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Opinion: How Big Tech’s predatory culture fuels failures like SVB

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

After 20 years of what appeared to be unstoppable growth, America’s tech industry has spent the past year underperforming the rest of the economy. Product failures in new industries like virtual reality and cryptocurrency, layoffs across the board, lower stock prices, and the failure of Silicon Valley Bank create a teachable moment to talk about the tech industry’s culture and direction.To an increasing degree over the past dozen years, the tech industry exploited the trust of consumers and policymakers to change the game. Rather than empowering users, many new technologies have exploited human weakness. They have used data and application design to manipulate the choices and sometimes the behavior of users, undermining their autonomy.The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank illustrates a tech industry culture that prioritizes profit over the public interest time and again. For decades, SVB embraced Silicon Valley culture, providing unique services to its community. And until quit...

Skeletal remains found in Lake Mead identified as 1970s drowning victim

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

By Elizabeth Wolfe and Paradise Afshar | CNNHuman remains discovered in Lake Mead in October have been identified as a 39-year-old man who is believed to have drowned in the reservoir nearly five decades ago, officials announced Tuesday.Medical examiners determined the remains belong to Donald Smith, a Las Vegas resident who reportedly drowned in April 1974, the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner said in a release.“The identification was based on DNA analysis and reports from the original incident,” the release said. “The cause and manner of Mr. Smith’s death was determined to be drowning and accidental.Smith’s remains were uncovered after a diver came across a human bone in Lake Mead’s National Recreation Area’s Callville Bay on October 17, prompting a search by a park dive team that uncovered more skeletal remains.Smith’s remains were at least the sixth discovery of human remains at the reservoir in the past year as a prolonged, excruciating drought across the Ame...

Program to fix California mobile home parks approved 1 application in 10 years. Will a rebrand work?

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

BY MANUELA TOBIAS | Cal MattersMobile home residents in California face an outsize risk of failing utility systems, flooding and fires as a result of infrastructure that frequently hasn’t been updated or repaired in decades.In 1984, California passed a law to help remedy this: a loan program, paid into by the residents themselves, to buy and in later iterations, fix their parks.But that solution, for the last 10 years, has helped only one of California’s 4,500 mobile home parks.State administrators approved a single loan application, in 2021, from a fund now worth $33.5 million, the state’s Housing and Community Development Department confirmed to CalMatters. The loan went to a non-profit organization to rehabilitate a run-down park in the Eastern Coachella Valley, a region notorious for its dilapidated mobile home parks. The last two applications it approved before that were in 2012, according to Alicia Murillo, speaking for the department.Housing experts, including from the housin...

Mistrial declared in case against Bay Area man charged with killing father

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

Acquitted last week of first-degree murder for the 2018 death of his father and with the jury then unable to reach a verdict of second-degree murder, Victor Alfonso Estrada, 34, of Fairfield, returned to his Solano County Jail cell and awaits a new trial date, The Reporter has learned.Solano County Superior Court Judge William J. Pendergast, who presided over the seven-week trial in Department 11, declared a mistrial on March 21, when the jury, after five days of deliberations and the acquittal on March 20, hung on the lesser charge. He ordered Estrada to return for a new trial setting at 8:30 a.m. Monday in the Justice Center in Fairfield.In a text message, Estrada’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Nick Filloy, told The Reporter that “the jury worked very hard and was commended for their service” by the judge, himself and Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro, who led the prosecution.Filloy did not comment at length on the trial’s outcome, only adding, “Hung juries are not a good...

Opinion: How climate scientists give their children hope without lying

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

Having a child is the most emphatic statement of hope a person can make. I have three young kids, and yet I have trouble remaining optimistic about the world they and their children will inhabit in 2100 and beyond.The world 77 years from now is likely to be far hotter and more unstable, warmed in a way that depopulates entire metropolises and renders farmland nonarable. It’s a world the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns will become reality unless we make dramatic, immediate reductions in our fossil fuel use.We’re not on track to make those changes in time to prevent a world in which animal and plant species will die off at an alarming rate. And yet, kids deserve to have hope.But not false hope. That was emphasized to me by Peter Kalmus, one of the climate scientists I called a few months ago to discuss the dissonance of raising children in a world we know to be headed for breakdown. In fact, “Earth breakdown”...

Monterey County man convicted for fatally stabbing fiancé in 2021

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

SALINAS – A Salinas man has been convicted for stabbing his fiancé to death in 2021.On Monday, a Monterey County Superior Court jury found Richard Ruiz, 61, guilty of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon, the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office announced this week.Ruiz’ sentencing is scheduled for May 18.In February 2021, Ruiz was engaged to Gabriela Guzman. On Feb. 17, Guzman’s son, Richard Chavez, contacted the Salinas Police Department dispatch and requested officers conduct a welfare check of his mother, as Guzman had not shown up to work for two days and no one was able to reach her.But when Salinas Police Officers arrived at Guzman’s Creekbridge area residence, they found her body in her bedroom, the DA’s Office said in a press release. She was stabbed six times in the face and neck.A Salinas Police Department investigation led officers to Ruiz. According to the DA’s Office, Ruiz was last at Guzman’s residence in the evening hours of Feb. 13, 2021. Detect...

Senate: Credit Suisse still helps rich Americans evade taxes

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

GENEVA (AP) — U.S. lawmakers say Credit Suisse kept allowing wealthy Americans to dodge tax payments, finding after a two-year investigation that the embattled Swiss bank violated a 2014 plea agreement it entered for enabling tax evasion.The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday pointed to a possible criminal conspiracy tied to nearly $100 million in secret offshore accounts belonging to one family of American taxpayers that the bank didn’t disclose.The committee said its findings show that more than $700 million was concealed in violation of Credit Suisse’s 9-year-old plea deal.“Credit Suisse got a discount on the penalty it faced in 2014 for enabling tax evasion because bank executives swore up and down they’d get out of the business of defrauding the United States,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, the Democratic chairman of the committee. “This investigation shows Credit Suisse did not make good on that promise, and the bank’s pending acquisition does not wipe the slate clean.”Th...

Sweden finds woman guilty of war crimes for gruesome photos

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Swedish court on Wednesday found a 35-year-old woman guilty of war crimes for posting photos of herself with severed heads that were on display in a Syrian city in 2014.Fatosh Ibrahim who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to three months in prison.The Goteborg District Court said Fatosh Ibrahim “on two occasions published photographs of severed heads impaled on the fence” of a Raqqa roundabout, placed there by Islamic State group militants.Ibrahim used her cell phone to take photos of herself in Raqqa’s Naim Square – meaning “Paradise” – where Islamic State group militants had displayed hanged bodies or heads.The court said in its ruling that Ibrahim posted on Facebook “disparaging comments about the people in the photos and expressed that they deserved what they were subjected to.”“The woman had clearly expressed her sympathy with the actions of the Islamic State group, and her actions have been considered to be in connection wit...

US Senate Finance Committee: Credit Suisse allowed rich Americans to keep evading taxes in violation of 2014 plea deal

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

GENEVA (AP) — US Senate Finance Committee: Credit Suisse allowed rich Americans to keep evading taxes in violation of 2014 plea deal.Source

Tragedia en Ciudad Juárez: migrantes se quedaron encerrados en incendio mortal

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:20:54 GMT

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, México — Cuando empezó a salir humo de un centro de detención de migrantes en la ciudad fronteriza de Ciudad Juárez, México, la migrante venezolana Viangly Infante Padrón quedó aterrorizada porque sabía que su esposo seguía dentro.El padre de sus tres hijos había sido detenido ese día por agentes de inmigración, dentro de una reciente operación donde fueron detenidos otros 67 migrantes, muchos de los cuales pedían limosna o lavaban ventanas de autos en semáforos de la ciudad, al otro lado de la frontera con El Paso, Texas.En momentos de conmoción y espanto, Infante Padrón recordó cómo vio a los agentes de inmigración salir corriendo del edificio cuando comenzó el fuego el lunes por la noche. Más tarde sacaron los cuerpos de migrantes en camillas, envueltos en mantas de emergencia. El resultado: 38 muertos y 28 heridos graves, víctimas de un incendio al parecer provocado como protesta por los propios detenidos. Exigen investigar incendio en centro migrato...