Open Source Sustainability is Really a People Problem

Matt Asay, a former COO of Canonical now working at AWS, argues that the question of open source sustainability “is really a people problem.” But to make the case, he cites comments by Tobie Langel, formerly W3C’s testing lead (and a former member of Facebook’s Open Source and Web Standards Team) who’s now founded an open-source strategies consulting firm whose clients…

California Judge Orders Uber and Lyft To Classify Drivers As Employees

A California judge ruled that Uber and Lyft must classify their drivers as employees in a stunning preliminary injunction issued Monday afternoon. The Verge reports: The injunction is stayed for 10 days, however, giving Uber and Lyft an opportunity to appeal the decision. Uber said it planned to file an immediate emergency appeal to block the ruling from going into effect….

Should the U.K. Government Form a Coalition to Buy ARM?

With SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son trying to sell ARM, a columnist for the Observer newspaper has a suggestion for the U.K. government (and specifically Brexit Tories), calling the Cambridge-based company “a kind of public-interest commercial company: licensing state-of-the art instruction sets that can be implemented in silicon architecture by everyone. It was in nobody’s pocket.” Its business, as its chief founder, Tudor…

The Workforce Is About to Change Dramatically

“For the first time ever, the world’s largest companies are telling hundreds of thousands of workers to stay away from the office for a full year, or longer,” notes the Atlantic. “If, in five years, these edicts have no lingering effects on office culture, that would be awfully strange…” Ambitious engineers, media makers, marketers, PR people, and others may be more…

Appeals Court Blocks Trump Appointee’s Takeover of Web Nonprofit

A federal appeals court has blocked a bid by one of President Donald Trump’s appointees to take over a government-funded nonprofit organization that fosters technology aimed at undermining internet censorship around the globe. From a report, shared by reader transporter_ii: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an order Tuesday morning preventing U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO…

Hoax That Fooled Armed Protesters Was Created By a Socialist Troll on Food Stamps

Remember that anonymous online hoaxster who urged hundreds of armed protesters to counter a non-existent flag-burning event at America’s historic Civil War battefield at Gettysburg? An investigation by the Washington Post reveals that the hoaxster had in fact been a “lifelong Democrat” before instead registering in 2015 with the Socialist Party — and that he now collects food stamps:
Adam Rahuba, a…

Hong Kong Government Tells Schools To Remove Books Breaching Security Law

Hong Kong’s government on Monday ordered schools to review and remove any books that might breach a sweeping new security law that Beijing imposed last week on the restless city. From a report: “In accordance with the four types of offences clearly stipulated in the law, the school management and teachers should review teaching and learning materials in a timely manner,…

Image: Snapshot of cosmic pyrotechnics

If you’re looking for fireworks for the U.S. celebration of Independence Day, then look no further than the world of astronomy. The cosmic firework at the center of this image, the spiral galaxy NGC 925, resembles a vast pinwheel, with a bright central bar and swirling spiral arms. The red bursts strewn throughout NGC 925 are eruptions of star formation, which…

Eclipse? What eclipse?

Even experienced observers say they couldn’t discern the Earth’s shadow on the moon during the partial penumbral eclipse of July 4-5, 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photos-partial-penumbral-eclipse-july-4-5-2020…

Hundreds of Armed US Counter-Protesters Fall for ‘Apparent Hoax’

Yesterday as America celebrated its Independence Day, the Washington Post reports something unusual happened at the historic Civil War battefield at Gettysburg: For weeks, a mysterious figure on social media talked up plans for antifa protesters to converge on this historical site on Independence Day to burn American flags, an event that seemed at times to border on the farcical… There…