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This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. Dr. Anthony Fauciinvoked the Fifth Amendmentanddeclined to answer questionsfrom a Senate committeemore than 100 timeson July 29, 2026. TheRepublican-led hearing- convened to scrutinize Fauci's management of the pandemic and the origins of COVID-19 - was thelatest chapter in a political storythat began [...]

When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk's predictions about his Twitter takeover turned out to be. Indeed, the failure of Twitter as a business was so catastrophic, Musk had to hide it by merging all his Xs together: he had [...]

We'll see how long US Attorney (and, of course, former Fox News personality) Jeanine Pirro gets to keep her job. I would guess the exit door is only inches away from hitting her ass since she refused to carry out Donald Trump's plan to punish Reflecting Pool visitors for highlighting the failures of his no-bid [...]

Earlier this year, following the initial verdict in the state of New Mexico's case against Meta (arguing that Meta caused harm to children by doing things like encrypting messages), we noted that even if you believe that Meta is a terrible company (as I do), that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted (ditto), and that the [...]

flowkey is a fun, interactive piano learning platform that helps anyone go from absolute beginner to confident player - at their own pace. It combines step-by-step courses with thousands of songs you know and love, tailored for every skill level, from first-time learners to advanced pianists. The app listens as you play and gives instant [...]

Flock Safety is happy it's the go-to choice for tons of law enforcement agencies. While it does suffer some occasional bleeding, its supercharged automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) - ones that not only capture plates, but pictures of drivers/passengers and full vehicle images to capture any other distinctive features - are so widely deployed they're [...]

There are so many shitty U.S. companies across tech, energy, and AI that criticism of our massively-unpopular telecom monopolies has fallen out of fashion. It's easy to forget, for example, that Comcast routinely used to make headlines for setting peoples homes on fire, torturing pets, or at times killing people (most of the stories I [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Capital One's stated reasons for shutting down Trump accounts: Would be nice to have some disclosure laws so that if a presidential candidate's had his bank accounts closed for money laundering, we don't learn about it years later in [...]

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Buc-ee's trademark bullying ways continue! This company that has long been famous for its enormous gas station and convenience stores practically dripping in Americana is quickly building a national reputation for itself as a petulant trademark bully. It's lawsuits are typically dumb and usually feature Buc-ee's claim that it somehow owns every cartoon animal mascot [...]

For years, John Deere had actively made repairing their tractors near-impossible for anyone but itself and the few authorized" repair shops-regardless of the ability of its customers to actually visit such shops. Now, in a major win for farmers and right to repair advocates, John Deere must soon provide farmers with not just the tools [...]

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 [...]

Well, it looks like investigators better go back to doing actual investigations in the Fifth Circuit, rather than just assuming a little paperwork and a whole lot of assistance from service providers is going to do their work for them. For at least the second time in the same state (Mississippi), federal judges have rejected [...]

The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle has 7 online courses designed to help learners build skills that align directly with industry expectations.The focus is on practical tools and languages used by data professionals: Python for programming, Pandas and NumPy for data manipulation, foundational certification prep and specialized work with Databricks, an industry-standard platform for data engineering [...]

There are many ways to describe the Trump Era, but the executive branch's conviction that it can simply ignore the legislative branch's entire existence has become something close to a governing principle. From impounding funds designated by Congress to launching a war without Congress's authority, Trump has basically decided that the legislative branch is a [...]

Back in May I noted how the Trump FCC had unveiled a brand new plan to stop robocalls." I also noted how the plan doesn'tactually stop robocallsbecause a well-lobbied U.S. government (1) refuses to hold big companies accountable or collect fines, (2) constantly embracesweak rules that make telemarketers and debt collectors happy through endless loopholes, [...]

When Erica Schwartz was first nominated for Director of the CDC, you could almost hear both a gasp of surprise and a collective sigh of relief from healthcare providers throughout the country. Schwartz is well qualified for the role, after all, and many took her nomination as a sign that the White House was attempting [...]

For a while now we've been mocking the Trump White House's plans for an AI framework" that would have the frontier AI labs hand over their top models for an initial review. After all, this was more or less the exact same plan that the Biden admin worked out in 2023, but it was done [...]

Recent reportshaveraised alarmabout the use of PatronScan, an ID-checking and face-scanning system, at multiple LGBTQ+ bars in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. Much of the attention has focused on reports that the system photographs patrons as they enter venues and questions about whether those images are used for facial recognition. A broader privacy concern also deserves [...]

As perhaps a few Elon Musk fans may remember, he got really annoyed at Wikipedia last year and tasked his second-rate LLM, Grok, with recreating it as Grokipedia." Grokipedia, launched nearly a year ago, basically starts by forking Wikipedia and then having its AI generate" more details and more stories. It's... not very good. And [...]

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, [...]

Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers were first sold as upmarket add-ons for gated communities and HOA curtain-twitchers who wanted to keep tabs on what everyone was doing, whether they lived there or not. Flock soon realized that selling to rich people wasn't as profitable as selling to governments. Law enforcement agencies have always been [...]

I've written a few times now about how the Trump administration hijacked a $42.5 billion broadband investment fund included in the 2021 infrastructure bill, stripped away requirements that the resulting broadband be fairly deployed and affordable, and instead redirected billions of dollars to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in exchange for slower, more expensive satellite [...]

A couple of weeks ago we discussed how the cuts made to HHS and specifically the CDC's FoodNet tracking platform were making it much harder to track and back trace the source of the country's current cyclosporiasis outbreak. You'll have heard about this outbreak in the news by now. It's the one where you begin [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. On an afternoon in mid-May, dozens of Microsoft engineers and their managers gathered online and in a conference room at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters to discuss Project Glasswing. The tech giant was racing to fix weaknesses in its code that a new AI model known [...]

Donald Trump took possession of a $400 million gift" plane from the Qatari government earlier this year. Trump claimed it was a coup for taxpayers and a boon for America, even as he made it clear this was all about him. According to Trump, no plane was more luxurious than this graft-y replacement for the [...]

The rise of AI is bringing a bunch of fascinating legal questions that are harder to answer than many expect. The latest one: who is liable if an agentic system running on its own hacks someone? That's the question a bunch of people have been asking this past week in the wake of multiple stories [...]

The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You'll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated [...]

The Trump administration has been shut down more than 10,000 times by federal courts over its novel interpretation of the law - one it claims allows it to indefinitely detain migrants without giving them a bond hearing. Some of those 10,000 adverse decisions have been significant, with implications that stretch far beyond single cases or [...]

Last month we reported how Meta had decided to try and sloppily nickel-and-dime its AI glasses customers. More specifically, the company decided it would be a good idea to introduce new rate limits" to smart glasses usage, forcing customers to pony up a$20 per month Meta One Premium subscriptionif they didn't want their glasses' conversation [...]

This post is going to come with something of a warning label. RFK Jr. went on CNN this past weekend for an interview with Dana Bash. I'm going to post the entirety of that interview immediately below. Before you watch it, get yourself a bib, or some paper towels, or wrap yourself in one of [...]

Early in the media law and ethics course I teach, as I shift gears from the ethics section to the law and core free speech issues, I try to build a foundation by introducing the many kinds of legal issues they may face as communicators. By this time, we have already discussed social media platforms [...]

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial onthe resurgence of left-wing political terrorism. Secretary of StateMarco Rubio invited representatives from more than 60 countriesto Washington to hear an argument thatmany of them appear not to [...]

For much of Techdirt's nearly three decades in existence we've covered attacks on the media by the rich and powerful. And sometimes we've been on the receiving end of such attacks ourselves. But I have never seen or heard of anything quite as extreme as what happened to Ina and David Steiner, proprietors of the [...]

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I don't know but when your best argument is we got locked out of our accounts for supporting violent insurrectionists," maybe it's time to stop arguing. But if there's anything Trump likes, it's being a plaintiff in a lawsuit. So, that's exactly what the Trump Organization argued, in hopes of pressuring Capital One into a [...]

It's hard to not have noticed that a key enabler of U.S. authoritarianism was our consolidated corporate media, which (with scattered exception) was more than happy to throw the entirety of journalistic integrity in the toilet for a chance to please a mad, idiot king. In large part because our press is increasingly owned by [...]

Just a few weeks ago, Sony announced that it would stop producing games on physical media starting in 2028 and a very loud portion of Sony's customers lost their freaking minds. And, in this writer's opinion, for very good reason. Having no physical media option for your games is going to make game preservation efforts [...]

Last week we wrote about how Elon Musk's xAI had filed a lawsuit to attempt to block Minnesota's anti-nudify app law. As we tried to explain, even if you (reasonably, understandably) dislike both Elon and nudify" apps, there were real problems with the Minnesota law. In particular, it was not narrowly tailored to just target [...]

The Senate Commerce Committee is set to considerS. 737, the SCREEN Act, a sweeping age-verification bill that would require online services to verify users' ages before they can access any sexually explicit content. If this bill passes, it will force millions of adult internet users to give up their anonymity, privacy, and security before they [...]

Hail to the Chief. Our country is being run by paranoid conspiracy theorist megalomaniac who openly wishes to kick-start America's first autocracy. Nothing that goes wrong is ever the president's fault. It's always the fault of officials with insufficient loyalty or the criminal acts of people out to get him. Trump decided the Lincoln Reflecting [...]

Rosetta Stone Sapphire combines over 30 years of language-learning expertise with immersive technology designed to help you speak naturally and confidently in real-world situations. Trusted by millions of learners worldwide, Sapphire brings together structured lessons, pronunciation coaching, conversation practice, flashcards, and personalized learning tools in one complete platform. Built around Rosetta Stone's proven Dynamic Immersion [...]

Sometimes it helps to just write out everything that happened leading up to a situation so we don't lose sight of just how ridiculous it is. I mean, would you believe that a President would sue his own IRS for something that happened under his own watch and did him no harm, demand $10 billion, [...]

Ideally, I think it makes sense to open up the U.S. market to Chinese goods (AI, EVs, robots), but have functional and well-funded regulators that policy all labor, competition, environmental, privacy, and consumer rights abuses. But big companies don't much like that because it would boost competition and accountability, eroding quarterly revenues. So instead we [...]

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to the protestor who is charged with destroying property for giving CBP agents the duress mode" password to wipe his phone. In first place, it's an anonymous comment extending our characterization of what the DOJ is doing here: While simultaneously pushing to institute [...]

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RFK Jr. has a lot on his plate at the moment as the head of HHS. America is currently dealing with a record breaking outbreak of the measles, for instance. His agency has had a very hard time getting people confirmed for key roles. There's that whole cyclosporiasis thing going around, which you'll know you've [...]

On a laptop screen in a dimly lit tent near the Donetsk front, a Ukrainian drone team steers its aircraft into the turret of a Russian T-72 and glimpses the start of an explosion before the picture dissolves into static. The strike is uploaded, verified, and scored against the point value assigned to the tank. [...]

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 [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms. From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, [...]