Month: April 2015

Automakers to gearheads: Stop repairing cars

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has caused a lot of grief over the years.  AutoBlog reports that now car manufacturers are trying to use it to stop people from repairing and tuning their cars:

Allowing them to continue to fix their cars has become “legally problematic,” according to a written statement from the Auto Alliance, the main lobbying arm of automakers.

The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to vehicles when it was signed into law in 1998. But now, in an era where cars are rolling computing platforms, the U.S. Copyright Office is examining whether provisions of the law that protect intellectual property should prohibit people from modifying and tuning their cars.

Ridiculous, is the word that describes this best, I think.

The next tech bubble is about to burst

Joe Kukura predicts the upcoming burst of the next tech bubble in his “The next tech bubble is about to burst“:

My timer for the bursting of this tech bubble currently stands at nine months. That’s when investors and venture capital markets will stop throwing around billions in Monopoly money, companies without any profits will lose their suspiciously optimistic valuations, and startups will crater. Unicorns will die, skies will fall, and parents’ basements will be resettled. We saw this with tech in 2000, with banks in 2008, and according to my Magic 8-Ball, we’re going to see it again very soon.

I don’t really know who he is, but he is linked to a selection of other people saying the same thing, with who I’m very well familiar – Mark Cuban, Andreessen Horowitz, Fred Wilson, and others.