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In what might be the most perfectly on-brand Elon Musk move yet, at the end of March on a Friday evening, Elon Musk suddenly declared that xAI, his AI company that was always connected at the hip with X (which we’d been calling ExTwitter to avoid confusion), was officially “acquiring” X at a valuation of […]

It’s no secret that Photoshop can be a bit dense when you’re first getting your feet wet with it. That’s why it pays to have a expert instructors show you the ropes. Led by a Photoshop pro, the Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle will help you master Photoshop CC and become an expert—no prior experience […]

Less than a week ago, the Trump Administration and its assorted haters undermined one of their own lies. Among the many smears leveled against immigrants, the one that claims they’re lazy freeloaders who take more than they give back to the US is one of the stupidest. Immigrants pay taxes, even if they’re not here […]

When most people make a serious mistake that harms someone else, they try to fix it. That’s basic human decency. But when the Trump administration admits to “mistakenly” trafficking someone with protected status to an El Salvador slave labor camp, their response is to mock the judge who ordered them to try to fix it. […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about Trump’s unhinged trade war that includes uninhabited islands: Reminder: This policy was spearheaded and implemented by a man who thinks nobody says the word “groceries” these days because “it’s an old-fashioned word” and he somehow brought it […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the COVID news continued. Some hospital administrators were trying to silence doctors and nurses from commenting on pandemic shortages, voluntary virus tracking apps were trying to get a grip on the spread, and the UK’s NHS was enlisting Palantir to analyze data. We wrote about the tone deafness […]

Israel-located NSO Group may no longer be a malware option for the US and other discerning governments around the world, thanks to blacklists, lawsuits, and its disturbing willingness to sell to some of the most abhorrent governments of earth. But the market for powerful phone exploits isn’t dying up. Governments still want powerful surveillance tech, […]

If you’re the President of the United States and you don’t like a law, you can apparently just… decide not to enforce it for a while? I mean, it’s not supposed to work that way, but for the past 74 days, that’s exactly what’s happened with the TikTok ban. Not just ignoring it quietly — […]

Healthcare.gov, the government health insurance marketplace website, launched in October 2013 only to buckle under the weight of just 2,000 simultaneous users. As millions of Americans stared at error messages and frozen screens, a political crisis unfolded, but so did a new era of government technology. The result was 18F, an in-house digital services consulting agency that […]

The measles outbreak that began in Texas continues at a brisk pace. RFK Jr. and his Department of Health and Human Services, as we’ve discussed, continues to make the outbreak worse through a combination of public opining on alternative treatments that are making some even sicker, garbled messaging that seeks to downplay the severity of […]

The Complete Cisco Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support […]

Trump has always considered cops to be better people than regular people. Unless they’re defending a federal building under attack by Trump’s people. Then they’re no better than anyone else. Trump’s first term came coupled with an announcement that cops would be elevated above the people they’re supposed to serve and that the general public […]

If you think back to Brendan Carr’s first tenure as a regular Commissioner at the FCC, he was constantly warning about “FCC overreach.” We couldn’t have privacy rules or net neutrality rules protecting consumers from Comcast, he said, because that would be an extremist abuse of government authority. In fact, any oversight of shitty telecom […]

We chronicled the implosion of the company Nikola and the fall from grace of its CEO, Trevor Milton, for years. If you don’t recall the story, Nikola was built to develop over the road trucks with a hydrogen propulsion system. In 2020, in a bid to gain more investment and boost confidence of current investors, […]

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 […]

The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology. Axon touts this technology as “force multiplying,” claiming it cuts in half the amount of time officers usually spend writing […]

Walled Culture has been following closely Italy’s poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power […]

Will the third time be the charm? Let’s hope so. This charmless act of hatred masquerading as “for the children” legislating has been struck down again by the same federal court that tried to kill it off the first time. In late December 2023, an Iowa federal court told the state there was little chance […]

uTalk can help you start speaking like a native within minutes. Using the uTalk learning App you can listen to real native speakers to help you navigate through your next vacation or business trip. With more than 2,500 words and phrases to learn in each of our 140+ languages, the app gives you a running start […]

There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day” trade plan to one last night. Here’s how that conversation went: “Imagine you want to buy a toy at a store which costs $50. You […]