Techdirt has just written about concerns that AI development is proceeding more quickly than human oversight can monitor and control it. Since then, there has been lively debate about whether those fears are real or overblown. They mainly focus on the possible future threats from AI systems using RSI — recursive self-improvement — to drive […]
You may recall that back in July we had the ridiculous story of how ICE decided to go all gestapo on its critics, including tracking down and threatening David Streever, who had emailed then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons back in January, after federal agents killed some peaceful protestors in Minnesota. Streever’s email was pretty straightforward: […]
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Yet another data point on the whole grift/graft aspect of (particularly) the second Trump administration. While Trump was endlessly bragging about how much war he was going to wage, while simultaneously bragging about how much war he was going to end, his Israel-enabled Iran War refused to submit to his vacillating bluster. After claiming to […]
In an ideal world it’s certainly possible that the U.S. federal government could implement meaningful guardrails for AI development that protect innovation, national security, consumer privacy, public safety, and labor/creatives, while preventing market monopolization by the sector’s biggest players. But we don’t live in that ideal world. We live in a country where an historically […]
Whatever mask RFK Jr. was attempting to wear to convince the world he isn’t a pure anti-vaxxer clown is now officially off. The man who has spent his time as Secretary of HHS overseeing the worst outbreak of measles in America in decades, who just can’t stop citing fake health studies and misinterpreting others, who […]
Here’s a riddle: Why did a Goshen Police Department officer search 6,474 automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, representing data from 82,413 cameras, on May 7, 2025? If your answer is “I don’t know,” it turns out you’re 100% correct. The officer left the letters “idk” in the search field where cops are supposed to […]
“Become ungovernable” is a phrase that has traveled around the world and morphed in meaning over time, but in the last few years has basically become an internet culture joke meme, with vaguely anarchist seasoning. But, now, in the Trump administration, it has apparently taken on a Schrodinger-esque meaning as either… a slogan for libertarian-leaning […]
The lowest common denominator administration continues to roll. It doesn’t care what’s legal or what’s proper. It just does what it wants because the shittiest people are in it and its basest of voter bases will feverishly clap their sweaty hands together in applause whenever it does whatever it wants to do. It will be […]
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A couple weeks ago, we wrote about the USPS whistleblower who revealed that the Postal Service had violated a preliminary injunction from a Massachusetts court in preparing to implement a horrifying Trump executive order designed to get the USPS to block the mailing of many mail-in ballots. We won’t go through all the details again, […]
LG hasn’t been making many friends lately. It annoyed some LG “smart” TV users recently when it tried to force them to use Microsoft’s Copilot AI system. It’s also been force-installing surveillance bloatware on many LG user’s monitors as it ramps up data surveillance and monetization. Now LG is in hot water again, after YouTube […]
Despite RFK Jr.’s assurances that he’s absolutely killing it combating this pesky measles thing that resurfaced after decades under his leadership, the only thing that is being killed are American citizens who contract measles. While we first eclipsed the measles case count of 2025 in mid-summer of 2026, there has also been no slowdown of […]
It’s easy to get submerged by the wave of bad news generated by the current administration on what often seems to be an hourly basis. Ask me how I know. My time is pretty much split between whatever ICE is doing and whatever Flock is doing, which results a whole lot of bad law enforcement […]
By now, calling Elon Musk a “free speech absolutist” is a joke. We have so many stories of him suppressing speech, or threatening, or suing people for their speech. At this point, anyone who still claims that Musk supports free speech is either (1) lying, (2) stupid, or (3) employed by him. So, it’s little […]
The truth continues to come out, and not via Truth Social. Everything former Olympian David Hearn might need to pursue a malicious prosecution lawsuit against the Trump DOJ has been leaking more steadily than the botched Lincoln Reflecting Pool repair job itself. This time, it’s the contractor admitting its repair job didn’t go as planned, […]
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By now it’s old hat to point out that the mainstream media bends over backwards to pretend that Donald Trump is a “normal” president. The number of times you could point to the coverage and question how the media would cover things if a Democratic president did anything even remotely similar is impossible to keep […]
Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we’ve noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector is falling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless “growth for growth’s sake” megamergers, imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions on customers, undermining labor, and cutting corners on product quality in a […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about the problems with the latest court ruling against Elon Musk: Heads I win, tails you lose Problematic law is passed: A) Company or individual rushes a legal challenge out so they aren’t accused of waiting too long […]
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