DIGITAL
- Catalan independence websites blocked by Spanish government in bid to stop referendum: ‘Blocking domain name servers is doing what Turkey does and what China does and North Korea does’
- The Disturbing Rise Of Cyberattacks Against Abortion Clinics
- Iran Cracks Down On Movie Pirates In The Most Inception-Esque Manner Possible
- Russia Moves to Block Cryptocurrency Exchanges
- Miami Beach Police Unaware Of The First Amendment, Arrest Guy For Twitter Parody Account
- Miami Beach cops arrest man for Twitter parody of police spokesman – Police chief: Parody “threatened to damage the reputation” of police department.
- Congress members threaten Twitter with regulation if it doesn’t suppress ‘racially divisive communications’ and ‘anti-American sentiments’
- Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate – Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream – A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.”
- Fantasy gambling is newsworthy, doesn’t violate players’ rights of publicity (Rebecca Tushnet)
- Suing Doe reviewers under the Lanham Act fails (Rebecca Tushnet)
- Hyperlinking to Sources Can Help Defeat Defamation Claims–Adelson v. Harris (Eric Goldman)
- B.C. social-media terror case shows pitfalls for prosecution (Benjamin Perrin)
- Real Talk About Fake News: Towards a Better Theory for Platform Governance (Nabiha Syed)
- How to seek truth in the era of fake news
- Supreme Court Leaves Troubling CFAA Rulings In Place: Sharing Passwords Can Be Criminal Hacking
- Potential Lawsuit Could Reveal How Trump Targeted Voters on Facebook and If There’s Any Connection to Russia
- How Israel Caught Russian Hackers Scouring the World for U.S. Secrets
- Kaspersky reportedly modified its AV to help Russia steal NSA secrets: Hackers used company’s software to secretly scan for top-secret information, WSJ says.
- Kaspersky, Russia, And The Antivirus Paradox
- Silicon Valley’s Russian ads problem, explained: Why Facebook, Google and Twitter find themselves in the middle of an investigation into the 2016 election.
- Report: Facebook removed references to Russia from fake-news report – Facebook decided it didn’t have enough evidence to name Russia in April report.
- Atone? He’d better: Facebook is still the biggest source of right-wing fake news – From Hillary rumors to the nonexistent Puerto Rico truckers’ strike, Facebook continues to spread total garbage
- The Threat of Big Tech Is Real: Why it’s time to panic about what Google and Facebook are doing to our lives.
- “The Industry Is Fundamentally Broken”: Women On Sexism In Silicon Valley
- How Facebook Rewards Polarizing Political Ads
- The science behind why fake news is so hard to wipe out: It’s time for Facebook and Google to pay attention to the psychology of the illusory truth effect.
- How Facebook Outs Sex Workers
- Facebook outsources its fake news problem to Wikipedia—and an army of human moderators
- Accidental Dow Jones News Report Claims Google to Buy Apple for $9 Billion
- Dow Jones posts fake story claiming Google was buying Apple: Story claims Jobs arranged the $9 billion acquisition in his will.
- Why Apple could be slapped with a massive $15 billion Irish tax bill: Tech giants use shell companies to defer corporate income tax bills indefinitely.
- Jony Ive’s creativity pales compared to Apple’s App Store lawsuit defense: Apple sells “software distribution services to developers” who lease App Store space.
- Supreme Court says live streaming would “adversely affect” oral arguments: Court wants transparency “while preserving the integrity of its proceedings.”
- Facebook’s Promise of Community Is a Lie: Under increasing criticism for spreading fake news, the internet giant is using communitarianism as a shield.
- Monopoly Men: After an eventful summer in Silicon Valley, there is blood in the water. At stake is democracy itself.
- Should Facebook And Twitter Be Regulated Under The First Amendment?
- Insights: New Year, New Start for Facebook’s Ad Targeting Troubles
- Dove apologizes for ‘racist’ ad that caused outcry on social media
- Twitter Temporarily Blocks Campaign Ad… Getting It Much More Attention
- “Baby body parts” campaign ad from US House member blocked by Twitter
- Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue
- Most people saw the Las Vegas shooting as a tragedy. Propagandists saw an opportunity.: Fake rumors designed to spread anti-leftist bias included making up victims, wrongly identifying the shooter, and feeding false narratives to media.
- YouTube Enacts Search Algorithm Changes After Las Vegas Conspiracy Videos Run Rampant
- Return of the algorithm monster: YouTube auto-promoted conspiracy theory videos – Dubious search results have led YouTube to “accelerate the rollout of planned changes.”
- Algorithmic Consumer Protection: To manage the risks & benefits of AI, we need to look beyond the fairness and accuracy of AI decisions.
- Vegan’s life upended after Facebook rant about “carnists” killed in Vegas: “It’s almost like a lynch mob is forming,” she says about the fallout from her post.
- YouTube Restricts Videos Related To Bump Stocks In Wake Of Las Vegas Shooting
- When YouTube Removes Violent Videos, It Impedes Justice
- Creators Cry Foul After YouTube Demonetizes Casey Neistat’s #LoveArmyLasVegas Video
- Jake Paul Sued For Damaging Man’s Hearing During Car Horn Prank
- German YouTube Star Finds Himself Facing Trial One Year After Ill-Advised Prank
- Defy Media Fires ‘Honest Trailers’ Creator Andy Signore After Wave Of Sexual Misconduct Allegations
- Amazon Weighing New Ad Programs To Make It A More Formidable YouTube Competitor (Report)
- GAW Miners founder owes nearly $10 million to SEC over Bitcoin fraud: Homero Josh Garza’s now-defunct companies must also pay $10 million.
- The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again
- How a Silicon Valley Striver Became the Alt-Right’s Tech Hero: Andrew Torba founded Gab.ai as a “free speech” alternative to other social networks
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai: ‘I don’t know whether humans want change that fast’ – From artificial intelligence to cheap smartphones, Google is on the frontline of technological development. But is it growing too big and moving too fast?
- Google’s New AI Can Mimic Human Speech Almost Perfectly
- Google’s Internet-Beaming Balloons Will Soon Be Floating Over Puerto Rico
- Google Fiber is losing interest in old-school TV: Existing TV customers will be kept on, but some will see a price increase.
- Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity Will Happen by 2045
- The Last Invention of Man: How AI might take over the world.
- The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions: Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.
- Put Humans at the Center of AI
- Waiting for the AI claims hurricane
- We Almost Gave Up On Building Artificial Brains
- As IBM Ramps Up Its AI-Powered Advertising, Can Watson Crack the Code of Digital Marketing?: Acquisition of The Weather Company fuels a new division
- Should drunk drivers be charged with DUI in fully autonomous cars?: New laws will have to be written based on the level of automation you have.
- How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds: Research suggests that as the brain grows dependent on phone technology, the intellect weakens
- ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia: Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human attention
- While You Were Offline: The People Of Twitter Agree With Rex Tillerson
- Does The Media Cover Trump Too Much? Too Harshly? Too Narrowly?
- Your Data is Being Manipulated (danah boyd)
- Six Features of the Disinformation Age
- Facebook Security Chief Alex Stamos Hits Back at Media Coverage of Its Algorithms
- Facebook security chief rants about misguided “algorithm” backlash
- Facebook Quietly Enters Starcraft War For AI Bots, And Loses
- At UN, robot Sophia joins meeting on artificial intelligence and sustainable development
- The Reports Are In: AI and Robots Will Significantly Threaten Jobs in 5 Years
- District 9 Director’s New Short Movie Offers A Disturbing Look At Our AI Future
- New Theory Cracks Open The Black Box Of Deep Neural Networks
- Why Don’t We Know the 100s of Women Writing About Tech?: When the Los Angeles Review of Books included only one woman writer in its tech issue, the Internet responded with a glorious list of women writers we should all know.
- How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @Realdonaldtrump
- What Rick and Morty fans’ meltdown over McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce says about geek culture: The mass revolt illustrated what increasingly toxic fandom culture looks like in real life.
- McDonald’s apologizes after ‘Rick and Morty’ Szechuan sauce deal makes adults mad, kids cry
- Dubai Prince Shows Off His Life Like No Other Royal
- Netflix Is Raising Prices Again
- Netflix raises its US monthly fee again, but only for two plans: The lowest tier stays the same, and the others are still competitive.
- Why Shonda Rhimes left TV for Netflix: ‘I love the creative freedom’
- Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate: Academic social network accused of infringing copyright on a massive scale
- New ‘Coalition For Responsible Sharing’ About To Send Millions Of Take-Down Notices To Stop Researchers Sharing Their Own Papers
- Library trolls copyright zealots by naming collection after Sonny Bono: Little-known copyright provision allows reproduction of full book texts.
- Authors Alliance & Creative Commons Launch New Termination Of Transfer Tool
- Windows Phone is now officially dead: A sad tale of what might have been
- “Technical difficulties” plague Arizona lottery; same winning numbers drawn: Yet again, Arizona Lottery investigates a glitch with a random number generator.
- 7th Annual Streamy Awards Live Stream Scores One Million Unique Viewers On Twitter
- AOL Is Shutting Down AIM in December
- kthxbai: AOL Instant Messenger is being turned off on December 15th – 20 years is a long time on the Internet.
- So Long, Aim. For Years, For Millions, You Were The Internet
- Fact: Asking Whether We Live in a Simulation is Not A Scientific Question
- Tim O’Reilly on why the future probably won’t be all that terrible: Economies as AI, humans as gut bacteria for tech, and how the Luddites got it wrong.
- What is the Value of Re-use? Complementarities in Popular Music (Jeremy Watson)
- Online Platforms and Free Speech: Regulating Fake News (Yale Law Journal)
- DPLA Exchange Offers Library-Centered Ebook Marketplace
- EU Commission issues guidance to online platforms for tackling illegal content online
CREATIVITY
- Ennio Morricone Loses Bid to Reclaim Rights to Film Scores
- Appeals Court Skeptical About Overturning Marvin Gaye Family’s “Blurred Lines” Victory
- Salt Lake Comic Con Fights Back Against Judge’s ‘Unprecedented’ Gag Order
- Courtroom “Feud” Leaves Accurate Speech About Celebrities Unprotected
- Who Can Create Copyrightable Work in Canada? Musings on a Monkey’s Selfie
- Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated!
- Gender stereotyping in UK advertising – staying on the right side of the line
- Entertainment trade associations looking for opportunity to push a false narrative
- From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories – Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive.
- Men Must Step Up to Change the Hollywood Culture That Enabled Harvey Weinstein
- Caroline Gleich Fights Back Against Cyber Harassment: Caroline Gleich’s Instagram feed is full of epic shots of the pro skier conquering the planet’s hardest lines. But in recent years, it was marred by an ugly shadow: anonymous bullies whose abusive comments left a wake of anxiety and doubt. Then Gleich spoke out about her tormenters—and realized she wasn’t the only adventure athlete being harassed online.
- The share of women in newsrooms has increased barely 1 percentage point since 2001, ASNE data shows: Things are almost as bad when it comes to the hiring of people of color: The share of POC working in American newsrooms is up 2.9 percent since 2001.
- The fight for the First Amendment, on campuses and football fields, from the sixties to today.
- Can the First Amendment save us?: It took a long time for the press to gain freedom and respect in America. Now both are in peril.
- How hip hop became the force behind Gabon’s political activism
- Bassel Khartabil’s Story Proves Online Activism Is Still Powerful
- Is Trump-Whisperer Maggie Haberman Changing The New York Times?: She’s a West Wing-beat colossus and a sui generis creature at the paper of record. “Maggie’s success is very much part of that tabloid, Twitter-fied sensibility bleeding into the Times,” says a colleague.
- Trump and the Watergate effect: Will young journalists still be inspired by today’s watchdog reporting?
- The Liberation of Kesha: Before she could make one of the year’s best albums, Kesha had to save her own life
- Whoops: Drug ads gloss over risks with a mind trick – that’s backed by the FDA – Drug makers are supposed to be forthcoming with health risks – and the more the better.
- France Has ‘Champagne,’ Portugal Has ‘Port.’ Should Australia Have ‘Uggs?’
- Marvel Keeps Making TV—But How Many Networks Is Too Many?
- Canada: The cult of personality (rights)
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Netflix in campaign to ‘set record straight’ on $500-million pledge for Canadian productions
- Think There Should be a Netflix Tax?: Why There is Nothing Stopping Canadian Subscribers From Paying Today (Michael Geist)
- Donald Trump tweet suggests that FCC should take NBC off the air: That’s “not how it works,” FCC commissioner tells the president.
- Zero Rating & Internet Adoption
- Advertised broadband speeds should actually be realistic, UK tells ISPs: ISPs would have 30 days to improve speeds or risk losing customers.
- Anybody Claiming Net Neutrality Rules Killed Broadband Investment Is Lying To You
- Wall Street Predicts Apathetic Regulators And Limited Competition Will Let Comcast Double Broadband Prices
- Analysts Predict Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Will Be A Massive Job Killer
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- SCC rules residential school survivors’ testimony should be kept private
- US Government Has ‘No Right To Rummage’ Through Anti-Trump Protest Website Logs, Says Judge
- Court significantly reins in what data anti-Trump website must give to feds – Judge: DOJ can’t “rummage through the information contained on DreamHost’s website.”
- Treasury Department Wing Latest To Be Accused Of Domestic Spying
- Supreme Court: Hacking conviction stands for man who didn’t hack computer: High court refuses to hear appeal of hacking conviction, one-year prison sentence.
- Russia reportedly stole NSA secrets with help of Kaspersky—what we know now: Proven or not, the accusations almost certainly mean the end of Kaspersky as we know it.
- How Kaspersky AV reportedly was caught helping Russian hackers steal NSA secrets: Reports say Israeli spies burrowed inside Kaspersky’s network caught Russia red handed.
- Hackers Grab More NSA Exploits, Possibly With Assistance Of Russian Antivirus Developer
- The NSA’s ‘Time Machines’ Make It Incredibly Easy To Violate Section 702 Restrictions
- The Worst-Case Scenario For John Kelly’s Hacked Phone
- House Judiciary Committee Introduces Weak Surveillance Reform Bill
- Deputy AG Pitches New Form Of Backdoor: ‘Responsible Encryption’
- Trump’s DOJ tries to rebrand weakened encryption as “responsible encryption”: DOJ rekindles fight with Apple, wants government access to encrypted devices.
- DOJ Says No One Has Any Right To Question The Adminstration’s Handling Of Records, Not Even The Courts
- How the Chinese cyberthreat has evolved
- UK Home Secretary Calls Tech Leaders ‘Patronizing’ For Refusing To Believe Her ‘Safe Backdoors’ Spiels
- Man who sued over Facebook childbirth livestream slapped with $120k in fees: Plaintiff stayed mum about possible money received in three other cases.
- The Equifax Aftermath – We Need More Hacking
- Man: My wife and I were secretly filmed at our Airbnb rental – “I hope more victims will come forward,” says man who claims he was recorded naked.
- T-Mobile customer data plundered thanks to bad API: T-Mobile missed bug that allowed harvesting of IMSI numbers, security question answers.
- Hackers Score Touchdown: NFL Players Association Hit With Data Breach
- Google is permanently nerfing all Home Minis because mine spied on everything I said 24/7
- Sex Toys Are Just As Poorly-Secured As The Rest Of The Internet of Broken Things
- Locking Your Phone Like This Is Pretty Much Useless
- Mattel withdraws kid-focused “smart hub” from market after complaints: Lawmakers, child advocates expressed concern about caregiving being “outsourced.”
- Beware of sketchy iOS popups that want your Apple ID: Benign iOS prompts are indistinguishable from those generated by malicious apps.
- Schrems Redux: What’s the Future for Transatlantic Data Transfers?
- An Irish Court Clouds the Future of EU Data Transfers: The Luck of the Model Clauses May Be Done
GAMES
- Epic sues alleged Fortnite hackers Brandon Broom and Charles Vraspir
- How anime landed BattleTech and the MechWarrior games in legal trouble
- “It’s disturbing that Wolfenstein can be considered a controversial political statement”: Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines discusses publisher’s marketing for upcoming anti-Nazi shooter
- Bethesda: Anti-Nazi game wasn’t meant to “incite political discussions” – Exec responds to anonymous vitriol, says Wolfenstein II is “on right side of history.”
- Dirty Chinese Restaurant mobile game canceled after racism criticism: Developer issues apology to Chinese community after call-out from US Congresswoman.
- Telltale’s Batman seemingly shows real image of assassinated ambassador
- Sex and gaming: Selling Japan’s Senran Kagura to the West – Marvelous Entertainment’s Michael Fisher and Harry Holmwood discuss the challenges and surprises this series presents
- Spreading social acceptance through a mobile game: Accidental Queens discusses the impact of exploring social themes in A Normal Lost Phone and Another Lost Phone
- Games as a service has “tripled the industry’s value”: Digital River report finds consumers prefer games with a steady stream of content over a $60 boxed title
- Rising game dev costs put squeeze on mid-tier studios
- Equity crowdfunding’s early success asks tough questions of Kickstarter: Kingdoms and Castles’ success proves the model, Tim Schafer says, and Fig’s Justin Bailey sees a niche future for donation-based crowdfunding
- Video: Game career advice from women who have been there and done that
- Bethesda’s Creation Club mod platform is live in Skyrim
- Creation Club brings paid mods to Skyrim: Bethesda finds acceptable face of paid mods and microtransactions after a long and difficult history
- Popular YouTuber calls for ESRB to step in over loot boxes: As controversy bubbles over, review aggregator OpenCritic takes “a stand against loot boxes”
- Loot boxes in video games will soon get a review flag from OpenCritic: “We’re going to take a stand” following poisonous boxes in new LOTR, Star Wars games.
- Loot boxes don’t count as gambling in the ESRB’s books
- Loot boxes aren’t gambling – ESRB: European ratings board PEGI says it’s gambling commissions responsibilities to define loot box rules
- What can game developers learn from road safety?: Epic Games UX researcher Ben Lewis-Evans details how creators can curb bad behavior through education, enforcement, and engineering
- The Untold Tale Of How Porsche’s Supercar Got Into Microsoft’s New Game
- ‘Yeesh, let’s not try and do that again’: Valve dev reflects on The Orange Box
- Nintendo shares hit-ten year high: Production of the Switch upped to two million units per month amid speculation of Chinese release
- The Nintendo Switch indie gold rush
- How Nintendo may be encouraging Switch hacking by trying to stop it: Fans look to hackers for save backup feature that Nintendo blocked to thwart hackers.
- SNES Classic outsells Switch’s launch during first week in Japan
- SNES Mini sells over 360,000 units in Japan in four days: The console is on track to outsell its predecessor, though stock shortages remain an issue
- Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even addfeatures: One year after working on NES Classic, Russian hacker returns with similar exploit.
- Tekken 7 surpasses 2M copies sold on consoles, 3 months after launch
- Tekken 7 has sold over two million units on consoles: It took three months to outsell Street Fighter V which sold 1.7 million console units since February 2016
- PUBG reaches nearly two million concurrent players: The last-man-standing shooter continues to break records in spite of growing competition
- Microsoft backtracks on controversial changes to Forza 7 VIP pass
- Turn 10 studio head apologises to fans over Forza 7 VIP passes: Developer folds to community pressure following controversial changes and communication issues
- What happens to your Steam collection when you die?
- COPPA: A game developer’s primer: “COPPA has many easy-to-miss trip wires,” and Reed Smith’s John P. Feldman and Wendell J. Bartnick are here to help
- Fired Riot employee discusses toxicity and community engagement: Rutledge says that talking to players can be scary, but it’s better than “feeling like total silence out there”
- Nielsen Report: ESports Fan Base Growing, Increasingly Complex
- American esports audiences most receptive to corporate sponsorship, Nielsen report reveals: The Nielsen Esports Playbook finds esports fans are divided on VR and esports as an Olympic event
- Hulu Forays Into Esports, Strikes Exclusive Content Deal With ESL
- Hulu Dives Into eSports With Pact for Four Shows From ESL
- Oculus Rift sees permanent price drop: $399 with Touch controllers
- Zuckerberg announces $199 Oculus Go as “sweet spot” standalone VR headset: Shipping “early next year,” also teases wireless “Santa Cruz” headsets.
- At Oculus’ Developer Summit, VR Progress Is A Game Of Inches
- Microsoft mixed reality guru Alex Kipman believes communication will be VR’s killer app
- Tim Cook says the tech “doesn’t exist” for quality AR glasses yet: Cook compared AR’s rise to that of the App Store in scope and importance.
- Survey: 28% of fans in the West think eSports belong in the Olympics
- Activision Blizzard is ready to deliver on Overwatch League hype: Mike Sepso on easing tensions between publishers and players, and the firm’s long-term plans for esports
- Blizzard looks to ‘evolve’ Battle.net with new social features
- The ESports Playbook Maximizing Your Investment Through Understanding The Fans
- How one bad joke morphed Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 3into the ill-fated BMX XXX
- Immortals appoint former hockey league officer as new president and COO – CrossCut managing director: “I believe we found a great fit and a world-class executive in Ari Segal.”
- Ubisoft to repurchase 4M shares as it continues fight against Vivendi
- Ubisoft to buy back 4m shares as it fends off Vivendi takeover: Anonymous investment services provider called in to help complete program by December 29th, 2017
- Nissan modified this GT-R to be driven with a PS4 controller: Remote-controlled by helicopter, it hit 131mph at Silverstone in the UK.
- AI isn’t just learning to play video games, it’s helping us build them
- The second death of the immersive sim (2007-2017) and a dark prophecy for a third-wave immersive sim
- Star Control II devs unite for a ‘passion project’ sequel
- How Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs
Jon