TechDirt 🕸

We’ve certainly been talking a lot about the “AI Doomers” who insist that AI is all too likely to destroy humanity. However, even people who aren’t fully on board with the existential threat of AI do often say that, at the very least, it’s going to destroy jobs for most people, potentially creating huge problems. […]

Technically we’ve posted this analysis before, when we posted our entire amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case, along with a summary of what we had written in it. But that summary also included other arguments, and a very condensed version of this one, that the First […]

For a few years now, the EU Commission has been pushing legislation that would undermine, if not actually criminalize, end-to-end encryption. It’s “for the children,” as they say. To prevent the distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse material), the EU wants to mandate client-side scanning by tech companies — a move that would necessitate the […]

These MaxLight mini flashlights are designed to fit in your backpack or pocket. They are super bright and strong enough to be used in emergencies when you need reliable illumination. The 4 modes let you switch from super bright, medium, low, and strobe modes. These flashlights have a carabiner, kickstand, long-lasting rechargeable battery, magnetic base, […]

Elon Musk has insisted that “transparency is the key to trust” in rebuilding Twitter in his image. He says it all the time. But, of course, under Musk, Twitter has been significantly less transparent, choosing to skip its transparency reports, and generally close itself off. But one of the key methods for transparency on Twitter […]

We’ve noted repeatedly that as the streaming sector grows and consolidates, it’s revealing many of the same problems we saw inherent in traditional, shitty, cable TV. As in the need to provide Wall Street improved quarterly returns at any cost has them doing the sort of things common in the traditional cable sector they used […]

Here we go again. We’ve talked several times in the past about game publishers and studios going out of their way to shut down fan-run servers for online play. The excuses for doing so mostly amount to either claims that intellectual property laws require this sort of policing action (it doesn’t), that the publisher needs […]

Despite industry best efforts to prevent it, the “right to repair” movement shows no sign of slowing down. This week, Minnesota was the latest state to pass a new right to repair law. State lawmakers added right to repair provisions to an omnibus bill (SF 2774) after obtaining bipartisan support across both chambers. The language requires electronics […]

A whole bunch of media articles are noting that Twitter users who deleted tweets have noticed in recent weeks that the deleted tweets have magically returned. There seems to be little rhyme or reason for which deleted tweets have returned, but it’s definitely happening to many users. In some cases, people said they had deleted […]

In his concurrence, Justice Gorsuch called the Supreme Court’s decision last week in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case a narrow one of statutory interpretation, ostensibly doing nothing more than interpreting the breadth of the first fair use factor (“the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial […]

A robbery/kidnapping case allegedly implicating business owner and immigrant Evgeni Kopankov has resulted in the government losing the evidence it took it oh so long to obtain. And the government has only itself to blame for how this went down. Kopankov was arrested in 2019 for his supposed involvement in a conspiracy to rob (and, […]

Companies big and small count on project managers to ensure their initiatives arrive on time and on budget, which is why these professionals routinely earn six figures for their services. From setting up projects in JIRA to streamlining pipelines with Agile and Scrum, this bundle boasts 11 courses to get you up and running with […]

You may have heard the news that the EU hit Meta with a $1.3 billion fine for violating EU “data privacy rules” and assumed that this was just Meta being Meta and being bad about your privacy. But that’s not really an accurate portrayal of what happened, and it hides how this fine is actually […]

We’ve noted more than a few times that Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a dumb cash grab, and illustrative of the company’s inevitable transition from innovative disruptor to the type of nickel-and-diming cable company Netflix originally disrupted. We’ve also noted how the company was forced to delay the effort a few times, after backlash in countries […]

While we’ve talked a great deal now about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, most of the focus has been on how three major regulatory bodies are handling approving, or not, the purchase. But those regulatory bodies are not the only ones challenging the purchase. A small group of gamers filed their own private suit […]

Lawmakers in the Alabama state legislature have voted for a bill that would require parental controls and NSFW content filters to be enabled on every phone and tablet sold in the state. House Bill (HB) 298, or the Protection of Minors from Unfiltered Devices Act, cleared the state House with an overwhelming 70-8 vote, with […]

We’ve talked a lot about KOSA, the “Kids Online Safety Act” that has massive bipartisan support in Congress. The latest version was introduced with 26 Senators as sponsors or co-sponsors. We’ve explained over and over again how the bill is unconstitutional and will actually do a lot to harm kids. Of course, like so many […]

For a brief moment of time, a judge in Arizona conspired with a vindictive politician to pretend the First Amendment didn’t exist. Senator Wendy Rogers — who was censured by the state senate last year for stating her political opponents should be hanged — took litigious offense at the methods deployed by journalist Camryn Sanchez, […]

Learn Spanish, French, Italian, German, and many more languages with Babbel. Developed by over 100 expert linguists, Babbel is helping millions of people speak and understand a new language quickly, and with confidence. After just one month, you will be able to speak confidently about practical topics, such as transportation, dining, shopping, directions, making friends, […]

For my final post of last year, I wrote about the many reasons to be optimistic about a better future, one of which was that we were seeing the crumbling of some large, bureaucratic (enshittified) companies, and new competitive upstarts pushing the boundaries. One of those areas was in the artificial intelligence space. As I […]