We had a great time on this week’s Lunch & Liberty, where we discussed the hidden costs of regulation. If you missed it live, you can LISTEN here:
Daring Bits
Apple Asks Permission to Bill Epic - Epic Games sought the help of regulators to fight Apple’s bullying. Regulators thank them with a possible $73 million bill for Apple’s legal expenses. Apple still bullying.
Meta Ventures the Open Seas - Meta turns to the decentralized fediverse to compete with X, and will enable Threads users to interact with Mastodon users. Cool - but Alex Gleason catches Meta censoring the fediverse.
Guns Un-Banned at Post Office - A federal judge has ruled that a 1972 firearms ban at post offices is unconstitutional, citing “American tradition” and a 2022 Supreme Court ruling.
Maine Comes For Your Kids - Maine Legislature proposes a bill to allow the state to take custody of children whose parents refuse to consent to transgender medical interventions.
Robot Overlords
AI Puts Words in Your Mouth - AI re-dubbing is now scary good at matching lip motions in a video to non-original audio. Here come the deep fakes, just in time for election year. On the bright side, this ought to make dubbed movies less annoying.
Meta Embraces Open Source AGI - After open-source AI ‘wins’ 2023, Meta starts building open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI). But really, Zuckerberg just wants to get you into his Metaverse glasses. 🕶️
Liberty Toolbox
DocuSeal - Free and open-source tool for document filling and signing, with custom PDFs and automatic digital signatures.