Last year, Apple received ample coverage about how the company was making privacy easier for its customers by introducing a new, simple, tracking opt-out button for users as part of an iOS 14.5 update. Apple marketing and press reports heavily hyped the App Tracking Transparency system, which purportedly gave consumers control of which apps were able to […]
This is truly strange. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals somehow decided it was a good idea to redact its decision finding (partially) in favor of a person whose rights were violated by DC Metro police officers. What could have been a straightforward recognition that cops exceeded their boundaries was, at least temporarily, presented misleadingly, […]
While technologies like low orbit satellite can help shore up broadband access, they come with their own additional challenges. One being that services like Space X’s Starlink have cause potentially unavoidable light pollution, harming scientific research. The other being the exponential growth in space detritus, aka space junk, that will make space navigation increasingly difficult. […]
If you don’t like people making “People’s Republic of California” jokes, maybe don’t do stuff like this: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative body for the city, voted 7-4 to test Mayor London Breed’s surveillance camera proposal, which will take effect in 30 days and sunset in 15 months. Under the policy, the San Francisco Police Department […]
Last year, I tried to create a “test suite” of websites that any new internet regulation ought to be “tested” against. The idea was that regulators were so obsessively focused on the biggest of the big guys (i.e., Google, Meta) that they never bothered to realize how it might impact other decently large websites that […]
Germany’s uncomfortable relationship with free speech continues. The country has always been sensitive about certain subjects (rhymes with Bitler and, um, Yahtzee), resulting in laws that suppress speech referring to these subjects, apparently in hopes of preventing a Fourth Reich from taking hold. But the censorship of speech extends far beyond the lingering aftereffects of […]
Go anywhere and stay connected with 4G LTE on the refurbished Galaxy Tab A (8.4″”, 2020). With a long-lasting battery, you can stream your favorite music, shows and movies for over 10 hours on a single charge. Whether you’re traveling, unwinding or enjoying a quick break, Galaxy Tab A’s compact, slim design and vivid display […]
Right after the 5th Circuit’s ruling on Texas’ HB 20 law on content moderation came out, I wrote up a long post going through the many, many oddities (and just flat out mistakes) of the ruling. Since then, one thing that was bothering about this ruling was that it wasn’t just wrong on the law, […]
VPN providers remain a primary target of governments around the world (authoritarian leaning and otherwise) that don’t much like their citizens chatting privately or avoiding government surveillance. We watched it happen in Russia, where strict new data collection and retention rules resulted in a mass exodus of VPN providers (the ones that are actually dedicated […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment further exploring the analogy in our post about making the internet “like Disneyland”: Actually let’s run with that idea, say the internet is Disneyland, would you as a parent take your kids to the entrance, pay the fee […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the Senate was moving ever closer to passing SESTA, as it held a hearing that showcased the issues with the bill. We wrote about the many reasons it was so terrible, and noted that it put just about every single online service at risk, but Senator Blumenthal seemed […]
If you want your rights violated, all you need to do is call a cop. If you want your rights upheld, you’ll probably want your rights to be violated in another federal circuit. We can learn something from this decision. But it won’t be things we want to learn. Instead, it shows how courts (especially […]
We’ve written stories about people having difficulty recognizing people joking around quoting movies. Sometimes it ends up ridiculously, like the guy who was arrested for quoting Fight Club and had to spend quite some time convincing people he wasn’t actually looking to shoot up an Apple store. We’ve also talked a lot about the impossibility […]
What is it with government agencies and the media teaming up to Streisand some dumb thing that almost no one has ever done or heard about, and turning it into a thing that everyone knows about? Back in the heady days of 2018, the American Association of Poison Control Centers released a press release warning […]
A federal court delivers another blow to tireless enforcers of parking violations, ensuring we will soon be at the mercy of parking scofflaws everywhere. First, it was the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court, ruling (twice!) that marking tires with chalk to track how long cars had been parked in spaces was an impermissible intrusion into people’s […]
Impressively thin and light, the HP EliteBook 725G3 empowers users to create, connect, and collaborate, using enterprise-class performance technology that helps keep them productive in and out of the office. Combining high-performance technology with an AMD A10 processor, Intel Integrated HD Graphics, and 8GB RAM, this refurbished laptop gives you seamless browsing throughout. With a […]
I wrote up an initial analysis of the 5th Circuit’s batshit crazy ruling re-instating Texas’s social media content moderation law last week. I have another analysis of it coming out shortly in another publication (I’ll then write about it here). A few days ago, Prof. Eric Goldman did his own analysis as well, which is […]
We’ve noted a few times that Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service is great if you have no other options. It’s also great if you’ve spent an eternity stuck on an expensive 3 Mbps DSL line straight out of 2003, or a traditional, capped, expensive satellite broadband connection. Being able to get 100 Mbps in the […]
Along with the call for law enforcement reforms following the inflection point created by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, there has been increasing demand for bail reform. Bail reform isn’t new. It’s something activists and politicians have attempted to achieve for years. The problem with bail is that it exacerbates what’s […]
Oh, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Whatever will you do next? The qualified immunity complaints of Judge Don Willett notwithstanding, the Fifth Circuit is where you go if you want batshit decisions that run contrary to common sense, much less established constitutional law. If you need a decision that sides with the government — no […]
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