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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 [...]

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 [...]