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Trump Gets $10 Billion Kickback To The Treasury For Offloading TikTok To His Billionaire Buddies

2 days 23 hours ago
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. […]
Karl Bode

ICE Officers Admit To Arrest Quotas During Court Testimony

3 days 1 hour ago
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. […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Mag 3 Ultra Qi2 25W 3-in-1 Foldable Charger

3 days 1 hour ago
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 […]
Daily Deal

Turns Out The DOGE Bros Who Killed Humanities Grants Are Kinda Sensitive About It

3 days 2 hours ago
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 […]
Mike Masnick

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

3 days 23 hours ago
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 […]
Leigh Beadon

At The WBC: Mark DeRosa Screwed Up & Then MLB Streisanded The Story

5 days 16 hours ago
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 […]
Timothy Geigner

The IRS’s Verification System for Sharing Taxpayer Data With ICE Would Have Accepted ‘Don’t Care 12345’ as a Valid Address

5 days 20 hours ago
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 […]
Mike Masnick

Roblox Rolls Out AI-Powered Real-Time Rephrasing Of Profanity Within Chat

5 days 22 hours ago
The power of the latest generation of AI systems is such that previously impractical applications are not just possible, but scalable. For example, moving beyond basic early AI text translation tools, it is now possible to use live translation to communicate in another language in real time. For many people that will be a real […]
Glyn Moody

Trump Rolls Out White Carpet For White Migrants

6 days ago
Roughly a year ago — as Trump was trying to turn anti-genocide protests into deportable antisemitism — his administration made it clear it was only willing to support white people with antisemitic views. The administration threw some anti-Israel filters into the mix for DHS vetting of incoming migrants, blending them with the anti-Trump filters that […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Luminar Mobile for iOS And Android

6 days ago
Luminar Mobile is your all-in-one creative companion designed for iOS, Android OS, and Chrome OS. Powered by an intuitive, touch-responsive interface, it lets you enhance photos effortlessly—anytime, anywhere. Whether you’re adjusting lighting, perfecting portraits, or adding artistic flair, Luminar Mobile delivers pro-level results in the palm of your hand. It’s on sale for $20. Note: […]
Daily Deal

Ninth Circuit Guts California’s Kids Code Once Again

6 days 2 hours ago
It’s been a little while since we last wrote about California’s deeply problematic “Age Appropriate Design Code,” which tried to force internet companies into taking blatantly unconstitutional steps to pressure companies into magically preventing all “harms” to kids. The law has bounced between the district court and the Ninth Circuit multiple times — and yesterday, […]
Mike Masnick

MAHA Institute: Nix The Entire Childhood Vaccine Schedule

6 days 15 hours ago
If you agree with me that what RFK Jr. has done at HHS — particularly when it comes to altering vaccine schedules, approvals, research, and access — is bad well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Kennedy rode Trump’s coattails, building his own Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement on the back of the wider MAGA […]
Timothy Geigner

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Writing Some Wrongs

6 days 19 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

Weasel Words: OpenAI’s Pentagon Deal Won’t Stop AI‑Powered Surveillance

6 days 22 hours ago
OpenAI, the maker of ChaptGPT, is rightfully facing widespread criticism for its decisions to fill the gap the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) created when rival Anthropic refused to drop its restrictions against using its AI for surveillance and autonomous weapons systems. After protests from both users and employees who did not sign up to support government mass surveillance—early […]
Corynne McSherry and Matthew Guariglia

Don’t Ban Kids From Using Chatbots

6 days 23 hours ago
Laws prohibiting minors from accessing AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT would violate the First Amendment. But that’s not stopping lawmakers from trying. Senator Josh Hawley has introduced the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act of 2025 (GUARD Act), which would require AI companies to “prohibit” minors under “18 years of age” from “accessing or […]
Andy Jung