Italy continues to push its way towards shitshow as it’s overtaken by far-right, fascism-adjacent politicians. There’s nothing here that signals the country will try to move back towards the center. Having apparently learned nothing from history, the government continues to move further right while still (somehow!) dealing with a “woke” court. Here’s a brief recap […]
Headway Premium is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It’s on sale for $60. Note: The […]
Does anyone actually trust Elon to be honest about, well, anything? Last week he claimed that ExTwitter hit a new “all-time high” on engagement, with “417 billion user-seconds globally” and that in the US it was 93 billion “user-seconds.” First off, what the fuck are “user-seconds”? This is not a typical measure in the internet […]
The utterly pointless, decade-long madness that was the Time Warner Discovery series of mergers has come to its pathetic conclusion. Basically announcing that the whole mess was a waste of time, company executives last week quietly announced they’d be untangling much of the partnership and try to pretend the whole thing never happened: “The theoretical […]
Huh. Here’s something you definitely don’t see every day. But before we get to the ruling, let’s do a brief exploration of the ultra-weird legal landscape that has made it clear cop dogs and cops should be held to way different standards than regular dogs and regular people. And it’s the regular dogs and regular […]
As we’ve said before, it’s quite easy to understand why there would be frustration, or even anger, when leaks over entertainment media occur despite every attempt to keep that content under lock and key. This happens with movies all the time. What continues to amaze me are two things, however. First, that movie studios’ response […]
It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger – creating a kind of copyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was the WIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition […]
If nothing else, it appears the FBI has decided it’s not worth fighting the “compelled assistance” battle again. Several years ago, the DOJ went to court in hopes of forcing Apple to decrypt a phone belonging to the (dead) San Bernardino shooter. It didn’t go well for the DOJ or the FBI, no matter how […]
For years we’ve talked about the growing threat of SIM hijacking, which involves a criminal covertly porting out your phone number from right underneath your nose (quite often with the help of bribed or conned wireless carrier employees). Once they have your phone identity, they have access to most of your personal accounts secured by two-factor […]
You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]
Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a tale of rate limiting, misinterpreted screenshots, and how half the internet lost its mind over a pretty standard Twitter error. This error was then interpreted through an extremely partisan political prism, leading previous arguments to flip political sides based on who was involved. The desire to […]
Apparently the only time Congress can get together to agree to something, it’s to give whoever is President the power to censor speech online. That’s the only conclusion I can come to regarding the widespread support for KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act), which Senator Chuck Schumer has announced will be coming to the floor […]
It’s always frustrating to watch a trademark dispute occur when the marks in question are non-distinctive or generic in nature. Now, I want to be careful here, because the trademark in question here is one that has been applied in a way slightly different than the generic use of the term is typically used. An […]
Augmented reality is on its way. The ability to layer media over top of the real world is, for the moment, a hardware problem. Our phones can do it – think Pokémon Go, or Snapchat’s dancing hotdog – but a real-time heads-up display remains out of reach, for the moment. When such technology arrives, it […]
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 sponsored Spotlight episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, host Ben Whitelaw […]
It sounds absolutely batty that there is a strong, bipartisan push to lock up aspects of our law behind copyright. But it’s happening. Even worse, the push is on to include this effort to lock up the law in the “must pass” National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This is the bill that Congress lights up […]
Good news for phone owners. Perhaps a little less great for law enforcement, which presumably still doesn’t have the capability to crack the latest cell phones. Not that it’s all bad news for law enforcement. Whether or not compelled password production is a constitutional violation is still an open question. Those whose phones are secured […]
In a stunning display of technocratic incompetence, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has effectively outlawed the very tool that online platforms have relied on for years to combat trolls: shadowbanning. Recent court decisions suggest that the DSA’s (possibly?) well-intentioned but misguided Article 17 has created a troll’s paradise, leaving websites in an impossible position […]
The leading candidate to head the FCC should Trump win re-election is facing calls for an investigation into Hatch Act violations after he helped co-author the controversial Project 2025. Sixteen House Democrats have sent a letter to government officials arguing that Carr’s involvement in the openly political Project 2025 is a clear violation of the […]
Here’s a fun one, coming to us via MLive, which at least let us know this exists, even if it couldn’t be bothered to post the freely available decision posted at the Michigan Supreme Court’s website. I can only imagine the amount of cop whining this will provoke. When cops don’t have a legitimate reason […]
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