Over the last few years, we’ve seen a bunch of politicians trying to frame their regulation of the internet as not being about regulating speech, but about “design” or “process” or some such. But when you scratch beneath the surface, they’re always really about regulating speech. Whether it’s KOSA or California’s Age Appropriate Design Code […]
No doubt encouraged by the governor and state legislature’s hatred of anything not aligned with their hetero-first principles, a Florida college not only shuttered its Gender and Diversity Center, but threw out hundreds of books dealing with, you know, gender and/or diversity. The Stop WOKE Act is likely to blame here, even if it’s not […]
Level up your creative projects with this Adobe Elements Bundle. If you are new to it, or even a seasoned pro, the intuitive tools are designed to edit your photos and videos with precision. Photoshop Elements 2023 allows you to easily combine your photos into a collage, enhance them with artistic effects, and create overlays […]
Dear California Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta: you really don’t have to be the opposite end of the extremists in Florida and Texas. You don’t have to lie to your constituents and pretend losses are wins. Really. Trust me. You may recall that the Attorneys General of Texas and Florida have taken to lying […]
The streaming sector has historically been home to no shortage of failures that most people forgot. There was of course Quibi, the $1.75 billion Hollywood streaming project that lasted all of 199 days before executives had to throw in the towel. There was also Verizon’s joint streaming venture with Redbox, which lasted about as long […]
Way back in 2020, Tim Cushing wrote about the Las Vegas police and its habit of running low-resolution images through facial recognition software in order to generate leads when conducting investigations. While his post focused on just how those low-res images were used, and sometimes misused, the important thing to recognize for the purposes of […]
Back in February, the FCC announced new rules that would prohibit the use of AI-generated deep fake robocalls. The proposal would make such calls illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which it already uses to combat robocalls. It was prompted by that very sloppy AI deep fake that targeted the Democratic Presidential primary […]
Last week, the NY Times had an article about how Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, is being targeted in a SLAPP suit by a “podcaster” who claims Raffensperger defamed her in his book about the 2020 election. (For reasons unknown, the NY Times links to none of the legal filings in the case, […]
Oh, Fifth Circuit, you crazy, crazy kid. I take back almost all the bad things I’ve said about you. The cop-friendliest circuit in the nation has done the unimaginable: set up a circuit-on-circuit showdown that can only be resolved by a Supreme Court decision. Until that happens (don’t hold your breath), you and your Google […]
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As we head into another Presidential election, one thing has been consistent from the last two such elections as well: the tech policies of both major parties are terrible. The Donald Trump Republican platform for 2025 is beyond crazy with all sorts of nonsense. The “tech” part of it is barely worth a mention, but […]
I spent decades as a telecom beat reporter watching the mainstream press cover the telecom industry. I had a front row seat to the endless promises big telecoms like AT&T and Comcast made before a merger, and the way the U.S. business press repeatedly parroted pre-merger claims entirely unskeptically, without pointing out the harms of […]
One of many ideas floated as a solution to police misconduct issues is the requirement that officers carry their own insurance. Almost every law enforcement officer is currently indemnified by the towns and cities that employ them, ensuring they’re never personally responsible for any judgments or settlements stemming from their misconduct. And that’s a very […]
Because of the wonderful world in which we live, we get to learn about certain unhappy terms and practices, one of which is the concept of “collective punishment.” As a matter of war, collective punishment is a war crime. The idea is that a belligerent force cannot punish an entire population or group merely for […]
The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed Indiana’s age verification law to go into effect — even as the Supreme Court has suggested a similar law in Texas might be unconstitutional. The Seventh Circuit panel handed down this ruling, letting the law go into effect just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court decided […]
For as long as the evening news has existed, America has been portrayed as a dangerous place to live. Reminding people we’re a very safe country — especially over the past 30 years — doesn’t draw in viewers. And it doesn’t draw in voters, either. Among the many, many, many things Donald Trump lied about […]
As we recently noted, telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast are having some very good luck using a corrupt, MAGA-heavy court to not only kill popular net neutrality rules — but to effectively lobotomize the FCC’s ability to protect broadband consumers at all. Leveraging the recent Supreme Court Lopper rulings, telecom lawyers are trying to […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about the Governor who told students to “look the other way” if they are bothered by mandated postings of the Ten Commandments: Funny how theocrats never practice what they preach. They refuse to simply “look the other way” when bothered by, […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at the loss of Aereo and its impact on policy, and also dedicated the first of two episodes of our podcast to dissecting the FTC’s Facebook settlement. The Wall Street Journal had Dennis Prager peddling complete nonsense about “Google censorship”, a Fox News commenter was calling […]
It was just a few weeks ago that we were discussing how an update Apple made to its rules for its App Store allowed for some retro-console game emulator apps, but not retro-PC game emulator apps for some reason. When Apple made the policy change, developer Chaoji Li submitted his app, iDOS, for consideration, only […]
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