Last week Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, elbowing out rival acquisition bids (for now) by Comcast/NBC and Paramount/CBS. But the deal still needs regulatory approval from Trump, who has already stated several times that he’d prefer it if his bestie new owner of CBS, right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, comes away […]
You want to see actual government censorship in action? And have it done by people claiming they’re doing it to stop censorship? Check out last week’s revelation (originally reported by Reuters) that the US State Department will now start denying H-1B visas for anyone who has anything to do with trust & safety, fact checking, […]
Now that congressional members on both sides of the aisle have decided it might be worth taking a look at the Defense Department’s “murder people in boats” program, we’re finally learning more than the Trump administration has been willing to share about these extrajudicial killings. The administration’s lawyers have cobbled together justifications for these actions […]
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Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was “exactly aligned” with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter. And he’s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for. The EU hit X with […]
All out of original ideas and facing market growth saturation, we’ve noted repeatedly how streaming companies are increasingly looking like the stodgy old traditional cable TV giants they once disrupted. That means a lot of pointless mergers, endless price hikes, a steady erosion of quality, and the slow paring back of useful features (like going […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is rkhalloran with a comment about keeping kids safe online: The correct answer is ACTUALLY PARENT YOUR KIDS. This is the digital version of finding “nudie mags” under your kid’s bed then trying to sue Playboy/Penthouse/… for the kid getting ahold of them (yes I […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Donald Trump got angry about a trend on Twitter and went full force calling for a repeal of Section 230, renewing the effort to slip this into the must-pass military spending bill. Trump promised he was willing to defund the entire military if Congress didn’t agree, but Congress […]
The fucking maniacs did it. We talked yesterday about how newborn vaccinations for hepatitis B were on the agenda for this latest meeting at ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. You likely know all this already, but RFK Jr. fired all ACIP panel members earlier this year, replacing them with hand-picked anti-vaxxer quack-jobs who are […]
So Netflix has announced that it’s buying Warner Brothers Discovery (including HBO) for a whopping $82.7 billion. As we’ve well covered, it’s the latest in a long series of pointless Warner mergers stretching back to the 2001 AOL acquisition, which all resulted in oodles of chaos, price hikes, layoffs, and generally a steady erosion in […]
Support us on Patreon » Earlier today, we joined in announcing the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call for restoring a culture of technology that empowers users and enriches their lives. The manifesto was created by a group led by Alex Komoroske, and today Alex joins the podcast for a deeper dive into what “resonant computing” means […]
A cofounder of a Bay Area “Stop AI” activist group abandoned its commitment to nonviolence, assaulted another member, and made statements that left the group worried he might obtain a weapon to use against AI researchers. The threats prompted OpenAI to lock down its San Francisco offices a few weeks ago. In researching this movement, I […]
The Trump administration is so sure it can get away with anything that it’s willing to try anything. That misapprehension of the situation has resulted in at least 200 rulings against the administration’s anti-immigrant efforts. Still, the regime persists with its attempts to brute force constitutional rights out of existence. Like it or not, MAGA […]
Learn Raspberry Pi and start building Amazon Alexa projects with The Complete Raspberry Pi and Alexa A-Z Bundle. Catered for all levels, these project-based courses will get you up and running with the basics of Pi, before escalating to full projects. Before you know it, you’ll be building a gaming system to play old Nintendo, […]
Everyone’s pissed at the tech industry. And for good reason. The term enshittification is super popular for many valid reasons. Companies that used to provide real value, are now focused on extracting more value from users, rather than improving their products and services. People used to be excited by new innovations. There was a time […]
Not that long ago, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight did a good bit on why public broadcasting is important. The segment features a lot of insight from UPenn media professor Victor Pickard, whose work on the (many) problems with modern consolidated U.S. corporate media has always been essential reading: But Oliver also walked the talk. […]
ACIP is meeting this week, which means we all get to clench our sphincters as we await whatever small, medium, or large sized horrors will come out of this panel of clowns. It wasn’t always this way. ACIP, and the larger CDC, used to be the world standard when it came to government bodies dedicated […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online […]
Despite all the recent hype about “AI,” the technology still struggles with very basic things and remains prone to significant errors. Which makes it maybe not the best idea to rush the nascent technology into widespread adoption in industries prone to all sorts of deep-rooted problems already (like say, health insurance, or journalism). We’ve already […]
A new bill sponsored by Sen. Hawley (R-MO), Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Britt (R-AL), Sen. Warner (D-VA), and Sen. Murphy (D-CT) would require AI chatbots to verify all users’ ages, prohibit minors from using AI tools, and implement steep criminal penalties for chatbots that promote or solicit certain harms. That might sound reasonable at first, but behind […]
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