So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we’ve written plenty about the so-called “inter partes review” or “IPR” that came into being about a decade ago as part of the “America Invents Act,” which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the […]
There have been lots of legal battles fought over proprietary blends of numbers and letters. States collecting a premium for vanity plates claim this is government speech, since it’s a state-issued plate. Or, if it’s not quite government speech, it’s the government’s tacit approval of this speech, even if the vanity plate really only contains […]
Lots of people have been waiting for this, but it’s finally happened: someone has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI over an AI “hallucination” (i.e., confidently spewing out something that is blatantly wrong). The complaint, filed by Mark Walters, in state court in Georgia, argues that OpenAI made up false and defamatory claims about himself. From the […]
Being abnormally suspicious of anything Chinese isn’t new. There’s a wave of hysteria-based lawmaking happening right now involving TikTok, but deciding Chinese nationals and Chinese entities are inherently suspicious has been part of this nation’s cultural fabric since the construction of railroads back in the mid-19th century. That supposition that foreigners — especially the exotic-looking […]
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Rep. Jim Jordan is at it again. You’ll recall that Jordan ignored subpoenas from the January 6th Committee and was referred to the House Ethics Committee for his failure to respond to those subpoenas. Of course, since being handed the keys to the brand new (created just for him) “Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the […]
By now we’ve noted several times how the folks most vocally calling for a nationwide TikTok ban are putting on a dumb performance designed to distract you from our lack of competent internet privacy laws and our complete unwillingness to regulate the sleazy data broker space. As in, banning TikTok doesn’t actually fix much because […]
You can’t walk out of your front door these days without tripping over someone ready to tell you about the next great thing in artificial intelligence. And, hey, it’s for good reason. The last few months have seen an explosion of new tools that have come online and are capable of some seriously amazing things. […]
We’ve done all we can we’re willing to do to make schools safer. We’ve added more cops, something that sounds like safety but just means we’ve offloaded school discipline to people trained in the art of violence. We’ve locked more doors, added more machinery, and opened up our students to all sorts of pervasive surveillance. […]
In the beginning, there were harms. No, not yet. First, there’s an idea, a product, a company. You’ve made an app where people can express themselves in some way (text, images, videos, something else, some combo of them…) and with some ingenious and distinctive features (everything is ephemeral… or permanent … or upside down … […]
It seems the propaganda peddlers are no longer even trying to pretend any more how they plan to abuse the bills being pushed by Democrats to “regulate” social media. It would be nice if some of the Democratic politicians actually listened to them. First, we had the story of how the Heritage Foundation, the main […]
Tiny hateful people are trying to convert their small-mindedness into actual laws all around the nation. On the public’s dime, bigots are advancing bills targeting the free expression of anyone who doesn’t fall into the hetero container these asshats think everyone should fit into. At least twelve state legislatures have introduced bills designed to criminalize […]
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Soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he insisted that stopping child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was his top priority, and while some of his fans insisted that he had magically done so, the fact is that he fired nearly the entire team that was handling that issue, meaning that CSAM was running rampant on […]
We’ve noted for decades how, despite all the political lip service paid toward “bridging the digital divide” (and the billions in subsidies thrown at telecom giants to solve the problem), the U.S. never had any real idea where broadband is or isn’t available. You can probably imagine that’s a problem given the decades of policy proposals and billions […]
Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed the train wreck release of Knights of the Old Republic 2 as a port for the Nintendo Switch. How big a screw up was this whole thing from the start? Well, if you’re not familiar with our previous post on it, we can just start with there being […]
Last month, in partnership with Engine, we launched our new browser game that puts you in the shoes of a frontline content moderation worker at a growing online platform: Moderator Mayhem. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can play it in your browser on mobile or desktop. The response to the game has been […]
Judging by the number of very angry press releases that landed in my inbox this past Friday, you’d think that YouTube had decided to personally burn down democracy. You see, that day the company announced an update to its approach to moderating election misinformation, effectively saying that it would no longer try to police most […]
Joining a new digital community can be an exhilarating and empowering experience. This has been observed on numerous occasions when people join new platforms such as Nostr, BlueSky, Farcaster, Post.news, Tribel, and many others, as well as older social media platforms such as blogs, Usenet, LiveJournal, Xanga, AOL, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Initially, these […]
This Solo Stereo Multi Connect Bluetooth Speaker may look small, but it produces as clear and powerful a sound as any other speaker. It comes in various colors that are great for any setting and décor. Connect this speaker to your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth and enjoy your favorite music. It has a built-in […]
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