Despite being hugely qualified and popular across both sides of the aisle, Congress still hasn’t approved Gigi Sohn to the FCC, leaving the agency without the voting majority to do anything popular or even remotely controversial, such as restoring net neutrality, the FCC’s consumer protection authority, or the media consolidation rules stripped away during the […]
The long saga of one of the most infamous internet “Karens” has come to a close as New York City resident Amy Cooper, a.k.a. “Central Park Karen,” has lost her defamation lawsuit against her former employer. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy) The same day unarmed black man George Floyd was being murdered by a white police officer, […]
I get that stock photos are a thing and that political campaigns or teams may be pressed for time, but some things really shouldn’t be so hard. If you follow politics, you may be aware that House Republicans, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, unveiled an agenda for 2023 politics it’s calling “Commitment to America.” […]
For years, defenders of pharma patents loved to claim that the reason that they needed patents and the reason they had to charge extortionate rates for drugs was because of the high cost of R&D for new drugs. The numbers keep going up. When I first started covering pharma patents, the number bandied about was […]
People who fail to understand the basics of supply and demand continue to insist suppliers want to kill potential customers. The DEA is leading the charge, engaging in hysterics while pretending to present facts, claiming that recent busts involving multicolored fentanyl indicate drug dealers are targeting children — children prone to ingesting pills that look […]
With this 13-in-1 docking station, you can use all of your devices while they stay connected and ready to use. Not only is it equipped with 13 ports but is also compatible with numerous connections to the latest USB-C hardware and technology, including USB 3.0, HDMI ports, SD card, and gigabit Ethernet port. All of […]
On Friday, we wrote about hundreds of authors signing a letter calling out the big publishers’ attacks on libraries (in many, many different ways). The publishers pretend to represent the best interests of the authors, but history has shown over and over again that they do not. They represent themselves, and use the names of […]
You might recall that the Trump administration “fix” to the competition and layoff problems created by the Sprint T-Mobile merger (which consolidated four major wireless players into three major players) was to have Dish build a new 5G network. But the effort has been a sloppy mess from the start, and three months into its […]
This week, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about Texas’s content moderation law, responding to the claim on Twitter that Wikipedia could easily comply with it by being more open and transparent: Tell me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works without telling me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works. I mean, Wikipedia is […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the SESTA fight continued, and we took a look at how Google would survive the law, but startups might not, and how much of the supposed sex trafficking epidemic driving the bill simply didn’t exist. Ajit Pai’s FCC amusingly declared victory over wireless competition issues, the streaming exclusivity […]
Pretextual stops are an unfortunate side effect of American law enforcement. When cops want to question people or root around in their cars, they’ll find another reason to make the stop and hope the eventual searches make it all worthwhile. This law enforcement activity has been repeatedly blessed by courts, which tend to view it […]
While Google’s Stadia game streaming service arrived with a lot of promise, it generally landed with a disappointing thud. A limited catalog, deployment issues, and a quality that couldn’t match current gen game consoles meant the service just never saw the kind of traction Google (or a lot of other people) originally envisioned. Developers have been […]
Lots of people are still trying to mentally process the bizarrely confused 5th Circuit ruling that has reinstated Texas’ social media content moderation law. I wrote an initial analysis of the ruling here, and then a further analysis of just some of the most egregious problems with it over at The Daily Beast. This week […]
With a gorgeous, ultra-thin design, the Apple MacBook Air 13.3-inch notebook is designed to take on today’s most demanding tasks without compromising on portability and usability. This refurbished Apple MacBook Air has an integrated 720p FaceTime HD webcam for video chats and communication. The combination of the stunningly beautiful Retina display, high-performance Core i5 processor, […]
Everyone’s got a hunger for data. Constitutional rights sometimes prevent those with a hunger from serving themselves. But when they’ve got third parties on top of third parties, all Fourth Amendment bets are off. Data brokers are getting rich selling government agencies the data they want at low, low prices, repackaging information gathered from other […]
We keep pointing out that publishers hate libraries. Oh, they’ll pretend otherwise, and make broad platitudes about libraries and the good of society. But, it’s clear in how they act that they think of libraries as dens of piracy. They’re now using the ebook revolution as a chance to harm, or even wipe out, libraries. […]
We’ve noted how, as Netflix gets bigger and more powerful, it has increasingly behaved more like the cable giants (Comcast) it used to disrupt. For example, once it was big enough to pay telecom giants their pound of flesh, it stopped caring about stuff like net neutrality. But there’s no better example of Netflix’s pivot […]
This will be a short one, but the reputation rehab project for Third Culture Bakery has begun. If you don’t recall that name, it’s a baker business in California that somehow convinced the USPTO to issue it a trademark for “mochi muffin“. Mochi is a rice paste popular in Japan for making small baked goods […]
We’ve talked in the past about the fact that creative works of the federal government are in the public domain and cannot be covered by copyright. This is pretty explicit in the law. Back in 2009 we had called out the fact that the Obama White House was (usefully!) posting images taken by the White […]
Despite Elon Musk’s disdain for the press, his legend wouldn’t exist without the media’s need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire’s mouth. We’re at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk’s comments […]
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