a Better Bubble™

TechDirt 🕸

A TikTok Ban Is A Pointless Political Turd For Democrats

1 year 3 months ago
As you probably noticed, the House just passed the controversial ban on TikTok, with 352 Representatives in favor, and 65 opposed. The bill is now likely to be slow-walked to the Senate where its chance of passing is murky, but possible. Biden (which has been using the purportedly “dangerous national security threat” to campaign with) […]
Karl Bode

IRS Direct File Program Goes Live In 12 States

1 year 3 months ago
It’s been a long and incredibly frustrating road to get here, but the IRS’ free Direct File pilot program is now live this tax season in 12 states. We have had a list of posts we have done on the topic of tax filings, most of which revolve around Intuit and some other tax-prep organizations’ […]
Dark Helmet

Senator Wyden Reminds White House Feckless Regulators Have Resulted In Pathetic Security On U.S. Wireless Networks

1 year 3 months ago
While countless lawmakers looking to get on cable TV spent much of the last few years freaking out about TikTok privacy issues, none of those same folks seem bothered by the parade of nasty vulnerabilities in the nation’s telecom networks. Hackers are still happily exploiting the SS7 flaw that lets governments and bad actors spy on […]
Karl Bode

ExTwitter Mostly Wins Silly Music Copyright Lawsuit

1 year 3 months ago
Last year, we wrote about a very silly lawsuit that some big music publishers had filed against ExTwitter, making some silly claims about how copyright law works. It basically ignored the existence of the DMCA, which was designed to prevent lawsuits like this one, where there is some infringement happening on the platform, but no […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Python & Artificial Intelligence Bundle

1 year 3 months ago
The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You’ll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Oregon Passes Right To Repair Law Apple Lobbied To Kill

1 year 3 months ago
Oregon has officially become the seventh state (behind New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota) to pass “right to repair” legislation, making it easier and more affordable for consumers to independently repair their own electronics. The bill, which passed the Oregon Senate last month 25-5 and the House on Monday 42-13, is a bit […]
Karl Bode

Techdirt Podcast Episode 383: Gaming Like It’s 1928!

1 year 3 months ago
As is tradition, now that we’ve announced the winners of our latest public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928, it’s time for a special episode of the podcast taking a closer look at them. Just like in past years, Mike is joined by myself and our game design partner Randy Lubin to discuss our […]
Leigh Beadon

MSCHF Asks The Supreme Court To Say Its Parody Of Vans Shoes Is Free Speech

1 year 3 months ago
The last time we wrote about an interaction between the Supreme Court and the famed art collective/pranksters/social commentators/cultural marketing jammers MSCHF, it was covering their interesting choice of amicus briefs. They sought to comment on the “Bad Spaniels” case by making the Justices and their clerks complete “connect the dot” artwork as an attempt to […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Award-Winning Luminar Neo Bundle

1 year 3 months ago
Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Warner Bros. Discovery Disappears Games People Already Purchased

1 year 3 months ago
And here we go again. It’s time for another abject lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you’re “buying” in this here digital age. We’ve covered a ton of these stories at this point, obviously. But there are examples of people learning that they don’t actually own the thing they spent their money […]
Dark Helmet

NSO Group Ordered To Turn Over Spyware Code To WhatsApp

1 year 3 months ago
The time has come to pay the discovery piper for NSO Group. The phone exploit firm formed by former Israeli spies was supported unilaterally by the Israeli government as it courted human rights abusers and autocrats. The Israeli government apparently felt selling powerful phone exploits to its enemies got caught with its third-party pants down […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class

1 year 3 months ago
MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In this course you’ll cover not just data […]
Gretchen Heckmann