tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62934081333368206922024-03-29T07:03:19.060-04:0040 Years In The DesertThe Further Adventures of Matthew Saroff,<br>
Itinerant EngineerMatthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.comBlogger28247150tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-1789309657891445212024-03-28T20:05:00.002-04:002024-03-29T01:32:09.405-04:00There is a Cost to Long Range EVs<p>When one purchases an extremely long range, as in more than about 400 km range EV, they carry a lot of batteries, and those batteries are very heavy, and as a result, these cars have <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/nobody-told-ev-owners-how-quickly-they-burn-through-tires">severely limited tire life</a>.</p><p>I would have thought that this was a no-brainer, but people are surprised by this: </p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">In case you missed it, there's been a lot of discourse surrounding electric vehicles and tires lately. Not only do EVs wear through their rubber and <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/32810/switching-to-electric-vehicles-will-ruin-our-roads-without-a-gas-tax-replacement">roads</a> quicker because of <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/40657/the-gmc-hummer-ev-pickup-will-weigh-9046-pounds-report">their relatively extreme heft</a>, but the instant power they put down also accelerates the process. Owners are shocked to learn this firsthand because, as <a href="https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-original-equipment-tire-customer-satisfaction-study">J.D. Power</a> reports, their daily drivers chew through tires like they're going out of style. And not only that, but many were supposedly never told this would happen.</span></blockquote><p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/g5snDxK.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/g5snDxK.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="150" /></a>That bit about instant power is kind of silly. Everyone knows that each time you do a burnout, you are reducing tire life something on the order of 1500 km.</p><p>On the other hand, the fact that something like a Cybertruck weighs about 3½ tons results in much shorter tire life is less obvious to the non-engineering types out there:</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Now, big-name OEMs like Michelin and Goodyear sell rubber specifically for battery-powered cars. Marketing is one reason, of course, but so are the legitimately different requirements of EV tires. They must strike a different balance of strength, weight, and resiliency without hampering vehicle range or causing excessive noise. That's a tall task when you're dealing with 6,000-pound sedans and "midsize" trucks that weigh as much as a dually pickup.<br /><br />Automotive dealer software company CDK Global published a lengthy study about EV service in late 2023. In it, one respondent said that “when it comes to EVs, tires are the new oil change." We published a story last August about Rivian R1Ts needing new rubber after as few as 6,000 miles. Not all EV owners deal with such egregious wear, but considering most service shops recommend oil changes every 5,000 miles on gasoline-powered cars, the comparison checks out in that case.</span></p></blockquote><p>One solution for this is to get a less expensive car with shorter range. Shorter range means less batteries, which means less battery weight, which means less tire wear.</p><p>If if you are charging from a 120VAC plug at your home, if you are commuting 50 miles a day each way, you should not suffer from range anxiety from a 200 mile range EV.</p><p>Or you could buy a plug in hybrid, which typically have a range on the order of 40-50 miles, but can continue after that using an internal combustion engine that gets around 50 MPG.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-10503479332890123242024-03-28T19:14:00.006-04:002024-03-29T01:11:49.017-04:00Good News Everyone!<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/Xm6MaEg.png"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/Xm6MaEg.png" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="150" /></a>Oregon's Gover has <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/oregon-governor-signs-nations-first-right-to-repair-bill-that-bans-part-pairing/">signed a right-to-repair law with a fabulous twist</a>, it is the first in the nation that outlaws parts pairing.</p><p>Parts pairing is the use of digital signatures to prevent the re-use of parts and the use of compatible 3<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">rd</span> party parts.</p><p>Printer ink and HP are a classic example of using this tactic to maximize their profits at the expense of their users:</p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Oregon Governor Tina Kotek <a href="https://ktvz.com/news/business/2024/03/27/gov-kotek-signs-oregons-right-to-repair-bill-into-law-consumer-reports-is-among-those-cheering/">today signed</a> the state's Right to Repair Act, which will push manufacturers to provide more repair options for their products than any other state so far. <br /><br />The law, like those passed in <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/weakened-right-to-repair-bill-is-signed-into-law-by-new-yorks-governor/">New York</a>, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/calif-passes-strongest-right-to-repair-bill-yet-requiring-7-years-of-parts/">California</a>, and <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/minnesota-enacts-right-to-repair-law-that-covers-more-devices-than-any-other-state/">Minnesota</a>, will require many manufacturers to provide the same parts, tools, and documentation to individuals and repair shops that they provide to their own repair teams.<br /><br />But <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/oregon-oks-right-to-repair-bill-that-bans-the-blocking-of-aftermarket-parts/">Oregon's bill goes further</a>, preventing companies from implementing schemes that require parts to be verified through encrypted software checks before they will function. Known as parts pairing or serialization, Oregon's bill, <a href="https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2024R1/Measures/Overview/SB1596">SB 1596</a>, is the first in the nation to target that practice. Oregon State Senator Janeen Sollman (D) and Representative Courtney Neron (D) sponsored and pushed the bill in the state senate and legislature. </span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Oregon's bill isn't stronger in every regard. For one, there is no set number of years for a manufacturer to support a device with repair support. Parts pairing is prohibited only on devices sold in 2025 and later. And there are carve-outs for certain kinds of electronics and devices, including video game consoles, medical devices, HVAC systems, motor vehicles, and—as with other states—"electric toothbrushes." </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"></span>This is a major step forward.</p><p>Unfortunately, the DMCA and WIPO make further progress more difficult.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-70624368544544768822024-03-28T19:14:00.000-04:002024-03-28T19:14:00.138-04:00One Fewer Shanda Fur die Goyim ⃰ <p>Joe Lieberman (יִמַּח שְׁמו)<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">†</span> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/03/27/joe-lieberman-senator-vice-president-dead/">has died at the age of 82</a>.</p><p>He rose to prominence by defeating the last decent Republican in the Senate™, Lowell Weiker in 1988 with enormous help from movement nutjob right wing Republicans like William F. Buckley.</p><p>Once he entered the Senate, he spent most of the time stabbing his Democratic colleagues in the back, culminating in his behavior in the 2000 election, when, as Al Gore's running mate, he blithely supported the theft of the election in Florida in the hope that he could be the nominee in 2004.</p><p>Along the way, he made the PATRIOT act worse, neutered environmental regulation, worked to prevent a public option in healthcare, opposed lowering the Medicare eligibility age, supported the Iraq war until the bitter end, and routinely accused people who disagreed with him of being traitors.</p><p>He abandoned all pretense of being a Democrat after his failed bid for the Democratic nomination in 2004, and lost the Senate primary in 2006, but refiled as an independent and ran as an independent and won the general election.</p><p>He was a smarmy sanctimonious, holier than thou hypocrite, but by exiting this world he has finally done something to make this world a better place.<br /></p>
<sup>*</sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Yiddish, meaning, "An embarrassment to the Jews before the rest of the nations of the world."</span><br />
<sup>†</sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Hebrew, meaning, "May his name be obliterated."</span>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-14790383988930832912024-03-28T19:04:00.003-04:002024-03-29T00:52:26.477-04:00Shorter Version, the French Are Bastards<p>Emmanuel Macron's <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/french-president-emmanuel-macron-ukraine-french-ground-troops">recent statements regarding the deployment of regular French military forces to the Ukraine</a> have a context, and this context is a neocolonialist plan for to continue looting their former colonies in Africa.</p><p>Specifically, the CFA Franc currency allowed the existing colonial economics to continue, where this allowed France to extract raw materials and import them at below market cost, and allowed them to sell finished goods at above market prices.</p><p>This was compounded by the installation of puppet governments post colonial independence, sabotage and destruction of infrastructure of uncooperative governments, and configuring corporate deals which would mean that all the profits (beyond what bribes went to corrupt leaders) ended up in France.</p><p>This looting has been central, arguably essential, to France's post colonial economic success, and the economic failures of these former colonies. <br /></p><p>As a result of this, the coups in in the former French possessions in the Sahel have been aggressively anti-French, and have eagerly accepted Russian offers of security assistance.</p><p>Needless to say, the French, particularly Emmanuel Macron, who has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/03/macron-france-cfa-franc-eco-west-central-africa-colonialism-monetary-policy-bitcoin/">waxed rhapsodic over Frances one-sided economic hegemony in Africa</a>, consider this to be a severe threat to France and the French economy.</p><p>This conflict is what is driven Macron's bellicose pronouncements.</p><p>The video below is rather long, 48 minutes, but explains this context in exquisite detail, and is well worth the watch.<br /></p><p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="279" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fiD24uEvY1U" title="Why France is Actually Preparing for War With Russia" width="496"></iframe></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-73818241556745913862024-03-28T18:55:00.001-04:002024-03-29T00:17:25.709-04:00Thursday <p>So, once again, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/28/unemployment-claims-benefits-layoffs-jobs-economy/1c5c2b3a-ed03-11ee-8f2c-380a821c02db_story.html">initial unemployment claims fell</a>, beating forecasts, falling by 2,000 to 210,000 while continuing claims rose by 24,000 to 1.8 million.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The number of Americans signing up for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week, another sign that the labor market remains strong and most workers enjoy extraordinary job security.<br /><br />Jobless claims dipped by 2,000 to 210,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week ups and downs, fell by 750 to 211,000.<br /><br />Overall, 1.8 million Americans were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended March 16, up 24,000 from the week before.<br /><br />Applications for unemployment benefits are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and a sign of where the job market is headed. Despite job cuts at Stellantis Electronic Arts, Unilever and elsewhere, overall layoffs remain below pre-pandemic levels. The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/jobs-hiring-unemployment-economy-inflation-federal-reserve-96162ff805670eb19a44cdf67fa20e3e">unemployment rate, 3.9% in February,</a> has come in under 4% for 25 straight months, longest such streak since the 1960s.</span></blockquote><p>Meanwhile, GDP was revised up by .2% for the 4<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">th</span> quarter of 2023. </p><p>With all of this, I'm thinking that the Fed will put off rate cuts for another meeting. (Somehow skyrocketing profits are not subject to the same level of concern as mildly improving wages)<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-16686291125732082392024-03-27T19:57:00.001-04:002024-03-28T01:46:59.157-04:00As Atrios Would Say, "That F%$#ing Paper."<p>
It's been clear for some time that someone in senior management at the
<i>New York Times</i> hates trans people.
</p>
<p>
They have been churning out poorly reported anti-trans propaganda for at least
the last two years, and
<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/seen-not-heard-new-york-times-failed-quote-trans-people-over-60-2023-stories-anti">Media Matters has the numbers</a>:
</p>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;">A new report from Media Matters and GLAAD finds that The New York Times
excluded the perspectives of trans people from two-thirds of its stories
about anti-trans legislation in the year following public criticism for its
handling of the topic. <br /><br />Media Matters previously reported that
the Times
<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/new-york-times-helped-fuel-anti-trans-panic-2022-will-2023-be-any-better">helped fuel</a>
a right-wing anti-trans panic in 2022 by platforming anti-trans extremists,
painting rising transgender identification as a social contagion, and
fearmongering about the costs of transgender acceptance. <br /><br />In
February 2023, the paper received two separate open letters: one from a
coalition of
<a href="https://glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgtbq-allied-leaders-and-organizations/">150+ organizations and leaders</a>, including GLAAD, and a separate letter signed by
<a href="https://nytletter.com/">hundreds of Times contributors</a> that
criticized the outlet's contributions to a
<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/san-bernardino-pride-flag-murderer-and-inevitable-consequences-right-wing-media-hate">deadly</a>
anti-LGBTQ culture war. The newspaper attempted to
<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/new-york-times-neglects-accountability-after-letters-call-out-its-anti-trans">conflate</a>
both efforts, dismissing all criticisms of its coverage as merely “protests
organized by advocacy groups.” <br /><br />Between February 15, 2023, when
those letters were separately delivered to the Times, and February 15, 2024,
the Times published at least 65 articles that mentioned U.S. anti-trans
legislation in either their headline or lead paragraphs. We counted how
often the paper quoted openly trans or gender-nonconforming sources, cited
anti-trans misinformation or talking points without context or adequate
fact-checking, and accurately represented the records of anti-trans figures
mentioned in its stories. Our findings:
</span><ul>
<li>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>66% of the articles</b> did not quote even one trans
or gender-nonconforming person.
</span></li>
<li>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>18% of the articles</b> quoted misinformation from
anti-trans activists without adequate fact-checking or additional
context.
</span></li>
<li>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>6 articles</b> obscured the anti-trans background of
sources, erasing histories of extremist rhetoric or actions.
</span></li>
</ul>
<p>There is a timeline at the link.</p><p>I do not know who is responsible for this, but it is someone senior.</p><p>If you put a gun to my head, I would say that it was probably the publisher, AG "Dash" Sulzberger, but I have nothing at all to back this up.<br /></p>
Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-26316799877579404122024-03-27T19:34:00.001-04:002024-03-28T01:28:44.400-04:00Because It Was the Output of a Bunch of Click Bait Lying Sacks of Sh%$<p>Over at <i>The Economist</i>, they are wondering, "<a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/03/21/why-freakonomics-failed-to-transform-economics">Why “Freakonomics” failed to transform economics</a>."</p><p>This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions. <br /></p><p>It's pretty simple: There was no concern for the truth nor accuracy. It was an exercise in mindless and dishonest contrarianism in the interest in selling books/clicks.</p><p>I <a href="https://40yrs.blogspot.com/2009/11/devastating-takedown-of-super.html">noted this in 2009</a>, when the folks at Freakonomics tried to argue that solar power would result in more heating than coal because they are black, and absorb heat.</p><p>To do this they had to:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Assume that coal power was far more thermally efficient than it actually is. (You cannot burn coal in a turbine and use the exhaust to boil water for a steam turbine, which is the most efficient form of fossile fuel power. It only works for liquid and gaseous fuels)</li><li>Assume that solar panels do not reflect or re-emit any heat (Black body radiation), and that their efficiencies are lower than were achievable then.</li><li>That the Earth is a perfectly reflective sphere. (It's not it's albedo is 0.39, as any Vangelis fan could tell you)</li><li>Ignore that home solar panels are most often put on roofs, which are also black.</li><li>Ignores the greenhouse effect in its entirety, which dwarfs thermal emissions of all power generation on the planet earth.</li></ul><p>Freakonomics did not transform economics because it was a humbug promulgated by snollygosters. <br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-66282003102478033152024-03-27T19:04:00.009-04:002024-03-28T00:01:42.763-04:00Bye Felicia!<p>Former clerk for Clarence Thomas John Eastman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/27/eastman-california-bar-ruling/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter">has been recommended for disbarment by the judge reviewing his actions with regard to the 2020 election</a>.</p><p>Judge Yvette Roland also suspended his right to practice law three days from now, and a final decision on a permanent ban on his ability to practice law will be dealt with by the California Supreme Court.</p><p>There is a line from the movie <i>The Firm</i>, where Gene Hackman's character asks, " Do you think l'm talking about breaking the law?" and Cruise responds, "No, I'm just trying to figure out how far you want it bent," that appears to apply here.</p><p>Lawyers are supposed to be zealous advocates for their clients, but they are not supposed to descend into blatant illegality to do so.</p><p>Eastman has been on the side of unethical and illegal behavior for years in support of his batsh%$ insane ideology.</p><p>The only travesty here is that it took so long for the legal profession to recognize and sanction this:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A California judge recommended that conservative attorney John Eastman be disbarred in the state over his role in developing a legal strategy to help President <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2">Donald Trump</a> stay in power after his 2020 election loss.<br /><br />State Bar Court of California Judge Yvette Roland issued the recommendation in a 128-page ruling on Wednesday, ordering that Eastman’s law license be put on “involuntary inactive” status effective three days after her ruling. The California Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on the matter, which Eastman can appeal. Along with the recommendation for disbarment, Roland recommended that Eastman be ordered to pay $10,000 in monetary sanctions to the State Bar of California Client Security Fund.<br /><br />“The court rejects Eastman’s contention that this disciplinary proceeding and Eastman’s resultant discipline is motivated by his political views or his representation of President Trump or President Trump’s Campaign,” Roland’s ruling said. “Rather, Eastman’s wrongdoing constitutes exceptionally serious ethical violations warranting severe professional discipline.”<br /><br />………<br /><br />Along with the effort to be disbarred in California, Eastman, a former law school dean, has been embroiled in other legal cases related to election interference.<br /><br />Eastman faces criminal <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/15/georgia-indictment-charges/?itid=lk_inline_manual_15">charges</a> in a Georgia case accusing Trump and his allies of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. He’s also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/doj-trump-indictment-trump-coconspirators/?itid=lk_inline_manual_15">one of the unnamed co-conspirators</a> described in an election interference case brought by the Justice Department, although he doesn’t face charges.</span></blockquote><div class="wpds-c-PJLV article-body" data-qa="article-body"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">Eastman's behavior has been an affront to the legal ethics and to the reputation of the legal profession since almost his first day passing the bar, which is an awfully high bar to clear.</p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">It's not just that he has defended the indefensible, it has been that his lying about the law has been central to his entire career.<br /></p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">It's nice that the wheels of justice have finally turned on him.<br /></p></div>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-63865792630829636642024-03-27T18:53:00.002-04:002024-03-27T19:53:37.271-04:00Not a Face-Eating Leopard<span style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.</p>— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) <a href="https://twitter.com/Cavalorn/status/654934442549620736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 16, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></span> In a district that Trump carried in Alabama, albeit one where it was close, Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/180167/alabama-democrat-marilyn-lands-abortion-stunning-electtion">defeated her Republican opponent Teddy Powell with 63% of the vote</a>.<p>She accomplished this miracle by focusing on Republicans eating their constituents faces, specifically on how Republican abortion criminalization legislation led to the shutdown of both abortion and IVF services in the state. </p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A special election in Alabama on Tuesday proved one thing for Democrats: Abortion is a winning issue.<br /><br />Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrat-marilyn-lands-wins-alabama-special-election-ivf-abortion-righ-rcna145210">defeated</a> her Republican opponent, Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, for a state House seat in a deep-red district after she made abortion and in vitro fertilization access a cornerstone of her campaign. <br /><br />………<br /><br />Lands secured a whopping 63 percent of the vote—a 26-point lead—by aggressively going against the grain, telling voters she supports a repeal of Alabama’s abortion bans while sharing her own experience with abortion two decades ago, when she received a devastating diagnosis: a genetic defect called trisomy.<br /><br />“Twenty years ago I was able to get the care I needed. My three doctors told me this is the procedure I needed, that my life was at risk. I was able to go to my own hospital with my own doctor there, I didn’t have to leave my community,” Lands told <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/180002/alabama-state-house-candidate-heart-wrenching-abortion"><i>The New Republic</i></a>’s Greg Sargent. “And to think we’ve gone 20 years backwards. I can’t believe that. I’ve seen, in my lifetime, women make great strides in many areas. And, I’m just, I’m outraged that 20 years later women do not have the same freedoms and protections that I had.”</span></blockquote><p>It's really very simple. Republicans want to kill women like Marilyn Lands and like my wife.</p><p>Suddenly, the staunch anti-abortion activists realize that the <i>Handmaiden's Tale</i> will apply to good Christian white people like them, and suddenly they are looking for another proxy for racism.<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">*</span><br /></p>
<sup>*</sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The history is abundantly clear here, the origins of the abortion crimilization movement <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/agent-intolerance/">grew from racial bigotry, not abortion</a>. They were upset that their segregation academies lost their tax exempt status.</span>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-81856550983962299202024-03-27T18:45:00.005-04:002024-03-27T18:45:00.140-04:00Ecch (Tweet) of the Day<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">A North Texas school teacher and U.S. Army veteran has legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and announced he is running for U.S. president. <a href="https://t.co/D5f2DCKd2X">https://t.co/D5f2DCKd2X</a></p>— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCDFW/status/1772738107672039517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2024</a></blockquote><p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
Yes, he has <a href="https://literallyanybodyelse.com">a website</a>.</p><p>According to the story, he is a middle school teacher, which makes him qualified to deal with Congressional Republicans, at least the more mature ones, but my guess is that he does standup comedy on the weekends, and this is his attempt to get on Colbert. (I'm cynical that way)<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-82280571111896930552024-03-26T23:16:00.009-04:002024-03-27T01:03:21.335-04:00What Angus Said<p>Specifically, Angus Deaton, recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel* who has <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/12/nobel-laureate-economist-angus-deaton-capitalism-power/">unloaded on members of his profession</a>, whom he excoriated for ignoring the power issues in economics and inequality:<br /></p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Angus Deaton is the economic doyen from central casting. The bow-tie-wearing econometrician was born in Scotland, did a PhD at Cambridge and has been at Princeton for the last 40 years. He’s currently the Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2015. And he’s just <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton">dropped an almighty bucket of sh%$</a> on his entire profession. </span></blockquote>(<i>%$ mine</i>)<br /><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Where Deaton published it is almost as interesting as the contents: at the International Monetary Fund, that institution once seen as the standard-bearer of neoliberal orthodoxy, but which has in recent years developed a curiosity about the real-world impacts of the hardline policies it once imposed upon or prescribed to countries. <br /><br />Deaton lobs a series of truth bombs at his own profession, the result, he says, of “changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practising economist for more than half a century”. These include: “We have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being”.<br /></span><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #2b00fe;">If “economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators… the others regularly fail to materialise, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution — frequently though not inevitably — our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder”.</span></li><li><span style="color: #2b00fe;">“Historians, who understand about contingency and about multiple and multidirectional causality, often do a better job than economists of identifying important mechanisms…”</span></li><li><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Far from being “a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency”, unions “once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments. Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening gap between executives and workers, to community destruction, and to rising populism.”</span></li><li><span style="color: #2b00fe;">“I am much more sceptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers and am even sceptical of the claim, which I and others have made in the past, that globalisation was responsible for the vast reduction in global poverty over the past 30 years”.</span></li><li><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Immigration contributes to inequality. </span></li></ul><span style="color: #2b00fe;">But Deaton’s main point is a recognition of how power distorts policy: “Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game.”</span></blockquote><p>One does wonder what took him so long to reach this decision.</p><p>It's been obvious since (at least) John Maynard Keynes. <br /></p><p></p>
<sup>*</sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">It's not really a Nobel Prize, even if this were called the Nobel Prize in Economics.</span>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-78771572587795093012024-03-26T21:03:00.000-04:002024-03-27T00:44:45.229-04:00Ken Paxton Cops a Plea<p>He claims that it is not a plea deal, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/26/ken-paxton-deal-texas-securities-charges/">Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to make federal securities fraud go away</a>.</p><p>It's a plea deal: </p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), a conservative firebrand acquitted last year in a historic impeachment trial, has reached an agreement with prosecutors to avoid trial on long-standing state felony securities fraud charges.<br /><br />Paxton was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/04/11/sec-charges-texas-attorney-general-with-securities-fraud/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4">charged nearly a decade ago</a>, accused of defrauding investors at a Dallas-area tech company by not disclosing that he was paid by the company to recruit them. The case has been delayed for years by pretrial disputes over the trial’s location and special prosecutors’ fees.<br /><br />Under the agreement reached in Harris County District Court on Tuesday, prosecutors will dismiss felony charges against Paxton if he successfully completes 100 hours of community service and 15 hours of legal ethics classes and pays restitution of $271,000 by September. Paxton, who was a state legislator when some of the alleged actions occurred, had previously pleaded not guilty.</span></blockquote><p>Restitution, community service, and ethics classes? It's a f%$#ing plea deal. <br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-47237575299027292162024-03-26T20:45:00.002-04:002024-03-27T00:39:01.745-04:00It's All About the Benjamins<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/26/robert-f-kennedy-announces-vp/">Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has selected Nicole Shanahan his running mate</a>.</p><p>She bankrolled his Suberb Owl ad, and has something on the order of about a billion dollars in the bank as a result of her divorce from Google founder Sergei Brin.</p><p>Needless to say, this juxtaposition of incompetent candidates and large quantities of money will have political consultants salivating, particularly those chasing signatures for ballot access.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-43388889938702573512024-03-26T20:04:00.004-04:002024-03-27T00:30:03.404-04:00Part of My Youth Gone<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/oCxx9Iu.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/oCxx9Iu.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="200" /></a>Babar author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/24/laurent-de-brunhoff-author-of-babar-childrens-books-dies-at-98">Laurent de Brunhoff, has died at the age of 98</a>.</p><p>I have fond memories of my mom reading me the Babar stories, both by Laurent and his father Jean.</p><p>It's been years since I've thought of the eponymous elephant, but notice of his death reminds me a simpler time in my life.</p><p><br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-40621548387356811682024-03-26T19:22:00.001-04:002024-03-27T00:21:28.741-04:00Bye Felicia<p>And by, "Felicia," I mean Ronna Romney McDaniel, who was hired a few days ago by NBC as a pundit <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/ronna-mcdaniel-nbc-rnc">was fired by NBC following massive internal protests</a>.</p><p>Also, her agent, CAA, <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/ronna-mcdaniel-dropped-by-caa-as-future-of-nbc-deal-remains-uncertain/">has dumped her</a>.</p><p>Needless to say, Republicans are claiming that she was fired because she was a Republican, but they are completely full of crap on this.</p><p>She was alibiing for insurrection and blatantly and egregiously lying to reporters in her role as RNC chair.</p><p>This is different from, for example, Donna Brazile who spent a career spinning reporters, but in a way that has been done by partisan actors for decades.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel is on her way out of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/nbc">NBC</a> less than a week after joining the network, NBC announced in a memo from NBCUniversal News Group chair Cesar Conde.<br /><br />Conde said he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”<br /><br />………<br /><br />But she also claimed it was “fair to say there were problems [in elections in battleground states] in 2020” and said that while she did “not think violence should be in our political discourse”, she supported Donald Trump’s election fraud lie, which ultimately stoked the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, as a way of “taking one for the whole team” .<br /><br />That interview prompted an <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/24/business/chuck-todd-rips-nbc-news-ronna-mcdaniel/index.html">angry on-air response</a> from Chuck Todd, a former host.<br /></span></blockquote><p>When complete tool Chuck Todd unloads a can of whup ass on a Republican, someone has screwed up. <br /></p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /><br />A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/nbc-condemned-by-top-us-historian-over-ronna-mcdaniel-appointment">procession</a> of senior NBC and MSNBC hosts followed Todd in protesting the McDaniel hire on air, from the popular husband-and-wife morning show team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace, Joy-Ann Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow.<br /></span></blockquote><p>One hopes that senior management will be flipping burgers in the near future.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-5744549537466453482024-03-26T19:09:00.002-04:002024-03-27T00:21:08.896-04:00Update on the Key Bridge<span style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JebyNOvJmCM" title="RAW: Cargo ship loses power, crashes into the Baltimore Bridge" width="320"></iframe><br /><i>The power goes out about 10 seconds in<br /><br />
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/yeCdzE1.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/yeCdzE1.jpeg" width="320" /></a><br />
Not good </i></span>
<p>
We now have some information on
<a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26/key-bridge-collapses-into-patapsco/">the container ship that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge at the mouth
of Baltimore harbor</a>.
</p>
<p>
The ship, the MV Dali was, if you cannot tell by the prefix, a diesel powered
container ship, 300m long, and about 116,000 tons, so it was almost as long as
a Ford Class carrier, and had about 15% more mass.
</p>
<p>
From this video, it appears that there was some sort of power failure, and a
loss of steering, with the lights going off at least 3 times.
</p>
<p>It is known that the ship sent out a Mayday before hitting the bridge.</p>
<p>
That, and the voluminous smoke from the stack before impact, which implies
that they tried to reverse to slow down, seems to reinforce this.
</p>
<p>
BTW, there is a lot of kinetic energy in play here, it looks like it was doing
about 7 knots (3.6m/s) and at maximum weight, you are looking about 682 mJ of
energy. Given that TNT has a an energy contendt of 4.184 MJ/kg, this
means that the impact was likely equivalent to somewhere around 100-160 kg of
TNT applied directly to the bridge support.
</p>
<p>That bridge was going down after that. <br /></p>
<p>
The bridge is toast, and at least 6 construction workers are missing and
presumed dead:
</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;">A massive container ship adrift at 9 mph issued a “mayday” early Tuesday as
it headed toward the iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge, losing power before
colliding with one of the vital support columns. As the 984-foot vessel
struck the bridge in the middle of an otherwise calm night, it caused a din
that woke people ashore and immediately toppled an essential mid-Atlantic
thoroughfare into the frigid waters. <br /><br />The effects were immediate
and catastrophic: Authorities began searching for six construction workers
who had been repairing potholes on the Interstate 695 bridge at the time of
the collapse. By Tuesday evening, their employer said they were presumed
dead, and the Coast Guard said it was ending rescue efforts.<br /><br />The
ship, a Singapore-flagged vessel named Dali with thousands of containers on
it, departed the Port of Baltimore around 1 a.m., then quickly ran into
trouble. It’s unknown what, precisely, caused the collision at 1:27 a.m.,
but the ship reported losing power just before it struck the bridge. The
National Transportation and Safety Board is investigating the accident —
which authorities said does not appear to be intentional nor an act of
terrorism — but had not boarded the vessel to collect evidence, such as
recorders, as of Tuesday afternoon. <br /><br />It did not want to disturb
the more pressing matter: search efforts led by the U.S. Coast Guard. But
Tuesday night, Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said the rescue efforts would be
suspended. <br /><br />“Based on the length of time that has gone on in the
search, the extensive search efforts that we’ve put into it, the water
temperature, at this point we do not believe we are going to find any of
these individuals still alive,” Gilreath said.</span>
</blockquote>
<p>
The water temperature in the bay at this time of year is around 47°F/8°C, so
the it's hihgly unlikely that anyone would have survived in that water for
more than an hour.
</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two people — one who was briefly hospitalized and another who declined a
trip to a hospital — were rescued, authorities said.</span>
</blockquote>
Who the f%$# decides, after falling 180 feet into Baltimore Harbor, not to go to
the hospital?
<p></p>
<p>
Oh, yeah, the ambulance probably wasn't covered by their health
insurance. (F%$# private healthcare)<br />
</p>
<p></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">As for the bridge itself, which opened in 1977 after five years of construction, Federal Highway Administration records indicate the bridge had been considered in “good” or “fair” condition going back at least three decades. A 2023 Maryland Transportation Authority inspection found the bridge to be in “overall satisfactory condition.”
</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">[Maryland Governor Wes] Moore said the bridge was “fully up to code” and Benjamin W. Schafer, a Johns Hopkins professor of structural and civil engineering who reviewed video of the incident, said he didn’t see anything that immediately stood out as a “red flag” in regard to the bridge’s structural integrity. He called the collapse “more of an acute event.”</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The bridge had two supports holding it up; if you take one away, “it’s not a bridge anymore,” he told The Sun.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
<p>I would be remiss if I did not note that the ship's owner, Maersk, <a href="https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/">was recently subject to penalties for retaliating against a whistle-blower</a>.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The company that chartered the cargo ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was recently sanctioned by regulators for blocking its employees from directly reporting safety concerns to the U.S. Coast Guard — in violation of a seaman whistleblower protection law, according to regulatory filings reviewed by The Lever.<br /><br />Eight months before a Maersk Line Limited-chartered cargo ship crashed into the Baltimore bridge, likely <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-tuesday/index.html">killing six people and injuring others</a>, the Labor Department <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/Maersk-Sec%20Findings%20-FINAL%20071423_Redacted.pdf">sanctioned</a> the shipping conglomerate for retaliating against an employee who reported unsafe working conditions aboard a Maersk-operated boat. In its order, the department found that Maersk had “a policy that requires employees to first report their concerns to [Maersk]... prior to reporting it to the [Coast Guard] or other authorities.”<br /><br />Federal regulators at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which operates under the Labor Department, called the policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”<br /><br />Maersk’s reporting policy was approved by company executives, federal regulators found in their investigation into the incident. </span></blockquote><p>There is at this time, there are no indications that this contributed to whatever failures led to the accident, but I would not be at all surprised to find that Maersk's official (!) policy of retaliation contributed to whatever went wrong.<br /></p>
<p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-75573967811870376362024-03-26T07:31:00.006-04:002024-03-26T10:34:46.636-04:00Breaking<p>I'm getting up, and my wife says something to the effect of, "Holy Sh%$!".</p><p>A container ship hit the Francis Scott Key bridge and knocked out a span.</p><p>Some cars ended up in the harbor. <br /></p><p>"Holy Sh%$ !" indeed.<br /></p><p>More news to follow.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Posted via mobile.</span><br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-18463432187238835072024-03-25T23:42:00.000-04:002024-03-27T00:46:08.739-04:00There Ain't No Justice<p>Donald Trump just <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/25/trump-bond-reduced-new-york-fraud-case/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqDwgAKgcICjCO1JQKMLfRdDDwvvcB&utm_content=rundown">got his bond following his loss in the fraud civil trial in New York cut by more than half, and he got 10 additional days to post it</a>.</p><p>He lost the case, and the rules in New York are very specific as to the timing and amount of the bond that must be posted, but for reasons that are unclear from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/84d39bdc-d990-487d-9395-2fdc11199a81.pdf">the ruling</a> (PDF) the judges have appeared to have bailed him out:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">An appeals court panel in New York said Monday that former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2">Donald Trump</a> would be allowed to post a $175 million bond to stave off enforcement of a nearly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/02/26/trump-money-bonds-engoron-carroll/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2">half-billion-dollar</a> civil judgment against him and his business.<br /><br />The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/84d39bdc-d990-487d-9395-2fdc11199a81.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_4">order</a> was a significant win for Trump, who was otherwise facing a massive cash crunch and the prospect of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) moving to seize some of his assets <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/23/trump-bond-deadline-new-york-fraud-case/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4">as soon as this week</a>.<br /><br />However, while the five state judges on the panel eased the financial strain on Trump, they did not erase it entirely. They gave Trump 10 days to come up with the reduced bond of $175 million, saying they would only delay enforcement of the full amount if he put up that lower figure within this window — and it is not immediately clear how he will come up with the money.<br /><br />………<br /><br />Trump’s attorneys have said he could not finance an appeal bond of more than $450 million. They said his team had contacted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/trump-civil-fraud-judgment-bond-450-million/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21">30 companies</a>, none of which would take real estate — which accounts for most of Trump’s wealth — as collateral. Instead they required he put up cash or investment accounts. Securing such a large bond in cash is a “practical impossibility,” Trump’s lawyers argued.<br /><br /><br />The appeals court panel on Monday did not reduce the initial judgment, only the amount Trump needs to put up for a bond while appealing. His deadline for securing the bond is next Thursday, April 4. The extra 10 days may not be enough of an extension for Trump to turn his real estate into cash, as it typically takes weeks or months to sell properties such as golf courses or hotels.<br /><br />………<br /><br />Although the appeals court gave no reasoning for its decision, Adam Pollock, an attorney who formerly served as assistant attorney general in New York, said the decision could indicate that it might consider permanently reducing the judgment against Trump on appeal.<br /><br />“It’s extraordinary because the law is clear that you have to post a bond in the full amount, and it additionally suggests that there may be concern that the underlying judgment is itself excessive,” said Pollock.<br /><br />The appellate court did indicate that it wants to keep the case moving based on the schedule it laid out, legal experts said. The order requires Trump to appeal in time for the court’s September term. That requires that his appeal be prepared by July 8, according to Pollock. “Here what they’re saying is, ‘You’re not going to get to drag this out,’” Pollock said.<br /><br /><br />In addition to reducing the amount Trump must put up for his appeal bond, the panel also said it would stay other parts of Engoron’s decision.<br /><br />Among other things, the panel said it would block Engoron’s decree that Trump and his company be prohibited from getting loans from any New York financial institution for three years. The panel also said it would block Engoron’s orders barring Trump from serving in a top position at a New York corporation for three years or his sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — for two years. An appeals court judge had granted temporary stays on those measures last month, though it remained unclear whether the full panel would maintain or change that.<br /><br />The panel said some of Engoron’s other moves, including his directive installing an independent director of compliance for the Trump Organization, should stand.</span></blockquote><p>It's going to get interesting when that independent monitor issues a report saying, "Same sh%$, different day," because without corrupt business practices, the Trump Org would have no business at all.</p><p>Oh, well.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-69553776453950125812024-03-25T20:50:00.001-04:002024-03-26T00:54:59.035-04:00Flaco Update<p>A necropsy has been performed on Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle Owl that had escaped from the Central Park Zoo, and it appears that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-zoo-death-cause.html">he had high levels of rat poison in his system, as well as a severe infection contracted from pigeons</a>.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl whose escape from the Central Park Zoo and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-zoo.html">life on the loose</a> captivated New York, had enough rat poison and pigeon virus in his system to kill him even if he had not died after apparently striking an Upper West Side building last month.<br /><br />The finding, from a necropsy conducted by Bronx Zoo pathologists after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-zoo-dead.html">Flaco’s death on Feb. 23</a>, validated widespread concerns about the hazards he faced living as a free bird in Manhattan for just over a year. He would have turned 14 this month.<br /><br />“Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors — infectious disease, toxin exposures and traumatic injuries — that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting,” the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Central Park and Bronx Zoos, said in a statement on Monday.<br /><br />Initial necropsy findings released the day after what onlookers described as a deadly building strike suggested Flaco had sustained an acute traumatic injury to his body, with signs of substantial hemorrhage under his sternum and in his back near his liver.<br /><br />………<br /><br />In confirming the role of traumatic injuries, those tests found he had a severe pigeon herpesvirus, which the conservation society attributed to his eating feral pigeons.</span></blockquote><p> I'm still bummed about his death.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-62241151769586725332024-03-25T20:42:00.001-04:002024-03-26T00:49:59.764-04:00Meanwhile, Down the Hall in Another Courtroom<p>Judge Juan Merchan has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial-manhattan.html">refused to further delay the criminal charges against Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case</a>, so the trial will begin on April 15:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Donald J. Trump is all but certain to become the first former American president to stand trial on criminal charges after a judge on Monday denied his effort to delay the proceeding and confirmed it would begin next month.<br /><br />The trial, in which Mr. Trump will be accused of orchestrating the cover-up of a simmering sex scandal surrounding his 2016 presidential campaign, had originally been scheduled to start this week. But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/25/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial/this-was-supposed-to-be-the-start-of-trumps-trial-a-sudden-document-dump-changed-that">pushed the start date to</a> April 15 to allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to review newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation.<br /><br />Mr. Trump’s lawyers had pushed for an even longer delay of 90 days and sought to have the case thrown out altogether. But in an hourlong hearing Monday, Justice Merchan slammed their arguments, rejecting them all. <br /><br />In a particularly low moment for the defense team, the judge questioned the claims — and eventually, the résumé — of one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers as the former president looked on. <br /><br /><br />After a midmorning break, the judge returned to the courtroom, said that the former president had suffered no harm from the late disclosure of the documents and made the April 15 trial date final.<br /><br />“Defendant has been given a reasonable amount of time,” the judge said crisply.</span></blockquote><p>Personally, I do not think that Trump's trial will actually start on the 15<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">th</span>, but I would be delighted if I were wrong about this.</p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-43502853092632255742024-03-25T19:21:00.001-04:002024-03-26T00:27:17.893-04:00Biden's Best Appointment<p>Rather unsurprisingly, it is Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who just <a href="https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-how-ftc-chair-lina">just forced GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and Boehringer Ingelheim to lower prices on asthma inhalers</a>.</p><p>You may be wondering how the FTC gets involved in such things, as its purview does not generally extend to patents and other forms of exclusivity offered to pharmaceutical manufacturers.</p><p>It turns out that its what is <b><i>squarely</i></b> in its purview is criminal actions in furtherance of anticompetitive goals, like lying to the FDA about the patent protections on certain medications.</p><p>The FTC went after all three, and the costs of their inhalers have been lowered, and they are now open to generic competition:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /><br />But I want to start with something different. This week, GlaxoSmithKline <a href="https://us.gsk.com/en-us/media/press-releases/gsk-announces-cap-of-35-per-month-on-us-patient-out-of-pocket-costs-for-its-entire-portfolio-of-asthma-and-copd-inhalers/">announced</a> it will cap out-of-pocket expenses to $35 for a device for its entire line of asthma inhalers, likely due to significant policy action by the Federal Trade Commission. This move will help millions of people, and it speaks to the kind of opportunities lying around for assertive policymakers.<br /><br />GlaxoSmithKline’s line of inhalers is the most prescribed in the United States, and this corporation’s cut to patient costs follows two other giant corporations - AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim - who recently did the same thing. <br /><br />Despite being a very old type of product that is sold inexpensively abroad, inhalers are a big business in America, <a href="https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senators-baldwin-colleagues-launch-investigation-into-pharmaceutical-companies-high-price-of-asthma-inhalers">generating</a> $178 billion in revenue between 2000 and 2021. Three firms - AstraZeneca, GSK, and Teva - had revenue of $25 billion in the past five years from this line of business. The high revenue is a result of high cost, with the list price of inhalers as somewhere between $200 to $600. A cut, therefore, is a big deal, especially for people with high deductible health care plans.<br /><br />Why are inhalers so profitable? And why have three giant firms decided to forego this money? The short story is that pharmaceutical companies have been committing an extremely boring form of fraud that enabled them to maintain illegal monopoly protection for their products, and no one in government bothered to stop it. Last year, Chair Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission stepped up with some clever lawyering and removed their monopoly protection. And so these firms are preemptively choosing to cut what patients have to pay. <br /><br />Here’s the slightly longer version. While you’d think that a drug patent expiring would be simple and allow new entrants to come in and make an off-patent drug cheaply, in practice pharma companies often have many patents for a single drug, and frequently file for new second generation patents for an old drug. So bringing a generic competitor to market, with all the approvals and manufacturing costs, is risky unless you know it’s legal to sell it. In 1984, Congress passed a law called Hatch-Waxman, which was designed to lower drug prices by setting up a process to let generic drug companies enter markets. It essentially created a litigation period before any production started, where the brand and generic producers would fight, and a judge would decide whether the drug’s patents had expired. Once that judge ruled for the generic producer, it would then put the expensive into factories, distribution, and so forth.<br /><br />The law worked, and as a result, today, most drugs we take are cheap generics, while most of the money we spend on drugs are for the small number of newer branded drugs that still have patent protections. (The situation though has slowly gotten worse, and a lot of the same problems have re-emerged in new forms, which is why everyone hates big pharma. But most drugs are generic and quite cheap.) <br /><br />Hatch-Waxman included a litigation-heavy process for challenging a drug patent, involving something called <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-approvals-and-databases/approved-drug-products-therapeutic-equivalence-evaluations-orange-book#:~:text=The%20publication%20Approved%20Drug%20Products,Act)%20and%20related%20patent%20and">the Orange Book</a>, which is a list of FDA approved medicine that have been deemed safe and effective, as well as their patents. That’s the guide the FDA and generic companies use to tell if an expensive drug can be challenged. According to Hatch-Waxman, when a drug company lists a patent in the Orange Book, the FDA is prohibited by statute from letting any generic into the market for 30 months to let the process of challenging a branded patent play out. <br /><br />And here’s where the fraud comes in. Pharmaceutical companies have been, well, lying. They list patents in the Orange Book that aren’t valid for the medicine associated with them. That’s illegal. It’s actually a crime, a form of fraud. You’re not allowed to list patents on medical devices, but they do that. And no one has cracked down on illegal Orange Book patent listing in decades. The FDA, HHS, and the FTC all thought it was someone else’s job, until Orange Book fraud became a routine way that everyone just thought, well that’s how business works. </span></blockquote><p><span>Lina Khan is <b><i>NOT</i></b> a, "Someone else's job," kind or regulator, and so the FTC drafted a statement making it clear that this was a crime, and sent out letters to a number of pharmaceutical companies saying that they were breaking the law.</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span>………<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">So basically, what’s happening is that the inhaler and epipen markets are about to get a lot more competitive, and prices are going to come way down, perhaps even lower than the $35 out of pocket some of these firms are promising. It won’t even require government action for much longer, because generic pharmaceutical firms are going to take up the enforcement on their own. That’s how you create markets. And when there’s generic competition with a bunch of sellers, it means we won’t have to depend on brand companies to choose to lower out-of-pocket costs. And that’s the ultimate solution.</span></p></blockquote><p><span>No. The ultimate solution is to jail executives who preside over such schemes.</span></p><p><span>This is not just a civil infraction, and it is a crime, and even if they have to lower their prices now, they have generated billions in profits over the past few decades, so they still win.</span></p><p><span>Still, Lina Khan cannot criminally prosecute criminal pharma execs, and she is doing what she can.<br /></span></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-88022091551431000072024-03-25T19:03:00.004-04:002024-03-25T23:38:43.065-04:00What Woz Said<p>Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/woz_tiktok_ban_hypocrisy/">weighed in on the bill in Congress to ban TikTok</a>.</p><p>He's calling bullsh%$, noting the obvious, that while TikTok may be a privacy hellscape, it is no worse, and in some cases arguably better, than the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, Ecch (Twitter), Google, Amazon, Apple, or any one of a dozen or so American companies.</p><p>It should be noted that at the time of my writing this, there have been no classified document leaks on TikTok, as opposed to, for example,<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/22/politics/us-military-discord-leaks-gamers-classified/index.html"> War Thunder discussion boards</a>.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has criticized the US government's targeting of TikTok, saying it is hypocritical to single out one social media platform for tracking users and not apply the same rule to all. <br /><br />In an interview with news channel <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2024/03/23/steve-wozniak-apple-cofounder-tiktok-lcl-sot-vpx.cnn">CNN</a>, Woz was asked about Apple's so-called "walled garden" approach to protecting users, and in response he said he was glad for the protection that he gets, and that Apple does a better job in this respect than other companies. <br /><br />"And tracking you - tracking you is questionable. But my gosh, look at what we're accusing TikTok of, and then go look at Facebook and Google and that's how they make their businesses," he added. "I mean, Facebook was a great idea. But then they make all their money just by tracking you and advertising, and Apple doesn't really do that so much."</span></blockquote><p>"That much," huh? That word is getting an <b><i>awfully</i></b> hard workout here. (Not a fan of Apple. The only reason that Tim Cook is not the biggest psychopath to have run Apple is because his immediate predecessor was Steve Jobs.)<br /></p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Earlier this month, the US Congress passed the <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/us_congress_passes_tiktok_ban/">Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act</a>, which aims to force TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell off its US-based biz or face being banned from operating in the country. <br /><br />"I don't understand it, I don't see why," commented Woz. "What are we saying? We're saying 'Oh, you might be tracked by the Chinese.' Well, they learned it from us."</span></blockquote><p>The hypocrisy behind the bill is stunning, of course, but that hypocrisy is at the core of what the United States calls the, "Rules based order," which boils down to, "The US makes the rules, bitches."</p><p>(Full disclosure, I do not have a TikTok account, and avoid using it in my blog, because I cannot figure out how to stop it from auto-playing videos.)<br /></p><p></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-19984614685464779262024-03-24T19:56:00.005-04:002024-03-25T00:59:14.294-04:00About that Boeing 787 that Dropped 1000 Feet<p> It appears that it was <a href="https://simpleflying.com/boeing-safety-advisory-latam-787-plunge/">a loose seat adjustment switch inadvertantly triggered by a flight attendant</a>.</p><p>The seat moved forward, print the pilot into the controls, and disengaging the autopilot.</p><p>Boeing has issued a safety advisory asking airlines to inspect these switches. (Sounds like another Boeing f$#@-up)</p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-30128801613753138622024-03-24T19:41:00.002-04:002024-03-25T21:23:37.771-04:00Close to Home, but I Have no Clue<div>My son goes to the University of Maryland at College Park, so when I read reports that the University was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/19/university-maryland-hazing-allegations/">shutting down all fraternity events and investigating allegations of hazing</a>, I and him wage was going on.</div><div><br /></div><div>He replied that all he knew about this was what he heard at the weekly stand up comedy open mic nights hosted by the student group Punch Bowl.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now you know what I know, basically nothing.</div>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-34509363786310166352024-03-24T19:02:00.013-04:002024-03-25T00:24:02.812-04:00A Feature, Not a Bug<p>It has become increasingly apparent that Medicare Advantage, the private and heavily taxpayer subsidized private for profit variant of health insurance for the elderly, does not work.</p><p>It is designed to draw people in with things like paying for gym, memberships, but when the healthcare sh$# hits the fan, you face limited networks and denial of essential care.</p><p>This is not a surprise. The goal was to create a constituency for the program and aggressive lobbying by the industry, which would eventually lead to the dismantling of the second most efficient and effective healthcare system in the United States. (The most efficient is the VA)</p><p>Well, mission accomplished, with a bill being proposed that would make Medicare Advantage the default option. <a href="https://wendellpotter.substack.com/p/as-medicare-advantages-shortcomings">People would have to explicitly ask for the original single payer program</a>:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A story in Rolling Stone last month offered an <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-republicans-privatize-medicare-1234960808/">ominous prediction</a> about our nation’s health care. “The right-wing policy agenda written for a new Donald Trump presidency would ‘greatly accelerate’ efforts to privatize Medicare,” <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewperezdc">Andrew Perez</a> wrote.<br /><br />That story should be seen by the millions of seniors who might not read Rolling Stone but who have traditional Medicare coverage with a supplemental policy that pays for virtually every medical bill when they get sick. Those are the people who have not yet been enticed into Medicare Advantage plans with promises of groceries and gym memberships but with little or no notice about the delays in care and the up-front, out-of-pocket costs common in many plans.<br /><br />As I pointed out in an earlier story, there are roadblocks to care that have been <a href="https://wendellpotter.substack.com/p/hospitals-across-the-country-are">reported by hospitals</a> that were no longer accepting Medicare Advantage plans from some companies. The CEO of the Brookings Hospital System in Brookings, South Dakota, was candid: MA plans “pay less, don’t follow medical policy, coverage, billing, and payment rules and procedures, and they are always trying to figure out how to deny payment for services,” he said<br /><br />.......<br /><br /><a href="https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/14/unitedhealth-algorithm-medicare-advantage-investigation/">Stories in Stat</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/bobjherman">Bob Herman</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/caseymross">Casey Ross</a> have carefully dissected what patients with Medicare Advantage plans have had to endure to get needed care. As I pointed out in a post about their work, <a href="https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/insights/bob-herman-one-few-reporters-still-pulling-back-curtain-business-health-care">patients often struggle to get the care they need</a>. In one story about UnitedHealthcare, the largest Medicare Advantage company, the reporters noted that the insurer’s stunning financial success was driven by “brazen behavior,” such as cutting off payments for seriously ill patients and “denying rehabilitation care for older and disabled Americans as profits soared.” UnitedHealth is far from alone in using such tactics to boost profits. Herman and Ross told of the struggle of a sick, 80-year-old North Carolina woman whose plan with Humana, the second largest Medicare Advantage company, would pay only for cheaper care in a nursing home instead of in a long-term acute-care facility.</span></blockquote>
Until the polity in the United States acknowledge that health insurers are the problem, and<b> NOT</b> the solution, this sort of profit driven rat-f$#@ery will only get worse. <div><br /></div><div>This needs to stop.</div>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-17842975151784287792024-03-23T22:48:00.001-04:002024-03-24T00:20:00.180-04:00Our New Future<p>There has been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-21/shingles-cases-increasing-nsw-covid-rise/103600746">an explosion in the number of cases of shingles among healthcare providers in New South Wales</a> that appears to be linked to Covid infections.</p><p>Given the rather obvious ties between Covid-19 and immune dysregulation, this is not a surprise.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Out of everything Regina Featherstone remembers about shingles, it's the nerve pain that stands out.<br /><br />"I would take one step … the pain sears up," she recollected.<br /><br />In December 2022, the 31-year-old developed shingles on her scalp and face, a time when she was both rundown and exhausted.<br /><br />Initially, it was a small red lump on Ms Featherstone's neck, something she thought was an infected hair follicle. Her GP agreed with her assumption — shingles is more often seen in older people. So, Ms Featherstone was prescribed antibiotics.<br /><br />But that same GP rang Ms Featherstone the next day to say that, having done some research after her appointment, this lump — which had now grown into multiple lumps — was actually shingles.<br /><br />Something the GP casually said next is another memory that stands out for Ms Featherstone: That shingles cases are increasing, with COVID being one factor as to why.<br /><br />"She said we have seen a rise [in shingles since COVID], especially in young people, because your immune system is just so compromised that you're more susceptible to your body just attacking itself."<br /><br />………<br /><br />One emerging question is whether COVID can increase the chance of shingles.<br /><br />In 2022, a paper published by Oxford University Press reported that COVID was linked to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/9/5/ofac118/6545460?login=true">an increased risk of shingles</a> in patients over 50.<br /><br />Coincidentally, some data suggests shingles cases have increased across age groups in parts of the country since 2020.</span></blockquote><p class="paragraph_paragraph___QITb">Once again, let me state, wear your f%$#ing mask.<br /></p><p class="paragraph_paragraph___QITb">Covid-19 is a particularly nasty disease, and notwithstanding the various treatments available, it has a very real potential to cripple or kill you.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-27303809470295373102024-03-23T22:30:00.011-04:002024-03-23T23:59:48.902-04:00Getting Your Archeology Geek On<p>This is a nice summary of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/21/must-farm-archeology-bronze-age-cambridge/">excavations at Must Farm, which are arguably the best preserved Bronze Age settlements in the British Isles</a>.</p><p>It appears that it all burnt down in a fire, but its unique location resulted in an extremely preserved site:</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A half-eaten bowl of porridge complete with wooden spoon, communal rubbish bins, and a decorative necklace made with amber and glass beads are just a handful of the extraordinarily well-preserved remnants of a late Bronze Age hamlet unearthed in eastern England that’s been dubbed “Britain’s Pompeii” and a “time capsule” into village life almost 3,000 years ago.<br /><br />The findings from the site, excavated in 2015 to 2016, are now the subject of <a href="https://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-settlement/publications/">two reports</a>, complete with previously unseen photos, published this week by University of Cambridge archaeologists, who said they cast light onto the “cosy domesticity” of ancient settlement life.<br /><br />“It might be the best prehistoric settlement that we’ve found in Britain,” Mark Knight, the excavation director and a co-author of the reports, said in an interview Thursday. “We took the roofs off and inside was pretty much the contents,” he said. “It’s so comprehensive and so coherent.”<br /><br />The reason for the rare preservation: disaster.<br /><br />The settlement, thought to have originally consisted of several large roundhouses made of wood and constructed on stilts above a slow-moving river, was engulfed by a fire less than a year after being built.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">During the blaze, the buildings and much of their contents collapsed into a muddy river below that “cushioned the scorched remains where they fell,” the <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/must-farm-prehistoric-stilt-house-dwellers">university said</a> of the findings. This combination of charring from the fire and waterlogging led to “exceptional preservation,” the researchers found. </span></p></blockquote><p>Definitely on my list of places to visit in the UK.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-44036705752287926872024-03-23T22:18:00.001-04:002024-03-25T21:19:25.791-04:00Consider the Source<p>It's not often that the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> comes out against corporate subsidies.</p><p>Usually it only happens when it's something like clean energy subsidies.</p><p>So I count it significant that they published an OP/ED from former acting USPTO director Joseph Matal titled, "<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/patent-lawsuits-are-a-national-security-threat-secretly-funded-litigation-f3cd5bd4?mod=itp_wsj&mod=djemITP_h">Patent Lawsuits Are a National-Security Threat</a>."</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The opposition to the subsidies arising from IP absolutism has been deepening and broadening, because more and more people, throughout the ideological spectrum, have become aware that rather than, "Promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts," as the Constitution states, they are instead extreme forms of rent seeking and extortion:<br /><br />Third parties are increasingly funding patent litigation in the U.S. in exchange for some of the proceeds. This practice was nearly nonexistent as recently as 2010 but now appears to account for about <a href="https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/1/4/2022-patent-dispute-report">30% of the country’s infringement lawsuits</a>. The government doesn’t know who pays for or controls these suits. That could allow foreign adversaries to profit from our legal system and threaten U.S. national security.<br /><br />In 2019 <a href="https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/PHG">VLSI Technology</a> alleged that some of the tech in Intel’s microprocessors infringed on its patents. In at least two lawsuits VLSI has been awarded some $3 billion in damages, some since reversed and remanded. Thanks to what’s known as the NHK-Fintiv rule—under which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refuses petitions for review if the relevant patents and parties are already involved in litigation—the agency hasn’t taken up Intel’s challenges.<br /><br />When OpenSky, another party, <a href="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/ptab-filings/IPR2021-01064/2">challenged</a> the same patents in 2021, the office’s review confirmed what Intel alleged: VLSI’s patents were invalid because they claimed features of semiconductor design that were obvious.<br /><br />………<br /><br />If a foreign adversary wanted to weaken the U.S., it could hardly do better than wage the type of legal warfare that VLSI has brought against Intel. As former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has noted <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/patent-litigation-is-a-matter-of-national-security-chips-and-science-act-intellectual-property-theft-lawsuit-technology-scammers-manufacturing-11662912581?mod=article_inline">in these pages</a>, this practice is a direct threat to America’s security.<br /><br />What is VLSI and are foreign governments involved in its campaign against Intel? We don’t know. VLSI Technologies Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer in the 1980s and ’90s, has been <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4527378">defunct</a> for more than two decades. The current VLSI makes no products and has no relation to the old VLSI. It appears to have appropriated the name to obscure itself, a common tactic among nonpracticing patent-litigation entities.<br /><br />VLSI’s parent company is Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-wins-us-appeal-overturn-218-billion-vlsi-patent-verdict-2023-12-04/">owned</a> in large part by interests in Abu Dhabi. The group is also a <a href="https://www.ilfa.com/membership-directory">member</a> of the International Legal Finance Association, an organization that lobbies against litigation-finance disclosure. VLSI has resisted revealing the identities of the investors in its litigation against Intel. When Colm F. Connolly, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Delaware, ordered VLSI to disclose who was funding its litigation in August 2022, the company agreed to dismiss its case with prejudice. (Fortress didn’t respond to a request for comment.) </span></blockquote><p>It appears that even right wing pig-felching bastards like Matal and Mukasey are getting disgusted with the excesses of the current patent process.</p><p>"F%$# the patent trolls," is something that we can agree with.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-39316287949739272322024-03-23T17:46:00.012-04:002024-03-23T20:50:42.141-04:00I May Be Drunk Blogging Tonight<p> It's Purim, after all </p><p>If I do drunk blog, expect an elevated level of typographical errors.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Posted via mobile</span></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-29131680033266828722024-03-22T20:37:00.006-04:002024-03-23T01:45:46.316-04:00Lies, Damned Lies, and Cable CompaniesJefferson County Cable <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/cable-isp-fined-10000-for-lying-to-fcc-about-where-it-offers-broadband/">was caught lying about its broadband coverage in order to prevent potential competitors from getting government grants</a> and was fined $10,000.00.<div><br /></div><div>Once again we see that industry self reporting is an invitation to deceptive practices, and that all cable companies are bastards:</div><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">An Internet service provider that admitted lying to the Federal Communications Commission about where it offers broadband will pay a $10,000 fine and implement a compliance plan to prevent future violations.<br /><br />Jefferson County Cable (JCC), a small ISP in Toronto, Ohio, admitted that it falsely claimed to offer fiber service in an area that it hadn't expanded to yet. A company executive also admitted that the firm submitted false coverage data to prevent other ISPs from obtaining government grants to serve the area. Ars helped expose the incident in a <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/cable-company-tries-to-block-grants-to-rivals-by-lying-about-coverage-area/">February 2023 article</a>.<br /><br />.........<br /><br />We also published reports in February 2023 detailing <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-gave-false-map-data-to-fcc-and-didnt-admit-it-until-ars-got-involved/">false broadband claims</a> made <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-could-have-avoided-giving-false-map-data-to-fcc-by-checking-its-own-website/">by Comcast</a>, which initially insisted that the false data it submitted to the FCC was correct. It's not clear yet whether Comcast will face any punishment.<br /><br />Last week's FCC order said that Jefferson County Cable initially reported serving 8,178 addresses for the commission's June 30, 2022, data collection. It then reduced that number to 6,605 addresses in the FCC's next round of data collection for December 31, 2022.<br /><br />Even the second, lower number was higher than Jefferson County Cable's actual coverage. After a letter from the FCC Enforcement Bureau in March 2023, "Jefferson County Cable corrected its inaccurate submissions for both data filings by removing these approximately 1,500 locations from each of the relevant data filings on May 19, 2023," the FCC order said.</span></blockquote><p>A $10K fine is a barely noticeable cost of doing business.</p><p>This was deliberate fraud by the company. The fine should be many times that.</p><p>Also, senior executives should have been from marched or of their offices in handcuffs.</p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-68337330966835957502024-03-22T19:29:00.003-04:002024-03-23T22:20:40.898-04:00I Owe Elon an Apology<div>I did not comment about it here, but on some of the social media platforms and BBS's that I frequent, I had made the observation that Elon musk's counterintuitive and stupid user interface choices on Tesla cars was probably responsible for the freak accident that claimed the life of Angela Chao, Mitch McConnell's sister in law.</div><div><br /></div><div>She mistook reverse and forward and backed up into a pond on her ranch and drowned.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had assumed that this was, at least in part, a consequence of Tesla's egregiously bad touchscreen centric user interface.</div><div><br /></div><div>It turns out that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/angela-chao-was-well-over-alcohol-limit-at-time-of-deadly-texas-crash-fd0305bd">Angela Chao was drunk off her ass</a> at three times the legal limit.</div><div><br /></div><div>At that level of intoxication, it would be rather mendacious to suggest that the car maker's poorly thought out ergonomics was responsible.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-died-full-self-driving-fatal-crash-2024-2">death of Tesla employee Hans von Ohain</a>, who relied on Musk's lies about the self-driving capability of his car to get him home when he was drunk is a direct result of Musk's psychopathic marketing.</div><div><br /></div><div>In case you are wondering, he was a direct descendant of<b> That</b> Hans von Ohain. (I am not going to make the obvious joke, "Hey look Ma, no Hans!")</div>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-90913513792801349002024-03-22T05:21:00.005-04:002024-03-22T05:21:00.134-04:00Linkage<ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://simpleflying.com/former-boeing-manager-walks-off-alaska-airlines-737-max-9/">Former Boeing Senior Manager Walks Off Alaska Airlines Flight After Realizing It Was A On 737 MAX 9</a> (<i>Simple Flying</i>) If it's Boeing, I ain't going.</li><li><a href="https://gizmodo.com/flipper-zeros-co-founder-says-the-hacking-tool-is-all-a-1851279603">Flipper Zero's Co-Founder Says the Hacking Tool Is All About Exposing Big Tech's Shoddy Security</a> (Gizmodo) An interview with the inventor of the tool.</li><li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/opinion/emmanuel-todd-decline-west.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb">The Prophetic Academic Emmanuel Todd Now Foresees the West’s Defeat</a> (<i>The New York Times</i>) He predicted the fall of the USSR in the 1970s, and now he is predicting this for the west. </li><li><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-11/capital-gains-hikes-at-center-of-biden-s-second-term-tax-agenda">Capital Gains Hikes at Center of Biden’s Second-Term Tax Agenda</a> (<i>Bloomberg</i>) Elections matter.</li><li><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/08/rcmp-all-pissed-off-a-private-business-told-it-to-get-a-warrant-if-it-wanted-a-copy-of-parking-lot-camera-footage/">RCMP All Pissed Off A Private Business Told It To Get A Warrant If It Wanted A Copy Of Parking Lot Camera Footage</a> (<i>Techdirt</i>) A bar told the RCMP that their policy was to require a court order. The RCMP responded by directing retaliation against their liquor license. </li><li> <a href="https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2024/03/13/martin-kulldorff-fired-from-harvard/">"Poor, poor pitiful me": Was Martin Kulldorff fired by Harvard?</a> (<i>RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE</i>) Eugenicist co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration got fired by Brigam and Women's Hospital, which ended his participation in Harvard Med School programs. So no, Harvard did not fire him, and good for his being fired. He is directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.</li><li><a href="https://mathbabe.org/2024/03/16/an-interview-with-someone-who-left-effective-altruism/">An interview with someone who left Effective Altruism</a> (<i>mathbabe</i>) Yes, EA is a cult, and a scam. </li></ul>
Interesting look at the erasure of Brythonic around 500 CE: (Spoiler, it's just the high status language displacing the low status one, not ethnic cleansing)
<iframe width="496" height="279" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3C5WP9wKPf8" title="The Mystery of the Missing Medieval Language" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-24158842628783852472024-03-21T21:11:00.001-04:002024-03-22T00:42:27.331-04:00About F%$#ing Time<p>Federal Courts are finally moving to <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/21/us-courts-finally-trying-to-crack-down-on-judicial-shopping/">moving to shut down to judge shopping</a>, a process, particularly favored by right wing legal activists, of arranging the filing to guarantee that the case finds its way to a particularly deranged judge:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This took way too long, but it appears that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the Judicial Conference have finally decided to crack down on the serious problem of judicial shopping in the federal courts. They’ve <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/news/2024/03/12/conference-acts-promote-random-case-assignment">set a new policy</a> that will hopefully result in a more random allocation of cases to judges. <br /><br />Jurisdiction shopping has been a problem for quite some time. You could argue that the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) was a response to patent litigation that involved repeated jurisdiction shopping. Of course, rather than fixing the underlying problem, they just set up a single appeals court that would hear all patent cases, which resulted in a weird sort of “<a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2014/09/10/cafc-rogue-patent-court-captured-patent-bar-needs-to-go-away/">judicial capture</a>” of the Federal Circuit. <br /><br />And, rather than fix it, the judicial shopping just shifted a bit after CAFC was created. Specific district courts, initially in East Texas (first <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2006/02/03/why-patent-trolls-worldwide-love-marshall-texas/">Marshall</a>, then Tyler), established themselves as patent-friendly court jurisdictions, leading to all sorts of shenanigans. This included frequent patent litigants <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/07/newegg-asks-appeals-court-help-after-waiting-nearly-two-years-east-texas-judge-to-actually-rule-patent-case/#comment-827200">buying a skating rink</a> and <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2009/06/26/tivo-bought-some-bull-in-marshall-texas-literally/">a literal bull</a> to ingratiate themselves with the judges and juries. The Supreme Court tried to <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/22/sorry-east-texas-supreme-court-slams-door-patent-jurisdiction-shopping/">put a stop to this</a>, though it took <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/09/07/patent-trolls-favorite-judge-comes-up-with-test-to-keep-patent-cases-east-texas-no-matter-what-scotus-said/">a few tries</a> to sorta get it to work. <br /><br />………<br /><br />And, by then, we saw that this kind of judicial shopping was happening beyond just the patent realm. Over and over again we’ve seen cases — especially cases involving culture war or politically charged topics — being filed in courts with just a single, or a very small number of judges, hoping to get one of the batshit crazy judges who will bless anything. Indeed, there are now a few judges, such as Terry Doughty, Matthew Kacsmaryk, and Aileen Cannon, whose names regularly show up in <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/end-judge-shopping">discussions about judicial shopping</a>. <br /><br />It’s becoming bigger and bigger news as the public is learning more and more about this type of judicial shopping, which undermines respect in the rule of law, as well as respect of the judicial system itself. <br /><br />So, now, finally, years later, the Judicial Conference has said <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/news/2024/03/12/conference-acts-promote-random-case-assignment">it’s going to start making a change</a>. In certain types of cases, they will be randomly assigned to judges across the entire district, rather than limiting judicial assignments just to the specific court where the case was filed. This will increase (sometimes significantly) the pool of judges who might be assigned the case: <br /></span><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The Judicial Conference of the United States has strengthened the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit. <br /><br />The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, “whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.” In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process. </span></blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The key here is the “district-wide” random selection, as opposed to just in the specific court within that district.</span></blockquote><p>It's good that the Judicial Conference is addressing this, but it's clear that self-regulation does not work.</p><p>Under the Constitution, Congress has wide ranging authority to supervise how the courts conduct their business, and the court cannot be trusted to police it self. (**cough** Clarence Thomas **cough** **cough** Samuel Alito **cough)<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-41875240602806252752024-03-21T19:45:00.001-04:002024-03-21T23:58:53.748-04:00Federalize the F%$#ing Texas National Guard<p>A few days ago, the Supreme Court allowed Texas to continue to enforce its anti-immigrant law, and yesterday, the 5<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">th</span> Circuit <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/19/texas-sb-4-illegal-immigration/">issued a new injunction against the law</a>:</p><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"></p><blockquote><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A federal appeals
court late Tuesday night stopped a state law allowing Texas police to
arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border —
hours after the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed it to go into effect.</span></p>
<p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Earlier in the
day, the high court had allowed the law to go into effect after it sent
the case back to the appeals court, urging it to issue a ruling
promptly. The appeals court soon scheduled a hearing for Wednesday
morning. And on the night before hearing oral arguments the appeals
court issued an order to let a lower court's earlier injunction stopping
Senate Bill 4 stand, <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-50149-CV1.pdf">according to a filing</a>.</span></p>
<p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The Supreme
Court earlier Tuesday let SB 4 go into effect but stopped short of
ruling on the law's constitutionality, which has been challenged by the
Biden administration.</span></p><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /></span></p><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">SB 4 seeks to make
illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a
punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a
second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.</span></p>
<p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The law also
requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are
convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting
migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant
agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.</span></p></blockquote><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left"></p><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left">The 5<span style="font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">th</span> Circuit is arguably the most conservative circuit in the United States, and it just sounds like they threw some <b><i>MAJOR</i></b> shade at the Supreme Court.</p><p class="t-copy t-links-underlined t-align-left">This will not be the last time that this happens. <br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-33167700188557277992024-03-21T19:28:00.003-04:002024-03-21T23:37:37.200-04:00I Am Amused<p>A judge in Illinois, one appointed by Barack Obama, has <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/undocumented-immigrants-have-right-own-guns-judge-rules-1880806">ruled that the law banning illegal immigrants from owning guns is unconstitutional</a>.</p><p>It appears to me that this is actually in accordance with Supreme Court precedent, though I am pretty sure that the Neanderthal majority on the did not foresee this: </p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A judge this month dropped gun charges against an illegal migrant in Illinois, sparking further debate about the rights associated with the Second Amendment.<br /><br />U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Coleman of the Northern District of Illinois referenced lower court rulings in dismissing <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/kyle-rittenhouse-body-armor-armored-republic-social-media-1879578">firearm possession</a> charges against Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, who was illegally or unlawfully in the United States when he possessed a handgun in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago on June 1, 2020.<br /><br />"The Court finds that Carbajal-Flores' criminal record, containing no improper use of a weapon, as well as the non-violent circumstances of his arrest do not support a finding that he poses a risk to public safety such that he cannot be trusted to use a weapon responsibly and should be deprived of his Second Amendment right to bear arms in self-defense," Coleman, who was appointed under President <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/topic/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a>, wrote in her eight-page ruling filed March 8.<br /><br />………<br /><br />The court previously denied two motions by Carbajal-Flores to dismiss charges. The first time was on April 13, 2022, and the second on December 19, 2022—about six months after the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-scraps-one-americas-toughest-gun-laws-1718557">U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3</a> to strike down a 100-year-old New York law requiring that individuals show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a firearm outside a home, stemming from the 2022 ruling in <i>New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. et al v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, et al</i>. </span></blockquote>The irony here is delicious.<br /><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-6850047666565797732024-03-21T19:19:00.000-04:002024-03-21T23:19:56.268-04:00It's Thursday, so <p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/ATmj847.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ATmj847.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="350" /></a>It's Thursday, and the new unemployment numbers are out, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-21/us-initial-jobless-claims-ease-in-sign-of-resilient-labor-market">initial claims fell by 2,000 to 210,000</a> as versus the predicted increase to 213,000, and continuing claims were unchanged at 1.81 million.</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Initial applications for US unemployment benefits held near historically low levels last week, underscoring the resilience of the labor market.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/INJCJC:">Initial claims</a> decreased by 2,000 to 210,000 in the week ended March 16, according to Labor Department data released on Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 213,000.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/INJCSP:">Continuing claims</a>, a proxy for the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, were also little changed at 1.81 million in the week ended March 9.<br /><br />………<br /><br />Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday said the labor market remains strong and initial claims are “very, very low.” With hiring growth slowing, some have argued that if layoffs were to increase, unemployment would rise as well fairly quickly. “That is something we’re watching, but we’re not seeing,” Powell said at a press conference after the US central bank left interest rates <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-20/fed-pencils-in-three-rate-cuts-in-2024-shallower-path-ahead">unchanged</a> at a two-decades high. </span></blockquote><p>I think that the Fed will hold off raising rates for at least one more meeting.</p><p>No clue as to what this all means.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-64217482862559831172024-03-21T19:06:00.000-04:002024-03-21T23:06:38.244-04:00I'm Matthew Saroff, and I Approve of That Message<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/ibDOoTS.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ibDOoTS.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="350" /></a>Someone is <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/whos-behind-those-mysterious-trump-epstein-billboards-popping-up-all-over-the-south?ref=wrap">renting space on billboards throughout the south showing an image of from one of the many times that Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump hanging out at a party</a>.</p><p>Needless to say, I am amused:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Residents of <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/north-carolina">North Carolina</a> began noticing the mysterious billboards days before this month’s Super Tuesday primaries.<br /><br />Across Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greensboro, and beyond, digital posters displaying the smiling faces of former President <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/donald-j-trump">Donald Trump</a> and his old friend, the notorious sex offender <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/jeffrey-epstein">Jeffrey Epstein</a>, greeted drivers as they traveled highways and busy intersections.<br /><br />Soon after, the Trump-Epstein signs popped up in <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/georgia">Georgia</a>.<br /><br />“I live in this little tiny Trump town and there’s one person here that I want to be friends with,” said liberal Jeff Wagenius in a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRTNcP8w/">TikTok</a> documenting the enigma. He added, “Cuz this right here deserves the best beer we have in town on me, I swear to God.”</span></blockquote><p>It appears that the advertisements have been paid for by a group calling itself, "ProtectChildrenQ LLC," which is listed on the attribution statement attached.</p><p>Someone needs to find whoever did this, and hire them to manage their campaign.</p><p>Dick Tuck would be proud.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-90505689048914280422024-03-20T19:31:00.001-04:002024-03-21T01:39:19.080-04:00Today in Self DefenestrationYou may have heard of Glassdoor, a web site that allows it's users to anonymously post about working conditions and pay at their jobs.<br /><br />It appears that this description of the site in now inoperative, at least the anonymous part.<br /><br />Current and past users are going to be outed by the company, which will now attach real names to previously anonymous accounts.<br /><br />They are pinky swearing that this will never be released to the public or employers, though with their recent purchase of, and integration of, the professional networking app Fishbowl into their service, that <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/glassdoor-adding-users-real-names-job-info-to-profiles-without-consent/">ties real names to the account and links those names to Fishbowl</a> and has requiring identity verification.<div><br /></div><div>Additionally, they are using third party data to involuntarily attach names to accounts.</div><div><br /></div><div>While this information is not (yet) public, this information is just one data beach or subpoena away.</div><blockquote><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews of employers, has recently begun adding real names to user profiles without users' consent, a Glassdoor user named Monica was shocked to discover last week.<br /><br />"Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data," Monica, a Midwest-based software professional, warned other Glassdoor users in a blog. (Ars will only refer to Monica by her first name so that she can speak freely about her experience using Glassdoor to review employers.)</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br />Monica joined Glassdoor about 10 years ago, she said, leaving a few reviews for her employers, taking advantage of other employees' reviews when considering new opportunities, and hoping to help others survey their job options. This month, though, she abruptly deleted her account after she contacted Glassdoor support to request help removing information from her account. She never expected that instead of removing information, Glassdoor's support team would take the real name that she provided in her support email and add it to her Glassdoor profile—despite Monica repeatedly and explicitly not consenting to Glassdoor storing her real name.<br /><br />Although it's common for many online users to link services at sign-up to Facebook or Gmail accounts to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously. But in 2021, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app that integrated with Glassdoor last July. This acquisition meant that every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a Fishbowl account. And because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities, Glassdoor's terms of service changed to require all users to be verified.<br /><br />While users can remain anonymous, this change raises some potential concerns about data privacy and anonymity, Aaron Mackey, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Ars.</span></div></blockquote><p>The entire reason that people used this service was because of its anonymity.</p><p>No one in their right mind reveals their remuneration or discusses the down side of a workplace on a public forum if the have to give personally identifiable information that will automatically be shared on a social media site, (Fishbowl) and if an employer, or a potential employer sees that you are on Fishbowl, they can assume that you are on Glassdoor.</p><p>F$#@ that, and f$#@ then.</p><p>They have deep pockets, they are owned by Indeed, but I expect the site as well as the e associated media network to be a ghost town in the next month or so.</p><div></div>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-61693352711936044212024-03-19T22:39:00.000-04:002024-03-20T01:15:39.345-04:00US Military Kicked out of Niger<p>Considering the fact that they had already <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/last-french-troops-leave-niger-military-cooperation-officially-ends-2023-12-22/">kicked out French troops</a>, and the US was making noises about an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/niger-once-key-u-s-counterterrorism-ally-ends-military-ties-7db66dbe">an alleged uranium deal between Niger and Iran</a>, which is about as good an indication of an impending regime change operation as one can find, it is not a surprise that the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/niger-junta-throws-us-troops-drone-base/">Nigeran junta decided to act</a>: </p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to the national television network on Saturday to denounce the United States and end the long-standing counterterrorism partnership between the two countries. <br /><br />“The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, declaring that the security pact, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/16/africa/niger-ends-us-military-agreement-intl-hnk">in effect since 2012</a>, violated Niger’s constitution.<br /><br />The announcement came in the wake of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/29/niger-cycle-of-deadly-violence-raises-questions-over-us-counter-terror-role">spiking terrorist violence</a> in the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/04/02/us-military-counterterrorism-niger/">West African Sahel</a> and on the heels of a visit to Niger by a <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3710272/us-working-diplomatically-with-niger-on-new-path-of-cooperation/#:~:text=The%20delegation%20included%20Marine%20Corps,defense%20for%20international%20security%20affairs.">high-level U.S. delegation</a> that included top officials from the State and Defense Departments, as well as Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM. <br /><br />“Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships truly capable of helping them fight against terrorism,” Abdramane said. “The government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation.”</span></blockquote><p>I would also note that the US involvement in anti-terrorism activities in Africa was accompanied by a <a href="https://40yrs.blogspot.com/2024/03/chaos-is-job-won.html">103,000% increase in terrorism in Africa in the past 20 years</a>, (Not a typo or a decimal point error) which strongly implies (Note: Correlation is not causation) that the US involvement in the region has had a less than salutary effect on regional peace and stability. </p><p>I do not think that Niger is particularly concerned by the (eventual) exit of US troops as a result, having realized that the mission's primary goal is likely US influence, and that counter terror aid is largely incidental.<br /></p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /><br />The U.S. has roughly <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3710176/deputy-pentagon-press-secretary-sabrina-singh-holds-an-off-camera-on-the-record/">1,000 military personnel</a> and civilian contractors deployed to Niger, most of them clustered near the town of Agadez, on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, at Air Base 201. Known locally as “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/02/20/niger-military-base-contractor/">Base Americaine</a>,” the outpost serves as the linchpin of the U.S. military’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/02/27/africa-us-military-bases-africom/">archipelago of bases</a> in North and West Africa and a key part of America’s wide-ranging surveillance and security efforts in the region. Since the 2010s, the U.S. has sunk <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/21/us-drone-base-niger-africa/">roughly a quarter billion dollars</a> into the outpost. This is in addition to <a href="https://ne.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2021-01-21-Defense-Fact-Sheet-English.pdf">more than $500 million</a> in military assistance provided to Niger since 2012. <br /><br />After a group of military officers deposed Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum last summer, the U.S. spent <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/25/niger-military-rand-paul/">months avoiding</a> the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/08/19/niger-coup-us-military-assistance/">term “coup”</a> before finally, as mandated by law, suspending approximately <a href="https://www.state.gov/military-coup-detat-in-niger/">$200 million in aid</a>. The U.S. did not, however, withdraw its forces from Niger and <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3526515/us-resumes-isr-flight-operations-in-niger/">continued drone operations</a>. <br /><br />In the wake of Niger’s March 16 decree ending their status of forces agreement with the United States, both the State Department and Pentagon have done little more than acknowledge it. “[W]e’re seeking further clarification for … what that statement means,” <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3710176/deputy-pentagon-press-secretary-sabrina-singh-holds-an-off-camera-on-the-record/">said</a> Defense Department Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh on Monday.</span></blockquote><p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/zvTcJt4.jpeg"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/zvTcJt4.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" width="150" /></a>I'm not the sharpest tack in the balloon, but I believe that they are saying, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, "Get the f%$# out now."</p><p>It will be interesting to see if Niger withdraws from the status of forces agreement, which would make US military personnel subject to local courts,</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Singh went on to say that the U.S. delegation had “expressed concern over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia and Iran.” Earlier this month, Langley, the AFRICOM chief, told the <a href="https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/Transcripts/Article/3700887/senate-armed-services-committee-hearing-posture-of-united-states-central-comman/">Senate Armed Services Committee</a> that Russia was attempting to “take over” the Sahel. “During the past three years, national defense forces turned their guns against their own elected governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger,” <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/langley_statement_3724.pdf">he said</a>, complaining that due to U.S. aid limitations following coups, these governments “turn to partners who lack restrictions in dealing with coup governments … particularly Russia.”</span></blockquote><p>Yeah, there are already counter-coup plans underway.</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">“This security cooperation did not live up to the expectations of Nigeriens – all the massacres committed by the jihadists were carried out while the Americans were here,” said a Nigerien security analyst who has worked with U.S. officials and spoke on the condition of anonymity due to his ties with the Nigerien military. He said that the U.S. needed to negotiate a new agreement with more favorable terms for Niger that was free of the trappings of “paternalism and neocolonialism.” </span></p></blockquote><p>Yeah, the US does not do agreements free of the , "Trappings of paternalism and neocoloniasm."</p><p>It ain't our bag.</p><p>It's probably why Russia and China are eating our lunch in Africa.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-51736302386277077592024-03-19T21:45:00.001-04:002024-03-20T01:15:04.775-04:00Getting Your Historical Tool Freak On<p>The original blow torch.</p><p>Basically a tube, a nozzle, an oil lamp, and you have a torch that can work glass and metal:
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="279" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IwkxKkBI3Ug" title="Bringing Back The First Blow torch" width="496"></iframe></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-47147899042430037582024-03-19T21:07:00.000-04:002024-03-20T00:55:47.177-04:00This is Rich<p>It appears that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/police-anti-vax-bolsonaro-forged-vaccine-card-before-us-visit/">former president Jair Bolsonaro forged vaccination documentation in order to flee to the United States</a> after his election loss.</p><p>Gee, who could have predicted that?</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Brazilian police have recommended that former president Jair Bolsonaro be charged with fraud and criminal association, authorities said Tuesday morning, alleging that he conspired with others to fabricate a vaccination card shortly before he entered the United States in late 2022.<br /><br />Days before Bolsonaro left the presidential palace in 2022, defeated by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a historically divisive election, police say, false information was entered into a health ministry ledger to issue fake vaccine cards for Bolsonaro and his daughter, Laura.<br /><br />An IP address from the presidential palace was used to print the cards, which asserted that Bolsonaro, who spent years inveighing against the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5">coronavirus</a> vaccine and swore off ever receiving one, had been vaccinated against covid-19.<br /><br />Days later, Bolsonaro decamped for Florida. At the time, the United States was denying entry to unvaccinated foreigners.</span></blockquote><p>It's a crime, of course, but it's also a depravity, placing other people at risk for his own political convenience.</p><p>I really hope that this motherf%$#er goes away for a long time.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-36201500901881164602024-03-19T20:08:00.004-04:002024-03-20T00:50:31.880-04:00This is my Shocked Face<p>Despite, or perhaps more likely because of, Republican efforts to criminalize abortion and birth control, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/abortion-increase-2023-data">the number of abortions has risen 10% since 2020</a>.</p><p>I would not consider this an own goal, because the real goal is to sow fear and dissension among women who might otherwise feel free to express their own sexuality and agency as human beings, so this might be a win:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Abortions in the US have sharply increased despite bans implemented in Republican-led states after the supreme court’s overturning of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/roe-v-wade">Roe v Wade</a>.<br /><br />More than 1m abortions were performed in the US in 2023, a 10% increase from 2020, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/medication-abortion-accounted-63-all-us-abortions-2023-increase-53-2020">according to research</a> from the Guttmacher Institute, an American policy organization which advocates for sexual and reproductive health.<br /><br />The latest data provides a more comprehensive picture of abortion access in the first full year after the supreme court issued the Dobbs decision that rolled back federalized rights and protections to abortion access.<br /><br />A rise in medication abortions largely drove the increase, the Guttmacher Institute said. Also known as medical abortions, medication abortions are performed by taking a dose of two pills: mifepristone and misoprostol.<br /><br />Medication abortions made up 63% of all abortions in the US in 2023, with 642,700 medication abortions taking place in formal healthcare settings. Only 492,210 medication abortions occurred in 2020, making up 53% of US abortions, the study concluded.<br /><br />But the number of medication abortions in 2023 may be higher than the study suggests. Current figures do not include self-managed abortions or those who received abortion medication in states where there are total bans.</span></blockquote><p>If you think that this news might prompt some self-reflection from the abortion criminalizing Republicans, you would be wrong.</p><p>This was never about preventing abortion anyway. The evidence is incontrovertible that the anti-abortion movement <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/agent-intolerance/">started as a racist proxy for outrage over the IRS pulling tax exempt status from segregation academies</a>, with a little dose of misogyny on top.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-52025472140464034212024-03-19T19:01:00.001-04:002024-03-20T00:13:59.522-04:00Yeah, This Ain't Good for Boeing<p><span style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q8oCilY4szc" title="Boeing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)" width="320"></iframe><br /><i>John Oliver explains how Boeing has f%$#ed itself up </i></span><i>The Washington Post</i> just published an article titled, "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/boeing-737-max-9-booking-tools/">How to know if you’re scheduled on a Boeing for your next flight</a>."</p><p>The fact that this is a thing does not bode well for the company:</p><div class="teaser-content"><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">U.S. airlines <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2024/01/24/boeing-737-max-inspections-faa/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2">returned Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to service</a> in late February, after a weeks-long grounding order from the Federal Aviation Administration.<br /><br />The FAA <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/01/05/alaska-airlines-plane-emergency-landing-portland/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3">issued the order</a> Jan. 5 after a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/09/door-plug-alaska-airlines-cabin-pressure/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3">door plug blew out</a> on an Alaska Airlines flight so the model could be inspected. The grounding of about 170 aircraft caused <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/01/08/flight-cancellations-alaska-airlines-united-boeing-737/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3">widespread cancellations</a>. Since then, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/12/boeing-whistleblower-death-plane-issues/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3">Boeing has made headlines</a> for a spate of incidents on flights.<br /><br />………<br /><br />If you’re scheduled to fly — or plan to book a flight in the coming weeks — here’s how to know what aircraft you’re flying on.<br /><br />………<br /><br />Before you book a flight online, you can check the aircraft type scheduled for your desired route. On search engines such as <a href="https://google.com/travel/flights">Google Flights</a>, the grid of results usually displays the model along with the departure time, the flight number, any layover city and other details.<br /><br />Travel booking site <a href="https://www.kayak.com/">Kayak</a> offers a specific aircraft filter on the left-hand side of its flight search results page. Travelers can include or exclude certain aircraft models from a flight search, such as the Boeing 737 Max 9.<br /><br />In February, a Kayak spokesperson said usage of the 737 Max filter increased threefold in the days after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/01/08/boeing-alaska-airlines-flight-calm-passengers/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16">the Alaska Airlines incident.</a> The company released an even more granular feature — the ability to distinguish between the Max 8 and Max 9 planes. Previously, both Max models were lumped together.</span></blockquote><div class="wpds-c-PJLV article-body" data-qa="article-body"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">Truth be told, this information has been available for a long time, though flights are always subject to changes because of maintenance or similar issues, so the information is not a guarantee.</p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">This is not news.</p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">What <b><i>IS</i></b> news is that people are now asking aviation experts how to avoid flying on Boeing airliners.</p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null">If people start looking to avoid Boeing in significant numbers for a significant amount of time, Boeing is done as an airline manufacturer.<br /></p></div></div><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-60551335456997841482024-03-19T00:38:00.001-04:002024-03-19T00:38:16.932-04:00Headline of the Day<blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b><span style="font-size: 120%; font-variant: small-caps;">Experts: Negotiating Big Pharma's Prices Won't Stifle Innovation — They Don't Use the Money to Innovate!</span></b></span>
<blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">—<a href="https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/experts-negotiating-big-pharmas-prices-wont-stifle-innovation-they-dont-use-the-money-to-innovate"><i>Institute for New Economic Thinking</i></a></span></blockquote></blockquote><p>This is true.</p><p>Big Pharma's money overwhelmingly goes to advertising, executive compensation, lobbying and stock buybacks.</p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">………<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Bottom line: big drug companies rake in enormous profits without prioritizing investments in medication development or innovation. They simply snap up drug rights that the federal government paid for (us, in other words), focus on boosting their stock prices, and overcharge the public. Surely, Americans deserve better. </span></p></blockquote><p>Using Bayh-Dole march-in rights, which has never happened in the almost 50 years since the law passed, or better yet, repealing Bayh-Dole and having the US government retain the rights to the research which it has funded, would go a long way toward ameliorating the abusive finance driven business strategies in the pharmaceutical sector.</p><p>We would probably get more and better drugs too, because we would see fewer researchers being pressured by college administrators to create and sell blockbuster research.</p><p>The current system impedes scientific discourse and results in regulatory arbitrage, particularly through the patent and drug exclusivity process, being the primary focus of the drug companies, not research.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-61560341945084524582024-03-18T19:06:00.000-04:002024-03-19T00:26:37.902-04:00Ecch (Tweet) of the Day<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">“Have you all lost your minds?”. <br /><br />Amazing and terrifying speech by <a href="https://twitter.com/SWagenknecht?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SWagenknecht</a> on the folly of Germany’s warmongering approach to Russia. <a href="https://t.co/wfOV1ebzoO">pic.twitter.com/wfOV1ebzoO</a></p>— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) <a href="https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/1769376253859987917?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote><p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
This is a good demonstration of why Sarah Wagenknecht left Die Linke (The Left), and why Die Linke got hammered in recent elections.</p><p>If they had any central governing principles it was rolling back the military and leaving NATO, and they sold that out to have a (<b><i>VERY</i></b>) junior role in the current coalition government.<br /></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-73347089567918750482024-03-17T23:32:00.000-04:002024-03-18T01:33:45.381-04:00I Hate Insurance CompaniesTrying to find a new car insurance, because the old one keeps jacking up rates.<br />Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-4403231365203729262024-03-16T19:35:00.004-04:002024-03-17T01:26:54.504-04:00Headline of the Day<blockquote><b><span style="font-size: 120%; font-variant: small-caps;">Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants.</span></b>
<blockquote>—Dan Froomkin via his web site <a href="https://presswatchers.org/2024/03/why-is-new-york-times-campaign-coverage-so-bad-because-thats-what-the-publisher-wants/"><i>Press Watch</i></a></blockquote></blockquote><p>
He is referring, of course, to AG "Dash" Sulzberger, ,who inherited the role of publisher of the <i>New York Times</i>. (His two predecessors were his dad, AO "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr., and his grandad, AO "Punch" Sulzberger, Sr.)</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">It’s an increasingly common critique of the New York Times: The largest, most influential news organization in the nation is not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy — while at the same time bashing President Joe Biden at every opportunity. <br /><br />And it’s been a bit of a mystery. Why would a newsroom full of talented and mostly liberal reporters be engaging in such damaging behavior? <br /><br />Well, mystery solved. <br /><br />It’s because that’s what the publisher wants. <br /><br />Publisher A.G. Sulzberger — perhaps unintentionally — showed his hand in <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/mutual-incomprehension-now-exists-seemingly-everywhere-the-new-york-times-publisher-responds-to-its-critics/">a speech on Monday at Oxford University</a> on “Journalistic Independence in a Time of Division.” His ostensible goal was to defend the Times against its critics. But the two biggest takeaways, in my view, were as follows:</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">……… <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What does that mean — practically speaking — to the editors and reporters who work for him? In my view, the message is clear:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One: You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully
about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged
insurrectionist.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And two: You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?</span></p></blockquote><p>I would not describe the behavior as aberrant. It is just the conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom is wrong. </p><p>If you have a problem, the conventional wisdom is <b>ALWAYS</b> wrong. If the conventional wisdom were right, then the problem would be solved already.</p><p>As an aside, it does segue nicely into <a href="https://40yrs.blogspot.com/2024/03/ecch-tweet-of-day.html">my earlier comment</a> about the role of nepotism in journalism.</p><p>Even if one ignores the fundamental unfairness of nepotism, the problem is that the inbred idiot descendants of the founders of dynasties cannot do the job competently.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-41099405725069903022024-03-15T19:19:00.004-04:002024-03-16T00:38:35.232-04:00What? Banning Anticompetitive Behavior Increases Competition? Hoocoodanode?<p>Now that the EU has forced Apple to allow web browsers that aren't just rebadged versions of its intentionally crippled browser, Safari, which means that they can run Web Apps, which do not have to go through the Apple Store.</p><p>As a result, <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/brave_mozilla_europe_ios/?td=rt-3a">installations of competing browsers, and browser engines, have spiked</a>, even with Apple's malicious compliance with EU rules:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers. <br /><br />It's an early sign the Europe Union's competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that <a href="https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-building-under-regulation">skeptics</a> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-11/apple-s-iphone-choice-screen-unlikely-to-achieve-eu-competition-goal">deemed unlikely</a>. <br /><br />The DMA applies to a set of six technology giants that have been designated as "gatekeepers" in order to limit their tendency to boost the usage of their own offerings – such as their own browsers, webmail, and marketplaces – to the detriment of rivals, which are pushed out of the way.<br /><br />………<br /><br />Three years on, efforts to create a level playing field for platform gatekeepers and smaller rivals continue – possibly with some progress. <br /><br />Brave's figures suggest the number of daily browser installs jumped from around 8,000 on March 6, 2024 to around 11,000 a week later. And in a social media post, the developer <a href="https://x.com/brave/status/1767643225773215918">cited</a> those results as evidence that Apple and Google have made it hard to switch default browsers specifically to block competition.<br /><br />………<br /><br /><a href="https://www.mozilla.org">Mozilla</a> also has seen increased interest in Firefox as a result of the DMA choice screen for iOS devices. <br /><br />"The monopolistic practices employed by Big Tech have often hindered Firefox's ability to innovate and offer users competitive alternatives," a Moz spokesperson told The Register. "It is no small feat for us to cut through their tricky tactics to keep consumers locked within their own ecosystems. <br /><br />"Despite less than ideal compliance, the recent implementation of the DMA choice screen is a promising step toward true competition online in the EU, which is why we're not surprised to have seen a more than 50 percent increase in Firefox user growth in Germany and close to 30 percent increase in France just since its implementation. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and we'll continue to fight for a web that puts people over profits, prioritizes privacy and is open and accessible to all."<br /><br />………<br /><br />"We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple's proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps," Mozilla's spokesperson lamented. "The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations – a burden Apple itself will not have to bear. <br /><br />"Apple's proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS."</span></blockquote><p>I'm sure that Apple CEO Tim Cook goes to Europe on occasion.</p><p>Perhaps it might be a good idea to frog march him out of customs in handcuffs the next time it happens.</p><p>Certainly it would make malicious compliance by Apple less likely in the future.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-74676389433481179942024-03-15T06:08:00.001-04:002024-03-16T00:22:39.181-04:00Good Riddance<p>The Minneapolis City Council has <a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/03/14/minneapolis-council-overrides-mayors-veto-of-uber-and-lyft-minimum-rates/">overridden the mayor's veto of a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft</a>, with the companies threatening to leave the area in response.</p><p>Let's be clear here: Forming a non-profit or worker cooperative ride sharing is not difficult, one need only look at ATX Coop and the late and lamented RideAustin in Austin, Texas.</p><p>The difficult part is creating a cadre of Gypsy cab drivers, and Uber and Lyft have already done the heavy lifting on this, thanks to heavy infusions of venture capital.</p><p>Creating the app? Not difficult at all:</p><blockquote><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Dismissing Uber and Lyft’s threats to leave the city, the Minneapolis City Council voted 10-3 to override a mayoral veto of minimum pay rates for drivers. <br /><br />The vote on Thursday sets up a six-week standoff between the progressive City Council and two tech giants, with Uber saying it will end service in the entire Twin Cities metro area when the rates take effect on May 1. Lyft says it will end service in Minneapolis when it takes effect. <br /><br />Driver activists in the council chambers cheered after the vote was called in celebration of a significant victory after three disappointing vetoes in the past year — one by Gov. Tim Walz and two by Mayor Jacob Frey. <br /><br />“It has been a rough journey… Thank God to the City Council members and all the elected officials who listened to me,” said Eid Ali, president of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association, at a news conference after the vote. <br /><br />The veto override sends the pitched political conflict back to the state Capitol, where <a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/03/12/minnesota-lawmakers-propose-uber-and-lyft-driver-pay-rates-higher-than-minimum-wage/">legislators began hearings on a bill this week</a> that would set statewide rates, after Walz vetoed a bill last year. <br /><br />Both Frey and Walz said they support raising wages for drivers but have been more sensitive to the companies’ warnings that pushing rates too high could backfire and cause demand to sink and the companies to pull up stakes.</span></blockquote><p>The technical term for the arguments that Frey and Walz are making is, "Bullsh%$."</p><p>If the companies leave, someone will fill in the void, and chances are that they will be less psychopathic than either of the two largest ride sharing giants.</p><p>Let them go.<br /></p><p></p>Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6293408133336820692.post-58814425301463322152024-03-14T19:15:00.000-04:002024-03-15T00:10:16.603-04:00Still Cannot Make Planes<span style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">
Upgrading Boeing to a buy after they assassinated a whistleblower in the
middle of his deposition
</p>
— The Fearless Truth Teller (@SeanMcCarthyCom)
<a href="https://twitter.com/SeanMcCarthyCom/status/1767345809048158486?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 12, 2024</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br /><i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/business/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-dead.html">Boeing whistleblower John Barnett was found dead</a>
in his car of a, "Self inflicted gun show wound," on the morning that he was
to testify.<br />How convenient.</i></span>
<p>Do you know what's not a good look for Boeing?</p>
<p></p>
<p>
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/faa-audit-boeing-737-max.html">Failing almost 40% of the audits into the 737 MAX production line</a>
in the most recent FAA examination.
</p>
<p>
The FAA is understaffed, underfunded, and ridiculously deferential to Boeing,
so it comes close to what is called a statement against interest, which gives
the poor results even more credibility"
</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;">A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s
production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the
manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers,
according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.<br /><br />The
air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a
737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the
agency announced that the audit
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/us/politics/faa-boeing-737-max-audit.html">had found “multiple instances”</a>
in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with
quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the
findings.<br /><br />The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly
technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since
the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its
quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence
about manufacturing lapses at the company.<br /><br />For the portion of the
examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a
type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane
maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97
instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.</span>
</blockquote>
<p>
It was even worse for Spirit AeroSystems, formerly, and soon to be again,
Boeing Wichita, which failed over half of the audits.<br />
</p>
<p>
Things that they found included using dish soap as a lubricant and using a
hotel key card to check a seal.
</p>
<p>
Boeing is no longer a manufacturer of aircraft, it is a spin off of the
<i>Red Green Show</i>.
</p>
<p>
In related news,
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/everything-hit-the-roof-a-moment-of-horror-unfolds-on-a-boeing-787-528e3b11">50 people on a 787 were injured due to a "Blue Screen of Death" incident</a>:
</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #2b00fe;">Brian Jokat was asleep, buckled into a window seat on a three-hour
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/LTMAY">Latam Airlines</a>
flight to New Zealand when the
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/dozens-injured-on-latam-airlines-flight-after-technical-event-with-boeing-787-dreamliner-b656b58c?mod=article_inline">plane suddenly dropped</a>, jolting him awake. He looked up and saw a man to his right pinned to the
roof, and several other people seemingly flying around. <br /><br />“You
know in ‘The Exorcist,’ when the girl flies from the bed and hits the
ceiling? It’s exactly that scene,” he said. “I was like, what the heck is
this?”<br /><br />What caused the midair incident that led to around 50
people on board the flight from Sydney to Auckland requiring medical
treatment is now the focus of an investigation involving air-accident teams
from Chile and New Zealand.<br /><br />Chile-based Latam said the plane, a
Boeing 787 Dreamliner, suffered a “technical event during the flight which
caused strong movement.” It didn’t give specifics. <br /><br />Jokat, a
61-year-old Canadian, said there was no rumbling like he would have expected
with turbulence. After the incident, he said, <b><span style="font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;">one of the pilots came to the
cabin and said his instrument panel had gone black for a second or two,
before lighting back up again</span></b>. “He said, ‘For that split second, there was
nothing I could do,’” according to Jokat.<br /><br />In a statement,
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/BA">Boeing</a> said it was
thinking of the passengers and the crew onboard the flight.<br /><br />“We
commend everyone involved in the response effort,” Boeing said. “We are in
contact with our customer, and Boeing stands ready to support
investigation-related activities as requested.”</span>
</blockquote>
<p>(<i>Emphasis mine</i>)</p><p>Yeah, this is what happens when you outsource your software development to the citizens of Chelm, because they work cheap.</p><p>Now we know why they work cheap. <br /></p>
Matthew Saroffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09182726521277446600noreply@blogger.com0