I do apologize for this post being late and shorter than usual but work was really rough this week and I’m kind of catching up with myself this weekend.

The biggest hidden part of your cable bill is the bill you pay for your local channels. So-called Retransmission Consent fees are huge, and growing every year, becoming an ever-more important part of the revenue for the major networks, and the local channels.

Free, over the air channels never got so expensive.

The worst part is, nobody thinks of those channels getting more and more expensive, so people blame the cable companies for passing through costs that are the fault of regulations.

That’s why the Local Choice Act was a good idea, letting people opt out of local channels they don’t want, to cut their bills by that much. John Thune I suspect won’t give up on the idea just yet. Maybe with a Republican Senate…

Take a look at any set of recent tech headlines. See how often things are getting broken into, and you’ll see thy the Internet of things is a bad idea. Do you want Ikea and Maytag in the business of fighting off Russian hackers?

Freeloaders shouldn’t dot he crime if they can’t do the time.

This is your reminder that Netflix is sabotaging its own customers to lobby for extreme cronyist politics.

I’ve sadi it before, but don’t buy fake iPhone chargers.

Demorat picking winners and losers as payback because a member of Congress doesn’t like what a local team is doing with its television broadcasts. Disgusting.

So Google is going to push encryption in Android. If this is actually police search-resistant, which is no sure thing, it will be interesting to see the consequences of this, and whether third parties like Samsung will play along.

Germany is getting nosy and I hope google tells them to stuff it.

California’s Phone Kill Switch law is taking effect on iPhones.