Welcome to Big Tech's'Age of Extraction' In his new book, antitrust scholar and former White House adviser Tim Wu argues that tech giants are bleeding you dry--and lays out a plan to stop them. Growing up in Toronto, Tim Wu had a classmate who was the progeny of Communist parents. His name was Cory Doctorow. Yes, the same guy who just published a book about enshittification . Though they shared a general world view, the boyhood pals also had arguments, with Wu typically taking a less radical stance than his buddy.

The Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the FCC does not have the "statutory authority" to implement net neutrality rules. Since the rules were established in 2015, the FCC argued that classifying ISPs as "telecommunication services" gives it broad authority to regulate them. The decision to redefine ISPs as "information services" during the first Trump Administration led to the repeal of net neutrality in 2017. The current FCC voted to restore net neutrality on April 25 last year. The difference between 2015 and now is the Supreme Court's recent, radical reinterpretation of an important legal doctrine.

AI learns from seen data to make predictions about unseen data. What is utterly remarkable is that prediction can underpin extraordinary creativity and mimicry. These developments have the potential to unleash an explosion of scale creativity -- delivering content design and production tools into the hands of the mass market that have hitherto only been available to large corporations with hefty budgets. Even now -- when we are still in the infancy of AI media generation -- there are demos, apps and subscription-based services to faceswap individuals into movies (see Zao), turn rough sketches into photorealistic images (try the GauGAN demo here), convert one voice into another (see Respeecher), personalise marketing videos (try the Synthesia demo here), age- and emotion-alter images (see Photoshop's new Neural Filters), generate face-synched videos of new or translated scripts (see Canny AI), play a video game with characters speaking any of 10 face-synched languages (see Cyberpunk 2077), and play a text-based adventure game with endless dialogue generated by AI (try out the free version of AI Dungeon here). Moreover, the same AI techniques will spawn new applications in a wide range of fields: advertising, architecture, interior design, gaming, song-writing, web design, education, even software development and pure mathematics -- in fact anywhere where structured or constrained creativity is key.

Fox News contributor Karl Rove reacts to Trump blasting the media and Big Tech for being'massively corrupt.' WASHINGTON – Congressman-elect Jay Obernolte, a 50-year-old who is a video game developer by trade, will be a bit of an outlier in Congress. That's because members of Congress are not necessarily known as a technologically savvy bunch. This reputation has been earned by many awkward moments and stumbles by members when discussing tech, including in a 2018 hearing when Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., told Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, "I use your apparatus often," referring to Google, the search engine. But Obernolte – whose company FarSight Studios creates games for a variety of platforms ranging from PlayStation to iOS – said that, with the right approach, Congress can and should effectively address major tech issues ranging from net neutrality to Section 230. "I actually think that sometimes we get caught up in jargon from a technological standpoint, which is not helpful because I don't think the technology is unapproachable," he told Fox News in an interview.

Latanya Sweeney is a professor of government and technology in residence at Harvard University's Department of Government, editor-in-chief of Technology Science and the founding director of the Technology Science Initiative and the Data Privacy Lab at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. Max Weiss is a senior at Harvard University and the student who implemented the Deepfake Text experiment. As federal agencies take increasingly stringent actions to try to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic within the U.S., how can individual Americans and U.S. companies affected by these rules weigh in with their opinions and experiences? Because many of the new rules, such as travel restrictions and increased surveillance, require expansions of federal power beyond normal circumstances, our laws require the federal government to post these rules publicly and allow the public to contribute their comments to the proposed rules online. But are federal public comment websites -- a vital institution for American democracy -- secure in this time of crisis?

For the second year in a row, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has cancelled his appearance at CES, though this time around, it's under very different circumstances. According to Politico Pro, both he and Commissioner Brendan Carr have had to cancel their CES plans due to the partial government shutdown that's still ongoing. Pai was supposed to discuss FCC plans with the Consumer Technology Association's Gary Shapiro while Carr was scheduled to take part in a roundtable discussion. Last year, Pai pulled out of CES due to safety concerns, which reportedly stemmed from death threats he had received following the FCC's repeal of net neutrality. Pai issued a statement yesterday that addressed Congress's failure to overturn the FCC's net neutrality decision, applauding the House of Representatives for not reinstating "heavy-handed internet regulation."

As has become an unwelcome tradition, as Friday wound down and the weekend was so close we could nearly taste it, breaking news hit. The biggest Friday night bombshell came in the form of an indictment of a Russian national engaged in a massive conspiracy to influence the upcoming midterm elections. With millions of dollars at her disposal, she and her co-conspirators have allegedly been engaging in a coordinated effort to use Americans' weaknesses and divisions against us, to amp up racial discord, and generally sow chaos and discontent. Of course, it wasn't like the week had been drama free up until that point. The fun, if you can call it that, began last Saturday, when Robert Mueller expert Garrett Graff explained what he expected to see next from the investigation into Russia's attack on the 2016 election.

Sue Zoldak is a public relations expert with a fierce competitive streak. Her surname in Slovak, as she likes to point out, means "mercenary." Her firm, the Zoldak Agency, uses targeted advertising and grassroots campaigning to help clients spur voters to press elected officials into voting yes or no on specific bills. While not strictly a lobbyist--she doesn't communicate directly with lawmakers--Zoldak fits squarely into the influence-peddling milieu of Washington, DC, with 15 years' experience on K Street, where lobbying firms are traditionally headquartered. Put simply, she's a go-to person for companies and organizations determined to shape public policy.

Summer isn't always the most exciting time for tech news, but there are more interesting announcements happening right now than there are little bits of pollen floating into our allergy-ridden eyes. With Apple's big developers conference in our rearview mirror and the biggest video game trade show happening as we speak, there's a lot going on in the world of bits, bytes, and murderous AI (sorry that one doesn't start with a "B"). This week's episode of the podcast covers some recent cyber-security issues that could very well affect you. We also talk about the rise of gaming-specific smartphones and Amazon's curious new streaming box, the Fire TV Cube. You can check it out in the player above, subscribe via iTunes, follow us on SoundCloud, or add us to your Stitcher.

Visitors walk past a 5G logo during the Mobile World Congress on the third day of the MWC in Barcelona, on March 1, 2017. The new year for smartphones is about to dawn. The South Korean electronics giant is is the headline exhibitor at the Mobile World Congress trade show that commences over the weekend, drawing some 108,000 attendees to the mobile industry's annual signature shindig. The S9 represents Samsung's turn to try and leapfrog Apple's most recent iPhones, as the rivals resume their bottomless battle for smartphone supremacy. Leaks point to a Galaxy phone with, among other features, an improved camera system.