We’ve been tracking the growing judicial revolt against the Supreme Court’s shadow docket nonsense, from individual district judges getting snarky in footnotes to anonymous judges speaking to reporters. But what happened Thursday at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals crosses into entirely new territory: a full en banc panel of federal judges openly criticizing the […]
The Himalayan nation of Nepal has featured only rarely on Techdirt. The first time was back in 2003, with a story about an early Internet user there. According to the post, he would spend five hours walking down the mountain to the main road, and then another four hours on a bus to get to […]
Rep. Clay Higgins wants to use his government power to ban Americans from the internet for life if they say unkind things about Charlie Kirk’s death. Yes, the same Clay Higgins who just two years ago co-sponsored the “Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act“—a performative bill that did literally nothing except restate that government actors […]
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This news — you know, the stuff that shows National Guard troops aren’t exactly happy to be expendable pieces in Trump revenge schemes — is unsurprising. No one signed up for this, but Donald Trump and a bunch of suck-ups scattered across a handful of red states have made Trump’s War on DC the new […]
For many, many years security experts have warned that the “internet of things” (IOT) (or the myriad “smart home” devices we have scattered around our homes) was a security and privacy dumpster fire. A lot of these devices are made in China (often poorly) introducing new network attack vectors and widespread national security concerns. So […]
Despite being the somewhat crispied face of (extremely limited) unrest in Los Angeles in response to ICE activity, Waymo hasn’t suddenly decided it’s time to get snitchin’. In fact, it’s chosen to go the other direction, as Riley McDermid reports for Gizmodo: Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana recently emphasized that the company will challenge, limit, or reject robotaxi […]
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.
When the U.S. government signs contracts with private technology companies, the fine print rarely reaches the public. Palantir Technologies, however, has attracted more and more attention over the past decade because of the size and scope of its contracts with the government. Palantir’s two main platforms are Foundry and Gotham. Each does different things. Foundry is […]
Last week, we wrote about two federal judges who were clearly fed up with the Supreme Court’s shadow docket nonsense—one sarcastically “apologizing” to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the other flat-out calling their approach “Calvinball.” Turns out those weren’t isolated incidents. They were canaries in the coal mine. Soon after that, NBC News dropped a remarkable […]
I know it’s never great to blame the victim, but this all could have been avoided if ICE officers hadn’t decided they all needed to act like paramilitary death squad members while raiding Home Deport parking lots. If you’re in the sort of business you feel you can’t do safely with your entire face exposed, […]
MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In the Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class, you’ll […]
I didn’t like Charlie Kirk. His morals and principles, as expressed through his rhetoric and actions, disgusted me. I’ve no reason to mourn his death—and no plans to celebrate it. Kirk was killed in what is most likely an act of politically inspired violence. He was shot during one of his usual speaking events; at […]
Earlier this month, we noted how Wired and Business Insider were among a half-dozen or so major news organizations that were busted publishing fake journalism by fake journalists using AI to make up completely bogus people, narratives, and stories. The Press Gazette found that at least six outlets were conned by a fraudster going by […]
The fact that this is still going is absolutely insane. If you haven’t followed along with us in the saga of Katy Perry, the famous pop star, and Katie Perry, a local Australian clothing designer, and the trademark dispute between the two, I will happily catch you up in truncated form. Please note that I […]
“Qualified immunity” is included nowhere in the Bill of Rights. But that’s because it’s not your right. It’s a right that only exists because the Supreme Court said it should exist. And ever since it made this proclamation, it’s done everything it can to ensure this judicial doctrine can swallow nearly any rights violation thrown […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On Feb. 10, on the third floor of the Social Security Administration’s Baltimore-area headquarters, Leland Dudek unfurled a 4-foot-wide roll of paper that extended to 20 feet in length. It was a visual guide that the agency had kept for years to explain Social Security’s many […]
This is the sort of thing any organized government would consider truly embarrassing. We don’t have one of those at the moment, so if there’s any embarrassment to be had, it has to be experienced on behalf of the Trump administration because this administration is thoroughly incapable of feeling shame itself. Let’s lay a bit […]
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The verdict is in on Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s devastating. A new piece in TES Magazine systematically demolishes Haidt’s claims by doing something revolutionary: actually asking experts who study this stuff what they think. The result reads like an academic execution: “When I read the book, I found it really hard to […]
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