Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Performance-enhancing bacteria found in the microbiomes of elite athletes

New research has identified a type of bacteria found in the microbiomes of elite athletes that contributes to improved capacity for exercise. These bacteria, members of the genus Veillonella, are not found in the guts of sedentary people.

Sugary drink taxes reduce consumption, major review shows

A 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks has cut the purchase and consumption of sugary drinks by an average of 10 per cent in places it has been introduced, a just published major review has found.

Ant farmers boost plant nutrition

Research has demonstrated that millions of years of ant agriculture has remodeled plant physiology. Farming ants deposit nitrogen-rich feces directly inside plants, which has led to the evolution of these ultra-absorptive plant structures.

New evidence on the reliability of climate modeling

For decades, scientists studying a key climate phenomenon have been grappling with contradictory data that have threated to undermine confidence in the reliability of climate models overall. A new study settles that debate with regard to the Hadley cell, a tropical atmospheric circulation widely studied by climate scientists because it controls precipitation in the subtropics and also creates a region called the intertropical convergence zone, producing a band of major, highly-precipitative storms.

#FridayReads via @ourgoodbrands@twitter.com on how Fairphone 2 was another milestone that helped us show that change is possible in the electronics industry ➡️ https://bit.ly/2Rq6iJF

Read more on how we're implementing a circular thinking in the electronics industry via @ourgoodbrands@twitter.com ➡️ https://bit.ly/2Rq6iJF 💡 and if you have old smartphones lost in a drawer, give them a second chance via our Recycling program ➡️ https://www.fairphone.com/en/recycling-program/ ♻️ 📱

Concentration Confusion

They’re not camps...they’re “facilities!” Try to keep hyperbole out of it.

Conservatives Are Nudging the Supreme Court to Dismantle Affordable Housing Policies

A conservative law firm has asked the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to inclusionary zoning, a tool localities use to increase affordable housing.

The post Conservatives Are Nudging the Supreme Court to Dismantle Affordable Housing Policies appeared first on The Intercept.

#Climate #apartheid: #UN expert says #HumanRights may not survive | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/25/climate-apartheid-united-nations-expert-says-human-rights-may-not-survive-crisis

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

With Friends Like These...

Joe Biden says working with segregationists isn’t a big deal. Cool!

The Dumb Week That Was

These poor people, trapped in a reality where everything...is stupid!

AOC Is Right: Democrats Can’t Cave In on the Border Bill

Democrats are split over a bill to fund $4.5 billion in emergency humanitarian aid for the southwest border: With a House vote on the package planned for Tuesday, some Democrats are revolting over the measure, fearing that the aid will be used to carry out Mr. Trump’s aggressive tactics, including deportation raids that he has […]

The FCC Is Siding With Landlords and Comcast Over Tenants Who Want Broadband Choices

In December of 2016, the city of San Francisco boldly enacted the “Occupant’s Right to Choose Communications Services Provider” ordinance (also known as Article 52) that hinders a payola scheme cooked up between big cable companies like Comcast and landlords. In just a few short years since its enactment, a great number of apartments in San Francisco have at least four options for broadband service, including affordable gigabit fiber service. Fearing that other cities would follow suit, a whole range of associations and corporations that represent landlords and the cable industry pushed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hard to block these local efforts. For a federal agency tasked with promoting competition, it shouldn’t be a close call to simply ignore these groups. But that is not what the FCC plans to do next month.

How San Francisco Stopped Landlords and Cable Companies From Making Money by Taking Away Tenant Choice

The scheme is relatively straightforward: cable companies pay landlords for each tenant that they can get to subscribe to their particular cable service. The more tenants a landlord delivers to the cable company, the more money the landlord gets paid. That means a portion of a tenants’ cable bill is going to their landlord, on top of the rent they already pay. In fact, Comcast even offers landlords bonus money from the tenants’ cable bills that increases with the number of tenants using Comcast.

These revenue sharing agreements incentivize landlords, who like getting paid extra money by Comcast, to make sure Comcast is your only option. In return, Comcast enjoys monopoly status and monopoly profits, even if, technically, there are many broadband options in your city and neighborhood.

San Francisco’s local leadership regularly heard from tenants about the lack of choices, despite other ISPs being present. And ISP competitors to Comcast would often get requests for service only to be blocked by the landlord from entering the building. So the city decided to take action and established a legal right to apartment tenants to get whatever ISP they want through an ordinance. Article 52 effectively terminated a landlord’s ability to keep competitive ISPs out of their buildings. As the Board of Supervisors declared with its ordinance, “it is common in such buildings for property owners to allow only one provider to install facilities and equipment necessary to provide services to occupants."

In San Francisco now, thanks to the local ordinance, a tenant can request service from any ISP. A landlord is only allowed to refuse their entry if it’s physically impossible, dangerous for health and safety purposes, or if the competitive ISP’s access would cause “significant, adverse effect on the continued ability of existing communications services to serve the property.” The competitor also has to pay the landlord “just and reasonable compensation” for the construction and entry costs associated with connecting the tenant. Violating the local law carries a liability of $500 a day plus attorney’s fees against the property owner. The law can be enforced with a lawsuit that can be brought by the city attorney, the competitor ISP, or the tenant.

Since the adoption of the ordinance, local fiber-to-the-home provider Sonic has gained access to approximately 300 multi-tenant buildings in San Francisco and the local wireless/fiber ISP Monkey Brains went from zero percent access to now being in 75 percent of the buildings in the city. Landlords essentially were forced to open their doors to all ISPs, or face liability far greater than the benefits derived from the cable payola scheme. Now, people are getting the benefit of choice—increasing the quality of their service, and lowering their monthly bills. And it happened in just a few years.

The FCC Is Poised to Act on a Fiction Drummed Up by Landlords and Comcast Rather Than the Facts of What Happened in San Francisco

Based on the FCC’s record, the problem the FCC seems to want to fix is “in use” wire sharing, on the grounds that it disrupts cable service. This is despite San Francisco explaining to the FCC how the ordinance functions, including the fact that landlords can refuse on the grounds of disruption of existing services. Still, the agency is convinced that there's a problem that needs fixing.

The problem with the FCC’s rationale is that the issue appears to be a complete fiction. EFF has been unable to find examples of services being disrupted in the city. The complaint is dubious, since a landlord has a right to refuse entry to an ISP that disrupts currently existing services. So the complaints of the cable industry’s association (ie Comcast) and the landlords (who simply want to delete the SF ordinance in its entirety) should be called into question rather than followed as evidence of the ordinances’ allegedly negative impact on broadband deployment.

The ramifications of the FCC intervening on a purely local decision to open up apartment buildings for more broadband choices is fairly profound, because it would curtail other cities from copying the San Francisco ordinance for their renters. Whether intentional or not, the FCC will give landlords and their cable financiers grounds to reject competitive entry that did not exist prior to the FCC’s preemption. This also appears to prohibit cities from adopting forward-thinking open access fiber policies in the future through city code and other local laws. Not to mention, the FCC’s intervention in San Francisco doesn't fulfill the agency’s actual job description: to promote competition.

San Francisco's policy has been an undeniably good thing for local renters. EFF hopes that the FCC refrains from intruding on it, and that the agency will not issue a partial preemption of San Francisco’s ordinance at its July meeting.

Tropical soil disturbance could be hidden source of CO2

Researchers working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo found a link between the churning of deep soils during deforestation and the release of carbon dioxide through streams and rivers.

Don’t Blame Boomers, Blame Their Parents

Since I’m being cranky today, I might as well stay cranky. Over at Vox, fellow boomer David Goldstein says that our generation ruined college for everyone else: Boomers like me have pulled up the ladder behind us after being educated largely at taxpayer expense. No wonder young people have piled up more than $1.5 trillion […]

125 Years After the Pullman Uprising, We Could Be on the Verge of Another Sympathy Strike Wave

Roaming the sleepy streets of Pullman on Chicago’s Southeast Side, it’s difficult to imagine a time when it was the chaotic center of worker struggle in the United States.

Many of the handsome red brick homes in the center of Pullman—once a bustling company town and now a Chicago neighborhood—are occupied and well-maintained, but the shuttered luxury hotel hasn’t hosted a guest in decades, the skeletal factory buildings are locked behind a chain-link fence while the hands of the derelict clocktower that helped govern the working lives of thousands of men and women remain frozen in time.

Elizabeth Warren Wants to Know Why HUD Hired Someone Known for Racist Blog Posts

On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Ben Carson criticizing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to hire Eric Blankenstein, a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official with a history of writing racist blog posts. “I am gravely concerned that Mr. Blankenstein has been hired as […]

Big data says food is too sweet

New research analyzed nearly 400,000 food reviews posted by Amazon customers to gain real-world insight into the food choices that people make. The findings reveal that many people find the foods in today's marketplace to be too sweet.

Damage to the ozone layer and climate change forming feedback loop

Increased solar radiation penetrating through the damaged ozone layer is interacting with the changing climate, and the consequences are rippling through the Earth's natural systems, effecting everything from weather to the health and abundance of sea mammals like seals and penguins.

Hearing Wednesday: California Should Audit Use of License Plate Data

EFF to Urge Lawmakers to Ensure Law Enforcement Complies with State Law

Sacramento – On Wednesday, June 26, at 10 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to approve an audit on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPR) by state law enforcement.

ALPRs are camera systems that scan the license plates of vehicles in order to track people in real time and create search databases of driver’s historical travel patterns. As a mass surveillance technology, ALPR captures information on every driver, regardless of whether their vehicle is under suspicion. Several years ago, California lawmakers passed legislation to regulate ALPR use, including requiring publicly available usage policies and guidelines for how the information is accessed. State Sen. Scott Wiener, who previously supported EFF legislation to protect drivers’ from ALPR surveillance, filed the request for the audit.

At the hearing Wednesday, EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass will explain that many California law enforcement agencies are not complying with this law. Researchers have found that ALPR data is routinely shared with hundreds of other entities without safeguards or proper legal process. A probe by the California State Auditor will help the public and policymakers learn more about how state agencies are protecting their data.

WHAT:
Joint Legislative Audit Committee Hearing to Consider New Audit Requests
WHO:
EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass
WHEN:
Wednesday, June 26
10 am
WHERE:
State Capitol, Room 126
10th and L Streets
Sacramento, CA 95814
For more on the hearing:
https://legaudit.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
For more on ALPR:
https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-alpr

Contact:  Dave Maass Senior Investigative Researcher dm@eff.org