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Microsoft Employee Says Whites, Asians Discriminated Against

Andrew Orr ·

Messages posted by an unknown female Microsoft programmer in internal Yammer boards say that white and Asian men are being discriminated against.

To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men. I have an ever-increasing file of white male Microsoft employees who have faced outright and overt discrimination because they had the misfortune of being born both white and male.

Microsoft’s 2018 demographic report shows that 55.1% of employees are Caucasian, 31.9% are Asian, and 73.4% are male. Personally, I think it’s a bit telling if you feel oppressed by more equality and diversity.

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JCPenney Explains Apple Pay Removal

Andrew Orr ·

This morning we heard that JCPenney quietly removed support for Apple Pay from its stores. Now we have a better idea why.

The retailer now claims the move was necessitated by the April 13, 2019 deadline in the U.S. for supporting EMV contactless chip functionality. As of this date, all terminals at U.S. merchants locations that accept contactless payments must actively support EMV contactless chip functionality, and the legacy MSD (magnetic stripe data) contactless technology must be retired. JCPenney was not ready to comply, it seems, so it switched off all contactless payment options as a result. However, it hasn’t ruled out re-enabling them later on, it seems.

TMO Deals

KOBRA Wireless Car Scanner: $14.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on the KOBRA Wireless Car Scanner. This device plugs into your car’s on-board diagnostics port to read data on your car’s performance. It then connects with a iOS, Android, or Windows device via Wi-Fi so you can make use of that data. It works on any car made after 1996, and it’s $14.99 through our deal.

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Some Instragram Meme Accounts Want to Unionize

Charlotte Henry ·

Left-wing memes are often very popular on Instagram. They have even made some of the people who share them quite well-off. Now some of those creators want to form a union, according to Vox.

The union, the first major organizing effort for professional meme creators on Instagram, is made up of that latter group, and now has thousands of followers on its official account and an open application process for new members. As Taylor Lorenz notes in the Atlantic, it will probably never be recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that governs unions, but the organizing drive is still very real: Not only does it use traditional union organizing tactics, but the memers have concrete demands they want Instagram to agree to. And with growing membership, they’ll likely have a bit of leverage.

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The 11 People Trying to Fight Fake News in the Indian Election

Charlotte Henry ·

The Indian election is the world’s largest democratic exercise. There is, unsurprisingly, some concern that it could be undermined by fake news. Bloomberg News met Boom Live, an 11-strong team of fact-checkers that make up 1 of the 7 firms working with Facebook’s efforts.

Based on the early tallies, more than 60 percent of India’s 900 million eligible voters are expected to cast ballots between now and May 19, as the center-left Congress Party tries to seize power from the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. As in other elections around the world, paid hacks and party zealots are churning out propaganda on Facebook and the company’s WhatsApp messenger, along with Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and other ubiquitous communication channels. Together with Facebook’s automated filters, Boom’s 11 fact-checkers and its similar-size fellow contractors are the front line of the social network’s shield against this sludge.

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Joshua Cohen, Apple’s Philosopher, is not Available for Comment

Andrew Orr ·

Apparently, Apple employs a full-time philosopher named Joshua Cohen. But he doesn’t have permission to talk to the media.

The company hired Joshua Cohen, formerly a political philosophy professor at Stanford University to work at Apple University, an institution created by Steve Jobs in 2008 to offer employees the kind of training typically available at university programs. The specifics of this university are kept tightly under wraps.