The city of Los Angeles last year started taking proposals for a plan to build out a gigabit fiber broadband network for every business and residence in the city. Only one company publicly shared their full proposal publicly, and it doesn’t exactly make the future of L.A. fiber look bright. [More]
los angeles
Ambitious Dutch Company Proposes $70 Billion Broadband Network For Los Angeles, Whole Country
By 7.22.14
Law Barring People In Los Angeles From Living In Their Cars Struck Down, Deemed Discriminatory
By 6.20.14
People who call their vehicles home in Los Angeles no longer have to worry about being cited or arrested, now that a federal appeals court stuck down a 31-year-old law. [More]
L.A. Sues JPMorgan Chase For Pushing Minorities Into Cruddy Mortgages
By 5.30.14
After filing similar suits against Well Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America, the city of Los Angeles is now going after JPMorgan Chase for allegedly pushing minority loan applicants into riskier and less-affordable mortgages than they were eligible for. [More]
Regional Sports Channels Highlight Problem With Comcast/TWC Merger
By 4.29.14
When Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal questioned Comcast and Time Warner Cable execs about how the merger of these companies would impact regional sports programming, the two cable operators shrugged it off as a silly question. But it’s not, and here’s why. [More]
Family Claims Pizza Place Served Them A Literal Pot Pie
By 3.12.14
We’ve heard that pizza and marijuana can be a winning combination for a fun weekend night. However, one south Los Angeles family doesn’t agree after their experience with a local pizzeria. They claim that they ended up in the emergency department of the nearest hospital with acute marijuana intoxication after eating the mushroom pizza that they ordered. [More]
‘Dumb Starbucks’ Shut Down, But Not Because Of Its Name
By 2.11.14
The saga of the “Dumb Starbucks” coffee shop in L.A. continued last night, first with the not-at-all-shocking revelation that the creator is a publicity-hungry comedian and writer and then with the news that the store/parody/stunt/art installation had been shut down by the county for reasons that have nothing directly to do with its use of the Starbucks name. [More]
Starbucks Says ‘Dumb Starbucks’ Can Not Use Starbucks Name
By 2.10.14
A quick update to the earlier story about the “Dumb Starbucks” store that opened up in L.A. over the weekend with operators claiming they don’t need permission to use the coffee chain’s name because the addition of “dumb” makes it a parody and therefore covered by the doctrine of fair use. Starbucks disagrees. [More]
‘Dumb Starbucks’ Opens In L.A., But For How Long?
By 2.10.14
UPDATE: Starbucks has issued an official statement saying that Dumb Starbucks can not use the coffee chain’s name. [More]
Time Warner Cable Will Try To Not Suck As Much In L.A. & NYC
By 1.30.14
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want to get a Manhattan resident’s blood boiling, your best bet is to mention Time Warner Cable. In addition to the horrid billing and customer service problems experienced by TWC customers all over the country, New York customers will claim they are plagued by frequent and unexplained outages and bouts of cripplingly slow download speeds. From what we gather, things aren’t much better for TWC customers in L.A. [More]
Behold, The Hot Burrito Vending Machine Is Here
By 1.8.14
Have you ever wanted to buy a gas-station burrito, but without the separate steps of interacting with the cashier and placing the burrito in the microwave yourself? Good news! Burritobox is the burrito vending machine of your dreams. [More]
Los Angeles Might Treat Sale Of E-Cigarettes Like Regular Smokes
By 12.5.13
It’s not just has-been actors like Stephen Dorff and Jenny McCarthy who smoke electronic cigarettes. They have become increasingly popular not just with smokers trying to quit but with people who want the fun of smoking without the whole “ashtray lung” after effect. Additionally, e-cigs don’t come with most of the pesky sales limitations of their tobacco counterparts, making them easier to buy and sell for some folks. But if the Los Angeles City Council gets its way, electronic cigarettes will soon be treated exactly the same as the unplugged versions. [More]
Google Who? L.A. Planning Citywide Gigabit Fiber Network
By 11.6.13
While a handful of cities around the country have launched municipal fiberoptic networks to bring ultra-high-speed broadband access to consumers at a reasonable price, none have come close in size to the project reportedly being hatched in Los Angeles that would make gigabit Internet service available to all city residents. [More]
Did An Airport Employee Place Dry Ice Bombs At LAX?
By 10.15.13
Police in Los Angeles say that the dry ice bombs found in supposedly secure areas of Los Angeles International Airport earlier this week may have been set by a disgruntled employee, though the exact reason for placing the devices is still unclear. [More]
L.A. Schools Now Taking Back iPads From Students Who Dare To Use Them For Purposes Of Fun
By 10.2.13
We mentioned last week that the Los Angeles Unified School District somehow thought it could hand out hobbled iPads to thousands of students without any of these kids figuring out a way to use the device as something other than a really expensive, incredibly fragile textbook. But now that it’s realizing that the temptation to use iPads the way they are intended (and marketed) can be too great for some students, the school district is taking them back. [More]
When You’re $.41 Short At The Gas Station, Don’t Punch The Attendant In The Face
By 9.30.13
When I’m a few cents short of my purchase at the corner store, I either put my stuff off to the side and go to the ATM or hold off on buying an item or two. But not one wanted man in Los Angeles, who decided to punch a female gas station cashier in the face when he couldn’t pay for his $1.41 cigar. [More]
L.A. School District Shocked That Kids Would Figure Out How To Use iPads For Purposes Of Fun
By 9.25.13
If you hand out iPads to a bunch of adult employees and tell them the devices can only be used for work purposes, some of them will abide by those guidelines. Do the same thing with a school full of kids and most of them will be Tweeting and on Facebook in a matter of seconds. And yet the nation’s second-largest school district is shocked that several hundred students have taken advantage of a simple work-around that turns a boring school tablet into a fun tablet computer. [More]
Verizon FiOS Tries To Win Over Blacked-Out CBS Employees
By 8.20.13
Millions of Time Warner Cable customers have now gone more than two weeks without knowing which attention-starved individuals got kicked out of the Big Brother house or if the people of Chester’s Mill ever got out from under the dome (Spoiler: Maybe). Many employees of CBS have been unable to watch the shows they air if they have TWC as their cable provider (which in NYC, Dallas, and L.A. is highly likely), so Verizon is trying to reach out to them and lure them over to FiOS. [More]
