BE THE TERRORISM YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. FBI motto (ca. 2001) The FBI’s penchant for self-ownership dates back to its reinvention as a counter-terrorism agency, a move that followed a bunch of power and budget expansions for any federal agencies that might help George W. Bush avenge his father’s loss in the […]
There have been numerous stories about the new generation of AI chatbots lying when asked questions. This is rightly perceived as a big issue for the technology if it is to become routinely used and trusted by members of the public, as some intend. But in China, the problem is not that chatbots lie, but […]
To hear the recording industry tell the story, copyright is the only thing protecting musicians from poverty and despair. Of course, that’s always been a myth. Copyright was designed to benefit the middlemen and gatekeepers, such as the record labels, over the artists themselves. That’s why the labels have a long history of never paying […]
The internet has revolutionized communications, sales, and information distribution, and has enabled historic levels of porn consumption. These are all unequivocally good things. (Fight me.) What it has also done is revolutionize court precedent. Prior to internet ubiquity, courts were sometimes more receptive to plaintiffs attempting to hold third parties responsible for content generated by […]
Companies big and small count on project managers to ensure their initiatives arrive on time and on budget, which is why these professionals routinely earn six figures for their services. From setting up projects in JIRA to streamlining pipelines with Agile and Scrum, the Complete Project Management Bundle boasts 11 courses to get you up […]
It remains kind of shocking just how badly Elon Musk has screwed up Twitter. He drove away somewhere between 40% and 70% of the advertisers on the site before he took over. And the advertisers have been pretty blunt that the problem is that Elon Musk himself is a real liability. He’s made advertising on […]
Microsoft has apparently realized that it’s just good business sense to get itself on the right side of history, and the right side of the growing “right to repair movement.” The company has increasingly been urging lawmakers to support the Washington State Fair Repair Act, which would ensure that consumers and indie repair shops have […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment simply highlighting one of the details in the story about Elon Musk threatening to give away NPR’s Twitter account: In an email sent at 2:19 a.m. EST after the story was originally published, Musk wrote a message without any text […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we took a closer look at how the sex trafficking statistics used to justify FOSTA/SESTA were made up. Epic was doubling down on its legal crusade against a 14-year old who cheated in a video game, Microsoft was defending putting a computer recycler in jail, and the FTC […]
There have always been panics. And those panics are often the result of government entities deciding now is the time to be alarmed by things someone claimed they saw on social media. All panics are overblown. What government officials declare to be the next threat to public safety is often something most social media users […]
The hyperbolic rhetoric that is a feature of the copyright industry, which tries absurdly to characterize making an additional digital copy as “theft”, can lead to some serious legislative harm. For example, Germany is currently aiming to bring in a new law against “digital violence” – things like bullying and stalking, but also identity abuse […]
I’m a weird guy, but you all knew that already. One of the ways in which I’m particularly weird is that I have not used any sort of an alarm clock in roughly 20 years (I’m in my 40s). For whatever reason, I can decide in my mind when I want to wake up and […]
At this moment, Bluesky has caught lightning in a bottle. It’s already an exciting platform that’s fun and allows vulnerable communities to exist. This sense of safety has allowed folks to cut loose, and people are calling it a “throwback to an earlier internet era.” I think that’s right, and in some respects that retro […]
Lots of people thought they could create a better Twitter after they (incorrectly) assumed Twitter was violating their First Amendment rights (lol) by refusing to host their Nazi-adjacent banter. A handful of people mistook froth for cream and decided they’d welcome the worst of the worst social media users. Shortly after that, they realized they’d […]
Cloud computing has revolutionized industry and changed the way businesses manage their digital infrastructure. As it relies on a massive sharing of resources across a network, the opportunities and challenges for developers and network administrators are growing rapidly. Over the 9 courses in the Cloud Computing Architect Bundle, you’ll go from cloud computing zero to […]
We’re in the midst of a full blown mass hysteria moral panic claiming that the internet is “dangerous” for children, despite little evidence actually supporting that hypothesis, and a ton arguing the opposite is true. States are passing bad laws, and Congress has a whole stack of dangerous “for the children” laws, from KOSA to […]
Last year BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable […]
If cops screw up enough, they may get blacklisted by prosecutors. These lists — known as “Brady” or “Giglio” lists (depending on jurisdiction) — inform prosecutors that they may not want to ask these officers to testify due to their long histories of misconduct. Most lawsuits generated by cops appearing on these lists deal with […]
Back in March, we discussed a fairly silly request, made by several film producers who are suing RCN for not being their copyright police, that the court subpoena Reddit to unmask 9 users of that site. There were several aspects of the request that made it all very dumb: half the Reddit users never mentioned […]
U.S. telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast spent millions of dollars and several decades quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either banned or heavily hamstrung towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly failed to upgrade or expand their broadband […]
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