Chinese start-up Mobike loses more than 200,000 bikes

Found on BBC News on Wednesday, 01 January 2020
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In 2018, it pulled out of Manchester after a series of incidents.

In China, thousands of shared bikes have ended up in huge scrapheaps, leading to questions about whether there is demand for them.

Mobike also pulled out of Newcastle and Gateshead, after some bikes were dumped in the River Tyne.

Investors have backed dockless bike companies with hundreds of millions of pounds, but the business model for them has repeatedly been called into question.

Here the theory of easy and healthy transport meets realism. It would not be surprising if this business model even creates more CO2 than having people continue to use their current method of transport.

Unintended Perk of the Online Mattress Boom: Never-Ending Free Trials

Found on Slashdot on Tuesday, 31 December 2019
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"You could literally do this and never pay for a mattress," he realized. Online mattress sales are booming in the U.S.

To entice shoppers who would otherwise prefer to test the firmness of the mattress in the showroom, many of these online upstarts offer free home trials that can run for as long as a year. The customer typically pays for the mattress up front and gets a full refund if the mattress is returned before the cutoff.

This is the same year where everybody talks about protecting the environment, reducing waste and emissions. Then you have leeches like those people who just abuse the system to save money and create piles of trash, torpedoing he efforts of all others.

Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security

Found on Wired on Thursday, 26 December 2019
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Fox News’ viewers evidently were not to be told those hard truths—they were to be kept thinking that everything in their self-selected filter bubble was just peachy keen.

Fox’s bubble reality creates a situation where it’s impossible to have the conversations and debate necessary to function as a democracy. Facts that are inconvenient to President Trump simply disappear down Fox News’ “memory hole,” as thoroughly as George Orwell could have imagined in 1984.

When in doubt, assume both sides are lying to some degree. Sadly, that's mostly the truth.

Mysterious drones flying nighttime patterns over northeast Colorado leave local law enforcement stumped

Found on The Denver Post on Wednesday, 25 December 2019
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The drones, estimated to have six-foot wingspans, have been flying over Phillips and Yuma counties every night for about the last week, Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said Monday.

“They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern,” he said. “They fly one square and then they fly another square.”

The Federal Aviation Administration told the sheriff’s office that it had no information on the drones, and the U.S. Air Force said the aircraft aren’t theirs, Elliott said.

Even if the sheriff’s office identified the pilot or pilots of the drones, they’re likely not breaking any laws, Myers said.

Six-foot wingspans make some big drones. Still they can be relatively cheap so a dedicated individual could afford them.

Congress passes legislation expanding robocall penalties

Found on Ars Technica on Friday, 20 December 2019
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The new legislation allows federal authorities to seize the profits of robocall operators and assess an additional penalty of up to $10,000 per call.

Now Congress is setting a deadline, ordering companies with IP-based voice networks to adopt SHAKEN/STIR within 18 months. Companies with old-fashioned non-IP networks must take "reasonable measures to implement an effective call authentication framework" in the same timeframe.

You think it should be easy to find out who just called you; looks like it is not.

Some junk for sale on Amazon is very literally garbage, report finds

Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 18 December 2019
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Writers went digging through the trash in New Jersey and came up with dozens of items to sell, such as "a stencil set, scrapbook paper, and a sealed jar of Trader Joe’s lemon curd." Setting up a storefront and listing the items for sale was "easy," the WSJ said.

The Amazon sellers who find and repair or clean and sell usable goods from the trash are not a new phenomenon. Any flea market, secondhand shop, or closeout store features "found" items, some of which genuinely are surprisingly high-quality, like-new finds. These sellers are just taking the business model online.

That garbage might actually be better than many of the new garbage from China.

NHS gives Amazon free use of health data under Alexa advice deal

Found on The Guardian on Tuesday, 10 December 2019
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The material, which excludes patient data, could allow the multinational technology company to make, advertise and sell its own products.

An NHS spokesperson said: “No patient data is being provided to this company by the NHS, which takes data privacy extremely seriously and has put appropriate safeguards in place to ensure information is used correctly.”

For now. First you start with a little step where you can assure that no personal data is handed over, to make people accept such a headline. In another step, you add patient data and the outcry will be small because most people will mix it up with what happened before.

'Grinch bots' are here to ruin your holiday shopping

Found on NBC News on Tuesday, 03 December 2019
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Up to 97 percent of all online traffic to retailer login pages this holiday shopping week comes from bots, largely operated by organized gangs of cybercriminals, according to estimates by cybersecurity firm Radware.

The bots fill out online forms and navigate retail sites faster than a real person can, and try to swiftly purchase limited supply gifts before you’ve even filled up your cart. The items are then sold for a higher price on third-party sites.

On a normal shopping day, humans outnumber bots on login pages by two to one. On the days leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, bots outnumber humans by 20 to 1.

Capitalism at its finest. The holiday season has turned into nothing but a compulsive consumerism.

Apple changes Crimea map to meet Russian demands

Found on BBC News on Saturday, 30 November 2019
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The region, which has a Russian-speaking majority, is now shown as Russian territory on Apple Maps and its Weather app, when viewed from Russia.

But the apps do not show it as part of any country when viewed elsewhere.

Vasily Piskaryov, chairman of the Duma security and anti-corruption committee, said Apple had complied with the Russian constitution.

Google, which also produces a popular Maps app, also shows Crimea as belonging to Russia when viewed from the country. The changes happened in March.

When it comes to propaganda, you always have to make sure that those who can influence lots of people are acting the way you want them to.

Boeing seems upset with NASA’s inspector general

Found on Ars Technica on Monday, 18 November 2019
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For the first time, the report also published an estimate of seat prices that NASA will pay Boeing for crewed Starliner missions to the International Space Station alongside prices the organization will pay for SpaceX's Dragon vehicle: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon.

Boeing's response takes issue with several parts of NASA's report. But the company appears especially exercised about the claim that NASA overpaid Boeing for seats on the third through sixth Starliner missions, payment over and above what was originally agreed upon as part of the company's fixed price contract with the space agency.

That's the free market for you.