Maybe it’s a weird personal flaw or something, but one of the most fascinating things in business to me is watching one-time pesky disruptors inevitably pivot into powerful turf protectors. As well as all the executive finger-pointing, shenanigans, and denialism that process usually entails. Take, for example, Netflix. After being disruptive and shaking up streaming […]
Apparently, it’s not enough to prevent hundreds or thousands of people with “no known affiliation” with terrorist groups from flying — a list that includes children who have yet to enter kindergarten. Even though the TSA long ago admitted (albeit, not publicly) the threat to airline flights was almost nonexistent, it still needs to look […]
It’s been a bit since we’ve talked about 3D printing, which I mostly took to mean that the world realized that there was no massive threat here and that we all collectively decided to make this a non-controversy. Early on there was some noise made about larger companies viewing the ability for the public to […]
We just got done noting how the telecom industry has been pushing misleading editorials in Arizona to derail the nomination of popular and well-qualified telecom and telecom reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The editorials are full of false claims that Sohn has a terrible track record on media diversity, shoveled by organizations with longstanding […]
So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it’s a special gift to “big tech”. A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries […]
It can always get dumber. As you’ll recall, last year Florida man governor Ron DeSantis, as part of his big push to become the new populist leader of ignorant people, pushed for a law to force social media websites to host political content they didn’t want to host. He convinced the subservient Florida Legislature to […]
In early 2020, Peter Brimelow, the founder of the incredibly sketchy site VDARE, sued the NY Times for calling him an “open white nationalist” among other similar things. Brimelow and VDARE have only spent two decades or so pushing for “ethno nationalism,” that “America is not a melting pot,” and that we need to “preserve […]
The Complete 2022 Agile and DevOps Training Bundle has 7 courses on Agile Scrum, and DevOps certification exam prep. You’ll learn about the Agile and Scrum methodologies of project management that are an integral part of ensuring your entire team knows what to expect from start to finish, keeps everyone on deadlines, and gets you […]
A few weeks ago, Rene Ebersole drew the curtain back on law enforcement forensic training, showing the public that their tax dollars were being blown on forensic education handed out by Dr. Arpad Vass — someone who in the year of our lord two thousand twenty-two is teaching cops how to utilize witching to locate […]
ISPs, looking to undermine, FCC authority managed to frame the whole net neutrality debate as “partisan” as to sow dissent, prevent consensus, block reform, and justify the 2017 repeal. But the idea was never really partisan. Despite headlines and DC rhetoric, a massive bipartisan majority of Americans actually supported the rules. Why? Because net neutrality […]
Praise be to the various gods! (Shout out to Tiamat!) The DOJ is back in the busting up local PD business, something it largely abandoned while Donald “A Police State Is The Best State” Trump held office for a single term. The DOJ Civil Rights Division was relegated to the furthest back burner during Trump’s […]
We’ve tried to make this point many times before. A few months back I wrote a detailed post in response to a famed economist who kept insisting that repealing Section 230 would hurt Facebook, that the reality is the opposite. If you understand the mechanisms by which Section 230 actually works, the key is that […]
Cops may have only the vaguest grasp on the laws they use to initiate stops, but they sure as hell understand copyright law. With algorithms doing the heavy lifting to prevent copyright infringement, cops have deployed a new tactic in hopes of preventing accountability activists from livestreaming or uploading their interactions with officers. When the […]
Last week, about the same time I posted by giant post on all the things that Elon Musk didn’t understand about content moderation, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong posted a really long, but completely worth reading thread about content moderation on social networks. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but did want […]
A world leader not known for shying away from truly terrible ideas about speech and the internet is back at it again. A few years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered, as Cathy Gellis put it, “a speech only an autocrat would love,” decrying pretty much everything that’s good and open about the internet while […]
Agenda is a date-focused note-taking app for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS, which helps you plan and document your projects. Agenda gives you a complete picture of the past, present, and future, driving your projects forward. Whether you’re a business manager noting decisions in a meeting, a teacher planning next week’s lessons, or a blogger brainstorming […]
Behold! An actually interesting academic study exploring whether or not Twitter moderation has an anti-conservative bias! This is something many of us have been asking for for a while, but it’s a very difficult thing to study in any meaningful way. The results of this study are actually really fascinating, but it’s important to dig […]
We’ve long covered how cable and broadband companies use a rotating array of bullshit fees to covertly jack up advertised rates, hitting you with a much higher bill after you’ve subscribed. We’ve also noted how new streamlined technologies have been turning the binding arbitration process on its head, making it easier and more affordable for […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a comment about Ed Sheeran filming his songwriting sessions to avoid copyright complaints, in response to a commenter saying it’s unfair to malign the copyright holders who went after him, because they legitimately own the rights they own: The legitimacy of the […]
Here we are at the last in our series of posts about the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926. So far, we’ve looked at The Wall Across The River, The Obstruction Method, Dreaming The Cave, Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn!, and A Drunk Man Looks at […]
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