Tech at Night

If you’re really that worried about Dropbox “opening your files” as these guys on a wild goose chase were, then why exactly are you uploading them unencrypted to Dropbox to begin with? This is what I’m talking about when I say people don’t actually act like they care about privacy. If people did care, they’d act differently.

Once again, the FCC is looking to reduce competition by picking winners and losers int he marketplace, this time in attacking owners of UHF stations. The guy who owns channel 56 doesn’t even have the same market power as the guy who owns channel 4, so why try to make UHF owners divest? That just reduces competition.

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Tech at Night

More Net Neutrality! With the oral arguments having happened, people are chewing on what happened. Some are confident the FCC will lose, which is unsurprising since they’ve lost on this before. Hence this title, Net Neutrality Returns – As Farce.

We need an FCC that will stop just trying to take power and instead will adapt to rapidly-changing technology in a smart and humble way. From what I’m hearing, Michael O’Rielly is a good choice for that, though of course I have no high hopes for Tom Wheeler.

Though apparently it’s not just FCC that’s terrible about this stuff. SEC writes regulations it can’t even follow itself, Darrell Issa points out.

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Net Neutrality! Verizon has taken the FCC to court over the FCC’s illegal Open Internet order of course. Oral arguments were today at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The court should reject the rule of course, as the court already rejected Net Neutrality previously in the Comcast case. The ALA, like a lot of reflexive leftist organizations, is wrong.

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Tech at Night

Apparently Kim Dotcom is already tired of living as a fugitive in New Zealand. Tired of laying about, risking capsizing an island, he’s quitting the new Mega to focus on his defense.

Meanwhile, it’s unfortunate that this anarchist was allowed in the country. Let’s just bar him from the United States, please?

The latest problem with Net Neutrality? It tramples over the Bill of Rights. Opposing the FCC’s power grab is the position in favor of civil liberties.

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Tech at Night: The Grand Return

On August 20, 2013, in General, by Neil Stevens
Tech at Night

So I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that. After Summer Games Done Quick and the Redstate Gathering, I was supposed to be back in action. But a case of the shingles took me down fast. I was a sleepless zombie in pain for a week. No fun. Was actually alright on Friday, but I had so much reading to do I couldn’t catch up in time to post on Friday, so here we are. Hang on.

So let’s start with Time-Warner and CBS. The two had their negotiations fall through with respect to carrying CBS on Cable, and so a blackout began. The left wants this as the pretext to more government, but let’s be clear about this. Government created this pickle. The way out of it was proposed way back when, and backed in Tech at Night, when Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise proposed legislation. It’s still the right answer.

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Tech at Night

I’d have signed a letter against IRFA, the Pandora-backed regulatory bailout.

Government is trying to give advice on security online, including advice on how to deal with breakins. Information exchange is truly a proper cybersecurity role for government. Also important is prosecuting private offenders, and dealing with state offenders.

Though it gets tricky when state offenders include firms selling goods while pretending to be private firms, such as Chinese firms like Lenovo or Huawei.

ECPA reform is being held in the Senate. Leaky Leahy says it’s a Republican doing it. I wonder who? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? I’m not entirely convinced that the bill is necessary, but I don’t think it’s a particularly idea as long as we preserve something along the lines of FISA.

If you really want your email to be private, don’t have it all run through Google.

Turns out Snowden’s final decision to pledge allegiance to United Russia has encouraged a child pornographer in Ireland to follow suit.

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Google as ISP lets us know they oppose Net Neutrality

On July 31, 2013, in General, by Neil Stevens

Previously in Tech at Night we heard that Google had been accused of violating the FCC’s Open Internet order, also known as Net Neutrality. The stated purpose of Net Neutrality is to prevent ISPs from discriminating between one kind of Internet traffic, and another, in order to bolster its own services.

Google as web services provider was a strong proponent of the new regulations. However in Google’s response to the Net Neutrality complaint, Google has come out in favor of discrimination, asserting that because discrimination against “server” traffic is an industry standard, Google is within its rights to continue that discrimination in the Net Neutrality era. Google, in defending its own Net Neutrality violation, is citing the pre-Net Neutrality industry standards it repeatedly claimed were dangerous and harmful to Americans.

Note that in the same Wired report, we learn that Google plans to release a “business” service, presumably at a higher price, to support servers.

Of course, they’re claiming that they’re within the law, but it’s clear they are not.

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SGDQ raised over $230,000 as of this writing, with the main marathon about over and the bonus stream soon to begin. I got to be there for about a day and a half, which was great fun. I ever learned that hiking uphill a mile and a half from the Arapahoe light rail station to the Sheraton Denver Tech Center is a lot harder than it sounds, in that mile high air. I don’t know how the Nuggets ever lose a home game.

So, I’m back, but there’s still also going to be no Tech on Friday this week, because I’m going to be off again for the 2013 Redstate Gathering in New Orleans. So what we’re doing tonight is the same as we’ll likely be doing next Monday: a catch-up post. Enjoy.

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Tech at Night

This will bet he only edition of Tech at Night this week. I was out of it Monday night, and this weekend I’m traveling to Denver for SGDQ 2013. I will be there to give live on stream commentary for the Legend of Zelda and Zelda II runs, so watch and donate if you care to.

House Democrats, together with a few libertarians, tried to restrict the NSA, and failed. I’m fine with this.

In other news, Google is accused of Net Neutrality violations for trying to restrict servers on Google Fiber. Heh. If people can run servers on Google Fiber then they’re going to have problems quickly. So this is a very interesting case.

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Nima Jooyandeh facts.