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BAD NEWS FOR MICE: State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe has dismissed a suit that sought “personhood” and freedom – to a reserve in Florida – for two Stony Brook University research chimps.
AVOIDING THE WHOLE UBER THING: OnDelivery.com, yet another NYC food delivery platform, is actually hiring its drivers.
DOWN TO ITS LAST $12M: Quirky, the Silicon Alley invention company whose blue-chip backers include General Electric and Andreessen Horowitz, has alerted the state that it will lay off 109 employees as it scrambles to find new funding or sell itself.
ATTENTION WEWORK: Milk Studios, which provides studio space, film-production services, equipment rental and Web design, among other services, is the latest getting into co-working with up to 200K sf in Industry City.
THE GEEK FACEBOOK: GitHub, the software development platform that lets programmers park and share their projects with 10.4M other coders, raised a $250M B round, bringing its total value to $2B.
ETSY FOR ANYONE: Tictail, a Swedish startup that aspires to be an online mall for independent retailers, plans to double its NYC staff following a $22M investment round. Tictail’s platform gives designers, artists and independent brands their own online stores and the marketing tools to drive sales. Set-up is free and users can create accounts over the phone or via desktop in minutes.
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ABSOLUMENT PAS: Google is gearing up for a fight in France, where privacy protectors want to apply a “right to be forgotten” rule to all of the search giant’s sites, not just those registered with European URLs.
HOVER CRAFT: Rotor Air Cam has embarked on an ambitious 3D mapping project that could put the Plainview-based startup on, well, the map.
But not so fast: Suffolk County has placed limitations on where commercial drones can fly, mostly over beaches and parks, but you know how these things can get out of hand.
Related: Liberty Mutual Insurance will begin using drones to survey damage on some storm and fire claims, following approval from the FAA. The agency approved four types of drones of various sizes. Other restrictions include altitude and speed – no higher than 400 feet or faster than 100 mph.
Like you could get an adjuster to move 100 mph.
BIG MAN OFF CAMPUS: SUNY Old Westbury has applied for Start-Up NY status for a school-run incubator in the Long Island Forum for Technology building in Bethpage, Newsday reports.
Certainly plenty of room there.
POWERING UP: Melville’s RUI Management Services has agreed to create 200 jobs and make an $803K capital investment in the region in exchange for cheap state-provided electrical power. The company declined to comment beyond the state’s announcement.
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ALSO THIS WEEK
Jim McCune takes us on a tour of Port Jeff’s self-serve Pour House.
Lyss Stern and the lucrative business of momdom.
Bioinformatics startup Envisagenics lands $100K seed investment
Rochester beat out California and Florida for a $610M photonics center.
Venture capitalist Bob Brill knows what he knows. And it isn’t biotech.
MISSED A ROUNDUP? Most are archived here.
BELOW THE FOLD
GREASE IS THE WORD: KFC is celebrating its 60th anniversary in Canada with a “Memories Bucket” of chicken that features a Bluetooth connected printer in the base, allowing you to print smartphone shots in what looks to be throwback Polaroid Swinger quality.
WE KNEW THIS: Hanging out with members of the opposite sex drags down school grades, according to a study – “The Girl Next Door: The Effect of Opposite Gender Friends on High School Achievement” published in the American Economic Journal of Applied Economics.
BUBBLES, TINY BUBBLES: Why humans love carbonation.
BRYAN ADAMS, TOO: German artist Martin Backes has invented a machine that endlessly sings 1990s ballads like Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You and Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. The contraption is sophisticated enough to attempt human-like emotion, although its pronunciation is more Moog than man. Oddly interesting, though.
CECIL, REMEMBERED: All 512 animals Teddy Roosevelt and his son bagged on safari. Many still here on Long Island.
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Compiled by John Kominicki. Thanks for reading.
