As Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out raids across the country, the agency is working rapidly to expand an online surveillance system that could potentially track millions of users on the web. Federal records uncovered by The Lever reveal that ICE is paying $5.7 million to use an AI-powered social media monitoring platform called Zignal […]
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, was pardoned by President Trump today, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move comes after months of lobbying by the company and Zhao’s own efforts to boost the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. In April of 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in […]
The national database on billion-dollar weather and climate disasters has found a new home after the Trump administration decided to ax it earlier this year. Thanks to researchers continuing the work despite a lack of federal support, we can keep the tally going this year — which is already proving to be one of the […]
Robby Starbuck is suing Google, claiming that its AI search tools falsely linked him to sexual assault allegations and white nationalist Richard Spencer. This is the second case that Starbuck, known for his online campaigns against corporate diversity efforts, has brought against a major tech company over its AI products. In April, Starbuck sued Meta, […]
Kin Lane fondly remembers working on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 2013. FAFSA is used by millions of college students each year to help access scholarship money, and Lane, an API expert, had an up-close look at the system. He saw the importance of ensuring financial data remains stored securely and can […]
Hello and welcome to Regulator. Of all the strange, unintended consequences stemming from major lawsuits, I never thought that the Trump administration’s power to force Apple to remove ICE-tracking mobile apps from its stores could have been connected to a legal battle over Fortnite V-Bucks. Yes, we are talking about the in-game digital currency that […]
Two days from today, October 22nd, was Google’s deadline to begin opening up its app store, stop forcing developers to use Google Play Billing, let them set their own prices, and more, following Epic’s repeated wins in Epic v. Google. But both Epic and Google have just successfully and mysteriously argued for one final week’s […]
By the time I arrived, the waterfront park in downtown Portland, Oregon was already awash with people as far as the eye could see. The No Kings protest in June had turned out around 10,000 people across the city; this one saw several times that number just downtown, with thousands more choosing to join localized […]
Saturday marked the biggest day of protest since the start of Donald Trumps’ second term. Organizers of the No Kings protests estimated that over seven million people took to the streets to declare their opposition to the president, his policies, and his tactics. Indivisible, the group behind the protests, claims that there were over 2,700 […]
The Department of Energy (DOE) released a new roadmap for the US to realize the decades-long dream of harnessing fusion energy. It’s a commitment to support research and development efforts and pursue public-private partnerships to finally build the first generation of fusion power plants. And of course, the plan hypes up AI as both a […]