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When I was in high school, part of the mandatory social studies curriculum included watching the miniseries Roots in class over the course of several days. I remember it fondly, though I did get myself into a bit of trouble in the process. Apparently shouting things like Hey, where is Geordi La Forge's visor?" and [...]

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Puerile, vindictive, and hateful is no way to run a government. That's how Trump is running his, however. And that means his DOJ cannot possibly hope to stay on the good side of judges, not when it's actively engaged in appeasing an autocratic megalomaniac and his enablers. The lawyers currently staffing the DOJ cannot be [...]

When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby kid David) hired trolling blogger Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of balanced, fact-based news," independent, principled journalism," and a unique entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision" that would completely modernize the network and reach the everyday Americans" she claimed were being [...]

Senator Bill Cassidy just lost his campaign for reelection to his Senate seat in Louisiana. With that, his career in federal government is likely over. It's no secret as to why this happened. In early 2021, Cassidy suffered from a spasm of patriotism and voted to convict Donald Trump during his impeachment trial after the [...]

As convenient as it is for cops to play along with hysterical claims made by politicians, sometimes a politician goes too far. That seems to be the case here. Scott Bottoms - currently a state rep in Colorado - tried to flex his self-proclaimed far right" bona fides by making a truly absurd claim about [...]

Today marks the deadline for online platforms to implement a process for notice-and-takedown of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) under the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), which became law one year ago. Starting today, platforms must conspicuously offer a notice-and-removal process for NCII, remove reported material within 48 hours of a valid removal request" from the [...]

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Section 702 surveillance powers are still limping along, mostly unimpeded, despite on-again/off-again objections by federal politicians. More active recently have been several GOP politicians. These representatives are newly opposed to clean reauthorization of Section 702 powers. This isn't because they've come to realize the threat to Americans' rights that warrantless access by the FBI (and [...]

We've talked a lot about how Americans have somehow accepted the fact that our voice networks are now saturated with scammers, fraudsters, and robocallers (no, that's not something that happens in well run, functionally regulated countries). I've also explained for years how the U.S. government solutions to the problems are usually ineffective because they're endlessly [...]

In the online world, we certainly have seen some companies make very poor decisions when it comes to dealing with negative reviews of their products or services. While it can be very frustrating to see this sort of online negativity pop up, the response to a negative review can be as telling as the review [...]

Judge Beryl Howell has now told ICE at least twice: it's not allowed to grade its own papers. Since Trump's return to office, the federal government has been engaged in a months-long purge of anyone who looks a bit foreign. ICE has increasingly relied on administrative warrants to do everything including enter homes to effect [...]

We discussed the rumor of this on Friday, but it's now real: Donald Trump has handed himself a $1.776 billion fund of taxpayer money - unappropriated by Congress - to dole out to friends in the MAGA movement who claim they were mistreated by the Biden administration, but with no judicial review over such claims. [...]

As someone who thinks a lot about AI and suicide, I was disappointed with John Oliver's recent episode of Last Week Tonight on AI Chatbots." The segment boiled down to this: chatbots exploit vulnerable people, drive them toward delusion and harm, and AI companies aren't meaningfully trying to fix them. If anything, as John Oliver [...]

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Behold this utter bullshit, uttered by the Trump administration's border czar" Tom Homan: White House border czar Tom Homan said Thursday he's sure" Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have detained U.S. citizens, but we don't deport them." Homan told reporters outside the White House that U.S. citizens have nothing to fear." We deport people [...]

One recurring theme during the Trump era is that because he fundamentally doesn't know how anything actually works, his beliefs and policies are broadly shaped by whatever terrible rich person was in his ear last. Even when it comes to stuff like streaming video. It's all transactional cronyism, and by and large the public interest [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Whoever with a response to one particular line in our post about John Roberts decimating faith in the Supreme Court's consistency: In second place, it's Stephen T. Stone with another comment on that post, this time in response to a comment asking if we [...]

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In all of our conversations about video game preservation, one common thread is the general apathy of developers and publishers when it comes to this sort of thing. It's actually a bit mind boggling to me that apathy is even a thing here. After all, this is the work done by these developers and, to [...]

It is widely accepted that drones have changed the conduct of modern war dramatically. The war in Ukraine, in particular, is driving the rapid evolution of drone technology. Evidence of how far things have come was provided recently by the following claim from Ukraine, reported here on The Next Web (TNW): In April, Ukrainian President [...]

The recent internet addiction" verdicts against Apple, Meta, and YouTube drew applause from those eager to see big tech take a hit. But look behind the headlines and the result is something else entirely. These cases won't help children. They will fuel a litigation plague that raises costs, chills innovation and hits smaller companies the [...]

Something that never was a problem for years suddenly became a thing after Trump's return to office. As his administration ramped up its cruelty towards non-white people, Democratic leaders suddenly became much more interested in seeing how ICE was handling this influx of detainees. Not that they were wrong to do so. The history of [...]

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The saga of Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion just got weirder. What started as a brazenly corrupt attempt to personally pocket $10 billion in taxpayer money has now morphed into something arguably worse: a $1.7 billion patronage slush fund - unappropriated by Congress - that Trump could dole out to loyal MAGA [...]

What's left of CBS News recently landed an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It's a bit of a doozy (transcript, video). There's a part where Netanyahu tries to blame foreign social media bot farms for the rise in people disgusted by his government's carpet bombing of children. There's a part where he pretends [...]

We've complained a great deal about RFK Jr.'s stint running HHS and its effects on the health of Americans in the short and long term because, well, there's a lot to complain about. His anti-vaxxer stances have begun infecting national vaccine policy, of course, and his stance of essentially ignoring an ongoing 17 month measles [...]

Following criticism, lawmakers have narrowed theGUARD Act, a bill aimed at restricting minors' access to certain AI systems. Theearlier version could have applied broadlyto nearly every AI-powered chatbot or search tool. The amended bill focuses more narrowly on so-called AI companions"-conversational systems designed to simulate emotional or interpersonal interactions with users. That change does address [...]

Earlier this week, OpenAI became the latest tech company to publicly endorse KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. The company, conveniently, tries to frame this as being about its support of child safety. It's not. It's about political horse trading, desperation for good publicity, and building a regulatory moat. KOSA would help create stronger online [...]

It might be time to do a wellness check on GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen. We had just discussed Cohen's announced bid to have GameStop buy eBay as part of an absolutely bizarre interview he did on CNBC's Squawk Box. In that interview, Cohen attempted to explain how GameStop would buy the much more highly valued [...]

The InfoSec4TC Projects Hub is a one-of-a-kind interactive platform where learning meets real-world practice. It enables learners to work on actual cybersecurity and compliance projects that simulate professional work environments and can help improve career readiness for roles like GRC Analyst, SOC Analyst, ISMS Consultant, or Cybersecurity Specialist. Each project is designed, reviewed, and evaluated [...]

As was covered here last week, ProPublica's Hannah Allam reached out to Trump's terrorism czar" Sebastian Gorka to ask him about the wreckage he's caused since being elevated to a position of power he clearly has no expertise to handle. Gorka's no expert in domestic security. While his resume may include occasional work for government [...]

A new Christian" mobile phone provider named Radiant Mobile is promising to offer a wireless service that censors all LGBTQ+ content. The MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), which runs on the T-Mobile network, says it's keen to deliver faith-focused mobile service," according tothe company's website. According to NIT Technology Review, the MVNO is working alongside [...]

Complaining about automagic enforcement of copyrights on the internet through copyright bots is so old hat at this point so as to be cliche. But there is a very good reason for that. Even in the narrower realm of PC gaming, we have seen examples of how copyright enforcement has ensnared totally innocent games, or [...]

Given how often we've seen AI-generated fake citations show up in legal filings and even legal decisions, you'd think the lesson would have sunk in by now: if you're going to use AI to help draft something, you have to actually check what it produces. Apparently that lesson has not reached every government ministry. Researcher [...]

Let's hope the word possibly" can be stricken from this headline in the near future. And while contempt charges don't mean much to an administration that is openly contemptuous of anything that hints at checks or balances, it would, at the very least, encourage other judges to stop treating the Trump DOJ like it's worthy [...]

John Roberts has a point: the Supreme Court-even this Supreme Court-sometimes gets things right. Maybe one could even fairly say it often gets things right. After all, just recently it produced good decisions in Case v. Montana, Cox v. Sony, and First Women's Choice Centers v. Davenport, and arguably even Chiles v. Salazar, along with [...]

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In a ruling that will clearly be remembered as one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, two years ago, the court gave Donald Trump a get out of jail free card, which he appears to be trying to take full advantage of with all the criming in his second term. But, [...]

Flimsy and corrupt authoritarian populism is dedicated to pretending that the oligarchs and autocrats really care about the people. One way Trumpism has done this is by pretending they actually care about reining in corporate power. That's included an elaborate, multi-year performance about how MAGA Republicans were going to curb abuses by big tech" and [...]

I'll let you all in on a little secret: I love pickles. Yes, let that statement spawn a million jokes in the comments; I don't care. Pickles are great and the fresher the better. I began gardening specifically so that I could grow cucumbers, garlic, onion, and dill, just so I could make my own [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing. Then the agents discovered something [...]

Support us on Patreon Recently, Mike joined Dave Hansen, Mark Graham and Kendra Albert on a panel for the Future Knowledge podcast, a joint production of the Internet Archive and the Authors Alliance. The discussion covers a wide variety of questions related to keeping the web (and especially the historical record of the web) alive [...]

Again, I feel like I'm going crazy here, but the obviously extremely partisan Supreme Court has struck again. I will repeat some of the basics, because it's hard to believe how blatant all of this is. In November, a (Trump-appointed) judge threw out Texas's new congressional maps, noting that the Texas state government had made [...]

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Let's make one thing clear before I start digging into the Washington Post firing up its teapot-based Tempest Generator: I do not support the assassination of Donald Trump. I am understandably impatient with the let nature take its course" progression we've observed so far, but I would not encourage anyone to expedite this process in [...]

ABC/Disney, like most major media companies, has spent much of its time during America's bout with authoritarianism being a feckless wimp. The company was quick to ditch its already fleeting embrace of civil rights to please our dim, racist president, and were just as quick to pay Trump a $15 million bribe to settle a [...]

It took longer than I thought it would, but the Trump administration's appeal of the court ruling and injunction that put a pause on RFK Jr.'s remaking of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and vaccine policy has come through. If you need a reminder on how we got here, here you go. In [...]