Communick News

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/mrlovenstein/p/954159/weird-wake

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/comicstrips/p/954117/weird-wake

Source

Secret Panel

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.

The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.

The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.

The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.

The justices had taken up the case to consider how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability. Arguments took place in December.

Rather than issue a decision, though, the high court dismissed the appeal, an unusuaI action that leaves the last lower-court ruling in place.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1140535/flipper-one-we-need-your-help

Hacker News.

With Flipper One, we're reimagining what a Linux cyberdeck can be — it's a huge project. We're opening up the development process and asking the community for help.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DCjxgVZvryb/

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1140547/samsung-chip-workers-offered-a-340000-average-bonus-as-union-pushes-toward-1m-and-an-18

Leaked transcripts show memory-line staff offered up to 607% bonuses worth $477,000, while logic-chip employees get as little as 50%. The 45,000-person walkout, if it lands, would be the largest in semiconductor-industry history.

Workers are often even more vulnerable than consumers, the researchers say.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260521160405/https://www.theverge.com/policy/935299/bossware-employer-surveillance

So now I guess I'm getting paid to sit in bumfuck nowhere and wait for a tow truck. And of course, like a movie detective, it died one day before retirement. I was swapping into a new van tomorrow and this one was getting traded in. I'll miss the old barge though. It had been owned and modified by several different contractor outfits at various points in it's life so it definitely had character.

fixed

The Software Freedom Conservancy is looking into the situation.

The Colorado State Democratic Party, reflecting the anger of rank-and-file Democratic voters, rebuked Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday over his decision to release Tina Peters from prison.

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, was censured by his own party on Wednesday night over his decision to free Tina Peters, a high-profile election denier and supporter of President Trump who had been serving a nine-year prison sentence for tampering with voting machines.

The censure by the Colorado State Democratic Party came after more than 700 infuriated Democrats signed onto a grass-roots effort to rebuke Mr. Polis for commuting Ms. Peters’ prison sentence last week. The censure measure, voted on during a state party central committee meeting on Wednesday night, passed with 89.8 percent support.

PS5 owners have noticed they're being offered different prices for the same games. Is this legal? According to a new report, maybe not.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/52375402

The integration launches in June and will automatically sync progress with the reading platform.

https://www.engadget.com/2178088/kobo-ereaders-are-integrating-with-goodreads-alternative-storygraph/