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Joe_Dragon writes:
A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’
The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels, in a widening education gap across the U.S.
Daniel Briles in his room at home in Red Wing, Minn. Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.
At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.
This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.
No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.
American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.
The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.
“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”
Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.
Jay Wells's high-school graduation photo hangs at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Jay Wells, 23, at his parents’ house this summer in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.
Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.
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Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”
Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.
“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.
The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.
Rich or Poor, Men Fall Behind
College enrollment rates by family income level, October 2019
Population,
millions
2.6
Gender
Male
Female
1.0
0.25
Race
White
Black
Asian
Hispanic
All
40
50
60
70
80
90%
$45,360 or less
With rare exception, women have a higher college enrollment rate than men of their same race.
$45,361 to $81,851
$81,852 to $138,747
White men’s enrollment rate isn’t much higher, and is often lower than, minority men in the same income group.
$138,748
or more
Note: Enrollment status of dependent primary family members 18 to 24 years old, by family income
Source: Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey data by Tom Mortenson, Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education
Angela Calderon/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”
Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”
The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.
The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.
“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.
It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic.
No plan
Over the course of their working lives, American college graduates earn more than a million dollars beyond those with only a high-school diploma, and a university diploma is required for many jobs as well as most professions, technical work and positions of influence.
Yet skyrocketing education costs have made college more risky today than for past generations, potentially saddling graduates in lower-paying careers—as well as those who drop out—with student loans they can’t repay.
Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.
Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school.
Daniel Briles, 18 years old, graduated in June from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minn. He decided against college during his senior year, despite earning a 3.5 grade-point average and winning a $2,500 college scholarship from a local veterans organization.
Daniel Briles preparing an audio track at home in Red Wing, Minn. His music is on Spotify under Daniel Envy.
Photo: Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal
He took a landscaping job and takes home about $500 a week. Mr. Briles, a musician, also earns some income from creating and selling music through streaming services, he said, and invests in cryptocurrencies. His parents both attended college, and they hope he, too, will eventually apply. So far, they haven’t pressured him, he said.
“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Mr. Briles said. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”
Many young men who dropped out of college said they worried about their future but nonetheless quit school with no plan in mind. “I would say I feel hazy,” said 23-year-old Jay Wells, who quit Defiance College in Ohio after a semester. He lives with his mother and delivers pallets of soda for Coca-Cola Co. in Toledo for $20 an hour.
“I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I figure out what to do next,” he said.
Jack Bartholomew, 19, started his freshman year at Bowling Green State University during the pandemic, taking his classes online. During the first weeks, he said, he was confused by the course material and grew frustrated. Finally, he quit. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I just feel lost.”
Mr. Bartholomew’s parents and one older sister have college degrees. He was a solid student in high school and was interested in studying graphic design. Yet while working online from his second-floor bedroom, his introductory courses seemed pointless for how much he was paying, he said.
He works 40 hours a week, at $15.50 an hour, packing boxes at an Amazon warehouse not far from his house in Perrysburg, Ohio. It isn’t a long-term job, Mr. Bartholomew said, and he doesn’t know what to do next.
“College seems like, to me at least, the only logical path you can take in America,” he said. But for now, he said, it is too big a struggle, financially and academically.
Jay Wells with the family dog, Reese, at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Tomorrow’s leaders
Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.
The University of Vermont is typical. The school president is a man and so are nearly two-thirds of the campus trustees. Women made up about 80% of honors graduates last year in the colleges of arts and sciences.
One student from nearly every high school in Vermont is nominated for a significant scholarship at the campus every year. Most of them are girls, said Jay Jacobs, the university’s provost for enrollment management. It isn’t by design. “We want more men in our pipeline,” Dr. Jacobs said, but boys graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than girls, both in Vermont and nationwide.
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The young men who enroll lag behind. Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women. “I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree,” said Luke Weiss, a civil engineering student and fraternity president of Pi Kappa Alpha at the campus.
Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.
Young women appear eager to take leadership roles, making up 59% of student body presidents in the 2019-20 academic year and 74% of student body vice presidents, according to W.H. “Butch” Oxendine, Jr., executive director of the American Student Government Association.
“Across all types of institutions, particularly two-year institutions, but also extending into public and private four-year institutions, women dominate student government executive boards,” Mr. Oxendine said.
Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
“What I see is there is a kind of hope deficit,” Mr. Grocholski said.
The campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.
“As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,” Dr. Jackson said. “To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.”
Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said.
Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.
The University of Oregon has one of the few college men’s centers, which offers help for mental and physical health. “Men don’t need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Kerry Frazee, director of prevention services, who works with the center. “No one can do it all by themselves.”
Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Imagine your data center Imagine your data center backup generator kicks in during power outage ... and catches fire. Well, it happened
WebNX facility falls offline in blaze, takes customers down with it
Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Tue 6 Apr 2021 // 22:30 UTC
A power outage kicked off a fire in web hosting biz WebNX's Ogden data center in Utah on Sunday, knocking the facility offline temporarily and leaving several servers in need of a rebuild.
Kevin Brown, Fire Marshal for the US city's Fire Department told The Register in a phone interview that firefighters responded to a call on Sunday evening. The fire, he said, "originated in a generator in the building and spread to several servers."
Brown said the facility's fire suppression system contained the blaze and that fire department personnel assisted with the cleanup. He said power was cut to the building until an electrical engineer could inspect the facility to make sure current could be restored safely, which he added is standard procedure.
He also confirmed that some of Ogden City's IT services were down on Sunday and Monday as a result of the data center fire.
In a Facebook post on Monday, echoed on its website, WebNX attributed the incident to the failure of a backup generator following a local power outage. ... one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure
"Sunday afternoon the city power was disrupted and, as designed, our backup generators automatically switched on," the company said.
"However, during that transition, one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure, caught fire, and as a result initiated the fire suppression protocol."
The company confirmed that its Ogden data center experienced some damage. And earlier statement noted: "Some servers will have an extended outage as they may require rebuilds due to some water damage. Those builds have a high probability that data is intact."
"Customer’s servers in one of our main bays were exposed to water and possible damage may have occurred," the company said. "No fire damage was inflicted on customer servers."
Most of the hardware in the data center appears to be unaffected, the company said, but there are machines that need to be inspected for water damage and may need to be rebuilt.
"As of now, we are working to restore power, network, and unaffected hardware back up online within the next day or two," the company said.
Customers aren't pleased
The incident has also affected Gorilla Servers, a separate company founded by WebNX CEO Daniel Pautz that appears to co-locate some servers within the Ogden data center.
According to Gorilla, "close to 90 to 95 per cent of all Gorilla Servers hardware experienced zero damage." The electronic engineering website of YouTuber Dave Jones, eevblog.com, was among the sites hosted by Gorilla and taken offline in the outage, we note.
Other folks continue to report problems or are unable to reach their systems in the data center, though WebNX claims service has been restored for some.
At 16:47 UTC today, fish-egg flogger Passmore Caviar said, "Our website remains offline due to a fire at the WebNX server facility. Currently, we expect it to be back online later this afternoon." At the time this article was filed, the website remained inaccessible.
Piqosity, a test preparation service, also said its site stopped responding as a result of the fire.
OVH founder Octave Klaba's before and after pictures of servers cleaned after the fire in OVH's Strasbourg data centre
OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting
And in various online discussion forums, affected customers continue asking for estimates about when service will be restored. A common complaint is that lack of official communication about what's going on. Other forum participants report being told that their servers have water damage and will have to be rebuilt – a process that may take several days.
WebNX, which also operates facilities in New York City and Los Angeles, could not be reached by phone – calls are met with a recording noting that the company is "aware of the support system being down right now and technicians are working to resolve it." The Register received no response to our email inquiries.
WebNX's SLA guarantees 100 per cent uptime and uninterrupted power every month, with account credits of one day per 15 minutes of downtime in each case.
At 20:50 UTC on Tuesday, WebNX posted an update to its Facebook page: "We are currently working hard to get everything back to optimal running order. Huge thanks to the staff and outside contractors who were brought in (and also flown in from out of state) to help with the situation. We are also really grateful to everyone who has stepped up to help out, including some amazing clients, and Ogden City who has been very supportive."
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Joe_Dragon writes:
US web hoster WebNX suffered a lengthy outage earlier this week when a generator caught fire at its Utah data center, during a power disturbance.
The city of Ogden Utah suffered a power disruption on Easter Sunday afternoon (April 4). WebNX's backup power switched on, but unfortunately, a generator caught fire. The city power was back up by then, but WebNX was unable to switch back to the grid, because the fire services had cut off power to the site as a precaution. Customers suffered a lengthy outage, and WebNX is checking servers for water damage.
wbnx ogden data center google street view.png
– Google Street view
Fire department pulled the plug
"Sunday afternoon the city power was disrupted and, as designed, our backup generators automatically switched on. However, during that transition, one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure, caught fire, and as a result initiated the fire suppression protocol," said a statement on WebNX's Facebook page late on April 5
The situation was made worse by that fire suppression protocol, according to an earlier statement (shortly after midnight the morning of April 5): "Unfortunately, the fire department opted to cut power to the rest of the building as a precaution even though the power systems were independent."
The Ogden fire chief told The Register that the blaze was controlled by the data center's fire suppression system, and firefighters helped with the cleanup. It's normal procedure to cut off power to a building until an electrical engineer can inspect the facility to be sure it's safe to restore power, he said. According to the fire chief, the fire "originated in a generator in the building and spread to several servers."
WebNX says in its Facebook statements that: "No fire damage was inflicted on customer servers. However, it does say that some customer servers in a main bay were exposed to water and possible damage. "The majority of hardware in the entirety of our data center was spared, but there are machines that need to be inspected for water damage, and possibly rebuilt. As of now [5 April], we are working to restore power, network, and unaffected hardware back up online within the next day or two."
Customers affected by the outage include Ogden City itself, which had some services located at WebNX, and other service providers including Gorilla Servers and Passmore Caviar.
Australian electronic engineering vlogger Dave Jones brightly commented in a YouTube video explaining why his eevblog.com site is not available: "The center of the universe is down. Everyone's getting withdrawal symptoms and they're having to check themselves into clinics and all sorts of things because they can't get their fix of the eevblog forum." Jones hosts his site at Gorilla Servers.
WebNX has said that compensation will be offered in line with customer service level agreements. Some servers will need rebuilding servers, and WebNX hopes to restore customer data.
WebNX has two data centers: 100,000 sq ft (9z300 sq m) in Ogden, and 10,000 sq ft (930 sq m) in downtown Los Angeles. The company mostly offers dedicated server hosting, and its history dates back to running a bulletin board on a Novell NetWare server, according to its LinkedIn page, which says: "We specialize in high end custom dedicated servers. If you can dream it we have likely built it."
The incident came one month after a serious fire destroyed an OVHcloud data center in Strasbourg, France. In that instance, the cause is suspected to be the site's UPS systems.Link to Original Source
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Cyberpunk 2077 delayed again to November
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Another delay to address balance and bugs
By Cass Marshall Jun 18, 2020, 12:27pm EDT
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Lizzy Wizzy shown in Cyberpunk 2077. Her body is entirely chromed out.
Image: CD Projekt Red
Cyberpunk 2077, the massive RPG from CD Projekt Red, has been pushed back once again to Nov. 19, following a previous delay to Sept. 17.
In a statement published to the game’s official Twitter account, CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiski and head of studio Adam Badowski wrote:
At the time we are writing these words, Cyberpunk 2077 is finished both content and gameplay-wise. The quests, the cutscenes, the skills and items; all the adventures Night City has to offer — it’s all there. But with such an abundance of content and complex systems interweaving with each other, we need to properly go through everything, balance game mechanics and fix a lot of bugs.
This is the second delay for Cyberpunk 2077; the game was originally set to debut on April 16, but was pushed back to Sept. 17 in January. CD Projekt Red noted that journalists are currently playing a preview build of the game, with hands-on previews scheduled to go live on June 25. “We hope this will satisfy some of your hunger for the game as we work to polish it for the November launch,” the statement said.
The delay announcement comes just weeks after CD Projekt said it was on track to hit the Sept. 17 date. In an investor call on May 29, Micha Nowakowski, senior vice president of business development at CD Projekt and member of its board of directors, gave the following update:
The release continues to be scheduled for September 17 and the whole team is working really hard to deliver on that date. The final few months are always the biggest hurdle, so these are always the most crucial months — and we know that from our past experience. We’ve been there a couple of times in the past and of course this is the first time we’re doing that remotely, so we learn as we go — but that’s as much as I can say.
This new release date likely brings Cyberpunk 2077 in line with the next-gen launches for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, both of which are scheduled for “holiday 2020.” It’s almost certain that the consoles will arrives before Thanksgiving, which falls on Nov. 26 this year. We’ll likely see more details about a next-generation version of Cyberpunk 2077 closer to these launches; CD Projekt Red has only officially confirmed that the game will be playable on Xbox Series X with Smart Delivery. The initial version of the game will contain its single-player campaign and world; the multiplayer elements of the game will not be available for players until 2021.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
A college student has committed suicide after seeing a negative cash balance of $730,165 in his account on the Robinhood stock trading app.
Alexander E. Kearns, 20, died on Friday after apparently hurling himself in front of an oncoming freight train in his home town of Naperville, Illinois.
Kearns, a University of Nebraska student who was home on break, left a heartbreaking suicide note, part of which was published online by his cousin-in-law Bill Brewster.
'How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollar's worth of leverage?' the note reads. 'A painful lesson. F**k Robinhood.'
Although the details of Kearns' trades have not been made public, there is reason to believe that his negative account balance was merely a temporary glitch, and he was not in fact $730,000 in debt as he believed.Link to Original Source
115719200
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Dog owner files suit against ‘Uber of dog walking’ Wag, charges false advertising
By Janon Fisher and Cathy Burke
New York Daily News |
Jul 01, 2019 | 5:56 PM
Dog owner files suit against ‘Uber of dog walking’ Wag, charges false advertising
Wag, the dog-walking app, is under fire for walker's mistreatment of dogs. (Boogich/Getty Images)
Let slip the dogs of war — on Wag.
A Long Island dog owner on Monday filed a $5 million lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court accusing the “Uber of dog walking” of false advertising, and alleging a coverup of “serious problems of deaths and thefts” of the pets it services.
Barbara Meli alleges the dog walking app Wag! hires untrustworthy people to walk the four-legged clients — and in the Battery Park City case of a purloined shih tzu-yorkie called Benny, dispatched actress Olivia Munn to quiet the bad press.
This dog named Benny was allegedly taken from a home in Battery Park City, Manhattan in June 2019.
This dog named Benny was allegedly taken from a home in Battery Park City, Manhattan in June 2019.
“Wag has generated over $360 million in venture capital to take advantage of a multi-billion dollar dog walking industry,” said lawyer Susan Chana Lask, who in her free time is an animal rights advocate.
“With their huge profits, they have actress Munn to appear and quiet down the bad press by talking to the grieving pet parents," she said.
[More New York] ‘Shame on them for thinking that’: NYPD sergeants union head defends gun control retweet critics say is homophobic
Munn is not part of the lawsuit.
According to the suit, on the same week Benny was snatched, a yorkie-terrier mix named Whiskey was struck by a vehicle and killed, and her crystal necklace and other property stolen, while in the custody of a Wag dog walker.
A yorkie-terrier mix named Whiskey, pictured here in an undated photo, was allegedly struck by a vehicle and killed while in the custody of a Wag dog walker.
A yorkie-terrier mix named Whiskey, pictured here in an undated photo, was allegedly struck by a vehicle and killed while in the custody of a Wag dog walker.
The lawsuit also lists the dog horror case involving an Long Island dog named Buddy who disappeared while in the care of a Wag dog walker — and Wag’s alleged attempt to “buy the owner’s silence to avoid unfavorable media coverage.” And the Wag walker for Duckie the dog from Brooklyn failed to put a leash on him during a walk — ending in his being hit and killed by a car, the suit claims.
[More New York] Jeffrey Epstein ‘victim’ files suit against his estate, says abuse began when she was 14
According to the lawsuit, “over 11 dogs and counting are dead and abused by Wag’s walkers" — though Wag claims to use a “robust vetting process that includes application and verification process, a third party background check, an online test covering dog safety.” They also claim only 10% of applicants make it through the rigorous checks.
Nassau dog owner Meli, who has three pet dogs, got suspicious of the service after trying to hire a walker for July, but found very little information about who’d be on the other end of the leash, the lawsuit states. She then hired Lask to investigate.
In an interview with the Daily News, Lask said only regulation “at the local, city and state levels” will address the problems, “starting off by mandating that all dog walkers and sitters are licensed, trained and bonded before they knock on the door.”
Wag! creative strategist Olivia Munn delivers care boxes to Wags & Walks Adoption Center on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018 in Los Angeles.
Wag! creative strategist Olivia Munn delivers care boxes to Wags & Walks Adoption Center on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss/Invision for Wag!)
Lask, in a statement, decried the lack of “trustworthiness” of the app, “as reports of dead, abused, stolen and lost dogs increases every year” and “has climbed to over 11 dogs, and two were killed and one abducted by a wag walker just in one week of June 2019.”
“Wag reaps huge profits in this new age of a mostly unregulated gig economy where lives are sold for profit, at a cost of silent deaths to the dogs who are meaningless in this technological business model," she said.
A spokesperson for the LA-based company declined to comment on the suit.
[More New York] Cop wounded in shootout with slain Staten Island suspect leaves hospital to thunderous applause from NYPD colleagues
“Ensuring the safety and security of all those who use the Wag! platform is of utmost importance to us,” the spokesperson said, adding: “Accidents and incidents are rare, but we know the impact even one can have on the family involved.”
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Germany's green transition has hit a brick wall
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December 21, 2018 601 views
More people are finally beginning to realize that supplying the world with sufficient, stable energy solely from sun and wind power will be impossible.
Germany took on that challenge, to show the world how to build a society based entirely on “green, renewable” energy. It has now hit a brick wall. Despite huge investments in wind, solar and biofuel energy production capacity, Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families.
Germany has installed solar and wind power to such an extent that it should theoretically be able to satisfy the power requirement on any day that provides sufficient sunshine and wind. However, since sun and wind are often lacking – in Germany even more so than in other countries like Italy or Greece – the country only manages to produce around 27% of its annual power needs from these sources.
Equally problematical, when solar and wind production are at their maximum, the wind turbines and solar panels often overproduce – that is, they generate more electricity than Germany needs at that time – creating major problems in equalizing production and consumption. If the electric power system’s frequency is to be kept close to 50Hz (50 cycles per second), it is no longer possible to increase the amount of solar and wind production in Germany without additional, costly measures.
Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to major energy losses and forced power exports to neighboring countries (“load shedding”) at negative electricity prices, below the cost of generating the power.
In 2017 about half of Germany’s wind-based electricity production was exported. Neighboring countries typically do not want this often unexpected power, and the German power companies must therefore pay them to get rid of the excess. German customers have to pick up the bill.
If solar and wind power plants are disconnected from actual need in this manner, wind and solar facility owners are paid as if they had produced 90% of rated output. The bill is also sent to customers.
When wind and solar generation declines, and there is insufficient electricity for everyone who needs it, Germany’s utility companies also have to disconnect large power consumers – who then want to be compensated for having to shut down operations. That bill also goes to customers all over the nation.
Power production from the sun and wind is often quite low and sometimes totally absent. This might take place over periods from one day to ten days, especially during the winter months. Conventional power plants (coal, natural gas and nuclear) must then step in and deliver according to customer needs. Hydroelectric and biofuel power can also help, but they are only able to deliver about 10% of the often very high demand, especially if it is really cold.
Alternatively, Germany may import nuclear power from France, oil-fired power from Austria or coal power from Poland.
In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants.
Furthermore, if the AC frequency is allowed to drift too high or too low, the risk of extensive blackouts becomes significant. That was clearly demonstrated by South Australia, which also relies heavily on solar and wind power, and suffered extensive blackouts that shut down factories and cost the state billions of dollars.
The dream of supplying Germany with mainly green energy from sunshine and wind turns out to be nothing but a fading illusion. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world.
However, the Germans are not yet planning to end this quest for utopian energy. They want to change the entire energy system and include electricity, heat and transportation sectors in their plans. This will require a dramatic increase in electrical energy and much more renewable energy, primarily wind.
To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy. Germany might import some of this balancing power, but even then the scale of this endeavor is enormous.
Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels. This is simply not sustainable or ecological.
Construction of solar and wind “farms” has already caused massive devastation to Germany’s wildlife habitats, farmlands, ancient forests and historic villages. Even today, the northern part of Germany looks like a single enormous wind farm. Multiplying today's wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.
In reality, it is virtually impossible to increase production by a factor of 15, as promised by the plans.
The cost of Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) is enormous: some 200 billion euros by 2015 – and yet with minimal reduction in CO2 emission. In fact, coal consumption and CO2 emissions have been stable or risen slightly the last seven to ten years. In the absence of a miracle, Germany will not be able to fulfill its self-imposed climate commitments, not by 2020, nor by 2030.
What applies to Germany also applies to other countries that now produce their electricity primarily with fossil or nuclear power plants. To reach development comparable to Germany’s, such countries will be able to replace only about one quarter of their fossil and nuclear power, because these power plants must remain in operation to ensure frequency regulation, balance and back-up power.
Back-up power plants will have to run idle (on “spinning reserve”) during periods of high output of renewable energy, while still consuming fuel almost like during normal operation. They always have to be able to step up to full power, because over the next few hours or days solar or wind power might fail. So they power up and down many times per day and week.
The prospects for reductions in CO2 emissions are thus nearly non-existent! Indeed, the backup coal or gas plants must operate so inefficiently in this up-and-down mode that they often consume more fuel and emit more (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide than if they were simply operating at full power all the time, and there were no wind or solar installations.
There is no indication that world consumption of coal will decline in the next decades. Large countries in Asia and Africa continue to build coal-fired power plants, and more than 1,500 coal-fired power plants are in planning or under construction.
This will provide affordable electricity 24/7/365 to 1.3 billion people who still do not have access to electricity today. Electricity is essential for the improved health, living standards and life spans that these people expect and are entitled to. To tell them fears of climate change are a more pressing matter is a violation of their most basic human rights.
Authored by: Oddvar Lundseng, Hans Johnsen and Stein Bergsmark
Oddvar Lundseng is a senior engineer with 43 years of experience in the energy business. Hans Konrad Johnsen, PhD is a former R&D manager with Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA. Stein Storlie Bergsmark has a degree in physics and is a former senior energy researcher and former manager of renewable energy education at the University of Agder.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Twenty-four Amazon workers in New Jersey have been hospitalized after a robot accidentally tore a can of bear repellent spray in a warehouse, officials said.
The two dozen workers were treated at five local hospitals, Robbinsville Township communications and public information officer John Nalbone told ABC News. One remains in critical condition and 30 additional workers were treated at the scene.
The official investigation revealed "an automated machine accidentally punctured a 9-ounce bear repellent can, releasing concentrated Capsaican," Nalbone said. Capsaican is the major ingredient in pepper spray.
The fulfillment center was given the all clear by Wednesday evening.
“
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'Amazon's automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger today'
“Today at our Robbinsville fulfillment center, a damaged aerosol can dispensed strong fumes in a contained area of the facility. The safety of our employees is our top priority, and as such, all employees in that area have been relocated to safe place and employees experiencing symptoms are being treated onsite. As a precaution, some employees have been transported to local hospitals for evaluation and treatment,” an Amazon spokeswoman told ABC News in a statement.
PHOTO: Signage for Amazon is displayed atop the companys fulfillment center in Robbinsville, N.J., June 7, 2018.Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images FILE
Signage for Amazon is displayed atop the company's fulfillment center in Robbinsville, N.J., June 7, 2018.
(MORE: Amazon is coming to Queens. So are the helicopt)
"Robbinsville Fire Dept on scene at Amazon Warehouse on New Canton Way investigating 'fumes' that have several employees complaining of illness. Fire Dept is attempting to isolate the source. EMTs are triaging multiple patients. 7 ambulances and a medic currently assigned," the Robbinsville Fire Department tweeted at 6:05 a.m. on Wednesday.
(MORE: An inside look at Amazon's HQ2 visits to NYC)
There is no threat to residents in the area and the fumes were confined to the fulfillment center's third floor south wing, Nalbone said earlier. The warehouse is approximately 1.3 million-square-feet and was ventilated.
Amazon employees are not unionized, but the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union issued a statement about the danger that robots pose to human workers.
"Amazon's automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger today, the effects of which could be catastrophic and the long-term effects for 80 plus workers are unknown," union president Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement. "The richest company in the world cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hard working people's lives at risk. Our union will not back down until Amazon is held accountable for these and so many more dangerous labor practices."
ABC News' Briana Montalvo contributed to this report.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Intel has no chance in servers and they know it
Numbers straight from the horses mouth
Aug 7, 2018 by Charlie Demerjian
Intel LogoIntel is flying press to an Analyst day to discuss their impending server meltdown. SemiAccurate has been detailing this impending catastrophe for over a year now, it is now time for the details.
Manufacturing History (Revised):
If you recall last year, Intel had a “manufacturing day” to tell you all about the glories of their manufacturing process. The official story, now shown to be the lie we told you it was, was that 10nm wasn’t actually late and Intel didn’t fall off the Moore’s law train. Instead they intentionally took a new tact called Hyperscaling which was said to slow down the cadence of shrinks but increase the magnitude of each step. Most of the financial world bought it, the few that didn’t had their microphones taken when they tried to ask pertinent questions. (Note: This is not a joke, the details are in the link above)
If you were cynical or more to the point knew what was actually happening behind the scenes, you would be horrified at the technically legal but still misleading statements given about the state of process technology at Intel. SemiAccurate was the lone voice detailing the problems from the very start, to the delays, and to the final non-admission that things were never going to work. Hyperscaling is BS and was directly contradicted by the very words of the presenters.
Servers – The New Spin Battleground:
Why is this relevant? Mainly because 10nm is now 4 years delayed (Note: That means a 6-year shrink cadence, not a 4-year one) so badly that multiple generations of Intel server products are delayed too. Intel’s Purley, aka Shylake-EP/SP was a solid chip betrayed by a 3x price increase. OEMs are reporting that sales are awful, mainly due to the fact that the volume SKUs are TCO underwater compared to their Broadwell-EP predecessors. What did Intel do to fix this product mess? Forced customers into Purley. If you don’t think this will have long term effects well they are already visible if you know where to look.
Then we come to Cascade Lake, the successor to Purley. It brings quite literally nothing to the table, it is a minor bug fix to Purley and nothing more. OK with the Meltdown and Spectre patches it will slow down a bit, but there is nothing really new in Cascade Lake. TDP goes up from ~160W for mainstream Purleys to ~200W in mainstream Cascades which is how they get the very modest performance increases.
Couple this to some, but not all, of the features promised for Purley and you have Cascade Lake. No more cores, no more memory channels, no more PCIe lanes, and nothing to close the yawning gap to AMD’s Epyc. Performance does go up though, but less than the TDP increase as a percentage. How much? 6-8% on a per-socket basis meaning Cascade will still be TCO underwater compared to 2015’s Broadwell-EP.
Luckily Intel has a cunning plan there too, raise prices from Purley’s ~$13,000 to ~$20,000. No that isn’t a joke, a 6-8% performance boost almost completely due to TDP raises comes with an ~$7000 price increase. Did we mention AMD’s Epyc, which is about 15% slower on a per-socket basis, costs less than 1/4th as much? And has more PCIe lanes, more memory channels, more cores, but does take more energy. Over the service lifetime, SemiAccurate feels safe in claiming that an Epyc box won’t consume very much of the $15,000+ delta, per CPU mind you, in electricity even at the high rates in some countries.
Cooper Lake:
Cascade is not due out until Q4/2018 for the hyperscalers and Q1 for the rest of the world, a ploy that shattered Intel partners’ trust the last time the company played this game. According to the latest leaked Intel roadmap, volume for Cascade won’t start it’s ramp until ~1Q before AMD’s monster Rome CPU. (Note: The leading edge of the boxes are for PRQ, not for volume release so add at least 1Q to the times)
It won’t’ be a fair fight. Why? Rome will beat Cascade by more than 50% in per-socket performance, likely tie or win on a single threaded basis, and more than double the Cascade’s core count. Please note that by more than 50% we don’t mean a little more, we mean a lot more, think abusive rather than hair’s width margins.
There are Cooper Lake SKUs that can close the gap a bit, the 3-die water cooled 350W Cooper-AP that requires new infrastructure will roughly halve the performance gap at a much higher price and significantly lower TCO. How bad is Cooper Lake? Normalized to Purley it is a bit less than 40% faster. This may seem like enough to hold the line but Cooper is not set to come out until about a year AFTER Rome, still have six memory channels, less PCIe lanes, and all the rest. And that is for the monster 3-die new socket version, the mainstream Cooper Lake won’t even reach those uncompetitive heights. Intel putting Cooper Lake out is nothing more than a desperation play.
Ice-ing On The Spin:
Cooper Lake is due out in early 2019, at the moment, and is going to be followed by Ice Lake which SemiAccurate exclusively told you was a mid-2020 product. Guess what? Ice Lake is slower than AMD’s Rome. Significantly slower. That is OK though because AMD will have Milan out at the same time as Ice Lake and Milan raises the bar by solid double digit percentages once again. Ice? Intel is claiming that it will raise the bar by less than 20%, but that is before the process changes from the old 10nm to the new 10/12nm take a hit out of the gains. SemiAccurate hasn’t seen the new numbers in enough detail to say much other than performance will go down from the current goals.
Gasping For Air:
Worse yet for Ice Lake the big Achilles Heel for their architecture, inadequate QPI bandwidth, won’t be addressed. Sure it goes up from 10.4Gbps to 11.2Gbps, but given the core count and memory speed increases, it is woefully inadequate. Sapphire Rapids brings things up a bit but won’t reach levels where AMD’s Rome will be three years earlier. AMD isn’t going to sit still mind you, but the current Naples/Epyc is already faster than Sapphire will be in that regard.
This means that even if Intel has a single core advantage, their other main strength, scaling, flips to a liability. It is bad enough that several OEM sources surveyed recently are concerned enough to scale back the lucrative multi-socket designs and look to AMD for a solution. This may seem like technical minutia but it is what an ~5 year platform delay brings to the table.
Onward And (Not) Upward:
So Cascade Lake doesn’t hit a 10% performance gain for a $7000 price increase, and AMD’s Rome beats it by more than 50% in performance. Cooper Lake which comes out several quarters after Rome roughly halves the gap. Ice Lake again closes the gap to Rome a bit more, but does not come close to beating it. Once again Ice Lake is released significantly after Rome, and that assumes Intel’s 10/12nm process is as on track as they claim.
Unfortunately for Intel, AMD’s Milan come out a bit before Ice and, well, beats it like a drum. We have been asked not to reveal specific numbers yet but the ones SemiAccurate received from a trusted source show Milan widening the gap to Ice by at least mid-double digit percentages.
Once Rome comes out in Q2 of 2019 or so, AMD never has a performance lead of less than 25% per socket, and that is the worst case for AMD vs the best case for Intel, fudged a lot in Intel’s favor on top of that. After Rome, the server fight isn’t even close, AMD walks away laughing. And costs a fraction of what Intel does. And takes less energy to run. And has better scalability. And has more features. And is more flexible. And has a functional process to build it on. And has a process lead. And I could go on but you get the idea.
Looking Forward:
Luckily for Intel, they have a plan. That plan doesn’t involve silicon, it involves gathering the press and analysts and lovingly providing FUD before the proverbial excrement hits the rotational parts of the air movement device over the next few quarters. On the silicon side there is absolutely nothing Intel can do to combat AMD, their offerings are not even adequate much less competitive, and priced much higher. Intel knows this.
Why does SemiAccurate say that Intel knows? We have seen their internal documents that show exactly how frightened the company is. The documents go into specifics we don’t feel are appropriate to discuss publicly but there is one thing we can say, Intel knows their position. One of the documents says in no uncertain terms that the company understands they will not be competitive in the server market until AFTER Sapphire Rapids, the 2022 server part. AMD has a clear run in Intel’s core market for at least 4 years.
Intel has two choices after AMD launches Rome, three if you consider now illegal market manipulations. We will discount those. Those choices are drop prices or cede marketshare. Intel can’t drop prices, their ~3x price increase from Broadwell-EP to Purley is the only reason their financials are so solid. The ~$7000 price gain from Purley to Cascade, coupled with a steep rise in the percentage of MSRP that Tier-1 customers pay, says Intel knows they can’t touch margins.
So they have to cede marketshare. How much? They know and it makes the 15-20% number that CEO Brian Krzanich was said to have mentioned look small. OEMs that SemiAccurate regularly talk to are already jockeying for capacity for AMD’s Rome and that is only the start of the game. You can figure out the magnitude of Intel’s share loss if you know where to look, it is a big number.
Puke-A-Whirl:
So what is Intel to do tomorrow? Spin until you get so dizzy you fall over, then flail. Numbers will be presented that show large potential increases in performance based on wider SIMD vector widths and other very specific benchmarks. The numbers quoted above are for real world benchmarks from key Intel partners, not press and analyst specific fantasies. If you doubt that, compare the launch slides for Intel’s latest 4-5 CPU revisions to the real world gains and you will see what we mean.
But the key message is a very cunning one, datacenter TAM. Intel has been talking up the TAM for the datacenter lately, purposefully conflating it with CPU sales. The datacenter TAM is going to skyrocket as more things move to the cloud and the PC/discrete server market is gutted. Look for the company to ‘unintentionally’ intermix datacenter TAMs with CPU sales in the hope that you don’ t ask questions about CPU share.
SemiAccurate has laid out a pretty stark picture of Intel’s performance and market competitiveness over the next 3-4 years. We are highly confident in the information presented because the majority of it comes from Intel’s internal outlook and documentation that was shown to us. They know they have no chance in their most lucrative core market, and are trapped between raising prices to keep margins up and cratering marketshare. Either way they lose because they aren’t close in performance once AMD’s Rome comes out.S|A
Bonus Code Name: Hill Ridge
101978162
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Utility Apologizes After System Gave Black Woman Temporary Password With ‘N***a’ In It
Puget Sound Energy said it is taking steps to eliminate the chance any offensive words are randomly generated in the future.
headshot
By David Moye
An issue over a temporary password is leading a Washington state utility company to make permanent changes.
Erica Conway of Renton said that she logged onto the Puget Sound Energy website on Monday to pay her bill online and that when she forgot her password, she clicked a button to generate a temporary one so she could access her account.
The password, sent by third-party software, was supposed to be a randomly generated combination of letters and numbers.
Conway’s temp password was “NiggaHHJ,” and as a black woman, she said she thinks it was anything but random.
“I was truly in disbelief. Because this is not normal, and this is not what a temporary password is supposed to say,” she told local station KIRO-TV.
Conway, a longtime volunteer for the Seattle chapter of the NAACP, said she is still reeling from the incident.
“It was like an emotional roller coaster. Shock, disbelief, disgusted, angry. It was just — yeah, even now I’m just kind of like, I cannot believe this. I just can’t believe it,” she said.
Conway said she also couldn’t believe the reaction of the utility’s customer service department when she called to complain about the racially insensitive password.
“I said, ‘Do you not screen for offensive words?’ And [the customer service agent] said, ‘Yeah, we do,’” she told local station KING-TV. “I said, ‘Do you screen for this word?’ And she said, ‘No, why would we?’”
Conway said she became frustrated when the employee didn’t seem to take her concerns seriously.
“‘We’re in 2018. You mean to tell me you’ve never heard this word before?’” she said. “And she said, ‘Yeah, in the movies by African-Americans.’ And I said, ‘I think we need to stop this conversation.’”
PSE spokeswoman Janet Kim told KIRO TV that the site’s automatically generated passwords go straight from the system to customers, “so it’s not able to be accessed by an employee.”
Still, she said, the company recognizes that the randomly selected password sent to Conway was definitely inappropriate.
“This was offensive. There was no question about that. We apologize to this customer, the community, for what has happened, and we are trying to do what we can to make it right,” Kim said.
Since the incident, the utility company has set some parameters for the password system to eliminate the chance that any offensive words are randomly generated in the future.
In addition, Kim told KING-TV, the customer service agent who spoke with Conway will undergo training to improve future interactions with customers.
But Conway said she wants the utility company to sit down with the members of the Seattle NAACP to see how what happened to her can be prevented.
“I’d really like to sit down with them. I really would. I feel like something has to be done,” she told KING-TV.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Linus Tech Tips has an update on the imac pro repairLink to Original Source
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital.
The deadly collision—reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police—took place around 10PM at the intersection Mill Avenue and Curry Road. Autonomous vehicle developers often test drive at night, during storms, and other challenging conditions to help their vehicles learn to navigate in a variety of environments.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel.
A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman’s “next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.” The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said.
We’ve reached out to Uber and will update when we receive comment. So far the company’s only public statement comes from Twitter.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Easylist, the popular adblock filter list used by millions of subscribers, appears to be under attack. Github, where the project is maintained, has recently received a DMCA notice requiring a domain URL to be removed from the list. That domain appears to be owned by US-based anti-adblocking company Admiral.
The default business model on the Internet is “free” for consumers. Users largely expect websites to load without paying a dime but of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. To this end, millions of websites are funded by advertising revenue.
Sensible sites ensure that any advertising displayed is unobtrusive to the visitor but lots seem to think that bombarding users with endless ads, popups, and other hindrances is the best way to do business. As a result, ad blockers are now deployed by millions of people online.
In order to function, ad-blocking tools – such as uBlock Origin or Adblock – utilize lists of advertising domains compiled by third parties. One of the most popular is Easylist, which is distributed by authors fanboy, MonztA, Famlam, and Khrinunder, under dual Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and GNU General Public Licenses.
With the freedom afforded by those licenses, copyright tends not to figure high on the agenda for Easylist. However, a legal problem that has just raised its head is causing serious concern among those in the ad-blocking community.
Two days ago a somewhat unusual commit appeared in the Easylist repo on Github. As shown in the image below, a domain URL previously added to Easylist had been removed following a DMCA takedown notice filed with Github.
Domain text taken down by DMCA?
The DMCA notice in question has not yet been published but it’s clear that it targets the domain ‘functionalclam.com’. A user called ‘ameshkov’ helpfully points out a post by a new Github user called ‘DMCAHelper’ which coincided with the start of the takedown process more than three weeks ago.
A domain in a list circumvents copyright controls?
Aside from the curious claims of a URL “circumventing copyright access controls” (domains themselves cannot be copyrighted), the big questions are (i) who filed the complaint and (ii) who operates Functionalclam.com? The domain WHOIS is hidden but according to a helpful sleuth on Github, it’s operated by anti ad-blocking company Admiral.
Ad-blocking means money down the drain.
If that is indeed the case, we have the intriguing prospect of a startup attempting to protect its business model by using a novel interpretation of copyright law to have a domain name removed from a list. How this will pan out is unclear but a notice recently published on Functionalclam.com suggests the route the company wishes to take.
“This domain is used by digital publishers to control access to copyrighted content in accordance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and understand how visitors are accessing their copyrighted content,” the notice begins.
Combined with the comments by DMCAHelper on Github, this statement suggests that the complainants believe that interference with the ad display process (ads themselves could be the “copyrighted content” in question) represents a breach of section 1201 of the DMCA.
If it does, that could have huge consequences for online advertising but we will need to see the original DMCA notice to have a clearer idea of what this is all about. Thus far, Github hasn’t published it but already interest is growing. A representative from the EFF has already contacted the Easylist team, so this battle could heat up pretty quickly.
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Older Americans struggling to overcome age discrimination while looking for work face a new enemy: their computers.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently opened a probe into allegations that ageism is built right into the online software tools that millions of Americans use to job hunt.
Financial planner couple
Retirement's magic number: Do you have enough?
Thursday, 11 Feb 2016 | 8:00 AM ET
Separate research published recently by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank found that in a widespread test using fabricated resumes, fictional older workers were 30 percent less likely to be contacted after applying for jobs. Fictional older women had it even worse, being 47 percent less likely to get a "callback."
Several forces are conspiring to ensure that many Americans have to work well past the traditional retirement age of 65. People are living longer, their retirement savings are inadequate, and Social Security reforms are almost certainly going to require it. The San Francisco Fed says that the share of the older-65 working population is projected to rise sharply — from about 19 percent now to 29 percent in the year 2060.
Online job-hunting tools should be making things easier for older employment seekers, and it can. Indeed.com, which claims to list 16 million jobs worldwide, currently lists 158,000 openings under its "Part Time Jobs, Senior Citizen Jobs" category. Monster.com, which claims 5 million listings, has a special home page for "Careers at 50+."
In other ways, however, online job sites can cut older workers out. Age bias is built right into their software, according to Madigan. Job seekers who try to build a profile or resume can find that it's impossible to complete some forms because drop-down menus needed to complete tasks don't go back far enough to let older applicants fill them out. For example, one site's menu options for "years attended college" stops abruptly at 1956. That could prevent someone in their late 70s from filling out the form.
Madigan's office said it found one example that only accommodated those who had attended school after 1980, "barring anyone who is older than 52." Other sites used dates ranging from 1950 to 1970 as cutoffs, her office said.
"Today's workforce includes many people working in their 70s and 80s," Madigan said. "Barring older people from commonly used job search sites because of their age is discriminatory and negatively impacts our economy."
The Illinois' Civil Rights Bureau has opened a probe into potential violations of the Illinois Human Rights Act and the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Madigan's office has sent inquiry letters to six top jobs sites: Beyond.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed Inc., Ladders Inc., Monster Worldwide Inc. and Vault.
CareerBuilder called the issue a mistake.
job search frustrated stressed senior
SIphotography | Getty Images
"CareerBuilder is committed to helping workers of all ages find job opportunities, and is fixing this unfortunate oversight," spokesman Michael Erwin said in an email.
Beyond.com said it hadn't heard from Madigan's office, and added that it works to prevent age discrimination on the site.
"Discrimination has no part in the hiring process and that's why we take such care to help job seekers and hiring managers carefully consider all information they put forth during the job search process to avoid any conscious or unconscious bias," the company said in a statement.
Indeed.com also said it had not heard from the attorney general's office, and denied its site had an issue.
"On Indeed, anyone can upload a resume with any dates, and users can create a resume with drop down dates that go back to 1900," spokesman Alex Ortolani said.
Monster, and Vault did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Ladders said the company has not received a letter so far from Madigan. "Our site does not restrict the dates on resumes that people submit to us. In fact, to combat age discrimination we do not ask for a year of graduation from college," in an email on March 13.
"Barring older people from commonly used job search sites because of their age is discriminatory and negatively impacts our economy" -Lisa Madigan, Illinois attorney general
Experts say it's best to leave age off your resume. Online resume-building tools that force applicants to enter years for degree programs or work experience have a way of forcing the issue, however. And there's fresh evidence why such revelations are a bad idea.
In the San Francisco Fed's experiment to see if it could find statistical evidence of age discrimination, researchers created fictitious resumes for young (ages 29–31), middle age (49–51), and older (64–66) job applicants. Then those resumes were submitted to 13,000 positions in 12 cities across 11 states, totaling more than 40,000 applicants.
Age was not listed, but was clearly implied by the inclusion of high school graduation years.
Across several categories of jobs — sales, administrators, even janitors — there was evidence of age bias, the researchers found. For example: Among men seeking sales jobs, callbacks fell to 14.70 percent from 20.89 percent — a drop of about one-third — as applicants age rose from middle age to older.
The study unearthed an even stronger pattern of discrimination against older women, suggesting that group faces a double-whammy of age and gender discrimination when trying to remain in the workforce. Older female applicants for administrative jobs had a 47 percent lower callback rate than young female applicants. In sales jobs, older women were 36 percent less likely to get a call.
The study notes that any "supply-side" reforms designed to nudge Americans to work longer — namely delaying Social Security benefits — won't work if older workers are systematically shut out of job openings.
"Current policies to combat age discrimination, which rely in large part on private litigation for enforcement, may be ineffective at reducing or eliminating age discrimination in hiring," the report concludes.
86954395
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Joe_Dragon writes:
Abstract: America’s higher education system is in dire need of reform. The average college student leaves school with more than $23,000 in debt, and total student loan debt in the United States now exceeds $1 trillion. Furthermore, too many students are leaving college without the skills needed to be successful in the workforce. And yet, despite the dire state of today’s higher education system, there is hope on the horizon: By favoring knowledge and skill acquisition over seat time, online options and competency-based learning are disrupting the traditional higher education market and perhaps have laid the foundation for a revitalization of American education. Despite the promise presented by these innovations, however, the antiquated higher education accreditation process remains a considerable obstacle to reform.
