Новости за 02.11.2016

ESPN has been losing hand over fist as consumers shift to streaming alternatives and new "skinny" TV bundles of smaller channels. The company is estimated to have lost roughly 7 million subscribers in just a few years, and a recent survey found that 56% of consumers would drop ESPN in a heartbeat if it meant saving $8 a month on their cable bill (the estimate of how much ESPN costs each subscriber). The losses are largely thanks to ESPN executives failing to see the cord-cutting threat coming. Apparently... Читать дальше...

In my talk last week at Wikimedia, one of the examples I gave of "copyright creep" where copyright law is being shoved into areas where it obviously doesn't belong was that time when John Deere and GM argued that you didn't really own parts of the vehicles you bought from them, because of copyright. The underlying issue was that these companies didn't want the Librarian of Congress to exempt hacking cars and tractors from section 1201 of the DMCA. 1201 is the anti-circumvention provision that says... Читать дальше...

Congrats Peter Thiel: you've successfully censored true stories reported by the press. Just a little while ago, Nick Denton posted that the remaining three cases filed by lawyer Charles Harder against Gawker, Denton and some reporters had been settled, with the agreement to remove the stories. Harder, of course, is the lawyer that Peter Thiel set up with his own practice, with the stated mission of filing lawsuits that would kill Gawker. Thiel/Harder "won" back when this effort forced Gawker into bankruptcy and then a fire sale to Univision. Читать дальше...

Deep Learning is a set of powerful algorithms that are the force behind self-driving cars, image searching, voice recognition, and many, many more applications. Learn more about it all with the $39 Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence Introductory Bundle. Over four courses, you will learn about building machines that, in effect, act like neurons in a neural network as they learn while they're fed more information. The first course covers the basics of building a linear regression module in Python... Читать дальше...

Last week, we wrote about the big news in the copyright realm, where the new Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, removed the Register of Copyrights (the head of the Copyright Office), Maria Pallante, from her job. Technically, Hayden reassigned Pallante to a new job in the Library of Congress, but Pallante rejected that offer and resigned. While we -- and some others -- pointed out that this was a good opportunity to reshape the Copyright Office away from being a taxpayer-funded lobbying organization for Hollywood... Читать дальше...

On Monday evening, you may have seen news of a "big scoop" at Slate by famed reporter Franklin Foer, about how Donald Trump had a server that was "communicating" with a Russian server. Foer, who famously got pushed out of The New Republic for not being very with it on technology on the internet (among other things), makes a really big deal out of some really weak tea. After reading the article (along with another one alleging Russian spies had been "cultivating" Trump) I tweeted out that the evidence on both was super weak. Читать дальше...

As we've been discussing, the hot new broadband battleground is the boring old utility pole. In most existing markets, a new competitor needs the incumbent ISP to move their gear and "make ready" the pole before a competitor can attach their own fiber. With every incentive to slow new competition, incumbent ISPs have long (ab)used this bureaucracy to their advantage. As a result, this preparation can take the better part of a year, especially if gear from multiple incumbents needs moving.

In a recent Google Fiber blog post... Читать дальше...

Back in June, Western media picked up on a sordid tale involving the Chinese company Jiedaibao, a platform which facilitates loans between individual lenders and borrowers. Because of the private nature of the deals, loan sharks came up with a new twist on securing collateral for the money they lend out at exorbitant rates, described here by China.org.cn: They often ask female students to pose naked with their ID and use these photos as collateral in their practice. If a student defaults on the loan... Читать дальше...

For those who don't follow the video game industry closely, you may not be aware that there is currently a worker's strike by voiceover actors belonging to SAG-AFTRA against some of the larger game publishers out there. The union and ten or so publishers have been attempting to negotiate a new labor agreement for something like two years, with the sticking point being additional compensation based on game sales. While this concept may sound foreign to those of us that grew up with the gaming industry in its infancy... Читать дальше...

Almost four years after we noted that the fight between German collection society GEMA and YouTube had gone on way too long, it looks like it's finally been settled. If you don't know, way back when, GEMA, which is effectively a mandatory copyright royalty collector in Germany, demanded insane rates for any music streaming on YouTube. Apparently, it initially argued that a stream on YouTube was no different than a purchase on iTunes, and thus it should be paid the same rate. In 2009, it asked for... Читать дальше...

If you really want to believe the nation is unsafe and under threat from foreigners of all kinds, the government entities in charge of ensuring your safety are more than happy to oblige your dark fantasies.