We talk a lot about the concept of “trust & safety” at internet companies, but the entire concept is relatively new, and still very confusing to many, including some who work in the field! Over the last few years we’ve seen a growing movement to organize and somewhat “professionalize” the space, with very important and […]
The “smart” internet of things era was supposed to usher forth a new era of convenience. Instead, it often manages to advertise how dumber technology can be the smarter option, and you’re not being particularly innovative if your product actually makes life harder. From “smart” door locks that are easily hackable to hackable “smart” TVs that are […]
Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it’s processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch. To help you master Microsoft Office, the Microsoft Training Bundle is […]
The enshittification of Reddit continues. Yesterday we wrote about the next move from protesting mods to switch their subs to NSFW, which strips those subreddits of ads, and how Reddit was experimenting with removing the mods who did that. For what it’s worth, just a few days ago, Reddit insisted in a comment that it […]
By now we’ve well established that the series of mergers that began with AT&T’s doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner’s subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery was some of the dumbest, most pointless “business” exercises ever conceived by man. The idiotic saga burned through hundreds of billions in debt, saw […]
To say that developments in the realm of artificial intelligence are coming fast at this point is a wild understatement. There’s a ton going on in the space, some of it showcasing amazing things we can now do using AI, some of it showing where humans are still very much needed, and much of the […]
The recently released files of the late Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reveal interesting details concerning some of the Court’s significant copyright decisions, but leave important questions unanswered. Justice Stevens (1920-2019) left his papers to the Library of Congress, which opened them to the public in May 2023. (See here for a blog post on Justice […]
Terrible people who represent terrible people are making terrible laws. Catering to the base is never a good idea because all it does is elevate the lowest common denominator. Utah isn’t an outlier. It has competition from several other state governments that aren’t necessarily as subordinate to the unofficial state religion. The separation of church […]
It seems that we’ve had a rash of formerly loved internet services going down the enshittification curve. As coined (brilliantly) by Cory Doctorow, enshittification is the process by which a company gets gradually worse. As he puts it: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for […]
The government of Malaysia isn’t too concerned about free speech. It may be a tourist destination, but it’s still subservient to a ruling class that likely can thank inbreeding for its current place at the top of the heap. Because it’s still ruled by people who’ve never been elected to their positions, those with the […]
The benefits of learning to speak a second language (or third) are immeasurable! With its intuitive, immersive training method, Rosetta Stone will have you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time. You’ll start by matching words with images just like when you learned your native language as a child. Then […]
Reddit’s ongoing war with its volunteer moderators (and users) has moved up a notch. As you’ll recall, last week, the ever tone-deaf CEO Steve Huffman insisted that the protests were just a blip, would be over by last Wednesday, and were having no real impact on the site anyway. That hasn’t gone quite to plan. […]
For the better part of the decade, the generally feckless FCC has been trying to require that broadband ISPs be a little more honest about broadband fees and limits at the point of sale. The FCC has been pondering implementing a “nutrition label for broadband” for years but could never quite get around to it. […]
Seward County is distinguished from Nebraska’s many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it counties by its penchant for seizing cash from motorists. The county’s population checks in at under 18,000 but its overly enthusiastic law enforcement still manages to rake in millions of dollars every year from pretextual traffic stops. The only other thing notable in its Wikipedia article is […]
Our posts on Katy Perry in the past have been all over the place. Sometimes Perry is an intellectual property bully. Sometimes she’s more the victim of intellectual property bullying. But what is not in dispute is the Katy Perry is a cultural icon worldwide with an extremely famous, albeit misspelled, name. In Australia, Katie […]
A year ago, we wrote about an unfortunate decision by a judge rejecting a motion to dismiss in a copyright lawsuit regarding bananas taped to walls. There was, of course, the high profile “banana taped to wall” artwork by Maurizio Cattelan that got tons of public attention at Art Basel in 2019 when it sold […]
Over the past two years, there has been a concerted push by state legislatures to regulate the Internet, the likes of which has not been seen since the late 90s/early aughts. Content moderation, financial relationships between journalists and platforms, social media design and transparency, “national security,” kids being exposed to “bad” Internet speech—you name it, […]
The First Amendment protects speech, even the horrible stuff. It can’t protect the speaker from being criticized for being abhorrent, despite what many abhorrent people believe. It can, however, in certain cases, protect the speaker from being punished for this speech. It’s not blanket coverage. The person engaging in the speech generally has to be […]
Luminar Neo is easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at its […]
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman really seems to underestimate the kinds of people who sign up to be Reddit mods, and their willingness to go to extreme lengths if you start pushing them. We’ve discussed the nonsensical nature of Huffman’s new API efforts, as well as his stupid response to the subreddit blackout which caused many […]
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