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The Raspberry Pi and Arduino Bootcamp Bundle has 5 courses to help you dive into the world of hands-on programming. Courses cover Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ROS2. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The […]

Would you freak out if you found out a judge was asking ChatGPT a question to help decide a case? Would you think that it was absurd and a problem? Well, one appeals court judge felt the same way… until he started exploring the issue in one of the most thoughtful explorations of LLMs I’ve […]

I’ve noted more than a few times that the primary problem with U.S. journalism is the fact that most major media outlets are owned by out of touch billionaire brunchlords who genuinely don’t understand the modern media environment, can’t see their own gender, race, or class biases, and often have absolutely no earthly fucking idea […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about Trump threatening ProPublica, and our point that he remains “exhibit A” for why anti-SLAPP laws are needed: The funny thing is, this statement could apply to a lot of situations: SLAPPs, campaign finance fraud, attempting to overthrow […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the FCC was remaining in denial about the lack of broadband competition, while we asked why all the antitrust attention was focused on Big Tech but not Big Telecom. Officials in Germany were pushing for encryption backdoors while Facebook was considering going ahead and undermining its own encryption […]

Here we are again, with yet another in our series of posts describing how in these here modern times you simply don’t actually own the things you’ve bought. This sort of thing takes many forms, of course. Sometimes the digital media you “bought” gets disappeared by a platform after a licensing deal runs out. Sometimes […]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]

ShotSpotter hasn’t been doing all that well lately. While it’s the market leader in acoustic detection tech for law enforcement, it has seen several large contracts slip through its re-branded fingers in recent months. While ShotSpotter executives and press releases tout the accuracy of its sensors, real-life experience hasn’t been quite as stellar. Even if […]

A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about an extremely important case that was being considered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s top court. The central question was whether the judges considered that copyright was more important than privacy. The bad news is that the CJEU has just decided that it is: The Court, […]

As the country most famous for enshrining civil rights, it sure seems like we spend a lot of time and money reminding the government of this fact. And it shouldn’t need to be reminded! These rights were defined by the government and considered inherent to American life. They weren’t granted. They were recognized as natural […]

You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]

What if banning social media from schools actually put kids at even greater risk? One of the more annoying things in talking about tech policy is how many people refuse to think one step ahead about how the world reacts to their policy proposals. We’ve talked about this in many contexts, but one that keeps […]

Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we’ve noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector is falling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless “growth of growth’s sake” megamergers and imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions — all while simultaneously cutting corners on […]

You know what kind of person kills animals on the regular? Psychopaths, at least according to a casual survey of pop culture references. You know who else? Cops. But I repeat myself. Laurel Matthews, a supervisory program specialist with the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (DOJ COPS) office, says it’s an awful lot. […]

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” I’m sure you’ll recall specifically which type of animal on George Orwell’s Animal Farm made that proclamation. In other words, we’re back to Orwellian lawmaking in this country. And not the usual kind. The 9/11 attacks in 2001 led to one sort of Orwellian […]

Correction & Retraction: The original BBC article implied that the NY Times was threatening Worldle and demanding it change its name. That now appears to be incorrect, and it simply opposed letting Worldle register its own trademark, noting that it was too close to its own Wordle. Which… is not a crazy interpretation. While the […]

Editor’s note: We’ve written a few times about NY’s “SAFE for Kids Act” and it’s many problems. There’s a decent chance that bill gets voted into law this week. Samuel Johnson posted a wonderfully detailed letter about why he, as a parent, opposes the law, and sent it to his elected officials. He also posted […]

The Complete ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Training Bundle has 4 beginner-friendly courses to help you become more comfortable with the capabilities of OpenAI and ChatGPT. You’ll learn how to write effective prompts to get the best results, how to create blog posts and sales copy, and how to create your own chatbots. It’s on sale […]

EU internet regulations and courts never fail to stupefy. The entire concept of “shadowbanning” has gotten distorted and changed over time. Originally, shadowbanning was a tool for dealing with trolls in certain forums. The shadowbanned trolls would see their own posts in the forums, but no one else could see them. The trolls would think […]

Back in April the Biden FCC finally got around to restoring both net neutrality rules, and the agency’s Title II authority over telecom providers. The modest rules, as we’ve covered extensively, prevent big telecom giants from abusing their monopoly and gatekeeper power to harm competitors or consumers. They also require that ISPs be transparent about […]