Tech

Hawley’s antitrust bill focuses on market cap, ignoring consumers

Enlarge (credit: Drew Angerer | Getty Images) Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) proposed a new bill on Monday aimed at blocking mergers and acquisitions for companies with market caps of over $100 billion. The bill introduced by Hawley, a frequent critic of Big Tech, is strikingly brief at just eight pages long. It would amend the […]

Tech

Victory for municipal broadband as Wash. state lawmakers end restrictions

Enlarge / State Capitol building in Olympia, Washington. (credit: Getty Images | traveler1116) The Washington state legislature has voted to end limits on municipal broadband, and the bill lifting those restrictions now awaits the signature of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee. The state Senate passed the bill Sunday in a 27-22 vote, and the state House passed […]

Tech

Facebook users can now petition oversight board to remove content

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images) Facebook is allowing its oversight board to rule on moderation decisions relating to content that remains on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Previously, the only rulings the board could issue were to restore content that moderators had removed. The Facebook Oversight Board was established last year in response to concerns that […]

Tech

This is Intel’s plan to dominate driverless car technology

Enlarge / Udelv hasn’t announced details about its forthcoming Mobileye-powered delivery robots—such as who will help Udelv build them—but they are expected to look something like this. (credit: Udelv) I’ve written before that Mobileye, an Intel subsidiary since 2017, is among the most formidable and underrated players in the self-driving sector. The Israeli company is […]

Tech

Charter must pay $19 million for tricking customers into switching ISPs

Enlarge / Pinocchio. (credit: Getty Images | malerapaso) A judge has ordered Charter Communications to pay $19.2 million to Windstream for lying to customers in order to trick them into switching from Windstream to Charter’s Spectrum Internet service. Charter also faces a $5,279 penalty for shutting off service to hundreds of Windstream’s resale customers. When […]

Tech

Court rules grocery store’s inaccessible website isn’t an ADA violation

Enlarge / A Winn-Dixie supermarket in Florida. (credit: Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) A federal appeals court struck a significant blow against disability rights this week when it ruled that a Florida grocery store’s inaccessible website did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ruling contradicts a 2019 decision by a different […]

Tech

100,000 people ask Biden, will ya break that 2-2 FCC deadlock already?

Enlarge / President Joe Biden speaks during an event on gun control in the Rose Garden at the White House April 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong ) Over 105,000 people have signed a petition urging President Biden to quickly break the Federal Communications Commission’s 2-2 deadlock between Democrats and […]

Tech

YouTube’s policies block ad targeting on Black Lives Matter videos

Enlarge (credit: Rego Korosi) YouTube is blocking advertisers from using social and racial justice terms like “Black Lives Matter” to target videos. At the same time, the site is allowing targeting for terms including “white lives matter” and “all lives matter,” according to an investigation by The Markup. Google’s ad policies officially deter advertisers from […]

Tech

US adds Chinese supercomputing companies to export blacklist

Enlarge / A staff member works beside China’s ‘Sunway TaihuLight’ supercomputer at the National Supercomputer Center on August 29, 2020 in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province of China. (credit: China News Service | Getty Images) The US has placed Chinese groups accused of building supercomputers to help the Chinese military on an export blacklist, the first such […]