Harvard University took the extraordinary step of suing the Trump administration on April 21, 2025, claiming that the pressure campaign mounted on the school by the president and his Cabinet to force viewpoint diversity on campus violated the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech. “Defendants’ actions are unlawful,” Harvard’s lawsuit states. “The First Amendment does not permit the […]
The Complete 2025 Microsoft Tech Training Super Bundle has 11 courses to help you level up your Microsoft IT skill set. Courses cover Microsoft 365 identity management, Azure administration, cybersecurity, and more. It’s on sale for $80. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
Last July, the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court handled a geofence warrant case, marking the first time this issue had been handled at the appellate level. The robbery suspect, Okello Chatrie, challenged the constitutionality of the warrant, arguing that its non-particular nature placed it outside the bounds of the Fourth Amendment. A half-decade ago, this argument […]
Do you have what it takes to run a social media network that grows to one billion users and beyond? That’s the question in our new card game, One Billion Users, which we successfully funded on Kickstarter last year. Now the game is entering production, and since we have no plans to make more copies […]
We’ve covered for years the ugly retransmission feuds that break out between your cable company and broadcasters during contract negotiations. These fights routinely result in you losing access to channels you pay for with no real recourse. The FCC has perpetually refused to protect consumers from this stuff, taking a sort of “boys will be […]
It should be no secret that Comcast, as well as many other cable TV and internet providers, have a firm reputation for shoveling mountains of bullshit and calling it their base fees only to have a bunch of hidden or sneaky other fees attached to invoices that greatly inflate the price of services. These have […]
At a time when Section 230 has become one of the most politically divisive tech policy issues, our final episode of the Otherwise Objectionable podcast brings together an unusual panel for a “roundtable discussion” between myself, Jessica Melugin of CEI, Charles Cooke from the National Review, and Dave Willner (well-known trust & safety expert who […]
Today Microsoft shut down Skype, a company that helped revolutionize phone calls online. To commemorate the death of Skype, we’re running a recent “Pessimist’s Archive” article on the history of internet calls, and how it almost wasn’t allowed. If you’re not already, you should subscribe to the Pessimist’s Archive. It used to cost money to […]
In an unprecedented 102-page ruling that methodically dismantles the Trump administration’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, Judge Beryl Howell has issued a permanent injunction that goes far beyond her initial temporary restraining order. The ruling represents a stark rebuke of what the court calls an “overt attempt to suppress and punish certain […]
Earlier this year, soon after Elon Musk began stripping away parts of the government he had no constitutional authority to destroy, we warned that it appeared officials in the White House were gearing up to use the Twitter Files playbook on the US government. The basics of the playbook are as follows: As Charlie Warzel […]
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Things continue to change thanks to the Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision. Prior to that, it was assumed the Third Party Doctrine justified all sorts of data dragnets, so long as the data was held by a third party. But that doctrine assumed the data being grabbed by law enforcement was being handed over knowingly and […]
Washington will soon become the eighth state in the country to pass Right to Repair legislation. While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bruce C. with a reply to a comment that attempted to downplay the recent behavior of federal agents: Even plain clothes officers are required to carry their badge. If they were undercover officers they shouldn’t be presenting themselves as officers to civilians unless they […]
As we announced last week, our recently-Kickstarted card game One Billion Users is about to enter production, which means this is your last chance to secure a copy for yourself. The Kickstarter campaign is accepting late pledges from now through the end of Wednesday, May 7th. We recently received our proof copy, and it looks […]
This is the fourth in our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ve already covered the Best Remix, Best Deep Cut, and Best Visuals, and today we’re looking at the winner of the Best Adaptation category: Calder’s Circus by David Harris. Regular followers of […]
One of things we’ve talked about repeatedly is how much better it would be for content producers, instead of immediately defaulting to behaving like IP protectionists, to treat their fans in a human and awesome way. There are times when the need for protecting IP makes sense, but there are far more times when creative […]
The free, independent state of Texas continues to make it clear it only respects certain rights and freedoms and only those that adhere to the Holy Trinity of guns, God, and, um… Nazi-adjacent Cybertruck manufacturers. A number of efforts have been made to remove books from schools and public libraries in recent years. None of […]
A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board reported an unusual spike in potentially sensitive data flowing out of the agency’s network in early March 2025 when staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, which goes by DOGE, were granted access to the agency’s databases. On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security gained access to Internal Revenue Service […]
Bizarrely buried near the bottom of NY Times article about the chaos behind the renditioning of people to a Salvadoran gulag is an important detail: the US and El Salvador have already brought back eight people who were “mistakenly” sent there: In Washington, the Trump administration was working to address Mr. Bukele’s confusion about whom […]
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