Internet

Some are dumb, and some are dangerous. Welcome to the Internet: a song of fire and ice buckets.

Plus, don't let the kids run social if you're a serious organization.

Plus, why can't the Trump administration hire normal people?

It's not that I agreed with their ideas. It's that they encouraged me to think.

Be careful what you wish for. Comedian Owen Benjamin spent yesterday on Twitter saying very not-nice things about one of the survivors of the Parkland school shooting. I won't link to them here because this is a family-friendly newsletter, but part of his schtick was taunting that he can't be…

The other day on the Daily Standard Podcast, we mused about whether we could recognize an historic turning point at the time it was happening. Usually, we have to wait for historical perspective to distinguish world-changing moments from the usual alarms and blips of the news cycle.

“Believe me,” said—well, not really “said,” but posted—Mark Zuckerberg. Raising Chico Marx’s old question, Who are you going to trust, me or your lying eyes?

Forget Detroit, let's all move to Italy. During the economic crisis, there were hundreds of stories written about distressed properties in Michigan. Now, in Sardinia, you can buy homes for $2. Of course, there are strings attached. As Thrillist reports:

The unexpected risks of lives spent online.

#Adulting is hard! CNN has an unintentionally funny look at 26-year-old "new" adults who are having trouble leaving the nest and finding health insurance.

Back in 2013, in my last weeks as a high school senior, with plenty of free time on my hands, I wrote a survival guide for future students. This tome, full of wit and wisdom, remains unpublished, safely stored on a laptop buried somewhere in my closet. Which is just as well. I now realize Tina Fey…

A few years ago I wrote a piece called “Bitcoin Is Dead” and about once a week since then I’ve gotten an email from some aggrieved techno-utopian saying, “Oh yeah? How about issuing a correction—bitcoin rocks!”

Let’s say that someone—maybe Jack Donaghy, or Steve Jobs, or God—appeared in a dream and asked you to come up with the worst idea in the history of the internet. What would you tell them?

Amanda Hess, a David Carr Fellow at the New York Times, who “writes about Internet culture for the [Times] Arts section,” recently took to its pages to tell us what she thinks of politicians who podcast. Executive summary: She doesn’t approve of them (“Politicians Are Bad at Podcasting,” Oct. 27).

The Department of Justice is compelling a broad set of Internet records related to an organization established to coordinate anti-Trump protests during Inauguration Day, prompting a legal fight, according to multiple reports this week.

Advocates of high-speed internet proliferation normally make one of two pitches when selling the idea of widespread—often government subsidized—investment in broadband. The first is that we currently live in a “two Americas” digital paradigm, and without access to fast, reliable internet, many…

Earlier in May, Rotten Tomatoes deemed The Circle a cinematic flop. Over at the SubStandard podcast, Sonny Bunch described the book as "mediocre." And yet, the novel demonstrates what many fear about social media: its uncanny ability to subsume the individual. But should people flee from its…

Whatever being a red-blooded American man means these days (not much, it seems), I like to think I am one. I chop wood. I’ve never had a manicure and refuse to wear skinny jeans. I relieve myself outdoors with great regularity, even when indoor options are available. And though I don't hunt my own…

There were two stories before Christmas that pointed to the possibility that we are now living in an alternate universe, or have diverged onto a new timeline, or pick your Fringe metaphor.

Recently, Google unveiled a new feature on its website: the ability to tour, via “street view,” its Lenoir, North Carolina, data center, one of its numerous, highly guarded campuses. Google is attempting, at least partially, to lift the iron curtain—for which it has been much maligned—and show the…

New legislation signed into law last week by Vladimir Putin strengthens anti-terrorism efforts at the price of civil liberties. The new law allows adolescents as young as 14 to be tried as adults, as well as criminalizes the failure to report a crime, "inducing, recruiting, or otherwise involving"…

I’ve never liked feeling stereotypical. Which is why I would like you to know that this story does not involve a vanilla latte. As bland, generic—dare I say, basic?—as my tale might otherwise be, some lines cannot be crossed. Despite being the premier Starbucks drink of choice for women in their…

I'm being stalked by a pair of cheap eyeglasses. They keep looking out at me with their eyeless stare. They’re joined by a zombie pair of khakis, Hillary Clinton, and, creeping along on their spindly little legs, folding music stands. None of them will leave me alone.

Early in the Internet’s life, and relatively late in his own, the great journalist Christopher Hitchens embarrassed me away from the Web. This embarrassment, luckily, did not involve his writing anything. He had invited me to work on a project and deadlines were approaching. I emailed him without…

On the surface, little seems to have changed as the opening bell rang for the retailers’ battle that is the holiday shopping season. On Thanksgiving day we carved some 46 million turkeys and downed 50 million pumpkin pies despite a shortage of pecans created by Chinese consumers who imported the…

In a speech today in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Internet "needs rules to be able to flourish and work properly." This, according to Kerry, is necessary even for "a technology founded on freedom."

Here it is, the FCC's 400-page plan to regulate the Internet:

This past week I decided to change living arrangements chez Epstein. I turned my office into a den and our spare bedroom into an office. Sounds simple enough. I soon realized that I would have to hire professional movers to lug a couch, a weighty television set, and several bookcases and a few file…

Hillary Clinton took a strong position in support of so-called net neutrality in an appearance yesterday evening in Silicon Valley:

Republican senators Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, and Rand Paul have all been high profile opponents of the Obama administrations current plan to regulate the internet -- in particular, Lee has called the regulation a government "takeover" of the internet and says it amounts to a "a massive tax increase on…

Texas senator Ted Cruz mocks the FCC Internet regulations, supported by President Obama, in a newly released video:

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is stepping up his criticism of President Obama’s plan to regulate the internet, warning that new rules will lead to the types of taxes and fees slapped on telephones and cable service.

The White House branched out into yet another social media venue Tuesday. Upworthy, the popular you-won't-believe-what-happened-next site, was given an exclusive White House video of President Obama discussing the executive action he plans to take to improve Internet speeds in U.S. cities. In true…

President Obama, earlier today, released this statement on net neutrality:

Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA), 13 fellow members of Congress, and over 20 organizations sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late September urging officials to make sure that schools and libraries receiving federal funds do not block or limit access to websites with…

In July, a hacker gained access to a computer server used to test code for the federal government's Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, according to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal's Danny Yadron. Although the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stressed no data was taken and…

The Commerce Department issued a low-key bureaucratic announcement on March 14: The government will not renew its contract with the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN), under which ICANN has administered the Internet’s domain name system since the mid-1990s. U.S. government…

"Bitcoin" is the most widespread, cryptographically-secure Internet currency. It was created in 2009 by someone (or someones) who referred to themselves as "Satoshi Nakamoto." Once it was released into the wild, the bitcoin currency ecosystem operated on a public, inalterable schedule. We know…

At first glance, a page on the Health and Human Services (HHS) website seems to be giving that agency's official advice on the "The Health Benefits of Nootropics," a classification of purportedly memory-enhancing drugs.  The page is found on the website's subdomain of the Assistant Secretary for…

The Healthcare.gov website has been plagued with problems since the October 1 launch.  As web programmers often do, the designers of the federal government's flagship health care website have a test version of the site, spa.healthcare.gov, to help work out the kinks before implementation on the…

Reuters reports that the federal government is "months behind" its efforts to set up data security measures for the state health insurance exchanges, set to open on October 1, as created by Obamacare:

A new CNN poll finds that 66 percent of American adults believe that it's "right" for the Obama administration to analyze and collect Internet data. Only 33 percent believe the action is "wrong," and 1 percent have "No opinion."

This week we have entry #5,740,412 in the ledger documenting "Why Not Every Market-Based Outcome Is Optimal." And that’s the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr.

Governments everywhere are on the prowl for more revenues. French president François Hollande wants to tax incomes in excess of €1 million at a 75 percent rate. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has jacked up VAT. Southern Europe’s finance ministers have come up with the novel…

House speaker John Boehner might support the Internet tax bill. But it isn't too likely, he indicated in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

In an NBC interview, Google's Eric Schmidt reminded America that "It's important to remember these 5 billion people are just like us. They're just trapped in bad poverty and bad governance and so forth." The CEO of Google was referring to those in the world who don't have smartphones:

The mayors of America have blessed the Marketplace Fairness Act, as Tom Cochran, CEO & executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, writes in Real Clear Politics. This, of course, is the legislation that allows states, cities, towns, villages, and wide spots in the road (about 9,600…

Eric Schmidt and Bill Richardson’s Pyongyang adventure continues to pay dividends.

Google chief Eric Schmidt, along with former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, visited a rare North Korean computer lab:

The United States announced today that it “cannot sign” a proposed treaty that would cede some control of the Internet to the United Nations. The details of the treaty have been the subject of more than a weeklong conference in Dubai.

In the middle of the night at a U.N. conference in Dubai, the presiding chairman of the International Telecommunication Union conference surveyed the assembled countries to see whether there was interest in having greater involvement in the U.N. governing the Internet. A majority of countries gave…

Two technology firms that monitor global Internet traffic report that Syria has been cut off from the Internet. Regular landline phone and cell phones services have been affected as well, Syrian opposition activist Ammar Abdulhamid told me. “Therefore, the possibility of accidental damage can be…

Next week the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to news reports.

Jen Rubin makes the case today that the anti-piracy bills pending in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), are likely unconstitutional. The bills essentially call for censorship of online speech in such a way, and with so little…

Unless you were unconscious last week – or perhaps a Yankees, Phillies or Red Sox fan in October isolation – you’ve likely seen the extraordinary online video of a horned beast attacking a mountain biker in South Africa. It’s captivating because of the random violence and the fact that the biker…

The New York Times reports that "China already has some of the world’s most far-reaching online restrictions," and now it's getting worse.

If you are growing tired of hearing all the gruesome details of politicians’ personal lives, you are not alone. But you may also find yourself troubled about what these stories say about the state of our culture. 

Jerry Brito, director of the technology policy program at the Mercatus Center, notes that the unrest in Libya could have an effect on the rest of the world, too -- at least that part of it that participates in social networking. Writing at time.com, Brito notes that Twitter's default URL shortening…

The Net Delusion

This week the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on COICA (the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeit Act). It sounds like harmless enough legislation, or at least it did to members of the committee who voted for it unanimously, 19-0, during the lame duck session last year. But…

In the Washington Post yesterday, Jackson Diehl had a column on the failure of the State Department to provide funding to something called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, a collection of providers of gizmos that can circumvent firewalls constructed on the Internet by repressive…