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Two weeks ago the Supreme Court rejected an effort by a dodgy right wing activists to destroy an $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural communities to the internet. The plaintiff in the case, a fake right wing “consumer group,” had tried to argue that the bipartisan subsidy (the Universal Service Fund, or USF) was an “illegal tax” the FCC lacked the authority to charge. They lost the...
There is an epidemic of magical thinking. An unwillingness to confront reality. Because reality is scary.
This affliction cuts across all ideological lines, manifesting in different forms but serving the same function: allowing us to avoid the difficult truths about what it will actually take to preserve human dignity, meaning, and freedom in the face of forces designed to eliminate all three.
We...
We haven’t talked about the numbers in America’s measles outbreak in a couple of months, but that certainly doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. It was back in April that we wrote about how the numbers were on pace to eclipse the outbreak in 2019, which was largely driven by unvaccinated religious groups in New York State, in large part due to both the long-term advocacy against vaccination by...
Techdirt has just written about how people are using Ring doorbell cameras to warn others in the area about the presence of ICE agents and the risk of possible ICE raids. That’s a good example of using existing technology to monitor the increasingly widespread and brutal activities of ICE teams. But driven by a desire to counter the US government’s moves, people are also coming up with new...
Visual Studio Professional 2022 is a fully featured development environment that developers around the world know and love. The 64-bit IDE makes it easier to work with even bigger projects and more complex workloads. Enhance your productivity, write high-quality code, and re-imagine collaboration with an advanced suite of tools and built-in integrations to tackle the most challenging development...
Martial law still appears to be the plan. The rollout has been limited, but the wholly unnecessary deployment of military troops to California sent a message our performative president wanted to get across.
Trump sent an even more explicit one days later, following up on DHS boss Kristi Noem’s quasi-declaration of war on this “democrat” state — one that is host to vehement protests against ICE,...
Techdirt has always made it very clear that broadband usage caps on fixed-line broadband are bullshit.
The costly and confusing restrictions serve no legitimate technical function. They don’t help your ISP “manage congestion.” They exist simply as a way for giant companies like Comcast to nickel-and-dime captive customers in uncompetitive broadband markets. Market failure created by their own...
Sheriff Christina Corpus is on the cusp of being an ex-sheriff and the first sheriff removed from office in San Mateo County via a county board vote. But her term as sheriff started a lot more promisingly. Running as a reformer, Corpus won the primary and the job, defeating Carlos Bolanos, who had definitely done little to earn the public’s trust during his extended term in office.
Her opponent...
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 round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben...
Washington State recently became the eighth U.S. state to pass new right to repair legislation making it cheaper and easier to repair technology you own. At this point, roughly one-third of Americans now live in a state where some form of right to repair law has been passed, usually with broad, bipartisan, overwhelming public support.
But according to a new report by U.S. PIRG, most industries...