By my records this is the 382nd edition of Tech at Night. This is however the one that was prepared on my 35th birthday (though sorry, I didn’t get it written until Sunday morning).

If they try to ban 3D printers in the name of gun control, remember that they’re killing children if they do it. 3D printing is an important technology and the fascists must not be allowed to use gun control to gut it. But they will try. Just watch.

Oh look, fugitive at large in New Zealand (and I mean large) Kim Dotcom has become a patent troll. Remember: he’s a convicted felon and fraudster, having stolen money and embezzled money. He ran a large copyright infringement ring, which he now has restarted in New Zealand, having paid off the government through promises of ‘investment’ to avoid being deported despite indictments in the US and convictions in Germany and Hong Kong.

Anyone who buys a ‘patent’ from him should himself be investigated for money laundering.

So David Vitter takes on an Obamaphone vendor TracFone who leeches away our tax dollars in that subsidy/scam. And gee, it turns out Frederick Pollak, President of TracFone Wireless. is a big old Democrat Donor, having donated nearly $90,000 to politicians and parties last cycle, with all but $5,500 of it gifts to Democrats and Democrat groups like DSCC and “DNC Services Corp.” It’s clear he’s tried to buy his way into favor with Republicans by giving to key Republicans with telecom oversight, but we can see the pattern.

So when TracFone sticks up for the Obama expansion of the Obamaphone program, keep in mind that its head is a partisan Democrat sticking up for a socialist administration lining his own wallet in return.

BGR is trying to sell some wacky agenda with the rhetoric of this anti-cable piece, but they’re exposing a key truth: dedicated television service is on the way out. Raw Internet data pipes are the future. That’s why incentives to auction off television spectrum are a great idea.

This is your reminder that we need to pass CISPA. The Commies want to cut our power and poison our water, folks. The Communist Chinese regime is murderous. We must never forget that. We must defend ourselves from their ideological aggression.

And while in the legislative process we must write CISPA well, we must not pretend the risks of passing CISPA are not balanced against the risks of inaction against acts of war online by state and state-supported actors.

Meanwhile, village idiot John McCain is ranting about the Japanese.

Government censorship of the Internet is error prone. Guess what? All coercive government actions online are error prone. Including Net Neutrality.

When anarchists attack cultists, the best result is for the weird cult to be inconvenienced and the anarchists to go to jail. It’s win-win for society.

Ah, the RIAA. They told us that we needed to gun for Google, and regulate, and legislate, and despite Google giving into the threat and acting, they claim it didn’t work. They want us to tilt the balance of DMCA in their favor, but their own requested actions haven’t worked yet. So why bother? Let’s not do large copyright reform.

I love it when internet trolls go to prison. I really do.

Oh look, the lefty Net Neuties at BGR are running random hits on Net Neut opponents. The ABI Research post BGR so loves is such a shady hit job. Asking “And how does AT&T count these Gigabytes?” Is ABI Research really trying to imply that AT&T is making up the data usage it charges customers for? Ah, I love these guys who ultimately just hate it when people have to pay for what they use, and firms find creative ways to do it. And don’t even get me started on the unintentionally ironic use of “Q.E.D.”, as a substitute for the author demonstrating its point, instead of actually marking where the point is supported.