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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 [...]

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 [...]

Americans are not peasants. We are citizens of a republic founded on the revolutionary proposition that ordinary people can govern themselves. This isn't poetry or aspiration-it's the foundational premise of the American project. And right now, a faction of tech oligarchs is betting everything on proving that premise wrong. They want to replace We the [...]

It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't choice appearing on the California ballot this Election Day: choose gerrymandering, or have gerrymandering chosen for you. It's an ugly decision to be forced to make. But, for the moment, at least, one that needs to be made. At issue is Proposition 50, which would change the law affecting how California [...]

As far as the Trump administration is concerned, there's only one crime worth targeting: not being white. Despite ICE now being the best-funded federal law enforcement agency and military troops being scrambled to any area of the country that pisses Trump off, ICE is no closer to reaching White House advisor Stephen Miller's baseline target [...]

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That's all well and good, but it means nothing if you don't have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In the Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class, you'll [...]

JD Vance thinks praising Hitler and talking about putting political enemies into death chambers is harmless kids being kids," but criticizing Charlie Kirk is somehow deserving of state-supported punishment. It sure looks like he's got quite the double standard. Yesterday, Vance defended Young Republican leaders who were caught in leaked chat logs making racist, antisemitic, [...]

Back in May we noted howTrump illegally declared he was unilaterally destroying the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act, lying repeatedly that the law was racist" and unconstitutional." The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools, education, and training to Americans (of [...]

It's story time! I came home from the grocery store over this past weekend very proud. I rushed to tell my wife about how I was complimented in the check out line by the very nice woman behind me. She mentioned that she was impressed by how I Tetris-ed" my groceries on the conveyor belt, [...]

This will obviously work out well for Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt. After all, he's lobbing this criticism in the direction of a presidential administration known for its tolerance of dissent and its refusal to use its considerable power against critics and political opponents. Stitt is standing alone, facing a Republican party that only represents itself [...]

When a school district sues social media companies claiming they can't educate kids because Instagram filters exist, that district is announcing to the world that it has fundamentally failed at its core mission. That's exactly what New York City just did with its latest lawsuit against Meta, TikTok, and other platforms. The message is unmistakable: [...]

Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network ofautomated license plate readersspread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of human distress" via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushingRaven, [...]

You may recall a year or so ago, when Mark Zuckerberg whined to Jim Jordan about how the Biden administration repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain... content." Or maybe you remember when he went on Joe Rogan and whined some more about Biden pressure on moderation, even though he admitted there that [...]

Instantly become a color expert with the Nix Mini 3 Color Sensor. This portable device puts all paint fan decks in your pocket, offering access to over 200,000 brand-name paint colors and essential color codes like RGB, HEX, and CMYK. Perfect for designers, contractors, and homeowners. The Mini 3 features Bluetooth connectivity, Debris and splash [...]

Almost every time people protest the government, the government decides to get on the wrong side of the law. This is something every administration is guilty of, but under Trump, attacking protesters and journalists has become the rule, rather than the exception. Plenty of litigation has arisen from the protests greeting Trump's uber-aggressive pursuit of [...]

For many many years, experts have warned about massivelongstanding flawsin Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signaling System 7), a series of protocols used by cellular networks hackers can exploit totrack user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. Governments and various bad actorsroutinely exploit the flaw to covertlyspy on wireless users around [...]

Walled Culture first wrote about Piracy Shield, Italy's automated system for tackling alleged copyright infringement in the streaming sector,two years ago. Since then, we have written aboutthe serious problemsthat soon emerged. But instead of fixing those issues, the government body that runs the scheme, Italy's AGCOM (the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees), hasextended it. The [...]

The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political organization. It has transformed into a corrupt, immoral, and criminal enterprise that serves the interests of one man's power while systematically destroying the constitutional principles this nation was founded upon. What we're witnessing isn't political competition but organized crime wrapped in patriotic rhetoric. When the President [...]

Support us on Patreon Techdirt recently passed its 28th anniversary as an independent online media outlet. Once, it looked like such outlets might take over, but then most were scooped up by traditional media or grew into more traditional companies themselves. But now we're seeing a new generation emerge, especially via newsletters on platforms like [...]

When 47 out of 65 federal judges tell The New York Times that the Supreme Court is mishandling its emergency docket and creating a judicial crisis," you might think a Supreme Court Justice would show some humility about the criticism. Instead, Justice Amy Coney Barrett decided to go on Fox News Sunday to dismiss the [...]

It's a meme so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. And like plenty of memes with this sort of pedigree, its origins are humble: just another article by The Onion (or rather its Clickhole offshoot). You know the face and you know the words: Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great [...]

Networks are all around us and you are using one right now to access this course. The Internet is extremely important in modern life today and this reliance is only predicted to continue with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the next few years. The Cisco CCNA 200-301 Exam Course will teach [...]

Elon Musk's promises on government spending cuts have followed a predictable trajectory: slash $2 trillion, then $1 trillion, then a mere $150 billion. Now we have the final accounting from the Congressional Budget Office: DOGE didn't just fail to cut spending-it presided over spending increases that exceeded even pre-DOGE projections. The CBO's fiscal year 2025 [...]

Six former Surgeons General have gotten together to publicly pen an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the dangers of RFK Jr. The post is fairly long and, frankly, reads as though all six of them are part of a Techdirt fan club for posts about Kennedy. As the post cycles through what Kennedy [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a reply to someone pushing back on calling the Trump administration fascist: In second place, it's That Anonymous Coward with a comment on Tim Cushing's post about incorrect assumptions in his earlier post on the Iowa school superintendent arrested by [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Reps. Gabbard and Gosar brought out the ridiculous House companion to one of the Senate's anti-Section 230 bills, while Donald Trump got on board the repeal 230" bandwagon even though it was copyright that kept getting his content removed. A federal judge made a ridiculous free speech ruling [...]

My cancer is back. This is disappointing but not unexpected; of the 2/3 of people who survive their first bout with ovarian cancer, 80% usually have it recur at some point. For me it was sooner than expected, and disheartening because, even if I beat it back this time, it will likely come back again [...]

Hello from the free state of Illinois! We just talked about Donald Trump's incurrsion into Chicago and the surrounding area, in which he first sent in a bunch of masked ICE agents to terrorize citizens and immigrants alike, at one point raiding an apartment building with agents repelling from blackhawk helicopters like the reincarnated form [...]

In July, a California federal court handed down what should have been considered an obvious decision: of course it violates constitutional rights to consider skin color, spoken language, accent," or place of employment sufficient to support a stop, much less arrest and detainment. In August, the appeals court affirmed that ruling following the government's absolutely [...]

Just when you think corporate content moderation can't get any more absurd, Apple has managed to redefine protected class" in a way that would make Orwell proud. According to internal correspondence obtained by Migrant Insider, Apple has removed the DeICER app-which allowed users to log sightings of ICE enforcement activity-by invoking guidelines normally reserved for [...]

Microsoft Project 2024 Professional is the ultimate project management tool, designed to help professionals plan, execute, and complete projects with precision and efficiency. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, this software is perfect for project managers, team leaders, and executives who need a reliable solution to manage their projects from start to finish. It's [...]

America isn't the land of the free. We abandoned that title when we returned Donald Trump to office - the same person who refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and, immediately upon his return to power, pardoned almost everyone who engaged in an attempted insurrection on his behalf. The so-called [...]

When FCC boss Brendan Carr isn't failing embarrassingly to censor comedians who make the President sad, he's taking a hatchet to corporate oversight and consumer protection. From weakening robocall enforcement to killing net neutrality, it's part of Carr's Delete, Delete, Delete" performance that is attempting to dress up corruption and regulatory capture as streamlined government [...]

Here is a brief timeline of events that got us here. Chicago has had a decline in violent crime and murders over the course of the last several years, with 2025 on pace to mark it as the safest year yet in the city. Despite that plain fact, Donald Trump has banged on about how [...]

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 roundup of the latest news in online [...]

This is who we are now. We are the country that makes people who aren't white leave the country because they're not white. And this is according to this administration's own press release, which celebrates the fact that we're now the inverse of the words engraved at the Statue of Liberty's base, which read: Give [...]

A San Francisco supervisor hasproposedthat police and other city agencies should have no financial consequences for breaking a landmark surveillance oversight law. In 2019, organizations from across the city worked together to help passthat law, which required law enforcement to get the approval of democratically elected officials before they bought and used new spying technologies.Bit [...]

The 2025 Adobe Graphic Design Bundle has 3 courses designed to help you learn the essentials of graphic design and how to apply those skills to your projects. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You'll learn all aspects of the design process. It's on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

It's not enough to go after the worst of the worst." It was never a sustainable effort, what with migrants committing fewer crimes than natural citizens. The attempt to rid the country of as many non-white people as possible under Trump always had to go bigger. It has become ICE raiding swap meets and Home [...]

Right wing activism organizations posing as consumer rights groups are trying to make it illegal for the federal government to try and help poor, rural Americans afford broadband," is a sentence I just had to write. Quick background: the $8 billion FCC Universal Service Fund (USF) applies a small surcharge on traditional phone lines to [...]