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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 week 4 days ago
This week, MrWilson scores another double-win with both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a piece-by-piece response to a commenter who defended ICE’s failed illegal raid on an immigration law office: In second place, it’s a comment about the first two measles deaths of 2026: Then: “Nobody has died. It’s not […]
Leigh Beadon

Buc-ee’s Decides The Right Response To Pushback On Its Trademark Bullying Is To Invoke Partisanship

1 week 6 days ago
We’ve been detailing the trademark bullying ways of Buc-ee’s, famous gas station and convenience store chain in the American south and infamous IP bully, for over a year now. Buc-ee’s seems to think that any semi-related business that has branding that involves a cartoon animal or in any way references beavers somehow violates its trademark […]
Timothy Geigner

‘Right To Repair’ State Laws Continue To Surge, But Enforcement Remains Nonexistent

1 week 6 days ago
There’s still a massive 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. US PIRG […]
Karl Bode

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Move Fast And Settle Things

1 week 6 days ago
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 […]
Mike Masnick

Pete Hegseth And His Department Of Unconstitutional Revenge Lose Again In California

1 week 6 days ago
When Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a national security risk because it wouldn’t agree to his dangerously unethical demands for what Claude should be able to do, Anthropic sued to challenge the directives. One of the challenges was brought in the Northern District of California, where Anthropic has now notched another significant win. While the previous […]
Cathy Gellis

Daily Deal: Raspberry Pi Pico With Ultimate Starter Kit

1 week 6 days ago
The SunFounder Raspberry Pi Pico With the Ultimate Starter Kit offers a rich IoT learning experience for beginners aged 8 and up. With over 450 components, 117 projects, and expert-led tutorials, this kit makes learning microcontroller programming and IoT engaging and accessible. It also features 27 video lessons by renowned educator Paul McWhorter, simplifying microcontroller programming […]
Daily Deal

School Asks Cops To Stop Using Stun Gloves On Its Students

2 weeks ago
Compliant Technologies probably would have preferred to keep flying under the radar. But a gaudy new no-bid contract with ICE (worth up to $20 million!) made it impossible. Prior to ICE’s big purchase, it may as well have never existed. It only had a few clients, and those few clients purchased a few pairs for […]
Tim Cushing

Republicans Stumble In Bid To Flood Midterm Airwaves With Discounted Ads

2 weeks ago
Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission that federal limits on coordinated expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment. Which is every bit as stupid and corrupt as it sounds. Previously, under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), political parties were subjected to strict […]
Karl Bode

Irony: Catholic Bishops Tell FL Officials To Respect Its Religious Liberty To Not Accept Religious Exemptions For Vaccines

2 weeks ago
The country is continuing to reel from multiple infectious disease outbreaks in America, even as childhood vaccination rates continue to fall. Measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough: you don’t actually need me to go on. With RFK Jr. using his position as Secretary of HHS to further muddy the waters on vaccines and their safety, some states […]
Timothy Geigner

Comparing Nixon’s Attacks On The Press To Trump’s

2 weeks ago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. In his White House Correspondents’ Association dinner speech on July 24, 2026, President Donald Trump made his usual diatribes against the news media. He derided the “failing” New York Times and reiterated his complaint that CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins doesn’t smile enough. He […]
Heather Hendershot

LA Mayor Karen Bass The Latest Democrat To Wimp Out On Paramount Merger

2 weeks ago
The unpopular Paramount Warner Brothers merger should have been a perfect opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate they are finally serious about stuff like media consolidation, right wing propaganda, media reform, and antitrust after decades of policy incoherence. Instead, numerous prominent California Democrats have been buckling to Paramount demands aimed at settling a 12-state antitrust lawsuit […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: The 2026 Canva Creator Mastery Bundle

2 weeks ago
Take your design skills to the next level with the 2026 Canva Creator Mastery Bundle, a powerful all-in-one course for modern creators and business owners. This program teaches you how to use Canva effectively to produce professional-quality visuals for any purpose. You’ll explore practical design techniques, creative workflows and branding strategies that make your content […]
Daily Deal

Two Die In Pennsylvania Of Measles Marking The First Deaths Of 2026

2 weeks 1 day ago
Last year, as decades of work by RFK Jr. to undermine vaccines with false links to deaths and autism culminated in his appointment to lead HHS, America saw the largest resurgence of measles cases in something like three decades. Three people died, including two children, all unvaccinated. Kennedy mostly ignored the outbreak from the beginning […]
Timothy Geigner

Meta Just Paid Nearly $17 Billion To Make Sure It Gets To Write The Kid Safety Rules For Every Other Social Media Platform

2 weeks 1 day ago
By now you’ve almost certainly heard the news that Meta has settled with 52 state and local Attorneys General who had sued the company in some form or another over child safety on Meta’s platforms. The headlines are all covering the basics: the years-long case these states filed against Meta ends, and Meta pays somewhere […]
Mike Masnick

How AI Watermark Mandates Could Unmask Journalists Who Never Touched AI

2 weeks 1 day ago
Imagine a scenario where a documentary filmmaker, in the course of making the documentary, captures some damning footage of corporate malfeasance, which she wishes to share with an investigative reporting organization anonymously. Should we be concerned that mandates on AI watermarking might reveal who she is, even if she’s not using AI at all? Last […]
Mike Masnick