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Way back in Trump's first term, back when he was still claiming he was going to build some enormous border wall and get Mexico to pay for it (neither happened), the lovely people over at Cards Against Humanity bought a parcel of land along the boarder with the intention of taking every possible action to [...]

Donald Trump just cut off all trade negotiations with Canada because an Ontario ad campaign quoted Ronald Reagan accurately. The quotes are real. The context is accurate. But Trump called them fake" and fraudulent," and the Reagan Foundation-the institution literally tasked with preserving Reagan's legacy-backed him up by lying about what their own guy said [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city's emergency response system. Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them [...]

On Tuesday, I wrote about how we were upgrading our daily email newsletter-the one we've had for decades but never actually promoted. Thousands of you had signed up just by spotting the little email icon. We figured more might be interested if we actually talked about it. We'd upgraded the tech, written a whole post [...]

When Reddit sued data scraper" companies and AI firm Perplexity earlier this week, I assumed it was another predictable skirmish over AI training data-the kind of case we've been tracking as companies try to wall off the open internet and set up toll booths. But reading the actual complaint made it clear this is something [...]

This 3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charging Pad integrates three charging modules for cell phones, headphones, and watches-a maximum power of 15W for cell phone charging, 5W for Airpods charging, and 2.5W for Apple Watch charging. Charge three devices at the same time, conveniently and efficiently. To add more, this charging pad can be folded and used [...]

Earlier this year, Donald Trump declared (without facts in evidence) that Chicago was a crime-ridden hellhole that could only be saved by sending in the literal troops. This happened during a year which has been one of the safest (in terms of crime rates) in Chicago's recent history. And, of course, actual crime rates were [...]

U.S. media mergers always follow the same trajectory. Pre-merger, executives promise all manner of amazing synergies and deal benefits. Post-merger, not only to those benefits generally never arrive, the debt from the acquisition spree usually results in significant layoffs, lower quality product, and higher rates for consumers. The Time Warner Discovery disasterwas the poster child [...]

Several years ago, DC Comics opposed the trademark sought by Unilever for the term Wonder Mum" with the UKIPO over its trademarks for Wonder Woman". Now, DC Comics is notoriously draconian when it comes to policing its IP, trademarks included, but this one was fairly ridiculous, as the UKIPO pointed out. There is no actual [...]

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. In this week's round-up of the latest news in online [...]

Sequoia Capitaljust showed us exactly what institutional neutrality" means-when billions are at stake. Sumaiya Balbale-the firm's chief operating officer, aShake Shackboard member, someone well regarded internally and by the start-ups she worked with as an experienced operating executive"-resigned in Augustafter complaining about partner Shaun Maguire's Islamophobic posts. Senior partners declined to discipline him, citing free [...]

Ryan Walters is no longer the Superintendent of the State of Oklahoma, but he's still at work doing his nonsensical performative shtick. After vacating his government position in the middle of his mandates for schools to carry copies of the Trump Bible and requiring transplant teachers to take a Prager U developed woke-test to get [...]

I've written a lot about the AOL->AT&T->Time Warner->Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street's obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting. Ever since the original AOL Time Warner merger [...]

The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle gives you unlimited access to expertly crafted online courses, interactive labs and study tools. Whether you're aiming for industry-recognized certifications or expanding your tech expertise, this bundle will help you get there with courses on CompTIA, AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, and more. It's on sale for [...]

The Trump administration is absolutely stuffed full of people who - if they had any self-awareness at all - would be suffering crippling bouts of impostor syndrome. But they don't because they actually think they're the best thing that has happened to the nation they're continue to destroy with their bigotry and incompetence. Pete Hegseth [...]

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper's (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper. The student journalists say that University administrators didn't like the student paper's decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten's decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the [...]

You may be tired of hearing about measles by now, but measles is not tired of infecting Americans. It's worth reminding ourselves that this is a disease that was declared gone in America. Cases and transmission rates were so low in 2000, thanks almost entirely to the widespread promotion and adoption of the MMR vaccine, [...]

Elon Musk is having avery bad week. The man who bought Twitter for $44 billion to secure unaccountable power over public discourse is discovering what unaccountable power actually looks like when wielded by someone who understands dominance better than he does. Trump just strippedSpaceXof a government contract and handed it to Jeff Bezos. Musk's response? [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn't be concerned. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in [...]

The appearance of impropriety" doesn't bother this administration. It prefers open impropriety, having learned the wrong lessons from Trump's first term, where most of his worst impulses were somewhat muted by the adults in the room. There are no adults left. If they haven't been fired, it's because they were never invited to participate in [...]

Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. The Luminar Neo Bundle gets you a license for Luminar Neo, a course on editing techniques, and 6 add-ons including Light Reflections overlay, Cold Harmony LUTs, Tranquil Dawn Skies, and more. It's on [...]

There are levels of corruption, and then there's whatever the hell this is. Donald Trump is demanding that American taxpayers pay him $230 million for being prosecuted. Which is like getting a speeding ticket and then billing the state for the cost of your traffic lawyer. Except in this case, the traffic lawyer is now [...]

If Elon Musk probably has a superpower, it isn't his engineering or business savvy. It's probably his rank opportunism. The latest case in point: this week saw a massive outage for Amazon Web Services (AWS) that managed to take many of your favorite websites and services offline. The outage also hampered the workflows of countless [...]

Look, folks, I'm sorry, but RFK Jr. is going to force us to talk about sperm. And I'm very much going to try to keep the jokes at an absolute minimum, because, as per usual when Kennedy starts spouting off about something health-related, this isn't actually funny. At this point I don't think it makes [...]

Just days after we wrote about the EU's renewed push for chat control, Germany has delivered a very important no" vote. During discussions with EU countries last Wednesday, Germany's opposition was decisive enough to kill the proposal's momentum and remove it from this week's agenda for EU justice ministers. But it wasn't just a procedural [...]

Support us on Patreon As you know, we talk a lot about decentralization and protocols over platforms. When it comes to decentralized social media in particular, one person who has been working on it since the earliest days is developer Rabble, who was around at the very beginning of what would become Twitter and has [...]

The Party of Free Speech Snowflakes is at it again. Despite Charlie Kirk not actually being a member of the administration or, indeed, a political leader of any sort, the Trump Administration continues to act as though one of its own has been assassinated, rather than just another podcaster who happened to be more popular [...]

Look, we get it. Your inbox is probably drowning in newsletters right now. Every publication, influencer, and their cousin's dog walker has suddenly discovered the revolutionary concept of... sending you emails with stuff to read. Who could have predicted that people might want content delivered directly to them? Well, actually, we could have. Because we've [...]

The SunFounder Raspberry Pi Pico W Ultimate Starter Kit offers a rich learning experience for beginners aged 8 and up. Withover 450 components, 117 projects, and expert-led tutorials, this kit makes learning microcontroller programming engaging and accessible. It also features 27 video lessons by renowned educator Paul McWhorter, simplifying microcontroller programming and IoT concepts. Packed [...]

Two Trump-appointed federal judges just decided that facts don't matter when the President wants to send the military into American cities. Donald Trump declared Portland a war-ravaged" city requiring military intervention based on a few anti-ICE protests and imagery from five years ago on Fox News that he apparently thought was happening now. The actual [...]

For more than fifty years the U.S. right wing has embraced a neat trick: by claiming that literally anything in factual opposition to their beliefs is biased" and therefore must be discarded as unreliable, they've bullied U.S. media into becoming a feckless mess terrified of accusations of liberal bias." Of course, if you ask the [...]

Several weeks back, we wrote about a very silly trademark opposition filed by Ohio State University against a restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called The Brown Jug. At issue was the restaurants offering of an alcoholic drink called Buckeye Tears." See, the University of Michigan and OSU are big time rivals in the realm of [...]

Asall things oldare new again, a bill that would make obtaining bad patents easier and harder to challenge is being considered in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would reverse over a decade of progress in fighting patent trolls and making the patent system more balanced. PERA would overturn long-standing court [...]

2025 has delivered almost nothing but bad news. Here's more of that, as first reported by Israeli press outlet, Calcalist: Control of NSO Group is set to leave Israeli hands. A group of American investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds has agreed to acquire the controversial spyware developer in a deal valued at several [...]

Brian Reed's Question Everything" podcast built its reputation on careful journalism that explores moral complexity within the journalism field. It's one of my favorite podcasts. Which makes his latest pivot so infuriating: Reed has announced he's now advocating to repeal Section 230-while demonstrating he fundamentally misunderstands what the law does, how it works, and what [...]

At least the last time this many journalists fled an oppressive regime, the military actually offered to give them a ride. That's not the sort of thing that's happening these days. In fact, the current administration is more like the current Vietnam government than it would care to admit, especially when it rails against socialism [...]

The Adobe Acrobat Pro + Microsoft Office Professional License Bundle isn't around for much longer. It's a chance to get a 3-year Adobe Acrobat Pro 2024 license and a license for Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for $100. It's your all-in-one bundle for editing PDFs, creating docs, and working smarter on Windows. Note: The Techdirt Deals [...]

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.... And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and became truth." -George Orwell, 1984 This past weekend witnessed what may have [...]

Whoops! Some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrid owners were stranded after the company pushed out a buggy software update that prevented the vehicles from running, and, at least according to one Reddit poster, resulted in the vehicle shutting off in the middle of a highway: I was driving 65 on the left lane of the highway [...]

This week, MrWilson takes both top spots on the insightful side (and the top spot on the funny side). In first place for insightful, it's a comment about Elon Musk's disastrous impact on the government: The worst part about it isn't just that the Fox News sponges won't get the full message, they'll not understand [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Ajit Pai put the final bullet in net neutrality and decided to move forward with unconstitutional rulemaking on Section 230, while Clarence Thomas joined the brigade of opposing 230, and Congress introduced yet another anti-230 bill, because sure why not? We looked at the pretty crummy results of [...]

While we chronicled the fall of Nikola, a company that promised over-the-road trucks built with hydrogen propulsion systems, it's useful to note that it was literally only this past February that the company declared bankruptcy. What came before that was the company's previous CEO, Trevor Milton. Milton made wild promises to investors in order to [...]

New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety's surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and the Johnson County Sheriffthat she wasbeing searched for as a missing person," andthatit was about her safety." The new information shows that deputies had initiated a [...]

The lawsuit between Palworld maker PocketPair and The Pokemon Co. (Nintendo included) is still ongoing. As the litigation progresses, PocketPair has been patching out some of the very content and gameplay mechanics that the Pokemon people complained about, which is unfortunate. The patents we're talking about are quite broad in the realm of video games [...]

In what may be the most legally absurd aftermath of a rap battle in hip-hop history, Drake's preposterously silly lawsuit against Universal Music has met its predictable end. The artist sued his own record label-not Kendrick Lamar himself-for the crime of also distributing Lamar's devastating diss track Not Like Us. The judge overseeing the case [...]

Right up front, I want to state that this is a very personal post. While it obviously draws from my many years of writing for Techdirt, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am expressing my own opinions about everything discussed below. I'm not immune to reading the comments. In fact, I actually [...]

Linux and UNIX operating systems have become increasingly popular in commercial computing environments. Due to their rapid growth in today's businesses, Linux/UNIX administrators have also become very much in demand. The Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle will help you prepare for the CompTIA Linux+ and the Novell Certified Linux Professional certification exams. The 2-course bundle is [...]

Last week we covered how Trump's immigration theater was pulling federal agents off child sex crimes, drug interdiction, and terrorism investigations to chase landscapers and line cooks instead. Turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we're learning the administration is also pulling hundreds of cybersecurity professionals away from defending America's critical [...]

California this week signed a new law that tries to prevent your landlord and broadband ISP from teaming up and preventing you from using broadband competitors. Starting January 1,AB1414requires that landlords allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party ISP, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service [...]

Measles is so back, baby! I know, you had thought we were done talking about this vile disease. After all, the outbreak that started in Texas among communities that are relatively unvaccinated finally slowed down at the tail end of the summer. That came after that outbreak almost single-handedly generated more cases of measles in [...]