An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A California judge has granted Uber and Lyft an emergency reprieve from an order requiring them to treat their drivers as employees. The companies were facing a Thursday deadline to comply with the order. Earlier today, Lyft announced that it would be forced to shut down in the state at midnight tonight. Lyft said it was being forced to shut down its California operations by a 2019 California law, AB 5, that forces ride-hailing companies to treat their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. Uber had warned that it was likely to do the same if the courts didn't delay enforcement of the law. "This is not something we wanted to do, as we know millions of Californians depend on Lyft for daily, essential trips," Lyft wrote. However, the company said, the new law would "necessitate an overhaul of the entire business model -- it's not a switch that can be flipped overnight." The judge's emergency stay means that Lyft and Uber will be able to keep operating under their current model while they continue litigating whether the new law applies to them. Yesterday, in a podcast interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi rejected the notion his company is capable of employing all of its drivers in California. "We can't go out and hire 50,000 people overnight," Khosrowshahi said on the Pivot School podcast hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. "Everything that we have built is based on this platform that... brings people who want transportation or delivery together. You can't flip that overnight."

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I'm sorry Faceboo, I don't come To Faceboo to learn how to use Faceboo, I come here to see what my friends are posting. I'm getting very annoyed.

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that found President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking his critics on Twitter. From a report: The lawsuit arose in 2017 after Trump's social media account blocked seven people who had tweeted criticism of the president in comment threads linked to his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle. Lower federal courts found that Trump's twitter account, where he often weighs in on official matters, constitutes a public forum and that blocking his detractors violated their constitutional free speech protections. In its Thursday petition to the Supreme Court, attorneys for the Justice Department (DOJ) urged the justices to overturn a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit against Trump.

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The aim is to reduce insect-borne diseases but environmental groups warn of unforeseen consequences.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This morning, multiple readers wrote in to alert us to a major Adobe gaff. It seems the latest update to the Lightroom app for iPhone and iPad inadvertently wiped users' photos and presets that were not already synced to the cloud. Adobe has confirmed that there is no way to get them back. The issue first cropped up on the Photoshop feedback forums two days ago, when the Lightroom app on iOS was updated to version 5.4. A user named Mohamad Alif Eqnur posted asking why all of his photos, presets, and watermark data had been removed after updating to the most recent version through the iOS app store. This was followed by replies from other users saying that the same thing happened to them, whether or not they were subscription based or free. One user posted to Reddit's r/Lightroom subreddit saying that they had lost "2+ years of edits" after the update. "I've talked with customer service for 4+ hours over the past 2 days and just a minute ago they told me that the issue has no fix and that these lost photos are unrecoverable," wrote the user. "Adobe is unbelievable some times. All I got was a 'we're sincerely sorry' and nothing else. 2+ years of photo edits just gone because of Adobe and all they give is a sorry, lmao." esterday afternoon, at 4:30pm Eastern Time, Adobe officially confirmed the issue, explaining that customers who updated to Lightroom 5.4 on iPhone and iPad "may be missing photos and presets," that those photos and presets are "not recoverable," and that they "sincerely apologize" to users who have been affected by the issue. Version 5.4.1 has already been released, fixing the issue, but it can do nothing about the lost data.

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Occam’s News. This just in. Breaking news. We live in Vichy America, controlled by Russia. They have been dismantling our communication infrastructure. While we weren’t paying attention. 3.5 years going on forever.

A question re #BLM. What do black police say? I can't say I've ever heard a black cop speak about it.

I wonder why the DNC didn't create an actual crowd for one or two speeches. It can be done safely. Look at the eulogy Barack Obama gave for John Lewis. The audience was very much part of the event. I think last night's keynote by Kamala Harris would have been more effective in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Maybe they'll create such an event tonight for the presidential nominee. I went to Obama's acceptance speech in Denver in 2008 in a football stadium. Quite an event.

Suppose you're a writer at The Atlantic. Do you pay to read Mother Jones? Or do your pubs exchange free subscriptions for their writers and editors?

A lesser-known technology known as "mailto" links can be abused to launch attacks on the users of email desktop clients. From a report: The new attacks can be used to secretly steal local files and have them emailed as attachments to attackers, according to a research paper published last week by academics from two German universities. The "vulnerability" at the heart of these attacks is how email clients implemented RFC6068 -- the technical standard that describes the 'mailto' URI scheme. Mailto refer to special types of links, usually supported by web browsers or email clients. These are links that, when clicked, they open a new email compose/reply window rather than a new web page (website). RFC6068 says that mailto links can support various parameters. When used with mailto links, these parameters will pre-fill the new email window with predefined content.

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Microsoft President Brad Smith warned of ongoing election interference through technology on Thursday at an Axios virtual event on the Future of Employability. From a report: "It was four years ago at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that our eyes were first opened to nation-state cyberattacks on candidates and campaigns ... Here we are again four years later ... We have stronger defenses ... but the threats are becoming more sophisticated," Smith said. "We are seeing attacks that are more likely to succeed than they were four years ago precisely because they are more numerous and more sophisticated," he added. "I think we need to be doing more not only to protect candidates and campaigns and journalists and think tanks, but where I think we really need to focus our energy is continuing to fight misinformation and securing our voting systems," Smith urged. Klobuchar, who earlier in the year sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said: "Last election was a dress rehearsal for what [Russia is] going to try now. There's every reason to believe they're going to do it again."

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I never do interviews on podcasts about podcasting, but I just did one, a few weeks ago, and they're getting ready to publish, and wanted a 75-word bio. So I wrote a new one. This one is exactly 75 words according to my script. I did not verify it by counting by hand.

• Dave Winer is an inventor of new media types, software developer and blogger in Woodstock NY. Started two Silicon Valley software companies, former contributing editor at Wired, with research fellowships at Harvard and NYU. Developed podcasting, RSS, blogging, outlining and web content management software. He has an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, and a BS in Math from Tulane. Winer has the first and longest-running blog on the internet, Scripting News, scripting.com.

Poll: Is it what it is?

I did some work on the mobile version of BingeWorthy this morning, and it should work now, whereas before it did not. It's still not totally the way I want it. Below is a screen shot.