Month: April 2021

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  L-R: Luigi, Super Mario series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and Mario, posing at Universal Studios Japan's upcoming Super Nintendo World theme park in Osaka. [credit: Nintendo / Universal Studios Japan ]

The highly anticipated Super Nintendo World section of Universal Studios Japan will be temporarily closing a little more than a month after its delayed opening, along with the rest of the park, due to the increased spread of COVID-19 in Osaka.

"Today, Universal Studios Japan has decided to temporarily close our park due to the substantial business shutdown request to operate with no spectators which was issued under the state of emergency for Osaka prefecture," reads a note on the Universal Studios Japan website.

The closure comes just weeks after Universal Studios Japan was forced to limit visitor numbers amid rising case rates in Osaka. Universal Studios Japan was previously closed for COVID from February 29 through June 7 of last year. The latest closure will be effective April 25 and will last "until the request has been lifted."

Enlarge / Supreme Court Justices, from left, Chief Justice John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan listen during then-President Trump's State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

A Supreme Court ruling yesterday killed the Federal Trade Commission's "strongest tool" for fighting scam artists and securing refunds for wronged consumers, the FTC's acting chairwoman said.

"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of scam artists and dishonest corporations, leaving average Americans to pay for illegal behavior," FTC Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said in a statement after the ruling. "With this ruling, the Court has deprived the FTC of the strongest tool we had to help consumers when they need it most. We urge Congress to act swiftly to restore and strengthen the powers of the agency so we can make wronged consumers whole."

Though it was criticized by Slaughter and consumer advocates, the Supreme Court's ruling in a case involving deceptive payday lending practices was unanimous. In AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission, the court ruled that Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act "does not authorize the Commission to seek, or a court to award, equitable monetary relief such as restitution or disgorgement" for consumers.

Enlarge / Christopher Poole, founder of 4chan, speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. (credit: Getty Images / Ramin Talaie)

CNBC reports that 4chan founder Chris Poole no longer works at Google. Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed social media project, Google+. Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.

Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015, a year before joining Google.

Back when Poole was hired, Google's fear of Facebook gave it an unhinged obsession with social media, but nobody at Google really understood how social media worked. Poole's hiring at the company was controversial, but high-ranking Google+ execs defended the move. 4chan is a social site with millions of monthly visitors, and that made Poole one of the company's few experienced social experts when he arrived.

Enlarge (credit: Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Texas’ deep freeze didn’t just disrupt natural gas supplies throughout Lone Star country—its effects rippled across the country, extending as far north as Minnesota. There, gas utilities had to pay $800 million more than they anticipated during the event, and Minnesota regulators are furious.

“The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, told The Washington Post. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.”

The gas and electric markets in Texas are lightly regulated and highly competitive, which has pushed companies to deliver energy at the lowest possible cost. But it also means that many companies were ill-prepared when the mercury dropped. To save money, they had skimped on winterizing their equipment. As a result, gas lines across the state—which has about 23 percent of the country’s reserves—quite literally froze. The spot price of natural gas soared to 70-times what it would normally be in Minnesota, and gas utilities paid a hefty premium when they used the daily market to match demand.