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. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]
We have talked about the Wyden Siren many times before. Senator Ron Wyden learns, through classified briefings, that the intelligence community is doing something most Americans would consider a clear violation of their civil liberties — often justified by interpreting plain English words to mean something no other English speaker would recognize. But because that […]
The best way to learn Raspberry Pi is by doing and in this course, you’ll get familiar with specific features by building your own GPS tracking system. From setup and configuration to location tracking through Google Maps, this course will help you go from beginner to advanced with Raspberry Pi. It’s on sale for $50. […]
Well well well. All it took was a regime change and the persistent abuse of camera networks by police officers to change MapQuest from “Remember MapQuest?” nostalgia to “hey where can I download MapQuest” demands. First, there’s the regime change. Trump has been stupid as fuck all the time since day one but nothing was […]
Ideally, I think it makes sense to open up the U.S. market to Chinese goods (AI, EVs, robots), but have functional and well-funded regulators that police all labor, competition, environmental, privacy, national security, and consumer rights abuses. But big U.S. companies don’t much like that because it would boost competition and regulatory accountability, eroding quarterly […]
To state that RFK Jr. says things that are just plainly wrong is to state the obvious. His waffling claims about the dangers of vaccines are wrong. His various other pet conspiracy theories, such as chemtrails and damage to humans from EMF, are also wrong. The data HHS is putting out under his leadership about […]
What is covered by freedom of thought in the AI age is being decided by courts that are hearing cases about something entirely different. The Chapter 11 filing of Character.ai on October 12 is the second such case in a year, and it shows that the record of how a person thought can be produced […]
Civil rights groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s Colossus xAI data centers in Memphis disproportionately pollute the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn’t bother to get the necessary permits to run the 57 gas turbines […]
As you may know, The Streisand Effect was originally coined right here on Techdirt in 2005, though it referred back to an event from 2003 when Barbra Streisand sued Ken Adelman, because his project to map how erosion impacted the California coastline incidentally included a photo of Streisand’s Malibu mansion. Streisand demanded $50 million in […]
This Interactive Self-Rotating Cat Toy Ball is a USB-rechargeable toy featuring 360-degree rolling movements, obstacle avoidance, and changing LED lights to help keep cats entertained. It’s built out of scratch-resistant and bite-resistant materials, the ball is tough enough to withstand rough play from high-energy kittens and adult cats alike. It’s on sale for $20. Note: […]
The Fifth Circuit has shown itself to be especially subservient to the Trump administration since his return to office. And it’s certainly not going to rock Trump’s mass deportation boat — not when it’s sitting right on top of Texas, which contains almost two-thirds of the US-Mexico border, as well as some of ICE’s largest […]
I recently noted how California’s being told by the Trump administration that it can’t enforce any of its own telecom consumer protection laws if it wants to receive $1.4 billion dollars Congress already earmarked for broadband expansion under the 2021 infrastructure bill. That means if California wants money it was already supposed to receive from […]
It’s probably a good thing for Tim Sweeney that Epic Games is a privately held company and he has a majority ownership stake, because I can’t imagine any Board of Directors would appreciate this AI rager he’s been on as of late. And, somehow, it keeps getting worse. It all started with Sweeney absurdly claiming […]
Over the last few months, we’ve been running the wonderful ten part series on “The Metric is Not the Mission” by Konstantinos Komaitis. It’s a deep exploration of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. The resulting series explores how […]
Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) has been steadily pushing the limits of transparency and accountability for several years now. The project — spearheaded by Emma Best — does what other activists won’t… or perhaps simply don’t have the expertise to carry out. DDoS made a name for itself by hitching Best’s non-stop FOIA onslaught to […]
It seems that every election cycle over the last decade has had concerns being raised about the state of “political deepfakes” and their ability to impact the election. So far, these have always been overblown, and there’s been little evidence of deepfakes having any real impact at all — perhaps other than creating the concept […]
JavaScript began as a web scripting language and has now expanded to include a game, mobile app, server, and database development. This JavaScript Crash Course is a great choice if you want to pursue a career in web design. You’ll learn the ins and outs of React, how to use Formik to manage forms, Material-UI […]
Who wouldn’t love the chance to clear themselves of misconduct? I guess not the Trump DOJ, which decidedly won’t be investigating itself, even though it could cook the books to an acceptable temperature (155-170 internally) to let itself off the hook in the Reflecting Pool prosecution debacle. It’s too many metaphors to be sure, at […]
Anna Gomez is the only Democrat at the current FCC because Republicans simply refuse to seat any new ones (or even formally renew her term, which technically was supposed to end over the summer). And while Gomez may not have much voting authority, she’s done a good job criticizing the Brendan Carr-run agency for its […]
If there are good, nuanced ways to make use of generative AI in gaming, as I think there are, that doesn’t change the fact that there are nuance-free and terrible ways for advocating for AI in gaming. Tim Sweeney and Epic Games have emerged as helpful foils for the never-AI crowd, given just how cartoonishly […]
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