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Wired, Business Insider Editors Duped By Completely Bogus ‘AI’ Using ‘Journalist’ Who Made Up Towns, People That Don’t Exist

7 months 2 weeks ago
The rushed integration of half-cooked automation into the already broken U.S. journalism industry simply isn’t going very well. There have been just countless examples where affluent media owners rushed to embrace automation and LLMs (usually to cut corners and undermine labor) with disastrous impact, resulting in lots of plagiarism, completely false headlines, and a giant, completely avoidable mess. As U.S. news outlets […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

7 months 2 weeks ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is BernardoVerda passing along a quote about a specific speech issue that has (ridiculously) been put back up for discussion: In second place, it’s MrWilson with a comment about the ousting of the CDC Director for not being “aligned with the president’s agenda”: It makes […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: August 24th – 30th

7 months 2 weeks ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the Secret Service joined the list of law enforcement agencies using data brokers to dodge warrant requirements for location data, much like the CPB was still doing via a broker being investigated by congress, while other agencies were throwing tax dollars at junk science — but at least […]
Leigh Beadon

Trump Goes Full Orwellian In Effort To Reshape The Smithsonian

7 months 2 weeks ago
When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign. It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power. It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both […]
Laura Beers

The Inversion Of American Values

7 months 2 weeks ago
There’s a particular kind of person who cheers when the president deploys military forces against American cities over the objections of their elected leaders. They call themselves patriots. They wrap themselves in the flag while applauding the systematic demolition of everything that flag once represented. They claim to love America while celebrating the transformation of […]
Mike Brock

House Republicans Want To Doxx Wikipedia Editors Over Bogus ‘Bias’ Complaints

7 months 2 weeks ago
Congress has absolutely zero constitutional authority to investigate a private website for its editorial decisions. Zero. None. This is First Amendment 101. Yet House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Mace have decided otherwise. In a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, these two Republicans are demanding that Wikipedia hand […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle

7 months 2 weeks ago
The Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle has 4 courses to help you become a Microsoft expert in no time. Courses cover Microsoft 365, Excel, Word for beginners, and Word advanced. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps […]
Daily Deal

FBI: Making America Great Means Lowering The Bar For New Hires

7 months 2 weeks ago
Trump’s desire to punish, oust, and eject anyone who isn’t white and/or MAGA enough from this country means the preferred outlets for his aggression are running out of manpower. Tons of federal officers have already been rerouted to immigration enforcement, leaving those left with the unenviable task of actually catching the kinds of criminals Trump […]
Tim Cushing

Republicans Like Nancy Mace Keep Shamelessly Taking Credit For Infrastructure Bill Improvements They Voted Against

7 months 2 weeks ago
Back in 2021, Congress passed both the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the infrastructure bill. While getting the latter right has taken a lot of time (causing no limit of whining by election-season Republicans and some segments of the “abundance” set), ARPA has already funded a lot of amazing stuff, from local community centers […]
Karl Bode

DOGE Falsely Targeted Him On Social Media. Then The Taliban Took His Family

7 months 2 weeks ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. It was early morning on April 1 when Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar, got a panicked message from his son. Halimi’s name had just appeared in a viral post on X, shared by none other than the site’s owner and the world’s richest man, […]
Avi Asher-Schapiro and Christopher Bing

From Book Bans To Internet Bans: Wyoming Lets Parents Control The Whole State’s Access To The Internet

7 months 2 weeks ago
If you’ve read about the sudden appearance of age verification across the internet in the UK and thought it would never happen in the U.S., take note: many politicians want the same or even more strict laws. As of July 1st, South Dakota and Wyoming enacted laws requiring any website that hosts any sexual content to implement age verification measures. These […]
Rindala Alajaji and Jason Kelley

Risky Bet: Colorado Gives $35 Million In Taxpayer Broadband Subsidies To Elon Musk And Jeff Bezos

7 months 3 weeks ago
So I’ve noted how Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill (they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants wind up in the back pocket of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (and their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband ventures, Starlink and Project Kuiper). I’ve also explained in detail why that’s […]
Karl Bode

Here We Go Again: German Courts Reopen The “Is Ad Blocking Copyright Infringement?” Nonsense We Thought We’d Put To Bed

7 months 3 weeks ago
It’s no secret that most publishers (though not us!) hate ad blockers. The idea that ad blockers are illegal or “an attack on free speech” get trotted out every so often, and they’re always silly. You should have control over how your own browser on your own computer works. That’s an important freedom. And that […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Headway Premium

7 months 3 weeks ago
Unlock a world of knowledge with a Headway Premium subscription. This exclusive deal gives you unlimited access to Headway’s massive library of 1500+ book summaries, with 30-50 new ones added monthly. Cover any topic you can imagine, from personal development and business strategies to health and wellness. It’s on sale for $60. Use the code READ20 at […]
Daily Deal

GOP-Friendly Local ‘News’ Broadcasters Plan More Harmful Mergers After Trump Destroys What’s Left Of Media Consolidation Limits

7 months 3 weeks ago
During Trump 1.0, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely-owned) competitors underfoot. The result of their destruction has been a rise in local news deserts, a lot of right wing […]
Karl Bode

The Threat Of Extreme Statutory Damages For Copyright Almost Certainly Made Anthropic Settle With Authors

7 months 3 weeks ago
In what may be the least surprising news in the world of copyright and the internet, Anthropic just agreed to settle the copyright lawsuit that everyone’s been watching, but not for the reasons most people think. This isn’t about AI training being found to infringe copyright—in fact, Anthropic won on that issue. Instead, it’s about […]
Mike Masnick