"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

Think Progress article detailing a WSJ expose from the CBO, which notes that effective corporate tax rates are at their lowest in forty years

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"When did TED lose its edge? When did TED stop trying to collect smart people and instead collect people trying to be smart? (...) What began as something spontaneous and unique has today become a parody of itself. What was exceptional and emergent in the realm of ideas has been bottled, packaged, and sold back to us over and over again. The whole TED vibe has come to resemble a sales pitch."

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"TED is not simply “engaging” & “entertaining” but a specific type of entertainment that is increasingly out of touch & exclusionary.

…appears that whole TED brand induces laughter from many of those skeptical of corporate speak & techno-jargon. At first, I thought I was laughing alone; however, it turns out that lots of other people are equally unimpressed by the current state of TED…I’m not the only one who does not take TED very seriously or worse, views the whole project as suspect…

Perhaps the biggest complaint I heard was that TED smells of corporatism…

So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what’s being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery…

As Mike Bulajewski pointed out in a Tweet, “TED’s ‘revolutionary ideas’ mask capitalism as usual, giving it a narrative of progress and change.”"

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

There’s an understanding that the price of entering a “free” giveaway is that you’ll be exposed to marketing, in some form. That’s an unpleasant and intrusive thing, hence my use of the word ‘price’. Social media has created new categories of marketing-exposure that can be actively damaging to not only the entrant or customer, but also the reputation of the companies involved.

Federal regulators have warned Johnson & Johnson that it could face fines and other sanctions for selling faulty insulin pumps and delaying disclosures of serious injuries to diabetics who were using its OneTouch Ping and 2020 pumps. The FDA ordered the Animas Corp. unit of J&J to explain why it kept selling pumps known to fail and also to submit a plan to rectify a failure to promptly report cases in which its device might have caused or contributed to death or serious injury....
In the issue with the Animas insulin pumps, some pump keypads for controlling how much insulin is injected were deteriorating prematurely, leading to failures. "We decided to go with a new keypad because it's more durable," [spokesperson Caoline] Pavis said.
But while Animas was lining up the new keypad supplier, it was still selling the older ones. The FDA demanded documents about the company's decision to do that.

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

"Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow" <rss2email@nocko.net>

Host Adam Savage of Mythbusters tells how Visa, Mastercard, and Discover had the Discovery Channel put the kibosh on an episode that would have revealed just how “trackable and hackable” the RFID chips found in many credit cards are. It’s a telling example of how corporate advertisers serve as the gatekeepers of mainstream media/entertainment:

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