Last year, Andres Freund, a Microsoft engineer, spotted a backdoor in xz Utils, an open source data compression utility that is found on nearly all versions of GNU/Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Ars Technica has a good report on the backdoor and its discovery, as well as a visualization by another Microsoft employee, Thomas Roccia, […]
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 […]
When federal judges with decades of experience start publicly mocking the Supreme Court’s lack of clarity, you know the system is broken. This week brought us two remarkable examples of lower court judges who are clearly fed up with trying to parse the Supreme Court’s “vibes-based jurisprudence” from its unexplained shadow docket rulings. First, we […]
You don’t often see blackmail victims extending offers to their blackmailers to sit down and discuss political issues, but that’s what happened when CBS — who recently paid off Trump to settle a lawsuit the broadcaster could have won — invited Kristi Noem to talk out of her perfectly coiffed ass for most of an […]
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has apparently decided his latest form of politically motivated lawfare (the thing he insisted he would end once he took over) should be threatening Google over… checks notes… having spam filters that work too well at blocking actual spam. In a letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai last week, Ferguson […]
The JavaScript DOM Game Developer Bundle has 8 courses to help you master coding fundamentals. Courses cover JavaScript DOM, Coding, HTML 5 Canvas, and more. You’ll learn how to create your own fun, interactive games. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]
Since before RFK Jr. was even confirmed into his position as the head of HHS and American health, I have been pleading for someone to step in and correct this obvious mistake. Everything about his first half a year or so in the role has been a disaster. Layoffs and resignations at HHS agencies have […]
I generally try not to engage in “I told you so,” but I told you so. The Trump administration’s long-percolating plan to use Dish Network as flimsy cover for harmful wireless consolidation is dead, just as I predicted five years earlier. Dish will lumber forward as another lazy MVNO for a while longer, but the […]
The Ryan Walters saga of stupid continues. Walters is the Superintendent of Oklahoma, where he oversees a state education system that ranks near the bottom among states, while also carving out time to lick Donald Trump’s boots as thoroughly as possible. Between naked attempts to sell the Trump bible in state schools and attempting to […]
Kristi Noem made an appearance on “Face the Nation” last week, squaring off against Ed O’Keefe of CBS News. CBS, of course, has already engaged in plenty of capitulation. And O’Keefe’s interview — while containing some probing questions — didn’t contain much push back against numerous bogus claims made by DHS head Kristi Noem. Somehow, […]
Earlier this month, Dish’s Sling TV unveiled a rare bit of innovation in an increasingly enshittified streaming video market. They began offering what they called “mini-subscriptions,” allowing users to subscribe to live streaming TV for the day, weekend, or a full week for prices starting at around $5. It was a nice option for folks […]
Last summer, when Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had violated antitrust laws through its search distribution agreements, I was left wondering what the hell any reasonable remedy would look like. The case always struck me as weird—Google was paying billions to Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine because users actually wanted […]
In September 2023, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk decided it was constitutional for a Texas university (West Texas A&M) to shut down a “PG-13” drag show. This was a decision he arrived at despite this being said (on the public record!) by the university official instituting the drag show ban: In the statement to the WTAMU community yesterday, [WATMU […]
The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle gives you unlimited access to expertly crafted online courses, interactive labs and study tools. Whether you’re aiming for industry-recognized certifications or expanding your tech expertise, this bundle will help you get there with courses on CompTIA, AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, and more. It’s on sale for […]
It’s always fascinating to watch supposed “free speech warriors” reveal their true colors the moment they get a tiny bit of power. We’ve been covering the ongoing saga of various COVID contrarians who spent years falsely claiming they were “censored” by the Biden administration, only to see the Supreme Court definitively reject those claims in […]
Back in April, the Trump FCC was sued by Nina Burleigh and Frequency Forward, alleging that Elon Musk’s influence in government was “creating unmanageable conflicts of interest within the FCC.” There’s not much debate there; Musk is getting slathered in new taxpayer subsidies via a Republican rewrite of the infrastructure bill, and all inquiries into his companies’ […]
I don’t find myself writing about how some combination of the USPTO and the court system gets things right on trademark matters very often, but I certainly did a couple of years ago in a series of posts about a fashion brand owned by Erik Brunetti. The brand was initially denied a trademark for its […]
One of the things upon which I spend a lot of time pondering: watching right-leaning, but otherwise intelligent people in my life look at Donald Trump’s systematic destruction of constitutional government and see just mere incompetence, but generally normal politics. These aren’t people force-fed reactionary propaganda in media bubbles. These are sophisticated observers who, if […]
Support us on Patreon » We’ve got a cross-post episode this week, with Mike’s recent appearance on the Computer Says Maybe podcast hosted by Alix Dunn. The discussion starts out looking at decentralization and Bluesky, then goes way beyond that into the early days of the internet and the concept of the Eternal September. You can […]
You can’t do mass deportation without being indiscriminate. That’s how things are working out in Trump’s second term in office, with ICE, etc. entirely abandoning any pretense of just trying to rid this country of dangerous criminals who are here in the country illegally. Raiding Home Deport parking lots to round up people just looking […]
stLouIST