And if that title didn’t really confuse you all that much, then you’ve managed to get the point. Eminem hasn’t been shy about asserting his intellectual property rights in the past, though much of his efforts on that front have actually been to the benefit of artists from his fights with record labels. That doesn’t […]
I’m not sure what’s happening inside Israel’s intelligence services, but it’s not sending the world its best when it’s done with them. For months, we’ve been covering tons of negative news generated by tech companies started up by former Israeli government employees. Most of this has been focused on NSO Group, a malware merchant with […]
After years of criticism about their inaccuracy, the FCC recently spent another $50 million (on top of the $350 million they’d already spent) on supposedly better broadband maps. But the end result is still a bit of a mess, with entrenched telecom monopolies like Comcast being repeatedly caught claiming to deliver broadband in areas that […]
One of the key things that Elon Musk promised in taking over Twitter was about how he was going to be way more transparent. He’s mentioned it many times, specifically noting that transparency is how he would build “trust” in the company. So, anyway, about that… over a decade ago, the big internet companies set […]
While we’re waiting to see if the Trump-stocked Supreme Court is going to end the internet as we know it, the nation’s top court has been rejecting, without comment, other essential cases that really could have used another set of judicial eyes. On Wednesday, we covered one of the Supreme Court’s passes — this one […]
Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators, and more. Scrivener won’t tell you how to write—it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. Scrivener makes it easy to structure ideas, write a first draft, […]
It’s become frustrating how often people insist that losing this or that social media account is “censorship” and an “attack on free speech.” Not only is it not that, it makes a mockery of those who face real censorship and real attacks on free speech. The Washington Post recently put out an amazing feature about […]
If anyone can call a government’s bluff, it’s Signal. It’s a nonprofit, which means it doesn’t need to make a bunch of shareholders happy by capitulating to ridiculous government demands in order to retain market share. Governments really can’t threaten Signal. It doesn’t collect or retain user information, so it can’t hand this data over […]
This week, our both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about attempts to censor and control the internet “for the children”. In first place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with the first comment on the post: Wow, it’s almost as if a bunch of moralizing busybodies want to control what […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the FCC’s broadband availability data was being derided as inaccurate and “shameful”, while the agency was relaunching its map that hallucinates broadband competition. We got a clear idea of when net neutrality protections would formally end, while more than half of US states were pushing their own net […]
At this point it should be common knowledge that if it has to do with any kind of speech, there is nothing that China won’t try to control and/or censor. It’s something of an amazing self-contradiction: in order to be large and powerful, the Beijing government believes it has to behave as though it is […]
ShotSpotter claims its gunshot detection tech is something cities battling gun violence just can’t (almost literally) live without. Data generated by cities paying millions for the tech often says otherwise. On multiple occasions over the past few years, cities have terminated their contracts with ShotSpotter, citing the tech’s overall uselessness. Cops in Newark, New Jersey […]
We wrote a few times about the problems of Spotify’s attempt to colonize the podcast market. While it was, perhaps, an understandable move driven by the economics of our totally broken copyright systems which made it impossible to be truly profitable with just music, Spotify’s decision to go after the podcast market, shelling out massive […]
There’s no reason anyone should look to Louisiana for legislative leadership. The state still has an oft-abused criminal defamation law on the books in 2023 — the sort of law that would have looked out of place a century ago. I guess you can be on the cutting edge when your legislative moves appeal to […]
MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, […]
We’ve been talking a lot lately about the massive moral panic going on right now, claiming that the internet is somehow inherently dangerous for kids. As we’ve noted, the evidence simply does not support this. Over and over and over again we see the actual data and actual research shows no evidence of any inherent […]
We’ve noted for a very long while how most of the explanations that corporations use to insist that your privacy is protected are effectively worthless. For example, corporations will routinely inform you that it’s no big deal that they’re over-collecting and selling access to your browsing or location data to any idiot with a nickel […]
The Streisand Effect. Some folks know it. Some folks even think that some people that know it use it purposefully to their own advantage. Other times people who should know better simply flail around and end up turning content viral which they had intended on burying. So, whenever we do these kinds of posts, someone […]
U.S. consumer protection in general has had an ugly few decades. One bright spot however has been the shift in the “right to repair” movement from niche nerdy fare to the mainstream. Not only have corporate efforts to monopolize repair resulted in a flood of proposed state and federal laws, the Biden Administration’s executive order on monopoly power […]
Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), passed in 2008, continues to be the Little Legislation That Could. While occasionally hijacked by opportunistic litigants whose privacy hasn’t actually been violated, it’s also been used to achieve some objective good. In 2020, the law played an instrumental part in wresting a $550 million settlement from Facebook over […]
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