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 […]
Back in the early aughts, when I wrote exclusively about the broadband sector, you literally couldn’t go a week without a story about a cable broadband technician falling asleep on the job, blowing up homes, occasionally murdering people or getting arrested for torturing and spray painting kittens. The problem was several fold: one, these companies’ executives were so fixated […]
Back in May, an 11th Circuit appeals court panel found that Florida’s ridiculous content moderation law was clearly unconstitutional, mostly upholding a district court ruling saying the same thing. As you’ll recall, Florida passed this law, mainly in response to Trump being banned from social media, that limits how websites can moderate content, largely focused […]
This refurbished iPad 7 is a great choice for anyone who loves to read, surf the web, and play games. This 10.2-inch A10 Fusion powerhouse has a beautiful “Retina” display, is powered by a four-core 2.33 GHz Apple A10 Fusion processor, and has up to 10 hours of battery life. With 8MP back camera, 1.2MP […]
When a Cellebrite device is hooked up to a seized phone, the operator presses a few buttons to pull pretty much every bit of data from the device. From there, investigators can try to find the evidence they’re seeking. While the FBI continues to claim device encryption is preventing law enforcement from accessing evidence, plenty […]
So, we’ve talked quite a bit about the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), Senator Amy Klobuchar’s attempt to do Rupert Murdoch’s bidding and force successful internet companies to send cash to media companies for… linking to them. Yes, not only do the news orgs want the traffic from Google, but they also want to […]
In 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved a long-running lawsuit over asset forfeiture. Indiana resident Tyson Timbs had his $42,000 Land Rover seized by law enforcement following his sale of $260 of heroin to an undercover officer. The basis of his challenge were the 8th and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution, […]
Remember when AT&T spent more than $200 billion to acquire Time Warner and DirecTV in the belief it would help the telecom dominate video advertising? Then remember when company leadership was so monumentally incompetent they had to run to the exits in terror? Good times. After AT&T’s gambit fell apart, the company returned to what […]
stLouIST