schwit1 shares a report from The Truth About Cars: Ford Motor Co. will be suspending end-of-lease buyout options for customers driving all-electric vehicles, provided they took possession of the model after June 15, 2022. Those who nabbed their Mach-E beforehand will still have the option of purchasing the automobile once their lease ends. However, there are some states that won't be abiding by the updated rules until the end of the year, not that it matters when customers are almost guaranteed to have to wait at least that long on a reserved vehicle.

The change, made earlier in the month, cruised under our radar until a reader asked for our take over the weekend. Ford could be wanting to capitalize on exceptionally high used vehicle prices, ensuring that more vehicles make it back into rotation. The broader industry has likewise been talking about abandoning traditional ownership to transition the auto market into being more service-oriented where manufacturers ultimately retain ownership of all relevant assets. But it may not be that simple as this being another step in the business sector's larger plan to maximize profitability by discouraging private vehicle ownership.

[...] While leasing customers will not be able to buy their EV, Ford Credit will allow them to renew an expiring contract in exchange for a brand-new model. Amazingly, the manufacturer is trying to frame this as environmentally responsible. But it smells like planned obsolescence and desperation from where I'm sitting. Ford knows that electrics require far less labor to produce. By also retaining/recycling the most-expensive component (the battery) it can effectively maximize profitability on a three or four-year turnaround. For now, the updated leasing scheme is limited exclusively to all-electric products (e.g. Ford Lightning or Mach-E "Mustang") sold in 37 individual states. But the long wait times for new EVs and Ford's desire to expand the plan through the rest of the year effectively means it'll be national by the time most people take ownership.

The co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes has been accused of publishing articles that are too accurate: copying text from other more authorative web sites.

Snopes.com describes them as "sentences or paragraphs from various news sites pasted into Snopes news stories without appropriate attribution." BuzzFeed News writes: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times. After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material... BuzzFeed News found dozens of articles on Snopes' site that include language — sometimes entire paragraphs — that appear to have been copied without attribution from news outlets that include the New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and the BBC... Snopes's subsequent internal review identified 140 articles with possible problems and 54 that were found to include appropriated material...

"That was his big SEO/speed secret," said Binkowski, whom Snopes fired without explanation in 2018 (she currently manages the fact-checking site Truth or Fiction). "He would instruct us to copy text from other sites, post them verbatim so that it looked like we were fast and could scoop up traffic, and then change the story in real time. I hated it and wouldn't tell any of the staff to do it, but he did it all the time." Two other former employees also said that copying and rewriting content was part of Mikkelson's strategy for driving traffic to Snopes' site...
Thanks to Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid for submitting this story. BuzzFeed notes that Mikkelson himself had also begun using a pseudonym "intended to mislead the trolls and conspiracy theorists who frequently targeted the site and its writers." That byline linked to a satirical bio claiming that in 2006 they'd "won the Pulitzer Prize for numismatics" (coin collecting) and were "also the winner of the Distinguished Conflagration Award of the American Society of Muleskinners for 2005."

Snopes.com actually thanked BuzzFeed's reporter for letting them know, calling BuzzFeed's article "an example of dogged, watchdog journalism we cherish" (while adding "Our staff has moved quickly to fix the problem... Our reputation is dependent on our ability to get things right, and more importantly, to quickly correct the record when we are wrong.") Besides removing Mikkelson's purloined content (and preventing him, though he's still the site's co-owner, from publishing on it), Snopes.com says that in addition, "We will attempt to contact each news outlet whose reporting we appropriated to issue an apology."

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson attributed the unattributed sentence-copying to his lack of formal journalism experience. "I wasn't used to doing news aggregation. A number of times I crossed the line to where it was copyright infringement. I own that...."

I remember when Snopes.com was just an entertaining fringe web site debunking kooky claims turning up in forwarded emails or on Usenet. Was it a victim of its own success — drawn into the 24/7 news cycle, with its "race to be first"? Were they overwhelmed by the amount of misinformation being spread on social media that needed debunking? In a statement to BuzzFeed, Mikkelson had this to say: Snopes has grown beyond our roots as a "one-man band" website into a newsroom of dedicated, professional journalists who serve the public with trustworthy information. Thanks to their efforts, Snopes has published original reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent elections, Russian disinformation efforts and so much more. The last thing I ever wanted was to have my mistakes detract from their excellent work, and I'm doing everything I can to make it right.
And on Twitter, BuzzFeed's reporter added that "I don't like that this story is being weaponized by bad actors like Steve Bannon to unfairly and baselessly smear the work of Snopes' staff writers who do good work and had no part in this."

schwit1 writes: Cathay Pacific is working with Airbus to introduce "reduced crew" long-haul flights with a sole pilot in the cockpit much of the time, industry sources told Reuters. The programme, known within Airbus as Project Connect, aims to certify its A350 jet for single-pilot operations during high-altitude cruise, starting in 2025 on Cathay passenger flights, the sources said. High hurdles remain on the path to international acceptance. Once cleared, longer flights would become possible with a pair of pilots alternating rest breaks, instead of the three or four currently needed to maintain at least two in the cockpit. That promises savings for airlines, amid uncertainty over the post-pandemic economics of intercontinental flying. But it is likely to encounter resistance from pilots already hit by mass layoffs, and safety concerns about aircraft automation.

theodp writes: The U.S. isn't producing nearly enough students trained in computer science to meet the future demands of the American workforce," lamented Amazon in a Friday press release, adding that it is "urging Congress and legislatures across the U.S. to support -- and fund -- computer science education in public schools." Well, the 'urging' seems to be working. On Friday, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) reintroduced the Computer Science for All Act (Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all lobbied for the bill's predecessor, the CS for All Act of 2019), which provides $250 million in new grants to support a diverse 'tech pipeline' in pre-K through grade 12 education.

Amazon and Amazon-funded nonprofit Code.org were cited as the bill's 'supporting organizations' and quoted in Lee's accompanying press release for the legislation, which aims to improve equity in CS education. "We look forward to working with Representative Lee and the bill's cosponsors to meet these objectives," said Brian Huseman, VP of Public Policy for Amazon, which in 2017 curiously broke from other tech giants and stopped releasing the gender and racial data on its workforce it's required to report to the federal government. "Right now, there are over 400,000 open computing jobs in the United States," added Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. "Frustratingly, only 47% of our public high schools teach computer science.