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Devin Nunes Claims The Right To An ‘Unimpaired Reputation’ Is A ‘Sacred Right’; Oh And Also Needs To Cough Up Info On How He Got Hired

2 years 10 months ago
Former Congressman, now Trump lackey TruthSocial CEO, Devin Nunes hasn’t had very much success with his long list of lawsuits against critics and the media. In just the past few months he’s lost multiple such cases. Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from soldiering on. One of the bigger cases he filed was against reporter […]
Mike Masnick

US Cable Giant Charter Hit With $7 Billion Verdict After Tech Kills 83-Year-Old Customer

2 years 10 months ago
A decade or so ago you couldn’t go even a week without a major U.S. cable company finding its technicians in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. You’d routinely see technicians that fall asleep on the job, blow up homes, occasionally murder people and get arrested for torturing and spray painting kittens (seriously). And while major U.S. cable companies have […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: HP EliteBook 840G4 Touchscreen Windows 10 Pro (Refurbished)

2 years 10 months ago
This refurbished EliteBook from HP pairs a fast processor with 8GB of RAM to help make multitasking easier, and its speedy 256 solid-state drive can house your essential media, games, and other data. It also features three USB ports so you can make the most of your system by expanding it with peripheral devices. This […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Secret Service Wiped Jan. 6 Insurrection Texts And The DHS Inspector General Helped Cover It Up

2 years 10 months ago
Congressional hearings into the January 6, 2021 raid of the US Capitol building continue, focusing on the actions of Donald Trump and members of his administration as they sought to have Trump’s loss turned into a win. Congressional investigators are looking into the possible involvement of Trump and Pence’s security teams. But subpoenaed communications from […]
Tim Cushing

Eve 6 Lead Singer: ‘Owning Media Is Now An Act Of Countercultural Defiance’

2 years 10 months ago
Max Collins, the lead singer of the band Eve 6 has penned a great piece for Popula, noting that owning media is now an act of countercultural defiance. Specifically, he’s speaking out against basically all of the major book publishers suing the Internet Archive for making it possible to check out digital copies of books. […]
Mike Masnick

Illinois Department Of Corrections Benchslapped For Spending Years Failing To Improve Medical Care For Prisoners

2 years 10 months ago
In the space of less than a week, two federal courts have come down hard on prison systems for treating prisoners like meat suitable for nothing more than processing by the so-called justice system. In Mississippi, a federal judge yanked control of a prison away from local officials, placing the Raymond Detention Center into receivership […]
Tim Cushing

NSO Group Finally Figures Out How Many European Countries It Does Business With

2 years 10 months ago
European lawmakers wanted answers after months of investigations and reporting made it clear exploit developer NSO Group was involved with some seriously shady customers. Facing lawsuits, sanctions, and the Israeli government’s belated attempt to ensure NSO didn’t continue to generate bad press in perpetuity, the EU began asking questions. For some reason, NSO didn’t have […]
Tim Cushing

FCC Officially Rejects Ajit Pai’s Boondoggle To Supply Elon Musk With Nearly A Billion Dollars In Subsidies

2 years 10 months ago
Elon Musk hates government subsidies. That’s what he says, right? He claims that we should “just delete them all,” and that “the federal budget deficit is insane.” Of course, the world’s richest man (for now) has received many billions in government subsidies for his companies. Indeed, you could argue that his success was very much […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Learn to Code for Free Course

2 years 10 months ago
In this free HTML course, you, with Chris Castiglione as your guide, will build this Cookie Monster project. This is a 7-day course, and it comes with two hours of free and fun videos, sample code, and step-by-step tutorials. This is the BEST way to learn the basics of HTML and CSS. Your assignment: Cookie […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Dude Who Keeps Suing To Try To Get His AI To Get A Patent Or Copyright Loses Again: Appeals Court Once Again Says No

2 years 10 months ago
Stephen Thaler is a man on a mission. It’s not a very good mission, but it’s a mission. He created something called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) and claims that it’s creating things, for which he has tried to file for patents and copyrights around the globe, with his mission being […]
Mike Masnick

Rampant Data Broker Sale Of Pregnancy Data Gets Fresh Scrutiny Post Roe

2 years 10 months ago
For decades now, privacy advocates warned we were creating a dystopia through our rampant over-collection and monetization of consumer data. And just as often, those concerns were greeted with calls of “consumers don’t actually care about privacy” from overly confident white guys in tech. Nothing has exposed those flippant responses as ignorant quite like the […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Inisghtful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

2 years 10 months ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a simple comment about the “bad apple” theory of policing: Someone should really tell them what the other half of that expression is. That comment came in response to a police official complaining about police as a group being unfairly hated because […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: August 7th – 13th

2 years 10 months ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, a lawyer renounced his participation in copyright-trolling activities and sued his former partner and clients, the creator of Kickass Torrents was trying and failing to get the criminal case against him tossed out, and Canadian telcos were losing their minds over TVAddons. Bob Murray was trying to stop […]
Leigh Beadon

Leaked NSO Group Presentation Details Malware’s Ability To Turn On Cameras, Mics To Surveil Targets

2 years 10 months ago
Israel’s foremost purveyor of malware, NSO Group, has undergone nearly a yearlong reckoning. A leak last summer appeared to show NSO customers were routinely targeting journalists, activists, members of opposition parties, and, in one case, the ex-wife of a Dubai ruler. That NSO Group was shady wasn’t a new fact. Its decision to sell malware […]
conciergecli@a8c.com

California Legislature Kills Ridiculous ‘Social Media Addiction’ Bill, But Allows Other Bad Bills To Move Forward

2 years 10 months ago
On Thursday, the California Senate’s appropriations committee was set to review a collection of anti-internet bills to see which ones should move forward. It decided to drop one that was particularly terrible: AB 2408, which would allow basically any California prosecutor (local or state-level) to sue companies for “addicting” kids (with addiction being extremely loosely […]
conciergecli@a8c.com

Data Privacy Matters: Facebook Expands Encryption Just After Facebook Messages (Obtained Via Search Warrant) Used To Charge Teen For Abortion

2 years 10 months ago
In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, there has been plenty of attention paid to the kinds of data that companies keep on us, and how they could be exposed, including to law enforcement. Many internet companies seemed somewhat taken by surprise regarding all of this, which is a bit ridiculous, […]
conciergecli@a8c.com

Yet Another Study Finds Cable News Has A Much Bigger Effect On US Polarization Than Social Media

2 years 10 months ago
The past two election cycles have seen an explosion of attention given to “echo chambers,” or communities where a narrow set of views makes people less likely to challenge their own opinions. Much of this concern has focused on the rise of social media, which has radically transformed the information ecosystem. However, when scientists investigated […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2022 Ultimate Excel VBA Bundle

2 years 10 months ago
The 2022 Ultimate Excel VBA Bundle is a step-by-step in-depth guide for Excel users who want to streamline their redundant tasks in Excel, build advanced custom reports, and utilize the power of Userforms to transform the way they get things done. These courses will show you the easiest tricks to learn Excel VBA in a […]
Gretchen Heckmann