Karl Bode
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Articles by Karl Bode
Sling TV Drops Innovative Streaming ‘Day Passes’ After Disney, Warner Bros Sued
Last year, Sling TV unveiled a rare bit of innovation in an increasingly enshittified streaming video market. They began offering what they called “,” allowing users to subscribe to live streaming TV for the day, weekend, or a full week for prices starting at around $5. It was a nice option for folks who don’t want, or can’t afford, increasingly costly monthly subscriptions.
Whoops: Grok Bot Spills Tech CEO’s Bank Data In Public Slack
Shane Mac, a tech entrepreneur and CEO of the software developer XMTP Labs, decided to connect Grok Bot to his personal bank account. Like many people who attach undercooked big tech agentic AI agents to their personal accounts without reading the instructions (see: Muse’s rough last few weeks), it didn’t go well. Mac soon found that Grok not only posted his financial information and bank balances to his company’s Slack channel, the Grok Bot leaked the information while posing as Mac.
Trump Acquired $5 Million In SpaceX Debt Two Days Before Space Transportation Executive Order
Our consolidated corporate press doesn’t really make this clear, surprisingly, but the United States is too corrupt to function. There’s simply no shortage of evidence across every arena that matters. Trump’s corruption is utterly historic, yet it’s just endlessly normalized. To the point where most press outlets don’t really even mention Trump’s corruption clearly when discussing policy moves. But it exists all the same.
Starlink’s Entry Into Wireless Is Being Wildly Overhyped
One of the ways Musk fraudulently goosed SpaceX stock value during the IPO was by pretending that the company would very quickly (in just a year or two) grow from just 12 million global Starlink subscribers (just 4 million in the States) to something more akin to 300-500 million. The way Starlink claims they’ll do this is by getting into traditional wireless phones and challenging incumbents like Verizon, though if you look at the actual details of the plan, it’s not well thought out.
China Still Has Easy Access To TikTok Despite Trump ‘Fixes’
Remember how the Trump administration — and folks like Brendan Carr — spent four straight years fear-mongering about China’s purported control over TikTok and its owner, ByteDance? And remember how the Trump administration (with incompetent Democratic lawmaker help) “fixed” the problem by offloading Tiktok to Trump’s billionaire buddies while still maintaining co-ownership with the Chinese?
U.S. Car Privacy And Security Remain An Absolute Shitshow
In 2023, Mozilla released a report noting that modern U.S. cars had the worst security and privacy standards of any major technology industry the organization tracks. That was followed by a major NYT report in 2024 showing how automakers routinely hoover up oodles of consumer driving and phone info, then sell access to that data to auto insurance companies looking to justify rate hikes.
Willmar, Minnesota’s Open Access Fiber Network Set To Go Live This Year
Willmar, Minnesota officials say they’re making steady progress on construction of the city’s planned $24.5 million open access fiber network, with the first residential and business customers slated to come online sometime later this year. Dubbed Willmar Connect, construction of the city-owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network broke ground in May 2026, marking a pivotal turn from years of feasibility studies and council debates to actual directional boring, conduit placement, and fiber splicing.
Judge Orders Trump To Stop Airing Taxpayer-Funded Midterm Propaganda Ads (For Now)
Last week, the DNC sued the Trump administration for using $20 million in taxpayer money on strange and ineffective midterm ads. The use of taxpayer money technically violates multiple laws (remember those?), including the Hatch Act and Federal Appropriations Laws restricting taxpayer-funded propaganda. Trump’s now been ordered to stop airing the ads entirely courtesy of a temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon.
Cable Giants Ironically Plan To Sue FCC For Illegally Killing Media Ownership Limits
I’ve explored how Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr has been working tirelessly to illegally destroy what’s left of already shaky U.S. media consolidation limits. He’s particularly interested in helping Trump-friendly local broadcasters like Sinclair, Tegna, and Nexstar merge and dominate what’s left of broadcast TV “news,” as a very obvious reward for their loyalty to the president. Consumer groups, media reformers, and activists have obviously been disgusted by the efforts.
DNC Sues Trump For Wasting $20 Million In Taxpayer Dollars On Ineffective Midterm Propaganda
The Democratic party has announced they’re suing Donald Trump for his recent attempt to flood the midterm airwaves with propaganda he’s falsely claiming are “public service announcements.” The DNC complaint was filed in federal court in Washington, and names the White House, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as defendants in what the party calls “a blatant violation of the statutory ban on the use of appropriations for ‘publicity or...
Right On Cue: Here Comes The Skydance/Paramount Layoffs
You can set your watch to it. Major media companies insist they simply have to merge to create all manner of amazing new “consolidative synergies.” The debt from the acquisitions then result in brand and company cannibalization as labor and consumers are forced to carry the load. The net result is mass layoffs, higher prices, and shittier products from corner cutting. Typical enshittification.
Paramount, Warner Bros Formally Merge, Form Giant Mountain Of Disastrous Debt
Larry Ellison has succeeded in fusing Paramount and Warner Brothers in a $110 billion merger that will culminate in mass layoffs, higher prices, lower-quality product, and news outlets like CNN becoming even more friendly to corporate power and the U.S. right wing. This enshittification will arrive despite endless promises by the Ellisons that none of these things are happening or will happen. They’ve renamed the entire giant company Skydance.
Meta’s Muse Is An Adorable Privacy And Security Dumpster Fire
Meta’s agentic AI product Muse has had a rocky few weeks since launch. The product, which features an animated avatar named Jolly (one presumes to make mass hyper surveillance seem adorable) is supposed to help you offload busywork like making restaurant reservations, paying bills, or ordering groceries. Despite Meta having claimed repeatedly that Muse was built with a heavy focus on privacy and security, the AI agent launched with a nasty zero-day flaw that made it possible to spy on Mac users.
Brendan Carr Is Making It Easier For Republicans To Harass You With Midterm AI Robocalls
Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr loves to insist he’s being tough on robocalls, which have increasingly rendered U.S. voice communications networks less and less usable. Except whenever you actually dig into his plans, it usually involves making it easier for big companies and Republicans — who often use the same tactics as outright scammers — to hammer you with spam calls you don’t want.
Trump Breaks Law(s), Uses $20 Million In Taxpayer Money To Fund Midterm Propaganda
Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr endlessly pays empty lip service to the “public interest” and the “value of broadcasting integrity” as he engages in ham-fisted censorship of comedians and journalists the president doesn’t like. Or the illegal dismantling of media consolidation limits. Or helps the president and his friends steal TikTok. But any time there’s an actual threat to broadcasting integrity or the public interest he’s unsurprisingly nowhere to be found.
Trump’s ‘Morally Binding’ New AI Guardrails Are Meaningless Pudding
Corporations have long enjoyed creating toothless “self-regulatory” regimes that exist primarily to pre-empt real government oversight. While the quality of these orgs can vary somewhat, generally they’re just a toothless pantomime designed to pretend that corporate power can effectively police itself for ethical and competitive breaches. U.S. history has a thing or two to say on their real-world effectiveness.
The Disastrous Bari Weiss Experiment May Be Coming To An End At CBS/CNN
When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son David) hired blog-troll Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of “balanced, fact-based news,” “independent, principled journalism,” and a unique “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” that would modernize the network and reach the “everyday Americans” they claimed were “traditionally ignored by mainstream media.” As we noted at the time, that was all bullshit code for turning CBS into yet another outlet...
Free Speech, Consumer Groups Make Last Ditch Effort To Block Paramount Merger
Last week California Democrats — including Governor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass, and AG Rob Bonta buckled under pressure and got 12 states to drop their antitrust lawsuit against Paramount’s $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. Worse: they did so without affixing any meaningful conditions or divestments, ensuring that the deal, as with all big deals before it (see: AT&T/Warner Bros), results in mass layoffs, higher prices, and less competition.
Trump Republicans Made A Historic Mess Of This Massive Broadband Grant Program
I’ve written a lot this year about how Republicans hijacked the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program (created by the 2021 infrastructure bill) and immediately set about weakening oversight standards, eliminating enforcement of stuff like broadband affordability, speed, and equitable deployment, and making it a priority to heavily subsidize Elon Musk for LEO satellite broadband networks he had already planned to deploy anyway.
Meta’s AI Agent Muse Launches With Nasty Zero-Day Flaw, Then Gets Blocked By Amazon
After burning $80 billion on the failed metaverse pivot — and billions more on desperate “me too” offerings in the AI space — Meta is looking to leverage its massive ad dominance to colonize the agentic AI (or personal assistant) market. So they recently introduced Muse, an AI agent represented by cutesy and personalized avatars, capable of doing semi-complex tasks like booking appointments and shopping.
‘Independent CNN Oversight Board’ To Be Hand Picked By Paramount
Earlier this week we noted how California Democrats fecklessly folded to Paramount’s demands and settled the 12-state antitrust lawsuit against Paramount’s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. We also noted how the conditions affixed to the deal are largely pathetic, and generally consist of a lot of performative fluff Paramount itself recommended and California AG Rob Bonta had previously laughed off.
America Last: Trump FCC Rubber Stamps Major Saudi, Chinese Investment In Paramount Merger
There was a four year span where Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr simply couldn’t stop hyperventilating about the fact that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was Chinese. Carr would appear on cable news pretty much every week to endlessly rant about the potential propaganda, privacy, and NatSec impact of what was (at best) fairly murky Chinese government influence over TikTok.
California AG Rob Bonta Caves, Paramount Merger To Proceed With Flimsy Conditions
California AG Rob Bonta has caved to what was a relentless, bipartisan pressure campaign to settle the 12 state antitrust lawsuit against Paramount. The AGs sued Paramount last July, arguing (correctly) that the $111 billion deal would largely be anti-competitive, resulting in mass layoffs as the even bigger Larry Ellison-owned company forces labor and consumers to pay down the deal’s mammoth debt load.
“Free Speech” President Admits He’s “Banning The Free Press” From The White House
Apparently autumn is when President Donald Trump feels free to admit to his anti-free speech, anti-free press ways. For a guy who constantly lied about being in support of free speech, despite regularly suing people and news organizations for their speech, he’s been remarkably willing to admit to wanting to abuse power to suppress speech lately.
Trump Admin Still Being Cagey On $21 Billion In Hijacked Broadband Grants
I’ve written a lot about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.
Comcast NBC Universal Is Scared To Release The New Elon Musk Documentary
Have I mentioned lately that media consolidation is bad and people who care about an informed electorate and democratic integrity should fight to restore federal media consolidation limits illegally destroyed by the Trump administration and FCC boss Brendan Carr? Anyway, there’s a new Alex Gibney documentary coming out about Elon Musk that takes him to task for being a white supremacist far right wing con man with a head full of conspiracy theories and recreational ketamine.
Trump Says California Can’t Stand Up To Big Telecom If It Wants Taxpayer Grants
As the federal U.S. government has given up on consumer protection and corporate oversight, states have filled the void with various degrees of success. That’s been particularly apparent in areas like telecom, where the corruption-fueled death of federal privacy and net neutrality protections have been replicated in a handful of states like California, which passed their own state-level laws.
AI Doomsday Panic Is Completely Out Of Control
(Just a quick reminder that if you like and appreciate my work, please consider signing up for a paid subscription tier. It genuinely helps keep the lights on. Consider it the equivalent of buying me a coffee every month. I very much appreciate your time and readership!) Earlier this month a 27-year-old who had been employed at Anthropic for all of four months declared he was quitting the software company because he believed that software automation poses an existential risk to humankind.
Paramount Funds, ‘Leaks’ Dodgy Study Saying California Will Suffer If Its Merger Is Blocked
Larry and David Ellison are desperate to get their unpopular $111 billion merger between Paramount/CBS and Warner Brothers across the finish line. So they’ve been engaging in no shortage of dodgy behavior to try and derail the only thing left standing in their way: the 12-state antitrust lawsuit claiming that more media consolidation is anti-competitive and will result in thousands of new layoffs.
Bernie Sanders Tries To ‘Help’ Fix AI By Complaining With Steve Bannon, ‘Banning Superintelligence’
In an ideal world it’s certainly possible that the U.S. federal government could implement meaningful guardrails for AI development that protect innovation, national security, consumer privacy, public safety, and labor/creatives, while preventing market monopolization by the sector’s biggest players. But we don’t live in that ideal world.
LG TVs Snoop Your Local Network, Listen To You When ‘Off’
LG hasn’t been making many friends lately. It annoyed some LG “smart” TV users recently when it tried to force them to use Microsoft’s Copilot AI system. It’s also been force-installing surveillance bloatware on many LG user’s monitors as it ramps up data surveillance and monetization.
Streaming TV Prices Rising Faster Than Cable Ever Did
Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we’ve noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector is falling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless “growth for growth’s sake” megamergers, imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions on customers, undermining labor, and cutting corners on product quality in a bid to give Wall Street that sweet, impossible, unlimited, quarterly growth it demands.
Musk’s Robotaxis Under Investigation For Dodging Safety Standards
It says nothing good about America how easily Elon Musk convinced the press and public he was a supergenius engineer who could cobble together complicated rocket machinery wearing coveralls in his backyard shed.
Jimmy Kimmel Won’t Air James Talarico Interview On ABC For Fear Of FCC Reprisal
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel‘s planned Thursday interview with Texas Senatorial hopeful James Talarico didn’t air on ABC broadcast TV because network lawyers were worried about Trump FCC censorship and reprisal.
Automakers Pressure Congress To Ban Chinese EVs To ‘Protect Privacy’
If you enjoy badly written bipartisan protectionist tech legislation designed primarily to coddle giant U.S. companies under the xenophobia-tinged breathless pretense of privacy and national security, you are really going to enjoy the next twelve to twenty-four months.
Fake Consumer Group Using AI To Generate Fake Support For Paramount Merger
In addition to the $111 billion Paramount/Warner Bros merger just being foundationally bad for creatives, labor, and consumers, the Ellison family-owned company’s executives just keep demonstrating why they’re not really the kind of folks you want dominating the lion’s share of U.S. media.
Paramount Caught Using ‘Astroturf’ Group To Drum Up Fake Support For Merger
We’ve well established how the $111 billion Paramount and Warner Brothers merger is terrible for labor, creatives, consumers, and markets. But the kind of behaviors Paramount leadership have been engaged in to sell the deal also give a pretty clear indication what kind of company we’re dealing with, and why they shouldn’t be allowed to control an even bigger slice of U.S. media.
Tom Cruise Parrots Paramount’s Empty Merger Promises Because He Loves His ‘Hollywood Family’
Just so we’re clear: pre-merger promises (especially in the media and telecom sectors) are absolutely worthless. There’s fifty years of indisputable evidence that all of the “synergies” and innovative improvements promised on the front end of major media mergers mean absolutely nothing. Especially in a country dead-set on defanging its labor and consumer protection regulators.
Colorado Sees First Lawsuit Under ‘Right To Repair’ Law
At this point all fifty states have considered passing “right to repair” law aimed at making it easier and cheaper for consumers (and independent repair shops) to repair their tech. That said, only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws. And of those states, none have seen any enforcement despite no shortage of offenders. So it’s interesting to see the first lawsuit filed in Colorado.
Apple, Google Pathetically Buckle To Trump’s Dim And Lazy Effort To Rename Lake Ontario
When we look back at this time and history words like “courage,” “integrity,” and “ethics” aren’t words you’re going to be associating with U.S. tech industry leadership. Everywhere you look you have tech sector executives either openly embracing fascism and the frontal assault on representative democracy, or too feckless and timid to take any sort of coherent stand on literally anything (and then wondering why the plebs are increasingly hostile to their software products).
GOP Begs Supreme Court To Let It Flood Airwaves With Cheap Midterm Propaganda
Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission that federal limits on coordinated expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment, opening the floodgates to a much broader array of political ads funded via no limit of rich assholes and their preferred dark money groups.
Monitor Makers Start Pummeling Owners With Annoying Ads, ‘Smart’ Spyware
Initially the idea of the “smart television” seemed like a good idea. That is until TV makers realized they could make significantly more money loading the television with spyware, tracking your every online choice, then selling all that data to a global assortment of unregulated data brokers.
Trump Demands FCC Punish Media Companies For His Sagging Polling
Our full-diapered mad king is at it again, this time urging FCC boss Brendan Carr to go after media companies for the crime of….simply pointing out his terrible, crashing polling numbers: Trump last week also posted a long, rambling screed on his personal propaganda website, vowing that NBC News‘ Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker would be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” for the crime of accurately pointing out Trump’s political endorsements don’t carry the weight they...
Texas Politicians Slowly Realize Elon Musk Hijacked Billions In Taxpayer Broadband Grants
Back in June I wrote a feature for The Verge about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.
‘Right To Repair’ State Laws Continue To Surge, But Enforcement Remains Nonexistent
There’s still a massive effort afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. All fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, though only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.
Republicans Stumble In Bid To Flood Midterm Airwaves With Discounted Ads
Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission that federal limits on coordinated expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment. Which is every bit as stupid and corrupt as it sounds. Previously, under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), political parties were subjected to strict statutory caps on how much money they could spend in direct coordination with their candidates’ campaigns.
LA Mayor Karen Bass The Latest Democrat To Wimp Out On Paramount Merger
The unpopular Paramount Warner Brothers merger should have been a perfect opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate they are finally serious about stuff like media consolidation, right wing propaganda, media reform, and antitrust after decades of policy incoherence.
Iowa AG Brenna Bird Makes Silly, Empty Legal Threats To Try And Save Larry Ellison’s Paramount Merger
As we’ve been noting, billionaire Larry Ellison’s effort to dominate what’s left of corporate media is facing some headwinds after 12 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against his planned $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers. As we’ve also noted, this is a giant turd of a deal, the debt from which will indisputably result in mass layoffs, higher prices, and shittier overall product.
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post Forced To Rehire Columnist Fired For Quoting Deceased Bigot Charlie Kirk
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post simply isn’t what it used to be. During the Trump era Bezos and his lackeys have fired all of the paper’s black columnists, turned the op-ed section into pro-corporatist agitprop, censored cartoonists that criticized Jeff, and generally shifted the paper’s journalistic tone in a more right wing, corporate/autocrat-friendly direction. You know, like the majority of other U.S. corporate media outlets owned by rich, tone-deaf assholes.
More Details Emerge On How Trump Cronyism Ruined The Attempt To Break Up Ticketmaster
Last March it was revealed that the Trump DOJ stabbed its antitrust lawsuit state partners in the back and struck a terrible settlement with Ticketmaster, scuttling a generational opportunity to break up one of the more glaring examples of modern monopoly power.
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