Realitista

Thinking Utopian: How about a universal basic income?

First, what are some advantages of providing a universal basic income? To those on the left, a UBI would create greater equality by ending poverty and providing a minimum living standard. It would also increase bargaining power for workers, who could demand better working conditions with a safety cushion. As Erik Olin Wright argues in Envisioning Real Utopias, such bargaining power “will generate an incentive structure for employers to seek technical and organizational innovations that eliminate unpleasant work,” which would “have not just a labor-saving bias, but a labor-humanizing bias.”

Every Noise at Once: The Greatest Music Discovery Map Ever

This thing is amazing. They’ve mapped every genre and have given samples to listen to of each. A lot to learn here.

Parents may protect babies against future allergies by sucking on kids' pacifiers

To protect a baby against future allergies, parents may want to consider sucking on their kid’s pacifier.

New research finds kids whose parents “cleaned” their child’s pacifier by sucking it were less likely to develop asthma, eczema and food allergies when compared to kids whose parents opted to avoid the not-so-pleasant-sounding cleaning method.

“We demonstrate that a common parental practice, sucking on the infant’s pacifier before it is given back to the infant, is associated with protection against early eczema development and asthma symptoms,” wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Bill Hesselmar, a pediatric allergist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working

The FBI-style anonymization might seem a little extreme, but ultimately it is making a legitimate point: not only do patent trolls pile on to successful startups, they can also be vindictive towards those who criticize them. The developer describes the snowball effect that patent lawsuits can have:

Even if you fight, and you win, you still put a big bullseye on your back that other patent trolls can look for, because suddenly you’re on their radar and they think maybe you’re wounded and don’t have any more resources to fight.

The developer’s story is familiar. Once a startup crosses a certain threshold of success, the licensing demands start pouring in, followed by the lawsuit threats, followed by the tough choice between settling and fighting. And, of course, these are the kinds of patents that describe broad concepts without actually solving any problems, held by non-practicing entities who develop no products:

We are now being sued by two of them for patents that are as broad as using a website to talk to a server, which is just the building blocks of the internet, to making a font legible on a mobile device. Just basic stuff, and it’s been hugely disruptive to our business.