At least seven pregnancy discrimination lawsuits have been filed in eight years.
Enlarge/ A woman works at a packing station at the 855,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island on February 5, 2019. (credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)
Over the last eight years, Amazon has faced at least seven lawsuits from pregnant women who worked at Amazon warehouses and say they were fired after the company refused to accommodate their needs during pregnancy, a CNET investigation by Alfred Ng and Ben Fox Rubin has revealed.
Amazon's vast network of warehouses makes the company one of the nation's largest employers. And the company has long faced criticism for the grueling requirements imposed on warehouse workers.
A big concern for pregnant workers is limits on bathroom breaks. Amazon's software tracks everything that happens inside the factory and strictly limits how much "time off task" an employee can take during the day. If a worker hasn't packed a box or performed another task in five minutes, software sends a supervisor over to investigate.
Along with a new Terminal app for interacting with command line tools, Microsoft is previewing a major update for its Windows Subsystem for Linux. The new version is called WSL 2, and Microsoft says it brings significant file system speed improvements,…
Along with a new Terminal app for interacting with command line tools, Microsoft is previewing a major update for its Windows Subsystem for Linux. The new version is called WSL 2, and Microsoft says it brings significant file system speed improvements, with some operations running up to 20 times faster. WSL 2 also brings full […]
The RIAA has obtained a subpoena from a Columbia federal court ordering Cloudflare to hand over the IP and email addresses and all other identifying information related to several allegedly infringing users. The RIAA notes it will use the information it receives to protect the rights of its member companies.
Despite the increased availability of legal options, millions of people still stream, rip, or download MP3s from unofficial sources.
These sites are a thorn in the side of the RIAA, one of the music industry’s leading anti-piracy outfits.
The RIAA has a long history of going after, what it sees as, pirate sites. The problem, however, is that many owners of such sites operate anonymously. The group, therefore, often has to turn to third-party intermediaries to find out more.
While some services may be willing to voluntarily share information with the music industry group, many don’t. Cloudflare falls into the latter category. While the CDN service does voluntarily reveal the true hosting locations of some of its users, it doesn’t share any personal info. At least, not without a subpoena.
Luckily for rightsholders, getting a subpoena isn’t very hard in the US. Under the DMCA, copyright holders only have to ask a court clerk for a signature to be able to demand the personal information of alleged copyright infringers. That’s exactly what the RIAA did last week.
In a letter sent by Mark McDevitt, the RIAA’s vice president of online anti-piracy, the music group informs Cloudflare that it requests personal details including names, addresses and payment information relating to the operators of six domains, which are all Cloudflare users.
The domains/URLs
The domains in question include those connected to the file-hosting site DBREE, music release site RapGodFathers, file-host AyeFiles, and music download portal Plus Premieres. The sites are accused of sharing copyrighted tracks from artists such as Pink, Drake, and Taylor Swift.
“We have determined that users of your system or network have infringed our member record companies’ copyrighted sound recordings. Enclosed is a subpoena compliant with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the RIAA’s McDevitt writes.
“As is stated in the attached subpoena, you are required to disclose to the RIAA information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history.”
The RIAA stresses that the mentioned files are offered without permission and it asks Cloudflare to consider the widespread and repeated infringing nature of the sites and whether these warrant a termination under its repeat infringer policy.
From the letter RIAA sent to Cloudflare
At the time of writing the sites are still using Cloudflare’s services. However, the allegedly infringing files are no longer available. These were presumably removed by the site owners.
There is no obvious connection between all the targeted sites. However, RapGodFathers is a familiar name when it comes to anti-piracy enforcement. Nearly ten years ago, the site was targeted by the U.S. Government, but the name is still around today.
It is unclear what RIAA plans to do with the requested information. It could form the basis of a legal complaint, but the music group may also use it to contact the site operators more directly. The letter only mentions that the information will be used to protect the rights of RIAA member companies.
“The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identities of the individuals assigned to these websites who have reproduced and have offered for distribution our members’ copyrighted sound recordings without their authorization.
“This information will only be used for the purposes of protecting the rights granted to our members, the sound recording copyright owner, under Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the letter adds.
What this “protection” entails remains a mystery for now.
While the court clerk signed the DMCA subpoena, Cloudflare still has the option to object, by asking the court to quash it. However, thus far there are no signs that the company plans to do so.
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A copy of the letter RIAA sent to Cloudflare, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf).
In a rock shelter in the highlands of southwest Bolivia amid the rubble of an area once set aside for funerary rituals, archaeologists found a leather-wrapped bundle of tools for preparing and inhaling snuff. They radiocarbon-dated the bundle to between 905 and 1170 CE, which is when the Tiwanaku Empire (a predecessor of the Inca and rival of the nearby Wari) was crumbling into smaller regional states. Chemical analysis reveals that the bundle once contained a small assortment of psychoactive plants, including coca leaves and ayahuasca.
Unwrapping a shaman’s bundle
Archaeologists Melanie Miller, José Capriles, and their colleagues used mass spectrometry to identify traces of cocaine, along with four other compounds, inside a hide pouch sewn from the skins of three fox snouts.
One compound, harmine, points to a plant called ayahuasca. Amazonian people brew it into a mind-altering tea, which also has traditional medicinal uses. Mixed with a plant called chacruna, the brew can produce vivid hallucinations. Small amounts of a compound called DMT could come from chacruna or from the seeds of a tree called vilca (whose name means “sacred” in the Quechua language of Peru). So it’s hard to say whether this was a ritual blend or a medicinal one. There’s not much archaeological evidence for ayahuasca, aside from traces of harmine in the hair of two Tiwanaku mummies from northern Chile who date from between 400 and 900 CE. So anthropologists still don’t agree on how long ago people started using it.
Now that there’s a desktop version of Windows 10 designed to run on laptops and tablets with ARM processors, it’s unsurprising that a handful of hackers have found ways to shoehorn Windows 10 onto old smartphones that had originally shipped…
Now that there’s a desktop version of Windows 10 designed to run on laptops and tablets with ARM processors, it’s unsurprising that a handful of hackers have found ways to shoehorn Windows 10 onto old smartphones that had originally shipped with Windows Mobile software. But up until now it’s been pretty tough to follow along […]
And, lo, did fans sarcastically reply, “You guys all have phones, right?”
Enlarge/ This image of an exclamation-mark warning next to a BlizzCon logo was uploaded by Blizzard Entertainment itself, not us. (credit: Blizzard Entertainment)
BlizzCon, the annual fan expo hosted by game studio Blizzard Entertainment, typically doesn't struggle to sell out—and the event's first wave of tickets did just that on Saturday, May 4. But it wasn't until those tickets went on sale that the studio's fans noticed a curious new rule for the event: you can't enter without installing a third-party, non-Blizzard app.
On April 25, Blizzard announced its plan to require the AXS Ticket app, created by the AXS ticketing service, on either iOS or Android for all BlizzCon ticket purchasers. At its site, Blizzard explains:
The app displays a QR code (one code for all of your tickets), which changes at regular intervals to help guard against dupes and fraud. Because of that, we won’t be able to accept paper tickets, confirmation emails, or screenshots/photos of the QR code at BlizzCon registration.
The same site adds a caveat: "If for some reason you find yourself at the show with a dead mobile device or some other unexpected issue preventing you from accessing the app, don’t worry. Just head to the Solutions Desk at registration and they’ll help you out." Blizzard has yet to clarify what the process of "help you out" will entail—as in, whether attendees will have to wait in a line and then manually enter AXS credentials into an official BlizzCon terminal to prove their purchases, since, again, traditional proof-of-purchase documents are apparently not going to work.
The four major US wireless carriers are facing proposed class-action lawsuits accusing them of violating federal law by selling their customers' real-time location data to third parties.
The complaints seeking class action status and financial damages were filed last week against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint in US District Court for the District of Maryland. The four suits, filed on behalf of customers by lawyers from the Z Law firm in Maryland, all begin with text nearly identical to this intro found in the suit against AT&T:
This action arises out of Defendant's collection of geolocation data and the unauthorized dissemination to third-parties of the geolocation data collected from its users' cell phones. AT&T admittedly sells customer geolocation data to third-parties, including but not limited to data aggregators, who in turn, are able to use or resell the geolocation data with little or no oversight by AT&T. This is an action seeking damages for AT&T gross failure to safeguard highly personal and private consumer geolocation data in violation of federal law.
The proposed classes would include all of the four carriers' customers in the US between 2015 and 2019. In all, that would be 300 million or more customers, as the lawsuits say the proposed classes consist of at least 100 million customers each for AT&T and Verizon and at least 50 million each for Sprint and T-Mobile. Each lawsuit seeks damages for consumers "in an amount to be proven at trial."
Das Fluid Framework synchronisiert Daten zwischen allen Microsoft-365-Programmen. Es teilt Dokumente in Komponenten auf, die auch in eigene Applikationen eingebunden werden können – etwa Excel-Tabellen oder einen Teams-Chat. (Office 365, Microsoft)
Das Fluid Framework synchronisiert Daten zwischen allen Microsoft-365-Programmen. Es teilt Dokumente in Komponenten auf, die auch in eigene Applikationen eingebunden werden können - etwa Excel-Tabellen oder einen Teams-Chat. (Office 365, Microsoft)
Big performance enhancements for the Linux subsystem are also on the way.
The Windows 7 console didn't support VT codes, so it completely garbles the output of applications that depend on VT codes. The Windows 10 console, however, does support VT codes, making it much more capable. (credit: The Windows console)
Details are currently scarce, but Microsoft has announced some big changes coming to its command-line interface. In Windows 10, Microsoft has been working to make the Windows command-line experience vastly improved, making it work much more like Unix command-line environments. But a couple of issues are still waiting to be fixed: people want tabs in their command-line, and they want support for emoji.
Coming in June, Windows Terminal will bring both of these. It sounds as if Windows Terminal will be able to replace the existing conhost console (the Windows component that's responsible for drawing command-line windows) with its limited feature set, ensuring that the new features are available to anything and everything that uses the command-line, including the traditional Windows NT cmd.exe but also including PowerShell and the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Windows Subsystem for Linux is also in line for some big improvements. Also coming in June, Microsoft intends to add full support for running containerized applications using Docker on WSL. This has been a much-requested piece of compatibility that developers have wanted in WSL.
The new version of Microsoft Edge web browser may be built on Google’s Chromium, but Microsoft is bringing a bunch of new features that will help set it apart from Google’s Chrome browser. Early builds of the browser already include Microso…
The new version of Microsoft Edge web browser may be built on Google’s Chromium, but Microsoft is bringing a bunch of new features that will help set it apart from Google’s Chrome browser. Early builds of the browser already include Microsoft’s own customized user interface and replacements for a number of Google’s core features and […]
Despite the increased availability of legal options, millions of people still stream, rip, or download MP3s from unofficial sources.
Das Fluid Framework synchronisiert Daten zwischen allen Microsoft-365-Programmen. Es teilt Dokumente in Komponenten auf, die auch in eigene Applikationen eingebunden werden können - etwa Excel-Tabellen oder einen Teams-Chat. (
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