Pure Tech

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Here’s a short crash course in U.S. telecom policy. Giant and very unpopular companies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter created regional monopolies that work tirelessly to erode all meaningful competition and oversight,...

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There’s a lot of health news going on in the country right now, in no small part to the absolutely pitiful and pathetic job RFK Jr. is doing heading up HHS. It is a near certainty that by the end of this week, the CDC will have published...

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This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The rich and famous who filed into the Kennedy Center’s opera house in December were there to enjoy one of the...

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This is probably nothing more than another data point in a deluge, but it’s worth pointing out because it’s instructive. Cops are using a whole lot of surveillance tech these days. Flock Safety has been especially aggressive in pursuing...

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A few weeks ago, David Lat went on the Serious Trouble podcast and mentioned that things actually hadn’t turned out that poorly for the craven big law firms that had caved to Donald Trump’s ridiculous attacks on any law firm he didn’t...

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The 2026 Microsoft Azure Architect & Administrator Exam Prep Bundle has 9 courses covering a wide range of Azure skills designed to help you pass your certification exams. Courses also include hands-on sections to help you put into...

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Florida Republicans’ bigoted little piece of speech policing — the former “Stop WOKE Act” — has already been terminated multiple times by federal courts. Two lawsuits with two sets of plaintiffs have generated the same results: a ruling...

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Not long after twelve states sued Paramount claiming its $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers would harm market competition, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed their own lawsuit, warning that the massive debt load from the media...

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In all of our discussions about how the digital revolution has created a system in which people don’t actually own the things they think they’re buying, I get particularly frustrated by the lack of change in it all. We’ve spilled much ink...

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This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In its term that ended last October, the Supreme Court passed an important milestone that went unnoticed: For the...

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Well, it was fun while it lasted. And even while it still (theoretically) lasts, it’s really nothing more than the Fifth Circuit saying rights can violated, but only for 90 days at a time. Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit managed to...

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Last year, the Marco Rubio-run State Department announced that it would start denying visas to people who worked in misinformation/disinformation research, content moderation, fact-checking, or other compliance and trust & safety...

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Opusonix is the workflow-first platform built for music producers and engineers who are tired of endless email chains and scattered files. By centralizing feedback, versions, and tasks in one structured workspace, it helps you cut email...

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Donald Trump believes that being elected president means he should never be challenged, never be asked to justify his actions, and never be given less than absolute loyalty and deference. He also clearly believes the office is there to...

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In late 2024 the Biden FTC under Lina Khan passed new “click to cancel” rules that made it easier to cancel subscriptions and services, promising to punish the worst offenders. It was a direct response to decades of sleazy behavior from...

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Are you currently pooping yourself uncontrollably and want to know why? Well, the CDC made that slightly more difficult last year, but you might just have cyclosporiasis, the unintentional weight loss craze that is gripping parts of the...

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Paramount is now threatening California regulators that they’ll be taking their ball and going home (to Texas? Israel?) after California and 11 other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company’s unpopular $111 billion merger...

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The central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is the growing incompatibility between traditional copyright law and the digital, online world. The culmination of that process was the EU Copyright...

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The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle has 7 online courses designed to help learners build skills that align directly with industry expectations. The focus is on practical tools and languages used by data professionals: Python for...

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Well, well, well. Last month we noted that Judge Kathleen Williams had agreed to reopen the incredibly sketchy case where Donald Trump (as President of the United States) sued his own IRS (which he controls) for $10 billion because a...

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This is pointless escalation, but pointless escalation is this administration’s brand. We already know ICE officers have gone out of their way to aim their phones at protesters and others who try to derail their masked kidnapping squads....

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A dozen states have filed an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount/CBS’ $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. The states argue the deal will undermine market competition, cause untold layoffs, result in higher prices and lower quality...

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I’m not sure who out there is in RFK Jr.’s corner anymore, beyond some unfortunately powerful people in seats of federal power at the moment. That Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has lasted even this long is as absurd as it is dangerous, given the...

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Recently, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027.  The UK...

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I think I’ve extensively explained at this point why the $111 billion merger between Paramount/CBS and Warner Brothers is a gargantuan pile of shit that will indisputably harm labor, consumers, markets, creatives, and potentially even...

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Less than a month ago, Trump secured himself a $400 million plane for free — something he certainly couldn’t have accomplished if he weren’t the president of the United States. It’s no longer a mere appearance of corruption: it’s a...

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We have all wanted to learn a language at some point but it’s hard to get started. Some language learning tools can be complicated and very time-consuming. But with uTalk, you’ll be speaking keywords and phrases in no time, and will start...

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One thing that we’ve heard for many years in covering a variety of ridiculous civil and criminal court cases is the belief that when a crazy case is filed, the person accused of wrongdoing should “just walk into court and tell the judge...

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For years I’ve noted that while Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband system can be very useful for people with no other options (warzones, RVs, boats, rural Americans), the network has struggled to maintain performance as it grows into...

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This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a comment about Wikipedia banning its co-founder: Guy was one of many people involved in the start of Wikipedia, left in a snit to start rival project after rival...

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This Week in 2016 ‘Most Transparent’ President Signs Into Law FOIA Reform Bill That Won’t Affect His Administration Documentary About Freeing Happy Birthday From Copyfraud Comes Out The Day After Happy Birthday Officially Declared Public...

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The long-rumored layoffs at Xbox have come and they are massive. We just recently discussed the mess that Microsoft’s Xbox division has become. An internal email that was sent to staff by CEO Asha Sharma laid out just how bad things were,...

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This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Last month, my colleagues and I published an investigation into a Texas oil refinery startup, America First...

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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...

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Another senior Trump administration official is gleefully showing off his true colors: The current general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published an opinion column with the Heritage Foundation’s news outlet The...

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The All-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Course Bundle has 10 courses designed to teach you about video editing, animations, photography, design, and more. Courses cover popular Adobe products like Lightroom, After Effects, Photoshop, and...

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of developmental psychologist Candice Odgers. I’ve mentioned her and her work on the site many times, and she was a guest on my podcast as well. She actually has expertise and has done the work to look at the...

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To be clear, the FTC under Donald Trump and new boss Andrew Ferguson has been a dangerous embarrassment. Whether it’s the firing of both Democratic Commissioners, the politically motivated investigations, the extremist attacks on trans...

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One of the key tools in the tool belt of the anti-vaxxer has long been VAERS, the voluntarily reporting system for adverse events following vaccinations. People who don’t really understand how any of this works often get very, very...

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Bari Weiss is seeking out friendly interviewers at the New York Times to try and “calm the firestorm engulfing her leadership of CBS News.” By “leadership” of course they mean censoring stories critical of the president, letting Benjamin...

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest sporting event in history. It’s also the most...

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It’s hard to believe that the same people who spent the Biden years screaming that Democrats were “socialists” out to destroy free market capitalism are now cheerfully handing the federal government ownership stakes in private companies....

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The Essential MATLAB and LabVIEW Mega Bundle has 9 courses to help you improve your skills in programming and visualization. You’ll learn the basics of each and then go through hands-on courses building apps, learning about data analysis...

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ICE has already been operating like a paramilitary kidnapping squad. Officers roam through neighborhoods, stake out hardware store parking lots, and even occasionally enjoy some ethnic food just so they can raid the source of hospitality...

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Sony just gave the world another lesson in how they don’t actually own the content they’ve bought digitally generally, and particularly not through Sony’s digital storefronts. Instead, as readers here will largely know, what is actually...

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This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood...

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For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can’t innovate and generally don’t know how...

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The Premium Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Super Bundle is a twelve-course digital toolkit designed to take you from coding novice to AI architect. The curriculum breaks down complex data science concepts into actionable steps,...

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For over a decade, a particular argument keeps resurfacing from well-meaning progressives: the rise of authoritarianism around the globe is a good reason to pass laws suppressing speech. The idea is that somehow, magically, without free...

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Good news!(?) It’s good news of sorts, so we’ll go with a qualified “good news!” here. There’s a little table setting that needs to be done to explain why it’s better now than it was before the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court continued...