Rikers Island doesn’t just house the convicted. It also houses those merely accused of crimes who are awaiting trial. The difference between the two doesn’t matter much to those staffing Rikers. If you’re there, you’re no longer a human being. For years, the jail has been mismanaged, which is a really kind word for a […]
Amazon’s home security tech acquisition, Ring, has become a dominant player in this industry sector. Some of that is due to Amazon’s backing. A lot of this is due to extremely inappropriate relationships with law enforcement, which convert cops to Ring proselytizers whose public statements are subject to review by the company’s PR wing. Ubiquity […]
A few months ago, I attended a wonderful conference put on by the “Global Freedom of Expression” program at Columbia University discussing decentralized social media and regulations around social media. One of the speakers, Alison McCauley from Unfinished Labs, gave a very interesting presentation on the first day of the conference, October 3rd, (which kindly […]
Meet Bittle, the palm-sized open-source bionic robot dog. Have fun watching it play tricks like a real animal, moving with 4 legs rather than wheels. Legged motion gives it more freedom to navigate unstructured terrains. Bittle is an open platform to fuse multiple makers’ gadgets into one organic system. With a customized Arduino board coordinating […]
Careful, kids. The FBI is recommending something useful. The same entity that thinks encryption is the enemy has delivered a message suggesting it may still care about the safety and security of internet users… at least those it doesn’t consider to be persons of interest. Here’s Daniel Sims of Techspot with more details. The FBI issued a […]
Back in August, password storage app LastPass vaguely admitted that hackers had accessed the company’s systems. In the company’s original August reveal, the company generally tap danced around the subject, claiming that while they had identified some “unusual activity,” consumer data had not been accessed. By November, LastPass had begun shifting its story a bit, […]
It’s not often a cop gets criminally charged for killing someone. In most cases, cops are cleared of wrongdoing. Even when they aren’t, their employers and overseers aren’t interested in establishing deterrents to bad police behavior or holding bad cops accountable for their wrongdoing. There are notable exceptions, of course. The most recent notable case […]
It’s been many, many years since we were regularly covering what we referred to as the ITC loophole in patent enforcement. The issue was that patent holders could get two totally separate at bats to try to force a company that was actually innovating to pay up over dubious patents. They could go to court, […]
As a publicly traded company, it’s simply not good enough to provide an affordable service that people genuinely like. The pressure to deliver quarter over quarter growth often takes on a tendency toward auto-cannibalism; price hikes, customer support cuts, dumb ideas justified through greed, all designed to goose short-term growth, but often at the cost […]
The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to take you from beginner to expert in Python, and learn how to apply that knowledge to AI. You’ll learn about data visualization, deep learning, artificial neural networks, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by […]
Colleen Huber M.D. thinks she can cure cancer by altering patients’ sugar intake. She also believes baking soda is better than chemotherapy when it comes to fighting this disease. Rational people think she’s endangering people’s lives and have said as much. Repeatedly. In response, Colleen Huber has filed lawsuits. Repeatedly. She feels she speaks from […]
[INT: Midwestern living room, Christmas morning 2022]: Children: Thanks for all of these consumer goods, Daddy. We know you mean well. But we just want to know whether we’ll ever see free access to federal courtroom documents in our lifetime. Me: [long pause while stroking my magnificent beard] I don’t know, kids. I just don’t […]
Hopefully, you already know who Tom Lehrer is, and are already familiar with his music, but if you’re somehow in the dark, I suggest you read this excellent profile, or visit his unofficial official YouTube channel. Or, visit his website where you can download everything for free (he even begs you not to send him […]
Back in June we wrote about a blockbuster article in Buzzfeed by Emily Baker-White detailing how ByteDance engineers in China were still accessing data on US TikTok users. That was notable, given that ByteDance had signed this big deal with Oracle, while former President Trump held a proverbial gun to its head, to try to […]
A private company can legally declare it has the right to refuse service to anyone (with a very small number of limitations under the law, mostly around discrimination against protected classes). The application of facial recognition tech makes it much easier to do. Rather than post photos and bad checks on the back wall to […]
The 2023 Ultimate Cybersecurity Analyst Bundle has 8 courses to help you become a cybersecurity expert. You’ll learn about social engineering, working with enterprise architecture, bug hunting, penetration testing, ethical hacking, and more. The bundle is on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all […]
Soon after Elon took over Twitter and fired everyone, we wondered (somewhat jokingly) if there was anyone left at the company who was aware of the FTC’s consent decree with the company, signed originally in 2011, but which runs for 30 years, and which was updated back in May of 2022. These documents have some […]
The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office published new piracy guidance this week claiming that Netflix password sharing is illegal. Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users who shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far […]
Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io » It’s that time of year! Ever since works in the US finally started entering the public domain again, we’ve been hosting an annual game jam for designers to create games based on the year’s newly copyright-free works. This year, it’s Gaming Like It’s 1927! There […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is rinzewind (shout out for the Discworld reference!) with a simple comment about the Twitter Files: The most disappointing thing of this whole Twitter Files fiasco, for me, has been Taibbi. He had made some questionable editorial decisions as of late, but this has already […]
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