Linkage

• Ludicrous Patent of the Week: Rectangles on a computer screen (The Register) The USPTO needs to be burned to the ground.
• 90 Cents of Every “Pay-for-Performance” Dollar are Paid for Luck (The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation) Most of the luck involves who their parents are.
• The left in Europe needs to change political course (Financial Times) The financial meltdown showed the neoliberal center left to be a failure.  We need a real left.
• Where Local Governments Are Paying the Bills With Police Fines (Truth-Out) Rather unsurprisingly, Louisiana leads this hall of shame.
• Brace yourselves: Source code powering potent IoT DDoSes just went public (Ars Technica UK) Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride
• How Actual Nuts and Bolts Are Bringing Down Oil Prices (Bloomberg) Oil drillers have finally discovered standardization, creating significant efficiencies. What took them so long?

John Oliver opens a can of whup ass on the standard excuse used by police, that any misconduct is the fault of a few "Bad Apples."