Flock Safety has been on the wrong side of the press cycle — if not the wrong side of history — for most of the last couple of years. Flock’s automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are more comprehensive than many of those previously deployed by law enforcement agencies. Not only do they capture plate/location data, […]

Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post simply isn’t what it used to be. During the Trump era Bezos and his lackeys have fired all of the paper’s black columnists, turned the op-ed section into pro-corporatist agitprop, censored cartoonists that criticized Jeff, and generally shifted the paper’s journalistic tone in a more right wing, corporate/autocrat-friendly direction. You know, like the […]

To say that Donald Trump has been waging an ideological war against the American free press would be an understatement in the extreme. Even attempting to list out the many, many ways in which he has attempted to threaten, sue, undermine, stifle, chill, attack, and hamstring media outlets would be a waste of time. No […]

With everything else going on in the world, it’s been a while since we’ve dug into a good old-fashioned patent troll story or a bogus defamation SLAPP. Today we’ve got a two-for-one. Leigh Rothschild is a patent troll of some renown — his entities have been connected to over 1,300 patent lawsuits — who regularly […]

The first attempted revenge prosecution of former FBI director James Comey has gone nowhere. Whatever the DOJ didn’t botch directly was undone by Trump’s persistent refusal to adhere to the rules of political appointments. The second attempted prosecution of James Comey isn’t going any better. The Trump DOJ willfully pretended an Instagram photo taken by […]

Many Trump supporters keep insisting that his immigration purges are justified because the people swept up in them came here “illegally,” so who cares if they get kicked out (or shipped off to some random war-torn country). When asked what people seeking asylum should do, the answer is often “do it the legal way.” That […]

Unlock a world of knowledge with a Headway Premium subscription. This exclusive deal gives you unlimited access to Headway’s massive library of 1500+ book summaries, with 30-50 new ones added monthly. Cover any topic you can imagine, from personal development and business strategies to health and wellness. It’s usually on sale for $60 for new users only, […]

Until just recently, Flock never felt it needed to rehabilitate its image, even when several cities were dumping contracts and cameras over persistent surveillance concerns. When cities shut down systems, Flock just kept running. In some cases, it even installed cameras that without proper permits or any other legal authorization. What’s hurting Flock now is […]

Last March it was revealed that the Trump DOJ stabbed its antitrust lawsuit state partners in the back and struck a terrible settlement with Ticketmaster, scuttling a generational opportunity to break up one of the more glaring examples of modern monopoly power. Quite a curious choice for a Trump-addled party that spent all last election […]

If Sony thought that the outrage over its decision to make the next PlayStation entirely disc-less was going to dissipate quickly, it was wrong. There are actually multiple organic campaigns to protest Sony’s decision to ditch physical media now. We already talked about the plans for a purchase and usage blackout of all things PlayStation […]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Political action committees are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all federal election funding, with about US$6.3 billion raised and $4.8 billion spent since January 2025. But their outsized political influence does not just come from their wallets. It’s also generated from their names. […]

Whenever Trump doesn’t like the facts, he calls it “fake news” or does what he’s doing here: tries to shoot the messenger by threatening them with a lawsuit. The administration has been sending National Guard troops to various US cities ever since it became clear its mass deportation efforts weren’t nearly as popular with US […]

We’ve been talking for a while now about how the rush (much of it driven by politicians’ obsession with Jonathan Haidt’s mostly debunked book) to ban kids from social media is dangerously stupid. It misdiagnoses the problem and creates a solution that both does not work and makes actual problems worse. Previous reporting has already […]

StreamSkill has combined seven of their best Office 2021/365 courses to create this awesome Ultimate Microsoft Office 2021/365 Bundle. Whether you’re a student, an office professional, a business owner, a freelancer, or just someone who wants to get started with the most widely used Microsoft programs, this course bundle is for you. Join now and […]

We’ve moved into a new era where the administration’s constant cruelty, violence, and actual murders simply aren’t enough to keep Trump appeased or entertained. ICE is now goosing its arrest numbers by arresting holders of expired visas at domestic airports. Now we’re being treated to additional abject cruelty in the places where boots are on […]

Earlier this month I noted that Elon Musk’s Starlink is giving very unsubtle indications that the company wants to jump into the wireless business. I also noted that there’s a very long list of reasons why this isn’t likely to go well for him, ranging from the extremely high cost of network build-outs, to the […]

This week, MrWilson takes both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a comment about opportunistic ICE arrests: ICE keeps trying to find more victims to prove the false narrative of how many undocumented immigrants there are in the country, so individual agents probably want to make their own abductions to show […]

This Week in 2016 This Week in 2011 This Week in 2006

As you’ll recall, RFK Jr., who is totally not checked out of his job at HHS, has managed to sneak in hosting a government sponsored cooking show in between not doing anything about the country’s problems with measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough, and so on. Well, two episodes are now out, and the reviews are not […]

We’re not going to do a full rehash of the whole Reckless Ben / Bryan Mansell / Bricks & Minifigs saga here. We’ve already got a bunch of stories on it, and there are many other sources. But there is some news in the form of Bricks & Minifigs (BAM) “settling” with Mansell — and […]

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. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]

Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online service is of a certain age) is everywhere. At the time of writing, about half the states in the US have some internet age verification law in place, and dangerous proposals, from the KIDS Act to the Kids Online Safety […]

The Plantum app is a digital tool that helps to identify plants, diagnose plant diseases, and improve plant care. The app can identify over 40,000 plant species, assess their health, and give specific care advice. Plantum offers a suite of digital tools that help users improve plant care by considering light conditions, soil, water schedule, […]

This news will come as no surprise to anyone. Those who have been following police misconduct revelations for years have seen this happen time and time and time and time again. Those who are in the business of engaging in police misconduct have known for years that it’s easy to do and it seldom gets […]

I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime studying and writing about the way corrupted lawmakers and U.S. telecom giants work hand in hand to erode U.S. broadband standards and mapping so they can obscure the way corruption and monopoly result in limited broadband competition — resulting in shitty, expensive, spotty, and slow U.S. internet […]

Of all the things I thought the Trump administration would cause to enter the public lexicon, I certainly did not have screwworms on my list. If you somehow haven’t heard of this, screwworms are actually a fly that lays its eggs by burrowing into the flesh of other animals. Those animals are mostly cattle, sometimes […]

Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav oversaw years of dysfunction during the last wave of pointless Warner Brothers AT&T and Discovery mergers, which included tens of thousands of brutal layoffs, consistent creative infighting, endlessly higher prices, cancelled programming, and endless chaos. Unlike most of us, who’d be shitcanned and ostracized, Zaslav is the kind of affluent […]

After immigration officers murdered two people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the DHS made some noises about outfitting officers with body cameras. Six months later — and following even more killings — nearly every officer was still bereft of state-owned recording devices. The administration offered this excuse for its lack of compliance with its own promises: While talking […]

I spoke a little about this on last week’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech, but now that Anthropic has come out with more details about how its text watermarking works, the debate has shifted into overdrive. Many people are upset about it, even though it appears that Google has already been doing something similar with the output from Gemini. […]

Sure, just about anyone can point and shoot with a camera, but only a true expert can snap a photo that’s worth sharing with the world. From exposure to shutter speed and everything in between, this award-winning training walks you through the nuts and bolts behind capturing truly stunning photos. iPhotography is the leading online […]