Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the SESTA fight continued, and we took a look at how Google would survive the law, but startups might not, and how much of the supposed sex trafficking epidemic driving the bill simply didn’t exist. Ajit Pai’s FCC amusingly declared victory over wireless competition issues, the streaming exclusivity […]
Pretextual stops are an unfortunate side effect of American law enforcement. When cops want to question people or root around in their cars, they’ll find another reason to make the stop and hope the eventual searches make it all worthwhile. This law enforcement activity has been repeatedly blessed by courts, which tend to view it […]
While Google’s Stadia game streaming service arrived with a lot of promise, it generally landed with a disappointing thud. A limited catalog, deployment issues, and a quality that couldn’t match current gen game consoles meant the service just never saw the kind of traction Google (or a lot of other people) originally envisioned. Developers have been […]
Lots of people are still trying to mentally process the bizarrely confused 5th Circuit ruling that has reinstated Texas’ social media content moderation law. I wrote an initial analysis of the ruling here, and then a further analysis of just some of the most egregious problems with it over at The Daily Beast. This week […]
With a gorgeous, ultra-thin design, the Apple MacBook Air 13.3-inch notebook is designed to take on today’s most demanding tasks without compromising on portability and usability. This refurbished Apple MacBook Air has an integrated 720p FaceTime HD webcam for video chats and communication. The combination of the stunningly beautiful Retina display, high-performance Core i5 processor, […]
Everyone’s got a hunger for data. Constitutional rights sometimes prevent those with a hunger from serving themselves. But when they’ve got third parties on top of third parties, all Fourth Amendment bets are off. Data brokers are getting rich selling government agencies the data they want at low, low prices, repackaging information gathered from other […]
We keep pointing out that publishers hate libraries. Oh, they’ll pretend otherwise, and make broad platitudes about libraries and the good of society. But, it’s clear in how they act that they think of libraries as dens of piracy. They’re now using the ebook revolution as a chance to harm, or even wipe out, libraries. […]
We’ve noted how, as Netflix gets bigger and more powerful, it has increasingly behaved more like the cable giants (Comcast) it used to disrupt. For example, once it was big enough to pay telecom giants their pound of flesh, it stopped caring about stuff like net neutrality. But there’s no better example of Netflix’s pivot […]
This will be a short one, but the reputation rehab project for Third Culture Bakery has begun. If you don’t recall that name, it’s a baker business in California that somehow convinced the USPTO to issue it a trademark for “mochi muffin“. Mochi is a rice paste popular in Japan for making small baked goods […]
We’ve talked in the past about the fact that creative works of the federal government are in the public domain and cannot be covered by copyright. This is pretty explicit in the law. Back in 2009 we had called out the fact that the Obama White House was (usefully!) posting images taken by the White […]
Despite Elon Musk’s disdain for the press, his legend wouldn’t exist without the media’s need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire’s mouth. We’re at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk’s comments […]
It really does feel like the legislative process regarding the tech world and privacy is a complete mess. While politicians are right that it would be good if we got a comprehensive privacy bill in place, they seem to have no idea what that even means. Actually, it seems like they don’t even know what […]
The HP ProBook X360 11-G1-EE (refurbished) is a Windows 10 Professional laptop with an 11.6″ display and a resolution of 1366×768 pixels, providing the ultimate user experience. This laptop is powered by an Intel Pentium dual-core processor that optimizes your work for better productivity. It also comes with 8GB RAM for faster and smoother performance. […]
Russia’s Roskomnadzor never used to be a powerful government thug. It used to be almost nothing at all. It was an afterthought — a regulatory agency created to cover things hardly anyone considered to be important. It was formed in 2008 and asked to oversee radio signals, telecom, and the Russian mail service. But then […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how the massive freak out over TikTok is kind of dumb and myopic, with folks singularly fixated on TikTok, but not the lax global adtech, data broker ecosystem we built that helped create it in the first place. We’ve also noted that most of the U.S. policy solutions for the supposed threat […]
We’ve talked a great deal about the impossibility of getting AI or other automated systems to properly police content for moderation purposes. While all kinds of content fits into this generally, we can pick on the topic of nudity or sexual content to demonstrate the point. We have a slew of posts on the topic, […]
It’s kinda weird how the GOP’s pure hatred and spite towards tech companies, and their desire to exact maximum punishment rather than make good policy, keeps blowing up bills that might otherwise pass. We’ve talked plenty about how Republicans have effectively torpedoed the big tech antitrust bill by insisting that it must include provisions that […]
India is still a democracy. Or so it pretends. But it’s becoming indistinguishable from autocratic regimes, like those found in some of its nearby neighbors, China, Turkey, and Pakistan. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has become indistinguishable from dozens of other abusive regimes run by dictators, all while trying to uphold the pretense of […]
You all remember the media shit-storm around kids from Covington Catholic High School and a run-in with folks in Washington DC that became a sort of Rorshach test demonstrating your political viewpoints based on how you viewed the encounter. The main character from Covington Catholic was Nick Sandmann, who sued a bunch of media orgs […]
This refurbished Acer Travelmate P446 laptop combines portability, performance, and value. Featuring a 14″ screen and an Intel i5 5200U 2.2GHz processor, combined with 8GB Ram and a 256GB Solid State Hard drive, it lacks little in the way of speed. Be it the home user, student, or business that needs top-notch performance at budget […]
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