For a brief moment last week, Donald Trump acknowledged what everyone already knew — that the US government could bring Abrego Garcia home from the El Salvador torture facility known as CECOT, where he was wrongly sent in what the administration claims was an “administrative error.” But within days, Trump’s administration was back to mocking […]
In recent years the Garmin line of smartwatches had an advantage over an increasingly crowded smart watch field. Unlike Google/FitBit, they were avoiding hiding a lot of features behind annoying subscription paywalls. Looking to goose quarterly earnings and give investors that impossible, sweet, perpetual growth they crave, Fitbit has been increasingly putting more and more […]
It’s been a while but we’ve got a double-winner this week from Thad, with a comment that took both first place for insightful and second place for funny, in response to the 9-0 Supreme Court ruling about Abrego Garcia: Wow, I never realized that Thomas, Alito, and all three of Trump’s appointees were Marxists. In […]
Today, we’re kicking off our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ll be going through all six winners in no particular order, starting today with the winner in the Best Remix category: Accoutrements by Nora Katz. Nora Katz is one of our returning winners […]
Many of you may be familiar with the brilliant writer A.R. Moxon, writer of the excellent “The Reframe” newsletter. Last year, he moved The Reframe from Substack to Ghost, and has now written about that experience. It’s an interesting read that we thought many here might enjoy as well, and Moxon was kind enough to […]
Instead of doing things like protecting consumers or telecom and media market competition (you know, his purported job), Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has spent his first few months in office abusing agency authority to threaten companies that refuse to kiss the Trump administration’s ass, or harass telecom companies that aren’t sexist or racist enough for […]
The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, […]
Abrego Garcia is being held incommunicado in a foreign torture camp. As far as anyone knows, he has no idea that he is the subject of a Supreme Court ruling and a high-profile legal battle to get him home. He likely doesn’t even know if his family, or anyone else, knows where he is. We […]
So you may have noticed that the media red carpet has been rolled out for Ezra Klein’s new book, “Abundance.” I don’t think the premise of the book is particularly original or challenging: that government should promise and efficiently deliver big things that genuinely help the public. But as we noted last week, I had […]
The EU Commission spent most of 2024 getting knocked around by opponents of its anti-encryption efforts. While it did find some support from countries with, shall we say, more authoritarian urges, most countries that still actually cared about security and privacy pushed back, resulting in the Commission putting encryption backdoors on the back burner until […]
We predicted earlier this week that the Supreme Court would need to weigh in on the Abrego Garcia case. Now it has done so with a striking unanimous order that rejects the DOJ’s attempt to wash its hands of what it admits was “accidentally” trafficking Garcia to El Salvador — a country he had protected […]
We’ve noted for years how the “smart” TV sector is at the forefront of enshittification. It’s a sector full of companies that have doubled down on annoying ads and surveillance to the detriment of the customer. And while absolutely fixated on monetizing consumer surveillance data, it routinely fails to put anywhere close to the same […]
SpaceX’s Starlink service can be a big improvement for those completely out of range of broadband access. But contrary to what many Republicans and c-tier comedians turned fascism apologist podcasters imply, Starlink is not magic. And it comes with a growing list of caveats. Including the increasingly unhinged behavior and far right political alliances of its conspiratorial, […]
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.
The current rapid advances in generative AI are built on three things. Computing power, some clever coding, and vast amounts of training data. Lots of money can buy you more of the first two, but finding the necessary training material is increasingly hard. Anyone seeking to bolster their competitive advantage through training needs to find […]
For four years, Trump supporters regularly exploited the federal judiciary, carefully selecting friendly judges in single-judge districts to block Biden administration policies through nationwide injunctions. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, with courts regularly ruling against Trump’s executive actions, they’re crying foul — claiming an army of “radical leftist” judges has secretly […]
Whether you’re a science enthusiast, history buff, or technology geek, Curiosity Stream has something for everyone. Unleash the power of on-demand streaming that allows you to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and where you want to watch it. From the comfort of your living room to the remote […]
What a surprise. The man who clearly doesn’t understand tariffs doesn’t understand drug trafficking. President Trump has repeatedly claimed the flow of illicit Fentanyl into the United States justifies hitting countries like Mexico, China, and Canada(???) with super-high tariffs, under the weird assumption that starting a trade war is the best move to make in […]
During Trump 1.0, his captured FCC took at absolute hatchet to what was left of 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 has been a rise in local news deserts and […]
Last year, we discussed Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson’s opposition to a trademark application from retired Hall of Fame QB Troy Aikman for the word and number “Eight.” While these sorts of oppositions don’t traditionally see us caping for them, this case was a bit different. Jackson’s registered trademarks were not merely for the term […]
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