Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we reiterated the all-important point that there is no legal distinction between a “platform” and a “publisher”, and explained why the freedom to decide what content to facilitate is essential to Section 230, while the Supreme Court signaled its recognition that social media sites don’t have to allow […]
When school students are tested, those overseeing the tests seemingly are willing to do whatever it takes to prevent cheating, even if it means utilizing extremely intrusive spyware to lower the risk of dishonesty. Students are just supposed to take this in stride, but the lessons they’ll often learn of just how little respect school […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Definitely loving all of this. And right up front (just in case the defendant thinks she can rob Peter Techdirt to pay Paul Eric Posey), I’ll make it clear this post will be filled with colorful expression, hyperbole, highly opinionated takes on the lawsuit, and… possibly… archaic slang. A lot of people (especially the most […]
If ExTwitter is the bastion of free speech, you would think that it would allow for the publishing of newsworthy documents revealing a politician’s funding briefings, right? Apparently not when that politician is politically aligned with Elon Musk, whose commitment to open discourse appears to be about as floppy as the Cybertruck’s giant windshield wiper. […]
New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s response to the horrifying shootings in Buffalo in 2022 was not to look for ways to limit access to guns or improve mental health care. It was not to look into why law enforcement ignored the threats that the shooter had made, which they were aware of. It was not […]
Fire up a wild ride across the cosmos with a fresh take on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In this third-person action-adventure game, you are Star-Lord, and thanks to your bold yet questionable leadership, you have persuaded an oddball crew of unlikely heroes to join you. Some jerk (surely not you) has set off a […]
The inevitable is upon us: a police officer has been caught using Clearview AI for non-law enforcement purposes. That wouldn’t mean anything if the officer had private access to the most ethically dubious player in the facial recognition tech market. But he didn’t. He was using access purchased by his employer, so it wasn’t only […]
Back in 2018 (pre-brunchlord owned) Deadspin posted the definitive video on Sinclair Broadcasting, highlighting in less than two and a half minutes how the local broadcaster is a right wing propaganda mill pretending to be a local news organization and the poster child for why media consolidation limits still matter: Like Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, […]
As the line from the Bill Murray movies goes, “It’s Groundhog Day… again.” Back in 2015, Valve launched its “Paid Creations” platform on the Steam client, through which those who made game mods could list them in a marketplace for a cost. This was done at least in coordination with, if not at the behest […]
Shortly after the company’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit in 2019, Google Senior VP Rick Osterloh wrote a blog post proclaiming that the merger would result in better and cheaper fitness tracking tech: “We’re confident the combination of Fitbit’s leading technology, product expertise and health and wellness innovation with the best of Google’s AI, software […]
ShotSpotter isn’t having a great year. Or two. Its tech has been called into question — both for its ability to truly detect gunshots and for its contribution (if any) to public safety. What is known about ShotSpotter isn’t great. The most in-depth examination of the tech was performed by the Inspector General of the […]
If you found out that 500,000 books had been removed from your local public library, at the demands of big publishers who refused to let them buy and lend new copies, and were further suing the library for damages, wouldn’t you think that would be a major news story? Wouldn’t you think many people would […]
We had a post earlier this week about the silliness of the Surgeon General’s idea for a warning on social media, and that linked to a longer piece Mike wrote about it at The Daily Beast, which talked about a similar push by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop getting upset about video games. The […]
MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In this course you’ll cover not just data […]
There’s a large contingent of people who want you to believe each successive year is worse than the last one. Despite being the beneficiary of a two-decade run of historically low crime rates, the United States is often portrayed as a crime-ridden wasteland where only the bravest dare to police the mean streets. This year […]
Like so many of Elon Musk’s accomplishments, the importance of his Starlink low-Earth orbit efforts is quite often overstated. While a great option for those in remote locations who can actually afford the steep price tag (affordability often tops access as the top barrier to broadband adoption), the network has struggled with speed issues due to satellite […]
If you’re in any way interested in tabletop board games, you will likely be familiar with the term “meeple.” If you’re not, the term refers to the small game piece that represents the player or the player’s people, to be moved around the board or gameset during play. It has become a ubiquitous term in […]
In terms of percentages, does the law enforcement community employ a larger number of sexual abusers? Or is it something else? It’s difficult to prove any of this with statistics, especially since most law enforcement agencies in the nation are able to bury this information, citing state laws, confidentiality agreements with police unions, or the […]
In the conversation about keeping kids safe online, the actual experts with the most to offer are all too often treated as outsiders and interlopers. One such expert is Candice Odgers, Professor of Psychological Science and Informatics at the University of California Irvine, who has recently been involved in a lot of debates against people […]
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