So, we want to force a company whose business is to circumvent encryption and people's security of data to now "act ethically and with human rights in mind"? How many layers of contradiction are to be found here?

Sounds like Grubhub violating restaurants' menu ownership and ability to control their own activities, and acting like it's the restaurants' fault when they complain:

“Out of the 140,000 restaurants we partner with, diners increasingly want delivery. If a restaurant doesn’t want those orders, we’re happy to remove them,” the spokesperson told SFGATE over the phone. SFgate source

If that doesn't come off as assholish, I don't know what is.

I mean, let's not overreact as if we're suburban soccer moms and have no knowledge of chemistry or science. This is probably just glue outgassing, no worse than new-car-smell or new carpet being laid down. Think about that before shouting "cancer risk"!

Just air the goddammed booths out, let the glue dry, and stop the hysterics.

Every country imposes requirements on manufacturers of devices or service providers that some person(s) might object to.

If you choose to do business in that country, you play ball, or you leave. How you pick which ones that are tolerable enough to live with is the question -- and don't imagine that it's moral principles that define it. It's how much a company wants to stomach the loss of that business.

Saudi Arabia (and many others) prevent the installation of Whats App, etc. on phones activated there.

Israel (and the US by the way) censor imagery of certain places on the maps shown in those countries.

Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken.

And you're singling out China for censoring the Taiwan flag emoji?

How about those other cases? Where does it start / end? Are you saying engineers should quit over every one of these infringements?

That is *not* what this court ruled. It would be nice to get someone with kindergarten legal understanding to check these stories first. What this court ruled on was that the arguments being made by LinkedIn weren't persuasive enough to let them continue blocking HiQ or prevent this case from going to trial.

But this case is so ridiculous on multiple fronts that although this procedural ruling (injunction) seems technically correct (to allow the case to proceed to actual court), it could just as well have been thrown out with no difference in or ultimate harm to the parties.

First, LinkedIn makes the claim that its users have a right to privacy against scraping by such a 3rd party. That's laughable. As the court saw, their whole business model is made on people sharing their profiles broadly and mostly to the public.

Secondly, HiQ claims that LinkedIn's efforts to stop it from using the data are tortious interference. That's bold -- suppose someone is taking your assets (you believe illegally) and selling them to others -- can you imagine the gall that the person taking your assets can sue you for interfering with their subsequent sale of your assets?

Finally, that LinkedIn resorted to using the computer fraud and anti-terrorism statutes to make their argument is ridiculous.

So much craziness to go around. I would've just tossed the case, but I guess there is the whole bit about due process... Maybe HiQ will fail anyway at the next substantive trial, but what a waste of time.

Because without more extensive explanation by the student, it suggests that the student avoided the most reasonable solution in favor of something complicated and unsupported.

It means the student chose to ignore the specifically given function that was stated to provide isLeapYear (which may have been rigorously tested to not fail any situation), in favor of a formula they've defined and provided no other justification for.

Is the definition of a leap year mod_4 - mod_100 + mod_400 precisely? There are no other terms, like a -(mod_10000)? Where did this formula come from?

Either the student could not complete the question using the most reasonable (and safe) method available, or chose to overly complicate it. Both are not good solutions.

As Bill Burr says, sometimes, I think the human herd needs to be culled a bit. When we get to this level of privilege -- and yes, this is actual privilege.

I hope they get sued hard for outright wage theft.

What I hate about this kind of company behavior is the lack of leadership compass in knowing what is right and wrong, and instead treating every resource (person) as an experiment to see what they'll accept or not. And if they don't hear enough complaints, must've been ok to do.

You can read it in their apologies and the positive spin: "We heard loud and clear the frustration when your compensation didn’t match the effort you put forth."

Heard you loud and clear? What is this, like the American Idol voting contest? Daytime Emmy awards, or public opinion poll, where we have to be asked what we like to be paid?

A proper apology would be: "We know what we were doing was wrong, and we were wrong to do it, and we will not do things like that in the future." Not, "it seems you didn't like what we did, so we'll do something different."

Makes you think they won't apologize for doing fundamentally wrong things until they get called out by public opinion. What types of issues should a company know are not ok / illegal, and what issues are subject to public approval or measuring reception? Shouldn't a CEO know these and apologize accordingly?

Or maybe that is the role of regulation and government to keep the amoral corporate compass calibrated.

Much as I'm a supporter of EV technology, and while this is a nice development, one must confront the reality that cells on the top of the car roof or hood will *never* make much of a difference in driving range. It can only ever be a trickle in the bucket.

800W was the output of the solar panels as quoted in the article (impressive for a small area), and a vehicle battery is, give it approx. 80kWh? That would take 100 hours of charging (~10 days sun) to charge full.

A nice contribution, but negligible in terms of overall energy consumption. Perhaps the most useful thing it could do is help reduce the peak load demand at certain times of day.

Better to deploy / use this technology to help the yield of stationary utility-scale solar generation.

Does it matter whether it's 5 digit price or 2 digit price?

Expensive labor is expensive labor. Why would a pure capitalist care to spend $100 more on a $20000 item if he had to, and the switching costs were low enough?

So, a scientist working on an app that monitors your activity to help prevent heart attacks / stroke is ok, but one that monitors your activity to promote performance is bad. How are we to tell which one is lifelong ban-worthy?

So, I, who worked and paid my own way through college, will not only not get any debt forgiven, but will have to pony up more in taxes to cover everyone else's tuition?

Just what do you think you're going to incentivize in the long run here by putting into place such a system?

What part of it is Siri intelligence? Or what is Siri intelligence here? Reading the description it just sounds like basic filtering against a whitelist of known contacts.

I am reminded of the purported quote of Michael Faraday, upon being asked by the prime minister what his discovery / invention was good for, he replied:

"Whatever it is, sir, I have no doubt you will find a way to tax it."

I'm part critical of Amazon for jumping on the bandwagon of catering to the mostly self-deluded customers who think that a slightly higher bit rate is noticeable, and who got suckered into thinking that that's the problem compared to the shitty speakers or headphones that are at the end of the pipe. I would rather Amazon take the high road and help people understand how silly this is.

The other part of me thinks, fine, if there's suckers to be taken advantage of, why not accept their money.