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While we've focused a great deal on RFK Jr.'s war on vaccines in America, it's worth remembering that his ambitions for making people sicker extend beyond the American border. We've already discussed Kennedy's 2019 trip to Samoa, where he used the unfortunate accidental mixing of vaccine doses with muscle relaxers that killed two young children, [...]

There were some rumors earlier this week that, as it was facing a lot of pushback in court, in the media, and even among (a few) fellow Republicans in Congress, Donald Trump was going to drop his blatantly unconstitutional, illegal, and corrupt $1.776 billion slush fund for MAGA insurrectionists. And now it's... sorta officially dead... [...]

Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison hired blogtroller Bari Weiss to turn what was left of CBS News into a right wing safe space for oligarchs and autocrats like Trump and Netanyahu. If the patient died during surgery, I don't think Ellison would lose any sleep. But I do think Ellison hoped that Weiss could at least [...]

Discover the innovative Smart Car Kit, a versatile robot equipped with 4WD omnidirectional movement, FPV (First Person View), app-based remote control, RGB lighting, and a durable metal frame. Powered by an Arduino Uno-compatible main board, this all-in-one kit delivers multi-functional capabilities, including obstacle avoidance, line tracking, IR remote control, face detection, gesture recognition, voice recognition, [...]

The Supreme Court's conservatives have spent years systematically dismantling the Voting Rights Act, but the last seven months have been something else - a rapid-fire series of emergency docket rulings, procedural maneuvers, and carefully worded opinions that, taken together, make it effectively impossible to challenge racial gerrymandering. Not difficult. Impossible. And Justice Alito, in particular, [...]

404 Media reports that hackers were simply able to ask Meta AI for access to high-profile Instagram accounts, and the AI agent simply... well... obliged: Hackers say that they used Meta's AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with [...]

After public outrage, California lawmakers are moving closer to exempting open-source operating systems from the sweeping age-bracketing regime mandated by last year's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043). Nonetheless, the current bill still jeopardizes internet users' speech, privacy, and security. While the open source exemption, if passed, would improve the law, the remaining amendments proposed [...]

On Techdirt, we often complain about lawyers and bad lawyering and bad cases. But there are times when lawyers are helpful, and my one-sentence summary after spending many days trying to understand a viral dispute about [checks notes] some old Star Wars LEGO sets is that a lot of people should have spoken to competent [...]

Before the current wave of laws banning mobile phones in schools, we had published a piece from some researchers who had looked at how similar bans had worked in Australia, with the conclusion that... they didn't. At best, the research showed the evidence on school phone bans to be weak and inconclusive." Those authors suggested [...]

LabsDigest is built for those who learn best by doing. Whether you're preparing for a CompTIA certification or diving into Python development, our platform offers interactive labs that simulate real-world tasks-no passive watching or reading, just real experience. Work through performance-based exercises for CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, and more, or sharpen your coding skills with [...]

This is hardly the worst thing about the administration's aliens.gov website but it's still worth noting. Let's get to the worst stuff first. The site URL is aliens.gov, which would lead most normal people to believe it has something to do with the ongoing declassification of UFO-related files. That's something Trump actually made happen, which [...]

If you recall, Trump FCC censor Brendan Carr recently launched numerous sham investigations of Disney/ABC because a comedian made fun of the President. One of those sham investigations includes the bogus claim that Disney should be stripped of its eight broadcast licenses because the company is sometimes nice to women and minorities. Another involves the [...]

The whole conversation around AI is about to get much, much worse. We've been talking a lot about AI, generative AI, LLMs, or whatever your preferred moniker has become, for some time now. And for good reason. This is a still-emerging technology that has begun to infiltrate many parts of our lives, willingly or otherwise. [...]

The DOJ has gone past bleeding talent. Now, it's just bleeding whatever. It's one thing to do a bit of MAGA swagger before a captive audience and walk out with a criminal indictment that contains no evidence of criminal activity. It's quite another thing to present that case to a court, where you'll have to [...]

John Deere is facing a second class action lawsuit for its ongoing, ham-fisted effort to monopolize tractor repair and drive up costs for its customers. The latest lawsuit was filed in mid-May in the Northern District of Illinois against John Deere by Christy Webber Landscaping of Chicago, which alleges that the company actively makes it [...]

Most legal experts seemed pretty skeptical about the tactic of 35 former federal judges asking federal judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the case where Trump sued his own IRS demanding $10 billion. Turns out they were wrong - on Friday, Judge Williams reopened the case, not going so far as to investigate whether fraud had [...]

CBP Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino made that title literal by showing up wherever Trump needed trouble started. Once he had arrived far north of the southern border he was supposed to be patrolling, Bovino (and the people he was commanding") found themselves on the receiving end of several lawsuits. Not only did they find themselves on [...]

Five years years ago AT&T effectively stopped selling DSL and started hanging up on DSL and copper phone line customers. While killing landlines and DSL is understandable given the limitations of the dated copper-based tech, the problem is that thanks to concentrated telecom monopolization, many of these customers were left without any replacement options due [...]

We've got a double-winner this week, but also a very very slow week overall on the funny side, so this will be a somewhat truncated post. On the insightful side, both top comments are similar thoughts in response to the judge dismissing charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, starting with this first-place winning comment from Huntly: [...]

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It was just a week or so ago that we were talking about the absurd situation in Knox County, Tennessee, where local government used Tennessee's book-banning laws to remove the book Roots from school libraries. Yes, this is the book by Alex Haley that spawned the 1970s miniseries of the same name and served as [...]

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. In Baltimore County, Maryland on Oct. 20, 2025, a 17-year-old student named Taki Allen was sitting outside his high school after football practice when an artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance camera falsely identified the Doritos bag in his pocketas a gun. Within moments police [...]

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 [...]

It's been less than two weeks since the Justice Department created the obviously illegal and unconstitutional $1.776 billion slush fund to pay off MAGA loyalists and January 6th insurrectionists. There are a variety of lawsuits looking to put a stop to it, and we just wrote about dozens of former federal judges asking the original [...]

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Flock Safety has made its bed. It has courted homeowners associations and gated communities since it first arrived on the market, apparently hoping to convert inherent racism into perpetual revenue streams. Then it went to where the real bias has always existed: US law enforcement agencies. It promised to tie their systems in with those [...]

Last month the FCC quietly issued a public notice saying the Brendan Carr run agency was demanding that the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB) create new TV ratings to alert viewers to transgender and gender non-binary programming" and the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes" included in children's programming. You are to ignore that [...]

I've written quite a bit about the Stop Killing Games movement, in no small part because I think it's way more important than most people think. Preserving cultural output is both important and, frankly, a key part of the bargain that is supposed to be copyright law. The fact that we offer video game publishers [...]

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. The United States is experiencing one of thesteepest declines in violent crimein modern history, including a murder rate at itslowest point in more than a century. Homicides across 35 major American citiesfell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies [...]

There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn't pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despitea parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congressis too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this [...]

Thirty-five (thirty-five!) former federal judges are asking a current federal judge to reopen the case where Donald Trump sued his own IRS, and then settled" the case on terms extremely favorable to himself, his family, and his MAGA loyalists. Law schools are famous for coming up with hypotheticals" to try to test students' knowledge of [...]

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 [...]

Poll everyone you can. Even the most MAGA never dreamed up this scenario. There's no single-issue voter whose kink is surely the people wanting green cards can get that done in their own countries." Nope, this is Trump's kink. This is a blatant attempt to juice the deportation numbers to soothe the throbbing bald skull [...]

The Trump Organization still hasn't shipped their promised Trump phone to most customers who laid down a $100 deposit a year ago. But rubes patriots who signed up did get something else instead: their private data leaked to the public. According to Techcrunch, the Trump Mobile website openly shared customer emails, addresses, phone numbers, and [...]

Alright, this is getting dire. In addition to all of the anti-vaxxer bullshit that has infected HHS thanks to RFK Jr.'s appointment to run the department, we have also made the point recently that an equally big problem is the talent drain occurring at HHS as well. Between the voluntary exits by smart people who [...]

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. In the months leading up to the implementation of Australia's social media ban in December 2025, there was much discussion about the possible negative consequences. Among these were concerns that teenagers would consume less news. Asmost young adultsuse social media for news [...]

Like most of the U.S., Western Massachusetts towns and cities have spent decades dealing with expensive, spotty, and slow broadband from private telecom monopolies like Comcast and Verizon. As a result, a lot of these towns and cities have explored building their own community owned fiber networks. Community broadband has been increasingly popular since COVID, [...]

Even if you don't live in California you've probably heard about the California primary coming up on June 2 (although early voting has already begun). In particular, you've probably heard about it because everyone and their brother has thrown their hat into the ring for governor, and, because it's a top-two" primary. Sometimes called a [...]

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 [...]

There are many (negative) things this Trump administration is known for. It's a long list and I would encourage everyone to add as many negative things to that list. His DOJ is specifically known for vengeful prosecutions of those who dare to oppose the guy who thinks he's a king. The nation's top law enforcement [...]

As we've previously noted, Brendan Carr recently launched a series of phony inquiries into ABC because Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the president's wife. Carr can't just come out and say that, so he's launched a series of fake (and legally laughable) investigations" into the company. They're all designed to scare ABC, and other big [...]

I'm starting to wonder if RFK Jr. can do anything right at all. After the courts put an injunction on Kennedy's overhaul of the CDC's ACIP panel on vaccines, as well as pretty much all of their recommendations since it was rebuilt on a foundation of anti-vaxxers, the government sprung into action to try to [...]

I've spoken to enough teachers and professors to know that LLM tools are absolutely a challenge for many of them in the classroom. Many struggle with making sure they're actually teaching students how to learn, worrying that the tools are doing the work for them, and skipping over the actual learning. Many are (understandably) resorting [...]

It's one thing to accuse the government of engaging in vindictive prosecutions. It's quite another thing to prove it. The deck is stacked against those making these claims. These allegations rarely succeed. The government gets the benefit of the doubt and has the ability to make evidence against its position simply disappear. It didn't work [...]

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was one of the few genuinely good things Donald Trump was talked into doing during his first term. It was an agency within the Department of Homeland Security that was focused on coordination between the government and industry when there were larger cybersecurity threats that needed coordination to [...]

The Complete Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ESP32 Bundle has 14 courses covering what you need to get started on building out your own smart home. After learning the basics, courses show you how to create a weather monitoring system, a smart home security system, a plant watering system, and more. Courses also cover getting familiar [...]

Our war on drugs began with a simple man with a simple plan. That plan was this: give the government more powers at the expense of civil rights, all under the leadership" of soon-to-be-deposed president Richard Nixon and known drug enthusiast, Elvis Presley. While that summary is long on pithiness and short on detail, it's [...]

NPR is imposing a new round of buyouts and layoffs as it tries to survive the brutal Trump GOP attacks on public broadcasting. According to NPR, it's being forced to trim $8 million of its $300-million annual budget because of the illegal (for whatever that word is worth any more) Trump administration attacks on NPR, [...]