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This Week In Techdirt History: May 3rd – 9th

19 hours 38 minutes ago
Now that our detour for the game jam winner spotlights is complete, we’re rolling out a new version of these weekly history posts after collecting your feedback. We’re shifting the timeframes to drop Five Years Ago and instead cover Ten, Fifteen, and Twenty Years Ago, and simplifying things a bit by just presenting a list […]
Leigh Beadon

I Reached Out To The White House Counterterrorism Czar For Comment. He Lashed Out On X.

1 day 16 hours ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka is one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration, a gate crasher in the buttoned-up world of national security.  In a field where quiet professionalism is revered, Gorka is loud and mercurial. With a booming, British-accented voice, he describes U.S. […]
Hannah Allam

FBI Raids Office Of Dem Politician Instrumental In Redrawing Virginia Voter Maps… With Fox News In Tow

1 day 20 hours ago
Maybe this isn’t just another vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration. But we’re going to need a lot more evidence to the contrary to abandon this conjecture: The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s hometown office and her neighboring cannabis shop Wednesday, bringing into public view what two people familiar with the matter told […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle

1 day 20 hours ago
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. This hands-on Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle will help you prepare for the CompTIA Linux+ and the Novell Certified Linux Professional certification exams. It’s on sale […]
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Appeals Court Kills FCC Effort To Acknowledge Racism In Broadband Deployment

2 days 2 hours ago
In late 2023, I wrote a feature for The Verge exploring the FCC’s attempt to stop race and class discrimination in broadband deployment. For decades, big telecoms have not only refused to evenly upgrade broadband in low income and poor areas (despite billions in subsidies for this exact purpose), they’ve provably charged poor and minority neighborhoods significantly more money for worse […]
Karl Bode

GameStop CEO Appears To Be Auctioning Off Video Game History

2 days 11 hours ago
By now you likely have caught wind of GameStop, the video game and collectables retailer, announcing a bid to buy eBay. Perhaps you heard of this, as I did, because of GameStop’s CEO, Ryan Cohen, showing up to CNBC’s Squawk Box program where he pulled off one of the strangest interviews about business I’ve ever […]
Timothy Geigner

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Human Element In The Room

2 days 15 hours ago
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s 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 roundup of the latest news in online […]
Mike Masnick

Utah Wants Websites To See Through VPNs. That’s Not How VPNs Work.

2 days 18 hours ago
Utah has a long track record of short-sighted internet policymaking, but the latest example really does take things to a new level of stupid. As of yesterday, Utah’s “Online Age Verification Amendments” bill, Senate Bill 73, has taken effect. It is a piece of legislation that effectively tries to ban VPNs as a desperate attempt […]
Mike Masnick

To The Surprise Of No One, Cops Are Using ALPR Cameras To Stalk Their Exes

2 days 20 hours ago
The cops never change. Only the tech toys do. That’s the upshot of this report from the Institute for Justice, which has been tracking what cops have been tracking now that they have always-on access to massive networks of security cameras, including Flock Safety’s controversial offerings, which also include automatic license plate readers (ALPR). The […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Complete Raspberry Pi And Alexa A-Z Bundle

2 days 20 hours ago
Learn Raspberry Pi and start building Amazon Alexa projects with The Complete Raspberry Pi and Alexa A-Z Bundle. Catered for all levels, these project-based courses will get you up and running with the basics of Pi, before escalating to full projects. Before you know it, you’ll be building a gaming system to play old Nintendo, […]
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John Roberts Wants You To Stop Believing Your Own Eyes

2 days 22 hours ago
John Roberts has spent years whining about how totally unfair it is that people claim he and his colleagues rule based on partisan leanings. He did it in 2014. He did it in 2017. He did it in 2019. Hell, he did it a couple months ago too. So it’s little surprise that he’s out […]
Mike Masnick

FCC’s Gomez Calls For Review Of Paramount’s Dodgy Merger Financing

3 days 2 hours ago
Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic Commissioner (because Republicans refuse to seat the second one) is calling for a rigorous review of Paramount and the Ellison family’s planned $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. As Paramount recently revealed, 49.5 percent of the deal’s funding comes from Middle East and Chinese government-linked sources; just the sort […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows License + Windows 11 Pro Bundle

3 days 20 hours ago
Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it’s processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch – whatever your needs are. Office Pro comes with MS Word, […]
Daily Deal