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It’s time for yet another reminder that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is an incapable leader at odds with the scientists who actually know what they’re talking about. At the CDC specifically, we recently discussed the government’s decision to do away with the team that was helping to identify, track, and remediate elevated levels of lead […]

While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at giant companies trying to monopolize repair in creative and obnoxious ways. Washington State just became […]

Here we go again with the party of the “rule of law.” The rule of law doesn’t apply to the Trump Administration. It only applies to the victims of its vindictive policies. But the least it could do is get some basic facts straight before talking out of its ass about whatever new fascist scheme […]

If asked, do you think corporate America would prefer to hire (1) lawyers who fight, or (2) lawyers who immediately surrender, I think you’d know the answer. And now we have some fairly unambiguous empirical data to support what the answer is. Oracle’s Larry Ellison loves Trump. Morgan Stanley contributed one of their top execs […]

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Never give up. That’s the unofficial motto of the Republican party pretty much everywhere in the nation. No matter how many rights you violate, court decisions you lose, and public criticism you receive, always remember, you’re in the for the long haul. It is your (allegedly) God-given right to take away other people’s rights and […]

We’ve noted for years how U.S. regional telecom monopolies have effectively crushed competition in many U.S. markets and utterly defanged our regulators. This one-two punch of muted competition and no oversight routinely results in expensive, slow, spotty broadband access. Frustrated by this, communities all over the U.S. have responded to this market and regulatory failure […]

I’ll start this off by acknowledging that, sure, there are times when it is perfectly reasonable to say, or even shout, “We’re all going to die!” Say you’re on a plane that has just lost all engine power and is hurtling towards the ground, for instance. Or perhaps someone has asked you the question, “Name […]

This story was originally published by ProPublica & the Chicago Tribune. Republished under ProPublica’s CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Illinois legislators on Wednesday passed a law to explicitly prevent police from ticketing and fining students for minor misbehavior at school, ending a practice that harmed students across the state. The new law would apply to all public schools, including charters. It […]

Support us on Patreon » We’ve got a cross-post episode for you this week, courtesy of the Tech Policy Podcast by TechFreedom, hosted by Corbin Barthold. Both TechFreedom and The Copia Institute submitted comments on the FTC’s inquiry into social media censorship, Corbin invited Mike and TechFreedom’s Santana Boulton for a discussion all about what’s going […]

This is part two of my series on using AI tools to fight back against tech company control. Part one explained why we can get beyond just begging billionaires to fix our tools. This part shows exactly how I built my own tool — with zero coding skills and almost no money. A few weeks […]

This is part one of a two-part series on using AI tools as one piece to fight back against tech company control of our lives. Part two shares the details of how I built my own task management tool in a few days for next to no money and without any coding skills. But first, […]

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design are two very different fields that work toward the same goal: create a functional product that’s a breeze for users to use and interact with. The iOS UX & UI Design Course breaks down the differences between both and helps you apply this knowledge to your app-building […]

Here are your options as a foreigner, whether you live in the US already or are just seeking a chance to enter the country: support Israel’s actions against Palestine or GTFO. The Trump Administration continues to pretend supporting Palestine is the same thing as being racist against Israel. And it’s using this false dichotomy to […]

Let’s be clear: CBS/Paramount, like many corporate U.S. media outlets, initially responded to the threat of authoritarian rule by kissing Republican ass in a bid to curry favor. CBS management has long made it clear that access and ad engagement are significantly more important than the truth. But the company’s looming acquisition by Skydance has […]

With all the conversations we’ve had in the past few months about the decline of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the leadership, or lack thereof, of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump, you might have been left with the impression that everything at HHS is broken beyond repair. But that’s not entirely […]

A federal appeals court just delivered yet another reality check to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s transparently retaliatory investigation into Media Matters — and the timing couldn’t be better, given that the FTC just opened its own bullshit investigation into the same organization for the same supposed “crime”: reporting factual information that made Elon Musk […]

Reports that prominent American national security officials used a freely available encrypted messaging app, coupled with the rise of authoritarian policies around the world, have led to a surge in interest in encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp. These apps prevent anyone, including the government and the app companies themselves, from reading messages they intercept. The spotlight on encrypted […]

Here’s yet another worrying development in the world of privately-owned security cameras. Flock Safety has made aggressive in-roads in both the private and public sector, something aided greatly by the company’s ability to blend the two. Much like Ring before it, Flock is pitching cheap cameras with local law enforcement buy-in, nudging residents towards leaving […]

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