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 […]
It’s been a while since we checked in on the Nintendo patent suit in Japan against Pocketpair, the company behind the hit game Palworld. If you need a quick refresher, here you go. Pocketpair made a game that was clearly inspired by the Pokémon series of games, but which also did no direct copying of […]
Qualified immunity — crafted out of thin air by the US Supreme Court — has rarely been anything but an easy way for government employees to duck out of lawsuits before they’re actually asked to defend themselves against allegations of rights violations. The Supreme Court has continually narrowed this doctrine, pretty much ensuring that if […]
In the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned would happen when you reduce sector competition). T-Mobile, which once tried to differentiate itself as the consumer-friendly “uncarrier,” almost immediately began behaving just like AT&T and Verizon, starting with firing 9,000+ people. It’s how […]
Earlier this year we wrote about the ridiculous thin-skinned executives at Palantir suing a small independent Swiss online magazine, Republik, that had reported on the great lengths the company had gone to, trying to get the Swiss government to purchase Palantir’s surveillance technology. Palantir knew they couldn’t sue for defamation because, you know, everything Republik […]
The MYNT3D 3D Printing Pen is a handheld creative tool that allows users to draw in three dimensions using heated plastic filament. Instead of printing from a machine, this pen lets you manually create 3D objects by extruding melted plastic that quickly hardens. It uses FDM technology similar to 3D printers and is designed for […]
Some readers might look at this headline and think there’s something off about it. And I’ll grant you that. There are several ways music can be played: to, for, not at all. Sometimes though, the only way to describe the playing of music is “at.” One of Trump’s many vindictive “surges” targeting cities and states […]
Last month, SpaceX began making lobbying filings in support of phone unlocking rules making it easier to switch your phone between wireless providers. You might recall that the Biden FCC was on the cusp of installing such rules before the Trump administration, hand in hand with giant telecoms, dismantled them (Trump’s FCC will have to […]
There are bad takes on AI, and then there are bad takes on AI. Some of you think my takes on the use of AI in gaming are bad. Cool, love you, kiss kiss. I think the takes from folks on both extremes, the never-AI-ers and the AI evangelists, are pretty awful most of the […]
Legal systems have always struggled to keep up with rapid technological change, and things are no different in the world of generative AI. There are still relatively few rulings on the new issues that the roll-out of AI-based services is raising. That makes a ground-breaking judgment from a court in Germany particularly important. It concerns […]
While we’ve been discussing a bunch of other Supreme Court end-of-term decisions this week, we should also call out two decisions the Supreme Court thankfully decided not to make. These non-decisions continue to help preserve First Amendment speech protections. First, and most importantly, they rejected Alan Dershowitz’s attempt to appeal his laughably embarrassing SLAPP suit […]
Plenty of people are going to disagree with this headline. But why should I bother defending it when I can let the government dig its own hole? From Executive Order 14367, issued by President Trump last December: Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic. Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount […]
The Luminar Neo Bundle includes a one time purchase of the software, an introductory course on how to use it, and 6 add-ons. Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different […]
Look, 5-4 Supreme Court decisions count just as much as 9-0 ones, and a 5-4 decision getting it right is still a win, but for a number of reasons, the 5-4 decision in Trump v. Barbara, regarding the issue of birthright citizenship is terrifying. This isn’t a complicated issue. This isn’t an issue that should […]
Last fall, Ezra Klein was getting a lot of attention for his book Abundance, which basically argued that America had become bureaucracy-obsessed and fallen out of love with building things. I thought it was mostly simplistic cack, downplaying or ignoring the fact that the U.S. government has become so blisteringly corrupt, it clearly no longer […]
It should be obvious at this point that JD Vance is a purely political creature. There’s no virtue to find in there, no moral stances firmly taken, nor anything resembling a true political ideology. There is only the attainment and retention of more and more power. You need look no further than Vance’s prior status […]
Call me crazy, but I tend to think when Supreme Court Justices make a big sweeping statement in one case, they should actually follow it through with other cases. You may recall, for example, that in the Dobbs case, where the right to an abortion was overturned, Justice Samuel Alito took the ‘history and tradition’ […]
We’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. And while it doesn’t disappoint, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for celebration. Okello Chatrie has been challenging the geofence warrant that led to his arrest and prosecution since 2019(!). Nearly seven years later, he’s a step closer to… well, maybe setting precedent […]
It is zero surprise that the Supreme Court officially overturned its 91-year-old precedent first created in Humphrey’s Executor. That case held that when Congress designates an agency as independent of the executive branch, the president cannot just fire its commissioners. The Humphrey’s Executor opinion stopped FDR from trying to fire an FTC Commissioner he didn’t […]
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