In both this case and the Apple antitrust case, it seems that the overwhelming popularity of a product gets turned into a call for government control when some decide they don't like the terms under which the product is provided. The idea that a product which gains a significant market share because of its value/utility should suddenly submit to a different set of rules to meet demands by its customers, or by those who sell on that platform to the platform's customers, sure strikes me as conceptually and legally strange.

But the last time I was on the job market I encountered quite a few job postings on other sites - including directly from the sites of employers who were posting them - that the companies already had candidates lined up for. There are some companies who have policies that dictate they must openly post a job, even when they have someone lined up for it. It appears that is as far as those policies tend to go though, as they are free to ignore every single one of those applications and leave the applicants in limbo for as long as they'd like.

I recall one company who posted well over a dozen positions over 2 years that I was very well qualified for (I was not unemployed for more than a few months of those 2 years; I was applying earlier when I was less satisfied with the position I held elsewhere at the time) that had a convenient page that allowed me to track how many positions I had applied for, and what happened with them. Unsurprisingly not one of them ever progressed to anything other than "closed".

In a fun turn of events I have been on their campus multiple times as a contractor for my current employer. Now that company is paying far more for me than they would have if they had hired me.

But that's not what they did. And if you're developing software for virtualized server containers, 'physical inspection' would be a bit hard to argue.

I think you could argue it's capricious. If the job can be done on-site or remotely, but only on-site would be eligible for promotion, that could be argued as "unfair evaluation criteria" not related to actual job performance.

One possible argument would be 'unfairly changing promotion criteria to include irrelevant behaviors'. The plaintiff would have to prove to the jury that 'forced commuting to the office' is 'irrelevant', and that this change/new policy is "arbitrary and capricious".

I wonder if this could be challenged in state courts, particularly by an employee living in a state with strong labor protection laws.

Except that they aren't doing full genome sequencing (which is vastly more complicated and vastly more expensive). They are sequencing only specific regions of the genome. It would be similar to comparing the Bible to the Koran based on how many times they use the word "Thou". In the end you'll know they're both books and they're different but you won't know the chapter counts or the year of publication.

Not necessarily, and for more than one reason.

• One, it's a different test (genotyping vs karyotyping)
• Two, chromosomes aren't all that stable against shipping and storage (and hence could be degraded by the time they arrive)

That doesn't apply here though. Sequencing technologies are not biased towards or against particular chromosomes, and the chromosomes are not sorted out before sequencing. The whole sample goes in and primers bind to anything they have affinity to. Sequencing then proceeds regardless of whether it starts on chromosome 4, 16, 21, or some other chromosome entirely - as long as the start and end are on the same chromosome. And if you're looking at variable regions within genes, the likelihood of those starting and ending on the same chromosome is exceptionally high.

CBC Marketplace did such a test nearly a year ago... and yes, they even submitted human DNA as well. Quite a few of the tested companies did detect it as "non dog DNA".

Which may just mean that the other company had included some additional tests to look for "non dog DNA", and this company did not. That's a smart control that this company should have thought of, although depending on the scenario it might only tell you about contamination, not complete substitution.

I have quite a bit of experience in molecular biology, including DNA sequencing. In undergrad I was part of a consortium that sequenced ESTs from a couple different species of trees. After grad school I was part of a multi-discipline multi-omics team that handled DNA and protein sequencing data.

I don't work for any of these dog sequencing company, but I know more about Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) than most people. I've seen more DNA sequencing formats and done more DNA assembly than most people as well. There are only so many ways they can do this type of DNA work at a scale that makes it possible for them to turn a profit at the prices they charge. If they had some completely novel new DNA sequencing technology they'd be selling it to research labs and hospitals, not selling it on the cheap for people to identify the parentage of their pets.

It's pretty easy to tell a human from a dog by a karyotype. It's actually quite a bit more difficult by DNA sequencing, especially the kind of rapid sequencing that is used for this kind of work.

A good analogy are the old statements that "humans are 99% chimp", and similarly "humans are 90% banana". The genetic similarities between very different species are profound. To tell one breed of dog from another - where of course the chromosomes are the same - you need to look at certain highly variable regions of the genome. The problem though is that those same highly variable regions exist in our genome.

So what could they do differently? Well they could add a few more control reactions to their sequencing to try to rule out errant DNA. They were operating under the assumption that people were sending in only dog DNA, and now we see what happens when something else goes in. The real challenge though is what to do if you get a sample that has some of each - which could easily happen if a dog owner with a dirty house collects a dog sample in a cavalier manner and ends up sending in some of their DNA along with the DNA of their dog. It appears the company built their method without a terrible amount of concern for that either.

The Prius has had a couple decades of design history behind it now. It would be a bigger surprise if it lost this contest.

I'm not a fan of the Prius myself, but it has its place and its base. We could of course criticize what it actually takes to build it, or the cost of disposing it when the time comes, but it should have little trouble winning this award.

My closest big city is not San Francisco (though I visited San Francisco not long ago while traveling for work). I strongly suspect that downtown San Francisco is seeing similar issues to my own local large city downtown area.

Namely, my city is seeing a chicken-and-egg problem getting retail going. The Macy's in that city left several years ago. More recently Barnes & Noble left as well. They still have Target and Walgreens, but not a whole lot else in terms of retail. Most of their high end jewelers, haberdasheries, suit stores, and the like have left as well.

Before a lot of the retailers left though they cut back their hours as they saw that downtown workers weren't sticking around very late into the night to shop (bar patrons didn't tend to shop much either). This created an unfortunate cycle; workers were leaving right at the end of their working hours because there wasn't much shopping to do while shops were closing because people weren't shopping.

Which leads to a chicken and egg problem of sorts. If retailers stay open later again will people start to shop? Or do the shoppers need to do something drastic to indicate to the retailers that they are looking to shop later? If the latter, what should that be?

My main airport has tried a similar idea in the parking ramps. It sounds great in theory, you can turn down an aisle in the parking ramp and see if there are any green lights in the ceiling that indicate an open spot. It also is supposed to all report back to the boards at the ramp entrance to tell you which levels of the ramp have open spaces.

It all sounds great, except it rarely works. Sometimes the tally is close to accurate on a per-floor level. The markers in the aisle rarely get it right though, and you end up driving hopefully up to several green lights before you eventually find an open spot. There is no rhyme or reason to it, either; it's not like the occupied green light spots are occupied entirely by Fiat 500s or other small cars, they could be filled by any vehicle you can imagine fitting into a standard American parking space.

I've argued for the last 10-15 years that ACM and IEEE should lead the way and go to open access models for their publications. They need to ween themselves from the addiction of publications as a revenue source. (Disclosure: I was an ACM SIG Officer for several years in the '80s and '90s, so I have an understanding of at least one SIG's finances.) Certainly there are costs that need to be accounted for, but I thought those could be managed through membership fees, sponsorship, possibly 'publication charges' for authors and their institutions, and efforts at cost avoidance through the publication program.

If you hold vendors legally liable for vulnerabilities in their software, no one will be willing to make software.
Why risk jail or financial ruin if something goes wrong?

That hasn't stopped people from making cars, airplanes, medical devices, prescription or non-prescription drugs, to name Just A Few industries... And to pick on Boeing, do you think it's A Good Thing that Boeing NOT be held liable for the safety problems in their aircraft? The MCAS problem was in large part a software problem.

You think other palces are immune?

No. I think the US system has MANY MORE POINTS OF FAILURE.