Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the federal government, naming the DOJ and the Copyright Office as defendants.  The EFF filed on behalf of plaintiffs Dr. Mitchell Green, a computer scientist and researcher at Johns Hopkins; Andrew Huang, an engineer and inventor; and Huang’s company Alphamax LLC.  The crux of the suit argues that Section 1201 of ...

Embed from Getty Images I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms, hosted by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, and I would recommend this user-friendly guide for anyone who, like me, has basically sucked at math their whole lives.  In one segment, du Sautoy describes how a matching algorithm pairs compatible donor sets with ...

For someone who clearly doesn’t like Hollywood, Emily Hong, policy wonk for New America’s Open Technology Institute*, is determined to pitch an over-the-top narrative about AG Hood v Google that is so divorced from reality that I don’t think Luis Buñel would know what to make of it.  Reposted on Slate, her title and basic plot, which portrays Google as ...

Because there are laws against certain expressions of neo-Nazism in Germany, and because my history-buff son and I are slightly amused by the satire inherent in that otherwise understandable fact, we will jokingly conjure the image of some official kicking a would-be fascist and screaming, “You vill be tolerant!”  But if you really like your irony served thick and over-salted, consider ...

Cat Sanding Many years ago, I volunteered a few hours after work to help the wood shop teacher at my son’s school.  The children had carved various hardwood animals that all needed edges honed with a belt sander the kids were too young to use.  I was just supposed to smooth out the marks left by the gouges and create ...

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