We need to insist on the application of public domain and GPL style vaccine development, not the proprietary intellectual property model of patented & limited access vaccine technology. Jonas Salk put his vaccine in the public domain because he was against the proprietary model and we should recognize this as a predecessor to the free software movement. If people really believe the proprietary vaccine model is superior they should have to prove it.

Is it really plausible that the same big pharma industry that happily hikes the price of insulin multiple times per year is at all committed to maximizing vaccine quality -- especially since they can get mandatory purchase policies on their products?? If you had a product people were already forced to buy in batches regularly, would you really bother to try your best to improve it to the max?

That to me seems completely ridiculous. As tech improves it is easier to create extremely fine grained contaminant detectors. If the vaccine industry were not simply a mandatory / proprietary pharma model, there would be public listings giving in depth data about contaminants detected amid tens of thousands of tested vaccine vials, and you could simply have the pick of whichever variety of openly developed and patent-unencumbered vaccine you would like to choose. Unless this kind of model is adopted the quality will never significantly improve. It's an incredible amount of vendor lock in and a totally unworthy system for a serious public health issue and generally useful set of technologies. (and smash all science journal paywalls, demand open science and an end to all patents of critical technologies)

Well I would recommend a much better value from an independent publisher, Foxhole by independent house Clapfoot Games, got it on discount for a whopping $11. It is based on Unreal Engine with recently overhauled graphics. http://www.foxholegame.com/ The wars go on for a few weeks like a multi-capture the flag, you can follow them at https://foxholestats.com/ . The current war has gone back and forth a few times, now Wardens are starting to womp the Colonials. The publishers have promised no microtransactions or other schemes.

Also the independently produced Rimworld turned out to be the most highly rated game on Steam last year. Understandable due to good game and character design and an extensive modding community (for example you can make a whole complex cannabis industry lol). Note how the fanciness of graphics is absolutely minimal, the characters are outlines with swappable clothes, but their behaviors are unique and relatable and they spontaneously react to stress. Some people have criticized character design decisions in the game, but also modders have made alternative models including for example the Kinsey scale.

https://www.techquila.co.in/ri...
https://www.pcgamer.com/rimwor...
https://www.pcgamesn.com/rimwo...

Disappointing that this post is overrun by snarly anonymous gamergate weirdos. Everyone knows EA is a scam machine, they drove Maxis and Simcity into the ground. If you don't like how a giant corporation tacks on pseudo social awareness then avoid the company.

Well the "jury is out" but there is a lot more data around! Here is a 2013 peer reviewed paper, "Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects" by Martin L Pall* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
You can see a list of his other papers here; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
2016 by same, "Microwave frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produce widespread neuropsychiatric effects including depression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... "Non-thermal microwave/lower frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) act via voltage-gated calcium channel (VGCC) activation. " So much for the 'thermal is everything' approach at least on this band.

Hourlong video with Pall https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And here is another one with that devious hippie Mercola; https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A whole bunch of bills in Massachusetts https://sites.google.com/site/...

Maryland did a whole thing on wifi and kids https://phpa.health.maryland.g...

The site Undark went a ways into the topic https://undark.org/article/cel...

0.08 W/kg they say from FCC. Per here a lot of other health bodies demand or advise far far lower RF exposure. https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7...
Regulatory FCC/ANSI– USA– 900MHzrange 610,000 nW/cm2
Regulatory Italy,Poland,Hungary,Bulgaria,China,Russia 10,000nW/cm2
Regulatory Switzerland 4,500nW/cm2
Recommendation– EcologInstitute (2000) 300nW/cm2
Recommendation– SalzburgResolution(2000) 100nW/cm2
Recommendation– BioInitiativeReport(2008) https://www.newlook.dteenergy....

big texas report (everything bigger in texas) http://www.puc.texas.gov/indus...

Anyways I suggest you dig around, there is all sorts of interesting stuff coming up on this topic.

Lots of people face serious problems in America today that are linked specifically to their skin color, level of wealth, medical issues, sexual orientation, gender identity etc.

Believe it or not there is a lot of sexism in the tech industry and Google is not obliged to protect sexist bros. On the other hand many of its executives seem to be enamored with sex trafficking because they see women like objects. That probably deserves more attention. (i.e. here http://www.newsweek.com/metoo-... )

the fight continues at the local level in Colorado for energy and data local autonomy from terrible corporations: https://muninetworks.org/conte....

The institute for local self reliance has been at this a long time: https://ilsr.org/ and the specific site for local internet, https://muninetworks.org/ .

Comcast succeeded in throwing its weight around in Seattle: https://ilsr.org/comcast-money... .

The battle of Pinetops North Carolina is critical here, there is a documentary about it even . https://muninetworks.org/conte... Trailer https://vimeo.com/222595040 .

Imagine having twenty service providers https://muninetworks.org/conte...

It's a hassle to figure out but it is possible to achieve victories in this area.

I learned a lot about DRM from this website when I was much younger. It has only gotten worse since then, with DRM infesting not just DVDs etc but now John Deere tractors, which are hostile architecture black boxes preventing farmers from optimizing their super expensive machines. So there is no free software or open secondary market for GPS data gathered (i.e. something that would sense micro conditions and efficiently apply another tech). This is hugely dangerous to the human race at large since we are dependent on the tractors for survival. I would argue it ought to be one of the biggest deals to face. If something goes wrong with John Deere we skid right back to sticks rather easily.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/...
https://www.extremetech.com/co...
http://boingboing.net/2017/03/...
"Now, farmers find themselves in desperate straits. Not only does Deere gouge them on repairs ("$230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize [a user-swapped] part"), but the repair shops can be far away or busy, and thus a half-million dollar tractor can sit immobilized while a farmer frets about getting his crops in."

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers...
http://www.npr.org/sections/al...
http://freeknowledge.eu/campai...
Totally unacceptable situation here.

Why was Accounts-google.com registered to Google inc, 1600 Ampitheatre Parkway at least as far back as 2013? http://www.domainhistory.net/a... and via MarkMonitor https://www.markmonitor.com/ which "protects the leading brands". YAN has been laughing about this all day. Didn't anyone bother to check any of this??

Makes you wonder how bad the health effects of indoor laser printer pollution will turn out to be. The toner nanoparticles are much more dense in operation than people realize. See serious academics:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-co... "Effects of Laser Printer–Emitted Engineered Nanoparticles on Cytotoxicity, Chemokine Expression, Reactive Oxygen Species, DNA Methylation, and DNA Damage: A Comprehensive in Vitro Analysis in Human Small Airway Epithelial Cells, Macrophages, and Lymphoblasts"
http://www.scientificamerican....
https://www.arb.ca.gov/researc...

A while ago I followed TheGrid web development AI project to keep tabs on how this bot is going to try to eat the industry. Now you can barely even load its home page because it makes so many repos https://github.com/grid-bot . see also https://thegrid.io/ "How The Grid Will Automate Web Design Without Killing The Designer" .. this list seems to work, it churns constantly: https://github.com/the-domains

I wonder if material like European politicians calling for the war on Libya, or supporting Israel's assorted plans to wipe Palestinians off the West Bank, or the austerity minions trying to find ways to shaft Greek citizens, do any of these things count as hate speech? The governments - thru the unaccountable EU behemoth - are trying to terrible things to a lot of people in that general part of the world and I wonder if their advocacy for their sinister ideas qualifies as hate speech. I'm assuming rich people with suits automatically will get a pass, as long as their views are close to whoever controls the European Commission.

Mobile phone companies occupy leased space on the electromagnetic spectrum (which as today's big health science report indicates may really be carcinogenic, full study here http://biorxiv.org/content/bio... what a surprise). They displace those frequencies from being available for any other public use and then have the temerity to blow off pushing through android updates because they have to futz with the worthless crapware they add to the phones. It is ridiculous to talk of crowd funding. Maybe instead their frequencies should be taken away and given to local people to run data links instead, and force them to make all the crapware optional so that the update packs are far more generic and easier to build... in fact why can't the build process be automated CI testing style? You should be able to generate your own update packs by hitting some checkboxes on their website, end of story.

A well placed water balloon filled with paint, or spraypaint, would render it impossible to use the cameras. It would have to be protected from such low fi techniques somehow. There is always the question of asymmetry - cheap countermeasures against expensive tech. While very dystopian, this seems within the same bounds.

They don't get any proper services included in their 1099 jobs so they depend on tips to have any hope of coming up with medical expenses or auto loan payments. No free ride.

Yes US labor law is out of date. It is demented for health insurance to be linked to jobs. Only W2 jobs cover this. 1099 employers are not supposed to be able to dictate how people do their jobs (including if they pick up fares or not). Taxicab companies have to cover all the expenses of W2 while Uber ducks this by trying to stick them as 1099s. Uber is "transportation slavery" as a driver put it to me, who much prefers working with less exploitative ride services. They have "socialized risk" while privatizing profit. All the Uber drivers in a region should be able to strike, if they are a bargaining unit in some polygon that will be the only way they can get leverage. Working at the precariat level of the economy is a horrible experience and it can't continue. So many tech companies blow out existing players by undercutting as loss leaders, then turn it into a monopoly, then hike the prices. Walmart and Amazon have done the same thing. It is sick that no one in this realm is capable of working on healthy commercial ecosystems, it's either precariat oppression monopolies or bust.