Apr 16
Somebody’s definitely getting fired, after over 2,300 vials containing fragments of the deadly SARS virus went missing from the Pasteur Institute in France earlier this week. Not one or two vials, mind you. Thousands of them.
Apr 09
France: Companies Not Allowed To Contact Employees Electronically After Work Day Is Over
Posted in: Today's Chili
If you happen to stay in France and earn a living there, then you might be familiar with the following. They happen to have a 35 hour work week (do bear in mind that the 35-hour working week happens to be a measure that was first adopted in France back in February 2000, under the watch of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s Plural Left government. The 35 hours happen to be the legal standard limit, where working more than that would be overtime) as well as up to six weeks of paid vacation (well, for the luckiest of them, but certainly not most), now how does that sound to those overworked worker drones out there?
Still, French workers continue to get contacted by the office for work related stuff even when they have already clocked out, which is something that most of us would think to be pretty normal these days.
I guess they do it differently in France, where a deal that was signed by tech industry employers and several unions in that part of Europe would mean the law forbids companies affected to contact employees electronically once their work day is done with.
Needless to say, the worker groups are more than happy to hear about this particular news, but since there are always two sides to a coin, you can be sure that there will be some unhappy people around, too.
Considering how France happens to have a large digital sector, not to mention being plagued by bureaucracy being a major complaint among critics, this latest labor-friendly law would certainly place employers at a disadvantage. I guess this is where being as efficient as possible in the office itself would be the key to keeping everyone happy.
France: Companies Not Allowed To Contact Employees Electronically After Work Day Is Over , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, email, france, 
Mar 17
Roughly ten millennia ago, musicians didn’t lug amps or guitars around to their shows—they lugged lithophones, or instruments made of resonant rocks. The oldest lithophones ever found will be played in their first public concert next week in Paris. Sadly, it’ll also be their last.
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Mar 06
I would so watch a French version of The Simpsons that makes fun of itself as much as this couch gag. Hopefully, it could be just as beautifully animated as this too. This couch gag was made by French director Sylvain Chomet and it has Homer eating snails, Bart brutally making his own foie gras and a few other French touches sprinkled about.
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Jan 08
France Fines Google 150,000 Euros
Posted in: Today's Chili
Google and France are in the limelight again, this time round with France’s data protection watchdog having slapped a 150,000 Euro fine on Google. The reason behind this fine? Apparently, Google has not complied with a three-month ultimatum that was issued some time ago in order to bring its practices on tracking and storing user information to be aligned with local law. The privacy watchdog is called CNIL, and it has also asked Google to post this particular decision on its google.fr homepage for 48 hours, where it must be done within eight days of being officially notified of the ruling.
This is not the first time that Google has been fined in France, and it remains to be seen whether it will be the last, either. The bone of contention is this – there was a new approach to user data that Google kicked off in March a couple of years ago, where it comprised of consolidating its 60 privacy policies into a single one, merging data collected on individual users across its services, where among them include YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+, without giving users a way to opt out. A Google France spokesman has taken note of this decision, and will mull over further action.
France Fines Google 150,000 Euros original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Dec 29
The ever proliferating Uber “black car” service and other mobile-app-dispatched driver services will have to wait 15 minutes before picking up any customer starting Jan. 2014, a French bill has … Continue reading
Dec 28
France is preparing to extend its “culture tax” to Facebook, YouTube, DailyMotion and other Internet giants. The culture tax is currently levied on French cinemas, TV broadcasters, Internet service providers … Continue reading
Dec 09
Canned French Air Selling For $7.50 Each Is Making A Large Profit For Student
Posted in: Today's Chili
Earlier this year, we saw canned air go on sale in China, which you may or may not be aware is currently going through a smog issue. This made us think of a future similar to Spaceballs where clean air is fought over, and today, we’re hearing the selling of canned air has reached France. (more…)
Canned French Air Selling For $7.50 Each Is Making A Large Profit For Student original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Nov 16
A new school for scrappy young programmers is opening in Paris next month, and it is every bit as freewheeling and disruptive as the Douglas Adams book its name references. 42*, as the school is dubbed, costs nothing to attend. All you have to do is prove you can innovate, solve problems, and apply logic […]
Oct 29
Finger-pointing over the NSA’s spying habits ascends to a new level of complexity with the latest revelations of how the United States spies on foreign officials. However, U.S. officials now tell The Wall Street Journal that the phone records at the center of the surveillance scandal in Europe were actually collected by European spy agencies, not the NSA.
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