Randy Lubin (previously) writes, "New work is entering the public domain and Mike Masnick and I are hosting a game jam to celebrate. Designers have all of January to design… Read the rest of the article: Public Domain Game Jam: what games can you design with the bounty of 1924?
Shardcore (previously) writes, "I took Godley & Creme's seminal 1985 video and sent it through a StyleGAN network."
Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest… Read the rest of the article: VICTORY! New Free File rules ban tax-prep firms from hiding their offerings, allow IRS to compete with them (a love-letter to Propublica)
Jennifer Jenkins from the Duke Center for the Public Domain writes, "January 1, 2020 is Public Domain Day! Works published in 1924 are entering the US public domain. They include… Read the rest of the article: Happy Public Domain Day 2020!
The editors of Canada's Globe and Mail asked me to reflect on what science fiction can tell us about the 2020s for their end-of-the-decade package; I wrote about how science… Read the rest of the article: Science fiction, Canada and the 2020s: my look at the decade ahead for the Globe and Mail
None of us signed up for an Internet composed of "a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four", but here we are, watching… Read the rest of the article: 2019: EFF enters the competition fray
Jon Cog writes, "For Christmas, mathematician Donald Knuth shared some great geeky fun. He revealed how for the last 57 years, he's been incorporating the digits of pi into the… Read the rest of the article: Donald Knuth's Christmas pi surprise
KKR is one of the largest private equity funds in the world. Overdrive is one of the largest e-lending suppliers to the world's libraries, supplying 43,000 libraries in 75 countries.
Robbo sez, "As is my wont, I post on social media at this time of year John Lennon & Yoko Ono's Happy Xmas (War Is Over) official YouTube video. It… Read the rest of the article: Youtube declares John Lennon's classic "Happy Xmas" to be "offensive content"
In my latest podcast (MP3), I conclude my serial reading of my novella Party Discipline, which I wrote while on a 35-city, 45-day tour for my novel Walkaway in 2017;… Read the rest of the article: Party Discipline, a Walkaway story (Part 4 — the final part!)
Slate has dubbed the 2010s as the decade of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for unlimited, anonymous corporate election spending. In 2010, the year of… Read the rest of the article: The 2010s were the decade of Citizens United
Doctors who accept pharma industry gifts (which can range from free coffees to lavish dinners to six-figure speaking fees) claim that they're not influenced by these bribes/gifts, which is possibly… Read the rest of the article: Doctors who take pharma industry freebies prescribe more of their benefactors' drugs
In 2017, a string of reports revealed that data-brokers were acquiring and linking titanic sets of location data from apps and mobile carriers and mining that data (and sometimes selling… Read the rest of the article: New York Times analyzes a leaked set of location data from a private broker, sounds the alarm
Until recently, Jackie Fielder was living in her van. At 25, the Stanford sociology grad couldn't afford rent in San Francisco.
The passage — through MEPs erroneously pushing the wrong buttons! — of the new EU Copyright Directive last March means that online platforms operating in the EU will have to… Read the rest of the article: Americans should definitely be worried about the EU's new copyright rules
It's not just the CBC and the Wall Street Journal — I was delighted to see this morning that Radicalized, my 2019 book of four science fiction novellas made the… Read the rest of the article: Radicalized is one of the LA Public Library's books of the year!
Last month, Propublica published a characteristically blockbuster piece on the use of "quiet rooms" in Illinois schools, especially in special ed programs: these are a euphemism for solitary confinement, and… Read the rest of the article: Illinois schools don't just lock special ed kids in solitary, they also restrain them
Gretchen McCulloch is the internet's favorite linguist, whose outstanding 2019 book Because Internet explores how statistical methods can, for the first time, be applied to large amounts of informal communications,… Read the rest of the article: Codifying "Boomerspeak" and debating the ethics of poking fun at it
When Americans get their paycheck every month, there are a ton of deductions from it — some represent money taken by state governments, some by the feds, but one of… Read the rest of the article: Medicare for All would cut most Americans' taxes, creating the biggest American take-home pay raise in a generation
The Canadian Energy Center (AKA "The War Room") is a taxpayer funded propaganda outlet that the Alberta government — dependent on the tar sands, the world's filthiest oil — funds… Read the rest of the article: Alberta's tax-funded climate denial "war room" ripped off its logo from a US tech company
