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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.
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In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben...
We’ve already written several times about the danger posed by adding AI to law enforcement incident/arrest reports. There are a lot of obvious problems, ranging from AI misinterpreting what it’s seeing to it adding so much unsupported gibberish it isn’t the time-saver companies like Axon (formerly Taser) claim it will be.
The cost-effectiveness of relying on AI is pretty much beside the point, at...
Eric Migicovsky, who basically invented the smartwatch category with the original Pebble, just announced something much simpler: a $99 ring with one button that records voice memos. That’s it. No internet connection required, no cloud storage, no subscription fees, no wake words. Press the button, talk, release. Your note is saved locally—either on the ring’s tiny bit of memory or synced to your...
The SunFounder GalaxyRVR Mars Rover Kit is your gateway to hands-on learning on robotics, coding, and Mars-like adventures! Its durable aluminum frame and rocker-bogie suspension easily handle tough terrains, while smart sensors ensure smooth navigation. It’s compatible with the Arduino UNO R3, runs on solar power, and includes real-time FPV with app-based control for day or night adventures....
ICE continues to be increasingly awful as it chases arrest and deportation quotas it will never meet. The administration’s desire to rid this nation of as many migrants as possible is generating new nastiness on a daily basis.
This bit of hideousness will likely have been subsumed several times over by the time you read this, but that doesn’t mean it should pass by unnoticed. The “worst of the...
We’ve covered how there’s a real push afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.
And...
We here at Techdirt have longed complained about the DMCA takedown process being wide open for all kinds of fraud and abuse. At one point years ago, Google reported that nearly 100% of the takedown requests it receives are not the sort of targeted takedowns the creators of the DMCA imagined, but rather more of a carpet-bomb approach. Examples of this sort of thing abound, with much of them...
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.
President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney...
Australia’s social media ban for kids is now in effect. As we’ve discussed, this is a monumentally stupid plan that will do real harm to kids. It’s based on a moral panic and a wide variety of faulty assumptions, including that social media websites are inherently bad for kids, something that none of the evidence supports. And, even if there were harms associated with social media, the way you...
The administration that is busy erasing history from any federal entity tasked with preserving it has an additional ally in the burying-the-bad-news business: Donald Trump, the former president.
Yes, it’s all stupid and weird and incredibly dangerous, but the guy who used to be president has been sued by multiple litigants over his tacit involvement (and deliberate encouragement) of the attack...