Last fall, we wrote about Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan (who seems to have won out over brother James in the Succession-style fight to lead his father’s nonsense peddling media outfit) lost his shit over an opinion piece in the Australian independent media organization Crikey and sued them for defamation in Australia. At the time, we […]
Who doesn’t love the wisdom of the crowds? Hey, it’s a great thing if you’re seeking comment from the oft-disrespected “stakeholders” known as the people who pay your salaries. Comment periods for proposed regulation ensures a healthy mix of intelligent commentary and unhinged partisanship. You know, like pretty much any congressional hearing. On the other […]
Twitter 1.0 had one of the most complete and thorough transparency reporting operations around. It was incredibly useful to anyone studying issues, especially regarding the all important information on government demands on the company, and Twitter’s compliance rate. Indeed, as we reported, while basically all of the other big tech companies folded when the government […]
MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, […]
You may recall the Social Dilemma, which used incredible levels of misinformation and manipulation in an attempt to warn about others using misinformation to manipulate. On April 13, a new YouTube video called the AI Dilemma was shared by Social Dilemma leading character, Tristan Harris. He encouraged his followers to “share it widely” in order […]
For the last few years, press and policy circles were absolutely dominated by talk about how there was an amazing “new, bipartisan coalition” of folks interested in “reining in ‘Big Tech’,” meaningfully checking corporate power, and finally embracing competent “antitrust reform.” The problem: it was largely all bullshit. The GOP in particular, which has, for […]
You might be a little surprised how many Techdirt posts have been done that involve donuts. I know, right? What a sentence! Still, we’ve got square donut trademarks, we’ve got donuts made to look like college sports teams, and we even have donut crumbs that some Joe Friday out there thought for sure was meth. […]
Nearly five years ago, California resident Susan Porter sued local law enforcement for deciding her honk in support of anti-Rep. Darrell Issa protesters was worth citing her for. When she expressed her support for the protesters in a way people have always considered to be an appropriate display of support, she was pulled over by […]
We’re hard at work on a very cool new project that will be released very soon, so I didn’t have time to record a podcast this week. However, there were two recent (much more well known) podcast episodes that I heard that Techdirt readers might really like. Rather than do longer posts about each, I […]
As we noted two and a half years ago when Epic filed its antitrust lawsuit against Apple, it seemed like a pretty big uphill climb legally speaking. The whole thing seemed more like “contract negotiation via antitrust judicial battle” rather than a legitimate antitrust claim. And, so far, it looks like we were correct. The […]
Back in 2016, around the time that both Theranos and Zenefits were engulfed in scandals that involved their superstar founders/CEOs being caught lying to investors, we had a podcast discussing the issues around innovation and the marketing mantra of “fake it ‘til you make it” for startups. One of the points raised is that there […]
Using advanced noise-reduction technology, Flux 7 TWS earphones have been designed to reduce unwanted noise during exercise. With an onboard 2,000mAh polymer lithium battery that offers 4 hours of music play time, the sweatproof Flux 7 TWS earbuds are ideal for fitness enthusiasts who want to pack light and move fast. The earphones are on […]
A worldwide pandemic in 2020 altered the contours of pretty much everything. Entire cities shut down. Retailers shrunk hours to time periods normally only witnessed prior to the introduction of the 24-hour clock. Shit got exceedingly weird. The good news is most of the world understood the new normal would be anything but normal. The […]
The great TikTok moral panic of 2023 shows no sign of slowing down. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent the few years getting oodles of free press attention for hyperventilating about TikTok. It doesn’t matter that Carr doesn’t have regulatory authority over TikTok, or that his proposed ban wouldn’t actually fix the problems he claims […]
The DEA has always been ridiculous when it comes to drugs. It overplays the downside, refuses to acknowledge any upside, and has been instrumental in ensuring people suffering from mental health issues are unable to access the drugs that might help them most. It’s a vindictive agency that acts like a Jack Chick religious tract […]
I think I can state the following without controversy: video games are, by and large, a path for escaping the real world for the sake of entertainment. The idea is that the real world can be a place that we want to get away from, diving into some fantasy world where the same rules don’t […]
Perhaps you may have heard the DOJ recently arrested Chinese nationals and shuttered “Chinese police stations” located in New York following an investigation into the sort of foreign national work our government tends to find repulsive, even as it does the same thing elsewhere in the world. It made all the papers, including the British […]
It’s “protect the children” season in Congress with the return of KOSA and EARN IT, two terrible bills that attack the internet, and rely on people’s ignorance of how things actually work to pretend they’re making the internet safer, when they’re not. Added to this is Senator Dick Durbin’s STOP CSAM Act, which he’s been […]
In 2020, the New York State legislature finally took a tool of opacity out of law enforcement’s hands. For forty years, law enforcement agencies had the option of rejecting officer misconduct records requests by citing 50-a, the law that said these records could be considered exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Notably, […]
The Ableton Music Production Mastery Bundle has 7 courses that will help you learn all about producing your own music. Courses cover recording, warping, editing, audio effects, DJing techniques and more. 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 […]
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