Why do bad cops stay employed for years while good cops find themselves out of their jobs? The answer will not surprise you. The answer is not so complicated as it is filled with infuriating details. Cops drive fast because they have tacit permission to do so. Almost any reason will do. A deputy who […]
For many years now, Tesla has referred to its various driver assistance tools as “full self-driving” and then acted shocked and surprised when people point out that it’s nowhere near what any normal human being would consider “full self-driving.” That, of course, hasn’t stopped Tesla boss Elon Musk from repeatedly promoting Full Self-Driving and insisting […]
All aboard the schadenfreude train! It’s always a pleasure to see denizens of the various Islands of Misfit Social Media Users get bent out of shape when their platform of choice (and by that I mean the options they had left after getting excommunicated by actually popular social media services) does regular-ass things that are […]
Over the last few years, there has been a lot of attention paid to the issue of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. It is a huge and serious problem. And has been for a while. If you talk to trust and safety experts who work in the field, the stories they tell are horrifying […]
Joseph Cuffari, addressed as the “Honorable” in this letter [PDF] from the House Committee seeking information on the January 6, 2021 raid of the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn election results, has been anything but honorable since being appointed to his position by former president Donald Trump. The DHS, which oversees the US […]
There are an endless number of programming languages out there. To keep on top of the game and to broaden your skill set, picking up a few of these new languages never hurts. Google Go (golang) is the programming language created by one of the largest technology names in the world, so having Go in […]
Earlier this year, I bought a Framework laptop. If you haven’t heard of the Framework, it’s a very new laptop company, but one that really believes in not just respecting, but encouraging tinkering and the right to repair. Cory Doctorow had written a glowing piece about the Framework that first got my attention, talking about […]
I’ve spent many years criticizing government officials and politicians of both parties for threatening retaliation against individuals and companies for their speech. But there are some pretty clear lines of what counts as actual 1st Amendment violations in retaliating over speech, and what is just government folks mouthing off and expressing their own opinion. To […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is drkkgt with a comment about the Texas school district that banned every book that had been flagged for review: Personally, I think these libraries should then be required to post a prominently displayed list of the books that were removed, author, ISBN, Publisher, Publishing […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the FCC unveiled its new broadband “advisory panel” that was stocked with telecom consultants, allies, and cronies, and got to work weakening the definition of quality broadband, while a former Commissioner was trying to claim that net neutrality aided the rise of white supremacy. A Florida city was […]
There’s no better way to admit you’re a pariah than skipping out on a celebration of your specific talents. Roman Polanski has passed on attending awards ceremonies out of fear of being extradited to face criminal charges related to the drugging and raping of a 13-year-old girl. Polanski remains a (cautiously) celebrated film director and […]
Following through on a request by the Biden administration to defend right to repair, the FTC recently demanded that Harley Davidson and Westinghouse stop voiding customer warranties over repairs. An FTC announcement noted how both companies told consumers that using cheaper, third-party parts or repair shops to repair equipment violated warranty in a bid to […]
Let’s be clear about this upfront: MUSO is a European copyright enforcement group with all the negative trappings that come along with that industry. That being said, MUSO has also distinguished itself from other piracy tracking groups by making some forward-thinking statements that don’t track with the copyright industries, such as coming out against the […]
There are a bunch of moving parts involved in this case that I really wasn’t planning on covering — but something quite amusing happened and I can’t resist. The basics are fairly straightforward: there’s an outfit named “Business Casual” that makes videos, apparently sometimes discussing historical events and whatnot. One part of the videos is […]
This post was inspired by a Benedict Evans’ tweet. One of the many phrases that has become popular to an annoying degree over the last few years is the concept of “dark patterns.” These are, we’re told, sneaky, ethically dubious ways, in which companies — usually “big tech” — trick users into doing what the […]
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There is no doubt civil asset forfeiture perverts law enforcement’s incentives. When a government agency can directly profit from seizing people’s property, it will do this as often as it can. And when the justice system is skewed against people seeking to have their property returned, it greases the wheels for abuse. In forfeiture cases, […]
Ron DeSantis likes to pretend that he’s in favor of free speech. He talks about free speech quite frequently. But the fact is that he’s a garden variety authoritarian censor in a cheap suit. He keeps passing culture war pro-censorship bills that try to stifle the free speech rights of his critics — quintessential anti-1st […]
We haven’t found ourselves talking about Mariah Carey much at Techdirt in the past, but the few times we have, have been for positive reasons. This time, not so much. If you’re not a fan of Mariah Carey, like me, you are probably still familiar with her hit holiday single, All I Want For Christmas […]
As you may recall, back during the Trump administration, after a bunch of kids on TikTok trolled Trump into believing one of his campaign rallies would be massively attended (which it was not), Trump decided to take out his anger on TikTok by issuing an almost certainly unconstitutional executive order demanding that TikTok’s owner, the […]
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