It’s opening day and already Major League Baseball has struck out. It’s a story as old as time: major sports league tries to trademark a bunch of city names only to be schooled on the internet and media by law professors and dropping the applications. Well, okay, so that’s not that common of a story, […]
It’s not as though we really need any more evidence that client-side scanning is a bad idea. Apple decided to be a pioneer and immediately discovered the world wasn’t exactly waiting for it to become a market leader in privacy invasion. We don’t need more information. We know breaking encryption results in broken encryption — […]
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 ban or heavily hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly refused to upgrade their networks. Quite often, […]
Earlier this month, we wrote about Mark Warner’s RESTRICT Act, mainly in the context of how it appeared to be kneejerk legislating in response to the moral panic around TikTok. Despite the bill being out for a few weeks, over the last few days, some of the discussion around it has gone viral, in particular […]
The Ultimate Advanced Cybersecurity Bundle has 5 courses to help you become a cybersecurity expert. You’ll learn how to architect, engineer, integrate, and implement secure solutions across complex environments to support a resilient enterprise while considering the impact of governance, risk, and compliance requirements. Courses will introduce you to the NIST Risk Management Framework, and […]
Officer Richard Gasparino of the Stamford, Connecticut police department couldn’t stand to have his “revenue diverted.” So, he arrested Michael Friend for the imaginary crime of holding up a sign warning motorists there was a sting operation in progress further up the road. The officer claimed Friend was “interfering with a police investigation” despite there […]
Dish Network remains a bit of a hot mess a month after a cyberattack effectively wiped the company off the face of the internet and disrupted most of the wireless and TV company’s internal systems. If you recall, it took the better part of a week before Dish even acknowledged to its users that anything […]
To be fair, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t always hand out immunity while waving away egregious, often horrific rights violations perpetrated by law enforcement officers. But it certainly seems to frequently find creative ways to let cops exit lawsuits, no matter how awful their behavior. Even the Supreme Court, which has done the […]
As you’ll recall, Elon Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist” but his definition of free speech… is not free speech supportive at all. It’s the opposite. Saying that free speech means “that which matches the law” means that when you have an oppressive, censorial government, they can suppress speech all you want, and […]
A couple of years ago, Utah became the first state in the union to mandate that content filters be enabled on all mobile devices sold by manufacturers like Samsung, Apple, Lenovo, or TCL. The measure was a hit among the anti-porn crowd because it created a precedent for other states which sought to curtail the […]
The life-plus-seventy-years sentence imposed on Winnie the Pooh by Cher’s ex-husband is finally over. Petitions for an early release went unheeded, forcing the butt naked childhood icon to perform tricks for the heirs of its creator’s estate until it was finally allowed to roam free — nearly 40 years after the bear’s sentence should have […]
I know we’re deep, deep, deep into the moral panic about social media being uniquely awful, especially for kids. It’s driving all sorts of nonsense, including the false idea that we’re in a uniquely excessive period of depression, or that it’s been “proven” that social media makes kids feel bad. But… that’s not what the […]
The All-In-One Hardcore Unity Game Developer Bundle has 8 courses to help you learn how to build your own games plus a 1 month pass for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Unity is one of the world’s most popular game engines. Used to easily create cross-platform 2D and 3D games, it comes with a powerful set […]
When the Adams County (OH) sheriff’s office raided rap artist Afroman’s home, he didn’t just sit back and assume everyone involved operated in good faith. The raid was captured on Afroman’s security cameras, which the artist soon converted into a viral video/rap song entitled “Will You Help Me Repair My Door.” The footage — which […]
The broadband and cable industry has long perfected the use of bullshit fees to jack up subscriber bills. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate — then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. They’ll then pretend they haven’t […]
Timing, as they say, is everything. We’ve been talking about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard a lot lately and for good reason. It’s a huge deal, both in terms of the size of the purchase relative to the video game industry, but also because of what it could mean for the overall competitive marketplace […]
Most tech companies handling data requests from governments now publish transparency reports. As everything moves towards always-online status (including, you know, your fridge), social media platforms and other online services have become the favored targets of government data requests. It just makes sense to look there first rather than out there in the real world, […]
Science fiction has always served as a source of inspiration for real technological progress. Sometimes that’s great, but other times it enables abuse or leads people to make terrible assumptions that result in harmful decisions. This week we’re joined by the hosts of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, authors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane […]
Elon Musk says he’s against a “lords and peasants” system on Twitter. And he thinks celebrities on the platform should be treated equal: And he’s really mad about shadowbanning: Even as he uses the shadowban features all the time, mainly against accounts he dislikes. But now it turns out that, all along, he’s set up […]
It was by no means certain that the internet would enjoy full First Amendment protection. The radio is not shielded from the government in that way. Nor is broadcast television. Both Congress and the President supported placing online speech under some degree of state control. In Reno v. ACLU (1997), however, the Supreme Court could […]
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