It was all too painfully familiar, making it that much more easy to believe. P.K. Subban, a black player on the hated Montreal Canadiens team playing in a near-lily white league, was the target of racist tweets after scoring the winning goal in Game 1 of the playoff series against the Boston Bruins earlier this […]
Technology
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Comcast: Is bigger better?
Comcast’s proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner is getting lots of negative reviews, but the monopolistic nature of cable service today makes it difficult for customers to see what’s going to change if the nation’s No. 1 cable company merges with the No. 2 firm. If the deal wins regulatory approval, Comcast would end […]
Posted inThe Download
Trying to Patch the sinking news lifeboat
Soccer is the game of the future, its deriders have long said, and always will be. After the latest news that Patch, the pet project of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, has laid off two-thirds of its remaining staff, you have to wonder if hyperlocal news sites are becoming the European football of journalism. About two […]
Posted inThe Download
The battle for the last digital mile
Net neutrality is a simple concept: All data are created equally. Or, at least, should be treated equally. It means, at its base, TimeWarner, Verizon, Comcast, or some other broadband provider cannot discriminate in data speed. The Federal Communications Commission implemented the net neutrality regulation – more formally known as Open Internet – as a […]
Posted inHealth Care, The Download
Rage against the machine
Technology has been credited – some would say condemned – for launching the demise of newspapers and other media. Now, the computer industry has been identified as the bogeyman in the problems facing a number of emerging programs at the state and national level. Software and hardware “glitches” are being blamed for an array of failures […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service, The Download
Technology services tax snafu ensnares Democrats
What if Massachusetts levied a tax and no one wanted to pay it? The business community is in full chuck-the-tea-in-Boston-Harbor mode over the new computer and software services tax. The 6.25 percent sales tax on “computer system design services” would bring in $161 million annually to help the ailing state transportation sector, according to […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download
Cape Wind’s new foes
After years of sitting on the fence, the state’s top CEOs came out against Cape Wind yesterday in a series of full-page newspaper ads in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Cape Cod Times. The Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a coalition of 16 corporate chieftains, joined long-time Cape Wind foe Associated Industries of Massachusetts […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
Scream all you want but don’t Yahoo! at home
There’s something ironic, perhaps disconcerting, about a tech company built on people’s ability to access it from anywhere forcing its employees to work in the office rather than at home. And there’s something equally head-scratching that a new mother, hired in her third trimester to take over a Fortune 500 company, who was viewed as […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Uber cab controversy
The Boston cab industry has never been much of a sympathetic character. So it was no surprise when the state’s August attempt to shut down the cell-phone-based cab service known as Uber was reversed in the face of outright hostility from the startup’s many fans. But in acting so quickly to placate a growing tech […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
The T giveth, and the T taketh away
Commuters getting on the MBTA this morning may have found the ride a little bit more predictable. The Globe reports that the T is beginning to roll out a countdown system on its LED displays today that lets riders know exactly how many minutes away the next train is. Real time data for the Red, […]