Last minute geek

1. A mysterious nonprofit made millions suing companies to put California cancer warnings on coffee
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) is a nonprofit that kicked off its mysterious existence by filing a string of lawsuits against restaurant chains and coffee roasters for not posting ...

2. GameStop cuts costs to deal with plunge in console sales
(English/engadget)

The PS4 and Xbox One are clearly approaching the end of their main lifecycles, and that's doing serious damage to GameStop's bottom line. The video game store's Q1 profits fell to $6.8 ...

3. Empirical analysis of behavioral advertising finds that surveillance makes ads only 4% more profitable for media companies
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

In Online Tracking and Publishers’ Revenues: An Empirical Analysis, a trio of researchers from U Minnesota, UC Irvine and CMU report out their findings from a wide-ranging (millions of data-points) study ...

4. Why is there so much antitrust energy for Big Tech but not for Big Telco?
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... whose monopolism has cost America its competitiveness. Bode points out that Big Telco is the enemy of Big Tech, and has -- since the days of the Bell System -- sought to monopolize 100% of the profits ...

5. Developers sue Apple over App Store practices
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The lawsuit seeks 'fairer profit, for developers’ digital products.' Read all  ...

6. Rumor: DoJ is going to investigate Google for antitrust violations
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... tension within the right: on the one hand, they don't want to stop the gravy train that monopoly profits represent for shareholders, but on the other hand, they're not happy that five or six tech execs ...

7. Speech Police: vital, critical look at the drive to force Big Tech to control who may speak and what they may say
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... of harassment and incitements to violence; his skepticism for the ways that profit, self-serving rationalization, and a desire to avoid political embarrassment all animate the drive to control online expression; ...

8. Now that Uber and Lyft are public, their inevitable financial collapse is much clearer
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Veteran transportation economics Hubert Horan has consistently published the best-informed, deepest critiques of Uber and Lyft, explaining how the companies can never, ever be profitable, and warning ...

9. How the "prosperity gospel" convinces poor people to give everything to grifty millionaire preachers
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... and it benefits from the US tax code, which enables churches to accept donations without paying taxes on them, like nonprofits do, but unlike nonprofits, the preachers who exhort their followers to send ...

10. Open Insulin: biohackers trying to create a "microbrewery" for insulin as an answer to price-gouging
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... and test their own insulin for a cost "from ten thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars." The project is organized under Counter Culture Labs, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, making donations to it tax-deductible ...

11. How con artists use the Ouija board effect for their scams
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Tufts University, which tracks corruption related to international arms trading, estimates that fake bomb detectors generated more than $100 million in profit between 1999 and 2010. "The psychology of ...

12. Congressional shaming prompts notorious Pentagon price-gouger to refund $16.1m
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... with tax dollars. Many attempts have been made to rein in Transdigm (who, despite their massive profits, clearly can't afford to buy a vowel, perhaps they could ask their retired $61m/year CEO, Nicholas ...

13. Help wanted! EFF is hiring a new copyright/trademark litigator
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... writing and analytical skills and an eagerness to be part of a team of highly motivated lawyers and activists working collaboratively in a nonprofit environment. Read the rest Read all  ...

14. To chase out low-waged workers, Mountain View is banning overnight RV and van parking
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Mountain View -- home to some of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies, including Google -- is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, thanks to the sky-high wages commanded by techies, ...

15. The "Uber of Live Music" will charge you $1100-1600 to book a house show, pay musicians $100
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... that generally lose money for all concerned. How could a company like this ever be profitable enough to warrant a $25m investment? Simple: they keep nearly all the money you pay to book the house show, ...

16. The empirical impact of Lyft and Uber on cities: congestion (especially downtown, especially during "surges"), overworked drivers
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... huge losses for car-rental companies; and less walking, cycling and use of public transit (awithnd accompanying cuts to transit). The (wildly unprofitable) rideshare companies' path to profitability ...

17. How New York taxi drivers were conned and bankrupted by medallion loan sharks
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... out loans to buy them. From the article: “People love to blame banks for things that happen because they’re big bad banks,” said Robert Familant, the former head of Progressive Credit Union, a small nonprofit ...

18. A deep dive into the internal politics, personalities and social significance of the Googler Uprising
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... and these leaders have gradually and persistently pushed the company toward profitable work that is in the company's no-go zone of projects that the staff are unlikely to support and may actively oppose. To ...

19. Judge recuses himself from health insurance cancer-denial case because he considers the company "immoral" and "barbaric"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... judge closed by calling Unitedhealthcare's refusal to cover proton beam therapy "immoral" and "barbaric." The untenability of America's private, for-profit health-care system grows more manifest by the ...

20. NASA probe spots the final lunar resting place of the crashed Israeli spacecraft
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Last month, Israeli non-profit SpaceIL's Beresheet probe made it to the lunar surface but sadly it wasn't a soft landing. Beresheet was the first private attempt at a lunar landing and they got pretty ...

21. Collecting user data is a competitive disadvantage
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Warren Buffet is famous for identifying the need for businesses to have "moats" and "walls" around their profit-centers to keep competitors out, and data-centric companies often cite their massive collections ...

22. Warren says no to Fox News town hall -- it's a "hate-for-profit racket"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Senator Elizabeth Warren didn't accept an invitation to a Fox News town hall because she says the company is  “a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists.” From The Washington ...

23. Supreme Court greenlights Apple customers' lawsuit over App Store price-fixing
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... users from buying apps from third parties, and then taking a 30% commission on every app sold, which led software companies to raise prices in order to remain profitable after Apple had taken its cut. Apple ...

24. Amazon's monopsony power: the other antitrust white meat
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... where the only thing that matters is "consumer harm," then you should still be worried about Amazon's monopsism, because when Amazon squeezes profits at the expense of its suppliers, those suppliers lower ...

25. Trump supporters astonished to learn that the man they gave $20m to "build the wall" has nothing to show for it
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... who started the campaign, is doing with their millions. Mr Kolfage created a nonprofit to receive the money, but its records are sparse and mysterious. Mr Kolfage became very upset when the Daily Beast's ...