from the summary:

Now Kimberly Hefling reports that for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs.

A secret about those private "not for profit" colleges which the Department of Education exempted from that regulation. They are for profit. Huge profits. The distinction is not that these institutions do not earn profits, but rather that they are exempt from business taxes on those profits and the income accrues to the administration and faculty instead of to business owners.

So I had a friend in college who worked part-time in the payroll office and had access to the campus salary database. From her dorm room. So one evening she asks if I want to know what any of my professors make. Looked them all up. In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year. Deans, provosts and presidents made much more.

Subsidized college loans have created a glut of education dollars and "not-for-profit" educators are raking them in. They are not opposed to earning huge profits themselves, the just do not want competition from other colleges which are run as business. So they lobbied Arne Duncan to enact a regulation which, for no legitimate rationale, applies only their competition.

Don't believe me? Universities try to keep this information locked away tightly but occasionally it leaks out. Here, for, example, is what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received as severence pay from New York University:

President Obama’s nominee to lead the Treasury Department, Jacob J. Lew, got a $685,000 severance payment when he left a top post at New York University in 2006 to take a job at Citigroup.

NYU is a private "non-profit". And, as that link indicates, as such they receive additional benefits from the federal government beyond tax exemption.

A proposed internet tax is the least of problems with Hungary's current government. Selected headlines from around the web:

The Guardian: Hungary's rabid right is taking the country to a political abyss

The Tablet: Meet Europe’s New Fascists

The Telegraph: Inside the far-Right stronghold where Hungarian Jews fear for the future

Aljazeera: Hungary: Towards the Abyss Investigating why critics of Hungary's authoritarian government believe it is leading the country towards fascism

The Tablet's, tagline is "A New Read on Jewish Life" and of course Aljazeera is Islamic. The Telegraph and Guardian are respectable British publications. They all agree that Hungary is leaning fascist.

from wikipedia

Franchise fees are governed under Section 622 of the Cable Communications Act of 1984.[2] Section 622, states that municipalities are entitled to a maximum of 5% of gross revenues derived from the operation of the cable system for the provision of cable services such as Public, educational, and government access (PEG) TV channels.

Franchise fees are fixed at a maximum of 5% of gross revenues. So how do municipalities maximize revenues from franchise fees? By maximizing cable company gross revenues. And how do municipalities maximize cable company gross revenues? By creating monopolies! By awarding exclusive license to one provider to extract monopolist profits from the public.

Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with permitting local governments to charge cable companies fees. That is justifiable to the extent that local governments incur costs of infrastructure repair with damage from cable installation. All that is needed is a single addendum to the law, one prohibiting local governments from creating monopolies. The law could simply mandate that municipalities must offer franchise licenses to all ISPs if they offer licenses to one and that all licencees must be be charged at the same rate.

The only reason we have cable monopolies in the U.S. is because the Cable Communications Act of 1984 created that perverse incentive. Other countries without such laws have much faster service at much lower prices.

If federal law permitted local governments to do this sort of thing with groceries, computers and cars we would have regional monopolies for those products as well. Be grateful that your town council is not permitted to sell grocery, computer and car franchises.

Not true. The cops can pull you over and help themselves to you cash. There is no "legal process" involved whatsoever.

There is a fascinating and unexpected inversion here: Corporations are now standing up against government to protect the rights of citizens. Of course, most of us expect that relationship to work the other way around.

It is not just Facebook. The first sentence of this article reads: "The FBI director has slammed Apple and Google for offering their customers encryption technology that protects users’ privacy."

Today, a product which includes protection from the government has added value. A prediction: In the future, corporate protection from government intrusion and persecution will become the product. Smart corporations such as Tesla (see Nevada tax deal) or Apple and Google (see double Irish Dutch sandwich) have special rights or have exempted themselves from government rules by using loopholes. Meanwhile, every day there is news of the federal government becoming increasingly insane. Like today. Increasingly, the government is engaging in unethical, illegal activities such as theft. As demand from protection from the federal government increases with the growing abuses, corporations will meet that demand by sheltering customers under their own umbrellas.

from the summary

"They just don't want other parts of the system to be wholly dependent on systemd."

That is really the crux of the issue and what distinguishes the systemd dispute from all the other FOSS food fights. The FOSS community never agrees on anything. That is why we have multiple everything: Multiple Kernels (BSD & Linux Kernels, multiple flavors of each) many distributions of each flavor, a host of programming and scripting languages, multiple package management tools (rpm, portage, dpkg) several GUI toolkits, GNOME and KDE desktop environments etc. Wayland is not enough, we must also have Mir. And the licenses. Egads! How many of those do we need?

Despite all the passion and ego involved, disagreement between adherents of particular designs and implementations has never before risen to the level of open revolt that we see over systemd. Why? Because in all these disputes each person can choose what is best for him/herself. Like Python and despise Perl? Use Python. Vice versa? Use Perl. But the usual rule of the user getting to pick what he likes best does not apply with systemd. Lennart Poettering is working to restrict choice to only systemd. His tactic is to make systemd a dependency of major software packages. Here he ison the Gnome dev list pushing a Gnome systemd dependency.

Sometimes an unpopular item is replaced on the buffet; Good software wins out and variety shrinks a bit. That can be a good thing. But the fear is that systmd is going to win not because it is a popular choice but because Poettering has gamed the outcome using dependencies. Something is wrong if you are running systemd because you hate it and you love Gnome. Perhaps the fanatical hatred of Poettering is driven by belief that systemd adoption is advanced in part by his cheating, instead of on the merits of systemd alone. The abusers are abusing not because he has written what they judge to be bad software but because he has violated an unspoken ethic of the FOSS community.

According to this map, state bans on Tesla sales are a Republican thing.

The Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, is a Republican. The Michigan State Senate has a 26-to-12 Republican majority and in the House a 59-to-50 Republican majority. With control of both the executive and legislative branches of government, it is certainly Republicans who are accountable for revoking the freedom to purchase a Tesla in Michigan.

By the way, it is election season, and I have noticed signs in my neighborhood stating, "For freedom, vote Republican."

"...the nation's largest flight attendant union is now suing the FAA to have the ban on gadget use during takeoff and landing reinstated."

An excellent example of how unions supplant an eagerness of workers to meet customers wants and needs with an attitude of wanton truculence.

from the commentary linked in the summary:

" If changing to a single-payer national system is, for political reasons, out of the question, then, at the very least, the Affordable Care Act must be fully implemented in all states. "

"Single-payer." Like the VA. Because unaccountable, lying government officials and patients dying while on fake waiting lists are exactly what we need during an ebola epidemic.

And Obamacare. Because of Obamacare I can not afford medical care. My premiums are about 3x before Obamacare. My deductible is $5,000.00. I am taxed $300.00/month on my health insurance because I am employed at a small company which can not purchase the plan directly from an insurer. (Obamacare revokes the tax exemption for employer-subsidized health insurance.) I am buying the least-expensive plan mandated by Obamacare to avoid the penalty and paying about $1,300.00 per month in insurance and taxes. I had a shoulder injury, went to an in-network doctor and had to pay for the entire visit, treatment and the physical therapy myself.

To summarize, now, because of Obamacare, I am required by law to pay $1,300.00 per month for health insurance and taxes at a minimum and on top of that I have to pay for my own medical expenses. Because of Obamacare, unless I am absolutely certain that I am dying I will not be going anywhere near a health care provider. By both making the patients poorer with higher insurance premiums and by raising the cost of treatment with higher deductibles Obamacare has created a massive financial disincentive to seeing medical care during an epidemic. And then also there is the decreased access to health care because of shrinking provide networks.

In addition to advocating for evidently broken and corrupt systems, the author wants to re-write the Constitution. You know, that document which guarantees citizens rights. What could possibly go wrong?

I do not know any camels personally but I grew up with horses and I can tell you they like to work. Sure, they would always rather be eating, like pigs but with longer legs. Yet some of them seem to enjoy the company of people and are eager to please. Imagine a large vegetarian dog. Camels are a different species but the point here is that there is no basis a priori to believe that the camel was abused or even inconvenienced by taking a walk in the desert with a camera on its back. Sure, it seems miserably hot and dry, but we are anthropomorphising;Camels are adapted to the desert.

Some animals do suffer terrible abuse in the hands of people which makes it especially unfortunate that an organization dedicated to their rescue and protection is governed by batshit crazy people like Ingrid Newkirk. Unfortunate both because their antics discourage mainstream donations and support, and because the donations which they do receive are often misdirected to this kind of bullshit. (or camelshit.)

That is the problem with "good causes." They can be perverted or hijacked to serve any end and are impossible to oppose successfully. Who strongly defended Bill Clinton's serial molestations and ignored Bob Packwood's? Women's rights activists. What group works hardest to trap poor children in failing schools by blocking reform? The National Education Association. What legislation encroaches on the rights of patients, guarantees profits for insurance companies and is making health insurance increasingly unaffordable for the middle class? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And remember the Patriot Act?

Self promotion of your own virtue is a gambit. A good cause is a power grab. If you want to succeed in acts unpopular, illegitimate, or harmful, first enshrine yourself as a public symbol of virtue.

Other third-world hell-holes: Estonia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia. They have the five least burdensome taxes among the 34 OECD nations according to the Tax Foundation’s International Tax Competitiveness Index (pdf, rankings on page 5).

Canada ranks 24th. The United States ranks 32nd with an overall score of 44.6% (to Estonia's 100%), better than only Portugal and France.

from the linked article at engineering.com:

Can anyone here make sense of that statement? GPS only works when buildings are aligned with true north?

from the summary:

from the LA Times:

So the absolute number of electric car sales is increasing but their market share is not. The reporter, one "Charles Fleming," seems not to comprehend that a fixed percentage of an increasing value is itself an increasing value. "Stagnant," is the wrong term to describe an increase in sales. Math is hard.

Tor developer Andrew Lewman says... agents from [NSA and GCHQ ] leak flaws directly to the developers, so they can be fixed quickly.

Why announce that publicly? The NSA and GCHQ will now attempt to to shut down the leaks and arrest the leakers. Even if they fail, it is certain to scare the leakers and make leaking more difficult.

"You have to think about the type of people who would be able to do this and have the expertise and time to read Tor source....

Why give those agencies clues to help them figure out who are the leakers?

...except those with several billon dollars.