Courts are cool with pretextual stops. As long as a cop can make up a reasonably good excuse for pulling someone over, they can start casting their lines in hopes of bigger fish. Given enough time and bullshit, cops can often talk people into warrantless roadside searches. But the pretext needs to be reasonable. And, […]
The somehow both long-running and surprisingly quick death of Stadia is now complete. We have been covering Google’s attempt at a video game cloud-streaming service for several years now. Frankly, it’s been a mess from the jump, from a banal launch that was rife with user experience issues, to poor game performance, and a laughably […]
So far, the biggest genius idea from Elon Musk for Twitter was to try to make people pay for blue checks. He keeps insisting that this will somehow solve the “bot/spam” problem, but no one has come up with a credible explanation for how or why. Musk himself has compared it to a spam filter: […]
Thanks to a steady stream of reports of abusive uses of its powerful Pegasus malware, Israel’s NSO Group saw its reputational stock drop precipitously as it became more and more apparent the company didn’t really care who it sold its products to. The list of customers included several notorious human rights abusers and leaked data […]
The 2023 Ultimate XBox Game Developer Bundle will teach you all you need to know about game development using Unreal Engine. Known for its ability to render high-fidelity graphics, Unreal Engine is one of the most popular engines available for creating video games. With its easy-to-use Blueprints Visual Scripting system and overall quality performance, it […]
We’ve already pointed out that the new Twitter under Elon Musk may be facing some big challenges from the FTC in the US. The company is under a consent decree, and it’s not clear that Musk is complying with the terms of the consent decree. And unlike SEC violations, violating an FTC consent decree can […]
Back in 2020, New York City officials unveiled an aggressive plan to revolutionize broadband in the city. The centerpiece of this Internet Master Plan involved building a $156 million open access fiber network that competitors could easily join at low cost, driving some much needed competition — and lower rates, faster speeds, and better coverage […]
In-N-Out is In-N-At it again. In our many posts on the burger chain, we’ve discussed the company’s habit of what I’ll call trademark tourism. In posts that have focused primarily on its trademarks in Australia, we’ve detailed out how In-N-Out will conduct a popup restaurant in these countries that it otherwise has zero brick and […]
Well, well, well. As you may recall, back in 2019 Devin Nunes and his bumbling lawyer Steven Biss sued Esquire magazine and reporter Ryan Lizza because Nunes really did not like this article about Nunes’ parents and their family farm, which is actually in Iowa, rather than California as many people believed. It’s an interesting […]
Plenty of countries have vulnerability disclosure requirements in place. This is supposed to increase the security of all users by requiring notification of affected platforms or software of exploits that may be used by malicious entities. Define “malicious entity” tho. The NSA has never abided by these requirements, despite being the free world leader in […]
I sent this notice around internally here at Techdirt, but figured it might be useful to state this publicly. Historically, Techdirt would often embed tweets using the embed feature from Twitter. This was always somewhat risky for a few reasons, including that people could (and often did) delete tweets. Though Twitter’s embed feature had a […]
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The government of India continues to increase its monitoring of residents’ day-to-day lives. Like pretty much every other country in the world, India relies on the internet to handle communications, data, and multiple services used by residents. The government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has become less democratic and more authoritarian. To keep dissent to […]
Last week yet another study indicated that Apple’s heavily hyped new dedication to privacy was somewhat hollow, with the company’s apps often extensively tracking user behavior despite claims that doesn’t happen. It was the latest in a series of studies showcasing how Apple’s pivot to a privacy-dedicated company is often a bit performative once you […]
Loveland, Colorado has a police problem. The problem isn’t that there are too few, or that they’re being underfunded. The problem is the ones they already have — the ones that keep getting sued. On July 20, 2020, Target contacted Loveland PD to deal with a man (Keenan Stuckey) suffering from mental health issues in […]
Spaceboy Elon Musk promised the Twitter he was pretty much sued into purchasing would bring an end to all the free speech violations he claimed were happening every day under its liberal overlords. But being an edgelord troll rarely converts into competent management. Musk is speedrunning the moderation learning curve. But he is also discovering […]
Meet Roland “Spanky” Macher. Spanky, a name by which I really must insist on calling him throughout this post, was a restaurant owner and real estate businessman before going to prison for 30 months for failing to pay his taxes and lying to the bankruptcy court. While in prison, he crafted his a how-to-business opus, […]
About 18 months after he lost the 2020 election, Election Conspiracist in Chief Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and dozens of other Democrats over the election he had won nearly six years earlier. That lawsuit went nowhere. But going nowhere meant tying up a lot of the court’s time, what with Trump’s lawyers dumping 193-page […]
The all-new 2022 Ninja Dragon Blade X PRO 4K Dual Camera Quadcopter Drone, with built-in 3-side intelligent obstacle avoidance, can be operated just by touch through your mobile phone or tablet. You don’t need any instruction manual for the operation, simply take off and stay in the air by pressing one button. It has a […]
Look, by now it’s pretty clear that Elon Musk is deeply, deeply in above his head at Twitter, in ways that could have some pretty significant legal consequences. Even so, it’s still not the job of politicians to make decisions for him. He is free to destroy the company (and a good chunk of his […]
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