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One massive, glorious upside of the supposed “end of factchecking” is that Americans are finally learning how to Satire without a safety net
Too long the only US exponent of satire has been The Onion, and that seems only to survive on the basis of brand; but now people are saying things which are pointedly, gloriously and incredibly (nb: in-credible, viz: not credible on their face) false. Please, continue! Let’s hope that the populace now swim in enough
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Utterly delighted new BBC Wonderblocks are teaching our preschoolers the basics of both algorithm development & applied password guessing, core skills that they will certainly need
I’m not joking: the first five episodes of this brand new series dropped today. It’s teaching preschoolers how to think procedurally and algorithmically — from absolute basics — and episode 5 is all about breaking into a henhouse by guessing password sequences. There are no loop constructs yet, let alone lambda calculus or functors, but
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I wonder how many free marketers amongst the political right have stopped to wonder why it tends to be quite rare that governments, to one or other extents, permit their people to choose by whom they are governed?
Including, for instance, anything from democracy to freedom of movement?
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Protecting Americans from Foreign Un-American Communication Applications Act (PAFUCAA)
The Day the TikTok Died by Kate Klonick https://klonick.substack.com/p/the-day-the-tiktok-died
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Breaking: TikTok forcing the Democrats to clarify whether they intend to go through with censoring the Internet
This is the kind of binary clarity I wish more tech companies sought, even demanded, from regulators. Quote: […] Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19. https://x.com/TikTokPolicy/status/1880424906820608180
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Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban, and Domestic and Foreign Censors Rejoice-TikTok v. Garland | Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Elegant analysis from Eric Goldman: https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2025/01/supreme-court-upholds-tiktok-ban-and-domestic-and-foreign-censors-rejoice-tiktok-v-garland.htm
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TikTok faces ban in US by Sunday after Supreme Court rejects appeal | BBC News | Oh dear…
In the UK we call this an “omnishambles” — it doesn’t matter how you look at it, it’s a mess. My suspicion is throwing it over the wall to Trump is supposed to make him look bad/under foreign influence, but it will mostly just make him popular if/when he rescinds it. Or: the Dems are
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It will be really interesting to see if Pornhub (et al) choose to revoke their service to the UK in a manner consistent with their actions in the US, or not…
…because Mindgeek has spent nearly a decade working towards age verification in the UK as a monetisable proposition. I literally wrote the metaphorical receipts. If not, one must wonder why they would support age verification in the UK versus not in the US? And what should be the political consequence of doing so? Online Safety
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