Facebook parent company Meta has responded to a coordinated series of lawsuits (list of states and the complaint below) which include one filed in Federal court on behalf of 33 states and state Attorneys General, and 9 other related suits each filed in individual states in state court.

Tech giants such as Facebook and Google may soon have to pay publishers for news content under a new California bill aimed at reining in Silicon Valley’s dominance. The proposed California Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, would require digital advertising giants to pay news outlets a “journalism usage fee” when they sell advertising alongside news content. The bill would also mandate that publishers invest 70% of the profits from that fee in journalism jobs.

Uber, Lyft, PostMates and DoorDash gig workers, among others, are all covered by California’s new gig worker law, AB5, which into effect last week on January 1st, 2020. How has it affected you?

This week Amazon opened its second 4 Star by Amazon store (the first is in New York City) at the Park Meadows shopping center in Lone Tree, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. It’s interesting to note that Denver got its Amazon 4 Star store even before tony Berkeley, California, which is slated for the third 4 Star store in the near future. (List of Amazon 4-Star store locations below.)

California governor Jerry Brown signed a new California net neutrality law into law yesterday (yes, on a Sunday, September 30th), and on that same Sunday, hours later, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against California’s new net neutrality law, saying that it “unlawfully imposes burdens on the Federal Government’s deregulatory approach to the Internet.”

A law that was passed in California last year, and that went into effect on January 1, 2017, makes it illegal for anyone operating a motor vehicle to hold a cellphone in their hand while driving. Assembly Bill 1785 (“AB 1785”) criminalizes “driving a motor vehicle while holding and operating a handheld wireless telephone or a wireless electronic communication device.”

The State Bar of California has issued an alert warning of a fraudulent complaint email being sent in their name. In an emailed statement this morning (June 8, 2016), the California State Bar said that it had received numerous inquiries about the email that supposedly had come from them, going out to members of the California bar.

Jeremy Meeks – also known as the “Hot Felon” and the “Handsome Felon” – knows firsthand the power of social media, after his arrest mugshot went viral and led to a modeling contract less than two weeks after his arrest.

Today the Supreme Court unanimously held that a warrant is required to search a cell phone, in the case of Riley v. California. Warrentless searches of a cell phone are not ok.

What should be here is the article about what to do when you get spam from a Gmail account. In it we ranted about how Royal Stage Christian Performing Arts from Sacramento, and their executive diretor, Tamara Warta, spammed us, using Gmail and Google Apps. And we decried how difficult it was to report spam from a Gmail account to Google.

Proposed California law AB 242, introduced by Assemblyman Ed Chau, is creating quite a buzz due to its wording, or rather, proposed lack of wording. AB 242 would require that all commercial websites and services offered through the Internet which collect personal information about California consumers make its privacy policy be written at a level of 8th grade reading, and be no longer 100 words.

Google is yet again finding themselves in hot water as the Federal Trade Commission is poised to slap them with an antitrust lawsuit. The FTC staff recommendation for the antitrust lawsuit is not unexpected given the swift investigations of Google by California, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. On top of the U.S. investigation, there is also an antitrust investigation of Google taking place in Europe.

California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill on Sunday that would have required a search warrant in order to obtain location-based personal information obtained through cell towers from mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets, and also GPS systems. The veto came with the message that Brown felt that information based on a user’s location is important to the processes needed by law enforcement.

With the news that California has become the second state, after Nevada, to permit self-driven cars (also known as ‘self-driving cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), many are waiting in anticipation for other states to follow suit. With Google co-founder Sergey Brin estimating that driverless cars are going to be a reality for the public within five years, many car and tech enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the day that they can get their hands on one and start driving it, or rather, being driven by it.

On Tuesday California Governor Jerry Brown passed Senate Bill 1298, legalizing robot-controlled cars, or self-driving cars (also known as ‘self-driven cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), with high praise from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who says that driverless cars will be a reality within 5 years.