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Authoritarian assholes really don’t like public broadcasting. They don’t like it because, in its ideal form, it untethers journalism from the often perverse financial incentives inherent in our consolidated, billionaire-owned, ad-engagement based corporate media.
If we bolstered real independent media or public broadcasting, you might see journalism more interested in telling people the truth...
It was over a decade ago that Mike wrote about the state of New York’s trademark bullying ways when it comes to enforcing its trademarks for “I NY.” Now, it should be obvious just how absurd it is for the state to even hold onto a trademark designed to promote the state, nevermind the manner in which the state government has enforced that mark. But the overall point is that such a broad...
To be sure, the DHS is just going to blow off Senator Wyden’s demands for answers, just as it has blown off congressional oversight, court orders, and pretty much the entirety of the US Constitution. (We’re all just waiting to be told we’re obligated to house National Guard troops sent by the administration to whatever state happens to be irritating him at the moment.)
Last month, Dhruv Merota of...
We’ve seen some pretty ridiculous lawsuits here at Techdirt, but the one that Donald Trump filed on Friday against Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over the article about the birthday card he was alleged to have given Epstein is so legally incompetent that it reads like a masterclass in how not to file a defamation claim.
The complaint is such a train wreck of basic legal errors and...
No matter what the DHS and ICE say about the justification of ICE officers remaining masked during raids, it’s all about avoiding public accountability. DHS boss Kristi Noem says alarmist things about ICE officers being “targeted” or “doxxed,” but it’s all about inflicting America with its own secret police while it undergoes the process of being made great again (for the second time).
The...
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 corners of the globe, your favorite documentaries are just a click away. Discover...
I’ve been warning people since the beginning of the year to expect the Trump regime to use the Twitter Files playbook on the US government and now we’re seeing exactly that play out. Trump is facing a bunch of pushback over the Jeffrey Epstein nonsense, so he needed some big new distraction quickly. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stepped up Friday with a supposed bombshell,...
In a lead up to the last Presidential Election, one of the lies circulated by the Trump camp to befuddle plebs and rubes was that Trump 2.0 was going to be “serious about antitrust reform.” You didn’t have to look far for some baseless claims in the press (or by supposed experts like Matt Stoller) that Trump would “expand on the antitrust legacy of former FTC boss Lina Khan” or “rein in big tech...
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is n00bdragon with a comment about the behavior of Grok and LLMs in general:
LLMs are just bias engines. That’s literally what they do. That’s how they work. They find patterns (biases) and replicate them. Not all biases are bad. Sometimes you want a machine that can find biases so that you can question them. Sometimes you want a machine...
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, we saw a new breed of scammers start abusing the DMCA on YouTube, and a new evolution of copyright trolls abusing the DMCA to take down social media accounts and demanding money to reinstate them. We also saw the debate following the Harper’s letter reach new heights of absurdity with a call for strengthening copyright to fight cancel culture. We wrote about how...