Data portability is an important front in the war for an open internet. A few years ago, it seemed like some major movement was coming, with the joint announcement of the Data Transfer Project from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter — but recently, news of any progress was running thin. That is, until now: the […]
A few weeks ago we wrote about how Elon Musk’s Twitter was now blocking tweets in India at the request of the government. As we noted, there’s a lot of important history here. India had demanded such blocking in early 2021 and the old regime at Twitter had pushed back strongly on it. After fighting […]
For years, California residents were allowed to know almost nothing about some of their public servants. While most of the government was a (relative) open book, law enforcement officers and their misconduct records were shielded from public view by a law that exempted plenty of police wrongdoing from public records requests. That changed in 2019 […]
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This is so bizarre. Last month, we highlighted the ridiculousness of Arkansas’ age verification for social media bill. These bills are showing up everywhere, from California to Utah and lots of other places as well. It’s bipartisan nonsense. It’s pretty clear that these bills are unconstitutional: they seek to suppress the free speech rights of […]
You might recall that the FCC under both Trump and Biden has made a big deal about forcing U.S. telecoms to rip out Huawei gear from their networks, under the allegation that the gear is used to spy on Americans (you’re to ignore, of course, that the United States spies on everyone, constantly, and has […]
One of the most pernicious effects of today’s copyright maximalism is the idea that every element of a creative work has to be owned by someone, and protected against “unauthorized” – that is, unpaid – use by other artists. That goes against several thousand years of human creativity, which only exists thanks to successive generations […]
Ever since Tesla first made the news, I had thought it would be a great car to own. The last few years have really disabused me of that notion, given the serious questions raised about the integrity of the company’s CEO. But even so, I’m pretty shocked by this latest Reuters report detailing how Tesla […]
It’s tough to be considered a trusted partner in the resistance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine if you can’t keep your most secret documents secret. No source for the embarrassing (and possibly harmful) leak has been identified, but that’s presumably what the US government hopes to find out ASAP. The Justice Department has joined […]
Never a dull moment in Elonland. Last week, as you’ll recall, he decided that NPR should be labeled as “state-affiliated media” even though NPR was literally Twitter’s prime example of what kinds of independent media outlets don’t deserve that label. What seemed to have happened is that some of the weird coterie of foolish people […]
I’ve been meaning to cover this for a few days now, but it’s finally off the backburner! And back on the afterburner! I have no idea what any of that means other than this is bad, bad, incredibly bad news for Fox News and (possibly) its parent corporation. Donald Trump and his voting bloc refused […]
You can use this ultra portable 4-in-1 Smart Flash Drive to transfer photos, videos, and files from your devices to your PC. It’s also great for saving your music or videos from Mac or PC to PC, or USB stick. It has ports for USB 3.0, lightning, micro-USB, and type-C. It’s on sale for $29. […]
The refrain to remember with Twitter under Elon Musk: it can always get dumber. Quick(ish) recap: On Thursday, Musk’s original hand-picked Twitter Files scribe, Matt Taibbi, went on Mehdi Hasan’s show (which Taibbi explicitly demanded from Hasan, after Hasan asked about Taibbi’s opinions on Musk blocking accounts for Modi in India). The interview did not […]
Montana is currently one of seventeen states that have passed laws—usually ghost written by telecom monopolies—banning local community broadband networks. As a result in many states, entrenched incumbent monopolies see zero incentive to lower rates, expand access, or improve service, thanks to muted competition and regulatory capture. COVID lockdowns highlighted the counterproductive stupidity of such […]
This week, both our top comments on the insightful side come in response to another commenter’s attempt to defend Twitter labeling NPR as “state-affiliated media”. In first place, it’s an anonymous commenter pointing to the site’s own definition: Going by Twitter 2.0’s updated definition (emphasis mine): State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state […]
Well, here we are at the last 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, Best Deep Cut winner The Pigeon […]
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Google’s Stadia product. What was originally billed as a forthcoming world class cloud video game streaming platform launched terribly, never gained much traction, and eventually was announced to be pivoting to serving as the backend platform for other companies that actually knew what the hell they were […]
When NSO Group began making the wrong kind of headlines all over the world, suddenly lots of governments began at least feigning an interest in caring about what third-party tools their intelligence and security agencies were using to conduct surveillance. The problem wasn’t just NSO Group. True, the Israel-based firm was more than happy to […]
Poor Matt Taibbi. He destroyed his credibility to take on the Twitter Files, and did so in part to raise the profile of his Substack site, Racket News. Indeed, Substack has become a home for nonsense peddlers of all kinds to create their own little bubbles of nonsense. In congressional testimony, Taibbi admitted that having […]
The use of facial recognition far outpaces its proven track record. Prone to false positives and negatives, especially when it comes to anyone else but white males, the tech continues to make inroads with the law enforcement community which has never seen a black man it can’t prosecute for crimes he didn’t commit. That’s the […]
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