Tuesday, former Twitter cybersecurity executive Pieter “Mudge” Zatko testified in front of a congressional committee regarding his whistleblower complaint[1][2][3] against Twitter. Though I’m a techie, I thought I’d write up some comments from the business angle. It’s difficult getting an unbiased viewpoint of the actual issues. The press sides with whistleblowers. The cybersecurity community sides […]
On Thursday, the White House hosted the United We Stand summit, to bring together people to take action against what they refer to as “hate-fueled violence.” This seems like a good idea for a summit, at a time when so much of politics is focused on grievances and culture wars that seem to inevitably lead […]
codeSpark’s mission is to help all kids learn to code by igniting their curiosity in computer science and turning programming into play. The app is designed to teach kids 4 to 9 the foundations of computer science through puzzles, coding challenges, and creative tools. It’s a great way for your kid to learn how to […]
When a proposed new law is sold as “protecting kids online,” regulators and commenters often accept the sponsors’ claims uncritically (because… kids). This is unfortunate because those bills can harbor ill-advised policy ideas. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC / AB2273, just signed by Gov. Newsom) is an example of such a bill. Despite its purported […]
We’ve already noted how Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a dumb cash grab. The company already cordons users off into pay tiers based on a number of different criteria, including how many simultaneous streams a single account can already use at one time. And it just got done imposing a major price hike on most […]
One of the cornerstones of trademark law in most countries is that you cannot trademark descriptive terms or words. The reason for this should be obvious. If I start a search engine and want to trademark my company name, calling it “Google” differentiates me from the rest of the market. But if I named my […]
Well, this is unfortunate. We’ve already highlighted the many, many problems with the Online Safety Bill in the UK, which will be a massive attack on free speech, in that (among many other problems) it seeks to force websites to remove content even if it’s “lawful,” meaning that they will massively overcensor. As I’ve pointed […]
This isn’t a surprise, but it’s still frustrating. Gavin Newsom, who wants to be President some day, and thus couldn’t risk misleading headlines that he didn’t “protect the children,” has now signed AB 2273 into law (this follows on yesterday’s decision to sign the bad, but slightly less destructive, AB 587 into law). At this […]
Just a somewhat periodic reminder: publicly-funded colleges are government entities. Almost every public university is. Sometimes, they seem to forget what they are and act in ways governments can’t — not without violating rights. That inability to remember constraints imposed on it by inalienable rights is causing problems for Texas A&M University. And its arguments […]
For many years, we’ve written about the myth — that is still believed by many, including many policymakers and journalists — that big companies always win out by simply copying smaller more innovative companies, and just grabbing the market from them. While there are a few examples of this happening, it is much, much more […]
The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle will help you develop your own dream video game, and publish it on multiple platforms with thousands of royalty-free, 2D and 3D assets. You get AppGameKit Studio, a fully featured game development toolset with two asset packs. The bundle also has GameGuru, a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an […]
Between COVID relief and the new infrastructure bill there’s a massive, historic, $50+ billion taxpayer subsidy headed for the broadband industry that should do a lot of good in shoring up access in underserved locations. But we’ve also noted how the government still doesn’t have a great idea of where that money should be spent, […]
It should not be this hard to stamp out a bad idea, but here we are, with the JCPA continuing to haunt the country like a zombie that simply refuses to die. The JCPA, for those just tuning in, is a bill designed to create a link tax. Its supporters sometimes blanch at that description, […]
Normally when we talk about trademark disputes, they tend to look fairly similar. Some entity is upset and/or sues over a trademark they have and we spend some time analyzing whether the trademark itself ever should have been granted, whether there is true customer confusion to worry about, whether the plaintiff is simply bullying, etc. […]
We’re still waiting to see if California Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the California Age Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273) into law, though all indications are that he will. However, he has now signed a different bad bill into law. He has happily signed what he calls the “nation-leading social media transparency measure” AB 587 […]
Government officials may say acceptable things when pressed for comment by journalists, oversight, and members of the public. But if you really want to know what an agency thinks, just keep your eye on the rank-and-file. So, when the West Texas branch of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) started retweeting one of the Trump […]
Matt Levine, over at Bloomberg, whose coverage of the Elon Musk/Twitter saga has been excellent (his coverage of most things has been excellent, but especially the Musk/Twitter stuff), recently wrote that he was coming to the conclusion that Elon Musk simply does not know what a merger agreement means. As he explains, if you want […]
In 2016, Arizona state senator John Kavanaugh tried to make it much more difficult to record police officers. He authored a bill that would create a 20-foot “no recording” zone around cops, supposedly in the interest of officer safety. That bill went nowhere. It contained obvious First Amendment problems and reeked of protectionism that armed […]
The Complete 2022 Java Coder Bundle has 9 courses to help you kick-start your Java learning, providing you with the key concepts necessary to write code. You’ll learn about Java, Oracle, Apache Maven, and more. From applying the core concepts of object-oriented programming to writing common algorithms, you’ll foster real, employable skills as you make your way […]
We’ve been writing a bit about the JCPA — the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act — the very bad bill from Senator Amy Klobuchar that would create all sorts of problems, from allowing news orgs to demand money for links (breaking the fundamental nature of how the web works), to creating a “must carry” provision […]
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