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Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him

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Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him


To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.

This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”

Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.

“There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”

Organizations like the FPF have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.

In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.

“People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”

This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now, streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.

“If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. “[The Trump administration is] really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”



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This Speaker I Tried From Soundboks Can Handle a Real Party

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This Speaker I Tried From Soundboks Can Handle a Real Party


In addition to the rubber balls, there’s a nice physical interface on the side for adjusting volume and pairing multiple Mix speakers together if you have multiple on hand (I was only sent the single mono speaker). Setup involves installing the Soundboks app, pairing to the speaker via Bluetooth on your phone, and picking whatever you want to play. It’s all quick and painless, especially for my first-time pairing with a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Otherwise, it’s all very pro audio. Everything reminds me very much of the Peavey PA system I have in my music rehearsal space. The top of the speaker features a built-in carrying handle and a place for a strap (an accessory you have to buy aftermarket, or you can fasten it with any strap you have that fits through the hole). There are also top-hat mounts for the speakers to slide onto traditional PA pole stands, if you wanted to use them in that way at a party or event.

The grill is replaceable, as is the massive internal battery, which means that these things are pretty much indestructible as long as the amp and speakers themselves still work—the battery is the weak point of most portable speakers in 2026.

I bounced it around my yard, dropped it off my patio, and generally beat the crap out of it during my two-week testing period, and the thing just needed a little wipe down and a charge when it ran out of juice. The claimed 40 hours of battery at reasonable volume is accurate, but you’ll get about eight hours at max volume (which is very good for the category). If you need to bring some walk-out music to your kid’s all-day Little League tournament, this a great way to go.

Big Sound

Photograph: Parker Hall

Soundboks calls this speaker midsize, but at 21.4 pounds and the size of a medium-size cooler, I’d still call it a large speaker. That said, the size doesn’t make it any less portable than competitors from JBL and others; you still need a car or cargo ebike to take one of these with you, so what’s a couple inches here or there? The fact that this is a rectangle actually makes it easier to strap down than many others, especially with the holes for the strap and the built-in handle to tie down through.



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Affordability Doesn’t Suck With Eufy’s Newest Robot Vac

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Affordability Doesn’t Suck With Eufy’s Newest Robot Vac


Where the X10 Pro Omni had rotating mop pads, the rolling mop pad on the Omni C28 continuously self-cleans to prevent spreading dirt or grime to other parts of the house. Both apply downward pressure, but neither can spot dirtier places on their own as pricier, AI-powered robot vacuums will. Still, I was happy to see that it was able to scrub away some of the large dirt smudges in my entryway, though it didn’t get all of them. It also didn’t manage to scrub away all of the cherry juice I intentionally spilled in my routine mess setup for robot vacuum testing, even after sending the vacuum to do a second mopping job on one of the spots.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Still, the Omni C28 was able to raise its roller mop high enough when it switched from mopping my floors to vacuuming my living room rug that there was no hint of dampness anywhere. The older X10 did get my colleague Adrienne So’s carpet wet, but it didn’t get mine wet, though my carpet is a fairly low pile. It did a fine job vacuuming the carpet, though I could tell the difference in suction between this and more powerful vacuums I’ve tested.

The base station is nice and compact, and includes drying fans to dry off the roller mop. That does mean there’s a gentle fan noise in the background for a couple of hours after you use this robot vacuum, which was more annoying than I expected, but you could easily place this vacuum’s base station in a less central spot in your home so you don’t hear it. You could also set up a schedule for the vacuum to run in the morning and finish its drying job before you get home.

Multi-Floor Madness

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Photograph: Nena Farrell

My favorite feature on the Omni C28 is that, even at this price point, it can still learn multiple maps. While it can’t climb up stairs, you can move it around your home and switch the maps in the app to the floor you’ve relocated to. This isn’t new for Eufy, as the older affordable model can do that too, but it’s nice to see the feature maintained when I’ve tried more expensive robot vacuums that don’t include it. It’s pretty simple to use; you’ll go to the maps, select “make a new map,” and then activate the robot to map. Once the map is made, you’ll switch to that map from the little map icon on the right side, which will label them with numbers in the order you created them.



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‘She’s Never Going to Age’: Porn Stars Are Embracing AI Clones to Stay Forever Young

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‘She’s Never Going to Age’: Porn Stars Are Embracing AI Clones to Stay Forever Young


Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now dream up any X-rated scenario of her on your computer.

Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal.

But last year she had a change of heart. Ann, who considers herself an AI fanatic, signed a contract with OhChat, a London-based AI companion company, to license her likeness on its platform, essentially creating an AI version of her in every way that can be used to make sex scenes for paying customers: same voice, same physique, and same pillowy brown hair.

As issues around deepfakes intensify and questions about the future of the adult industry become more dire with the passing of age-verification laws, several AI companion platforms want to create a new standard for consent-driven AI porn. More than sexting a faceless chatbot, digital twins—also called duplicates, doubles, clones, or replicas—draw on the exact likeness, including speech and mannerisms, of your favorite performers and creators.

Ann, now a self-help author and sports radio host, represents a growing faction in adult entertainment who not only believe AI is going to reshape the sex industry but who want a say in how that change materializes. She sees the decision to partner with OhChat as a way to tap into a fountain of youth—and stay at her peak forever.

“This keeps my name alive,” she says of her digital twin. “She’s never going to age.”

For Cherie Deville, a 47-year-old performer known for shooting MILF content, digital twins are just a smart business strategy to earn passive income while the opportunity is hot. “We can either let the makers of AI take the lion’s share of the money in the sex-work space, or creators and businesses can get on board and start creating their own revenue sources through AI.”

OhChat creators, who must submit 30 images and undergo voice training with a bot, sign an agreement stating the level of sexual content allowed for their digital twin. Ann is considered a “Level 4”—the highest on the platform—which means paying members can create scenarios and chats of her that include full nudity and sex. Per the company’s guidelines, clones can be deleted at any time.

“For guys that like to say good morning or good night, they now have that access. The fact that I’m not shooting scenes anymore also allows new scenes to be created,” Ann says.

Once described by CEO Nic Young as the “love child between OnlyFans and OpenAI,” OhChat launched in 2024 and has since scaled to over 400,000 users. According to data shared with WIRED, OhChat has 250 creators, 90 percent of which are female, and has contracts with celebrities Carmen Elektra and Joe Exotic. The platform runs on a tiered subscription model—$5 a month for on-demand texts or up to $30 for unlimited adult content—and the company, like OnlyFans, takes a 20 percent cut.

Other competitors in the space include My.Club, Joi AI and SinfulX AI, the platform that adult film actress Georgia Koneva partnered with this month, saying, in a press statement, that her avatar gave her a “new way to share my voice and personality with the people who follow me.” According to SinfulX AI, it also develops “original” synthetic characters using licensed source imagery from adult performers whose content it has the rights to use. In the same statement, the company said that those AI-generated “characters” are “designed not to replicate any single individual while still maintaining the realism for which its content is known.”



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