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James Comey is not exactly someone we've ever been a fan of on Techdirt. He was a terrible FBI director in so many ways. We've spent years criticizing the man - for his crusade against encryption, his supporting the FBI's ridiculously aggressive impersonation of reporters, his embrace of the FBI's program to coerce and entrap [...]

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The administration's anti-migrant tactics are now months into an indefinite period of continuous escalation. That protest efforts have escalated alongside it apparently means nothing to the officials spearheading this brazen attack on non-white people. It wasn't until federal officers began killing people in front of witnesses that the administration decided to dial things back a [...]

Anonymous insiders tell the access journalists at Semafor that Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is cooking up a review" of ABC broadcast licenses after Jimmy Kimmel once again made the President sad. The FCC clearly leaked word of the inquiry to Semafor in the hopes that Semafor would present it as a serious, big boy [...]

We discussed RFK Jr.'s recent appearance before Congress, where he bravely declared that the current measles outbreak in America has absolutely nothing to do with him, despite that definitely not being true. But, unsurprisingly, that wasn't the only craziness that Kennedy put on display in the hearing. The Secretary of HHS doesn't believe in the [...]

There's stilla meaningful effort afootto implement statewide right to repair" laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. All fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, though only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado,California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws. Alaska [...]

Apparently we've reached the stage of the second Trump presidency when we're doing reruns of the old hits. As you'll recall, Donald Trump has been desperate to get late-night TV host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel fired for quite some time. While Trump has long complained about any late night comedian making fun of him, he [...]

There have been plenty of absolutely batshit crazy legal filings from Trump and his crew over the last few years, but a filing last night takes the crazy to new levels. This is in the case filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against the National Park Service over the ballroom Donald Trump is [...]

Simplify your daily charging experience and replace most of the chargers and cables on your desktop, with this one mini station that does it all. The Magstand Mini Magnetic Charge Station is a mini charging station that features 3 wireless charging spots, one USB-A port, and can also double as a bedside lamp with 2 [...]

Under Trump, DHS, ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol have violated every single right affected by their daily work. When you're trying to perform 3,000 arrests per day, you can be slowed down by things like the Constitution. And these agencies certainly haven't been slowed. In fact, they've been encouraged to continue violating rights by being [...]

Late last monthwe noted howthe Trump FCC under Brendan Carr announced a new ban" on all routers made overseas (which means pretty much all of them). At the time, we also noted how this was less of a ban and more of a shakedown, with router manufacturers required to beg the Trump FCC for conditional [...]

Progress may be slow, but it's still progress. While I've been talking about the importance of video game preservation as a function of our own overall cultural preservation, very few people out there are actually trying to do something about it all. One of those doers has been Ross Scott and others involved in the [...]

As its name suggests, generative AI is designed to generate material in response to prompts by drawing on its probabilistic database built up through analyzing huge quantities of training input. But it can draw on those patterns to analyze other files, and that's also a widely used application. Writing in The Argument, Kelsey Piper encountered [...]

The DOJ continues to be the Trump Administration's preferred avenue of vengeance. Since his return to office, multiple prosecutions targeting the president's critics and political opponents have been mounted. To date, not a single one has succeeded. (And more than a few have been stalled completely by Trump's refusal to engage in the legally required [...]

One of the more frustrating things about the case in which Donald Trump sued the IRS that he runs, demanding $10 billion over nothing, was that it seemed like it might just work, and there might be nothing that could be done to stop it. But at least one federal judge (luckily the one overseeing [...]

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The patron saint of the debate me, bro" grift is getting his due as most saints do: posthumously. The best thing that ever could have happened to people perpetrating violent left" bullshit was Charlie Kirk being shuffled off this mortal coil by the predictable end result of his divisive, racist, bullying speech. What should have [...]

There's been a flood of new state laws placing restrictions on 3D printing that are driven by sloppy moral panics about 3D printed guns (and a desire by large manufacturers to dominate the market), but are so ignorantly and broadly written that they do more harm than actual good. New York's 2026-2027 executive budget bill [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Palantir's general creepiness: I mean, yeah, the name of their company is basically I read Lord of the Rings and wanted to be Sauron." In second place, it's MrWilson with a comment about Arkansas's latest failed attempt to pass [...]

We're nearing the end of our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of our eighth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1930! We've already covered the Best Adaptation, Best Deep Cut, Best Visuals, and Best Remix winners, and this week we're looking at the winner of Best Digital Game: I Could [...]

Amidst all the other chaos and damage RFK Jr. is doing in his current role as Secretary of Health and Human Services, we noted a few weeks back that he was also seemingly having a hard time finding someone to fill the opening for CDC Director. That opening, created when Kennedy fired Susan Monarez after [...]

If you own one of the Sony Bravia lines of televisions (like I do) and were hoping that the expensive television would suddenly become slightly less functional for no good reason, I have some good news for you. Sony just announced that the company is making adjustments that will reduce the usefulness and efficiency of [...]

In June 2025, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court upheld what would seem to have been an extremely obvious conclusion reached by the federal court handling the case: yes, it definitely violates the Constitution to mandate the posting of a religious text in every classroom in Louisiana. This wasn't about displaying an assortment of foundational texts" [...]

To have one defamation case about public allegations of your drinking as FBI Director would be unfortunate. To have a second dismissed the very next day would be, well, perhaps a sign that something has gone wrong. Earlier this week we wrote about Kash Patel's ridiculously weak defamation case against The Atlantic over its big, [...]

The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for [...]

The state of Virginia is trying to break with its racist past. It's not pretending it doesn't exist. But, better late than never, it's trying to undo some of the damage still being perpetrated by Virginians and their legislators. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a bill into law that stripped confederate-friendly organizations of their tax exempt [...]

We've noted how Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav is poised to receive a $550 million golden parachute from the sale of Warner Brothers to Paramount, despite the fact that his tenure has been broadly viewed as disastrous at best. Zaslav oversaw years of dysfunction during the last wave of pointless Warner Brothers mergers, which included [...]

In the year 2,000 (cue the Conan O'Brien music), America had so successfully defeated measles as a disease that we were awarded elimination status for the disease. Then Trump was elected to a second term, for reasons I still can't fully explain, after which RFK Jr. somehow was confirmed as the Secretary of HHS. Almost [...]

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 special episode, Mike and Ben reflect on 100 [...]

Back when Netflix was proposing a takeover of Warner Brothers, you might recall that director James Cameron had no shortage of critical things to say. Cameron went so far as to write a heavily publicized letter to Senator Mike Lee, lamenting the Netflix Warner Brothers merger (andonlythe Netflix merger) as disastrous to the motion [...]

Back in 2011 and 2012, one of the central technical objections that helped kill SOPA and PIPA was about DNS blocking. Engineers, internet architects, and cybersecurity experts all lined up to explain, in painstaking detail, why blocking at the DNS layer was a terrible idea. It would break the fundamental architecture of how the internet [...]

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 [...]

The government needs more funding than ever, which is kind of hilarious when you realize the Tea Party of the Obama era was the predecessor of this Big Government version of the GOP. The DHS can't even get itself a budget at the moment. Sure, it will get some money thrown to it sooner or [...]

There's some endless, curious tensions within the corrupt Trump administration when it comes to their effort to completely destroy the government's ability to hold corporations accountable for dodgy, nefarious, or even illegal behavior. Their own, lazy, circular logic and bad faith legal interpretations are creating vast new legal minefields we'll be untangling for decades. The [...]

Iran's internet has beenintermittently disruptedfor months. After years of bombardment, Gaza's telecommunications infrastructureremains fragile. In India,recurring shutdownsand throttling have become a routine response to protests and unrest, cutting millions off from news, work, and basic services. Acrossdozens of other countries, governments increasingly treat connectivity itself as something that can be weaponized-cut, slowed, or selectively restored [...]

Back in 2023, Arkansas passed a social media age verification law so poorly drafted that the bill's own sponsor couldn't accurately describe who it covered. The law appeared to exempt TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube while the sponsor publicly claimed those were the exact platforms being targeted. When the state's own expert witness testified that Snapchat [...]

I originally began this headline with the word ironically." But it would only be ironic if it wasn't by design. Irony suggests something slightly out of the control of the principal figures resulted in something somewhat unexpected. That isn't the case here. This was by design. The New York Times has obtained the behind-the-scenes memos [...]

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Disclaimer: This post talks about Bluesky and an offering from Bluesky and I am on the Bluesky board. Take everything I say with whatever size grains of salt you feel is appropriate. I've written a few times now about how I think that AI tools, used carefully and thoughtfully, represent our best chance at taking [...]

This Saturday is the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (WHCA). And there's been ample criticism of journalists that plan to have giggles and cocktails with overt fascists, given this helps normalize of one of the most racist, censorial, and corrupt administrations in U.S. history. This year, because an actual comedian might get somewhere close to [...]

With the streaming world turning into a wild, chaotic, fractured mess, there is no better example of how terrible this can all be than with live sports. We've already seen all kinds of issues among streaming services when it comes to sports. Buffering live games piss people off. Exclusivity deals worked out among several services [...]

There are defamation lawsuits designed to win, and then there are defamation lawsuits designed to generate headlines for your fans on social media, punish journalists, and maybe - if you're lucky - force a settlement or intimidate future reporting. FBI Director Kash Patel's brand new defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic is very obviously the second [...]

For nearly twenty years, I've used Google Docs for most of my writing: class notes, personal notes, a novel in progress, research, activism, and my day job. It's become an essential piece of infrastructure for me, an archive of my life and evolving interests. In order to sign up for Google Drive, I presumably had [...]

Last fall, an Alabama police officer decided he wasn't going to allow a 62-year-old woman to exercise her First Amendment rights - not if she was going to do so from inside an inflatable penis costume. Yes, these are sentences we actually have to write here at Techdirt - things that seem so implausible you'd [...]

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A couple weeks back, Jonathan Haidt published another entry in his ongoing campaign to convince the world that social media is inherently ruining kids' lives. This one was a victory lap titled Seven Lines of Evidence Against Social Media," treating recent developments - including the social media addiction verdicts against Meta that most people are [...]

Talk about pathetic. CBS has announced that the now-Larry Ellison owned network will be hosting a lavish dinner this week praising Donald Trump and his (nonexistent) dedication to the First Amendment. The dinner will be hosted at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, which the State Department claimed in December 2025was being renamed [...]

It's barely been a few days back since we discussed just how open to mistakes and abuse YouTube's copyright takedown system is, when NVIDIA's demo video for its controversial DLSS 5 tech got briefly pulled down because an Italian news channel did a piece featuring the footage which it copyrighted. The copyright bots took it [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica and Frontline.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. The National Guard soldiers in desert camo piled out of unmarked vans in East Los Angeles last June, cordoning off East Sixth Street, a residential street lined with single family houses, and blocking a nearby road leading to an elementary school. A squad of [...]

Earlier this month, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies!!!" - notably including the stock ticker, because why not just make the market manipulation explicit. The stock popped after that and has continued to rise in the past [...]