Feed Items
A federal appeals court just delivered yet another reality check to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s transparently retaliatory investigation into Media Matters — and the timing couldn’t be better, given that the FTC just opened its own bullshit investigation into the same organization for the same supposed “crime”: reporting factual information that made Elon Musk sad.
Here’s what happened:...
Reports that prominent American national security officials used a freely available encrypted messaging app, coupled with the rise of authoritarian policies around the world, have led to a surge in interest in encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp. These apps prevent anyone, including the government and the app companies themselves, from reading messages they intercept.
The spotlight on...
Here’s yet another worrying development in the world of privately-owned security cameras. Flock Safety has made aggressive in-roads in both the private and public sector, something aided greatly by the company’s ability to blend the two.
Much like Ring before it, Flock is pitching cheap cameras with local law enforcement buy-in, nudging residents towards leaving their cameras (some of which have...
Bring your tech skills up to 21st-century snuff with the Modern Tech Skills Bundle. This 2,000+ class series combines subject areas that every aspiring tech pro needs to know to get ahead and stay ahead. Broken out into cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, and information technology and cloud computing, you’ll be able to zero in on specific courses for your current field and branch out into...
Picture this: You’re a researcher who has spent years developing a grant proposal, gone through layers of expert review, and received National Science Foundation (NSF) approval. Then some kid barely out of college — whose main qualification appears to be founding a company that puts ads on the blockchain — logs into a Zoom meeting, pays more attention to his fingernails than the discussion, and...
We recently noted how U.S. telecom giant Verizon was more than happy to kiss Trump’s ass in exchange for FCC approval of its $20 billion merger with Frontier. That included quickly kowtowing to the administration’s demands that it do its best to be more racist and sexist.
For its part, Verizon counterpart AT...
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PB...
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, there was something of a spat between Donald Trump and Twitter. Trump announced a panel to study “anti-conservative bias” on social media, and went on some crazy Twitter tirades that raised complicated content moderation questions, and we wrote about what a mess the whole thing was. Then, Trump released a draft of an executive order about social media that was...
This may seem like the sort of statement usually delivered by an overblown narrator as rockets and lasers go zooming* by, but here goes: In the world of journalism, the future is now! Granted, it's the kind of future that often makes waves in the present and raises at least as many questions as it answers, but if you wanted a bright, problem-free future, you'd have to travel back to the...