Technology

Substack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech
Technology

Substack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech

Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform.“I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those views,” Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, said in a statement. “But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse.”The response came weeks after The Atlantic found that at least 16 Substack newsletters had “overt Nazi symbols” in their logos or graphics, and that white supremacists had been allowed to publish on, and profit...
New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea
Technology

New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea

A man involved in a brazen plot to manipulate the stock price of a New Jersey deli’s parent company pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday.James T. Patten, 64, of North Carolina, admitted to orchestrating a series of misleading trades in an apparent bid to enrich himself and two co-defendants in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J.Mr. Patten faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million for securities fraud. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.Mr. Patten’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, said in an interview on Wednesday that attention on the case “was exaggerated beyond any perception — that this was some $100 million fraud involving a delicatessen...
Vera Molnar, Pioneer of Computer Art, Dies at 99
Technology

Vera Molnar, Pioneer of Computer Art, Dies at 99

Vera Molnar, a Hungarian-born artist who has been called the godmother of generative art for her pioneering digital work, which started with the hulking computers of the 1960s and evolved through the current age of NFTs, died on Dec. 7 in Paris. She was 99.Her death was announced on social media by the Pompidou Center in Paris, which is scheduled to present a major exhibition of her work in February. Ms. Molnar had lived in Paris since 1947.While her computer-aided paintings and drawings, which drew inspiration from geometric works by Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, were eventually exhibited in major museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, her work was not always embraced early in her career.“Vera Molnar is one of the very few artists who ha...
Powell, Fed’s Chair, Unleashes the Bulls
Technology

Powell, Fed’s Chair, Unleashes the Bulls

Higher for (not much) longer The “everything rally” has gone global, sending stocks and bonds soaring in Asia and Europe and lifting U.S. stock futures, after investors got their clearest signal yet that the Fed would begin cutting interest rates soon. Hopes are growing, too, on Thursday that other central banks will follow suit.The Fed delivered an unexpectedly dovish forecast on Wednesday, penciling in three rate cuts next year. Those moves are projected to lower the Fed’s prime lending rate to 4.6 percent, a notable drop from the central bank’s last estimate in September.The revision sent the Dow Jones industrial average to a record high. The S&P 500 also achieved that marker on a so-called total return basis — which would take dividends into account — according to Deutsche Bank ana...