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At best, most Trump administration officials can be called sycophants." At BEST. But so many of them can be called a lot of other things a bit more insulting. We have a lot of shoe options to work with. Most of them fit multiple people. Rubes, hucksters, useful idiots, bigots, charlatans, window lickers, narcissists, anthropomorphic [...]

I've documented for years how major media consolidation is simultaneously completely pointless and incredibly harmful. Such deals exist exclusively so that unremarkable rich men with no real ideas can grab some tax breaks, create the illusion of perpetual growth, and pretend they're savvy dealmakers." Yet every single time a major media merger is completed the [...]

The Stop Killing Games movement appears to still be alive and well. The grassroots campaign to legislate out the practice of gaming companies selling games that they neuter or render unplayable in whole or part later when shutting down backend server support has had its ups and downs, to be sure. An effort to pass [...]

The Metric Is Not the Missionis a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy-from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around [...]

Last year, Sling TV unveiled a rare bit of innovation in an increasingly enshittified streaming video market. They began offering what they called mini-subscriptions," allowing users to subscribe to live streaming TV for the day, weekend, or a full week for prices starting at around $5. It was a nice option for folks who don't [...]

We've been covering a bunch of stories related to the saga of Reckless" Ben Schneider and Bricks & Minifigs (BAM"), which began with a series of videos Schneider produced about his increasingly more extreme attempts to get back the Lego sets that someone had given to a BAM franchise on a consignment deal, and which [...]

The Soundfreaq Sound Spot II combines wireless audio performance, ambient lighting, and relaxing sound features in a compact design built for modern lifestyles. Featuring a Bamboo and White finish with eco-friendly materials, this Bluetooth speaker complements bedrooms, offices, living rooms, and personal spaces while delivering both style and functionality. Engineered with a custom-designed audio driver, [...]

If most cops had a sense of irony, they wouldn't be cops. By that I mean that there's little in the job that attracts people with tons of self-awareness or a finely developed sense of humor. Both of those traits generally contain a sense of irony. And since most cops don't have that, this is [...]

Shane Mac, a tech entrepreneur and CEO of the software developer XMTP Labs, decided to connect Grok Bot to his personal bank account. Like many people who attach undercooked big tech agentic AI agents to their personal accounts without reading the instructions (see: Muse's rough last few weeks), it didn't go well. Mac soon found [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is n00bdragon with a comment about Florida's age-gating law and its esoteric definition of addiction: Is anyone else bothered by this incredibly strange definition of addiction"? Is YMCA soccer addicting if 10% of a youth soccer team (one player) plays soccer for more than two [...]

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Back in the much simpler times of 2021, we wrote about some of the games Major League Baseball decided to play as part of a brief owner's lockout of players while both sides negotiated a collective bargaining agreement. This included essentially scrubbing the MLB website of all pictures of current players, stories about current players, [...]

Back in the early days of the Internet - 1988 to be precise - the self-replicating computer program known as the Morris worm spread across the network and shut down thousands of online VAX and Sun computers. It was a good example of software not going rogue, but doing exactly what its creator had intended [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on [...]

For years, the idea of expanding the Supreme Court has been dismissed as a fantasy among serious" thinkers. However, with it becoming ever more clear that the Supreme Court has gone completely off the rails and is now a purely partisan entity, rather than one doing neutral adjudications, more people are open to the idea [...]

The Ultimate Web Coding for Everyone Bundle has 8 introductory courses covering core programming languages and web development frameworks. You'll learn about Python, Ruby, JavaScript, MySQL, and more. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. [...]

There's been plenty of talk by judges about imposing sanctions on ICE and DOJ lawyers who have routinely violated court orders and constitutional rights, and straight up lied in court (or allowed agents and officers to lie in court). But not much has actually been done about this. So far, it's mostly been threats of [...]

Our consolidated corporate press doesn't really make this clear, surprisingly, but the United States is too corrupt to function. There's simply no shortage of evidence across every arena that matters. Trump's corruption is utterly historic, yet it's just endlessly normalized. To the point where most press outlets don't really even mention Trump's corruption clearly when [...]

We just talked about how the majority of the American public either believes that RFK Jr. recommends they not get the MMR vaccine that protects people from measles, or are otherwise unsure of what his stance even is on the topic. When Kennedy sycophants (sickophants?) attempt to point at all the times Kennedy has said [...]

The Metric Is Not the Missionis a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy-from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around [...]

Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on spying technologies-automated license plate readers(ALPR),cell-site simulators, andfacial recognition, to name a few-causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil rights and civil liberties these tools present. Some authorities are responding to these concerns by trying to hide [...]

Dive into Godot - a rising star in the game engine world - with the 2026 Complete Godot Stack Development Bundle. You'll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you'll also explore techniques for game design and game [...]

This is now as common as breathing. ICE does stuff. Arrested people invoke their rights. ICE shows up in court. The court expresses its anger at ICE's tactics and lies. Thousands of habeas cases filed by migrants have ended with the courts siding with the arrested migrants. It's actually more than 10,000 at this point, [...]

Apparently we're in an era where the courts just decide to ignore precedents they don't like. And that leads us to ridiculous results like yesterday's ruling in the Eleventh Circuit allowing Florida's HB3 social media age verification law to move forward. But to understand how messed up it is, you need to know the history [...]

One of the ways Musk fraudulently goosed SpaceX stock value during the IPO was by pretending that the company would very quickly (in just a year or two) grow from just 12 million global Starlink subscribers (just 4 million in the States) to something more akin to 300-500 million. The way Starlink claims they'll do [...]

There have certainly been some bad takes on both sides of the AI in video games argument. In one corner, we have the never-AI-ers who reflexively claim that any use of any type of AI in any game is a total disqualifier. No quarter is given to nuance. No daylight is offered for discussion. It [...]

A key role universities play in society is providing knowledge that can guide public action. Moreover, public universities have a legal duty to serve the public. We expect researchers in universities to produce and disseminate knowledge that can ultimately advance human flourishing and meet the informational needs of lawmakers, civil society, and the public generally. [...]

This is not a unique or new observation, but so many MAGA attacks on others are projection, claiming that Democrats were doing the very things that MAGA always knew they would do if they were in charge. We've certainly spent plenty of time talking about Donald Trump's myriad and non-stop attacks on free speech, and [...]

The Academy of Game Art Bundle teaches you the basics of how to create video game art. You'll learn how to use Inkscape to create logos, 2D backgrounds, pre-defined modules, UI designs, and characters. A course on using DragonBones will teach you how to animate your characters as well. The bundle is on sale for [...]

More evidence is piling up that contradicts the almost-but-not-quite denials given by administration officials in response to allegations about the DHS compiling a database to keep tabs on protesters. Just a few months ago, Immigration Czar" Todd Lyons was trying to turn credible accusations into a nothingburger by deploying a few vague and trite statements [...]

Remember how the Trump administration - and folks like Brendan Carr - spent four straight years fear-mongering about China's purported control over TikTok and its owner, ByteDance? And remember how the Trump administration (with incompetent Democratic lawmaker help) fixed" the problem by offloading Tiktok to Trump's billionaire buddies while still maintaining co-ownership with the Chinese? [...]

The apocryphal quote supposedly from Mark Twain is one of my favorites: History does not repeat, but it does often rhyme." Now, there is no evidence that Twain ever actually authored these words, but it's incredible how true they tend to be regardless. And when it comes to the current measles outbreak that is ravaging [...]

The Metric Is Not the Missionis a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy-from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around [...]

In 2023, Mozilla released a report noting that modern U.S. cars had the worst security and privacy standards of any major technology industry the organization tracks. That was followed by a major NYT report in 2024 showing how automakers routinely hoover up oodles of consumer driving and phone info, then sell access to that data [...]

Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves... and then sued them (unsuccessfully) for not advertising on his personal propaganda and manipulation site? Well, it appears that Donald Trump is trying a government-backed variation on that abusive power play: claiming that news networks choosing not to cover him after he announced he was [...]

The Complete CompTIA and IT Exam Training Bundle offers access to multi-platform IT training courses, practice exam simulators, and hands-on labs such as CramWise, LinuxPath, DojoLab, CodeDirect, and ExamsDigest. These help prepare you for exams like CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, Cloud+, Server+, and PenTest+, alongside cloud and networking credentials. It's on sale for $40. Note: [...]

In today's episode of wtf," we have a jury deciding a local blogger is a criminal because a local politician didn't appreciate being sent a Shrek bereft of clothes to his cell phone. Morgan Trau of the Ohio Capital Journal has the (pathetic) details on this particular miscarriage of justice. An Ohio political blogger let [...]

Last week, the DNC sued the Trump administration for using $20 million in taxpayer money on strange and ineffective midterm ads. The use of taxpayer money technically violates multiple laws (remember those?), including the Hatch Act and Federal Appropriations Laws restricting taxpayer-funded propaganda. Trump's now been ordered to stop airing the ads entirely courtesy of [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad replying to a comment about Mark Zuckerberg's past projects: I'd say the first thing he did was bring back the AOL silo paradigm. In second place, it's MrWilson with a comment about the fifth measles-related death in Pennsylvania: My bingo card has the [...]

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In my many, many posts about RFK Jr. and his disastrous tenure as Secretary of HHS, there are two themes that have hopefully broken through all the noise. The first is that Kennedy is a miserable communicator, in a way that is totally purposeful. He talks out of both sides of his mouth all the [...]

Here comes the latest in ho-hum dystopia. And by that, I mean surveillance creep has become such a regular occurrence that it takes something truly Overton Window-breaking to gain traction with the general public. But that's no reason to let this slide by without pointing it out. The government (at all levels) has a lot [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on [...]

The big Meta multi-state settlement got most of the headlines, and there's been plenty of discussion about how it's a bad deal for kids and pretty clearly anti-competitive. That's thanks to a very strange clause that encourages Meta to make its own required feature changes the industry standard" by convincing other platforms to cut similar [...]

The Essential MATLAB and LabVIEW Mega Bundle has 9 courses to help you improve your skills in programming and visualization. You'll learn the basics of each and then go through hands-on courses building apps, learning about data analysis and visualization, and more. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

There is plenty of coverage everywhere you look about how Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon have announced plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army officer who shot up Fort Hood, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more. There is plenty of debate about the moral atrocity that is a firing [...]

I've explored how Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr has been working tirelessly to illegally destroy what's left of already shaky U.S. media consolidation limits. He's particularly interested in helping Trump-friendly local broadcasters like Sinclair, Tegna, and Nexstar merge and dominate what's left of broadcast TV news," as a very obvious reward for their loyalty to [...]

There's a certain segment of the American population that likes to really bang on about the importance of the First Amendment to our rights to free speech and the freedom of religion... right up until that includes speech and religion they don't like. This same segment also tends to make a lot of noise about [...]

The Metric Is Not the Missionis a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy-from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around [...]