For all of the hype Silicon Valley gets as the birthplace of American technological innovation, the broadband networks in cities like Palo Alto have never kept pace. Like most towns and cities across the U.S., Palo Alto residents have long complained about the slow speeds, high prices, and comically terrible customer service they get from […]
This is just so painfully obnoxious. The legacy news media, spurred on by a welfare system that pretend free market supporter Rupert Murdoch dreamed up and convinced governments to implement, whereby the government would force internet companies, which had innovated and created new business models that worked, to suddenly be required to pay for sending […]
This is a bit of an oddity. We’ve seen lots of lawsuits against social media services filed by bigots who are upset their accounts have been banned or their content removed because, well, they’re loaded with bigotry. You know, “conservative views,” as they say. This one goes the other direction. It claims YouTube’s moderation algorithm […]
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Look, I know some folks get annoyed that I write as much about Elon Musk and exTwitter as I do, but he’s really been the most fascinating case study in sheer wrongness regarding the running of a modern internet company and it’s just endlessly fascinating. And, really, if he just stopped doing stupid things, I […]
We’ve noted a few times that there are two major reasons that the U.S. still hasn’t passed even a basic privacy law for the internet era or regulated data brokers. One, the government is corrupt, and has repeatedly buckled to the lobbying of multiple industries that find the current dysfunction very profitable. Two, the government […]
Well, that was quick. We had just been discussing the encouraging news that Rockstar had scooped up Cfx.re, a community dedicated to roleplaying within GTA and Red Dead Redemption games, as well as several mods made within that community. The only thing that made this newsworthy at all is that Rockstar has had an awful […]
If you’ve never watched it, Kirby Ferguson’s “Everything is a Remix” series (which was recently updated from the original version that came out years ago) is an excellent look at how stupid our copyright laws are, and how they have really warped our view of creativity. As the series makes clear, creativity is all about […]
It’s been clearly acknowledged by a majority of courts (but not the Supreme Court, alas) that filming cops while they perform their duties is protected by the First Amendment. Most legislators know this. But some legislators still yearn to protect cops from accountability. So, they push bills that install “time and place” restrictions in hopes […]
You might have heard late last week or over the weekend, that Elon was getting rid of the “block” feature on exTwitter. Elon had tweeted on Friday claiming “Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs.” But, uh, he had said basically the same thing back in June. I know this […]
Customer service matters. Suing patients unhappy with your work just ain’t it. That’s what Texas cosmetic surgeon Dr. Wilbur Hah has just learned, after being handed a loss in four concurrent opinions dealing with four anti-SLAPP motions filed by unhappy patients the (allegedly not-so-good) doctor sued for daring to besmirch his reputation with social media […]
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A few days Elon Musk tweeted that “X as humanity’s collective consciousness” and then pinned that meaningless platitude that would only sound profound to a stoned high schooler. Anyway, if you’re going to be “humanity’s collective consciousness” you should maybe try to to avoid making years worth of images inaccessible. But that’s what Musk did […]
When it comes to obnoxious DRM and bizarre, greedy restrictions, nobody does it better than printer manufacturers. The industry has long waged a not-so-subtle war on its own customers, routinely rolling out firmware updates or DRM preventing them from using more affordable, competitor printer cartridges. A few years ago, printer manufacturers took this tactic one […]
This week, we’ve got a double winner on the insightful side with Stephen T. Stone taking both top spots. In first place, it’s a comment about how, whatever you might think about old Twitter, its moderation practices were sure better than they are now: Maybe I didn’t hear about it, but I don’t recall any […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we looked forward to the Senate oversight committee hearing that would force Ajit Pai to explain why the FCC made up a DDoS attack, but were disappointed (if not at all surprised) when it utterly failed to hold him accountable. Pai was also busy opposing the effort to […]
As a writer of opinion pieces, sometimes you go hard in the paint and the result isn’t precisely what you expected. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about Netflix’s announced decision to dip its toe into the video game market. At that point, word had gotten out about it all, though that word can […]
XKCD has multiple comics about how hacking isn’t quite the way they make it out to be in movies: And: Both of these demonstrate how actual hacking is often a lot less sophisticated than people make it out to be. And, indeed, for years we’ve pointed out that social engineering is generally more effective than […]
Just fucking weird. Seems illegal. How do we get away with this in a constitutional republic? Rights exist. And et cetera. Those are the responses that tend to be generated by anyone attempting to explain civil asset forfeiture to normal people who just assume the government needs to prove something, anything before taking money (or […]
We’ve covered the many problems of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) for years now (this is the second Congress it has been introduced in), and it appears that more and more people are realizing the myriad problems with the bill which, ridiculously, has broad bipartisan support, with an astoundingly disappointing 43 cosponsors in the […]
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