For the next three years, perhaps a monthly article summary of all the Trump's Executive Orders or the Trump Admin's actions have been deemed illegal and unconstitutional and overturned by the courts in the last month, with suitable links to the prior Techdirt articles foretelling what was to come. So much losing!
I gotta say that the Funniest / Most Insightful summary is the first thing I MUST read on Sunday mornings! While I try to read all the week's posts, reading some of the insightful remarks often sends back to read an article I may have missed or overlooked based on the headline or topic.
I also enjoy reading the History articles, just to see how the times have changed or not.
Techdirt does an exemplary job going into depth and providing links in each article but so much is happening it's easy to forget where or how these stories evolved over time.
As for new ideas, there have been many topics which have drawn continuing coverage by Techdirt where Mike in particular and other contributors have held key and influential opinions on over time. An occasional article weaving together the past articles, providing the evolved whole story would be nice and very referential.
Think of this suggestion as picking a "filed under" tag and sharing a summary of the related articles on that tag for a given related theme. eg: "law firms", or "media consolidation", or "section 230"; some might need to focus on just a slice.
Even after CBP engaging in some very imaginative extrapolation of this small number ... only raised that number to a little over 3,000 possible TdA gang members, which is far below the number anyone would reasonably believe amounted to an “invasion” by an international criminal cartel with a strong desire to get some terrorism on.
When relying on fictitious, sensationalized accounts a ragtag bunch of leaderless petty criminals failed to instill the requisite level of fear into the citizens minds, the "Acting President of Venezuela" found ~3000 goons to terrorize the populous of Minneapolis to validate the threat foreign gangs might pose. Objective accomplished.
At the very least, the media could point out there is no such medical diagnosis as, "a mind cripping disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME".
Where is the disclaimer "those charges have not been proven in court or by a medical professional?
But if the infectious disease specialists are looking for patient zero, he's orange.
Anyone who has watched ANY of his many W-H Executive Order signing sessions and seen his reactions ("Oh, that's a good one", "Who was in charge of this one?") knows he has not read any of them.
I also question if some of the puppets presenting the EOs to him have any isea what in them either.
It's just like him and the Epstein photos ... "I [have so many pictures taken with me | sign so many EOs], I have no idea [who | what] they are. I'm aure they are all fine [people | EOs ]. I dont know them."
Did not see the clip, but nothing in the story suggests this would be "free". Perhaps "free at the point of use" means the introduction of a "buy now, pay later" healthcare model (4 easy payments ?), when you use your Trump MedBed Card, available to 2nd gen US citizens only?
Mind you that restriction makes it not universal.
And I am pretty sure the American Quackery Association (aQa) is not in the registered healthcare space.
What is the increase in masked individuals (maybe officers) without identification, jumping out of black unmarked Suburbans without identifying themselves and grabbing random people off the streets?
What is the ratio between those incident numbers and those same "officers" claiming they were assaulted while grabbing / kidnapping their targets?
Based on the news reports, in all likelihood the "assault" ratio is probably way down. Statistics are a wonderfully manipulative tool.
Never mind the liberal definition of "assault" applied when the victim is a trained officer in full body armour.
When Kristy Noem explained to the Senate the Latin term Habeus Corpus as,
"It means, 'I have the body', and I will dispose of it in whatever country the President directs me to, unless he says otherwise, which is his right".
Perhaps she misheard the question as "Habemus Corpus, which is "we have the body".
So Comcast finally ran out of options on what competitors to merge with and no one wants the divisions they want to spin off.
So the execs finally had to get down to business and learn what it is their business! That doesn't seem right.
The Trump admin tells Amazon it can't break out real gov't bimposwd costs amd must show only the top-line price. But Airlines, Telcos and others are allowed to make up fake gov't fees amd added costs to deliberately obsure what it costs them to provide the basic service?
One question,'cos I'm no rocket scientist and accounting is hard ..
If X owned 25% of xAI, now diluted to 12.5%, and xAI was valued at $80B, then does the $10B of xAI that X owns go down under an asset, a liability or a rounding error?
Howard Lutnik will soon be touting this as Musk's best deal ever, because even though X is a private company, its valuation has tanked along with the rest of the market, so tne $45B valuation is a real bargain and xAI can only skyrocket from now on! Trump should be sobjealous of this genius!
So disappointed you broke this story; now they'll know!
Trump has said America is Great Again, therefore no Americans could possibly need "rescuing"! This Biden bill is a fraud, it's waste of taxpayer money and is abusing the telcos authority to gouge the consumer in a free market! DOGE must act now to protect America from cheaper internets!
“Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said. “In fact, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent.”
Well, you can't get any more "maximally transparent" tjan wearing no clothes!
Child: why is the Emperor wearing no clothes?
Adult: The Emperor's DOGEs are spinning a yarn to be made into while cloth as we speak. Receipts to follow soon.
“This Week In Techdirt History:" has always provided an enlightening weekend reflection on the the past, bringing back to the fore important stories we may have forgotten about.
But in the here and now, there is so much crazy, dangerous and illegal shit Trump and his minions are saying and doing every day. Mike and the great staff at Techdirt are doing an excellent job reporting on it. It's all so overhwelming that some important stuff just slips your mind by the weekend or just not had time to read during the week.
What is needed for these times is a weekly summary, "This Week in Trumpdirt History:" !
"This Week in Trumpdirt History:" would provide a succient summary of the week's torrent of activity, tieing the week's Trump stories in a "cohesive" (if not coherent) thread linking back to the original Techdirt stories just as this column does for Techdirt stories.
Keep up the great reporting, team!
Oh that's right, they got rid of that first.
A well designed IT delivery system (process, not SW/HW) should have sufficient IT controls to detect, if not prevent, and certainly have the capacity to rollback any changes.
Anyone familiar with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act knows it basically says never allow the same person transact both sides of the ledger. The law was enacted in 2002 as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and WorldCom. It would be unconscionable if Congress did not impose similar controls on its own systems.
In this case, the change initiator (coder) must not implement it (deploy to Prod). Any changes to Prod should be detected by monitoring systems. Those changes must correlate to approved changes. "Approved changes" must correlate what was deployed matches what was changed AND the changes MUST correspond to what was the agreed change (ie: the requirement).
Such a system would detect a direct change to Prod or an unapproved change to code that was deployed. Advanced systems will also track changes to authorizations/permissions or even new newtork connections (ie: http requests to/from unknown hosts.
For all this to work you must have oversight. That extends to validating processes and controls are in place, are sufficent and effective and are regularly audited and evaluated. That's why the first thing Trump eliminated was the Inspector General positions; the oversight and auditors.
Enron's $63 billion failure made it the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history until Worldcom the following year in 2002. Those reeked havoc on financial markets. It is difficult to imagine the impact fraud on multi-trillion enterprise like the US Gov't could have on the world.
It was on Nov 14,2024 that the Onatrio Gov't awarded Starlink the contract.
In contrast to some of the other Ontario Connects-Bringing high-speed internet access to every community in Ontario initiatives, spending C$100M to bring connectivity to 15000 people in some of Ontario's most remote communities is a prudent investment. A different C$30M project only enabled 670 connections across 5 remote communities.
How remote? Some communities to be served are up to 500 miles North of Thunder Bay (which itself Canadians think is way North) across barren tundra. They are not connected to the power grid and generator fuel can only be flown in or trucked along ice roads only in months when the ground (or lakes) are sufficently frozen. If it's too expesnsive to supply a year round road or power, forget fibre!
Unlike US providers claiming they won't/can't connect fiber to homes mere blocks away from existing connections or charging $10K+, this is legit uneconomical.
That said, Ford had little choice to acquience im the optimistic hope the tariff reversal is permanent. That's how diplomatic gestures work, even if the other side no longer understands diplomacy; it's the polite thing to do.
However, Canadians should ask Ontario and Canada why they did not choose to invest in a Telesat solution? Telesat is a Canadian gov't established satellite communications company created to provide remote connectivity. They launched the world’s first commercial domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit and also offered the first direct-to-home (DTH) television service. If this carries on, time to look at domoestic alternatives.
It was never half, not even close.
Approximately 245 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2024 general election Of those who voted, Trump got 77,303,573 votes (49.9%).
That's just about 31% of eligible voters who voted for him. If you consider the entire US population of 335 million, only about 23% voted for him.
Even then, some may have voted for only one reason (inflation reducution, immigration reform, drill baby drill, always Republican, cult worhsip) or a few of those.
Absolutely no one voted for eveything, everywhere, all at omce, including the newly made up stuff, invading Canada, Greenland and Panana, a bitcoin reserve (funded by looting tne Treasury),defund California, cut all spcial spending and aid, or the complete destruction of the entire government apparatus (OK, maybe Bannon did) or the willful defiance of the laws of the US (with Supreme Court approval).
What if this were happening somewhere else in the world?
Here's a possible report on that:
Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government
Are you worried/terrified yet? Most of the rest of world certainly is, both for you (Americans) and for the rest of us.
How did Trump/Trump Admin lose this week?
For the next three years, perhaps a monthly article summary of all the Trump's Executive Orders or the Trump Admin's actions have been deemed illegal and unconstitutional and overturned by the courts in the last month, with suitable links to the prior Techdirt articles foretelling what was to come. So much losing!
Weekend recall
I gotta say that the Funniest / Most Insightful summary is the first thing I MUST read on Sunday mornings! While I try to read all the week's posts, reading some of the insightful remarks often sends back to read an article I may have missed or overlooked based on the headline or topic. I also enjoy reading the History articles, just to see how the times have changed or not. Techdirt does an exemplary job going into depth and providing links in each article but so much is happening it's easy to forget where or how these stories evolved over time. As for new ideas, there have been many topics which have drawn continuing coverage by Techdirt where Mike in particular and other contributors have held key and influential opinions on over time. An occasional article weaving together the past articles, providing the evolved whole story would be nice and very referential. Think of this suggestion as picking a "filed under" tag and sharing a summary of the related articles on that tag for a given related theme. eg: "law firms", or "media consolidation", or "section 230"; some might need to focus on just a slice.
Lawless gang of ~3000 criminals terrorizing cities
At the very least, the media could point out there is no such medical diagnosis as, "a mind cripping disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME". Where is the disclaimer "those charges have not been proven in court or by a medical professional? But if the infectious disease specialists are looking for patient zero, he's orange.
What am I signing?
Anyone who has watched ANY of his many W-H Executive Order signing sessions and seen his reactions ("Oh, that's a good one", "Who was in charge of this one?") knows he has not read any of them. I also question if some of the puppets presenting the EOs to him have any isea what in them either. It's just like him and the Epstein photos ... "I [have so many pictures taken with me | sign so many EOs], I have no idea [who | what] they are. I'm aure they are all fine [people | EOs ]. I dont know them."
Read the fine print
lies, damn lies and statistics
What is the increase in masked individuals (maybe officers) without identification, jumping out of black unmarked Suburbans without identifying themselves and grabbing random people off the streets? What is the ratio between those incident numbers and those same "officers" claiming they were assaulted while grabbing / kidnapping their targets? Based on the news reports, in all likelihood the "assault" ratio is probably way down. Statistics are a wonderfully manipulative tool. Never mind the liberal definition of "assault" applied when the victim is a trained officer in full body armour.
Latin misunderstanding
When Kristy Noem explained to the Senate the Latin term Habeus Corpus as, "It means, 'I have the body', and I will dispose of it in whatever country the President directs me to, unless he says otherwise, which is his right". Perhaps she misheard the question as "Habemus Corpus, which is "we have the body".
That's how business works? !
So Comcast finally ran out of options on what competitors to merge with and no one wants the divisions they want to spin off. So the execs finally had to get down to business and learn what it is their business! That doesn't seem right.
Huh?
The Trump admin tells Amazon it can't break out real gov't bimposwd costs amd must show only the top-line price. But Airlines, Telcos and others are allowed to make up fake gov't fees amd added costs to deliberately obsure what it costs them to provide the basic service?
Best deal ever(
One question,'cos I'm no rocket scientist and accounting is hard .. If X owned 25% of xAI, now diluted to 12.5%, and xAI was valued at $80B, then does the $10B of xAI that X owns go down under an asset, a liability or a rounding error? Howard Lutnik will soon be touting this as Musk's best deal ever, because even though X is a private company, its valuation has tanked along with the rest of the market, so tne $45B valuation is a real bargain and xAI can only skyrocket from now on! Trump should be sobjealous of this genius!
Oh No!
So disappointed you broke this story; now they'll know! Trump has said America is Great Again, therefore no Americans could possibly need "rescuing"! This Biden bill is a fraud, it's waste of taxpayer money and is abusing the telcos authority to gouge the consumer in a free market! DOGE must act now to protect America from cheaper internets!
et tu, Mar a Lago
I am just waiting for the EO to drop mandating the official renaming of "The Southern White House'.
who needs cloth?
“Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said. “In fact, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent.” Well, you can't get any more "maximally transparent" tjan wearing no clothes! Child: why is the Emperor wearing no clothes? Adult: The Emperor's DOGEs are spinning a yarn to be made into while cloth as we speak. Receipts to follow soon.
Things Elon tells his 4 year old
Things Elon tells his 4 year old ... Don't forget to SCHUTT the front door or you'll let the DOGE out!
New weekly column idea
“This Week In Techdirt History:" has always provided an enlightening weekend reflection on the the past, bringing back to the fore important stories we may have forgotten about. But in the here and now, there is so much crazy, dangerous and illegal shit Trump and his minions are saying and doing every day. Mike and the great staff at Techdirt are doing an excellent job reporting on it. It's all so overhwelming that some important stuff just slips your mind by the weekend or just not had time to read during the week. What is needed for these times is a weekly summary, "This Week in Trumpdirt History:" ! "This Week in Trumpdirt History:" would provide a succient summary of the week's torrent of activity, tieing the week's Trump stories in a "cohesive" (if not coherent) thread linking back to the original Techdirt stories just as this column does for Techdirt stories. Keep up the great reporting, team!
Where"s the oversight?
Oh that's right, they got rid of that first. A well designed IT delivery system (process, not SW/HW) should have sufficient IT controls to detect, if not prevent, and certainly have the capacity to rollback any changes. Anyone familiar with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act knows it basically says never allow the same person transact both sides of the ledger. The law was enacted in 2002 as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and WorldCom. It would be unconscionable if Congress did not impose similar controls on its own systems. In this case, the change initiator (coder) must not implement it (deploy to Prod). Any changes to Prod should be detected by monitoring systems. Those changes must correlate to approved changes. "Approved changes" must correlate what was deployed matches what was changed AND the changes MUST correspond to what was the agreed change (ie: the requirement). Such a system would detect a direct change to Prod or an unapproved change to code that was deployed. Advanced systems will also track changes to authorizations/permissions or even new newtork connections (ie: http requests to/from unknown hosts. For all this to work you must have oversight. That extends to validating processes and controls are in place, are sufficent and effective and are regularly audited and evaluated. That's why the first thing Trump eliminated was the Inspector General positions; the oversight and auditors. Enron's $63 billion failure made it the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history until Worldcom the following year in 2002. Those reeked havoc on financial markets. It is difficult to imagine the impact fraud on multi-trillion enterprise like the US Gov't could have on the world.
Connecting North of the moddle of nowhere
It was on Nov 14,2024 that the Onatrio Gov't awarded Starlink the contract. In contrast to some of the other Ontario Connects-Bringing high-speed internet access to every community in Ontario initiatives, spending C$100M to bring connectivity to 15000 people in some of Ontario's most remote communities is a prudent investment. A different C$30M project only enabled 670 connections across 5 remote communities. How remote? Some communities to be served are up to 500 miles North of Thunder Bay (which itself Canadians think is way North) across barren tundra. They are not connected to the power grid and generator fuel can only be flown in or trucked along ice roads only in months when the ground (or lakes) are sufficently frozen. If it's too expesnsive to supply a year round road or power, forget fibre! Unlike US providers claiming they won't/can't connect fiber to homes mere blocks away from existing connections or charging $10K+, this is legit uneconomical. That said, Ford had little choice to acquience im the optimistic hope the tariff reversal is permanent. That's how diplomatic gestures work, even if the other side no longer understands diplomacy; it's the polite thing to do. However, Canadians should ask Ontario and Canada why they did not choose to invest in a Telesat solution? Telesat is a Canadian gov't established satellite communications company created to provide remote connectivity. They launched the world’s first commercial domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit and also offered the first direct-to-home (DTH) television service. If this carries on, time to look at domoestic alternatives.
Not half
An International perspective
What if this were happening somewhere else in the world? Here's a possible report on that: Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government Are you worried/terrified yet? Most of the rest of world certainly is, both for you (Americans) and for the rest of us.