There’s a famous Mitchell & Webb sketch where two SS officers, mid-conversation on the Eastern Front, suddenly notice something troubling about their uniforms. “Hans,” one asks, peering at his cap, “are we the baddies?” The skulls had been there the whole time. The skulls are kind of a giveaway. But it took a while for […]
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Not that ICE was ever that great about taking care of all the people it detains. It certainly wasn’t during Trump’s first term. The DHS Inspector General released a report that said there were numerous problems in a single detention facility. Not only that but what was contained in the report was incomplete because the […]
More than 4,000 Hollywood insiders recently signed a letter blasting Paramount’s planned $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers, noting that the massive consolidation will be very harmful to labor, consumers, and creatives. As we saw with the AT&T Warner deal, history generally supports this; these debt-riddled deals are broadly, uniformly harmful. Companies that take on […]
You’re all sick of me saying we need to have more nuance in the discussion about AI use in the gaming industry. I get it. I’m also not going to stop. And I hope you will have noticed that I have called for nuance in both directions. While I’m more optimistic than many in our […]
As numerous posts on this blog have emphasised, the underlying idea of open access (OA) – allowing anyone to read and share published academic research for free – is great in principle, but in practice has failed in important ways. That’s because traditional academic publishers have subverted the open access model to such an extent that the […]
Raids and arrests around the nation by federal immigration officers all feature the same thing: a bunch of people in masks shoving people into unmarked vehicles. What’s happening under Trump during his second term doesn’t feel like America. And it certainly doesn’t look like America. Instead, it looks like the actions of paramilitary jump-out squads, […]
James Comey is not exactly someone we’ve ever been a fan of on Techdirt. He was a terrible FBI director in so many ways. We’ve spent years criticizing the man — for his crusade against encryption, his supporting the FBI’s ridiculously aggressive impersonation of reporters, his embrace of the FBI’s program to coerce and entrap […]
Across 30 hours of instructor-led content, you’ll learn how to diagnose different kinds of cybersecurity attacks and how to defeat them in the Complete Ethical Hacking Course. You’ll practice all the skills and techniques in real-time using an ethical hacking lab so you can put your learning to the test. You’ll experience real-time hacking examples […]
The administration’s anti-migrant tactics are now months into an indefinite period of continuous escalation. That protest efforts have escalated alongside it apparently means nothing to the officials spearheading this brazen attack on non-white people. It wasn’t until federal officers began killing people in front of witnesses that the administration decided to dial things back a […]
Anonymous insiders tell the access journalists at Semafor that Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is cooking up a “review” of ABC broadcast licenses after Jimmy Kimmel once again made the President sad. The FCC clearly leaked word of the inquiry to Semafor in the hopes that Semafor would present it as a serious, big boy […]
We discussed RFK Jr.’s recent appearance before Congress, where he bravely declared that the current measles outbreak in America has absolutely nothing to do with him, despite that definitely not being true. But, unsurprisingly, that wasn’t the only craziness that Kennedy put on display in the hearing. The Secretary of HHS doesn’t believe in the […]
There’s still a meaningful effort afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. All fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, though only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws. Alaska […]
Apparently we’ve reached the stage of the second Trump presidency when we’re doing reruns of the old hits. As you’ll recall, Donald Trump has been desperate to get late-night TV host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel fired for quite some time. While Trump has long complained about any late night comedian making fun of him, he […]
There have been plenty of absolutely batshit crazy legal filings from Trump and his crew over the last few years, but a filing last night takes the crazy to new levels. This is in the case filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against the National Park Service over the ballroom Donald Trump is […]
Simplify your daily charging experience and replace most of the chargers and cables on your desktop, with this one mini station that does it all. The Magstand Mini Magnetic Charge Station is a mini charging station that features 3 wireless charging spots, one USB-A port, and can also double as a bedside lamp with 2 […]
Under Trump, DHS, ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol have violated every single right affected by their daily work. When you’re trying to perform 3,000 arrests per day, you can be slowed down by things like the Constitution. And these agencies certainly haven’t been slowed. In fact, they’ve been encouraged to continue violating rights by being […]
Late last month we noted how the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr announced a new “ban” on all routers made overseas (which means pretty much all of them). At the time, we also noted how this was less of a ban and more of a shakedown, with router manufacturers required to beg the Trump FCC for conditional […]
Progress may be slow, but it’s still progress. While I’ve been talking about the importance of video game preservation as a function of our own overall cultural preservation, very few people out there are actually trying to do something about it all. One of those doers has been Ross Scott and others involved in the […]
As its name suggests, generative AI is designed to generate material in response to prompts by drawing on its probabilistic database built up through analyzing huge quantities of training input. But it can draw on those patterns to analyze other files, and that’s also a widely used application. Writing in The Argument, Kelsey Piper encountered […]
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