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John Carmack: Calm Down About Video Game AI Tech Demos, Folks

2 months 1 week ago
The fear over industry disruptions due to technological advances is so predictable that we have the entire “buggy whip” analogy pre-built to rebut it. For the uninitiated, the analogy harkens back to when the automobile came into wide circulation and the disruption it had on the makers of horse buggy tools, like the whip for […]
Dark Helmet

Otherwise Objectionable: Can Section 230 Survive In An AI-Driven World?

2 months 1 week ago
As Artificial Intelligence reshapes the internet landscape, we’re watching history repeat itself: The same people who fundamentally misunderstood Section 230’s role in enabling the modern internet are now making eerily similar mistakes about how we should approach AI regulation. This week’s episode of Otherwise Objectionable dives into these parallel debates, exploring both how Section 230’s […]
Mike Masnick

60 Minutes Producer Quits After Trump FCC Harassment, Saying Show Can No Longer Do Independent Journalism

2 months 1 week ago
Last fall  Trump sued CBS claimed (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense. CBS/Paramount is looking […]
Karl Bode

Another Court Says Trump Admin Needs To Stop Randomly Renditioning People To El Salvador

2 months 1 week ago
The Trump administration’s attempt to rendition people to El Salvador without due process has hit another judicial roadblock. Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado has blocked the government from using the improper Alien Enemies Act to remove noncitizens from the US without due process. The administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is both legally absurd […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2025 Embedded Systems Engineer Mastery Bundle

2 months 1 week ago
Embedded systems are at the heart of modern innovation, powering everything from smart devices to automotive technology. This Embedded Systems Engineer Mastery Bundle has 10 courses to help equip you with the skills to design, program, and implement microcontroller-based solutions. Gain hands-on experience with Arduino, PIC, and ESP32, master C programming for embedded applications, and […]
Daily Deal

DOJ Learning In The Abrego Garcia Case That Judges Don’t Like Being Lied To

2 months 1 week ago
When a federal judge starts calling out government lawyers for “willful and bad faith” behavior and “deliberate evasion of fundamental discovery obligations,” you know things have gotten serious. But in the case of Abrego Garcia — the man who the DOJ admitted they accidentally sent to a Salvadoran gulag without due process — the DOJ […]
Mike Masnick

5th Circuit Obediently Lets AT&T Off The Hook For Major Location Data Privacy Violations

2 months 1 week ago
For decades, major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile collected vast troves of sensitive user location and movement data, then sold access to any random nitwit with two nickels to rub together. The result was a parade of scandals wherein everybody from stalkers , law enforcement (or people pretending to be law enforcement), car companies, governments, and right wing […]
Karl Bode

Techdirt Podcast Episode 415: The Problems With Age Verification

2 months 1 week ago
Support us on Patreon » It’s hard to create a law about children online without first identifying who the children are. We’ve written a lot about the problems that arise with mandated age verification, and a new paper by Eric Goldman, The “Segregate-and-Suppress” Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online, digs into why the entire popular approach […]
Leigh Beadon

Daily Deal: LabsDigest Subscription

2 months 1 week ago
LabsDigest is built for those who learn best by doing. Whether you’re preparing for a CompTIA certification or diving into Python development, our platform offers interactive labs that simulate real-world tasks—no passive watching or reading, just real experience. Work through performance-based exercises for CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, and more, or sharpen your coding skills with […]
Daily Deal

Harvard Goes To Court To Stop Trump Nonsense

2 months 1 week ago
Last week, we wrote about Harvard showing a bit of institutional courage in telling the Trump administration to fuck off with its demands that the university fire certain professors, change its curriculum, and allow government oversight of campus activities. In response, Trump escalated things, as he tends to do, cutting off over $2 billion in […]
Mike Masnick

Verizon CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath Gives Predictably Wimpy Response To Being Bullied By Radical Trump FCC

2 months 1 week ago
For decades, telecom giants like Verizon reacted hysterically every single time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tried to do anything to protect consumers or hold telecom giants accountable. I spent decades covering it as a telecom policy reporter. Whether privacy rules or popular net neutrality rules, Verizon (and its lobbying proxies at various think tanks) […]
Karl Bode

Industry Begins Embracing True Fans, Super Fans, Core Fans As An Alternative Way To Fund Creators

2 months 1 week ago
Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) concluded with a look at “true fans,” an alternative way of funding creators that avoids the main problems of the current copyright system. The approach is based on nurturing the connection between artists and their most dedicated fans, allowing the former to generate extra revenue by providing the […]
Glyn Moody

A New One: House Speaker Blames Video Games For Medicaid ‘Abuse’

2 months 1 week ago
I guess it’s good to know there are still surprises left for me in this universe. We have talked about the common absurdity in which video games are blamed for all manner of things. It’s the moral panic of our time. Video games are blamed for violence, for supposed addictions, for violence, for the eventual […]
Dark Helmet

RIP John Roberts’s Summer Vacation

2 months 1 week ago
At 1:15am early Saturday morning the Supreme Court, in just a few lines of text, did something that was both small and huge: It “directed” the government not to remove anyone detained in the Northern District of Texas (or, more specifically, “All noncitizens in custody in the Northern District of Texas who were, are, or […]
Cathy Gellis