Update: See below for important corrections to this story
"Fruit Belt" is a 150-year-old predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo that has faced a series of systemic hurdles, each worsening the next, with the latest being the erasure of its very name, with the Big Tech platforms unilaterally renaming the area "Medical Park."
Read the rest “The story of how Buffalo's oldest, best-established Black neighborhood was literally wiped off the map is a perfect parable about systemic bias -- UPDATED”
Back in 2016, a "reputation management" company called Profile Defenders was caught forging court orders in order to get complaints about its clients removed from the site Pissed Consumer. This was a monumentally stupid thing to do, as judges are consistently unamused with people who forge their signatures.
Read the rest “The "Reputation Management" industry continues to depend on forged legal documents”
Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) on Friday ordered two New York state agencies to investigate reports that Facebook could have access to a lot more of your personal data, if you're a smartphone user, than anyone realized before. Read the rest “NY Governor Cuomo orders 2 state agencies to probe report that Facebook gets more personal data from mobile users than known”
Amazon will instead focus on Northern Virginia and Nashville, after an organized effort by New Yorkers to hold the company and lawmakers accountable for sneaky dealmaking.
Whether you love them or hate them, rideshares like Uber and Lyft have become a daily part of life for millions of New Yorkers. These app-based services make it easy to pay for your ride, but while the privacy cost isn’t always as clear, it’s about to get a lot larger. These apps have tracked our movements since they launched, but as of this month, the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) started tracking us too.
Read the rest “New York City's new rideshare regs put Big Brother in backseat, give GPS tracking a whole new meaning”
After the 2020 census, the nation's electoral districts will be redrawn and it's a widely accepted fact that New York City will lose a seat, despite its growth since the 2010 census.
Read the rest “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is preparing for New York's establishment Dems to eliminate her district”
Amazon's plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a NYC campus is under fire from locals, as more details are revealed of what was promised to Jeff Bezos' empire.
The Tappan Zee will meet its maker on Saturday as New York state contractors plan to blow up what's left of the 63-year-old bridge. Replaced by the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge in 2017, the iconic Tappan Zee will be loaded up with explosives and sent to a watery grave in the Hudson River. The steel will be recovered by a marine salvage team. Restaurants and businesses in the area are planning watch parties for Saturday morning, including the “Dim-Sum-struction of the Tappan Zee Bridge," and "The Big Bang Brunch." Several New York news outlets plan to carry the detonation live.
Lyndhurst, local restaurants host Tappan Zee Bridge farewell, specials on Saturday (lohud.com)
(Photo: Brett Weinstein/Wikimedia Commons) Read the rest “New York will blow up the Tappan Zee Bridge on Saturday”
In October 2017, Syracuse cops arrested Torrence Jackson with a small amount of marijuana and accused him of hiding drugs in his rectum (the officers say they saw him shift in his seat and concluded that he'd put drugs up his butt). They took him to St Joseph's Hospital where he was nonconsensually X-rayed; when that revealed no drugs, officers told doctors to force sedation on Jackson and then put a tube and camera up his rectum.
Read the rest “Syracuse cops falsely accuse man of rectal dope-stashing and take him to hospital for nonconsensual anal probe; now he must pay $4600 for the procedure”
Charter-Spectrum has settled a lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General that accused the company of defrauding New Yorkers through false advertising about the data-speeds they could expect from their plans (among other things, the AG accused Charter of supplying customers with modems that were too slow to attain the speeds they'd paid for).
Read the rest “Charter will pay $174.2m for defrauding New Yorkers over data speeds, the largest settlement ever paid by a US ISP”
New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has concluded that seven New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, at least 200 times, for sums ranging from $46 to $3,000, and then sent collections agents after survivors who could not pay.
Read the rest “New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, then sent debt-collectors after them”
New York City's "marshal" service is a throwback to the Dutch colonial days; the 35 marshals are appointed by the mayor, draw no salary, and earn their livings by skimming a percentage off of the debts they collect, operating with impunity and reaching around the world.
Read the rest “New York City's municipal debt collectors have forged an unholy alliance with sleazy subprime lenders”
Amazon has selected New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters. They're re-branding the area of Crystal City in Arlington, VA as "National Landing." Read the rest “#AmazonHQ2: Amazon to open New York and Northern Virginia headquarters, plus new Nashville operations center”
I had no idea there was such a long and complicated debate over who owns Liberty Island and its crown jewel, the Statue of Liberty. Thank goodness CGP Grey is here to explain it all to us! Get a beverage and have a seat, it's quite a story. Read the rest “Who owns the Statue of Liberty? CGP Grey explains”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS STORY, AND WILL BE UPDATED. Authorities in New York are holding a press conference on 7 or more suspicious packages, some of which contained pipe bombs, sent to political targets, mostly in New York state. On the face of it, the coordinated attack appears to be an attempt to assassinate up to 7 different perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump. Read the rest “'AN ACT OF TERROR' — Packages sent to 7+ targets, CNN, Obamas, Clintons, Soros, Cuomo, Holder, Maxine Waters”
The FCC justified its Net Neutrality-killing order by claiming that comments it received showed strong public support for dismantling the rules that stop your ISP from deciding which parts of the internet you get to use; but it was widely reported that the comments in the Net Neutrality docket were flooded by bots that opposed Net Neutrality, using names and personal information from stolen identities of dead people, sitting US senators, journalists and millions of others.
Read the rest “New York Attorney General expands law-enforcement investigation into the bots that killed Network Neutrality”
