On Papa John’s most recent earnings call, its CEO and founder John H. Schnatter blamed poor results in part on controversies surrounding the NFL, which the restaurant chain sponsors. Stepping into the middle of a political controversy was a mistake. So was clumsily trying to walk it back on Twitter. What Papa John’s said on…
Game company EA is about to release Star Wars Battlefront II, but you won’t get to play Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader right away. On Reddit, the company defended of its policy to require payment or many hours of gameplay to unlock those characters. Reddit users responded to the EA statement with a record number of…
Five women accused comedian Louis C.K. of sexual abuse. Unlike most people in this situation, he denied nothing and took responsibility. So how did he still get it wrong? According to the New York Times, since 2002, Louis C.K. has on several different occasions asked women he worked with permission to masturbate in front of…
Code that goes wrong generates errors. It’s typical for developers to spend their time on the code, not on the error messages. This is a plea to put a little more effort into those messages, even if you think no one will see them. Unknown attackers ambushed the Boston Globe site with a DDOS (distributed denial…
The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes tax proposals, posted and then retracted an erroneous analysis of the Republican tax plan. The problem took several days to fix. If you ever screw up (and who doesn’t), take notes; this is a great case study in how to recover. What does a tax proposal…
The New York Times, reviewing leaked documents from the law firm Appleby, described how Apple reroutes profits to avoid taxes. Apple’s denial is full of facts but lacks clarity. In Monday’s New York Times article “After a Tax Crackdown, Apple Found a New Shelter for Its Profits,” here’s what we learned: Five months after [Apple…
Anthony Rapp, the actor now appearing on “Star Trek: Discovery,” says Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted him when he was 14. Kevin Spacey apologized by saying he was gay. This is wrong on so many levels. Rapp was a child actor appearing on Broadway in 1986. As he told BuzzFeed News, he remembers going to Spacey’s…
Facebook’s News Feed shows both what your friends share and what companies that you follow share. In some countries, Facebook is ripping the company stuff out of the news feed. But publishers need not worry, because as it says in its patronizing, arrogant, and ultimately meaningless statement, it has “no plans” to make those changes…
Barstool Sports offered reporter Elika Sadeghi a two-year contract that specified she’d be subject to offensive speech. Sort of. The whole incident falls apart upon close examination. As described in The Boston Globe, Sadeghi opted not to take the gig when she read the contract. It included a passage saying she understood that her colleagues…