By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 10th at 06:00 PM  | 

Gigi Sohn talked to Personal Democracy Forum about the work she does at her organization, Public Knowledge. She took time to call out RedState and Less Government. Here’s my hastily-created transcript of the key passage around the 28:00 mark: [On AT&T/T-Mobile] We often get attacked by the right-wing press, folks like, you know, RedState and Less Government, so I’m constantly dealing with attacks fully funded | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 8th at 03:10 AM  | 

Oops. It’s midnight as I type this out. I just remembered I’d better do Tech tonight, so here goes. Fortunately I already did my reading! Urgent in the Senate this week is the upcoming vote on Net Neutrality repeal, which was already passed by the House. We need 51 votes, not 60. Less Government has a list of Senators to contact with this urgent message: | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 5th at 03:00 AM  | 

There’s been a push lately to attack punitive, unfair taxes on wireless service, one that Erick Erickson signed onto, and was advertised at RedState. Ironically I only found out about it because I saw the ads while working on the code side of the site, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Anyway, that movement seems to have gotten a win, as the House passed the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 3rd at 02:45 AM  | 

Wireless competition continues to grow, as Cricket edges closer to 4G LTE. I’m losing track of how many 4G providers we’re starting to rack up. So yes, the people who tell you smaller and regional carriers are not an acceptable substitute for national carriers? They’re selling you something. That something is an attack on federalism via the Sprint/Soros/Obama/Holder attack on AT&T and the rights of | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 31st at 11:00 PM  | 

Last week I noted that the FCC is officially moving ahead with its new subsidy program. The administration will convert the Universal Service Fund – currently taxing the public and handing it out to rural telephone carriers – into a grab bag of Internet subsidies. The rural phone companies are unhappy, and everyone else is racing to get a cut. C Spire, apparently serving many rural southern customers, | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 25th at 01:30 AM  | 

Mary Bono Mack, pay attention: Here’s the model for any privacy ventures you should attempt: voluntary action by private individuals, educated by simple government actions. If you really must get government involved, teach the people to fish, so that they can protect their own privacy for a lifetime. Because if we insist on regulating the Internet problems of the moment, not only do we expand | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 20th at 03:55 AM  | 

Late start tonight for Tech at Night. Sorry, but I’ve started a plan to get myself out of California, and to be honest I’m more than a bit nervous about the whole thing. Looking for new work in the Obama economy? Yeah. But at least Marsha Blackburn wants to help the tech job situation by taking on Barack Obama’s twin regulatory nightmares of the FCC | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 5th at 08:30 PM  | 

Steve Jobs died today after a long battle with cancer. He was 56. Founding NeXT would have been enough to turn anyone into a cult hero in his field. Acquiring Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group and turning it into Pixar would have made anyone a respected business leader. But for Steve Jobs, those were feathers in his cap called Apple, the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak, | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 29th at 03:30 AM  | 

Regulation, Regulation, Regulation. We’re faced with it, and now the regulators are going Presidential on us and claiming executive privilege at the FCC. You want to know how they’re coming up with their marching orders for America? Too bad. Just ask watchdog StimulatingBroadband.com. You want a laugh? George Soros-funded front group Free Press is suing the FCC… because Net Neutrality isn’t enough of a power | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 20th at 01:30 AM  | 

I’d like to start off tonight’s edition by saying that I enjoy some of the pushback I’ve been getting in this Tech at Night series. It’s fun when someone comes here, telling me I’m all wet, then ending up admitting they’re enamored of the whole Obama regulatory apparatus. It feels good to have my pro-liberty, pro-growth, small-government positions validated like that. So to the multifaceted | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 17th at 02:30 AM  | 

We’ve lost some battles lately. That’s what happens when we let a radical Democrat become President. We let Patrick Leahy’s America Invents Act pass, imposing on America a Euro-style patent system that rewards lawyering, not being the first to invent something. We let the FCC pass an illegal Net Neutrality power grab, and that will have to go to court soon. We’re even seeing some | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 10th at 03:00 AM  | 

Friday has come and gone at last, and in fact we’re well into Saturday now unfortunately, due to my needing to have covered so much this time. Additionally, at long last it looks like the ongoing saga of California vs Amazon is coming to an end. Amazon had already floated the idea of compromise with the Democrats on their unconstitutional plan to try to bully | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 20th at 11:00 PM  | 

Twitter has a credibility problem on its hands, all of a sudden. Even as I’m getting blind link spam sent to me every single day on the site, Twitter has singled out a conservative activist group to have its accounts wiped out. Not only was the Empower Texans feed shut down, but every single employee’s personal feed was targeted as well. Twitter’s response has been | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 14th at 03:30 AM  | 

Sorry if you’ve been missing Tech at Night this week. Monday I just ran out of time as I had to do a whole bunch of housekeeping*, and tonight I’m running late. So let’s go. In classic Tech at Night style, let’s talk about the FCC. They took forever to get the ball rolling on Net Neutrality, but it’s coming now and it’s a vehicle | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 30th at 02:00 AM  | 

Amazon’s not kidding one bit about punishing states that attempt to punish it. After Amazon sent a last ditch warning to Associates that all California Associates would be terminated in the event Governor Brown signed the budget with the Amazon Tax in it, the Governor went ahead and did it. So, every Amazon Associate in California just got terminated, including countless small businesses scraping by | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 28th at 02:00 AM  | 

And we truly are back. Friday night was a night off thanks to some maintenance at RedState. It was nice because I could rest on a Friday night… but it’s not so nice now when I have a whopping 20 Firefox windows to sort through tonight. So here we go. With so many big stories going on, it’s hard to pick which one to start | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 22nd at 08:00 AM  | 

I’ve said before that the case against the AT&T/T-Mobile deal makes no sense. Not only does the historical record suggest that the merger will increase competition, but the actions of key players are the opposite of what we’d predict if the merger were expected to reduce competition and raise margins. There’s something more to it, though. That something is astroturf pushing a basic agenda of | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 20th at 11:45 PM  | 

I’ve been treating Lulzsec, one of the online gangs attacking websites including the CIA’s, as an offshoot of 4chan and Anonymous. So I’m not surprised to find out that Lulzsec and Anonymous are joining up to attack the US Government. It’s like Hamas and Fatah merging; nobody is surprised. But attacking the government? Handcuffs hurt, boys. It’ll be fun when y’all find that out. It’ll | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 7th at 03:30 AM  | 

I really can’t wait until the Lulzsec crew learns about the joys of frogmarching. These arrogant punks need to have some sense smacked into them, and felony charges would be a great way to do that. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you improve domestic cybersecurity: find the people breaking into servers and take away their liberties under existing US law. More in security news: | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 4th at 03:30 AM  | 

I am so sick of California. While it’s good that the “privacy” bill didn’t make it out of the Senate, it’s not so good that the Amazon tax is going on to the Senate. Texas: Don’t be like us. Defeat your Amazon tax in SB 1. And the hacks go on: Anonymous attacks.. Iran?, its apparent offshoot lulzsec attacked PBS and Sony, but leaves itself | Read More »