Unleash the power of PlayStation and explore hundreds of incredible games with a new choice of membership plan. With PlayStation Plus Essential, you’ll get to enjoy all the core PlayStation Plus benefits: join your friends in online multiplayer, add new games to your collection every month, get incredible deals from PlayStation Store, and more. Relive some […]
It seems like every couple of weeks there’s another report of a Hertz customer being treated like a thief because the car rental company can’t be bothered to do even the most minimal of due diligence or follow-up. At this point, there are more than 100 plaintiffs involved in class action lawsuit claiming Hertz has […]
Early in the pandemic, the FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB program), which gives low income Americans a $50 discount off of their broadband bill. Under the program, the government gave money to ISPs, which then doled out discounts to users — if they qualified. But (and I’m sure this will be a surprise […]
Governments set up rules governing how they govern. Then they ignore them. So, what’s the point? Is it a nod to decorum before the proverbial government party guest throws up in the bathtub and hits on your mom? If the law says an entry order or warrant is needed to enter people’s homes to investigate […]
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on a terrible idea in France: requiring companies to pay for the use of public domain material. As the post explained, this is a subversion of what it means for something to enter the public domain, and a betrayal of the implicit bargain of copyright. Fortunately, the plan was dropped, […]
Signal ensures its users’ security and privacy by encrypting their messages and refusing to collect a bunch of data governments or malicious hackers might find useful or interesting. That hasn’t made it many friends in governments (except with government officials who utilize the service to dodge public records requests). An FBI official once compared Signal […]
Imagine waking up in the morning, grabbing your hot cup of coffee, and scrolling your favorite blog post or website, only to find it looking like this: Images are missing. Video content is not there. Nothing but an empty black void staring back at you. This is what could happen if a recent case brought […]
The Brazilian government — under the “leadership” of Donald Trump Mutual Admiration Society member Jair Bolsonaro — has been steadily cracking down on free speech under the guise of saving the public from “fake news” and other misinformation. Over the past few years, it has ramped up efforts to eradicate content and reporting that it […]
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There’s this weird thing that people who hate Section 230 continue to ignore: that if you just take away Section 230, it doesn’t magically make companies liable for the actions of their users. If you studied the history of Section 230 (i.e., read Jeff Kosseff’s excellent book on the topic) or just had a passing […]
For decades, consumers have mostly wanted one thing from their ISP: a semi-affordable dumb pipe connection for the Internet. For just as long, US ISPs have bucked this demand, routinely trying to saddle users with higher costs and additional services consumer never asked for, while finding strange new ways to make an additional buck on […]
A couple of years ago, we discussed the work being done, essentially by one enterprising individual going by the handle “Peebs,” to archive a bunch of retro video game manuals for the sake of preservation. Earlier this year, we updated you all with the fairly impressive news that every SNES game manual had been digitized […]
Last week a new GitHub Copilot investigation website created by Matthew Butterick brought the conversation about GitHub’s Copilot project back to the front of mind for many people, myself included. Copilot, a tool trained on public code that is designed to auto-suggest code to programmers, has been greeted by excitement, curiosity, skepticism, and concern since it was announced. The GitHub […]
We’ve often talked about the importance of distinguishing content moderation at the infrastructure layer of the internet stack from that which happens on platforms at the edge, and this issue was brought to the forefront recently when Cloudflare took down Kiwi Farms. This week, we’re joined by internet policy expert Konstantinos Komaitis to discuss an […]
The Saudi government, led by crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, doesn’t care to be criticized. It routinely punishes its own citizens for insulting the nation’s ruler. It occasionally murders and dismembers critics for refusing to be silenced. And now it’s prosecuting and imprisoning US citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights. Last month, the Saudi […]
Emily Baker-White has quite the story over at Forbes, revealing how ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, apparently planned to have its “Internal Audit and Risk Control” department spy on the location of some American citizens: The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least […]
Whether you’re just starting out your IT journey or wanting to boost your IT skills, this 2022 CompTIA and AWS Practice Exam E-Book Bundle, full of practice exam questions and theory, is just the right package for you! With 14 eBooks from ExamsDigest, it will give you a walkthrough of the basics to advanced aspects […]
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt is involved in some questionable use of the state’s public records laws. Following the AG’s dubious decision to sue schools over what he called “illegal” mask mandates, he raised his controversy level considerably earlier this year. He continued this assault on his own credibility by suing schools and educational non-profits […]
You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a company that leans more right wing than AT&T. The company was a big ally to President Trump and drove most of his telecom policy (which was basically to give AT&T everything it wants). AT&T has a long, long record of supporting politicians who oppose civil rights and […]
We know cops often can’t differentiate innocuous substances from actual drugs. These from-the-hip determinations are just the manufacturing of reasonable suspicion and probable cause, something that allows cops to perform the searches and seizures they were planning to do anyway. Whether it’s the “odor of marijuana” (something that can rarely be objectively examined in court) […]