Here's What I Think About Technology: A Blog by Avi Ezor

Last Thursday, Australia's parliament passed legislation that allows the country's intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access end-to-end encrypted digital communications. If you use apps like WhatsApp, text messages are unreadable to anyone but the two in the conversation, as the messages are turned into a scrambled mess before being decoded on the other side. The new law will allow Australia's government to force tech companies to allow law enforcement access to such private communications in order to assist in their investigations. Just so we're clear, this is bad. Proponents of the bill argue that this will be a large step forward in fighting terrorism, and by proponents, I don't just mean Australia. There have also been calls for such legislation in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. (Together, these countries are referred to as the "Five Eyes".) The tech companies, however, have spoken out heavily against su...

There’s always that person who hears a song on iTunes/Spotify and says “This doesn’t sound as good as vinyl.” Maybe you’ve gone to the movies and heard someone lament the end of of movies being projected on film stock. (I’m totally that person, by the way). Does your friend still own a VCR, and a stack of classic horror films on VHS that could easily be watched on streaming? For mainstream media brands, or any entertainment company whose main interest is obtaining as much money as possible, these are not normally the kinds of demographics you’d want to aim for. Most people enjoy progress, and Netflix isn’t going to waste money converting their films to scratchy film prints when you can watch them on their HD service, right? Yet, I attended a screening of the Netflix Original Movie,  The Other Side of the Wind , that the company had provided on a 35mm film print. At New York Comic-Con, there was a vendor selling official VHS copies of the 2013 horror film,  V/H/S/2.  A...