Police departments across the country are lining up to launch drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs, and hundreds have cleared a necessary hurdle toward making deployment a reality, expanding aerial surveillance and data collection even in areas patrol officers typically can’t reach. As of February 2026, over 1,000 public safety agencies—including police, fire, and other emergency management agencies—had received […]
Support us on Patreon » If you know anything about Techdirt, you know we’re big fans of the EFF and its decades of advocacy for digital rights and the open internet. Recently, the organization went through a big change in the form of a new executive director: legal expert and long-time leader in the space Nicole […]
For many, many years now we’ve been calling out how the entire narrative around the “censorship industrial complex” was absolute bullshit, made up by a group of either deliberate misinformation peddlers or confused “contrarian” journalists too stupid to understand how basic things work. And I say that as someone who has long been critical of […]
Rediscover the thrill of classic gaming with the Retropian Color, the pocket-sized powerhouse designed to revive your favorite retro titles in vibrant detail. This handheld console delivers nostalgia on the go, featuring a crisp 3.5-inch IPS display, an open-source Linux system, and support for 10,000+ games. Whether you’re into arcade classics, 8-bit adventures, or 32-bit […]
Will anyone ever hold an ICE officer accountable for shooting or killing someone? Maybe, but it won’t be anyone from this administration — one that has actively blocked state investigators from following up on ICE shootings and even pulled FBI agents from ongoing investigations so ICE can forgive itself for its officers actions. While ICE […]
There have been rumblings for a while that America’s richest and most annoying white supremacist, Elon Musk, really wants to get into the wireless phone business. His lobbyists have been making noise in support for broader phone unlocking rules, and there’ve been several IPO-fluffing press leaks over the last few months indicating they’re keen on […]
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from a Senate committee more than 100 times on July 29, 2026. The Republican-led hearing – convened to scrutinize Fauci’s management of the pandemic and the origins of COVID-19 – was the latest chapter in a political story that began […]
When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk’s predictions about his Twitter takeover turned out to be. Indeed, the failure of Twitter as a business was so catastrophic, Musk had to hide it by merging all his Xs together: he had […]
We’ll see how long US Attorney (and, of course, former Fox News personality) Jeanine Pirro gets to keep her job. I would guess the exit door is only inches away from hitting her ass since she refused to carry out Donald Trump’s plan to punish Reflecting Pool visitors for highlighting the failures of his no-bid […]
Earlier this year, following the initial verdict in the state of New Mexico’s case against Meta (arguing that Meta caused harm to children by doing things like encrypting messages), we noted that even if you believe that Meta is a terrible company (as I do), that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted (ditto), and that the […]
flowkey is a fun, interactive piano learning platform that helps anyone go from absolute beginner to confident player — at their own pace. It combines step-by-step courses with thousands of songs you know and love, tailored for every skill level, from first-time learners to advanced pianists. The app listens as you play and gives instant […]
Flock Safety is happy it’s the go-to choice for tons of law enforcement agencies. While it does suffer some occasional bleeding, its supercharged automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) — ones that not only capture plates, but pictures of drivers/passengers and full vehicle images to capture any other distinctive features — are so widely deployed they’re […]
There are so many shitty U.S. companies across tech, energy, and AI that criticism of our massively-unpopular telecom monopolies has fallen out of fashion. It’s easy to forget, for example, that Comcast routinely used to make headlines for setting peoples homes on fire, torturing pets, or at times killing people (most of the stories I […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Capital One’s stated reasons for shutting down Trump accounts: Would be nice to have some disclosure laws so that if a presidential candidate’s had his bank accounts closed for money laundering, we don’t learn about it years later in […]
Buc-ee’s trademark bullying ways continue! This company that has long been famous for its enormous gas station and convenience stores practically dripping in Americana is quickly building a national reputation for itself as a petulant trademark bully. It’s lawsuits are typically dumb and usually feature Buc-ee’s claim that it somehow owns every cartoon animal mascot […]
For years, John Deere had actively made repairing their tractors near-impossible for anyone but itself and the few “authorized” repair shops—regardless of the ability of its customers to actually visit such shops. Now, in a major win for farmers and right to repair advocates, John Deere must soon provide farmers with not just the tools […]
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 […]
Well, it looks like investigators better go back to doing actual investigations in the Fifth Circuit, rather than just assuming a little paperwork and a whole lot of assistance from service providers is going to do their work for them. For at least the second time in the same state (Mississippi), federal judges have rejected […]
The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle has 7 online courses designed to help learners build skills that align directly with industry expectations. The focus is on practical tools and languages used by data professionals: Python for programming, Pandas and NumPy for data manipulation, foundational certification prep and specialized work with Databricks, an industry-standard platform for data engineering […]
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