programminglanguage:dc

KEI letter to US DOJ, opposing IBM acquisition of Red Hat | Knowledge Ecology International
▻https://www.keionline.org/30093

Très intéressant sur les relations Logiciels libres et grandes entreprises. Utiliser le LL comme cheval de Troie pour renforcer des services spécifiques... brisant la confiance et la neutralité du libre. L’inverse de ce que décrit « Des routes et des ponts » sur les partenariats communs-privés.

The following was sent to US DOJ today, to express KEI’s opposition to the IBM acquisition of Red Hat.

13 March 2019

Bindi R. Bhagat
U.S. Department of Justice
Antitrust Division
Technology and Financial Services Section

Dear Ms. Bhagat,

Thank you for taking our call today, regarding the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) effort to buy Red Hat, Inc. As discussed, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) is opposed to IBM acquiring Red Hat.

At present, Red Hat controls the most important Linux distribution for Internet and cloud servers.

The important metrics in this area include, but are not limited to, the share of Internet traffic supported by Red Hat server installations, as well as the revenue that Red Hat realizes for maintaining and customizing Linux server software, compared to other Linux server distribution companies or organizations.

Red Hat is an important contributor to the Linux kernel and to the code that is used in many elements in the broader GNU/Linux platform of free software programs that are used by server platforms, including the many non-Red Hat Linux distributions.

IBM is proposing to pay a large premium for Red Hat. Prior to the acquisition offer, Red Hat was valued at approximately $20.5 billion. IBM is proposing to buy Red Hat for $34 billion, a premium of about 67 percent of the previous value.

IBM could have invested in Red Hat stock at a much lower price, if the objective was simply to share in the expected profits of Red Hat, continuing its current business offerings. What IBM gains from its acquisition of Red Hat is control, and the ability to shape the direction of its software development efforts, to favor IBM’s own cloud services.

Today Red Hat is considered a neutral partner for many companies offering or developing cloud services. If IBM acquires Red Hat, the trust in Red Hat will be eroded, and IBM will have powerful incentives to influence Red Hat’s software development efforts towards providing special functionality and benefits to IBM and the IBM cloud services, and even to degrade the functionality of services to companies that compete directly with IBM, or fail to buy services from IBM.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) should consider the impact of the merger on the incentives that Red Hat will have, post merger, to undermine competition and degrade the benefits of a more level playing field, for this critical Internet resource and platform.

Our concerns are shaped to some degree by the detrimental decision made by the DOJ in approving the Oracle acquisition of Sun Computer’s open source assets, including the MySQL database program. At the time, DOJ viewed the MySQL software as unimportant, because the revenues were small, relative to other database programs. Most users of MySQL did not pay any fees to use the software. Our organization, KEI, used MySQL to support our Joomla, Drupal and WordPress content management systems, and did not pay fees to Sun Computer, along with countless other businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals who also used the free version. We were concerned, at the time, that Oracle would degrade and slow the development of the capacities of MySQL, in order to protect Oracle’s very expensive proprietary database services. We believe that our concerns about Oracle have unfortunately been borne out, by the blunting of the rate of innovation and ambition for MySQL, the fact that Open Office (another program gained in the acquisition of Sun Computers) is no longer an important free software client for office productivity, and Oracle’s aggressive litigation over copyright and patent claims related to Java.

The DOJ might consider conditions on the merger that would provide greater assurances that Red Hat will not be used to create an unlevel playing field that favors IBM’s own cloud services. We are willing to suggest such conditions, relating to governance, licensing and other issues. For example, the DOJ could require IBM to show how it will ensure the continued policy of ensuring that Red Hat’s patents are only used for defensive purposes. Conditions on this issue should be durable, and avoid predictable loopholes.

IBM’s competitors and existing customers of Red Hat will have more informed suggestions as to specific conditions that would protect IBM’s competitors. But overall, the best decision would be to reject the merger, on the grounds that is is fundamentally designed to create an unlevel playing field.

Red Hat is not just another technology company. It is one of the main reasons the Internet functions as well as it does.

Sincerely,

James Love
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
1621 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009
▻https://keionline.org

#Communs #Logiciels_libres #Red_Hat #IBM

US court throws out lawsuit against academic boycott of Israel | The Electronic Intifada

▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-court-throws-out-lawsuit-against-academic-boycott-israel

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2019-02/na00_1.jpg?itok=kRJF6P1g

A federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association over its decision to support the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The ruling is a significant blow to efforts by Israel lobby groups to use courts to harass, intimidate and silence supporters of Palestinian rights in US universities – a tactic known as lawfare.

In April 2016, several current and former members of the ASA filed the lawsuit against the group over its 2013 resolution backing the academic boycott.

In his 20-page ruling, US District Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote that the plaintiffs had no standing to file a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of the ASA, and that their individual damage claims came nowhere near the $75,000 minimum required for them to seek relief in federal court.

At most, the individual plaintiffs could seek damages of a few hundred dollars to cover membership dues they allege were misappropriated, but they would have to find some other venue to pursue their claims, the judge found.

“The court basically said, in no uncertain words, that the plaintiffs suing ASA lied when they claimed to have ‘suffered significant economic and reputational damage.’” Radhika Sainath, senior attorney with the civil rights group Palestine Legal, told The Electronic Intifada. “But, as the court explained, ‘nowhere’ in the lawsuit could the plaintiffs explain what that damage was. It didn’t pass the smell test.”

Dear White Nationalists, White Rights Activists, and Neo-Nazis | Unite the Right protest in DC
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/dear-white-nationalists-white-rights-activists-and-neonazis-unite-th

Dear White Nationalists, White Rights Activists, and Neo-Nazis | Unite the Right protest in DC | August 12, 2018 Support independent media! ▶►https://www.patreon.com/Orf Matt Orfalea...

Re:Legend - the story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest ever Kickstarter
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-14-re-legend-the-story-behind-southeast-asias-biggest-ever-ki

Brothers DC and Welson Gan abandoned mobile to chase their “dream game”, and now they’re poised to become SE Asia’s biggest indie success story

#Publishing #Development

Mapping the slums | Erica Hagen | TEDxGateway - YouTube

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVkyBf_TM9s

Mapping the slums | Erica Hagen | TEDxGateway

Ajoutée le 10 mars 2015
In her talk Erica Hagen describes how slums around the world are absent from maps online and on paper. She works towards empowering communities through open data, open mapping, citizen media and participatory processes.

Erica is co-founder of Map Kibera, which created the first free and open map of the Kibera slum in Nairobi in 2009. Map Kibera has evolved to include Voice of Kibera, a website that maps stories citizen reporters; the online video initiative Kibera News Network; and more. She is also director of GroundTruth Initiative, in Washington, DC, using digital technologies, citizen media and mapping for greater citizen voice and impact around the world.

Websites:

www.mapkibera.org
www.groundtruth.in
Twitter: @ricaji

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ▻http://ted.com/tedx

#slums #cartographie #bidonvilles

Pour mémoire : Wonder « Love IDF » Woman en 2014 pendant le massacre de Gaza : Wonder Woman Gal Gadot on Israel-Gaza : Israeli actress’s pro-IDF stance causes controversy
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/wonder-woman-gal-gadot-on-israel-gaza-israeli-actresss-pro-idf-stance

Israeli actress Gal Gadot – who was recently unveiled as the caped superhero in Zack Snyder’s new DC movie Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice – caused a stir by posting a message of support for the Israel Defence Forces via her official Facebook page, just days before a poster of her in character first debuted.

As the conflict between Israel and Gaza worsened, she uploaded a photograph of herself praying with her daughter Alma.

“I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens,” she wrote. “Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children...We shall overcome!!! Shabbat Shalom! #weareright #freegazafromhamas #stopterror #coexistance #loveidf”

Puisque l’administration Trump se plaît à évoquer des actions militaires contre la Corée du Nord, après le NY Times qui s’inquiète à cause des très menaçantes parties de volleyball du régime de Pyongyang, le Guardian va directement à l’essentiel : « est-ce que la Californie doit commencer à paniquer ? ».

North Korea nuclear threat : should California start panicking ?
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/20/north-korea-nuclear-missile-could-it-hit-california-trump

In test blasts, military parades and propaganda videos that show San Francisco and Washington DC in ruins, North Korea has broadcast its intention to be a world nuclear power. Less clear, experts say, is how close the secretive nation is to realizing its ambitions to threaten the mainland of the United States.

As rhetoric between the two nations has ratcheted up in recent weeks, residents of major west coast cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle have begun to ask out loud: should they be worried?

Et admire l’adresse Web (URL) pas moins putassière : « north korea nuclear missile - could it hit california - trump ».

C’est rassurant : la guerre n’a pas encore commencé, et la presse libre du monde libre est déjà au garde-à-vous.

Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes–Zero Are Critical
▻http://fair.org/home/five-top-papers-run-18-opinion-pieces-praising-syria-strikes-zero-are-critical

Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday night airstrikes. By contrast, the five papers ran a total of 18 op-eds, columns or “news analysis” articles (dressed-up opinion pieces) that either praised the strikes or criticized them for not being harsh enough:

The vegan movement split, and now the disruptor has the meat industry on high alert, by Chase Purdy — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/829956/how-the-vegan-movement-broke-out-of-its-echo-chamber-and-finally-started-disrupt
▻https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/pigs.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600

A 2001 schism splintered the vegan community into two camps: absolutists who tout veganism as an all-or-nothing moral imperative, and pragmatists who quietly advocate for incremental change. The vegan movement’s brain finally outgrew its heart, and in less than two decades the pragmatic vein of the movement has morphed into one of the biggest disruptors of the American food system.

(...) Fast-forward 16 years and that small group of pragmatists have built the movement they imagined. Friedrich leads The Good Food Institute, a lobbying shop in DC that represents the interests of meat-alternative food products; Shapiro helped mastermind a cage-free ballot initiative in Massachusetts that will reshape how food animals are produced across the country; Prescott has made inroads into major investment banks; Meier leads undercover investigation efforts to expose the poor living conditions of many farm animals; and Tetrick, who as a college student would travel from West Virginia to DC to hang out with the pragmatists, was a founder of Hampton Creek, the well-known eggless condiments company.

(...) Voters who empathize with farm animals were much more likely to buy into Shapiro’s measure. That’s where Erica Meier and Compassion Over Killing comes in: By leading undercover investigation of factory farms, Meier’s team gathers the opposition research needed to make a compelling case to the public. And if sales data show consumers care about animal welfare, Matthew Prescott can use—and has used—it to convince investment banks to pressure companies, such as McDonald’s, to change their practices.

Meanwhile, companies such as Perfect Day (cow-free milk), Beyond Meat (plant-based meat), and Hampton Creek (eggless condiments) are developing meat and dairy products marketed as better for the environment and the animals. And to ease those new products into the marketplace, people such as Bruce Friedrich work to shape federal regulations that dictate how those new products can be marketed.
Despite the broad reach and proven efficacy of the vegan pragmatism, not everyone in the larger vegan movement is impressed.

#militer dans le #capitalisme

The First Cross-dressing Comic Book Superhero - Neatorama
▻http://www.neatorama.com/2011/08/11/the-first-cross-dressing-comic-book-superhero

http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MadamFatalTitle.jpg

Madame Fatal is hardly up there in the pantheon of famous and beloved comic book superheroes. Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Captain America, and the Fantastic Four probably never lost any sleep over this rival comic hero possibly replacing them in their fan’s hearts.

’Madame Fatal (sometimes spelled “Madam Fatal”) is a fictional character and superhero active during the Golden Age of comic books. Madame Fatal was created and originally illustrated by artist/writer Art Pinajian. The debut of the character was in Crack Comics #1 (May 1940). This was a crime/detective anthology published by Quality Comics. Madame Fatal continued in the series until issue #22, but was not at all popular or well-received.

http://uploads.neatorama.com/images/posts/449/90/90449/1463721873-1.jpg

The character later appeared in a few DC Comics, after they had purchased the rights to the character in 1956, along with a bulk buy-out of all the Quality Comics characters. Even so, Madame Fatal was never much seen except for a few brief appearances and passing mentions from other comic book characters.

Madame Fatal is notable for being a male superhero who dressed up as an elderly woman to fight crimes. As such, he was the first cross-dressing comic book superhero. (Interestingly, later that same year, The Red Tornado became the first female cross-dressing superhero (superheroine?). The Red Tornado proved to be much more popular and successful than Madame Fatal.

http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/210MadmFatalChange.jpg

O.K, the basic premise goes like this: Richard Stanton is a highly intelligent, highly athletic, successful, world-famous actor. He is dapper, middle-aged, blonde, Caucasian (aren’t all superheroes?) and smokes a pipe. His daughter is kidnapped and he needs the help of police, who get nowhere at all. During the kidnapping ordeal, his wife dies of a broken heart. So, Stanton (as do many other superheroes during their genesis) decides to don a disguise, take on an alter ego, and take matters into his own hands.

He adopts the identity of a red-cloaked, elderly woman who carries a red walking stick. The red cane is used as her main weapon, and this, along with his (her?) superior intellect, athleticism, and deductive crime-solving abilities, helps Madame Fatal become a crime fighter and superhero. Using this disguise, he is able to save his daughter.

http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/230_madamfatalpunch.jpg

Richard Stanton decides to retire from acting and devote his life to conquering crime and criminals as the red cane-wielding Madame Fatal. The Madame Fatal character was ridiculed, because of the cross-dressing angle, from the very beginning.

An article in Cracked lists Madame Fatal as one of the “7 Crappiest Superheroes in Comic Book History.” Many modern readers interpreted the cross-dressing of Madame Fatal as a thinly-disguised attempt to actually portray comic’s first gay superhero, although this angle was never expressly acknowledged.Creator Pinjian’s actual intentions regarding the character are unknown.

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/m/madfatal.jpg

Madame Fatal had a short life span. The character was very briefly mentioned in later comic books, but there have been thinly-veiled references to Madame Fatal over the years. The most recent time Madame Fatal was mentioned (or seen) was in DC Comics in 1999.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fatal1.jpg

The character was the butt of a gay joke (no pun intended, I swear). A scene in an August 1999 issue of Justice Society of America depicts the funeral of the first Sandman. Wildcat wonders whether his own funeral “will be like the time they buried Madame Fatal here, and no one turned up for the funeral but the touring cast of La Cage Aux Folles?” That would seem to imply the fact that Madame Fatal is dead in the DC Comics universe.

Madame Fatal probably suffered the most gut-wrenching type of death any comic book character can experience. More excruciating than death by gun, knives, clubs, or being lowered into a pool of acid. Madame Fatal suffered the very worst type of death -death by unpopularity.

#travestissement #transgenre #comics #superhero #BD

Interview – H.A. Hellyer
▻http://www.e-ir.info/2015/10/10/interview-h-a-hellyer

Dr H.A. Hellyer is nonresident Fellow with the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and Associate Fellow in International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. An analyst & political scientist on Arab affairs, Muslim-Western communities, Egyptian politics, European security policies, and political theory, Dr Hellyer was appointed as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce for the 2005 London bombings. He served as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) first Economic & Social Research Council Fellow attached to the ‘Islam’ & ‘Counter-Terrorism’ teams with FCO security clearance, as a non-civil servant, independent academic with security clearance. He was previously Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (UK) and Research Associate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some of his publications include “Muslims of Europe: the ‘Other’ Europeans” for Edinburgh University Press, “Engagement with the Muslim Community and Counter-Terrorism: British Lessons for the West” for Brookings Institution Press, and “The Chance for Change in the Arab World: Egypt’s Uprising” for Chatham House’s Journal of International Affairs. He is currently writing a book on the Egyptian revolutionary uprising of 2011 and its aftermath.

Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

I tend to focus on three different fields – and at the moment, I’m truly fascinated by the current developments in all three. The first relates to the politics of the Arab world, including Islamist politics; the second pertains to Muslim Western populations and their challenges to, as well as challenges from, the countries in which they reside; and the third around the interchange between Islam and modernity.

Many of our assumptions have been challenged in the past 5 years, since the revolutionary uprisings took place in the Arab world. I can still remember a world where academics wrote about the ‘resistance axis’ in the region, and the likes of Hizbollah and Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus were a part of that, described as ‘counter-weights’ to the machinations of right-wing neoconservatism and imperialism. The frames are wholly different now, on both of those points, due to the Syrian revolutionary uprising – and that leads to an important question for the Arab anti-imperialist left, as well as the old left in the West. Is this what left-wing politics is about, where we sacrifice the Syrian revolutionary uprising on the altar of some kind of imagined ‘resistance’ – while another type of foreign interference, be it from Tehran, Moscow, or Hizbollah, is critical in propping up a regime that has overseen the killing of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians? That’s a question that ought to be asked. In so doing, I hope the answer is not for the left to decide that they ought to become akin to the right-wing, whether in the West or the Arab world, and lose their time-honoured commitments to social justice as leftists. But rather, that the left ought to become more nuanced, and really take seriously the autonomy of people as a motivating factor, even when it is politically inconvenient.

I’ve also been interested to see the discussion unfold around Islamism. Pre 2011, there were certain basic elements that more progressive, liberal and left-wing thinkers had when it came to Islamism in general. The first was that Islamism was, generally, to be considered as ‘political Islam’ – i.e., that it was normative, mainstream, historically authentic Islam, but simply put into politics. The second was that the Muslim Brotherhood, as the mainstream of Islamism, was, across the board, rather moderate, pluralistic, and democratic.

NYC’s Taxis Finally Launch an App to Compete With Uber
▻http://www.wired.com/2015/08/arrow-ny-taxis-app

New York is launching the Uber of taxis.

Insiders of the city’s taxi industry are finally launching an app that lets users hail cabs and pay for rides using a smartphone. It’s such a great idea you have to wonder what took so long.

The app is called Arro and, as first reported by Crain’s, it’s in beta testing with 7,000 New York City cabs and could launch within weeks. Here’s how it works: A user launches the app, which gives a nearby cabbie the passenger’s name, pickup address, and cross street. The user, meanwhile, gets the driver’s name and ID number. The app saves credit card info, letting passengers pay the metered fare and tip automatically. Another advantage is no surge pricing; the app developers told Crain’s that fares always will be meter-based.

Once a sure bet, taxi medallions becoming unsellable
▻http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/17/taxi-medallion-values-decline-uber-rideshare/27314735

Until recently in America’s big cities, purchasing a taxi medallion—the city-issued license to operate cabs —was about as sound of an investment as they come.

But with the rise of Uber and other ridesharing services, the value of taxi medallions are plummeting, leading cabbies and fleet owners throughout the USA worried that their industry will be decimated if local and state government doesn’t intervene.

“I have had a pretty successful thing,” said Gary Karczewski, 65, a Chicago cabbie who inherited his medallion from his father 28 years ago and earned enough to purchase two homes and help send his two daughters to college by driving the equivalent of 80 times around the world. “My hope was to wind down soon and give whatever I could sell the medallion for to my mother. But I am not confident there’s a market now.”

In Chicago, which has the country’s second biggest fleet with roughly 7,000 taxis, the median sale price for a medallion hovered around $70,000 in 2007 before reaching a median sales peak of $357,000 in late 2013.

Since reaching that high point more than a year ago, the value of medallions in the Windy City have sharply declined and sales have ground to a near halt—with the city recording only seven medallion transfers in the first quarter of 2015—as the median sale price fell to about $270,000.

The steady slide, which also is on display in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and elsewhere, has left many owner-operators and big fleet managers pessimistic about their once prized assets.

Cabbies around the country complain that drivers for services like Uber, which use a smartphone app to connect riders with freelancers using their own vehicles, are disrupting the market and playing with an unfair advantage.

Medallion owners also grumble that rideshare services in many markets aren’t subject to the same rules of the road. Uber’s contract drivers don’t face as stringent vehicle inspections, their drivers aren’t required to obtain a chauffeurs license, and they can adjust their fares based on demand.
Taxi medallion values are plummeting in big U.S. cities

The changing landscape has been put into stark relief by the diminishing value of the taxi medallion in once plum markets like New York, where in recent years they proved to offer a better return on investment than gold, oil and real estate.

As a result of the booming value, the vast majority of medallions in big metros like New York and Chicago were gobbled up over the last several decades by investors and companies that rent the medallions to drivers.

But times are changing. The upstart Uber, which has a reported valuation of $50 billion, collected more than $750 million in just New York City during its first four years of business there. Investor Carl Icahn announced on Friday that he was making a $100 million investment in Uber rival Lyft, calling the company a “tremendous bargain.”

“What I think has happened is that competition for consumers has not caused a drop in medallion prices, because medallion values in no way are tied to the riding public,” said Uber global policy director Corey Owens. “What’s happened is that drivers have found they have better opportunities.”

Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which regulates the city’s taxi industry, had sold newly-created medallions for wheel-chair accessible taxis for $80,000 each. The bargain price came after the authority put the medallions on the market last fall, with an initial asking price of $475,000, but received no bids.

In New York, taxi mogul Evgeny Friedman is locked in a court battle with Citibank, to whom he owes some $31 million after some medallion loans matured.

Citibank is looking to seize 87 of Freidman’s 900 medallions in New York, which has seen medallion prices drop to about $870,000 last fall from a peak of about $1.2 million last spring. Freidman, the biggest medallion owner in the USA, also owns fleets in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.

In an April letter to creditors, New York taxi commission officials and other stakeholders, Freidman’s attorney, Brett Berman, called on industry regulators and medallion lenders to restructure and extend loans for his client and reform the industry.

“If you want to ensure that medallion industry nationwide continues to operate, if you want to have services available to riders that don’t have iPhones, if you want to have drivers that are vetted, then there’s going to have to be a major change nationwide and city-by-city in terms of how they’re going about enforcing the rules,” said Ronn Torossian, a spokesman for Freidman.

Even in Nevada, where the taxi industry has successfully fought off attempts by Uber to establish a beachhead in recent years, there are signs that government resistance to rideshare services is softening. Last week, the Nevada Senate approved legislation that would create regulations that would allow people to hail a ride using a smartphone.

There are other signs that medallion industry’s vitality is on unsteady footing.

Earlier this month, Medallion Financial Group—one of the country’s largest creditors to medallion owners—reported in its financial disclosures that nearly 4.1% of its loans were late 31 days or more in the first three months of 2015, up from 2.2% in the previous quarter.

Charles Goodbar, a Chicago attorney who helps secure loans for medallion owners, said that financing has all but dried up. At the same time, new regulations, as well competition from ridesharing services, has reduced how much fleet owners in Chicago and elsewhere can lease their vehicles to cabbies.

“There’s zero market,” said Goodbar, who also owns 59 medallions. “In my case, a buyer would have to come to the table with about $220,000 in cash per medallion, because there isn’t any financing available.”
An UBER application is shown as cars drive by in Washington,

An UBER application is shown as cars drive by in Washington, DC on March 25, 2015. (Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS, AFP/Getty Images)

Ancillary industries are also feeling the pain.

Carriage News, a New England industry newsletter closed shop in March, as medallion financing agencies slowed issuing loans, making advertising unnecessary.

“The demise of Carriage News can be laid directly at the feet of the TNCs [transportation network companies] and the do-nothing politicians who allow these ... operations to continue to erode the taxi industry,” publisher Bob Keeley wrote in a front-page editorial announcing the 45-year-old publication’s demise.

The taxi industry isn’t going out without a fight.

In New York and Chicago, the industry has backed efforts for a universal hailing app in a bid to compete with rideshare outfits for riders that prefer the convenience of finding a ride with a couple of taps on their smartphone.

And the trade association Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association (TLPA) has launched a vigorous media nationwide campaign called “Who’s Driving You?” in an attempt to raise questions about Uber and other ridesharing companies safety record. The TLPA maintains a long list of alleged crimes and other embarrassing incidents by Uber drivers and drivers for other ridesharing outfits.

After the latest high-profile incident last month in Houston, an alleged sexual assault by an Uber driver, the company faced an ultimatum from Mayor Annise Parker to tighten its oversight of drivers or face expulsion from the city. The company quickly responded to the city with a memo detailing how it would it planned to bolster vetting and dismiss drivers that aren’t registered

In New York, the Taxi and Limousine Commission is weighing a proposal that would create an agency that oversee the implementation of smartphone apps used in the taxi industry.

Under the proposal, the smartphone app operators would be required to approval before modifying their apps or face fines—a regulation that a powerful coalition of Silicon Valley companies told New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio would stifle innovation.

“While we do not develop software for transportation providers, we are gravely concerned by the unprecedented decision to subject software available around the world to pre-release review by a city agency,” wrote the Internet Association, the tech coalition that includes Facebook, Google and Twitter.

While more regulation on ridesharing companies may be inevitable, many medallion owners say that their best days are now in the rearview mirror.

“It’s now become a race to the bottom,” said Karczewski, the Chicago medallion owner. “I’m at the end of my career, but guys who have a lot of skin in the game...What are they going to do?”

#taxi #usa #uber #disruption

Migrants : et si ouvrir les frontières générait de la richesse ? Idées

Imaginez que tous les pays ouvrent en même temps leurs frontières et autorisent la libre circulation des individus sur leur territoire. Que se passerait-il dans l’immédiat ? Au bout de vingt-cinq ans ? Hier considérée comme une utopie, cette question est devenue un véritable objet d’étude. Et les scientifiques commencent à y apporter des réponses, qui n’ont pas grand-chose à voir avec les timides mesures prises face à la crise migratoire au sujet de laquelle l’Europe se déchire. Le sujet, pourtant, reste dans le secret des laboratoires. Il en sera ainsi tant que les gouvernants construiront leur ­politique dans ce domaine en se laissant guider par l’opinion publique plutôt que par les résultats scientifiques.

#migration #asile #réfugiés #richesse #libre_circulation #ouverture_des_frontières
►http://www.lemonde.fr/festival/article/2015/06/25/et-si-on-ouvrait-les-frontieres_4661969_4415198.html

“American victims of terror sponsored by Iran have moved to seize the internet licenses, contractual rights and domain names being provided by the United States to the extremist regime in Tehran.”

"The families, who hold unsatisfied American federal court judgments amounting to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the “top-level domain” (TLD) names provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ایران TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilized by the Iranian government and its agencies."

“The court papers have been served on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an agency of the US Department of Commerce [sic] in Washington, DC, which administrator [sic again] the World Wide Web [more sic].”

▻http://www.free-press-release.com/news-american-victims-of-terrorism-look-to-seize-iran-s-internet

#ICANN #DNS #ccTLD #domain_name #Iran

Mapbox makes it easy to get a map into people’s hands | opensource.com

▻http://opensource.com/life/14/3/mapbox

Down what appears to be an alley just large enough to drive a delivery truck, Mapbox’s Washington, DC office is tucked into its surroundings much like their contributions to the open source cartography world: integrated without shouting. Only their trademark hexagon globe sign will let you know that you’ve arrived at the proper location. Once inside the unassuming office, you’ll find yourself standing in the middle of their work zone. Making their home in an old garage, the first floor is full of computers and people working diligently to churn out tools and data to be used by the world’s masses, all in what can only be described as a silence found only in a library. What’s being produced here affects many of the mainstream and up-and-coming mobile applications found on many a smartphone.

#open_source #cartographie

WASHINGTON: White House withholds thousands of documents from Senate #CIA probe, despite vows of help | National Security & Defense | McClatchy DC
▻http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/12/221033/despite-vows-of-help-white-house.html

WASHINGTON — The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn’t exercised a claim of executive privilege.

In contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee’s work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records, a McClatchy investigation has found.

The significance of the materials couldn’t be learned. But the administration’s refusal to turn them over or to agree to any compromise raises questions about what they would reveal about the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons.

The dispute indicates that the White House is more involved than it has acknowledged in the unprecedented power struggle between the committee and the CIA, which has triggered charges that the agency searched the panel’s computers without authorization and has led to requests to the Justice Department for criminal investigations of CIA personnel and Senate aides.

“These documents certainly raise the specter that the White House has been involved in stonewalling the investigation,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program at the New York University Law School.

#maison_blanche

WASHINGTON: #Yarmouk update: Nusra’s apparent return complicates UNRWA’s hopes for food program | World Watch | McClatchy DC
▻http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/03/219994/yarmouk-update-nusras-apparent.html

Every day since [Feb. 27] apparently there has been fighting in the northern part of the district. The peace agreement apparently has fallen apart. Nusra, according to some reports, has returned to the area, and pro-government forces are apparently fighting to prevent them from re-establishing themselves.

One can only speculate about why Nusra came back. Maybe its leaders realized that their pullout could be seen as a victory for the government. Maybe they simply couldn’t give up an area that is strategic to the control of southern Damascus. But whatever the reason, Nusra has returned, and the optimism that life could return to normal in Yarmouk appears to have vanished.

Homeless population in US capital up 135 percent from last year - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/26/home-f26.html

Homeless population in US capital up 135 percent from last year
By Adam Soroka
26 February 2014

The number of homeless families seeking shelter in the Washington, DC has risen by 135 percent from the same time last year, surging past earlier official expectations of a 10 percent increase, according to various news sources. The growing rate of homeless families seeking shelter is almost unprecedented, bringing the entire family shelter system to maximum capacity by late January.

Nearly 300 individuals fill DC General, a former hospital-turned-family shelter, with another 125 families filling up the District’s only other family shelter. In fact, the city has had to put an additional 436 families with a combined 849 children in motels in the District and in the neighboring Maryland suburbs. The epidemic has been termed “a crisis” by the District’s director of the Department of Human Services (DHS), David Berns.

#états-unis #pauvreté #washington

StopWatching.Us: Rally Against Mass Surveillance 10/26/13
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/stopwatchingus-rally-against-mass-surveillance-102613

Thousands came together in Washington, DC on October 26, 2013 to protest the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Updated version with titles.

Crimes against Secrecy, Crimes against the Constitution
▻http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/01/06/crimes-against-secrecy-crimes-against-the-constitution

(...) we not only have evolved a legal system (by reinforcing the clearance system, expanding the Espionage Act, and gutting most means to challenge Constitutional violations) that treats crimes against secrecy with much greater seriousness than crimes against the Constitution, but DC folks (even lawyers, like Carter) simply point to it as the way things are, not a fundamental threat to our country’s government.

That plight — where our legal system guards this country’s “secrets” more greedily than it guards the Constitution — is the entire point underlying calls for amnesty for Snowden. He has pointed to a system that not only poses a grave threat to the Bill of Rights, but just as surely, to separation of powers and our claim to be a democracy.

Fermeture des écoles publiques à Chicago et à Washington (où les écoles seront offerts à des exploitants privés...)

DC mayor to offer closed schools to charter operators - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/23/dcps-m23.html

DC mayor to offer closed schools to charter operators
By Nick Barrickman
23 May 2013

A new announcement by Vincent C. Gray, Democratic mayor of Washington, DC would see 12 former public facilities opened up for long-term leasing to charter schools in the District of Columbia, with an additional four receiving short-term rights. The announcement comes days after the rejection of an injunction in Federal court which was intended to halt the planned closures of 15 public schools this year and next.

et

Chicago officials release final list of 49 school closures - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/23/chic-m23.html

Chicago officials release final list of 49 school closures
By Kristina Betinis
23 May 2013

In the face of mass opposition, the Chicago Board of Education released its final list of school closings Tuesday, announcing the closure of 49 elementary schools and one high school program this year. The city has shuttered public schools every year since 2001, but the latest round is the largest yet, and one of the biggest mass shutdown of schools in US history.

#éducation #école #enfance #états-unis

DroneShield: crowdfunded, networked drone detectors - Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2013/05/03/droneshield-crowdfunded-netw.html

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/a88d9f100657c844c46320e9ab8c9b0f1-300x258.jpg

DroneShield is an indieGOGO project from a DC aerospace engineer that aims to build a tiny, net-connected drone-detector/identifier. Based on a Raspberry Pi gumstick computer, it uses a mic to detect the audio signature of nearby drones, and then communicates about its findings over the Internet. The project promises free/open hardware and software specs on its main site.

#surveillance #resistance

Tens of thousands rally in Washington for immigrant rights - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/12/migr-a12.html

Tens of thousands rally in Washington for immigrant rights
By Bill Van Auken
12 April 2013

Tens of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters marched in Washington, DC on Wednesday to demand legislation legalizing the status of some 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States and offering them full citizenship.

Significant demonstrations also took place in Atlanta, Los Angeles and several other cities amid reports that the so-called Gang of Eight Democratic and Republican US senators is preparing to unveil an immigration package by early next week.

#migrations #asile #états-unis

600 children living in Washington, DC homeless shelter - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/14/home-f14.html

600 children living in Washington, DC homeless shelter
By Naomi Spencer
14 February 2013

Washington, DC, offers one of the starkest portraits of the social crisis in America. At the District’s former General Hospital, a shelter for homeless families houses 372 adults and some 600 children in tiny living quarters. Families sleep with their scant belongings in areas barely bigger than office cubicles.

#états-unis #discrimination #pauvreté #crise

Islamic Green Lantern introduced by DC Comics | Books | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/06/islamic-green-lantern-dc-comics

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/9/6/1346886543196/Islamic-Green-Lantern-012.jpg

Simon Baz, the muscular protagonist in his early 20s with the Arabic word for courage, “al-shuja’a,” tattooed on his arm, is the latest example of superhero diversity in the comic book world. His debut comes after DC unveiled a gay Green Lantern in June and Marvel Comics presented a half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man last year.

#bande_dessinée