Thursday, November 17, 2016
FCC abides by GOP request, deletes everything from meeting agenda Wheeler's attempt to impose new set-top box rules that help consumers avoid paying cable box rental fees may also be doomed. Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge sent a letter to Trump today urging him to side with consumers …Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Dan Goodin reports over at Ars Technica on the development of technology which can use inaudible frequencies to tie together multiple unconnected devices. He explains: The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. …Thursday, April 2, 2015
Another blow to deceptively marketed “unlimited” data plans Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica: The FCC's new rules ban throttling except in cases of "reasonable network management." AT&T could argue that the throttling is necessary to keep its network running smoothly, but FCC Chairman …Friday, September 26, 2014
FBI Director dislikes encryption on Apple and Google devicesEncryption of data on mobile devices is a big selling point in our post-Snowden world. But FBI Director James Comes isn’t happy about it: What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place …Sunday, April 6, 2014
Note: I’m not your lawyer, you’re not my client, and nothing in this article is, or should be construed as, legal advice. Companies that don’t sell anything and exist only to enforce patent rights, sometimes purchased from the original patent holder solely for the value of enforcement, are known as …Friday, March 15, 2013
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behaviorEarlier this week I mentioned that the EFF was going to represent a couple of anti-trolling websites in a case brought by porno copyright troll Prenda Law. The Ars Technica article by Megan Geuss is well-written and really conveys the absurdity …Tuesday, March 12, 2013
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda LawCopyright trolls sue lots of people to extract settlements from those who can’t afford to litigate in the face of potentially massive statutory damages. Their claims are often facially lacking in merit and instead leverage intimidation and …Monday, January 7, 2013
Antivirus pioneer John McAfee spying on BelizeNate Anderson, at Ars Technica: You will not be shocked to learn, dear reader, that McAfee’s massive spy operation didn’t just reveal some petty corruption or embarrassing secrets but rather the existence of a Hezbollah trafficking network that funneled …Friday, January 4, 2013
At least one Ars Technica reader agrees: Rdio > SpotifyArs Technica reader jamieskella, contributing to Chris Foresman’s reader recommendation round-up for all those newly-gifted iPads out there: How and why is Spotify still being recommended when Rdio (free) boasts 18 million songs and is …Thursday, November 22, 2012
USPTO director defends software patentsDirector of the United States Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos, quoted by Timothy B. Lee at Ars Technica: In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken. Of …Thursday, November 8, 2012
Judge blocks California’s new ban on anonymity for sex offenderThis one is worth watching. With regard to blogs and forums, particularly, there’s a strong analogy with letter-writing and other modes of communication with the “outside” that are typically allowed. The plaintiffs, two registered …Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Amazon outage takes out Reddit, Foursquare, HerokuLee Hutchinson, writing at Ars Technica: These kinds of outages are a jarring reminder of the true nature of “the cloud”—it’s still just servers in data centers. Amazon’s market power in ebooks leads to some questionable behavior, as well as some …Monday, October 22, 2012
Sloppy SSL implementation begets Android app vulnerabilitiesDan Goodin at Ars Technica explains how researchers found that 8% of apps in a 13,500-app sample were susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Hopefully developers will revisit their SSL implementations or, better yet, Google will update …Friday, October 5, 2012
HP CEO Meg Whitman calls it like it is: badMeg Whitman, as quoted by Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica: We aren’t as effective internally as we should be because of poor systems. We are not as competitive as we need to be in how we go to market because of our IT systems. We haven’t been using a …Friday, August 24, 2012
Cloud startup aims to make “dumb” cell phones smartSean Gallagher reports at Ars Technica on biNu, a company developing an asynchronous, server-side smartphone emulator in Java. The system’s low-bandwidth, high-security nature makes it a perfect fit for countries where the next iPhone is out of …