« Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The ONT | Main | EMT »

Daily Tech News 28 June 2025

Top Story

• In the midst of a string of straightforward decisions by the Supreme Court upholding the plain meaning of the Constitution, such as Trump v. CASA, limiting the power of the inferior courts, and Mahmoud v. Taylor, limiting the power of the the indoctrination guilds, there was one with the exact same 6-3 split that went in a perhaps unexpected way. (The Verge)
  
  In FSC v. Paxton the Free Speech Coalition sued Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to block legislation to enforce age filters on online pornography on the grounds that it would inevitably infringe upon the free speech of adults.
  
  A 2004 decision against the federal Child Online Protection Act, as well as a 1997 decision against the Communications Decency Act, both ruled that the legislation would violate the First Amendment on precisely those grounds.
  
  This time though the court ruled that there was no fundamental right infringed by the Texas legislation - or by similar laws proposed or enacted by 21 other states - stating that advances in technology something something something, an argument I find questionable.
  
  Expect sales of VPNs to teenagers to soar.
  
  This does leave open the question of more recently proposed age filter laws for social media. I don't care much if fifteen-year-olds have to circumvent the filters to watch PornHub and OnlyFans, but if they suddenly can't access Bluesky they'll infest sites that aren't age restricted and we all remember the Great Tumblr Containment Breach catastrophe.

Tech News

• Gigabyte says its new turbo mode can boost performance of recent Intel systems by as much as 35%. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It can't.
  
  
  
• If you have Brother printer - or one of several models from Fuji, Toshiba, or Minolta - change the wifi password. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or you might find yourself the victim of of a drive-by print job.
  
  
  
• Which came first, colour vision, or the existence of colour in animals so that there was a need for colour vision. (Quanta)
  
  Colour vision, and by a lot.
  
  
  
• Speaking of seeing stuff, Facebook wants access to your pictures to feed them into its AI - including pictures you have never uploaded to Facebook. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The answer is no.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the answer is no, Facebook is upset that Republicans are taking its slaves away. (FWD.us)
  
  FWD.us is a lobbying group founded by Mark Zuckerberg nominally to - among other things - promote improved border security.
  
  Either that was a lie or... Well, given their past activity, it was pretty much just a lie.
  
  The answer is still no.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is finally getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death. (Tech Republic)
  
  Going forward, it will instead be black.
  
  
  
• What the Supreme Court doesn't understand about vivisectionists. (StatNews)

  Recently I saved three toes of a patient with type 2 diabetes in the earlier stages of gangrene using maggots to eat the dead flesh, allowing the remaining healthy tissues to regrow and recovering almost complete function.
  
  But when I trap young children and feed them into my basement maggot pit, I could face felony charges in 49 states.
  
  The careful medical evaluation is the same. But one is celebrated while the other is criminalized - with devastating consequences for the children whose futures hang in my bank balance.

  Slightly edited, yes. This doctor is not talking about feeding children to maggots, but rather about chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation.

  As a pediatrician, I never imagined having lawmakers decide which children's suffering deserves treatment.

  Maybe he should stop making children suffer then.
  
  Yes, this was another 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court upholding a state law and affirming the Sixth Circuit's existing decision.
  

Sort Of Tech News

For the past few months I've been working busily on a new project at work that was expected to launch about, well, right now really.

With just a few weeks left before it needed to ship, and with the application largely working, the entire design was suddenly changed for... Reasons... Putting me into extreme crunch time. So lately I've just been grabbing half an hour each day - while working seven days a week - to put up at least some content.

I can't complain because I was party to the decision to redesign everything and agree that the new design makes it a much better product for everyone involved, including reducing the future tech support load, much of which would have landed on me. And the company got in a specialist to do some of the key work for the redesign, and he did a good job.

Just... Ouch. I haven't slept much this past month.

Anyway, we missed the originally planned shipping date by a week but it's now complete and I have my weekends - and my sanity - to myself again.



Not At All Tech News



The shark is back.

(For those not terminally online, Sameko Saba is the latest iteration of the girl who won the World Series for the Dodgers last year sort of.)



Musical Interlude



Alternate version because there are no versions of the original with decent audio that aren't blocked somewhere.





Disclaimer: Your friends don't dance? Into the maggot pit!