Pure Tech

Techdirt

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Ajit Pai put the final bullet in net neutrality and decided to move forward with unconstitutional rulemaking on Section 230, while Clarence Thomas joined the brigade of opposing 230, and Congress...

Techdirt

While we chronicled the fall of Nikola, a company that promised over-the-road trucks built with hydrogen propulsion systems, it’s useful to note that it was literally only this past February that the company declared bankruptcy. What came...

Techdirt

New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety’s surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and the Johnson County Sheriff that...

Techdirt

The lawsuit between Palworld maker PocketPair and The Pokémon Co. (Nintendo included) is still ongoing. As the litigation progresses, PocketPair has been patching out some of the very content and gameplay mechanics that the Pokémon people...

Techdirt

In what may be the most legally absurd aftermath of a rap battle in hip-hop history, Drake’s preposterously silly lawsuit against Universal Music has met its predictable end. The artist sued his own record label—not Kendrick Lamar...

Techdirt

Right up front, I want to state that this is a very personal post. While it obviously draws from my many years of writing for Techdirt, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am expressing my own opinions about everything discussed...

Techdirt

Linux and UNIX operating systems have become increasingly popular in commercial computing environments. Due to their rapid growth in today’s businesses, Linux/UNIX administrators have also become very much in demand. The Linux/UNIX...

Techdirt

Last week we covered how Trump’s immigration theater was pulling federal agents off child sex crimes, drug interdiction, and terrorism investigations to chase landscapers and line cooks instead. Turns out that was just the tip of the...

Techdirt

California this week signed a new law that tries to prevent your landlord and broadband ISP from teaming up and preventing you from using broadband competitors. Starting January 1, AB1414 requires that landlords “allow the tenant...

Techdirt

Measles is so back, baby! I know, you had thought we were done talking about this vile disease. After all, the outbreak that started in Texas among communities that are relatively unvaccinated finally slowed down at the tail end of the...

Techdirt

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...

Techdirt

Americans are not peasants. We are citizens of a republic founded on the revolutionary proposition that ordinary people can govern themselves. This isn’t poetry or aspiration—it’s the foundational premise of the American project. And right...

Techdirt

It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t choice appearing on the California ballot this Election Day: choose gerrymandering, or have gerrymandering chosen for you. It’s an ugly decision to be forced to make. But, for the moment, at...

Techdirt

As far as the Trump administration is concerned, there’s only one crime worth targeting: not being white. Despite ICE now being the best-funded federal law enforcement agency and military troops being scrambled to any area of the country...

Techdirt

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...

Techdirt

JD Vance thinks praising Hitler and talking about putting political enemies into death chambers is harmless “kids being kids,” but criticizing Charlie Kirk is somehow deserving of state-supported punishment. It sure looks like he’s got...

Techdirt

Back in May we noted how Trump illegally declared he was unilaterally destroying the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act, lying repeatedly that the law was “racist” and “unconstitutional.” The law, passed as part of the infrastructure...

Techdirt

It’s story time! I came home from the grocery store over this past weekend very proud. I rushed to tell my wife about how I was complimented in the check out line by the very nice woman behind me. She mentioned that she was impressed by...

Techdirt

This will obviously work out well for Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt. After all, he’s lobbing this criticism in the direction of a presidential administration known for its tolerance of dissent and its refusal to use its considerable power...

Techdirt

When a school district sues social media companies claiming they can’t educate kids because Instagram filters exist, that district is announcing to the world that it has fundamentally failed at its core mission. That’s exactly what New...

Techdirt

Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for...

Techdirt

Instantly become a color expert with the Nix Mini 3 Color Sensor. This portable device puts all paint fan decks in your pocket, offering access to over 200,000 brand-name paint colors and essential color codes like RGB, HEX, and CMYK....

Techdirt

You may recall a year or so ago, when Mark Zuckerberg whined to Jim Jordan about how the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain… content.” Or maybe you remember when he went on Joe Rogan and...

Techdirt

Almost every time people protest the government, the government decides to get on the wrong side of the law. This is something every administration is guilty of, but under Trump, attacking protesters and journalists has become the rule,...

Techdirt

For many many years, experts have warned about massive longstanding flaws in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signaling System 7), a series of protocols used by cellular networks hackers can exploit to track user...

Techdirt

Walled Culture first wrote about Piracy Shield, Italy’s automated system for tackling alleged copyright infringement in the streaming sector, two years ago. Since then, we have written about the serious problems that soon...

Techdirt

The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political organization. It has transformed into a corrupt, immoral, and criminal enterprise that serves the interests of one man’s power while systematically destroying the constitutional...

Techdirt

Support us on Patreon » Techdirt recently passed its 28th anniversary as an independent online media outlet. Once, it looked like such outlets might take over, but then most were scooped up by traditional media or grew into more...

Techdirt

When 47 out of 65 federal judges tell The New York Times that the Supreme Court is mishandling its emergency docket and creating a “judicial crisis,” you might think a Supreme Court Justice would show some humility about the criticism....

Techdirt

Networks are all around us and you are using one right now to access this course. The Internet is extremely important in modern life today and this reliance is only predicted to continue with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in...

Techdirt

It’s a meme so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. And like plenty of memes with this sort of pedigree, its origins are humble: just another article by The Onion (or rather its Clickhole offshoot). You know the face and you know the...

Techdirt

Elon Musk’s promises on government spending cuts have followed a predictable trajectory: slash $2 trillion, then $1 trillion, then a mere $150 billion. Now we have the final accounting from the Congressional Budget Office: DOGE didn’t just...

Techdirt

Six former Surgeons General have gotten together to publicly pen an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the dangers of RFK Jr. The post is fairly long and, frankly, reads as though all six of them are part of a Techdirt fan club for...

Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a reply to someone pushing back on calling the Trump administration fascist: No, it isn’t. Regardless of how you feel about Democrat-led government...

Techdirt

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Reps. Gabbard and Gosar brought out the ridiculous House companion to one of the Senate’s anti-Section 230 bills, while Donald Trump got on board the “repeal 230” bandwagon even though it was copyright...

Techdirt

My cancer is back. This is disappointing but not unexpected; of the 2/3 of people who survive their first bout with ovarian cancer, 80% usually have it recur at some point. For me it was sooner than expected, and disheartening because,...

Techdirt

Hello from the free state of Illinois! We just talked about Donald Trump’s incurrsion into Chicago and the surrounding area, in which he first sent in a bunch of masked ICE agents to terrorize citizens and immigrants alike, at one point...

Techdirt

In July, a California federal court handed down what should have been considered an obvious decision: of course it violates constitutional rights to consider skin color, spoken language, “accent,” or place of employment sufficient to...

Techdirt

Just when you think corporate content moderation can’t get any more absurd, Apple has managed to redefine “protected class” in a way that would make Orwell proud. According to internal correspondence obtained by Migrant Insider, Apple has...

Techdirt

Microsoft Project 2024 Professional is the ultimate project management tool, designed to help professionals plan, execute, and complete projects with precision and efficiency. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, this...

Techdirt

America isn’t the land of the free. We abandoned that title when we returned Donald Trump to office — the same person who refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and, immediately upon his return to power, pardoned...

Techdirt

When FCC boss Brendan Carr isn’t failing embarrassingly to censor comedians who make the President sad, he’s taking a hatchet to corporate oversight and consumer protection. From weakening robocall enforcement to killing net neutrality,...

Techdirt

Here is a brief timeline of events that got us here. Chicago has had a decline in violent crime and murders over the course of the last several years, with 2025 on pace to mark it as the safest year yet in the city. Despite that plain...

Techdirt

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...

Techdirt

This is who we are now. We are the country that makes people who aren’t white leave the country because they’re not white. And this is according to this administration’s own press release, which celebrates the fact that we’re now the...

Techdirt

A San Francisco supervisor has proposed that police and other city agencies should have no financial consequences for breaking a landmark surveillance oversight law. In 2019, organizations from across the city worked together to...

Techdirt

The 2025 Adobe Graphic Design Bundle has 3 courses designed to help you learn the essentials of graphic design and how to apply those skills to your projects. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You’ll learn all aspects of...

Techdirt

In what may be the most accidentally honest moment of his presidency, Donald Trump just admitted what we’ve been documenting for months: “We took the freedom of speech away.” Yes, that’s literally what he said: For those who’ve been...

Techdirt

It’s not enough to go after the “worst of the worst.” It was never a sustainable effort, what with migrants committing fewer crimes than natural citizens. The attempt to rid the country of as many non-white people as possible under Trump...

Techdirt

“Right wing activism organizations posing as consumer rights groups are trying to make it illegal for the federal government to try and help poor, rural Americans afford broadband,” is a sentence I just had to write. Quick background: the...