My Reading List 8/19/2014 - Facebook is EVUL- So is Amazon

Valleywag - Driving the Tech Elite to Work Is a Miserable, Thankless Job -

Facebook's drivers, who are contracted through the SFO Shuttle Bus Company, earn just $18 an hour—substantially less than $6,000 a month Facebook pays its high school interns.

And the drivers' situation is made worse by all the unpaid time they must spend at work. According to two of the drivers interviewed by USA Today, employees are "held hostage" for six hours in the middle of the day when the shuttles aren't running, with contractual obligations forcing shuttle operators to remain close to the bus's parking lot.

It's Valleywag, take it for what it's worth.  It should be noted that 18.00 /Hr is over $37,000 per year, which while not a lot in SF is well above the "livable wage" activists keep campaigning for.  Additionally the company that Facebook contracts with offers, benefits including Sick Day, Holidays, PTO, and a 401K with matching (or at least they did in 2009).

Wired - The Next Big Thing You Missed: Thanks to Amazon, Tiny Sellers Can Now Reach Across the Globe -

In 2006, Amazon launched a service that allowed US sellers to use its network of warehouses to ship their goods. More recently, Jeff Bezos and company have rolled out the Fulfillment by Amazon program globally, enabling entrepreneurs like Thompson to move goods through fulfillment centers in other parts of the world. “It really changes the paradigm when you’re able to ship the goods in bulk to a warehouse in Europe or Japan and have those goods be fulfilled in one day or two days,” Thompson says.

I'm sure this represents evil incarnate somehow. just not sure how yet.

Salon - Rick Perry’s indictment is bad for Democrats: A Texas perspective -

It gets worse, from the perspective of Machiavellian Democrats (assuming such creatures exist). Stymied by Republican obstruction in Congress, President Obama is trying to use executive action to push through reforms in areas from immigration to the environment. For the most part, progressives have mounted a strong defense of broad executive prerogatives. It may be harder for progressives to argue that inherent executive authority is broad when exerted by a Democratic president to defer action against undocumented immigrants but narrow when used by a Republican governor in a line item veto to cut state funding for the Travis County DA’s office.

Amazingly the NY Times seems to agree -

Mr. Perry should have left the matter to the courts, where both a criminal and a civil attempt to have her removed failed, or to the voters.

But his ill-advised veto still doesn’t seem to rise to the level of a criminal act.