Activists say raids on Planned Parenthood are part of a right-wing campaign against women's reproductive rights.

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Mimic implements a devilishly sick idea floated on Twitter by Peter Ritchie: "Replace a semicolon (;) with a Greek question mark (;) in your friend's C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error." There are quite a few characters in the Unicode character set that look, to some extent or another, like others – homoglyphs. Mimic substitutes common ASCII characters for obscure homoglyphs. Caution: using this script may get you fired and/or beaten to a pulp.

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A referendum to change the constitution in Congo triggers violent protests.

An anonymous reader writes: An article at the NY Times summarizes the state of research on cognitive improvement. There are multiple industries — from big pharma to the makers of "brain-training" games — trying to convince you there are ways to become more intelligent. Unfortunately, scientific research doesn't really bear that out. There is, however, evidence you can provide short-term boosts, slow aging-related cognitive decline, and trick yourself into achieving better outcomes. Experiments show that simply telling a group of low-performing students that intelligence is malleable led to higher test scores. Researchers also found a use for mental exercises, but only in adults over the age of 60, a time at which some level of cognitive decline is common. Physical exercise seems to help fight that cognitive shrinkage as well. Oddly, different exercises fight it in different ways. As for drugs, there is some evidence that stimulants help with long-term memory, but that's about it. That's not to say they have no effect, just that their effect is more to make you feel smarter instead of actually being smarter. The article does point out one of the best ways to combat cognitive decline: maintain social engagement as you get older. "[P]eople with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects."

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theodp writes: Earlier this week, Amazon sicced former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on the NY Times and the ex-Amazon employees that were interviewed for the NYT's brutal August 2015 article about Amazon's white-collar workplace culture. So, one can hardly wait to see how Amazon and Carney will respond to The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp, Dave Jamieson's epic new HuffPo piece on what the future of low-wage work really looks like. Jamieson tells the heartbreaking tale of Jeff Lockhart Jr., who through some workforce sleight-of-hand was working-at-Amazon-but-not-entitled-to-Amazon-benefits when he met his maker after he collapsed in aisle A-215 of Amazon's Chester, VA fulfillment center and laid unconscious beneath shelves stocked with Tupperware and heating pads. Lockhart, whose white work badge distinguished him as a member of the Integrity Staffing Solutions temp worker caste as opposed to a blue-badged Amazon employee (Google yellow-badged its benefits-less temp workers), sadly left behind a wife and three kids, the oldest of which is legally blind. Jamieson writes, "Whoever found Jeff on the third floor apparently alerted Amcare, Amazon's in-house medical team, which is staffed with EMTs and other medical personnel. In the event of a health issue, Amazon instructs workers to notify security before calling emergency services. An employee brochure from a facility in Tennessee, obtained through a public records request, reads: 'In the event of a medical emergency, contact Security. Do Not call 911! Tell Security the nature of the medical emergency and location. Security and/or Amcare will provide emergency response.'" If you're pressed for reading time, Salon's Scott Timberg has a nice TL;DR recap.

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I'm going to make a request of the lazy web. I don't do it often. But this is one of those times when it's the right thing to do.

What I need

1. I need a nw.js app.

2. I want to download the app and run it on my machine. It must not matter what folder I run it in.

3. Mac OS.

4. It has one command in its menu, it prompts for the address of a file on the web that contains JavaScript code. When I enter the URL, it includes the code:

   includeScriptCode (theUrl)

5. I've provided the source for includeScriptCode in this gist.

6. It should store the URL in localStorage and include the script code every time it starts up.

7. If you want to get fancy you could let the user specify the URL of a stylesheet and call useStylesheet with its address as the param.

Who is the user?

Developers who want to get started with nw.js development without having to wade through a dozen confusing getting-started tutorials.

Why I need this

I go crazy trying to understand the getting-started docs for nw.js.

I need to have this much done for me, so I can get started. Then in a few weeks I'll be ready to ship something, at that point I will need to understand how to build one for release.

All the docs assume that's the first thing I want to do, learn how to build something for release. But I can't understand those docs until I actually use it.

Yes, I probably could figure this out if it's all I had to do for a few days. But I'd rather spend the time building features for my users and readers. This simple step should exist as part of the nw.js community.

Please help. Not only will you be helping me, but you'll be helping a bunch of people who will follow, and will appreciate a simpler nw.js startup.

Two men on a motorcycle gun down parliamentary hopeful Mostafa Abdelrahman of the Salafist Nour party in El Arish.

HughPickens.com writes: This year, murders have spiked in major cities across America. According to FBI director James B. Comey the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers that has come in the wake of highly publicized incidents of police brutality may be the main reason for the recent increase in violent crime. "I don't know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year," says Comey. He says he's been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations. That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country's most violent cities. Officers tell Comey that youths surround police when they get out of their vehicles, taunting them and making videos of the spectacle with their cell phones. "In today's YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime," says Comey. "Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns."

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Load configs from files and the environment

Run chmod recursively against directories

Have error logging capabilities in your Dist::Zilla plugin