As you’ll recall, it became apparent pretty much immediately after Elon Musk took over Twitter that he had zero idea that the company was under an FTC consent decree that had just been renewed months earlier, and which had some fairly stringent rules regarding data privacy and how the company rolled out new features. Sometimes […]
Back in 2016, Alphabet executives made it pretty clear they had grown tired of trying to disrupt the U.S. broadband industry with Google Fiber. Executives were fired, hundreds of employees were laid off, and any real expansion in the project was effectively frozen. Alphabet and Google Fiber executives then just pretended none of this had happened […]
Adidas is not exactly unknown in the seven circles of trademark insanity hell. The company most famously is a jealous defender of its vaunted “3 slanted stripes” branding. It takes that protective stance to ridiculous extremes, including going after an eSports league for having the “E” in question be three stripes, or suing to hell […]
In both Canada and the U.S., there’s no shortage of evidence that consolidation in telecom and media hasn’t been great for telecom and media — or employers, competition, or consumers. That’s not really stopping regulators in either country, who continue to approve massive harmful megadeals with only the pretense of meaningful review. Canada’s just approved […]
Earlier this year, a federal court dismissed almost all of a far right troll’s challenge to the criminal case brought against him by the DOJ. “Ricky Vaughn” is a notorious social media presence — one who’s been repeatedly suspended and banned for his never-ending string of shitheelishness. I don’t sympathize with Douglass Mackey, better known […]
Look, we all knew that there was going to be a lot of fuss about the upcoming public domaining (finally!) of Mickey Mouse nine months from now on January 1, 2024. I mean, we’ve already been talking about what next year’s public domain game jam is going to look like with Mickey as one of […]
Apple tried to create something useful and ended up empowering awful people. Meant to help its users keep an eye on things that were important to them, the small tracking devices known as AirTags were soon exploited by stalkers to track and harass their targets, leading to a class action lawsuit against the company by […]
Deepstash is a platform for finding and organizing the ideas that matter to you. It helps you become more inspired and productive through bite-sized ideas. In Deepstash, you find ideas on topics like personal development, art and culture, mindfulness, and more. These ideas are represented as little cards you can read at a glance. All […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the NY Post tweets a link to one of its own news stories, and Twitter decides that it violates the company’s rules (perhaps very questionably so), and in response, locks the NY Post’s Twitter account. Also, as part of the same “crackdown” on sharing certain media, Twitter […]
In case you’d missed it, the EU is currently proposing a telecom-industry backed plan to effectively tax Big Tech companies, and throw that money at Big Telecom companies for broadband expansion. On the surface, the proposal is part of the EU’s efforts to craft digital policies for the next few decades, with an eye on […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is weevie833 bringing some facts to the conversation about the perception of Conservative bias in Twitter content moderation: Here is a research study (like, actual research) that provides nuance to the perception of Conservative bias in Twitter account deplatforming. Keep in mind that (as obvious […]
We’re nearing the end of our series of posts showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927. So far we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia, Best Visuals winner Urbanity, Best Adaptation winner To And Again, and Best Deep Cut winner The Pigeon Wager. Today, […]
If you don’t use the 3CX VoIP platform, or work in the MSP space with companies that do, you may have missed the news that the company suffered a massive supply chain attack over the past few days. With comparisons being made to the SolarWinds fiasco, this was really, really bad. Unsuspecting clients of 3CX […]
If someone loses a patent lawsuit very badly—to the point where they face orders to pay attorneys’ fees—you wouldn’t think they would be eager to come back to court with a nearly identical lawsuit. But that’s what has happened with this month’s patent. What’s more, the lawyer representing the patent owner, William Ramey, has been […]
In recent years, major media organizations have been lobbying Congress to enact legislation, the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,” requiring search engine providers to engage in a form of collective bargaining about the tax they would pay to media publishers for the privilege of providing links to their news articles, backed up by mandatory interest arbitration in which […]
We’ve already covered how Florida man Governor Ron DeSantis flipped out that Disney, the largest employer in his state, offered some mild criticism over one of his unconstitutional censorship bills, and decided to retaliate by (1) removing the stupid questionable “theme park exemption” his office had directly worked with Disney to insert into his unconstitutional […]
As a rule, it’s a good idea to be particularly suspicious of defenses of censorship that — coincidentally — materially benefit the people espousing them. In this case, the argument in favor of censorship is coming from founder and CEO of AI image generator Midjourney, David Holz. And Holz makes clear that he is willing […]
With its intuitive, immersive training method, Rosetta Stone will have you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time. You’ll start by matching words with images just like when you learned your native language as a child. Then you’ll move onto interactive lessons where speech recognition technology works to evaluate and […]
It’s been so weird the way Elon Musk and his friends have been jealous of underpaid, overworked journalists who happened to have blue check marks next to their name. There’s some sort of deep-seated insecurity to think that just because Twitter decided some people should be verified to avoid problems with impersonation that it was […]
Hungry to boost municipal budgets, a growing roster of states and cities have spent the last five years or so trying to implement a tax on Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services. Sometimes (like in Chicago) this has involved expanding an existing amusement tax (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar […]
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