This Week In Techdirt History: December 20th - 26th
from the ghost-of-christmas-past dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2015, while newly-leaked documents were exposing the US government's surveillance options, Hillary Clinton was nonsensically calling for an encryption "Manhattan Project" but not to produce a back door. Tom Cotton was also attacking Tim Cook and demonstrating profound ignorance, and was joined by Manhattan's Disctrict Attorney. Blackberry, apparently hoping to hasten its own demise, started arguing for greater cooperation with law enforcement. And yet, amidst all this, the government apparently didn't notice the irony in freaking out about an unauthorized backdoor discovered in Juniper firewall software.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2010, we wondered if journalists would face the same treatment as Julian Assange and why US publications were downplaying the significance of major leaks, while, in apparent anticipation of a leak, Bank of America started trying to block payments to Wikileaks, soon followed by Apple blocking the Wikileaks app. Meanwhile, we got a closer look and Homeland Security's terrible evidence for its recent domain seizures, and its affidavit that was riddled with errors that just got worse and worse.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2005, Senators were apparently undeterred by multiple court rulings on the unconstitutionality of video game bans, the FTC was cautiously optimistic about spam trends although the clock was ticking on Bill Gates's prediction that the problem of spam would be solved by early 2006, and Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into digital music price fixing. Sony's woes continued as Texas expanded its lawsuit to include MediaMax CDs and some of the parent company's own stores were failing to pull the rootkit CDs from shelves. And, as three men were facing charges for selling modified Xboxes, we wanted to know why modifying your own hardware is a federal crime.
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And now we have politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playing Among Us on Twitch. It's awesome how yesterday's moral panic becomes today's accepted recreation.
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Yeah.
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Three's Company went from being the end of civilization as we know it to being rerun on Nick At Nite.
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Chess and the waltz were considered dangerous activities tantamount to the end of civilisation at some point, now they're considered gentile activities for the elite.
It's said that the only sure things in life are death and taxes, but change and opposition to it, followed by changes being thought of as the new normal that must be defended against further change, must also be considered.
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Re: Re: Re: change
"Change is the only constant", unless it's the stuff in your wallet.
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2019/06/26/change-is-the-only-constant/
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Genteel, not gentile.
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Not sure if that was autocorrect or my typing, but you are correct.
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I mean, it's possible some Jewish people consider them "gentile" activities too. 😉
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Hah, good old days
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