Tax Bill That Will Further Enrich the Wealthy Is Close to Becoming Law Rolling Stone
If Uber Is a Taxi Firm, Airbnb Looks a Lot Like a Hilton Bloomberg
If Uber Is a Taxi Firm, Airbnb Looks a Lot Like a Hilton Bloomberg
Uber’s trying to manage the optics is priceless “yeah, well, we never said that we weren’t regulated as a taxi service in a lot of markets so nothing to see here, move one” — of course the whole reason they fought this all the way to the ECJ was as a test case to try to escape registration requirements and regulations being imposed imposed on them at a city/country level by any jurisdiction.
Here is the press release, with a link to the ruling in it: According to Advocate General Szpunar, the Uber electronic platform, whilst innovative, falls within the field of transport: Uber can thus be required to obtain the necessary licences and authorisations under national law
Wackiest tech gadgets you can gift USAToday. UserFriendly:
Wow, USATODAY made a holiday wish list for @internetofshit!!!
#1 Creepy Robot that essentially is a Roomba that spys on you taking pictures and videos instead of cleaning the house.
Why an Episode of Peppa Pig is Banned in Australia
If you're a four-year-old in the United Kingdom, you probably
know who Peppa Pig, above, is. The anthropomorphic, snorting pig and her family
are a mainstay of children's television there -- and, increasingly, elsewhere
-- with unrivaled popularity throughout Great Britain. Each episode features
Peppa's family and her friends (and often the friends of her brother, George)
exploring the everyday adventures that come with being a preschooler. Take, for
example, Wikipedia's
description of the first episode of the show's third season,
titled "Work and Play:" "When Peppa and Suzy [that's Suzy Sheep,
Peppa's best friend] learn that grown-ups must work all day, they decide to
play at working in a store. But they quickly get tired of it." It's not
very hard-hitting stuff, but little kids tend to like it.
As of this writing,
there are four seasons of the show totaling 208 episodes, each of which is five
minutes. (There's also a ten minute Christmas special.) One of them can be seen
below…… but if you’re in Australia, your major broadcaster doesn’t want your preschooler to watch it.
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That episode is called "Spider Web." Wikipedia's description is short but to the point: "There's a spider in the house, so Mummy Pig tells Daddy Pig to get rid of it." The Pig family spend much of the five minutes discussing whether the spider should be able to live with them or not -- Mummy Pig wants it gone, but Daddy Pig notes that spiders eat flies and are therefore good to have around. In the end, the family concludes that spiders are good to have around (although better outside the house than inside). Daddy Pig even makes a new rule: no one is to break a spider’s web, as the spider worked long and hard to build it, and that just wouldn’t be nice.
"Spider
Web" originally aired in the UK on December 21, 2011 and soon
was available for broadcast in other areas. Australia was one of those
secondary regions -- but it never made it to TV there. Peppa Pig typically airs
on ABC 4 Kids in Australia and the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company),
which operates that channel, declined to air the episode.
The problem: spiders
in Australia are really dangerous. Really. As Wikipedia notes, “Australia
has some highly venomous spiders, including the notorious Sydney funnel-web,
its relatives in the Atrax genus, and redback spiders, whose bites can be
deadly.” Even though the most common spiders in Australia are generally not
very toxic, there are some best avoided. Learning to play nice with spiders is
a bad idea if you're an Australian four-year-old.
The ABC's decision
probably wouldn't have come to light except for a slight error on their part.
In August of 2012, a viewer complained that the Spider Web" episode
appeared on an ABC-run website. The ABC apologized for
their error, and the episode is no longer available there.Bonus fact: Peppa Pig’s first two seasons featured Peppa and friends riding their bicycles without helmets and riding in cars without seatbelts. Parents complained, and the first two seasons were re-edited to fix a lot of these deficiencies. (Here’s a side-by-side of one scene which was edited to add helmets to Peppa and her bicycling friends.) Of course, there were still some problems in this area — in the clip above, Daddy Pig borrows Peppa’s bike but takes it without first donning a helmet.
From the Archives: Bacon of the Sea: Pigs can’t fly. They can, however, swim.
Coral sex conceives new growth for Great Barrier Reef
Even a little exercise boosts your brain
