Do regular Beat Saber songs hold no challenge? The 17-track Metallica song pack adds a feature in which “the speed of individual cubes will change depending on the intensity of the song” and supposedly “boasts Beat Saber’s most challenging levels.” Based on what community modders were doing years ago with “Master of Puppets”... yeah, that tracks.
404 Media is fighting a subpoena from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to seize confidential reporting material:
In order to do our job well, journalists need to be independent from the government and from outside corporate interests. ... Our sources—many of whom are particularly vulnerable—share information with us specifically because we are independent from the state.
As we’ve said before: tell your Senator to pass the PRESS Act.
My new favorite fan-binding project: Second Head, a collage of fanfic sentences that employ a vivid yet frequently repeated turn of phrase.
There’s an impulse, I think, to in-group even when performing a creative act. A feeling that there are certain ways one Should go about the act, by virtue of seeing it performed that way ... we make what we see and we make what we think we should make. At least, at first.
Consider my emerald orbs transfixed.
The BEAD program — which my colleague Sean wrote about last year — is coming under fire as Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches:
Cruz sent a letter yesterday to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson in which he asked the agency to halt the program rollout until Trump takes over. Cruz also accused the NTIA of “technology bias” because the agency decided that fiber networks should be prioritized over other types of technology.
Not spending ad dollars on a website because its owner keeps spouting weird conspiracy theories is a very serious antitrust problem, and as usual, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is on it. Surely the best use of law enforcement’s time and money.
Couldn’t get enough of Trust & Safety Tycoon? Cocreator and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick is crowdfunding a card game, inspired by Touring, about growing a social network while running your competition into the ground. It’s called One Billion Users, and if I ever end up playing, I’m totally nabbing the “Hellsite” card.
Microsoft is still fighting The New York Times over AI copyright rules, and it’s got a new line of attack: if the Times is so mad at chatbots, why does its tech podcast host love them? Its lawyers’ appreciation of Hard Fork, unfortunately, does not extend to learning Kevin Roose’s name.
Ken White of Popehat is a longtime proponent of anti-SLAPP laws, which shift legal costs off people who get hit with bogus, speech-suppressing lawsuits. With anti-speech suits by billionaires in the news lately, he’s restarting a long-running series on them — building up to why we need one at the federal level now.
[The Popehat Report]
Our sister site Polygon has joined us in getting active on Bluesky, complete with a starter pack of reporters. If you prefer your decentralization ActivityPub-flavored, they’re still posting on Mastodon too.
