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This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others. ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how […]

Much of what we’ve written about regarding the Trump regime’s nonsensical and ridiculous immigration policies have focused on how they’re grabbing people off the streets, or disappearing them to random foreign gulags without due process. But we’ve also talked about the absolute insanity of US immigration policy as it pertains to foreigners traveling to the […]

Just because a constitutional violation is easy to ignore doesn’t make it any less of a constitutional violation. And yet, that was the first defense of Louisiana’s Ten Commandments mandate offered by the governor of the state, Jeff Landry. When asked what he would say to parents who are upset about the Ten Commandments being […]

The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to speed on Amazon Web Services. The courses cover AWS, DevOPs, Kubernetes Mesosphere DC/OS, AWS Redshift, and more. It’s on sale for $39. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]

The Supreme Court this morning took a chainsaw to the First Amendment on the internet, and the impact is going to be felt for decades going forward. In the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier […]

In a day full of terrible Supreme Court rulings there was one bit of good news: in their FCC v. Consumers’ Research ruling, the court rejected a bid by radical right wing Republicans to destroy a popular $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural schools and communities to the internet. The plaintiff in […]

Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It’s basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service. A cornerstone of the supposed company […]

Well, RFK Jr.’s reconstructed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), just concluded its first day of meetings in Atlanta. This was over the objection of GOP Senator Bill Cassidy, who confirmed RFK Jr. to his appointment but called for a delay to ACIP’s meeting after Kennedy terminated all 17 panel members weeks ago and replaced […]

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 […]

For years, we’ve written about the concept of “soft corruption,” which is the idea that there are certain actions that may not mean the full definition of corrupt practices in the legal sense, but are so obviously corrupt that they make people more cynical towards those who claim to represent our interests in the government. […]

Within days of each other, two federal judges in the same district reached completely opposite conclusions about AI training on copyrighted works. Judge William Alsup said it’s likely fair use as transformative. Judge Vince Chhabria said it’s likely infringing because of the supposed impact on the market. Both rulings came out of the Northern District […]

To call the administration’s “worst of the worst” claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It’s not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump’s first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for […]

Splunk is a powerful data platform used to gather information from multiple sources and index it for efficient access. You can then use collected data to create visualizations, analytics, and a variety of automated and security-related functions. With its web-style interface, Splunk is easy to use and is utilized by many companies worldwide. The 2025 Complete […]

While dozens of AI copyright lawsuits wind their way through courts nationwide, Judge William Alsup’s ruling this week in Bartz v. Anthropic stands out — not just because it’s from one of the most thoughtful tech judges on the federal bench, but because it charts a somewhat nuanced path through the copyright minefield that could […]

So you may have seen that Elon Musk’s long-hyped Robotaxis have finally “launched” in Austin. And it’s going just about how you’d expect if you’re familiar with the fit and finish of Elon Musk promises. There are about a dozen Robotaxis now operating; Model Ys with a human observer in the front seat to try […]

A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about a growing risk that we will lose access to the world’s knowledge, because of a failure by traditional academic publishers to place copies of the articles they publish in key backup archives. Although unacceptable, that oversight is more a matter of laziness and cost cutting on the part of […]

We’ve noted more than a few times that media and streaming execs are all out of original ideas. Now that the market has saturated and subscriber growth has slowed, streaming companies have decided to stop giving the public what it wants (few restrictions, low prices, better quality content) in order to provide Wall Street with […]

It’s a bit jarring to be reminded that it was only on June 10th that RFK Jr. decided to fire every member of ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. Those 14 experts had a variety of backgrounds all related to and demonstrating industry experience specifically dealing with vaccination science and policy. They were replaced by […]

There are a few thousand military troops in Los Angeles now, thanks to Trump’s Martial Plan. Local law enforcement officials pointed out they had the situation under control, what with most of the violence (what there was of it that isn’t police violence) limited to a few blocks in downtown LA. The rollout of National […]

Here’s a fun corporate governance puzzle for you. Suppose you’re a foreign company trying to buy an American steel producer. The previous administration blocked your deal. The current president promised during his campaign to block it too, saying he’d stop it “instantaneously. Absolutely.” How do you get the deal approved? If you guessed “write the […]