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This Week In Techdirt History: July 6th – 12th

15 hours 20 minutes ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we looked at the encryption dilemma created by the EARN IT Act, while a federal case showed that cops already had plenty of options when dealing with device encryption. There was pushback against the Trump administration’s attempt to corrupt the Open Technology Fund, the FCC’s assault on a […]
Leigh Beadon

Oregon Appeals Court Says Bullet Cartridge Matching Is Just More Junk Science

1 day 7 hours ago
This isn’t the first state court to reach this conclusion, but so few courts bother to examine the science-y sounding stuff cops trot out as “evidence” that this decision is worth noting. There’s no shortage of junk science that has been (and continues to be) treated as actual science during testimony, ranging from the DNA […]
Tim Cushing

Prepare For A New Dodgy Trump-Era Tax On Netflix And Other Streaming Services

1 day 11 hours ago
Two weeks ago the Supreme Court rejected an effort by a dodgy right wing activists to destroy an $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural communities to the internet. The plaintiff in the case, a fake right wing “consumer group,” had tried to argue that the bipartisan subsidy (the Universal Service Fund, or […]
Karl Bode

The Magical Thinking That’s Killing Our Humanity

1 day 13 hours ago
There is an epidemic of magical thinking. An unwillingness to confront reality. Because reality is scary. This affliction cuts across all ideological lines, manifesting in different forms but serving the same function: allowing us to avoid the difficult truths about what it will actually take to preserve human dignity, meaning, and freedom in the face […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022

1 day 16 hours ago
Visual Studio Professional 2022 is a fully featured development environment that developers around the world know and love. The 64-bit IDE makes it easier to work with even bigger projects and more complex workloads. Enhance your productivity, write high-quality code, and re-imagine collaboration with an advanced suite of tools and built-in integrations to tackle the […]
Daily Deal

Trump Administration Sends In The Marines… To Do Paperwork?

1 day 17 hours ago
Martial law still appears to be the plan. The rollout has been limited, but the wholly unnecessary deployment of military troops to California sent a message our performative president wanted to get across. Trump sent an even more explicit one days later, following up on DHS boss Kristi Noem’s quasi-declaration of war on this “democrat” […]
Tim Cushing

Comcast Forced To Retreat From Broadband Data Caps (Sort Of) Due To Competition From 5G Wireless And Community Fiber

1 day 21 hours ago
Techdirt has always made it very clear that broadband usage caps on fixed-line broadband are bullshit. The costly and confusing restrictions serve no legitimate technical function. They don’t help your ISP “manage congestion.” They exist simply as a way for giant companies like Comcast to nickel-and-dime captive customers in uncompetitive broadband markets. Market failure created […]
Karl Bode

CA Sheriff Who Ran As A Reformer Now Facing Removal From Office

2 days 7 hours ago
Sheriff Christina Corpus is on the cusp of being an ex-sheriff and the first sheriff removed from office in San Mateo County via a county board vote. But her term as sheriff started a lot more promisingly. Running as a reformer, Corpus won the primary and the job, defeating Carlos Bolanos, who had definitely done […]
Tim Cushing

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Move Fast And Mistake Things

2 days 11 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 round-up of the latest news in online […]
Mike Masnick

Idaho AG Office Forces Schools To Take Down ‘Everyone Is Welcome’ Signs For Being ‘Political’

2 days 15 hours ago
It’s been interesting to watch the current administration and its GOP backers contort themselves into logical pretzels to explain to Americans why their policies, which are clearly either steeped or tinged with racist elements, are not in fact racist. Immigration policies and practices that are conducted without such annoyances as due process are waved off […]
Dark Helmet

Missouri AG: Any AI That Doesn’t Praise Donald Trump Might Be “Consumer Fraud” (No, Really)

2 days 16 hours ago
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey just sent threatening letters to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, claiming their AI chatbots violated Missouri’s consumer protection laws. The crime? When asked to rank presidents on antisemitism, some of the AIs had the temerity to suggest Donald Trump might not be great on that front. Yes, you read that […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Modern Tech Skills Bundle

2 days 16 hours ago
Bring your tech skills up to 21st-century snuff with the Modern Tech Skills Bundle. This 2,000+ class series combines subject areas that every aspiring tech pro needs to know to get ahead and stay ahead. Broken out into cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, and information technology and cloud computing, you’ll be able to zero in […]
Daily Deal

U.S. Consumer Protection Is Dead: Lobbyists And Lawyers Kill New FTC Rule That Would Have Made It Easier To Cancel Subscriptions

2 days 21 hours ago
Have I mentioned lately that the U.S. no longer has functional federal consumer protection and corporate oversight thanks to Donald Trump? And how that should probably be more of a story across journalism? Last fall you might recall that the FTC created a popular new rule that barred corporations from making it annoying or difficult […]
Karl Bode

Ideas Without Love

3 days 13 hours ago
I recently sat through this hour-long interview between New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat and Peter Thiel. It was honestly a somewhat hypnotic experience for me. And on reflection, deeply disturbing. Not because Thiel said anything overtly monstrous—quite the opposite. He was thoughtful, articulate, intellectually sophisticated. He demonstrated genuine insight into technological stagnation, political decay, and civilizational risk. […]
Mike Masnick