Ukraine has allegedly struck the NIP-16 space communications and tracking facility in Crimea. According to reports, the attack was conducted on Saturday (June 22), using U.S.-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles.
This attack was one of two carried out by Ukraine over the weekend into the Crimean Peninsula. These come just over a month since the United States gave Ukraine the go-ahead to strike into Russian territory using U.S.-made weapons.
The first attack over the weekend targeted the space communications facility with approximately 20 radar dishes. Some of these were combined in large fixtures with eight dishes.
Low-resolution satellite images obtained by the War Zone (TWZ) appears to confirm that the NIP-16 facility was indeed attacked, as claimed. However, due to the image quality, it is difficult to determine the exact extent of the damage.
We’ll get to that in a minute. Snip.
After Russia seized it following the 2014 takeover of Crimea, the facility was handed over to its Aerospace Forces, which then began modernizing it, as reported by the Ukrainian Defense Express (UDE) news outlet.
“As of 2017, reports stated the center had received ten new systems, and the upgrading was still proceeding,” UDE explained. “The initial plan was to spend 1.8 billion rubles on the reconstruction of one radio telescope alone: at the exchange rate of that time, cost about $28 million,” it added.
The Kyiv Post reported that Russia is now using it for ballistic missile early warning, looking towards the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia. Others have postulated that it may be used for GLObalnaya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema in Russian (GLONASS), Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).
We’ve got a pretty good idea what was hit because the after satellite photos are already available:
Starting at the top right where the signs of burning are, there’s a pair of laser rangefinders. Moving down around them and in the central area of damage a six meter radom and a five meter radom. And in a bottom bit of damage some items I don’t understand: parabolics on a gimbal, one of them is called, who I’m sure appeared at Glastonbury last year [it’s a radar dish that came move around, like the ones in the Very Large Array]. An M 6 meter case grain [I suspect he means a 6 meter gain antenna], and a 15 meter retractable radar.
Plus “Three new structures which were built since October 2020 the bottom one built in March or April 2021 during Russia’s military buildup.”
OK, let’s talk about GLONASS. According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), GLONASS has an accuracy range of 4.46–7.38m, which is fine for nuclear weapons, or to track positions of planes and ships, or to hit most buildings, but falls woefully short of tactical battlefield accuracy. During the Desert Storm, U.S. generals would brag that military band GPS would let a cruise missile target an individual M&M in a bowl. Even if we’re limiting Ukrainian access to military band GPS, Civilian GPS + differential GPS (basically using fixed ground tower signals to provide higher accuracy) is probably at least an order of magnitude more accurate than GLONASS.
Differential GPS was something the Russians were going to try to bring online as part of a constellation upgrade, but the Ukraine war (and the sorry state of Roscosmos) might have sidelined that goal. On the other hand, the only scheduled Russian space launches for the rest of this year are all for upgraded GLONASS K1 sats, so maybe that’s the one thing they’re still doing.
Peter Zeihan thinks this move has the Russians way screwed.
“You use a deep space system to basically keep track of all your satellites in orbit and communicate among them and to the ground. And since satellites typically are [orbiting], you need several of these stations around the world in order to provide good coverage.”
“The Russians have never had that, because the Russians have never had a series of allies that they can trust on a global basis. So they have four of these networks within the Russian Federation and that’s it and apparently one of them was completely destroyed within the last 36 hours.”
“It pretty much is the end of the Russian civilian space program. It was already floundering and wasn’t economically viable, especially with the advent of SpaceX because the Russians used to use their old ICBMs as launch vehicles. Basically you use one of them and then it’s gone and then you use another one you keep doing that until they’re all gone and, well, they’re all gone now unless they actually want to go into their active reserve they were using the ones that were decommissioned after the end of the Cold War, so they’re no longer cost effective at all.” I’m not sure that this is true, as all recent Roscosmos space flights have used the Soyuz-2 rocket, whose development split off from ICBM development a long damn time ago.
“Second, military satellites. Most military satellites, like most civilian satellites, are whipping around the planet, and now the Russians have lost one quarter of what was left of their capacity to track and communicate with them. That’s going to provide a real problem for the Russians in terms of satellite communications. Not to mention anyone who was looking at getting the Russians to launch and maintain a military satellite for them now has to find someone who is not Russia to maintain it.”
“And if your goal was to get away from the United States, there just aren’t a lot of options here, because the Chinese don’t have a good network for this either. So basically you’re down to Europe with the Airbus Consortium or the United States.”
“Third and perhaps most significant moving forward is, with the loss of this the Russians are losing the ability to not just keep tabs on their satellites but but to get good telemetry for things like repairs. And if the Russians lose the capacity to do that, then their GLONASS, system which is their equivalent of GPS, starts to fall offline.”
“Now there are already parts of the world that don’t have very good coverage all that often, but if you remove meaningful launch capability and monitoring capability and maintenance capability from the Russian system (losing one more radar system would probably do that) then you’re talking about the Russians losing the capacity to use precision guided munitions using geographic tags, that would be an end to things like, say, glide bombs, which are the newest military innovation that the Russians have used, basically dropping one to two to three ton bombs from within Russian territory and then having them glide and hit targets. If you lose their ability for satellite communication that goes away.”
I think Zeihan slightly overstates the problem for Russia, or more specifically immanentizes the crisis more than is warranted, especially in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War. First, GLONASS precision wasn’t exacting to begin with, so its ability to hit tactical battlefield targets was questionable. Second, it takes time for sat global positioning errors to add up, even if you couldn’t use one of the three other stations for measurement and precision correction. Third, Russia hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of precision munitions in this war, the overwhelming majority of their weapons seem “dumb” anyway, and changing that has been made harder by sanctions. Finally, Russia could pull a sneaky end-around and relying on GPS as well as GLONASS for any precision weapons (as many civilian devices, including iPhones, have the capability to use) and the US has evidently retired “Selective Availability” for GPS.
My suspicion is that the GLONASS damage will be secondary to the destruction of whatever military radar capabilities Russia added to NIP-16, and which were evidently taken out by the strike as more battlespace preparation for the arrival of Ukrainian F-16s in theater later this year.
At least six Hooters restaurants in Texas suddenly joined the growing list of restaurant closures over the weekend, and more may follow.
A handful of Texas Hooters locations have been listed as “permanently closed” on Google, and national sports bar chain officials have confirmed the closure. U-Haul moving trucks were spotted being loaded outside of Lubbock’s Hooters, which was among the Texas locations to permanently close.
Hooters employees also shared the closure is the most recent of around 40 locations that have shuttered across the U.S. In addition to the Texas locations, Florida also saw the closure of a Hooters over the weekend.
“Like many restaurants under pressure from current market conditions, Hooters has made the difficult decision to close a select number of underperforming stores,” the company stated in an email. “Ensuring the well-being of our staff is our priority in these rare instances. With new Hooters restaurants opening domestically and internationally, new Hooters frozen products launching at grocery stores, and the Hooters footprint expanding into new markets with both company and franchise locations, this brand of 41 years remains highly resilient and relevant.”
The following Texas locations appear to be permanently closed:
Bryan: 960 N Earl Rudder Fwy
Lubbock: 4950 S Loop 289
McAllen: 410 E Expressway 83
San Angelo: 4384 Sherwood Way
Seabrook: 1818 NASA Road 1
Wichita Falls: 3701 Call Field Rd
According to the New York Post, “Roughly 40 of the 300 restaurants worldwide were shut, including in Florida, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. The number of Hooters locations has declined by 12% since 2018.”
You know a recession is serious when men stop paying for beer, cheeseburgers and fried appetizers delivered by busty, scantily-clad waitresses.
For those who have followed LinkSwarm links on falsified job data under the Biden Administration, it should come as no surprise that all the job gains in the largest and bluest state in the union in 2023 were fake.
According to the latest report published by the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) which is an agency of the California government, is overseen by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the California State Legislature, and performs and publishes extensive analyses of the state’s budget in addition to providing fiscal and policy advice to the California Legislature, contrary to prior reports of over substantial job gains in the deep blue state in 2023, the reality was far uglier.
In a report titled “Newest Early Jobs Revision Shows No Net Job Growth During 2023” we learn just that: the Early Revisions to state-level data flagged here previously, suggests that California actually lost jobs during the fourth quarter of last year. As the report details, “based on the most recent release of the early benchmarks, payroll jobs declined by 32,000 from September 2023 through December 2023. On the contrary, the preliminary monthly reports showed a solid increase in job growth (+117,000 jobs) at the time.”
This, according to the LAO, means that “with the fourth quarter revision, calendar year 2023 saw essentially no net job growth (+9,000 jobs overall).”
So maybe all but 9,000 were fake? Nope.
The data since January 2024 has not yet been rebenched, which means that the figure includes the Early Benchmark Revision for these recent months are growing at the same rate as the official CES estimates. But one can be absolutely certain that once the next set of revisions come in, California will not have generated any actual job growth for the second year in a row. In fact, make that all of America.
America’s favorite septuagenarian bomber is about to get another upgrade.
The B-52J is the latest iteration of the iconic B-52 Stratofortress, a long-range strategic bomber that has been a cornerstone of the United States Air Force (USAF) since its introduction in the 1950s. Yes, you read that right. The same Air Force that is desperate to retire the F-22A Raptor after only 20 years of using what most consider to be the world’s most advanced warplane has also operated a long-range bomber since Harry Truman was president.
Despite the fact that there have been a total of eight variants of this legendary bomber, the aircraft has basically remained the same in that time. Until now. The “J” represents a major modernization program (that’s why the Air Force opted to skip “I” and go to J, because it is two generations removed from the B-52H). In fact, the immediate predecessor to the newest incarnation of the Stratofortress, which is known as the B-52H, was first deployed in the 1960s.
That means that the B-52 has not had a major overhaul in its design since the Vietnam War!
All these modifications will ensure that the B-52 remains flying until 2050. In other words, a whole century after it was first deployed. I’d hate to harp on a point made earlier, but it boggles the mind that the Air Force is completely sanguine with keeping a bomber flying that was designed at a time before human beings had satellites in orbit and televisions were run off vacuum tubes and they are completely gung-ho to retire air-superiority stealth warplanes that are barely 20 years old.
The mind reels at this, actually.
Anyway, the B-52J is expected to have several key capabilities that differentiate it from its predecessors. It will ultimately cost $48.6 billion for the overhaul, by the way. One of the most significant upgrades is the replacement of the bomber’s original Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with the new Rolls-Royce F130 engines.
This change will increase fuel efficiency and range while curbing emissions as well as significantly reducing maintenance costs. The new engines will also be quieter and produce minimal smoke, giving the B-52J a stealthier profile.
That last bit is key to this. As it stands, the Air Force has made a concerted effort for decades to transition its forces to stealth. This makes sense, given the kind of countermeasures that American enemies are developing. Yet, for the duration of the Air Force’s stealth craze, they relied upon an old bomber that was anything but stealthy.
In addition to the new engines, the B-52J will receive a new radar system, a modified variant of the F/A-18EF Super Hornet’s APG-79 AESA radar. This new radar will provide the bomber with greatly improved radar range and situational awareness, while also taking up less space than the older mechanically scanned radar. The B-52J will have a cleaner look, with the removal of blisters that currently house the AN/ASQ-151 Electro-Optical Viewing System (EVS).
The B-52J is expected to be a versatile platform, capable of carrying a wide range of weapons, from gravity bombs to cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. This flexibility will allow the bomber to engage the enemy with “affordable mass,” precision-guided munitions, and highly specialized, “exquisite” weapons as needed.
The USAF plans to have a fleet of 76 B-52Js, which will be the result of the modernization of the current fleet of 76 B-52Hs. The new Stratofortress is expected to be available for operational use by the end of the decade, with the initial operations capability (IOC) expected in 2033.
Vague difficulties with various program components skipped.
With so many systems moving to drones and with the advent of highly complex air defense systems protecting possible targets of these bombers, what is the point of these systems? These are valid questions and concerns. Ultimately, though, B-52s have long served multiple roles. From bombing distant targets to launching hypersonic weapons to being used as testbeds for new platforms.
These new B-52s could be helpful in keeping the US competitive with its foes.
For example, they could go from being strategic long-range bombers to become motherships for swarms of drones.
On the one hand, $48.6 billion is a lot of money to spend on airframes that rolled off the line at least 60 years ago (the last new B-52 was delivered in 1963). On the other hand, if you’re going to use strategic bombers, the B-1 Lancer is nearly 50 years old itself, and there are only 63 in service, and only 21 B-2 Spirits (including AV-11, which had to be almost completely rebuilt after a fire), so there’s still a need for the B-52. Plus the B-52 has embraced mission creep as a survival strategy, and is used in all sorts of roles never envisioned by it’s original designers, from launching cruise missiles to laying naval mines.
Could you use it to fly drones? Sure, but it will never be as effective as designing a purpose-built aircraft or as cheap as retrofitting a commercial airline platform for that role. Going forward, the B-52 will probably be used for the same mission it’s worked since the Vietnam War: Dropping large quantities of conventional munitions on America’s enemies.
One final reason to keep the B-52 around is that it still seems to scare the shit out of those same enemies…
In the least anticipated team-up since Kathleen Kennedy and any Star Wars project, a Mexican Cartel drug cartel and Chinese underground bankers have formed an alliance.
A federal indictment has alleged an alliance between one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels and Chinese underground bankers—who are accused of jointly conspiring to cover up more than $50 million in drug profits.
A Tuesday press release from the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs detailed the 10-count indictment, which charged 24 Los Angeles-based Sinaloa drug cartel associates with working alongside groups that have been linked to Chinese underground banking systems.
The name given to the federal government’s multi-year investigation was “Operation Fortunate Runner.” It ended with a superseding indictment of the group back in April, though it was only unsealed on Monday—revealing that the 24 individuals were each charged with one count of conspiring to perpetuate the distribution of cocaine and methamphetamine, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and one count of conspiring to operate an unlicensed monetary transmitting company.
“The superseding indictment alleges that a Sinaloa Cartel-linked money laundering network collected and, with help from a San Gabriel Valley, California-based money transmitting group with links to Chinese underground banking, processed large amounts of drug proceeds in U.S. currency in the Los Angeles area,” explains the DOJ press release.
“They then allegedly concealed their drug trafficking proceeds and made the proceeds generated in the United States accessible to cartel members in Mexico and elsewhere,” it continued.
Chinese and Mexican law enforcement agencies collaborated with the Justice Department to arrest fugitives who fled the United States to other countries after being indicted and initially charged last year.
Edgar Joel Martinez-Reyes, 45, is the lead defendant. According to reporting done by the Associated Press, prosecutors say that Martinez-Reyes played the part of manager—leading couriers who retrieved the drug cash from the Los Angeles area. Authorities say that he partnered with leaders of the Chinese money laundering operation and traveled to Mexico to negotiate contracts with the Sinaloa cartel.
Anne Milgram of the Drug Enforcement Administration said at a recent news conference, “This investigation shows that the Sinaloa Cartel has entered into a new criminal partnership with Chinese nationals who launder money for the cartels.”
Drug seizures at the unsecured southwest border have dropped over the past four years, although hundreds of thousands of pounds of illegal drugs have still been seized.
Meanwhile, there has been a rise in encounters with Chinese nationals.
According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the number of Chinese nationals encountered at the southwest border during fiscal year 2024 has already eclipsed the numbers of the previous three years.
In FY 2024, there have been 27,700 encounters with Chinese nationals from October to April, as their data for May has yet to be released. During the entire FY 2023, that number was 24,314—compared to only 2,176 in FY 2022 and 450 in FY 2021.
We’ve been wondering what all these Chinese nationals were doing pouring into America, and “Cartel Thug” seems to be among the possibilities.
How much Chinese authorities have cooperated with the DEA, given that there is wide suspicion that the Chinese government has given its blessing to flood America with fentanyl, remains to be seen. But given how widespread the practice of siphoning off money for other enterprises is the Chinese banking sector, it’s entirely possibly that Chinese authorities are actually cracking down on it. Plus the underground bankers may not be current on their CCP bribes.
Crime cartels in one country do frequently cooperate with the cartels in another, though we’re use to thinking of such cooperation working on ethnic lines (Sicilian mobs cooperating with the American mafia, or Mexican cartels working with Mexican Americans or illegal aliens.) But where there are large amounts of illicit money to be made, strange bedfellows bloom.
More evidence of the Biden Recession, California’s welfare state goes extra crazy, Chicago has to spend mad money to produce illiterate children, an Assistant DA resigns, a cyberattack hits car dealers nationwide, a Brazilian thief gets ventilated, and God unites the entire world in hatred of the New York Yankees. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Taxpayers are funding a new high-rise building in Los Angeles where homeless people will enjoy skyline views, a cafe, a gym, and an art studio, not to mention the free rent.
The fancy new building is 19 stories high and has 278 units, each costing about $600,000. The total cost was $165 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. It is the first of three new high-rise buildings that will soon house homeless people.
Snip.
This modern tower for the homeless includes a TV in each apartment, a gym, an art room, a soundproofed music room, a computer room with a library, a TV lounge, a courtyard, and a cafe that will host movie nights. There are also six common balconies, four of which have dog runs.
Where are politicians getting all the money for this project? The buildings are funded by the city’s supportive housing loan program, Proposition HHH, which was approved by city voters in 2016, as well as state housing funds and $56 million in state tax credits.
The three apartment buildings will be located around the headquarters of the Weingart Center, a nonprofit that assists homeless people. Kevin Murray, a former California state senator, is the man behind the project. He serves as the chief executive of the nonprofit.
I’m sure all the Homeless Industrial Complex members involved got generously paid for their efforts. Once again, the message of the Democratic Party is: You’re suckers for working for a living.
Illinois Policy just issued a report showing that while CPS has doubled spending per student since 2012, grades are down by 60-80%, depending on the subject. “Just 1-in-4 CPS students can read or perform math at grade level,” the report says. “The percent of students enrolling in college after high school graduation is decreasing. And for those who do enroll, another study found many are struggling to finish college in four years – just 30% get their bachelor’s in four years compared to 47% nationally.”
By every other measure… there’s no other way to put this… CPS is falling apart.
In 2023, 26% of students in grades 3 through 8 across all of CPS could read at grade level and about 18% could do math proficiently. For 11th grade CPS students, only 22% could read at grade level and 19% do math proficiently.
CPS’ failure to engage students shows in the chronic absenteeism rate. Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed.
According to ISBE data, 86.3% of teachers in CPS were rated as proficient or excellent in 2023, down from 91.4% in 2019. Yet many students in CPS are struggling to reach proficiency in core subjects.
There’s much more at the link, all of it tragic. An entire generation of Chicago students is failing — and being failed by their schools and, let’s be brutally honest, by their families.
If you’re thinking that CPS must be seriously underfunded to achieve such dismal results, you must have been living in a cave for the last 40 or 50 years. CPS will spend a jaw-dropping $29,028 per student this year. My family lives in a lovely exurb of Colorado Springs and our district spends roughly one-third of what CPS does — $10,214 per student — and we get much better results. It isn’t about the money. It rarely is.
The case began in November 2022, when Loper Bright Enterprises, a fishery based out of Cape May, New Jersey, appealed a district court opinion to the Supreme Court. The conflict between Loper Bright and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) started after the agency decided to require private fisheries like Loper Bright to pay their regulatory inspectors for their time observing fishery practices.
While the law doesn’t explicitly allow this practice, the Fishery Service cites the Chevron Deference, a precedent set by a 1984 Supreme Court case, which states that an ambiguous law can be interpreted by government agencies as they see fit. In short, the Fishery Service wants private companies to pay their salaries and found a legal loophole to justify it.
While this may seem like an isolated incident, it is just one example of a long history of government agencies infringing on individual liberty. The outcome of this case holds supreme importance for the future of our republic and the preservation of our financial and civil freedoms.
Since 1950, the federal government has steadily grown in size. Today, it has over 2.9 million civilian employees, more than Walmart has worldwide. This growth has paved the way for the creation of a governmental pseudo-branch denoted the “administrative state.” The administrative state contains government employees who have a significant impact on people’s everyday lives but yet aren’t held accountable to citizens in the form of elections. These unelected bureaucrats undermine the central ethos of a republic, where elected officials are supposed to seek the good of their constituents or risk not being re-elected.
The problem with this system was made evident during the pandemic. During the COVID shutdown, hundreds of millions of Americans were sentenced to lockdowns, impacting their schools, churches, and families. Many of the people behind this policy were members of the CDC, one of the government agencies that comprise the administrative state. The decisions they made were not subject to the traditional checks and balances which typically constrain the US government. Instead, America found itself under a tyranny of the unelected.
This overreach extends beyond individual liberty into private business. When businesses can be encroached upon at a whim by unelected authorities, long-term investment becomes a much riskier endeavor. When the COVID shutdown occurred, many small businesses, with their small profit margins and high overhead, were unable to weather the storm. For the companies that survived, the blatant government intervention and the severe consequences that followed left a sour taste in their mouth for future capital investments. You’re not going to build a new business if a bureaucrat can shut it down the next day. All of these factors contribute to government agencies having a negative impact on financial markets and investor portfolios.
The Chevron Deference precedent, which is at the center of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, gives even more power to these governmental agencies. When ambiguity exists, this precedent allows courts to simply defer to agencies’ interpretations, even if those interpretations favor the agencies’ own interests. It also allows courts to seek out ambiguity in order to give near-unbridled power to these agencies.
If the Supreme Court upholds Chevron, it will further entrench the power of unelected bureaucrats and make it increasingly difficult for individuals and businesses to challenge agency overreach. However, if the Court rules against Chevron, it would represent a shift toward increased restraint of the administrative state, leading to a reevaluation of the scope and authority of federal agencies.
Israeli arms exports hit record sales. Funny how having products that actually work stimulates sales. I’m betting Russia is enjoying the opposite right now…
Baseball game announcer: We will not be singing the national anthem. Crowd: The hell we won’t! Patriotism ensues.
Speaking of DA’s behaving badly, a followup: Assistant Travis County DA Joseph Frederick, who was charged with aggravated assault, has resigned before he could be fired, his lawyer saying this was to maintain his health benefits, because he has Parkinson’s. Which is strange, because COBRA covers involuntary termination as well.
Argentine President Javier Milei has a glorious rant about how you can’t negotiate with leftists.
This week’s California restaurant chain closing due to the minimum wage hike: Arby’s. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“CDK Global, a major software provider to auto dealerships in the U.S., has been hacked, forcing the company to shut down most of its systems temporarily. This cyberattack effectively halted sales operations at approximately 15,000 car dealerships, including those under General Motors, Group 1 Automotive, and Holman.” Without this software, there’s essential dead in the water. (More details.)
Speaking of money-losing MSM outlets, the incoming editor of the Washington Post says thanks but no thanks after the staff there preemptively published a hit piece on him. How’s that letting the inmates run the asylum working out for you, Jeff Bezos?
George R. Nethercutt Jr., the Republican who ousted Democratic Speaker Thomas S. Foley in the Newt Gingrich Contract with America wave of 1994, dead at 79 (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Is olive oil good for your brain? I hope so, since it’s an Atkins-compliant dressing for my salad, so I generally get more than the recommended teaspoon a day.
An Oakland, California shooting on Juneteenth resulted in several people being hospitalized, according to the city’s police department.
The Wednesday night shooting started after a fight broke out near a crowd of roughly 5,000 people taking part in events around Lake Merritt, according to the Oakland Police Department. When police tried to move the crowd to a safe area, some people punched and pushed, with one officer being assaulted, the agency said.
The crowd was purportedly peaceful until an “illegal sideshow” with cars and motorcycles developed.
Several victims were hit by gunfire and transported to a nearby hospital, according to the Oakland Police Department. Authorities say there is currently no report of fatalities nor have there been any arrests made in connection with the shooting.
Multiple shots, several people hospitalized, no arrests.
1. In normal cities in normal states, there are usually enough police around to prevent two gangs from opening up on each other at a major holiday celebration. IN Oakland evidently things are different.
2. For all the talk of California having the toughest gun control in the nation, gangbangers seem to have no problem obtaining weapons. Evidently the California Democratic establishment only wants to disarm the law-abiding.
Now Uncle Fed is suing Adobe…but not over that issue.
The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission today levied a lawsuit against Adobe [PDF] for imposing a hidden termination fee on subscribers who want to cancel their Adobe plans. Adobe is accused of forcing subscribers to “navigate a complex and challenging cancellation process designed to deter them from cancelling subscriptions they no longer wanted.”
Adobe offers its Creative Cloud products on a subscription basis, with fees that are paid monthly. A monthly payment suggests that it’s possible to cancel anytime, but that’s not how Adobe works because most customers are actually locked into a hidden annual agreement.
Customers who sign up for a free trial and are then charged and signed up to the default Creative Cloud plan, which is actually an annual contract. Canceling the annual contract requires customers to pay a lump sum of 50 percent of the “remaining contractual obligation” to cancel, despite the fact that service ends that month.
Adobe does let customers sign up for a month-to-month subscription plan, but at a higher cost than the annual contract that’s paid monthly, and the difference is not always clear to new or existing customers. Adobe even has a whole help page because of the confusing nature of its subscription. If you look at the Adobe website, for example, Adobe lists a $60/month fee for accessing its full suite of apps, but that’s only if you agree to the annual contract. A true month-to-month plan that you can cancel anytime is $90/month, and if you pay for a year upfront, you get no money back when you cancel after a 14-day period.
If memory serves, back in the dim mists of time, $75 was around what I paid to upgrade from PageMaker 3.0 to 4.0. And that wasn’t a month, that was “Pay this fee once and use this software forever.” None of this pay $60 a month BS. Of course, I was running it on a Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 (which some still insist was the last truly stable Mac operating system), so that was four CPU architectures and innumerable OS versions ago. Now get the hell off my lawn before I hit you with my cane.
According to the DoJ, Adobe’s setup violates the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) through the use of fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks to hide information about the Early Termination Fee.
According to Kneon and Geeky Sparkles at ClownfishTV, Adobe’s own staff is none too happy about the draconian terms of service.
Geeky Sparkles: So Adobe will get punished, but Google can do all kinds of crap and take down all kinds of websites, and the Department of Justice doesn’t do anything about that.
Kneon: Yes.
GS: I’m just pointing that out.
K: A lot of companies are doing this, I’ve noticed this. They make it very, very hard to cancel, which is illegal.
K: Every time we’ve tried to cancel like Direct TV or something, you have to call them. You can’t just like do it on the website, and they always do that, and then they want to get you on the phone. They want to actually try to upsell you.
K: Comcast does that especially with their Internet. Oh yeah, it’s only going to be like you know 100 bucks a month or whatever, $200 a month. And then then after your trial is over whatever…they’re like. “Oh now it’s like $350 a month. You wanted usable Internet? Wow, that’s an up charge.”
K: The justice department alleges that Adobe hid early cancellation fees and trapped consumers in pricey subscriptions, so you have to pay a fee if you cancel. A lot of times they’re like “Oh yeah, it’s whatever a month,” but then you read the fine prints, you have to commit to two years.
K: The Department of Justice claims Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms and this is on top of them being allowed to snoop in your files.
K: The lawsuit alleges Adobe hides the terms of its annual paid monthly plan in the fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks, and, in doing so, the company fails to properly disclose the early termination fees incurred upon cancellation that can amount to hundreds of dollars.
K: When the customers do attempt to cancel, the Department of Justice alleges Adobe requires them to go through an onerous and complicated cancellation process that involves navigating through multiple web pages and popups. It then allegedly ambushes customers with an early termination fee which may discourage them from canceling.
Try to cancel via livechat or over the phone? Expect your call to be mysteriously dropped.
K: They want you to get frustrated and just give up.
K: These practices break federal laws designed to protect consumers.
The lawsuit also targets “two Adobe executives, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, for alleged violations of the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA).”
K: Up until 2012, Adobe, you bought the software, you got it on a disc, you put it on your computer.
K: Though Adobe is doing some scummy stuff, it almost feels like somebody’s gunning for Adobe. Like this lawsuit drops a week or two after they get backlashed.
GS: It is weird, especially when you have Google out there doing all the weird stuff that’s been going on, with their websites and things. And a lot of sites are losing all their ad revenue because they’re not being found, or they’re shutting down because they they they just completely sunk in both traffic and revenue. And they’re allowed to tank thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of sites and that’s OK, and put up when they put up AI information that comes above everything else a lot of times it’s wrong.
One possible reason for the difference in treatment is that Adobe is screwing actual paying customers, while Google, in screwing random websites, may only be screwing people and companies with whom they have no actual contractual obligation to. Which is a big difference between software you pay for and software you use for free.
K: It does seem weird that it’s like “boom boom,” like this is a kill shot to take Adobe out of play.
GS: Two things can be correct at the same time. It does feel like they’re being targeted, but I also think that they kind of have it coming.
K: Apparently the community dissatisfaction with the company grew so intense that even Adobe’s own staff started expressing unhappiness about the whole ordeal.
To the point that someone in Adobe is evidently leaking internal slack threads to Business Insider.
K: The company’s workers appear to be siding with regular users voicing complaints about the terms of service updates and the resulting backlash, as well as Adobe’s poor communication and apparent mishandling of the situation.
K: “The general perception is Adobe is is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to fuck its users. Let’s avoid becoming IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems.”
K: This is not the right time to be pushing your your AI stuff when creatives are worried about losing their jobs as it is.
Aside: I sort of hate that the word “Creatives” has become a thing, since it aggregates too many diverse sets of people (writers, artists, movie makers, graphic designers, etc.) into an amorphous class. It’s a fairly recent coinage, but I wonder if it’s already too late to stamp out that particular linguistic “innovation.”
K: They’re trying to say they never trained their AI on customer data, we never trained generative AI on customer content, taken ownership of a customer’s work or allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements. People aren’t going to believe you.
GS: Then why word it the way you did? That doesn’t make any sense.
Indeed.
Adobe does indeed a lot of splainin to do, and those heinous terms should be revised before anyone gives Adobe another dime, since there are cheaper alternatives to just about everything they offer. But that’s not to say that there aren’t other tech giants out there with even more heinous policies (Google and Microsoft are two that immediately come to mind), with or without AI, and it is curious that Adobe, a relatively new and smaller player in the AI space, has suddenly been subjected to so much official heat.
At what point do California voters finally realize that their Democratic Party leaders have abandoned trying to enforce the rule of law and shout “Enough!”?
Video of a shocking smash and grab robbery shows the moment a Sunnyvale jewelry store is overwhelmed by suspects armed with tools and hammers.
The incident took place at PNG Jewelers on Wednesday afternoon. The store is located at 791 E. El Camino Real. Police said at least five people have been arrested, but they are looking for more suspects.
The surveillance video’s timestamp shows the robbery happened just before 12:30 p.m. Well over a dozen suspects, clad in black clothing, barge into the store and begin smashing the glass counters as they ransack the place.
Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said their officers responded to a report of a robbery in progress and that approximately 20 suspects were involved.
“The suspects fled the store in multiple vehicles before officers arrived on scene. Officers located two suspect vehicles as they were attempting to flee the area,” Sunnyvale DPS said in a news release.
For those unfamiliar with it, Sunnyvale is smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley, between Mountain View, Cupertino and Santa Clara, and was home to numerous influential companies including Fairchild Semiconductor, Atari and LinkedIn. Homes there list for $2 million and up. El Camino Real is the central “strip” of Silicon Valley, running all the way in to San Francisco where it turns into Mission Street.
Daylight jewelry store robberies were hardly unknown before, but these large mobs of smash-and-grab looting are a direct result of Democrats decriminalizing shoplifting. Even though the haul here is clearly above the $950 limit of Proposition 47, California criminals that have honed their looting skills on smaller value targets are clearly seeking fatter scores, and show no hesitation in branching out to hit targets in affluent cities.
The continued slide of one-party blue California into abject lawlessness is no longer shocking, but it should be. In the name of social justice, Democrats are systemically destroying the underpinnings of ordered, law-abiding society. How long before insurance companies simply refuse to insure retail stores in California, and how soon until high end stores in Silicon Valley go the the way of those in San Francisco and simply close entirely?
The Democratic challenger for Fort Bend County Precinct 3 commissioner is facing charges for allegedly creating a fake social media account to post racist comments directed at himself after the Republican incumbent requested an investigation last year.
According to arrest warrant documents, Pct. 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers requested the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office begin an investigation in October regarding the source behind several social media posts directed at his opponent, Taral Patel.
This came after Patel, 30, issued a statement on his social media accounts with a collage of racist posts that he claimed were directed at him. Although many of the usernames were concealed, Meyers told investigators he recognized an account that went by the name “Antonio Scalywag” as someone who had attacked him before.
Investigators found that the fake account used a profile photo that belonged to someone else. The DA’s office issued a subpoena to Facebook and Google, which allowed them to obtain account data that matched Patel’s address, phone number, Texas driver’s license number, bank card number, and other personal information.
On Wednesday, the Texas Rangers arrested Patel on a third-degree felony charge for online impersonation and a Class A misdemeanor charge for misrepresentation of identity, which is found under the Texas Election Code. A spokesperson with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office said this is the first time their agency has charged someone with an election-related misdemeanor
The only novelty here is that the person faking the hate crime is of Indian subcontinent ancestry rather than black.
