The U.S. government announced plans to require some foreign travelers to provide their social media account names when entering the country — and in June requested comments. Now the plan is being called “ludicrous,” an “all-around bad idea,” “blatant overreach,” “desperate, paranoid heavy-handedness,” “preposterous,” “appalling,” and “un-American,” reports Slashdot reader dcblogs:
That’s just a sampling of the outrage. Some 800 responded to the U.S. request for comments about a proposed rule affecting people traveling from “visa waiver” countries to the U.S., where a visa is not required. This includes most of Europe, Singapore, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand… In a little twist of irony, some critics said U.S. President Obama’s proposal for foreign travelers is so bad, it must have been hatched by Donald Trump.

“Travelers will be asked to provide their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and whatever other social ID you can imagine to U.S. authorities,” reports Computer World. “It’s technically an ‘optional’ request, but since it’s the government asking, critics believe travelers will fear consequences if they ignore it…”

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Source: Slashdot – ‘Social Media ID, Please?’ Proposed US Law Greeted With Anger

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes CNN Money’s report that “pizzas will soon be dropping from the heavens”:

Domino’s demonstrated its ability to deliver food via a drone Thursday in New Zealand and plans to test actual deliveries to customers next month. “It doesn’t add up to deliver a two kilogram package in a two-ton vehicle,” said Scott Bush, a general manager for Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, which is independent of the U.S. chain and operates in seven countries. “In Auckland, we have such massive traffic congestion it just makes sense to take to the airways.”

A Domino’s customer who requests a drone delivery will receive a notification when their delivery is approaching. After going outside and hitting a button on their smartphone, the drone will lower the food via a tether. Once the package is released, the drone pulls the tether back up and flies back to the Domino’s store.

Robotics Trends has video from the flight, and reports that Domino’s is also testing a pizza-delivering robot. Their Domino’s Robotics Unit “has four wheels, is less than three feet tall, and has a heated compartment that can hold up to 10 pizzas. It can deliver pizzas within a 12.5-mile radius before needing to be recharged.”

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Source: Slashdot – Domino’s Will Deliver Pizza By Drone and By Robot

“The incredible increase in the cost of EpiPens, auto-injectors that can stop life-threatening emergencies caused by allergic reactions, has hit home on Capitol Hill,” reports CNN. Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar reports that the argument “has now turned into civil war in the US Senate”:

One senator’s daughter relies on Epi-Pen, while another senator’s daughter is CEO of Mylan, the single company that is licensed to sell these injectors in the US. On the worldwide market there is no monopoly on these devices… Is it finally time to allow Americans to go online and fill their prescriptions on the world market?

Time reports some patients are ordering cheaper EpiPens from Canada and other countries online, “an act that the FDA says is technically illegal and potentially dangerous.” But the FDA also has “a backlog of about 4,000 generic drugs” awaiting FDA approval, reports PRI, noting that in the meantime prices have also increased for drugs treating cancer, hepatitis C, and high cholesterol. In Australia, where the drug costs just $38, one news outlet reports that the U.S. “is the only developed nation on Earth which allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices.”

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Source: Slashdot – US Patients Battle EpiPen Prices And Regulations By Shopping Online

Long-time Slashdot reader sfcrazy writes: During LinuxCon, Torvalds was full of praise for GNU GPL: “The GPL ensures that nobody is ever going to take advantage of your code. It will remain free and nobody can take that away from you. I think that’s a big deal for community management… FSF [Free Software Foundation] and I don’t have a loving relationship, but I love GPL v2. I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been viable from a technical standpoint.” And he thinks the BSD license is bad for everyone: “Over the years, I’ve become convinced that the BSD license is great for code you don’t care about,” Torvalds said. But Linus also addressed the issue of enforcing the GPL on the Linux foundation mailing list when someone proposed a discussion of it at Linuxcon. “I think the whole GPL enforcement issue is absolutely something that should be discussed, but it should be discussed with the working title ‘Lawyers: poisonous to openness, poisonous to community, poisonous to projects’… quite apart from the risk of loss in a court, the real risk is something that happens whether you win or lose, and in fact whether you go to court or just threaten: the loss of community, and in particular exactly the kind of community that can (and does) help. You lose your friends.”

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Source: Slashdot – Linus Loves GPL, But Hates GPL Lawsuits