News for the week of April 10

News for the week of April 10

1st Article:

Isaac, Mike. "Uber Settles Suit Over Driver Background Checks." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-suit-over-driver-background-checks.html?ref=technology>.

In case you do not know, Uber is an app that allows you to call an Uber driver to drive you somewhere for a fee. The issue with this was that Uber failed to make sure that their drivers had to make sure they had performed good background checks. As a punishment, Uber had to pay $10 million and will have to pay fifteen more if they do not put better background checks in place. Uber had actually lobbied for less background checks in the past. After that, they faced another lawsuit and although they paid it, they claimed they did nothing wrong. Now Uber says that they are happy that this is over and that they can get better.

Uber has always been fascinating to me. While we may not have flying cars, we do have Uber. However, whenever I explain Uber to someone they always ask the same thing: What if you have a bad driver? This is why I am glad that Uber had lost this. I think they definitely should make tougher background checks and allow fewer people to be drivers. I hope they will follow through with this and that Uber will be much safer.

2nd Article:

Wahba, Phil. "Starbucks Roastery in New York Will Be Its Largest Store." Time. Time, 5 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <http://time.com/4283209/starbucks-roastery-nyc-largest-store/>.

On April 5, Starbucks announced they would open a new location in NYC. However, it is not just any old location. It is a “roastery.” This means that it will be the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for coffee. It will be 20,000 square feet, which makes it the largest Starbucks store in the world. It will open in 2018.

Throughout my education I have been taught about monopolies time and time again. Now, today there are not supposed to be any. Since Starbucks has 220 locations just in NYC, I think it is safe to say that Starbucks has a monopoly. While this is actually a good idea, the roastery will take up 20,000 square feet. If they did not do this many small businesses could take that location. These would be locations that would each have something interesting about them and not just be a terrible coffee place.

3rd Article (longer one):

Klug, Foster. "North Korea Says It Tested A New Long-Range Rocket Engine." Time. Time, 9 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <http://time.com/4287556/north-korea-claims-test-new-long-range-rocket/?xid=homepage>.

Yesterday North Korea claimed they tested a new long-range  rocket engine, and it worked. This may not be true since North Korea is not always the most reliable. The difference between this and the tests that North Korea has done in the past is that this missile could reach the U.S. mainland. This rocket could also go into the atmosphere and come back into it for re-entry. The rocket also would be very hard to detect if they truly have gotten this technology to work. The only evidence provided is a photo of Kim standing by what appears to be a rocket, which proves nothing.

Young dictators that have too much control have always been a fascination of mine. It is amazing to see how we view nations run by these people. In at least every other line of this article, the author includes a line to clarify this. I think that this would not happen if Russia claimed it had developed a new type of rocket. Also, it was interesting that at the top of the article, in bold, the author states that the rocket could hit the U.S. I think the author did this to get views, which is the exact reason I hate most news.

News for the Week of April 3

1st Article:

 Berenson, Tessa. "Father Asks Apple to Unlock His Dead Son's Phone." Time. Time, 1 Apr. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. <http://time.com/4279454/father-asks-apple-to-unlock-his-dead-sons-phone/>.

A recent study was published that showed that by 2050 one billion people throughout Asia could have their water supplies threatened. This is because of climate change, population growth and some socio-economic conditions. The study was published in the last week or so. It was published in the journal Plos One. Plos One is a journal that tries to publish fair articles. The interesting thing is that this is affecting different parts of Asia for different reasons (I. E. India’s rapid population growth and China’s Industrial Growth).  

I was very intrigued to see if there would be any bias in this article. In a way, there is. The writer does not think that climate change is not happening. Since I agree with him, I liked that it was written like it was not trying to convince you of climate change, it was telling you it was happening. One thing I latched onto in the article was when the author talked about the overpopulation problem because it is talked about so little. The one thing I did not like about the article was that it did not talk about how to fix these problems. The main reason problems are not solved is simply because of people not knowing how to solve them. At the end the writer could have said a place to donate to at least instead of just making the reader worried.

2nd Article:

Berenson, Tessa. "Father Asks Apple to Unlock His Dead Son's Phone." Time. Time, 1 Apr. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. <http://time.com/4279454/father-asks-apple-to-unlock-his-dead-sons-phone/>.

In the middle of March, the adopted son (Dama) of Leonardo Fabbretti died at the age of 13. He died of Bone Cancer. Fabbretti did not have many pictures of his son from the few months before he died so he went to look on his son’s phone. But when he did, it was locked and he could not get into it. So he wrote Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple) to see if he would unlock the phone for him. This would allow him to see his son’s last thoughts and photos.

Now this article may not seem like the type of article I am supposed to write, but hold on for a minute. The significance of this article is at the end. Fabbretti includes in his letter that what he is going through is an “exceptional case.” Now this is interesting because of what happened between Apple and our Government a few weeks back. The FBI asked Tim Cook to give them an option to practically be able to unlock any iphone whenever they want. While the article never states it, there definitely is a connection between these events. This raises very interesting questions. What could be defined as an exceptional case? Could letting people in these positions get what they want lead to things Apple has said they will not stand? What happens when these issues involve dead people? We have to start really considering these things before we make decisions that could really impact bigger events.

3rd Article (the longer one):

Geewax, Marilyn. "Minimum And Overall Wages Are Rising, Luring Workers Back." NPR. NPR, 1 Apr. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. <http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/01/472680235/minimum-and-overall-wages-are-rising-luring-workers-back>.

It may have taken almost a decade, but wages are starting to increase. The good thing is that this is a nation wide increase. California has put a plan into action that will raise the minimum wage to an unheard of $15 an hour in the next five years. In addition to this, New York says the minimum wage here will also be $15 an hour by 2018. In the last month alone, retailers have added 48,000 jobs and food service and drinking places added 25,000 jobs. However, manufacturing jobs went down by 29,000 and 12,000 jobs were lost in the mining section.

I am a big advocate of increasing the minimum wage, so this article attracted my attention. It is clearly written as a one sided thing, but when that thing is getting Americans to work, how can you not agree? The one thing I really liked about the article is that it was not all good news. At the very end, the author put the thing about the amount of jobs that were lost. This was well placed because if the author had put this at the start of the article, the reader never would have processed it as well. The one thing I disliked about this article (as well as the others) is that the author(s) never talk about how they can fix these problems.

The Movement Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0KZAzT-P9s