By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 17th at 07:30 AM  | 

This edition of Tech at Night is unfortunately delayed. It’s almost 4am now as I’m able to start this (7am eastern) because I had a bout of Net Neutrality to deal with. All websites loaded at the same speed on my DSL: zero. Total downtime. So, late or not, let’s go. As I warned on Monday, Net Neutrality is forcing ISPs like AT&T to impose | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 15th at 03:00 AM  | 

Good evening. I’m going to start tonight with a clarification from Friday. While I identified last week’s Net Neutrality push poll with Consumer Reports, the poll was actually signed on by CR’s publisher, Consumers Union, and conducted by the Consumer Federation of America. As that one television network says, I have now made a report, and you can decide for yourself what to make of | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 12th at 03:30 AM  | 

As I began work on tonight’s late Tech at Night, reports came out of an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan. As Japan continues to deal with an unimaginably strong earthquake and then a devastating tsunami caused by that quake, I hope nobody takes those special circumstances and tries to argue against clean, effective power generation technology in the general case. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 10th at 02:30 AM  | 

I know nobody wants to talk about Net Neutrality right now when unions are the issue giving everyone warm feelings right now, but there were important hearings held Wednesday. Greg Walden’s House subcommittee held hearings on HJ Res 37, which disapproves of Net Neutrality to invoke the Congressional Review act and overrule the FCC’s power grab. On top of that, the FCC responded to the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 8th at 12:07 AM  | 

Much to cover, and less time to cover it in! So many important things I don’t even know what to hit first. So, I’ll be biased and hit what I found out about from RedState. Google and the NLRB teamed up to promote unionization, with Google providing free ad space. That’s a problem for three reasons. First, the NLRB is supposed to be the impartial | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 5th at 12:30 AM  | 

Good evening, I wrote in my best Alfred Hitchcock impression. Top story as we go into the weekend: our friendly neighborhood House Republicans are pressing on with their oversight of the FCC and Net Neutrality in particular. The resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality is postponed, but instead we’re getting pressure on the FCC to justify its actions economically. Good on Greg Walden, Fred Upton, and | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 2nd at 11:00 PM  | 

Welcome to the remarkably early Tech at Night tonight. When I have my initial preparation done by 6pm, I’m not going to stay up until midnight to do the actual writing. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent. We start with some mild bad news: the resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality has been delayed. Fred Upton is getting recognition for his active work challenging the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 1st at 03:30 AM  | 

Hello! There’s no one clear theme of things to discuss tonight. It’s a diverse list of topics, so let’s just muddle on through and see what’s going on. We’ve got some good news from what the Republicans in Washington are going. On the Senate side, the side we haven’t heard nearly as much about thanks to the Obama-Reid majority there, conservative Republicans are taking key | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 26th at 05:30 AM  | 

And now I really push the definition of Tech at Night, starting to write this at 2am. I’d originally planned to skip tonight’s edition, and instead just sleep. But I woke up, and sleep isn’t returning anytime soon, so let’s make the rounds of tech and policy. Some Democrats still haven’t learned the lesson of the PCCC. The far left alternative to the DCCC published | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 24th at 03:30 AM  | 

On Monday I did the first half of my catchup work. Now we’ll do the second half. And one of the big issues coming up is copyright. Over the last thirty years, copyright in America has been radically reformed. While traditionally it worked as patents still do work, as a temporary grant of monopoly enforceable in civil courts, we’ve gradually moved them into the realm | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 22nd at 01:30 AM  | 

I’m back. CPAC week came and went. Then another week came and went after the horrible cold I got at CPAC. But now I’m healthy again and it’s time to start catching up. Though there’s no way I’m going to post on every tidbit I’ve run across in the last two weeks, I can try to hit the highlights. And let’s start with the fact | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 8th at 03:00 AM  | 

Remember when the Communication Workers of America backed Net Neutrality in the mildest way possible, despite the fact that it risked killing CWA jobs? Well here’s their payoff: CWA is all-in for the Internet Tax. Of course, the left isn’t calling it the Internet Tax. Instead it’s “Universal Service Fund reform,” by which they mean finding a way to get more money into the so-called | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 5th at 02:00 AM  | 

Forgive me if I’m not as engaging as usual tonight. Firefox robbed me of a good 20 minutes of time tonight. Firefox 3, what was supposed to be faster and better than ever, had taken up so much memory it was slowing my whole system, and then it took forever to restart. Of course, now they’re saying Firefox 4 will be better this time. Really. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 3rd at 12:45 AM  | 

Net Neutrality is taking a real pounding this week. The Heritage Foundation has come out shooting, calling for a major rollback in the FCC’s authority, including repealing Net Neutrality legislatively. Also, The US Chamber of Commerce is calling upon the FCC to be held to the President’s standards for regulatory review, which would certainly put Net Neutrality at risk. But its supporters press on. Even | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 31st at 11:30 PM  | 

Wow, my Tech at Night graphic is now out of date. I was already late to the iPhone 4 party because of the iPad and because I had waited for the legendary White iPhone 4. But now that I have an iPhone 4, having the 3GS in the graphic seems wrong somehow. Time for a new one if I get a good idea. Comments welcome. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 28th at 11:30 PM  | 

I don’t want to go the full Jim Anchower on you all, but the end of the week has been a bit rough on my end. My Internet connection is going full on Neutral on me, by which I mean it’s been going offline as much as it’s online, including a big 8 hours of full downtime at one point. If it weren’t for my | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 27th at 03:30 AM  | 

Sorry but Monday night I plain forgot to post. So I just have twice as much stuff to discuss tonight is all. Arguably the big story right now is what to do with the D Block. The D block is one of five pieces of the old television spectrum that is now freed up for new uses since we’ve gotten television broadcasts moved into a | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 22nd at 03:30 AM  | 

The big story as we close out this week is Verizon appealing the FCC’s Net Neutrality order. Verizon is choosing to go back to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the site of the last Net Neutrality legal fight. That was the Comcast v FCC case, lost by the FCC because the FCC simply doesn’t have the legal authority to do it. Some say it | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 19th at 11:30 PM  | 

I went ahead and took Martin Luther King day off, so it’s a double dose of stories to cover tonight. Though first, in case you missed it, make sure to see my post today on Marsha Blackburn‘s call to action against stifling, destabilizing Internet and technology regulation. Other than that, the big story this week so far has been the FCC finally approving the NBC | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 15th at 03:00 AM  | 

Republicans are eager to get to work against the President’s regulatory bypasses of the last two years. Cliff Stearns promises “aggressive and rigorous” oversight of Internet, Energy, and Obamacare, says Hillicon Valley. As the Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that’s no idle threat. Meanwhile Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton is looking forward as well as | Read More »