Link Roundup Febuary 2019

Amazon’s Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone Into Cops

Ring also extends into the physical world of policing. The police departments of Aurora, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Albuquerque, NM; Hayward, CA; and Lakeland CA have all received discounts on Ring products. In the case of Hayward, CA, this discount extended to all citizens of the town. Certain police departments, such as in Aurora, CO, used the Ring cameras as part of a "porch pirate campaign” where bait boxes filled with rocks and sealed with Amazon tape were left on porches rigged with Ring cameras. Matthew Longshore, a spokesperson with the Aurora Police Department, told the Denver Channel that Amazon provided the boxes, and Ring sent the doorbells overnight. According to a Ring spokesperson, the company offers rebates or subsidies to cities police departments with a surplus in their budget.

Measles cases in Europe tripled last year, WHO says

Vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella in Ukraine fell sharply over a number of years during its conflict with Russia, reaching 31% in 2016 - among the lowest in the world.

US sees limitations on reuniting migrant families

Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors. “It would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment, and could be traumatic to the children,” White said in a court filing late Friday, citing his years of experience working with unaccompanied migrant children and background as a social worker.

Protesters Try to Storm Brooklyn Jail With Little Heat or Electricity

Elected officials said jail officials rejected an offer by the city to supply emergency generators and emergency blankets. On Saturday evening, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that the city was sending trucks with hundreds of blankets and hand warmers to the jail and that generators were on the way “whether they like it or not.”

Exclusive: FBI Warned Law Enforcement Agencies of Threat Posed by Non-Existent 'Pro-Choice Extremists'

Shapiro explains that the FBI has a set of administrative classification codes to refer to the different offenses it investigates (45 is “Crime on the High Seas,” for instance, while 172 is “Sports Bribery.”) The code 266 is used for domestic terrorism (“Act of Terrorism – Domestic Terrorism”). Letters are then used to break the whole 266 category down into subcategories. In a September 18, 2005 document, 266J was classified as “Anti Abortion Extremists.” By October 18, 2010, the same category was referred to as “Abortion Extremism.”

Revealed: FBI investigated civil rights group as 'terrorism' threat and viewed KKK as victims

Federal authorities ran a surveillance operation on By Any Means Necessary (Bamn), spying on the leftist group’s movements in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s members was stabbed at the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.

China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise

Dr. Kidd also said he considered his collaboration with the ministry to be no different from his work with police and forensics labs elsewhere. He said governments should have access to data about minorities, not just the dominant ethnic group, in order to have an accurate picture of the whole population.

'Yanked from the ground': cactus theft is ravaging the American desert

Minnich, 71, has been a cactus grower and nursery operator in New Mexico for 50 years. He said the internet had significantly accelerated theft of rare, slow-growing cactus species over the last decade. A case in point: Sclerocactus havasupaiensis, which is native to one drainage at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, was being auctioned on eBay in early January by a seller in Ukraine. It was just one of more than 365 internationally protected plant species that are openly traded on Amazon and eBay.

New York City to Ban Discrimination Based on Hair

In practice, the guidelines give legal recourse to individuals who have been harassed, threatened, punished, demoted or fired because of the texture or style of their hair. The city commission can levy penalties up to $250,000 on defendants that are found in violation of the guidelines and there is no cap on damages. The commission can also force internal policy changes and rehirings at offending institutions.

Amazon Will Pay a Whopping $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits

But even though Trump previously blasted Amazon for its limited state taxes—a single presidential tweet caused the company’s shares to fall by 9%—ITEP notes that its non-existent federal tax payment is a result of the Trump Administration’s corporation-friendly tax cuts. The think tank writes that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act not only decreased corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, but it also didn’t close “a slew of tax loopholes that allow profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes on almost half of their profits.”

Nike says it’s ‘actively working’ to fix its broken smart sneakers

The $350 Adapt BB went on sale this past weekend, and users started reporting issues soon after. Some report that either the left or right sneaker fails to pair after attempting to update them through the companion Android app. That means the sneaker can’t be tightened or properly worn. Some users say the update caused the motor to stop functioning, too, so even the physical buttons don’t work.

The Trauma Floor

The use of contract labor also has a practical benefit for Facebook: it is radically cheaper. The median Facebook employee earns $240,000 annually in salary, bonuses, and stock options. A content moderator working for Cognizant in Arizona, on the other hand, will earn just $28,800 per year. The arrangement helps Facebook maintain a high profit margin. In its most recent quarter, the company earned $6.9 billion in profits, on $16.9 billion in revenue. And while Zuckerberg had warned investors that Facebook’s investment in security would reduce the company’s profitability, profits were up 61 percent over the previous year.

The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

Over the past 100 years, workplaces have, on the whole, got considerably safer. In the early 1900s, about 4,400 people in the UK died at work every year. By 2016, that figure had fallen to 135. But while serious injuries at work have been decreasing for men, there is evidence that they have been increasing among women. The gender data gap is again implicated, with occupational research traditionally focused on male-dominated industries.