It’s been a long and winding road to mostly get us right back to where we started in the battle between pop star Katy Perry and Aussie clothing designer Katie Perry. If you’re not familiar with this saga, here is a brief summary. Note that I will be mostly using only Katy and Katie when […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The Trump administration is loosening restrictions on the sharing of law enforcement information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, officials said, overriding controls that have been in place for decades to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. Government officials said the changes could give the […]
Support us on Patreon » There’s a notion that pops up in the comments here on Techdirt that Mike and our writer Karl Bode are deeply opposed in their opinions on AI and engaged in an epic ongoing debate. Alas, the truth is a little less spectacular: while they might have some differences of opinion here […]
The SAFE act, introduced by Senators Mike Lee and Dick Durbin, is the first of many likely proposals we will see to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008—and while imperfect, it does propose a litany of real and much-needed reforms of Big Brother’s favorite surveillance authority. The irresponsible 2024 […]
The DOJ is filled with grossly incompetent prosecutors these days. It’s a bunch of subservients acting in obeisance to the zenith of gross incompetence: the current President of the United States. When not being sidelined by judges for not being legally appointed, the handpicked losers of Trump’s DOJ Revenge Squad are being shut out by […]
The Academy of Game Art Bundle teaches you the basics of how to create video game art. You’ll learn how to use Inkscape to create logos, 2D backgrounds, pre-defined modules, UI designs, and characters. A course on using DragonBones will teach you how to animate your characters as well. The bundle is on sale for […]
Look, I get it. Government waste is real. Bureaucratic bloat is real. The desire to have a federal government that spends taxpayer money wisely and operates without unnecessary friction? That’s a pretty standard and quite reasonable desire in American politics. So when Elon Musk showed up promising he could cut $2 trillion in federal spending […]
Brendan Carr is once again doing Brendan Carr stuff. Carr has threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of broadcasters that tell the truth about Trump’s disastrous war in Iran. In a post over at Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website, Carr insists that news outlets that are “running hoaxes and news distortions” (read: telling the […]
Normally, a post about the signing of an NFL free agent wouldn’t make it anywhere near these here Techdirt pages. Today, that is not the case. The site For The Win posted a mildly interesting report on the Tennessee Titans signing wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson to a 4 year, $78 million contract. But wait, you’re […]
It has long been clear: Trump needs to be removed from office before he can inflict even more damage than he already has. But he doesn’t just need to be stopped; for America to have a future he also needs to be repudiated. Impeachment speaks to each need, to both make clear his behavior is […]
We’ve been covering the growing parade of lawyers submitting AI-hallucinated case citations to courts for a while now. It keeps happening, and courts keep having to deal with it. But the pattern is usually the same: a careless attorney uses ChatGPT to draft a brief, the fake citations get spotted by the opposing side or […]
We’ve discussed at length how Trump’s “fix” for TikTok’s problems basically involved forcing the sale of the platform to his greedy billionaire buddies (with the help of pathetic Democrats). The deal fixed none of the real issues Trumpland pretended to be concerned about (national security, privacy, propaganda), and China still maintains a significant ownership stake. […]
It’s not that arrest and ticket quotas don’t exist. They do. They always have. They always will. It’s that they’re illegal. Courts have repeatedly criticized quotas because they create incentives so perverse they’d make /b/ board denizens uncomfortable. Since they’re presumptively illegal, most law enforcement agencies will use any word but “quota” to describe these. […]
Power all your Apple essentials-without the clutter. The Mag 3 Ultra Qi2 25W 3-in-1 Foldable Charger delivers fast charging for your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods all at once. The new Qi2 25W makes charging 70% faster, reaching from 0 to 50% in just 30 minutes! Magnetic charging also lets you power up your Apple […]
Much of last week I had been working on a different article than the one this became. The American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the American Council of Learned Societies — all plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Humanities over DOGE’s mass grant cancellations — had uploaded the full […]
We’ve noted how Microsoft is a little sensitive about AI slop at the moment. Back in January, CEO Satya Nadella wrote a well-circulated blog post lamenting critics of “AI slop” and demanding the public simply move past such conversations. It was relatively innocuous, but wasn’t received well for some valid reasons. One problem is that […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Nimrod with a comment about the lack of checks and balances for RFK Jr.: Observation If a member of organized crime were to manage to get themself elected President, they would probably try to delegitimize the legal system, law enforcement and government authority in […]
Before we get started: last week, I asked for your feedback on the weekend posts and some possible changes we’re considering going forward. The dominant theme of the responses was that lots of people like the Comment posts just the way they are, but can take or leave these History posts. We’re still mulling over […]
The World Baseball Classic is currently going on and I absolutely adore it. Essentially a World Cup for baseball, 20 nations are playing against one another in a banger of a tune-up for the Major League Baseball season. It’s a flamboyant delight, with cultural celebrations such as the Italian team doing a shot of espresso […]
We’re a couple weeks late to this one, but it deserves more attention than it received. As the Washington Post first reported, a federal judge has found that the IRS violated federal law 42,695 times when it handed over confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE last summer. But the raw number, staggering as it is, undersells […]
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