About a month ago, we wrote an article pulling together a variety of sources, including an NBC News investigation, that suggested that Elon Musk’s Twitter was doing a terrible job dealing with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the platform. This was contrary to the claims of a few very vocal Elon supporters, including one […]
NYPD detective Joseph Franco developed a late career habit of letting perps walk. Very late career. He was fired. But not before wreaking enough havoc, prosecutors were forced to toss nearly 100 convictions. Franco spent two decades working for the NYPD. How much of that was honest work is unknown. He was charged with perjury […]
If you’re not familiar with Dwarf Fortress, you’ve missed out on a legendary story about a labor of love. The game, a minimalist experience in which you are managing a colony of dwarves as they live their lives and conduct their dwarf-y business, was created by two brothers sixteen years ago. It’s an incredibly deep […]
Geofence warrants are just part of day-to-day cop business these days. Rather than moving forward with a list of suspects, law enforcement agencies just ask for data on everyone in a certain area at a certain time and move backwards to probable cause to investigate and arrest. When a bunch of violent jackasses stormed the […]
It’s been clear since the takeover, that Elon’s running Twitter entirely based on his fleeting and oft-changing whims. The weird decision last week to suddenly, with one week’s notice, remove the free tier for Twitter’s basic API, has create a bit of an uproar, as tons of tools, services, and useful bots made use of […]
Netflix’s password sharing crackdown hasn’t even launched yet in the States, but is already a public relations mess. The plan is to try to force Netflix customers to pay an extra $2-$3 every month for service for any users using your credentials outside of the home. An accidentally leaked Netflix help guide last week indicated […]
Deepstash is a platform for finding and organizing the ideas that matter to you. It helps you become more inspired, wiser, and productive, through bite-sized ideas. These ideas are represented as little cards you can read at a glance, and all ideas have a source: a book, an article, a podcast, etc. Topics covered include: personal […]
In 2018, Laredo (TX) police officers arrested independent journalist Priscilla Villarreal after she published the name of a Border Patrol agent who had committed suicide. The alleged crime was “misuse of official information.” But all Villarreal had done was perform an act of journalism: she had asked Laredo police officer Barbara Goodman to verify information […]
For all the misleading claims about “free speech under attack” in place where it is definitively not under attack (i.e., on social media sites, or via “cancel culture”), there are many areas in which free speech absolutely is under attack, and there may be no bigger one than the (relatively new!) movement to overturn the […]
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Elon Musk’s new API pricing plan for Twitter. The first place winner is actually a response to the second place winner, so we’ll present them in reverse order. First off, in second place, it’s James Burkhardt responding to Twitter’s […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, while Theresa May was repeating her demands that tech companies control more speech on social media, we hosted a series of posts about content moderation surrounding an event at Santa Clara University, with essays by Eric Goldman, Mike Godwin, Kate Klonick, and more. A UK appeals court said […]
There are plenty of valid reasons to seek a search warrant. Investigating a crime you can’t punish anyone for (because you’ve killed them) isn’t one of them. That’s the upshot of this recent federal court decision — one that will no doubt be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court to see if the cop-friendly […]
Roughly a year ago, we discussed Russia’s response to some of the sanctions the West was placing upon it, including its plan to simply legalize copyright infringement, so as to keep the country running despite the crippling sanctions. That blanket legalization plan morphed somewhat months later, when Russia instead pivoted to a plan to create […]
As we noted recently in reporting on the FEC dismissing the Republican’s laughably ridiculous complaint that Google was dumping their fundraising emails into the spam folder as an “in-kind contribution” to Democrats, there was still the GOP’s even more ridiculous lawsuit. Last week, Google filed its response, and it’s… worth reading to see how thoroughly […]
Geofence warrants get all the hype. But Google also stores other data of interest to law enforcement: Google searches. With these warrants, law enforcement asks Google to search its repositories for certain searches performed by users. Once the government has this data in hand, it will start asking Google to narrow things down. And, once […]
People keep claiming that Mastodon isn’t scaring Elon Musk, but it’s pretty clear that he’s worried about the exodus of people from Twitter. With his bizarrely short-sighted decision to end free access to the Twitter API, driving developers over to Mastodon, some people realized that the various tools that people use to find their Twitter […]
Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you’ll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting […]
The evidence-free moral panic over social media keeps getting stupider, and when things get particularly stupid about the internet, you can pretty much rely on Utah politicians being there to proudly embrace the terrible ideas. The latest are a pair of bills that seem to be on the fast track, even in Utah’s short legislative […]
Last August, cable giant Charter Communications (Spectrum) was slapped with a $7 billion lawsuit after one of the company’s cable technicians murdered an 83-year-old customer after hours. The lawsuit (pdf) claims that Charter had eliminated a more rigorous screening process when they merged with Time Warner Cable, letting the employee and his history slip through the cracks. […]
Back in August last year, Techdirt covered a major announcement by the US government that all taxpayer-supported research should be immediately available to the public at no cost. As Mike wrote at the time, this is really big, not least for the following key element mentioned in the press release: This policy guidance will end […]
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