EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders have filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to block Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the private information of millions of Americans that is stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and to delete any data that has been collected or removed from databases thus far.
Yet my — and I'd imagine your — frustration isn't borne of a hatred of technology, or a dislike of the internet, or a lack of appreciation of what it can do, but the sense that all of this was once better, and that these companies have turned impeding our use of the computer into an incredibly profitable business.
Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov.
This is the first release in our new data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use.
We’ve built this project on our long-standing commitment to preserving government records and making public information available to everyone. Libraries play an essential role in safeguarding the integrity of digital information. By preserving detailed metadata and establishing digital signatures for authenticity and provenance, we make it easier for researchers and the public to cite and access the information they need over time.
Wikimedians in Residence face underfunding, broken tools, and a lack of support from the Wikimedia Foundation. With the political winds shifting, can this profession survive?
I will never stop covering the harm done by Trump’s anti-trans orders, but there is already so much of it. I learned in the first Trump term how to separate the personal from the professional, at least when on deadline. But once the draft is done, and edits are in the can, and I’m laying in bed at night trying to fall asleep, it all comes back to me:
Do I need to plan for a quick getaway if some Trump lackey decides the loudmouth tranny journalist needs to go? How do I prevent myself from burning out again like I did during the first Trump term? How do I deal with the guilt of not being able to cover everything? These are the thoughts that haunt me when I’m not pouring myself into work or whatever movie or video game I’m playing to distract myself.
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I worry about the future of my community, but there’s no time for that now. There are too many stories to write.