175078067submissionJoe_Dragon writes:
Sony v. Cox —
ISPs tell Supreme Court they don’t want to disconnect users accused of piracy
ISPs say Sony's win over Cox would force them to do "mass Internet evictions."
Jon Brodkin — 9/18/2024, 1:32 PM
The US Supreme Court building is seen on a sunny day. Kids mingle around a small pool on the grounds in front of the building.
Enlarge / The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, in May 2023.
Getty Images | NurPhoto
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Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.
While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access." The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.
The amici curiae brief was filed by Altice USA (operator of the Optimum brand), Frontier Communications, Lumen (aka CenturyLink), and Verizon. The brief supports cable firm Cox Communications' attempt to overturn its loss in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony. Cox petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last month.
Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox in 2018, claiming it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers. A US District Court jury in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels.
Cox won a partial victory when the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the $1 billion verdict, finding that Cox wasn't guilty of vicarious infringement because it did not profit directly from infringement committed by users of its cable broadband network. But the appeals court affirmed the jury's finding of willful contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial.
Future of Internet at stake, ISPs say
The Altice/Frontier/Lumen/Verizon brief said the 4th Circuit ruling "imperils the future of the Internet" by "expos[ing] Internet service providers to massive liability if they do not carry out mass Internet evictions." Cutting off a subscriber's service would hurt other residents in a home "who did not infringe and may have no connection to the infringer," they wrote.
The automated processes used by copyright holders to find infringement on peer-to-peer networks are "famously flawed," ISPs wrote. Despite that, the appeals court's "view of contributory infringement would force Internet service providers to cut off any subscriber after receiving allegations that some unknown person used the subscriber's connection for copyright infringement," the brief said.
Under the 4th Circuit's theory, "an Internet service provider acts culpably whenever it knowingly fails to stop some bad actor from exploiting its service," the brief said. According to the ISPs, this "would compel Internet service providers to engage in wide-scale terminations to avoid facing crippling damages, like the $1 billion judgment entered against Cox here, the $2.6 billion damages figure touted by these same plaintiffs in a recent suit against Verizon, or the similarly immense figures sought from Frontier and Altice USA."
Potential liability for ISPs is up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each work that is infringed, the brief said. "Enterprising plaintiffs' lawyers could seek to hold Internet service providers liable for every bad act that occurs online," they wrote. This threat of financial liability detracts from the ISPs' attempts "to fulfill Congress's goal of connecting all Americans to the Internet," the ISPs said.
ISPs cite Twitter’s Supreme Court win
The ISPs' brief argues that the 4th Circuit decision conflicts with the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Twitter v. Taamneh, which rejected allegations that social media companies aided and abetted ISIS in a terrorist attack. ISPs wrote:
But the Fourth Circuit's rule runs roughshod over the traditional common-law limits on aiding-and-abetting liability. This Court recently clarified those principles in Twitter. That case addressed claims that Twitter and other social-media companies aided and abetted terrorism by knowingly failing to stop ISIS from using their platforms to raise funds and attract recruits. In assessing those claims, the Court invoked the same principles that have "animated aiding-and-abetting liability for centuries," searching for "conscious, voluntary, and culpable participation in another's wrongdoing." Under the common law, the Court stressed, "truly culpable conduct" exists when "the defendant consciously and culpably participated in a wrongful act so as to help make it succeed." The Court emphasized the need for such active wrongdoing more than a dozen times.
A communication provider's failure to stop bad actors from misusing its service does not qualify. Under the common law, this Court explained, "communication-providing services" have no "duty" "to terminate customers after discovering that the customers were using the service for illicit ends." For that reason, the Court held that the social-media companies' continued provision of routine communication service to terrorists was "mere passive nonfeasance" that did not amount to culpable aid. And in words that could have been written for this case, the Court explained that it "would run roughshod over the typical limits on tort liability and take aiding and abetting far beyond its essential culpability moorings" to hold a "communication provider" liable "merely for knowing that... wrongdoers were using its services and failing to stop them."
ISPs say they shouldn't be liable for copyright infringement because "aiding and abetting requires some act to support the wrongdoing—not mere knowledge that a customer is doing something wrong." Providing service to a customer is not the same as providing "substantial assistance" to a wrongdoer, they wrote.
"Providing routine services to a wrongdoer generally counts as substantial assistance only if done under 'unusual circumstances' or 'in an unusual way,'" ISPs wrote. ISPs claim the 4th Circuit "made the same errors this Court corrected in Twitter" when it "ruled that Cox materially contributed to its subscribers' infringement by knowingly failing to cut their Internet connections."
Sony wants to reinstate $1 billion verdict
Even if ISPs win their argument, copyright holders will still have the right to pursue claims of infringement directly against the infringers, the brief said. "They can still use any evidence they collect of online infringement to serve subpoenas to learn the identity of the customer whose Internet access was used for infringement," ISPs wrote. "The subpoenas can then lead to direct actions against the actual infringers."
Record labels say going after individuals is too difficult. Sony and other labels want the Supreme Court to reinstate the $1 billion verdict along with the jury's original finding that Cox was guilty of vicarious infringement.
"Vicarious liability is an especially important tool in the digital age where pursuing direct infringers—in this case, thousands of faceless individuals who cannot be identified except through an ISP like Respondent—is impractical at best and impossible at worst," record labels wrote in an August 16 petition to the Supreme Court.
Record labels say the case "is an ideal vehicle to resolve the scope of the profit requirement," given that the 4th Circuit decided record labels failed to prove that Cox profits directly from subscribers' infringement. "The facts that underpin the jury's profit finding—Cox's fees, its employees' emails, its advertising, and its network traffic—are not in dispute," they wrote. Joe_Dragon writes:
After a doctor suffered a fatal allergic reaction at a Disney World restaurant, Disney is trying to get her widower's wrongful death lawsuit tossed by pointing to the fine print of a Disney+ trial he signed up for years earlier.
Jeffrey Piccolo is representing the estate of his late wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, a doctor at New York's NYU Langone hospital who died of an allergic reaction while visiting the Florida resort in October.
The couple, along with Piccolo's mother, went to dinner on the night of Oct. 5 at Raglan Road Irish Pub, a restaurant located within a shopping and dining complex called Disney Springs.
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Tangsuan was "highly allergic" to dairy and nuts, and they chose that particular restaurant in part because of its promises about accommodating patrons with food allergies, according to the lawsuit filed in a Florida circuit court.
The complaint details the family's repeated conversations with their waiter about Tangsuan's allergies. The family allegedly raised the issue upfront, inquired about the safety of specific menu items, had the server confirm with the chef that they could be made allergen-free and asked for confirmation "several more times" after that.
"When the waiter returned with [Tangsuan's] food, some of the items did not have allergen free flags in them and [Tangsuan] and [Piccolo] once again questioned the waiter who, once again, guaranteed the food being delivered to [Tangsuan] was allergen free," the lawsuit reads.
The three of them ate and then went their separate ways: Piccolo brought the leftovers to their room, while his wife and mother headed for the stores. After about 45 minutes, Tangsuan "began having severe difficulty breathing and collapsed to the floor."
Bimbo bread is displayed on a shelf at a market in Anaheim, Calif., in 2003. On Tuesday, U.S. federal food safety regulators warned Bimbo Bakeries USA — which includes brands such as Sara Lee, Oroweat, Thomas', Entenmann's and Ball Park buns and rolls — to stop using labels that say its products contain potentially dangerous allergens when they don't.
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She self-administered an epi-pen, and an observer called 911. The Piccolos, who had tried calling her multiple times, were eventually told she had been rushed to the hospital. They went to meet her and, after a period of waiting, were told that she had died.
"The medical examiner's investigation determined that [Tangsuan's] cause of death was as a result of anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system," according to the lawsuit.
Piccolo filed suit in February against Raglan Road Irish Pub and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc. (WDPR), accusing both companies of negligence for preparing Tangsuan's food improperly and for failing to train their employees to guarantee food was made allergen-free as requested.
He is seeking more than $50,000 in damages and trial by jury "on all issues so triable."
Disney says the case should be handled out of court because Piccolo created a streaming account
Neither Disney Parks nor its lawyer has responded to NPR's request for comment. They have, however, fought back in legal filings.
In late May, Disney's lawyers filed a motion asking the circuit court to order Piccolo to arbitrate the case — with them and a neutral third party in private, as opposed to publicly in court — and to pause the legal proceedings in the meantime.
Arbitration is generally considered a more efficient and cost-effective method of resolving disputes than litigation, and Disney said explicitly in court documents that the "main benefit of arbitration is avoiding heavy litigation costs."
The reason it says Piccolo must be compelled to arbitrate? A clause in the terms and conditions he signed off on when he created a Disney+ account for a monthlong trial in 2019.
FILE — A Paqui One Chip Challenge chip is displayed in Boston, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. A lawsuit was filed against a Thursday, July 11, 2024 in the case of a Massachusetts teen who died after he participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge on social media. (AP Photo/Steve LeBlanc, File)
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Those terms of use — which users must acknowledge to create an account — state that "any dispute between You and Us, Except for Small Claims, is subject to a class action waiver and must be resolved by individual binding arbitration."
Disney says Piccolo agreed to similar language again when purchasing park tickets online in September 2023. Whether he actually read the fine print at any point, it adds, is "immaterial."
"Piccolo ignores that he previously created a Disney account and agreed to arbitrate 'all disputes' against 'The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates' arising 'in contract, tort, warranty, statute, regulation, or other legal or equitable basis,'" the motion reads, arguing the language is broad enough to cover Piccolo's claims.
Piccolo's lawyers say Disney's claims are "outrageously unreasonable"
In early August, Piccolo's lawyers filed a response slamming Disney's rationale as "preposterous," bordering "on the surreal" and "fatally flawed for numerous independent reasons."
"There is simply no reading of the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement which would support the notion that Mr. Piccolo agreed to arbitrate claims arising from injuries sustained by his wife at a restaurant located on premises owned by a Disney theme park or resort which ultimately led to her death," they wrote in the 123-page filing.
They confirmed that he did create a Disney+ account on his PlayStation in 2019, but he believes he canceled the subscription during the trial because he hasn't found any charges associated with it after that point.
Piccolo's lawyers accused the company of trying to deprive Tangsuan's estate of its right to a jury trial.
The bundle is offered at two price points, both of which include access to Disney +, Hulu and Max.
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"The notion that terms agreed to by a consumer when creating a Disney+ free trial account would forever bar that consumer's right to a jury trial in any dispute with any Disney affiliate or subsidiary, is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience, and this Court should not enforce such an agreement," they wrote.
Piccolo's lawyers also took issue with the process itself, saying Disney didn't raise its alleged right to arbitration early enough in the proceedings.
They further note that Piccolo didn't bring the lawsuit as an individual, but on behalf of Tangsuan's estate, which did not sign off on any such terms. There was no such estate at the time, since Tangsuan was still alive.
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"[Disney] does not explain how it is possible for Mr. Piccolo individually to bind an Estate that did not exist, which is not surprising as there is not a single authority in Florida that would support such an inane argument," they said.
The arbitration provision, they added, could present a problem for more than just their own client.
"In effect, WDPR is explicitly seeking to bar its 150 million Disney+ subscribers from ever prosecuting a wrongful death case against it in front of a jury even if the case facts have nothing to with Disney+," they wrote.
Both sides will get to make their case in front of a judge before long. The court has scheduled a hearing on Disney's motion for Oct. 2.
Editor’s note: Disney+ is among NPR’s financial sponsors. Joe_Dragon writes:
A Black man has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against a hotel in Detroit, Michigan, alleging the hotel only offered him a job interview after he changed the name on his resume, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNN.
Dwight Jackson filed the lawsuit against the Shinola Hotel on July 3, alleging he was denied a job when he applied as “Dwight Jackson,” but later offered an interview when he changed his name to “John Jebrowski.”
The lawsuit alleges Jackson was denied a job in “violation of Michigan Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
Between January and April 2024, Jackson, a 27-year-old Black man, applied to multiple positions at the Shinola Hotel in downtown Detroit, including a role in reception, according to the lawsuit. On its website, Shinola Hotel says it is a “luxury” hotel.
Jackson’s attorney, Jon Marko, provided CNN with a copy of Jackson’s resume, which details consistent employment, including previous roles as a “Front Desk Agent” at Detroit’s Marriott Westin Book Cadillac and David Whitney Hotel, which use the words luxury and luxurious to describe their respective hotels.
“Mr. Jackson had applied for a job that he was eminently qualified for,” Marko, a civil rights attorney, told CNN. However, Shinola Hotel did not offer Jackson an interview.
After getting no response to his initial job applications, in April 2024 Jackson applied again, making one significant change to his application — his name.
According to the lawsuit, Jackson applied to Shinola Hotel “twice for similar positions under a more readily apparent Caucasian name, with the alias ‘John Jebrowski,’” using nearly identical resumes. The resumes have different dates of previous employment.
He was offered multiple interviews within the same week, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit alleges that “Jackson established that the Defendant’s consideration of candidates was based on the racial appearance of the applicant’s name.”
Supreme Court Police officers stand on the steps of the Supreme Court on April 16, in Washington, DC.
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“To be denied a job in 2024 in your hometown, for the color of your skin, goes beyond dollars and cents. It goes into the psyche of a person,” Marko said.
Sage Hospitality Group is Shinola Hotel’s operating partner. Anna Stancioff, Sage Hospitality’s Senior Corporate Director of PR & Brand Communications and spokesperson for the hotel said in an email Tuesday, “We take this allegation very seriously and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We are committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where everyone has the opportunity to succeed and are dedicated to building a diverse workforce that reflects the community.”
According to Marko, Jackson attended the job interview and confronted the interviewer at Shinola Hotel. He revealed his real identity and expressed his belief that he was not given an interview initially because his name appeared more traditionally African American.
“Shortly after Jackson underwent the interview process, he was informed that he was no longer a viable candidate for the position,” the lawsuit states.
Marko said employment discrimination is not unusual. He added, as a civil rights attorney, “We’ve seen a lot of discrimination in hiring, especially when it comes to the exclusion of minorities and individuals who have minority-sounding names.”
A recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that name bias is a prevalent issue in the hiring process. Researchers sent out identical resumes to 108 U.S. employers to analyze whether race and gender affected callback rates for job applications. Resumes with Black male and Black female names received the fewest callbacks.
But, Marko said, proving cases of name bias is extremely challenging and most of these cases never get off the ground due to a lack of evidence.
Jackson’s case is different, he said, because he applied twice for similar positions with nearly the exact same resume and it yielded different results when he used the alias.
Marko said Jackson “wants to shed light on this problem that’s not just isolated at the Shinola Hotel, not just isolated in Detroit or Michigan, but across the country. He wants to make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.” Joe_Dragon writes:
Since Apple announced plans for the 0.50 euro Core Technology Fee that apps distributed using the new EU App Store business terms must pay, there have been ongoing concerns about what that fee might mean for a developer that suddenly has a free app go viral.
App Store vs EU Feature 2
Apple's VP of regulatory law Kyle Andeers today met with developers during a workshop on Apple's Digital Markets Act compliance. iOS developer Riley Testut, best known for Game Boy Advance emulator GBA4iOS, asked what Apple would do if a young developer unwittingly racked up millions in fees.
Testut explained that when he was younger, that exact situation happened to him. Back in 2014 as an 18-year-old high school student, he released GBA4iOS outside of the App Store using an enterprise certificate. The app was unexpectedly downloaded more than 10 million times, and under Apple's new rules with Core Technology Fee, Testut said that would have cost $5 million euros, bankrupting his family. He asked whether Apple would actually collect that fee in a similar situation, charging the high price even though it could financially ruin a family.
In response, Andeers said that Apple is working on figuring out a solution, but has not done so yet. He said Apple does not want to stifle innovation and wants to figure out how to keep young app makers and their parents from feeling scared to release an app. Andeers told Testut to "stay tuned" for an answer.
What we are trying to do is tear apart a model that has been integrated for 15 years. And so for 15 years, the way we've monetized everything was through the commission. It covered everything from technology to distribution to payment processing, and the beauty of that model is that it allowed developers to take risks. Apple only got paid if the developer got paid, and that was an incredible engine for innovation over the last 15 years. We've seen it go from 500 apps to more than 1.5 million.
To your point, we've seen kids everywhere from 8-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 10-year-olds, to teenagers come up with some amazing applications and it's been one of the great success stories of the App Store. In terms of the Core Technology Fee and our business model, we had to change. The mandates of the DMA forced us to tear apart what we had built and price each component individually. And so we now have a fee associated with technology, tools, and services, we now have a fee associated with distribution and the services we provide through the App Store, and then we have a separate fee for payment processing if a developer wants to use it.
To your point — what is the impact on the dreamer, the kid who is just getting started. It could be a kid, it could be an adult, it could be a grandparent. We want to continue to encourage those sorts of developers. We build a store based on individual entrepreneurs, not so much catering to large corporate interests. And so we really wanted to figure out how do we solve for that.
We haven't figured out that solution here. I fully appreciate that. We looked at the data. We didn't see many examples of where you had that viral app or an app just took off that incurred huge costs. That said, I don't care what the data said. We don't care what the data said. We want people to continue to feel... and not be scared... some parents... hey, I've got four kids who play around with this stuff. I don't have five million euros to pay. This is something we need to figure out, and it is something we're working on. So I would say on that one, stay tuned.
It is not clear when Apple might come up with a solution or what that solution might be, but it sounds like the company might soon have some kind of option for these rare fringe cases when an app goes unexpectedly viral.
The 0.50 euro Core Technology Fee (CTF) that Apple is charging applies to all apps created under Apple's new business terms, both those distributed in the App Store and those distributed outside of the App Store in the European Union. The CTF must be paid for every "first" app install over one million installs.
A free app that is distributed outside of the App Store and downloaded over a million times will owe 0.50 euros for every subsequent "first" install, aka the first time a customer downloads an app on a device each year. The fee is incurred whether or not an app charges, creating a situation where an app developer could owe Apple money without ever making a dime.
As it stands, the CTF is a major unknown for any kind of freemium or free app built under the new business terms that might go viral, effectively making it very risky to develop a free or freemium app outside of the App Store. A free or freemium app that gets two million annual "first installs" would need to pay an estimated $45,290 in fees per month, or more than half a million dollars per year, even with no money earned. That's not a sustainable model for free apps, and freemium apps would need to earn at least 0.50 euros per user to break even.
App developers are able to continue to use Apple's current App Store business terms instead of adopting the new terms, paying just 15 to 30 percent commission to Apple with no change. That prevents distribution outside of the App Store, and it prevents developers from using third-party alternative payment solutions in the App Store. Adopting any of the new features that Apple has implemented because of the Digital Markets Act requires opting in to the updated business terms.
Apple has been tweaking the app ecosystem rules that it introduced in the European Union based on developer feedback. Developers can now opt back in to the current App Store rules after trying out the new rules, though this is only available one time. Apple also recently did away with an app marketplace restriction that required alternative marketplaces to offer apps from any third-party developer that wanted to participate.
Third-party app stores are now able to offer apps only from their own catalog, and developers will soon be able to distribute apps directly from their websites as long as they meet Apple's requirements. Note that all of these changes are limited to the European Union, and the App Store is operating as before in the United States and other countries. Joe_Dragon writes:
With no suspects or motive announced, the FBI is joining the investigation into power outages in a North Carolina county believed to have been caused by “intentional” and “targeted” attacks on substations that left around 40,000 customers in the dark Saturday night, prompting a curfew and emergency declaration.
The mass outage in Moore County turned into a criminal investigation when responding utility crews found signs of potential vandalism of equipment at different sites – including two substations that had been damaged by gunfire, according to the Moore County Sheriff’s Office.
This photos shows the gate to the Duke Energy West End substation in Moore County, N.C. on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022. Tens of thousands were without power in the county after what authorities say was an act of criminal vandalism at multiple substations. The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that infrastructure at the West End substation was damaged.
NC county announces curfew as nearly 40,000 customers remain without power after 2 substations damaged by gunfire
“The person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said during a Sunday news conference. “We don’t have a clue why Moore County.”
Fields said multiple rounds were fired at the two substations. “It was targeted, it wasn’t random,” he said.
The sheriff would not say whether the criminal activity was domestic terrorism but noted “no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they’re the ones who [did] it.”
Authorities announced a mandatory curfew from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m., starting Sunday night, with Fields saying the decision was made to protect residents and businesses.
In addition to the FBI, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has joined the investigation, officials said.
More than 33,000 customers were still in the dark across the county Sunday evening, the Duke Energy outage map showed. For some, the outage may stretch into Thursday, officials said, upending life for tens of thousands.
All schools in the county will be closed Monday and authorities have opened a shelter running on a generator.
Traffic lights are also out, and while a few stores with generators were able to open their doors, several businesses and churches in Moore County were closed Sunday, CNN affiliate WRAL reported.
“We were just getting over Covid. And now this,” the sheriff said, adding, “It’s gonna hurt all of our restaurants and businesses.”
Inside people’s homes, it’s become difficult to keep the cold out.
“We have a six-month-old baby in the house. We’re out of heat. We are trying to get heat for her,” Carthage resident Chris Thompson told WRAL.
Chilly temperatures, with lows in the 30s, were expected in the area overnight Sunday with highs in the 50s and a chance of rain expected Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Moore County is in central North Carolina, about 50 miles northwest of Fayetteville.
02 nc mass power outage MAP
Mapbox
Millions of dollars worth of damage
The estimated cost of the substation damage is in the millions, the sheriff said Sunday.
The damage has been significant and rerouting power isn’t an option, said Jeff Brooks, principal communications manager for Duke Energy.
Damage to the gate to the Duke Energy West End substation is seen Sunday in Moore County.
Damage to the gate to the Duke Energy West End substation is seen Sunday in Moore County.
“Equipment will have to be replaced,” Brooks said. “We’re pursuing multiple paths of restoration so that we can restore as many customers as quickly as possible. Recognizing that, we are looking at pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment.”
In addition to the gunfire damage at the substations, a gate at one of the locations appears to have been taken off its hinges, Asst. Chief Mike Cameron of the Southern Pines Fire and Rescue Department told CNN.
While it’s unclear what motivated the alleged vandalism, the sheriff on Sunday addressed rumors circulating on social media that the attack was an attempt to thwart a local drag show.
Fields said investigators “have not been able to tie anything back to the drag show,” which was scheduled in the town of Southern Pines at 7 p.m. Saturday, around the time the power went out.
Duke Energy workers gather Sunday as they plan how to repair an electrical substation in Carthage, North Carolina.
Duke Energy workers gather Sunday as they plan how to repair an electrical substation in Carthage, North Carolina.
Jonathan Drake/Reuters
Shelters open, schools close
The county declared a state of emergency to protect residents and property and maintain public services, authorities said. The countywide curfew is expected to stay in effect nightly while the emergency declaration is in effect.
“It is going to be very, very dark and it’s going to be chilly tonight, and we don’t need to have anyone out on the streets and that is the reason for our curfew,” North Carolina state Senator Tom McInnis said during the news conference. “Please stay home tonight the roads are dangerous.”
The emergency order also encourages residents to conserve fuel.
With streets in the dark, the area has seen increased emergency calls and vehicle accidents are being reported because traffic lights are out, Cameron told CNN.
People who rely on oxygen have also placed emergency calls, he added.
A shelter was opened at the Moore County Sports Complex, and trailers with bathroom and shower facilities are being brought in, Moore County Manager Wayne Vest said.
As for schools, it’s unclear how long campuses will stay closed. Moore County Superintendent Tim Locklair said decisions regarding school openings for the remainder of the week will be made on a day-by-day basis.
CNN’s Aileen Graef, Keith Allen, Nicole Grether and Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report. Joe_Dragon writes:
An Amazon delivery driver in Illinois was told to keep delivering packages after she reported hearing tornado sirens, with the dispatcher saying that the sirens were “just a warning.” According to a report by Bloomberg, which includes screenshots of the conversation, the driver was told that returning to the warehouse would be viewed as a route refusal, “which [would] ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning.”
The conversation reportedly happened on Friday evening, around an hour and a half before a tornado hit an Amazon facility around 30 miles away from the driver. After being told twice to “just keep delivering,” the driver was eventually instructed to shelter in place “for 15-20 minutes, then continue as normal.” (The instructions to shelter in place were repeated several more times after.) The driver, expressing that a delivery van wouldn’t provide much safety, said she wanted to return to base.
"“If you decide to come back, that choice is yours.”"
The dispatcher’s response is harrowing: “If you decide to come back, that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won’t be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are.” The dispatcher said drivers couldn’t be recalled unless Amazon directed it and that she would lose her job if she returned. The tornado ended up touching down near a highway, throwing cars in the air, according to Bloomberg, though the driver involved in the text exchange is reported to be safe.
Amazon told Bloomberg that the dispatcher “should have immediately directed the driver to seek shelter” when they reported hearing the sirens and said that “under no circumstance should the dispatcher have threatened the driver’s employment.” The company says it’s investigating the incident.
The Amazon facility wasn’t a safe haven either: a warehouse collapsed during the storm, leaving six workers dead. Bloomberg reports that the warehouse didn’t conduct drills to make sure people were prepared in case of an emergency.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced that it’s investigating the warehouse incident, and experts say that Amazon’s lack of action can be traced back to Amazon’s endless drive to please customers at all costs and a lack of policy that would legally obligate the company to send its workers home. The incident was cited by an Amazon shareholder that filed a shareholder resolution calling for an independent audit of the company’s working conditions.
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Amazon drivers (who are often not direct employees of Amazon but instead work at companies contracted by the online commerce giant) have a history of being put in harm’s way to meet quotas. Earlier this year, there were reports of drivers being told to turn off the (often buggy, according to reviews) app used to make sure delivery workers were driving safely. Joe_Dragon writes:
A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’
The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels, in a widening education gap across the U.S.
Daniel Briles in his room at home in Red Wing, Minn. Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.
At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.
This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.
No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.
American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.
The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.
“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”
Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.
Jay Wells's high-school graduation photo hangs at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Jay Wells, 23, at his parents’ house this summer in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.
Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.
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Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”
Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.
“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.
The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.
Rich or Poor, Men Fall Behind
College enrollment rates by family income level, October 2019
Population,
millions
2.6
Gender
Male
Female
1.0
0.25
Race
White
Black
Asian
Hispanic
All
40
50
60
70
80
90%
$45,360 or less
With rare exception, women have a higher college enrollment rate than men of their same race.
$45,361 to $81,851
$81,852 to $138,747
White men’s enrollment rate isn’t much higher, and is often lower than, minority men in the same income group.
$138,748
or more
Note: Enrollment status of dependent primary family members 18 to 24 years old, by family income
Source: Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey data by Tom Mortenson, Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education
Angela Calderon/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”
Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”
The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.
The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.
“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.
It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic.
No plan
Over the course of their working lives, American college graduates earn more than a million dollars beyond those with only a high-school diploma, and a university diploma is required for many jobs as well as most professions, technical work and positions of influence.
Yet skyrocketing education costs have made college more risky today than for past generations, potentially saddling graduates in lower-paying careers—as well as those who drop out—with student loans they can’t repay.
Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.
Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school.
Daniel Briles, 18 years old, graduated in June from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minn. He decided against college during his senior year, despite earning a 3.5 grade-point average and winning a $2,500 college scholarship from a local veterans organization.
Daniel Briles preparing an audio track at home in Red Wing, Minn. His music is on Spotify under Daniel Envy.
Photo: Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal
He took a landscaping job and takes home about $500 a week. Mr. Briles, a musician, also earns some income from creating and selling music through streaming services, he said, and invests in cryptocurrencies. His parents both attended college, and they hope he, too, will eventually apply. So far, they haven’t pressured him, he said.
“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Mr. Briles said. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”
Many young men who dropped out of college said they worried about their future but nonetheless quit school with no plan in mind. “I would say I feel hazy,” said 23-year-old Jay Wells, who quit Defiance College in Ohio after a semester. He lives with his mother and delivers pallets of soda for Coca-Cola Co. in Toledo for $20 an hour.
“I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I figure out what to do next,” he said.
Jack Bartholomew, 19, started his freshman year at Bowling Green State University during the pandemic, taking his classes online. During the first weeks, he said, he was confused by the course material and grew frustrated. Finally, he quit. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I just feel lost.”
Mr. Bartholomew’s parents and one older sister have college degrees. He was a solid student in high school and was interested in studying graphic design. Yet while working online from his second-floor bedroom, his introductory courses seemed pointless for how much he was paying, he said.
He works 40 hours a week, at $15.50 an hour, packing boxes at an Amazon warehouse not far from his house in Perrysburg, Ohio. It isn’t a long-term job, Mr. Bartholomew said, and he doesn’t know what to do next.
“College seems like, to me at least, the only logical path you can take in America,” he said. But for now, he said, it is too big a struggle, financially and academically.
Jay Wells with the family dog, Reese, at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Tomorrow’s leaders
Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.
The University of Vermont is typical. The school president is a man and so are nearly two-thirds of the campus trustees. Women made up about 80% of honors graduates last year in the colleges of arts and sciences.
One student from nearly every high school in Vermont is nominated for a significant scholarship at the campus every year. Most of them are girls, said Jay Jacobs, the university’s provost for enrollment management. It isn’t by design. “We want more men in our pipeline,” Dr. Jacobs said, but boys graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than girls, both in Vermont and nationwide.
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The young men who enroll lag behind. Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women. “I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree,” said Luke Weiss, a civil engineering student and fraternity president of Pi Kappa Alpha at the campus.
Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.
Young women appear eager to take leadership roles, making up 59% of student body presidents in the 2019-20 academic year and 74% of student body vice presidents, according to W.H. “Butch” Oxendine, Jr., executive director of the American Student Government Association.
“Across all types of institutions, particularly two-year institutions, but also extending into public and private four-year institutions, women dominate student government executive boards,” Mr. Oxendine said.
Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
“What I see is there is a kind of hope deficit,” Mr. Grocholski said.
The campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal
Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.
“As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,” Dr. Jackson said. “To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.”
Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said.
Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.
The University of Oregon has one of the few college men’s centers, which offers help for mental and physical health. “Men don’t need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Kerry Frazee, director of prevention services, who works with the center. “No one can do it all by themselves.”
Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com Joe_Dragon writes:
Imagine your data center Imagine your data center backup generator kicks in during power outage... and catches fire. Well, it happened
WebNX facility falls offline in blaze, takes customers down with it
Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Tue 6 Apr 2021// 22:30 UTC
A power outage kicked off a fire in web hosting biz WebNX's Ogden data center in Utah on Sunday, knocking the facility offline temporarily and leaving several servers in need of a rebuild.
Kevin Brown, Fire Marshal for the US city's Fire Department told The Register in a phone interview that firefighters responded to a call on Sunday evening. The fire, he said, "originated in a generator in the building and spread to several servers."
Brown said the facility's fire suppression system contained the blaze and that fire department personnel assisted with the cleanup. He said power was cut to the building until an electrical engineer could inspect the facility to make sure current could be restored safely, which he added is standard procedure.
He also confirmed that some of Ogden City's IT services were down on Sunday and Monday as a result of the data center fire.
In a Facebook post on Monday, echoed on its website, WebNX attributed the incident to the failure of a backup generator following a local power outage.... one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure
"Sunday afternoon the city power was disrupted and, as designed, our backup generators automatically switched on," the company said.
"However, during that transition, one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure, caught fire, and as a result initiated the fire suppression protocol."
The company confirmed that its Ogden data center experienced some damage. And earlier statement noted: "Some servers will have an extended outage as they may require rebuilds due to some water damage. Those builds have a high probability that data is intact."
"Customer’s servers in one of our main bays were exposed to water and possible damage may have occurred," the company said. "No fire damage was inflicted on customer servers."
Most of the hardware in the data center appears to be unaffected, the company said, but there are machines that need to be inspected for water damage and may need to be rebuilt.
"As of now, we are working to restore power, network, and unaffected hardware back up online within the next day or two," the company said.
Customers aren't pleased
The incident has also affected Gorilla Servers, a separate company founded by WebNX CEO Daniel Pautz that appears to co-locate some servers within the Ogden data center.
According to Gorilla, "close to 90 to 95 per cent of all Gorilla Servers hardware experienced zero damage." The electronic engineering website of YouTuber Dave Jones, eevblog.com, was among the sites hosted by Gorilla and taken offline in the outage, we note.
Other folks continue to report problems or are unable to reach their systems in the data center, though WebNX claims service has been restored for some.
At 16:47 UTC today, fish-egg flogger Passmore Caviar said, "Our website remains offline due to a fire at the WebNX server facility. Currently, we expect it to be back online later this afternoon." At the time this article was filed, the website remained inaccessible.
Piqosity, a test preparation service, also said its site stopped responding as a result of the fire.
OVH founder Octave Klaba's before and after pictures of servers cleaned after the fire in OVH's Strasbourg data centre
OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting
And in various online discussion forums, affected customers continue asking for estimates about when service will be restored. A common complaint is that lack of official communication about what's going on. Other forum participants report being told that their servers have water damage and will have to be rebuilt – a process that may take several days.
WebNX, which also operates facilities in New York City and Los Angeles, could not be reached by phone – calls are met with a recording noting that the company is "aware of the support system being down right now and technicians are working to resolve it." The Register received no response to our email inquiries.
WebNX's SLA guarantees 100 per cent uptime and uninterrupted power every month, with account credits of one day per 15 minutes of downtime in each case.
At 20:50 UTC on Tuesday, WebNX posted an update to its Facebook page: "We are currently working hard to get everything back to optimal running order. Huge thanks to the staff and outside contractors who were brought in (and also flown in from out of state) to help with the situation. We are also really grateful to everyone who has stepped up to help out, including some amazing clients, and Ogden City who has been very supportive." Joe_Dragon writes:
Twenty-four Amazon workers in New Jersey have been hospitalized after a robot accidentally tore a can of bear repellent spray in a warehouse, officials said.
The two dozen workers were treated at five local hospitals, Robbinsville Township communications and public information officer John Nalbone told ABC News. One remains in critical condition and 30 additional workers were treated at the scene.
The official investigation revealed "an automated machine accidentally punctured a 9-ounce bear repellent can, releasing concentrated Capsaican," Nalbone said. Capsaican is the major ingredient in pepper spray.
The fulfillment center was given the all clear by Wednesday evening.
“
”
'Amazon's automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger today'
“Today at our Robbinsville fulfillment center, a damaged aerosol can dispensed strong fumes in a contained area of the facility. The safety of our employees is our top priority, and as such, all employees in that area have been relocated to safe place and employees experiencing symptoms are being treated onsite. As a precaution, some employees have been transported to local hospitals for evaluation and treatment,” an Amazon spokeswoman told ABC News in a statement.
PHOTO: Signage for Amazon is displayed atop the companys fulfillment center in Robbinsville, N.J., June 7, 2018.Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images FILE
Signage for Amazon is displayed atop the company's fulfillment center in Robbinsville, N.J., June 7, 2018.
(MORE: Amazon is coming to Queens. So are the helicopt)
"Robbinsville Fire Dept on scene at Amazon Warehouse on New Canton Way investigating 'fumes' that have several employees complaining of illness. Fire Dept is attempting to isolate the source. EMTs are triaging multiple patients. 7 ambulances and a medic currently assigned," the Robbinsville Fire Department tweeted at 6:05 a.m. on Wednesday.
(MORE: An inside look at Amazon's HQ2 visits to NYC)
There is no threat to residents in the area and the fumes were confined to the fulfillment center's third floor south wing, Nalbone said earlier. The warehouse is approximately 1.3 million-square-feet and was ventilated.
Amazon employees are not unionized, but the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union issued a statement about the danger that robots pose to human workers.
"Amazon's automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger today, the effects of which could be catastrophic and the long-term effects for 80 plus workers are unknown," union president Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement. "The richest company in the world cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hard working people's lives at risk. Our union will not back down until Amazon is held accountable for these and so many more dangerous labor practices."
ABC News' Briana Montalvo contributed to this report. Joe_Dragon writes:
Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital.
The deadly collision—reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police—took place around 10PM at the intersection Mill Avenue and Curry Road. Autonomous vehicle developers often test drive at night, during storms, and other challenging conditions to help their vehicles learn to navigate in a variety of environments.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel.
A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman’s “next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.” The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said.
We’ve reached out to Uber and will update when we receive comment. So far the company’s only public statement comes from Twitter. Joe_Dragon writes:
Older Americans struggling to overcome age discrimination while looking for work face a new enemy: their computers.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently opened a probe into allegations that ageism is built right into the online software tools that millions of Americans use to job hunt.
Financial planner couple
Retirement's magic number: Do you have enough?
Thursday, 11 Feb 2016 | 8:00 AM ET
Separate research published recently by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank found that in a widespread test using fabricated resumes, fictional older workers were 30 percent less likely to be contacted after applying for jobs. Fictional older women had it even worse, being 47 percent less likely to get a "callback."
Several forces are conspiring to ensure that many Americans have to work well past the traditional retirement age of 65. People are living longer, their retirement savings are inadequate, and Social Security reforms are almost certainly going to require it. The San Francisco Fed says that the share of the older-65 working population is projected to rise sharply — from about 19 percent now to 29 percent in the year 2060.
Online job-hunting tools should be making things easier for older employment seekers, and it can. Indeed.com, which claims to list 16 million jobs worldwide, currently lists 158,000 openings under its "Part Time Jobs, Senior Citizen Jobs" category. Monster.com, which claims 5 million listings, has a special home page for "Careers at 50+."
In other ways, however, online job sites can cut older workers out. Age bias is built right into their software, according to Madigan. Job seekers who try to build a profile or resume can find that it's impossible to complete some forms because drop-down menus needed to complete tasks don't go back far enough to let older applicants fill them out. For example, one site's menu options for "years attended college" stops abruptly at 1956. That could prevent someone in their late 70s from filling out the form.
Madigan's office said it found one example that only accommodated those who had attended school after 1980, "barring anyone who is older than 52." Other sites used dates ranging from 1950 to 1970 as cutoffs, her office said.
"Today's workforce includes many people working in their 70s and 80s," Madigan said. "Barring older people from commonly used job search sites because of their age is discriminatory and negatively impacts our economy."
The Illinois' Civil Rights Bureau has opened a probe into potential violations of the Illinois Human Rights Act and the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Madigan's office has sent inquiry letters to six top jobs sites: Beyond.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed Inc., Ladders Inc., Monster Worldwide Inc. and Vault.
CareerBuilder called the issue a mistake.
job search frustrated stressed senior
SIphotography | Getty Images
"CareerBuilder is committed to helping workers of all ages find job opportunities, and is fixing this unfortunate oversight," spokesman Michael Erwin said in an email.
Beyond.com said it hadn't heard from Madigan's office, and added that it works to prevent age discrimination on the site.
"Discrimination has no part in the hiring process and that's why we take such care to help job seekers and hiring managers carefully consider all information they put forth during the job search process to avoid any conscious or unconscious bias," the company said in a statement.
Indeed.com also said it had not heard from the attorney general's office, and denied its site had an issue.
"On Indeed, anyone can upload a resume with any dates, and users can create a resume with drop down dates that go back to 1900," spokesman Alex Ortolani said.
Monster, and Vault did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Ladders said the company has not received a letter so far from Madigan. "Our site does not restrict the dates on resumes that people submit to us. In fact, to combat age discrimination we do not ask for a year of graduation from college," in an email on March 13.
"Barring older people from commonly used job search sites because of their age is discriminatory and negatively impacts our economy" -Lisa Madigan, Illinois attorney general
Experts say it's best to leave age off your resume. Online resume-building tools that force applicants to enter years for degree programs or work experience have a way of forcing the issue, however. And there's fresh evidence why such revelations are a bad idea.
In the San Francisco Fed's experiment to see if it could find statistical evidence of age discrimination, researchers created fictitious resumes for young (ages 29–31), middle age (49–51), and older (64–66) job applicants. Then those resumes were submitted to 13,000 positions in 12 cities across 11 states, totaling more than 40,000 applicants.
Age was not listed, but was clearly implied by the inclusion of high school graduation years.
Across several categories of jobs — sales, administrators, even janitors — there was evidence of age bias, the researchers found. For example: Among men seeking sales jobs, callbacks fell to 14.70 percent from 20.89 percent — a drop of about one-third — as applicants age rose from middle age to older.
The study unearthed an even stronger pattern of discrimination against older women, suggesting that group faces a double-whammy of age and gender discrimination when trying to remain in the workforce. Older female applicants for administrative jobs had a 47 percent lower callback rate than young female applicants. In sales jobs, older women were 36 percent less likely to get a call.
The study notes that any "supply-side" reforms designed to nudge Americans to work longer — namely delaying Social Security benefits — won't work if older workers are systematically shut out of job openings.
"Current policies to combat age discrimination, which rely in large part on private litigation for enforcement, may be ineffective at reducing or eliminating age discrimination in hiring," the report concludes. Joe_Dragon writes:
ITT Technical Institute is officially closing all of its campuses following federal sanctions imposed against the company. The for-profit college announced the changes in a statement:
“It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service. With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected.”
ITT Tech announced it was closing all of its campuses just one week after it stopped enrolling students following a federal crackdown on for-profit colleges. ITT Tech and other higher education companies like it have been widely criticized for accepting billions of dollars in government grants and loans while failing to provide adequate job training for its students. Last year, ITT Tech received an estimated $580 million in federal money (aka taxpayer dollars), according to the Department of Education.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with providing federal loans to students who are seeking higher education, but ITT Tech often went a step further: The company’s recruiters often preyed on students who didn’t understand the nature of taking on debt and shouldn’t have been seeking a technical degree
A report from The Atlantic recently revealed that “students pursuing bachelor’s and associate’s degrees at for-profit colleges saw their earnings drop, compared to before they started the program.” The reason is because students at for-profit colleges are less likely to finish their degrees, have a higher risk of living in poverty, and in addition to earning less than they did before pursuing their degree, students become burdened by debt without learning any technical skills.
The sanctions imposed against ITT Technical Institute last week were described by experts as a “death sentence.” The sanctions prevented ITT Tech from receiving any federal aid for tuition and also required ITT Tech to increase its cash reserves from $94.4 million to $247.3 million. The cash reserves were created to help support students in case the company closed. Now that ITT Tech is officially closed, the company is not saying how it will use its reserves. In an email, a company spokesperson told Gizmodo, “Please see today’s press release. This will be our only comment.”
ITT Tech’s decision to close down its campuses comes after Labor Day weekend, during which many of the faculty members and students at the company’s campuses felt completely lost and out of the loop. “Labor Day gives us a time to pause and spend time with our family,” said the company in an internal email sent on Friday. “As we close out the end of our June quarter, we’d like to extend that time by giving all employees Tuesday, September 6th off as an extra comp holiday.”
In the same email, ITT Tech CEO Kevin Modany indicated to its faculty members that the company’s demise could happen at any moment.
“As you may know, we have contacted the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to request their consideration of possible alternatives to ED’s additional requirements,” said Modany. “However, we cannot provide any assurance that the ED will respond to our requests in a favorable manner. There is a possibility that we could hear something at any time. As such, we ask that you check your email regularly for updates. If you do not have access to email, please check with your Supervisor.”
ITT Technical Institute employees and students have been confused by the company’s opaque emails and lack of communication. During the holiday weekend, my email inbox was filled with messages from faculty and students pleading for more information. “No one knows what’s going on,” said one faculty member. “There is no communication to the staff,” said another.
Students also wrote to Gizmodo, saying they were scared about their future. For example, we received this message on Friday, after our story was published. Here’s what the individual said:
I am a current student at ITT. Went to campus today to study and was kicked out. The dean stated they were closing campus early for the holiday. I sat in the parking lot and watched staff go in and clear out personal affects. Boxes, shopping bags full of things. One instructor brought lunch to campus and several people just left upset. Word is some people were let go to save money towards the 100 million the school has to put in escrow to stay open, other rumor is its prep for the shut down. Not sure what’s happening and have tried calling the CEO of corporate to get answers because I am one of several students that are suppose to graduate 9/29. Scared to death we won’t get to before graduation.
Not all hope is lost. The Department of Education has provided resources to current and formers students in a blog post that may answer some of the immediate questions you have. The DOE is also directing students to this Federal Student Aid announcement page, where its providing information to current and former students who have Title IV-related questions.
Updating... Joe_Dragon writes:
Microsoft updates support policy: New CPUs will require Windows 10
In a change to its longstanding support policy, Microsoft says PCs based on new CPU architectures, including Intel's Skylake chips, will require Windows 10. A list of preferred systems will support older Windows versions on new hardware, but only for 18 months.
"For the listed systems, along with our OEM partners, we will perform special testing to help future proof customers' investments, ensure regular validation of Windows Updates with the intent of reducing potential regressions including security concerns, and ensure all drivers will be on Windows Update with published BIOS/UEFI upgrading tools, which will help unlock the security and power management benefits of Windows 10 once the systems are upgraded."
I think that putting BIOS/UEFI updates in to the windows 10 auto / forced update system is a real bad idea and may even open MS to having to pay the cost to replace an $600-$1000+ laptop and or $100-$300+ MB. If it's update system try to flash at the wrong time or at a very risky time say right when the is a big storm or at a time where the power is not very stable. Even more so with a install updates on shutdown.
And it can lead to an update loop on a laptop with you must be on AC power to install the bios update and then the system reboots and then windows retry's the update again. Joe_Dragon writes:
That unsightly and costly metal box that funnels cable or satellite service into your TV might be going the way of the black rotary-dial telephone — in the technology trash heap. Joe_Dragon writes:
A European court just made getting to and from work a tad more tolerable.
Wouldn’t it be great to get paid for commuting? A European court just made that wishful thinking a reality for some workers in Europe.
The European Court of Justice said in a ruling Thursday that “when workersdo not have a fixed or habitual place of work, the time spent by those workers traveling each day between their homes and the premises of the first and last customers designated by their employer constitutes working time within the meaning of the [Working Time Directive,]”—European Union legislation that protects the rights of workers. The directive, for instance, bars employers from forcing workers to log more than 48 hours per week.
The court says that during trips to and from customers, workers are at their employer’s disposal and they act on the instructions of the employer, who “may change the order of the customers or cancel or add an appointment.” It also said that “the fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves.” Forcing workers to bear the burden of their employer’s decision, ” would be contrary to the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the [Working Time Directive], which includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest period.”
The ruling will affect million of public and private sector employees across the EU, specifically those without a permanent office, such as electricians and sales reps, 