Tech is reshaping the world — and not always for the better. Whether it’s the rules for Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s plan for fighting misinformation, tech platform policies can have enormous ripple effects on the rest of society. They’re so powerful that, increasingly, companies aren’t setting them alone but sharing the fight with government regulators, civil society groups, and internal standards bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board. The result is an ongoing political struggle over harassment, free speech, copyright, and dozens of other issues, all mediated through some of the largest and most chaotic electronic spaces the world has ever seen.
City council meetings across the country have had wild characters for a while, but we’re now seeing literal villains show up in support of mass surveillance. A few weeks ago we saw Darth Vader show up in San Diego in support of Flock cameras, and now we have Dr. Doom showing up in Seattle claiming “total dominion” and that he’ll be watching the entire city.
When someone on an H-1B or another work visa loses their job, they have up to 60 days to find new employment — otherwise they have to leave the country. DHS considering eliminating this grace period, though the policy hasn’t changed yet.
The proposed change is part of the Trump’s broader crackdown on legal immigration. DHS recently raised the cost of H-1B visas again, to a prohibitive $103,000.
Answering your Decoder questions about surveillance, AI coverage, and the Nilay rant.
The New York Times delves into Trump’s mental health through the lens of his increasingly unhinged postings on his also-ran Truth Social platform. Here’s how the White House responded to criticisms:
“Truth Social is the most powerful and popular social media platform in the world because it serves as President Trump’s authentic voice, where he communicates directly with the American people and the world without the biased media taking him out of context.”
[The New York Times]
Remember when it was cheap and easy for me to buy DJI’s banned camera? The FCC is currently taking comments on a plan to ban online marketplaces from listing gadgets like that. Platforms would need to validate each device’s FCC status before they list it for sale. Etsy wants its “micro-entrepreneurs” to be exempt.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
As reported by CoinDesk, the memecoin peaked at $190.81 two minutes after it debuted on Wednesday. Its value tumbled quickly after that, with LAPTOP now sitting at around $2.16 — a more than 98 percent drop.
President Donald Trump’s memecoin has similarly dipped in value, resulting in more than $3.8 billion in losses.
Subscribers of Anthropic’s Max plan ($100-$200 per month) say they didn’t get what they thought they were paying for.
Crooked Ideas, the nonprofit arm of Crooked Media, is tapping Chaotic Era author Kyle Tharp to head up the iniative, which will support existing political influencers and focus on creating content related to issues like AI safety, climate change, healthcare, and “enshittification,” according to a report from Semafor.
Searches related to hotels and flights will now more prominently display results linking to price comparison sites, after the EU found Google was breaking antitrust rules by prioritizing its own Shopping, Flights, and Hotels tools, fining it €460 million. Google told Reuters it’s the largest reduction in search quality for 29 years.
$LAPTOP plays on the infamous device that dragged him into the political spotlight. It also takes aim at Donald Trump’s similar crypto currency by distributing tokens to wallets that have lost money on $TRUMP, and pledging more if the Democrats win in 2028 or Biden’s crypto market cap overtakes the Trump coin’s.
[Wall Street Journal]
Self-reporting isn’t working, based upon an investigation by Right to Repair Europe. For the last year, tablet and phone manufacturers (and importers) have been required to provide repair instructions and prices for spare parts on a website, but over 80 percent fail to do so. Some leave the field blank, or worse: provide a generic link to temu.com or Aliexpress.com.
The president posted an image that purports to show the next generation of United States Space Force dress uniforms and, well… they sure look a lot like Imperial officer garb. (Which itself is inspired in part by German SS uniforms.)
That’s the vote tally at the United Nations to adopt a new world map, the “Equal Earth projection”, that corrects distortions in the centuries-old and well-known Mercator projection. The Mercator map was prized during the era of European imperialism. (This is also a subject in a great episode of The West Wing.) The proposed new map more accurately portrays the relative size of continents.
You can probably guess the only nation that voted against it. Yes, it was the United States, which called this “a radical ideological project.” Perhaps the new map should depict us as an island standing alone against the world’s nations. If you really want to find a radical ideological project in mapping, just look at Trump’s “Lake America” designation.
More than three years after Tate and his brother were arrested and indicted in Romania on charges of human trafficking, Reuters reports the DIICOT prosecuting unit has indicted Tate again. They’ve charged Tate for “trafficking minors, money laundering, sex with a minor and witness tampering and his brother Tristan for complicity.”
Both Tates were arrested in Miami in July after British authorities requested their extradition, and they are currently in jail in the US.
New hire deportation agents were issued phones equipped with ELITE (Enhanced Lead Identification and Targeting).
ELITE analyzes government data to create “confidence scores” for potential targets; it also maps their location.
On The Intercept, one anonymous ICE agent called the app “1984 shit:” “ELITE is used on illegal immigrants right now but can easily be used on Americans.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked to send tailpipe pollution policies to Congress to repeal. US District Judge Beryl Howell accused the EPA of “Orwellian doublethink.”
The announcement comes one day after New York City, the nation’s largest school system, unveiled similar restrictions. But LA’s goes even further, imposing the one-year restrictions on high schoolers, too.
[The New York Times]
It’s a customized Cisco and you can’t have it. Nobody tell Dom.
AB 1856 redefines an “operating system provider” to exclude open-source software from the state’s age-gating law, set to go into effect on January 1st, Tom’s Hardware reports. It follows a similar exemption added to Colorado’s age verification bill earlier this year.
He probably thinks he’s invincible at this point, but Trump is actually now wading into a place that may even (sadly) be more dangerous for him than living in the Epstein files. Data centers, like Flock cameras, are remarkably unpopular among Americans of all stripes. He always manages to wiggle out of consequences, but this will be a compelling new test of how far people will go to drink his Kool-Aid.
The San Antonio Express-News reports that a request from Pflugerville, TX, resident Sam Aly found that hundreds of unauthorized agencies were searching the city’s Flock data, even though the company claims only two agencies were improperly included. The City Council canceled Flock’s contract last week and covered its cameras.
Aly:
Between February 16 and August 15, 2026, outside agencies searched Pflugerville’s camera data 1,597,918 times. 1.6 million searches in six months. 459 different agencies searched us. That works out to roughly 8,900 outside searches per day, every day. Our own police department ran 5,078 searches in the same period. So for every 1 search by Pflugerville PD, outside agencies ran 315.
It’s the top navigation app on Apple’s and Google’s app stores after it took a stance against renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Google Maps changed the name of the Great Lake over the weekend, while Apple Maps may make the switch following the company’s chat with President Trump, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
