Oklahoma is considering a bill that would criminalize porn:
404 Media
Oklahoma Senator Introduces Bill to Make Porn Completely Illegal
In a slate of several bills restricting reproductive rights and divorce, Oklahoma senator Dusty Deevers suggests anyone making anything even vaguel...
Turns out "incinerate money and boil the oceans" was not the smartest strategic gambit
404 Media
DeepSeek Mania Shakes AI Industry to Its Core
Why a relatively unknown Chinese-developed AI model has turned the AI industry on its head.
You can watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole with employee policies and public websites on GitHub, which is automatically cataloguing all of the changes the 18F agency is frantically making to its internal and external webpages:
404 Media
GitHub Is Showing the Trump Administration Scrubbing Government Web Pages in Real Time
Watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole on this government agency's GitHub page.
New: The manufacturer of a medical device that costs six figures has told hospitals that they will no longer be allowed to fix them. Hospitals must now sign repair contracts with the manufacturer if they want the device fixed. Repair monopoly in action:
404 Media
Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures
Hospitals are increasingly being forced into maintenance contracts with device manufacturers, driving up costs.
The last few weeks have really highlighted just how fragile corporate social media is, and just how beholden to political power it is. To build any sort of ground-up power we must continue to invest in decentralized alternatives that are resistant to intervention
404 Media
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized socia...
We've been lucky enough that we are getting a lot of merch orders from Europe in particular, but we (and our customers) are getting killed on shipping for obvious reasons. If you know of a good EU merch printer/supplier/fulfiller, please let me know? Would be good to work with a small shop
New: The FTC has formally sued John Deere over its tractor repair monopoly, which is the strongest punitive action the federal government has ever taken against a company over restricting right to repair
404 Media
FTC Sues John Deere Over Its Repair Monopoly
Deere "has illegally restricted the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combines."
Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized, open source Instagram competitor that has had skyrocketing signups in recent days:
404 Media
Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed
Pixelfed said it is "seeing unprecedented levels of traffic."
Beautiful stuff: "It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you have to get really good at an instrument... I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music."
404 Media
CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music
"I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”
New: Meta has deleted trans and nonbinary Messenger themes, as well as the blog posts announcing them. Happens the same week that it has changed its rules to allow users to say LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill"
404 Media
Meta Deletes Trans and Nonbinary Messenger Themes
Amid a series of changes that allows users to target LGBTQ+ people, Meta has deleted product features it initially championed.