The gears of justice turn slowly, but they do turn. Late last year we discussed a delightful gentleman named Roland Macher, who goes by “Spanky”, because of course he does. Spanky was a restaurant owner and real estate businessman who found himself in prison for over 2 years because paying your taxes is hard or […]
Some unfortunate news. AZ Central reported yesterday that James Larkin, who was a free speech pioneer who built an alt-weekly newspaper empire, and then spun out the controversial classifieds ads site Backpage, died by suicide, one week before his latest trial. While there’s been plenty of discussion about Backpage, related to questions around Section 230, […]
For years, we’ve pointed out that the FBI is more interested in easy wins than actually securing the nation. And for years, the FBI has maddeningly refused to take our harsh criticism into consideration. It has done its own thing, because of course it has. Who could possibly stop it? A mass violators of rights […]
This is not a surprise, because the company made it clear it planned to do exactly this, but Meta has now begun the process of stopping links to news sources from appearing in Canada, something that Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez insisted would never happen. The company says it will take a few weeks to […]
For several years, the government was able to route around the Fourth Amendment by turning cell service providers into proxy tracking devices. Thanks to the Third Party Doctrine, location data generated by cell phones wasn’t given an expectation of privacy. A Supreme Court decision handed down in 2012 strongly suggested the government needed to obtain […]
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, […]
The grand old enshittification curve strikes again. Remember, as stated by Cory Doctorow, the process of enshittification entails these steps: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Way […]
While Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband technology is too expensive and capacity-constrained to seriously put a dent in US broadband problems, it’s helpful in low connectivity situations like disasters, select parts of rural America, or the war in Ukraine. But Musk’s growing power over the fledgling LEO satellite sector has started to […]
More than a decade ago, it came to our attention that the NFL was out in the streets of New Orleans threatening small businesses for the crime of using New Orleans related language alongside the use of images of the fleur de lis. Those actions were quite silly, given that the symbol and much of […]
Last month we noted how media reform activists had petitioned the FCC to revoke Fox News’ local broadcast license in Philadelphia. More specifically, the group argued that Fox News’ rampant election fraud propaganda technically violated the “character clause” embedded in the Communications Act the FCC is supposed to use to determine whether an organization should […]
We’ve long believed in the power of online platform interoperability and the power it gives to users to curate their own experiences. One of the prime examples of this is Block Party, created by Tracy Chou, which has had to suspend its operations following ExTwitter’s API changes. Tracy joined us on the podcast once before […]
There’s so much to dig into on this one. First off, just to state my own bias upfront, I’m not a fan of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Literally just a few days ago I wrote about one of its highly questionable studies and how it’s being used (badly) to justify a terrible […]
Censorship has always been the name of the game when governments push “fake news” laws. First of all, laws like these allow governments to decide which news is “fake” and which news is “credible.” Those pushing these laws claim they just want to ensure citizens aren’t misled. But, in reality, governments just want more options […]
The Little Wonder Solo Stereo Bluetooth Speaker may look small, but it produces as clear and powerful a sound as any other speaker. It comes in a a variety of colors that are great for any setting and décor and you can connect multiple speakers together. Connect this speaker to your smartphone or tablet via […]
Speech has consequences. Elon Musk has decided to reenable accounts suspended for posting CSAM while at the same time allowing the most basic of CSAM scanning systems to break. And, that’s not even looking at how most of the team who was in charge of fighting CSAM on the site were either laid off or […]
Transparency is good, actually. For decades numerous sensitive infrastructure, military, and first responder systems in Europe and the U.S. have utilized a radio standard dubbed TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera, and other major vendors. For 25 years secrecy surrounding the encryption algorithms used in TETRA kept researchers […]
As some of you might have seen, this past weekend, the NY Times ran a very nice profile about me, written by Kashmir Hill. There’s not much to say about it, other than it was an interesting (if somewhat awkward-feeling) experience to be the subject of a story, rather than the journalist covering it. But […]
It has been a busy day for Arkansas. Pornhub.com geo-blocked IP addresses in Arkansas in the latest protest against unworkable age verification laws. Arkansas is the fifth state to have an age-gating statute enter force and is the fourth to be geo-blocked by the parent company of Pornhub, the Montréal-based firm MindGeek owned by Ethical Capital […]
I didn’t think we had much reason to write about all of the Harlan Crow / Clarence Thomas stuff that I’m sure you’ve read elsewhere. But the latest (in a now increasingly long series) of mind-blowing revelations from ProPublica regarding the relationship between the billionaire and the Supreme Court Justice… actually has a somewhat bizarre […]
The regulation will continue until internet freedom improves, apparently. Last year we wrote about Senator Michael Bennet pushing a terrible “Digital Platform Commission” to be the new internet speech police, and now we have the bipartisan free speech hating duo of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham with their proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection […]
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