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Supreme Court Shrugs Off Opportunity To Save The First Amendment From The Fifth Circuit’s Antipathy

4 months 3 weeks ago
The Supreme Court’s latest recap of its relative inactivity (Trump administration “emergency” appeals aside) has delivered yet more evidence of this court’s indifference to rights violations committed by the government. Other cases involving alleged rights violations that should have — at the very least — been handed over to jury for further consideration were tacitly […]
Tim Cushing

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

4 months 3 weeks ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment offering an additional resource on our post about the White House’s new app: The other half of the story The analysis by “thereallo” covers the Android version; there’s a dissection of the iOS version at Security Analysis of the Official White […]
Leigh Beadon

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN

4 months 3 weeks ago
It’s time for the second in our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of our eighth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! We’ve already covered the Best Adaptation winner, and this week we’re looking at the winner of Best Deep Cut: CARAMENTRAN by RedSPINE and poymakes. Sometimes, we get entries […]
Leigh Beadon

Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration To Hold ICE Shooters Accountable

4 months 3 weeks ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. They asked nicely at first.  After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who’d recently moved to Minneapolis, local law enforcement officials requested a partnership with the federal government to investigate the case, as they’d done in […]
Andy Mannix

In Chiles V. Salazar The Supreme Court Issues A Bad Good First Amendment Decision

4 months 4 weeks ago
The Supreme Court’s decision last year in U.S. v. Skirmetti, upholding a law depriving young trans people the healthcare they need, is insupportable, rendering people unequal in a way the Constitution cannot possibly suborn. But its new decision in Chiles v. Salazar regarding the First Amendment standard to use regarding Colorado’s law regarding conversion therapy […]
Cathy Gellis

Daily Deal: Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock

4 months 4 weeks ago
The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for […]
Daily Deal

The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong

4 months 4 weeks ago
Last week, I wrote about why the social media addiction verdicts against Meta and YouTube should worry anyone who cares about the open internet. The short version: plaintiffs’ lawyers found a clever way to recharacterize editorial decisions about third-party content as “product design defects,” effectively gutting Section 230 without anyone having to repeal it. The […]
Mike Masnick

The Trump Administration Is Trying To Steal $21 BIllion Earmarked For Better Broadband

4 months 4 weeks ago
A quick refresher: there was originally $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill most Republicans voted against (yet routinely try to take credit for among their constituents). But after taking office this second time, the Trump administration rewrote the grant program’s guidance to eliminate provisions ensuring the resulting broadband is affordable […]
Karl Bode

DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator

4 months 4 weeks ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology. […]
Avi Asher-Schapiro

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Age Old Questions

4 months 4 weeks 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. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Mike Masnick

The AI Doc’s Falsehoods And False Balance

4 months 4 weeks ago
There is a familiar media failure in which opposing viewpoints are presented as equally valid, even when the evidence overwhelmingly supports one side. It’s called Bothsidesism. This false balance phenomenon legitimizes misinformation and undermines public understanding by giving disproportionate weight to baseless claims. Why bring this up? Because the new AI Doc film is based […]
Nirit Weiss-Blatt

Daily Deal: Opusonix Pro Subscription

4 months 4 weeks ago
Opusonix is the workflow-first platform built for music producers and engineers who are tired of endless email chains and scattered files. By centralizing feedback, versions, and tasks in one structured workspace, it helps you cut email traffic by up to 90% so you can focus more on creating and less on chasing approvals. From time-coded […]
Daily Deal

Trump’s Anti-Migrant Surge Is Now A Mudslide That’s Wiping Out What’s Left Of His DOJ

4 months 4 weeks ago
Trump’s do everything all at once approach to immigration enforcement is starting to go off the rails. Trump’s plainly stated hatred of “shithole countries” and their inhabitants manifested in early wins for his bigoted “remove the brown people” programs. Then Stephen Miller (the man who answers the “what if a lightbulb had eyebrows and was […]
Tim Cushing

Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “A Pile Of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.

4 months 4 weeks ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In late 2024, the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud computing offerings. The tech giant’s “lack of proper detailed security documentation” left reviewers with a “lack of confidence in assessing the system’s overall security posture,” according to an […]
Renee Dudley

South Dakota GOP, Governor Get Their Voter Suppression On

4 months 4 weeks ago
Because South Dakota governor Larry Rhoden is forever obligated to serve Kristi Noem and Kristi Noem is forever obligated to serve Donald Trump, he and his GOP buddies are making America MAGA again, starting with his home turf. Non-citizens have never really disrupted voting. But they’re the convenient scapegoat for a party that’s justifiably worried […]
Tim Cushing

The EU Killed Voluntary CSAM Scanning. West Virginia Is Trying To Compel It. Both Cause Problems.

4 months 4 weeks ago
Last week, the European Parliament voted to let a temporary exemption lapse that had allowed tech companies to scan their services for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) without running afoul of strict EU privacy regulations. Meanwhile, here in the US, West Virginia’s Attorney General continues to press forward with a lawsuit designed to force Apple […]
Mike Masnick