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MAGA Suddenly Quiet About Overseas Influence Now That Larry Ellison’s Warner Bros Bid Has Saudi, Chinese Backing

2 days 12 hours ago
You might recall that during the great mass TikTok hyperventilation of 2021-2025, there was no limit of face fanning by Republicans like Brendan Carr about overseas involvement in social media. Carr was so particular on this subject, he scuttled an FCC program aimed at shoring up “smart” home device security standards because one of the […]
Karl Bode

ICE Detainment Center Guards Allegedly Set Up Suicide Death Pools

3 days 6 hours ago
Say what you will about cops — even the federal ones — but they have nothing on the people charged with guarding people who have been detained or imprisoned. The cruelty of cops is slightly tempered by the fact that anyone with a cell phone, dash cam, or doorbell surveillance device might catch them in […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle

3 days 6 hours ago
The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle gives you unlimited access to expertly crafted online courses, interactive labs and study tools. Whether you’re aiming for industry-recognized certifications or expanding your tech expertise, this bundle will help you get there with courses on CompTIA, AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, and more. It’s on sale for […]
Daily Deal

Rethinking And Refreshing Techdirt’s Weekend Posts: We Want Your Feedback

4 days 5 hours ago
For many years now we’ve had two regular posts that come out on the weekends: our This Week In Techdirt History posts on Saturdays, and our Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week posts on Sundays. Sometimes we switch it up a little bit, replacing the history post with a special promotion or (as will be […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: March 1st – 7th

5 days 5 hours ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2021, while AT&T was apparently committed to being comically hypocritical about Section 230, Utah was prematurely trying to dance on 230’s grave with a new and extremely horrible “free speech” bill that was a disaster in the making, and we had Ron Wyden and Chris Cox on the Techdirt […]
Leigh Beadon

We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI

6 days 2 hours ago
About a year and a half ago, I wrote about my kid’s experience with an AI checker tool that was pre-installed on a school-issued Chromebook. The assignment had been to write an essay about Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron—a story about a dystopian society that enforces “equality” by handicapping anyone who excels—and the AI detection tool […]
Mike Masnick

Anthropic’s Statement To The ‘Department Of War’ Reads Like A Hostage Note Written In Business Casual

6 days 6 hours ago
We’ve been covering the ongoing saga of the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy Anthropic for the sin of having modest ethical guidelines around its AI technology. The short version: Anthropic said it didn’t want its AI making autonomous kill decisions without human oversight. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded by declaring the company a supply chain […]
Mike Masnick

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

6 days 7 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

Oregon Federal Judge Says ICE’s Warrantless Arrests Are Illegal

6 days 8 hours ago
ICE has been telling itself all it needs to do is write its own paperwork and it can do whatever it wants. Memos — passed around secretively and publicly acknowledged by no one but whistleblowers — told ICE agents they don’t need judicial warrants to arrest people or enter people’s homes. All they need — […]
Tim Cushing

Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts

6 days 21 hours ago
We should all know by now that this iteration of the Trump administration absolutely loves using pop culture imagery, including that of video games, to help message its horrible policies. Want to gloat about ICE terrorizing American cities and generally pissing everyone off when they’re not too busy perforating innocents? Let’s use images from Pokémon […]
Timothy Geigner

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The (Content Moderation) Eras Tour

1 week 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 a special episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Ben and Mike discuss […]
Mike Masnick