Farmers are the vanguard of the Right to Repair movement; accustomed as they are to fixing their own equipment (you can't wait for a repair tech when the tractor doesn't… Read the rest of the article: California Farm Bureau sells out farmers, hands John Deere a monopoly over tractor repair
California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown repeatedly vetoed universal healthcare after the state legislature voted it through; Democratic state majorities in NY, CT and NJ refused to enact legislation to close… Read the rest of the article: 2018's Blue Wave needs to take down Trump, and the right-wing establishment of the Democratic Party
In Walter Scheidel's new book The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, the Stanford classics prof traces the rise and… Read the rest of the article: History's solutions to runaway inequality: warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague
Tomorrow's the day: the EU will vote on the text of the new Copyright Directive, including the most sweeping and invasive internet regulations in European history: Article 11, letting news… Read the rest of the article: What's next after tomorrow's EU internet regulation vote?
Tomorrow's EU vote on a new copyright directive will determine whether the EU internet will be governed by algorithmic censorship filters whose blacklist anyone can add anything to. (Visit Save… Read the rest of the article: The EU's copyright plans will let anyone mass-censor the internet
As the European Parliament prepares for tomorrow's vote on the new Copyright Directive with its provisions requiring mass-scale filtering of all public communications to check for copyright infringement (Article 13)… Read the rest of the article: Wanting It Badly Is Not Enough: Real Problems For Creators Deserve Real Solutions
Woman World started life as a webcomic created by Canadian cartoonist Aminder Dhaliwal to explore the premise of a world where "men have gone extinct" and women have to "learn to talk again because they're not being interrupted" — what could have been a one-panel joke turned into one of the most remarkable, funny, compassionate, ascerbic, hilarious comics of its day, and that day is now, because today is the day you can get Woman World, a book from Drawn & Quarterly collecting the comic so far.
On Wednesday, the EU will vote on whether to force all online platforms to filter user-generated content against massive databases of copyrighted works (anyone can add anything to these databases,… Read the rest of the article: What developers need to do to save the internet from the EU's looming copyright disaster
Storyboard Pandemonium writes, "I am twelve years old. Me and a friend who I met at an afterschool program wrote this book to help people deal with unfair rules, beat… Read the rest of the article: 12 year olds write a book on making afterschool mischief
The Medieval Fantasy City Generator; fill in a few options and press go, and voila! I have no idea how plausible these are, but they're MUCH better than anything I… Read the rest of the article: Procedurally generated maps of medieval cities, suitable for RPGs
Succulents are key to stabilizing the fragile coastal ecosystems of California; they're also extremely popular in China and South Korea, thanks to a fad that's sweeping Asia.
Last week, Trump invited a collection to sheriffs to the White House for a rousing speech about the evils of the free press, exactly the kind of thing the leader… Read the rest of the article: The sheriffs who cheered Trump's attack on the press have long histories of shady dealings, revealed by the press
Cash bail has turned American jails into debtors' prisons, where the wealthy can go about their business while awaiting trial, and the poor can languish for months or even years… Read the rest of the article: Good news: California ends cash bail! Bad news: It's been replaced with a black-box algorithm.
Objective Reality is a new VR installation from automato.farm, written by Bruce Sterling, in which you "play" one of a variety of inanimate objects: a rotating fan, a roaming Roomba,… Read the rest of the article: Bruce Sterling's VR, Objective Reality, lets you live life as an inert, resentful appliance
Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on how the administration views the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where genocides, crimes against humanity and war crimes are prosecuted: "We will… Read the rest of the article: Trump wants to kill the International Criminal Court to protect US war criminals from prosecution for Afghan crimes
Writing in the New York Times, Nathaniel Popper notes a new current running through our discourse: the idea that Big Tech is not to be trusted, and should be broken… Read the rest of the article: Big Tech is losing the public's trust in just the same way that Big Finance has
Rudy Rucker writes, "'Return to the Hollow Earth' is my new steampunk novel of the Hollow Earth."
Doug Ford is the laughable bumblefuck who was elected Premier of Ontario by a roster of cheap Trumpian tricks and (literally) a promise to make beer cost $1 in the… Read the rest of the article: Court nukes Ontario's Trumpian government bid to gut Toronto city council
The European Copyright Directive vote is in three days and it will be a doozy: what was once a largely uncontroversial grab bag of fixes to copyright is now a… Read the rest of the article: Not in our name: Why European creators must oppose the EU's proposal to limit linking and censor the internet
In Patent 10049419, "Mobile law enforcement communication system and method," Motorola engineers describe "A communication system, comprising: a self-driving vehicle within which to detain a detainee by a law enforcement… Read the rest of the article: Motorola patents a robocop autonomous car that brethalyzes, mirandizes you, calls your lawyer and collects your bail
