It wasn’t that long ago that cable TV execs were trying to claim that “cord cutting” was either outright fiction, or a fad that would end once Millennials started procreating. The willful denial among cable execs was downright palpable for the better part of the last decade. Now they all just pretend like they never […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad, expanding on the fact that Iowa’s book ban demonstrates hatred of LGBTQ people: Or women. Denying information on the HPV vaccine is more inline with the notion that women who are sexually active deserve to get STDs. In second place, it’s Toom1275 responding […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we looked at the utter failure of FOSTA as more lives were put at risk, while we learned more about why Facebook changed its priorities to support the bill, and then one of the most high-profile impacts happened with Tumblr banning sexual content (and then Facebook unveiled new […]
Uh, well, okay then. I really thought we were done with the whole Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard saga. Hell, I even wrote what I thought was a final post on the matter, called the post a curtain call, and discussed how the deal had passed all the regulatory barriers and had been consumated. That happened […]
Here we go again, everyone. Another far-right state lawmaker has introduced a bill requiring age verification in order to access porn sites from within state limits. This time it is Tennessee state Rep. Patsy Hazlewood who introduced yet another extreme age verification proposal that essentially makes it a crime to own a legally operating porn […]
A little over a month ago we told the Copyright Office in a comment that there was no role for copyright law to play when it comes to training AI systems. In fact, on the whole there’s little for copyright law to do to address the externalities of AI at all. No matter how one […]
For many, many years we’ve been calling on companies to enable end-to-end encryption by default on any messaging/communications tools. It’s important to recognize that doing so correctly is difficult, but not impossible (similarly, it’s important to recognize that doing so poorly is dangerous, as it will lead people to believe their communications are secure when […]
New York law enforcement agencies have always considered transparency to be something to be foisted on other government entities. The NYPD spends a lot of its time screwing over public records requests, in one notable case rejecting a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for a copy of its FOIL response guidelines. For years, these […]
MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In the Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class, you’ll […]
When Elon filed his recent ridiculous SLAPP suit against Media Matters, it was noteworthy (but not surprising) to me to see people who not only claimed to be “free speech supporters,” but who made that a key part of their persona, cheering on the lawsuit, even though its only purpose was to use the power […]
Last year agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and […]
The killing of Eric Garner — an unarmed black man — by white NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was yet another in long and unending series of flashpoints that generated nationwide protests against police violence. Of course, the NYPD felt its officer, one in plainclothes who choked Eric Garner to death over the alleged crime of […]
Two years ago Techdirt wrote about an attempt by Sony Music in Germany to implicate Quad9, a free anycast DNS platform (Cloudflare has technical details on what “recursive” means in this context), in copyright infringement at the domains it resolves. That was bad news for at least two reasons. First, because Quad9 is operated by […]
No one’s more willing to abuse a law than a cop. They pretend they don’t understand the complexities of laws when it suits them. But they’re always right on top of any law that might protect them from the consequences of their own actions. Enter the somewhat infamous “Marsy’s Laws” that have been passed in […]
As you know, the Supreme Court is now considering the NetChoice/CCIA cases challenging two similar (but not identical) state laws regarding social media moderation. The laws in Florida and Texas came about around the same time, and were clearly written to target ideological speech. Both of them put restrictions on how certain social media apps […]
Possibly legally-obtained funds traveling from Point A to Point B? Those belong to the law enforcement middlemen. That’s how Wyoming’s top court explains things, in a decision [PDF] that says money obtained from legal drug sales in other states can be stolen by cops who operate in a state where this drug isn’t legal. Those […]
Embrace the evolution of image scanning technology with the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner. This state-of-the-art device is designed to digitally preserve and enhance your cherished memories, ensuring they stay vivid for years to come. The Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner can effortlessly scan color and B&W negatives (135, 110, 126) and […]
Over the years we’ve written about plenty of “cyberespionge” companies. Some engage in spyware or surveillance ware. Others actively hack devices. Almost all of these eventually get exposed through dogged investigative reporting. A few people reached out to point to this rather concerning Editor’s note that was posted to Reuters this week: Reuters has temporarily […]
Back in September Mozilla released a scathing report showing how modern vehicles are a privacy shitshow. After studying vehicle systems for over 600 hours, researchers found that most cars hoover up vast swaths of sensitive location and other information on consumers, then, like most companies, sell access to that data to pretty much any nitwit […]
In October, California became the first state in the nation to ban “excited delirium” as an official cause of death. While this was a positive development, the question remains: why did it take so long? “Excited delirium” was never a real thing. It has always been a convenient excuse for deaths at the hands of […]
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