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 […]
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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 […]
During a heat wave last summer, some Texans were shocked to wake up and find that their local energy company had turned up their thermostats in the night to save energy. Houston locals weren’t exactly thrilled to wake up sweating in the night to the sound of dehydrated, crying infants. As it turns out, consumers has participated […]
I really cannot believe we’re back here. Way back in 2016 we wondered aloud who gets to trademark the word “Iceland”. Confused? Well, Iceland Foods is a grocery in the UK that’s been around since the 1970s. Iceland is also the name of a sovereign nation established in the early 1900s. In 2016, Iceland Foods […]
Summer is nearly over, but, for many politicians, destructive tech regulations are always in season. Congress is back from recess, and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) is once more under consideration. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s “antitrust” pet project would crack down on the five biggest tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and […]
The explosion of AI-generated art has taken the internet by storm, and is poised to continue growing for a long time. In turn, that’s sparked a lot of conversation (and a lot of backlash) about the impact on artists — but much of the controversy seems misguided or overblown. This week we’re joined by Rob […]
It’s a tale as old as time. Two companies look to merge, and promise regulators that the new super-union will create unlimited, untold synergies. They insist repeatedly the consolidation most certainly won’t raise prices, and that the megadeal will absolutely in no way result in layoffs. Regulators rubber-stamp the deal, then, like clockwork, all of […]
Given the inalienable protections this country has determined are essential to democracy, the United States has only tolerated limited violence against journalists. Most of this violence is perpetrated by law enforcement officers who feel a fully functioning democracy demands they greet documentation of their acts with force or unjustified arrests. This calculus shifted during the […]
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It’s often kind of amazing at how much moral panics by adults treat kids as if they’re completely stupid, and unable to do anything themselves. It’s a common theme in all sorts of moral panics, where adults insist that because some bad things could happen, they must be prevented entirely — without ever considering that […]
Last year we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had launched a bad faith effort suggesting that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on the internet, and should be forced to fund broadband expansion. This argument, that tech giants like Google and Netflix somehow get a free ride (they don’t) and should “pay their fair share” to […]
The operative word in the phrase “criminal justice system” isn’t “justice.” As much as we tip our hats to enshrined rights and ideals like “innocent until proven guilty,” the operative word remains “system.” And like any system, the justice system is mostly there to process those accused of crimes, rather than act as a check […]
The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with a thirty-percent jump in the last decade. That’s in contrast to every other developed country, which saw a decline. With that as backdrop, there’s some growing concerns about not just the safety of undercooked autonomous driving, but the extreme weight of larger electric […]
I mean, of course. On Friday Elon Musk terminated his Twitter purchase for the third time. In yet another termination letter sent to Twitter, he claims that Twitter’s severance agreement with Peiter “Mudge” Zatko was a violation of the purchase agreement. Some background: you already know that Musk signed a purchase agreement to buy Twitter. […]
Sooooooo… this was something that happened. Trump, the commander of a fine legal team that has included, over the years, plenty of people facing indictments, sanctions, and lawsuits of their own, sued the Clinton campaign for trying to throw an election he ended up winning. Perhaps Trump was as surprised by his victory as millions […]
Hany Farid is a computer science professor at Berkeley. Here he is insisting that his students should all delete Facebook and YouTube because they often recommend to you things you might like (the horror, the horror): Farid once did something quite useful, in that he helped Microsoft develop PhotoDNA, a tool that has been used […]
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Normally, there wouldn’t be much need to insert yourself into lawsuits involving seriously flawed claims about social media moderation. But these two lawsuits — both losses for plaintiffs claiming the Biden administration conspired to ban their social media accounts — are now in the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has delivered […]
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