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Arizona Sheriff Gets Shitty Because People Protested An ICE-Led Drug Raid

2 weeks 3 days ago
What a surprise. The most intellectually dishonest people in the nation still have the biggest bullhorns. That’s why a regular-ass drug raid that occurred in Tucson, Arizona somehow makes headlines in New York City. Here’s the New York Post, disingenuously reporting the (Arizona) news: A massive raid on a suspected cartel member found in Arizona […]
Tim Cushing

While District Court Judge Questions Trump’s Military Deployment; Appeals Court Shrugs

2 weeks 3 days ago
The normalization of authoritarianism is happening in real time in federal courtrooms. While district court judges try to apply actual legal standards to Trump’s near constant attempts to find ever more constitutional crises to create, appeals courts are busy treating the wholesale dismantling of constitutional constraints as just another political disagreement. Take, for example, what’s […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The All-in-One Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing Bundle

2 weeks 3 days ago
The All-in-One Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing Bundle has 9 courses to help you go from beginner to expert in hacking and pen testing. Courses cover everything from social engineering to working with Metasploit to cloud security, and more. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]
Daily Deal

Amazon Ramps Up Enshittification With Even More Ads On Prime Video

2 weeks 3 days ago
Back in early 2024 Amazon announced that Prime Video customers (who already pay $140 per year) would be charged $3 extra every month just to avoid ads that didn’t previously exist. It was just the latest example of “enshittification” in a streaming sector all out of original ideas, desperate to provide Wall Street with impossible […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

2 weeks 4 days ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about ICE arresting Brad Lander: Republicans keep saying no one is above the law, but they keep referring only to other people and not themselves. They don’t need warrants. They don’t need to provide due process. They get to assault […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: June 15th – 21st

2 weeks 5 days ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests were having an impact, with one court citing the incident in denying immunity to officers in another case, more schools moving to end contracts with cops, and Minneapolis city council voting unanimously to disband its police department. Meanwhile, Devin Nunes’s […]
Leigh Beadon

Buc-ee’s Sues Parody Apparel Shop For Parodying Its Brand

2 weeks 5 days ago
A couple of weeks back, we discussed famed southern convenience store chain Buc-ee’s and its penchant for initiating all kinds of trademark related threats and lawsuits. While we talk about this sort of thing a lot around here, the company’s actions have been particularly silly. When taken in sum total, you’re left with the idea […]
Dark Helmet

The Way Forward For AI: Learning From The Elephant & The Blind Men

2 weeks 6 days ago
This series of posts explores how we can rethink the intersection of AI, creativity, and policy. From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle. Together, they advocate for a more balanced, forward-thinking approach that acknowledges the potential […]
Mike Masnick

The Shell Game Of Fascist Gaslighting

2 weeks 6 days ago
I need to say something that will be deeply uncomfortable for many of you: if you have friends, family, or colleagues defending what’s happening right now, their old sane selves may not be coming back. Let me be specific about what I mean. This week, Donald Trump posted explicit orders on Truth Social directing federal law enforcement […]
Mike Masnick

ICE Tells Agents They Can Start Making Unjustified Arrests Again

2 weeks 6 days ago
It has never been about removing dangerous criminals — the “worst of the worst” — from the United States. Under Donald Trump, immigration enforcement has been about removing immigrants from the country. Period. That’s the whole thing. (And, apparently the only immigrants welcome to seek shelter in the US are those of the whiter variety […]
Tim Cushing

Community And Choice Are Not Bubbles

2 weeks 6 days ago
Disclosure: I am on the board of Bluesky and am inherently biased. Adjust your skepticism of what I write on this topic accordingly. It seems a bit odd: when something is supposedly dying or irrelevant, journalists can’t stop writing about it. Consider the curious case of Bluesky, which, according to various pundits, is a failed […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2025 Java Bundle

2 weeks 6 days ago
The 2025 Java Bundle has 6 courses designed to help you build real projects and fast-track your way to a becoming a Java expert. Courses cover the fundamentals of Java with exercises to help you improve your skills. You’ll learn how to build a website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There’s also a course to […]
Daily Deal

US Marines Witnessed Detaining A US Citizen In Los Angeles

2 weeks 6 days ago
As Mike Masnick noted late last week while covering yet another extremely disturbing development in the ongoing horror show that is our current government, the Trump Administration isn’t fucking around. It wants to destroy America so it can have the only kind of America it’s willing to put up with: one it can rule, rather […]
Tim Cushing

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Outsourced But Not Out Of Mind

3 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 roundup of the latest news in online […]
Mike Masnick

SCOTUS Simply Ignores Precedent, Rather Than Overruling It, In Allowing Trump To Fire Officials Congress Deemed Independent

3 weeks 1 day ago
What may be one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most important and far-reaching rulings in decades dropped in late May 2025 in an order that probably didn’t get a second – or even first – glance from most Americans. But this not-quite-two-page ruling, as technical and procedural as they come, potentially rewrites a major principle of […]
Mike Masnick

Verizon ‘AI’ ‘Personal Shopper’ Assistant Ripping Customers Off With Weird Unwanted Charges

3 weeks 1 day ago
One recurring theme of our head-first rushed adoption of “AI” is that half-cooked automation routinely reflects the often shitty natures of the companies or individuals installing it. Health insurance companies with a history of being crooks implement Medicare rejection AI with a 90% error rate. Incompetent media company executives implement half-cooked “AI” that plagiarizes, undercuts […]
Karl Bode