We’ve been somewhat critical of Elon Musk‘s tenure as Twitter owner and CEO (I think for fairly good reasons), but he does have a few good ideas. Lead among them, wanting to enable encrypted direct messages (DMs). He’s mentioned it before, but also had this slide in a recent internal presentation he gave: There’s not […]
The “cord cutting” phenomenon the cable and broadcast sector long denied or downplayed simply shows no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data by Leichtman Research, the top U.S. pay TV companies lost another 785,000 subscribers last quarter as younger Americans continue to shift to streaming video, over the air antennas, or free […]
When cops decide they’ve found the right perp, very little can persuade them to look elsewhere. This tunnel vision has the tendency to take years of freedom away from innocent people. And it would be terrible enough if officers simply refused to consider exonerative evidence. But in this case (like far too many others), the […]
A clear demonstration that the EU Copyright Directive is a badly-drafted law is the fact that it has still not been implemented in national legislation by all the EU Member States three years after it was passed, and over a year after the nominal deadline for doing so. That’s largely because of the upload filters of Article 17. The requirement […]
We’ve written a number of posts about the problems of KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act from Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn (both of whom have fairly long and detailed histories for pushing anti-internet legislation). As with many “protect the children” or “but think of the children!” kinds of legislation, KOSA is built around […]
The AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers were a monumental, historical disaster. AT&T spent $200 billion (including debt) to acquire both companies thinking it would dominate the video and internet ad space. Instead, the company lost 9 million subscribers in nine years, fired 50,000 employees, closed numerous popular brands (including Mad Magazine), and basically stumbled around […]
Lots of people like to pretend California is home to certifiable Communists — a socialist collective masquerading as a state. But California is not beholden to socialist ideals. It has its own dictatorial ideological bent, one that’s only slightly tamed by its election of liberal leaders. Every move towards the left is greeted by an […]
Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021 (2-Pack) This bundle is for families, students, and small businesses who want classic MS Office apps and email. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. Get 2 licenses for Microsoft Office Home and Business for Mac for $55. The Million Dollar Puzzle Are you a fan […]
There’s this narrative out there that “it has been decided” that social media is “bad for children” and that it is such a big danger that “regulation is needed.” A few months ago, we wrote about a Berkeley professor who claimed that this was settled and that there was “no longer any question as to […]
Back in July, BMW raised a bit of a ruckus when the company announced that it would be making heated seats a luxury option for an additional $18 per month. Now, Mercedes aims to take the concept one step further by announcing that buyers of the company’s new Mercedes EQ electric models will need to pay […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is WarioBarker, responding to our post that suggested Elon Musk’s fans will never realize his actions at Twitter are exactly what they accused Jack Dorsey of doing before: I disagree – they’ll recognize it, but consider it perfectly fine because Musk’s on their side. In […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, it became clear the FCC was gearing up for an attempt to hide its attack on net neutrality just before the Thanksgiving weekend. While Comcast once again falsely claimed there was nothing to worry about, the agency did exactly that and released its order on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the […]
Two years ago, the DOJ opened up an investigation into the Springfield, Massachusetts police department, targeting its troubled Narcotics Unit. Like far too many other drug-focused units, the Springfield Narcotics Unit was filled with officers who routinely engaged rights violations. Narcotics Bureau officers regularly punch subjects in the head and neck area without legal justification. […]
When people speak of culture, and preserving it, they usually mean the works of recognized artistic giants like Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Charlie Chaplin, and Miles Davis. They rarely mean things like live streams of Korean pop music, generally known as K-pop. And yet K-pop is undoubtedly an expression – some would say a particularly […]
This week, we have a special joint episode with The Neoliberal Podcast, discussing the question on a lot of minds: just what the hell is going on at Twitter now that Elon Musk is in charge? He’s owned the company for less than a month, and it’s already in chaos. Mike sits down with Neoliberal […]
A new report claims that more than a third of Twitter’s biggest advertisers have now pulled their ads from the platform, as the unstable and unpredictable nature of the new owner, combined with his implicit encouragement for hate, has made the site less and less welcoming to the brands with money to spend. Dozens of […]
Soon after Musk took over Twitter, he announced that no big content moderation changes would occur until after he had convened a “content moderation council” made up of “diverse” perspectives. Never mind that Twitter had actually done that years earlier. Musk will reinvent anything and take credit for it if he can. Of course, it […]
Mindfulness.com makes mindful living easy, practical, and simple to use in everyday life. You’ll learn science-based skills that leading health experts from around the world are teaching as part of the modern day mental health toolkit. Make good sleep a habit, be more in touch with yourself, and learn so much more to help you improve […]
To save the children, we must destroy everything. That’s the reality of the EARN IT Act. I mean, you can get some sort of sense of what you’re in store for just by reading the actual words behind the extremely labored acronym: Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. Whew. It’s a mouthful. […]
For the last few years, Apple has worked overtime trying to market itself as a more privacy-focused company. 40-foot billboards of the iPhone with the slogan “Privacy. That’s iPhone” have been a key part of company marketing. The only problem: researchers keep highlighting how a lot of Apple’s well-hyped privacy changes are performative in nature. […]
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