Scientists redefined the kilogram for the 21st century by tying it to a fundamental feature of the universe — a small, strange figure from quantum physics known as Planck's constant, which describes the smallest possible unit of energy.
In early 2017, when she was an unknown law student, Ms. Khan published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" in the Yale Law Journal. Her argument went against a consensus in antitrust circles that dates back to the 1970s — the moment when regulation was redefined to focus on consumer welfare, which is to say price. Since Amazon is renowned for its cut-rate deals, it would seem safe from federal intervention.
Ms. Khan disagreed. Over 93 heavily footnoted pages, she presented the case that the company should not get a pass on anticompetitive behavior just because it makes customers happy.
[...]
The paper got 146,255 hits, a runaway best-seller in the world of legal treatises. That popularity has rocked the antitrust establishment, and is making an unlikely celebrity of Ms. Khan in the corridors of Washington.
Make sure to watch the video for Toledo's local news casters making weed puns.
If you haven't seen the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, you can probably picture the iconic line of dancers kicking in unison, like a salute to American entertainment from a century ago. Well, this year the show got a surprising update: drones.
My friend Maddy has been in New York helping choreograph this. She's pretty much my most famous friend.
For years, Facebook gave some of the world's largest technology companies more intrusive access to users' personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.
But the leaks are not the disease, just the symptom. Sunken morale is the cause, and it's dragging down the company.
How to stop morale's downward momentum will be one of Facebook's greatest tests of leadership. This isn't a bug to be squashed. It can't just roll back a feature update. And an apology won't suffice. It will have to expel or reeducate the leakers and those disloyal without instilling a witch hunt's sense of dread. Compensation may have to jump upwards to keep talent aboard like Twitter did when it was floundering. Its top brass will need to show candor and accountability without fueling more indiscretion. And it may need to make a shocking, landmark act of contrition to convince employees it's capable of change.
As far as I can tell, not once in his apology tour was Zuckerberg asked what on earth he means when he refers to Facebook's 2 billion-plus users as "a community" or "the Facebook community." A community is a set of people with reciprocal rights, powers, and responsibilities.
Exactly. It's the same reason I don't love startups who insist they're a family - I don't have the ability to leave my family and I wasn't born into your company. It's a false equivalence. The same is true of calling a mass-market surveillance platform a "community".
At hearings, industry representatives complained that they had been put in the impossible position of either accepting the compromise or fighting a ballot initiative they had no power to change. "The internet industry will not obstruct or block AB 375 from moving forward," the Internet Association announced, "because it prevents the even-worse ballot initiative from becoming law in California." Soltani wryly pointed out that Mactaggart had offered Silicon Valley a take-it-or-leave-it privacy policy — the same kind that Silicon Valley usually offered everyone else.
Such a great story about the power of democracy.
A study out Wednesday in the journal Science Advances described "a hierarchy of desirability" in the messaging tactics of online daters. It also found that both men and women messaged potential partners who were on average 25 percent more attractive than they were.
I've read many narratives about white people just touching black hair and I read them with my mouth open. Not because of the racism, even. Just because as a polite person the idea of just reaching out and touching anyone's hair makes my eye twitch. When would it be appropriate? If there was a very large poisonous spider in their hair. If I was doing a magic trick. Or after six or more years of marriage.