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The FBI has done some heinous things in its pursuit of its counter-terrorism objectives. While it's true the FBI has occasionally nabbed actual terrorists, it seems to prefer creating terrorists to going after those that are already avowed terrorists. The FBI utilizes informants and undercover agents to perform this highly questionable work. Investigations border on [...]

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That's all well and good, but it means nothing if you don't have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In this course you'll cover not just data [...]

We've written a few times now about how the misleadingly named House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government" is not actually looking into the weaponization of the federal government," but rather is very much about allowing Chairman Jim Jordan to go about weaponizing the powers of the subcommittee himself to threaten and intimidate [...]

Back in December I wrote a feature for The Verge exploring the FCC's long overdue effort to stop race and class discrimination in broadband deployment. For decades, big telecoms have not only refused to evenly upgrade broadband in low income and poor areas (despite billions in subsidies for this exact purpose), they've charged poor and [...]

Well, this is a new one for me. In all the stories we've done over the years on concerns over real life violence and violent video games, one point we've made over and over again is that people certainly can tell the difference between video games and real life. I, for one, abhor guns in [...]

Predictive policing programs were supposed to make police work smarter and more efficient. It was supposed to trim down on hours wasted where a police presence wasn't needed and increase enforcement in areas where crime was a problem. But it hasn't done this. It hasn't made cops smarter. It's possibly just made them lazier. No [...]

A couple weeks ago, we released the 2024 edition of our Sky Is Rising report about the state of the entertainment industries. Last week, Mike and I joined Corbin Barthold on Techfreedom's Tech Policy Podcast for a discussion about the report and, more broadly, the state of culture in the internet era and the conversations [...]

Bluesky is now open to anyone without an invite. And a bunch of other exciting things are coming soon. As many of you know, I've been pretty excited about where Bluesky is going as a social media offering, not just because of the people who have been using it (who have mostly been great, making [...]

I'm not a religious man, but Jesus Fucking Christ. Yet another insane decision that allows the government to ignore constitutional rights has been handed down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals - the one nationally known as the most cop-friendly circuit in the nation. The long journey to this horrible ending begins in 2018. [...]

The Complete Cisco Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support [...]

Last week, as you likely heard, the Senate had a big hearing on child safety" where they grandstanded in front of a semi-random collection of tech CEOs, with zero interest in actually learning about the actual challenges of child safety online, or what the companies had done that worked, or where they might need help. [...]

Last month you probably saw the story about how somebody used a (sloppy) deepfake of Joe Biden in a bid to try and trick voters into staying home during the Presidential Primary. It wasn't particularly well done; nor was it clear it reached all that many people or had much of an actual impact. But [...]

Cops will charge someone with assault, whether or not they've been actually assaulted. It's a charge often added on top of resisting arrest and can be triggered by any movement or action that results in physical contact with an officer. Throwing a snowball in the direction of a cop can be considered assault, depending on [...]

Earlier this year, we discussed a frustrating story regarding one company in the UK, Cornices Centre, threatening a cyclist over a YouTube video showing what purports to be a near miss by a truck with the company's name and logo on it. Those threats centered on a very confused understanding of trademark law, such that [...]

Things remain troubling in Los Angeles. The city is still trying to somehow punish investigative journalist Ben Camacho and activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for a mistake its own police department made. Camacho made a public records request for LAPD officers' photos. After some litigation, the LAPD finally complied. Camacho - who writes for [...]

There are a number of people, both those who agree with me and those who disagree with me, who seem to think I have some sort of personal dislike of Elon Musk. That's not true. I find it amazing that he gets away with some of the stuff he gets away with, and I am [...]

Facial recognition may be helping law enforcement catch bad guys, but inherent flaws in these systems ensure it's only a matter of time before the AI coughs up yet another unforced error. That sort of error rate might be acceptable when the AI is doing nothing more than pitching in to refine Google search results [...]

This handy, pocket-sized recording device fits in your wallet, bag, and purse. It comes with a high-capacity battery that can be charged in under two hours and stores up to 750 hours of audio. With a super-clear audio quality, this recorder offers 24-hour battery life and is equipped with digital noise reduction technology that is [...]

Amidst all of the attention paid to last week's Senate hearing on child safety online, it remains stunning just how little time was actually spent on how to help children online. Instead, we saw pure theatrical nonsense, with Senators insisting (falsely) that these five tech CEOs could magically stop bad things from happening to kids, [...]

For decades now, airlines, hotels, cable companies, banks and a long list of other companies have bilked U.S. consumers out of billions of dollars annually via bullshit fees that unfairly jack up the advertised price of service. More interesting perhaps is the fact that it it took until 2023 for a U.S. federal regulator to [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is also our second place winner on the funny side. It's from That One Guy in response to our refusal to take down our posts about Appin: Someone didn't do their homework... If only there had been some way for Rajat Khare and Appin to [...]

As you likely know, at the beginning of January we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We invited designers of all stripes to make analog and digital games using the material that entered the public domain this year (including the big one, Mickey Mouse). Now, the jam [...]

In January, after a lot of back and forth with TikTok, Universal Music Group announced it would not be renewing its license with the platform for its catalog of music that users could use in their videos. UMG's claimed reasoning for this was three-fold: TikTok wasn't doing enough to combat deepfakes of the artists it [...]

As our Error 402 series continues, I swear that eventually we're going to get to some of the more promising models and stuff that actually has been working in some cases shortly, but we're still covering some of the stuff that hasn't fully panned out (or, has only panned out in limited setups). For this [...]

We've well documented how giant telecom companies have taken billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors in exchange for fiber networks they only half deploy. We've also noted that when those big ISPs do finally deploy service, they tend to prioritize white, affluent neighborhoods - which generally see faster, cheaper, service than [...]

We've covered a few stories this week related to the Senate hearing on kids safety" and there's going to be a lot more in the coming weeks as those same Senators grandstand and yell about protect the children!" and generally make fools of themselves. I think Casey Newton's summary of the spectacle is about right: [...]

A half-decade ago, Amazon was an emerging player on the facial recognition scene. Its proprietary blend was called Rekognition." At the outset, Amazon was definitely interested in getting it in the hands of as many cops as possible. Documents obtained by the ACLU showed the company was courting law enforcement agencies, seeking to sell them [...]

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, [...]

For years now we've been covering the big ongoing fights between the US and the EU regarding the transfer of user data across the Atlantic. The main issue was that due to somewhat different data protection/privacy laws between the EU and the US, the two keep trying to work out a deal" that allows (mostly) [...]

Early last year new journalism outlet named The Messenger" launched to great fanfare. The brainchild of former The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, the outlet launched with $50 million in backing anda lot of chatterabout how it was going to revolutionize U.S. journalism. Finkelstein claimed he wanted to build an alternative to a national news media" [...]

Well, this is certainly moving fast. We had begun talking about the recently released PC game Palworld as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, specifically as the game has both been described as Pokemon, but with guns" while also not containing any specific Pokemon copyrighted expression within it. While the Pokemon [...]

A pair of conservative Republican lawmakers in the Utah state legislature have introduced legislation that would require porn filteringon all mobile devices sold within the state. Technically, the bill would require retailers and manufacturers to enable parental controls on phones and tablets sold in the Beehive State in a bid to protect minors from adult [...]

Back in April, we were joined on the podcast by Chris Riley, the Executive Director of the new nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative that aimed to promote data portability and empower users to transfer their data from one service to another. Today, the Initiative has released its first annual report (pdf link), and Chris is back [...]

So as you probably know, yesterday, the Senate held one of its semi-regular let's call tech CEOs to Congress and make ourselves look out of touch and foolish" hearings. This time the focus of the discussion was on children's safety," but there was little to no discussion on what it actually takes to protect children [...]

US Private Vaults has an interesting business model. It offered something akin to end-to-end-encryption for physical goods. Unlike banks and their safety deposit boxes, US Private Vaults did not collect or retain information about its customers. Nor did it retain master keys that would allow it to access stored goods. This lack of master keys [...]

Dive into Godot - a rising star in the game engine world. You'll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you'll also explore techniques for game design and game asset creation - giving you the ultimate techniques to [...]

Back in December, we wrote about Appin. We were not writing about the reports (of which there have been many) that the organization that started as a sort of cybersecurity training school, but morphed into a kind of hack-for-hire" scheme was involved in all sorts of nefarious activity. Rather we wrote about their (ab)use of [...]

When last we checked in with right wing propaganda mill One America News (OAN), the conspiratorial gibberish farm was busy trying to pretend (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) that DirecTV's decision to boot the network from its cable lineup was part ofa vast, diabolical cabalto censor conservatives (it wasn't, the channel simply isn't [...]

Here we go again. In the long and vaunted history of DRM in software, and especially in video games, there is one general truism: DRM tends to effect only legitimate buyers while so-called pirates" route around it completely. There are all kinds of anecdotal stories as to the annoyances at best, and game-crippling outcomes at [...]

One of the things we talk about quite a lot on Techdirt is how the easy" policy ideas that many people have aren't quite so easy, because everything has tradeoffs. You want strict privacy laws? Well, that might create issues for free speech and competition. You want stronger liability on social media services? Well, that's [...]

Last November, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical datato consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as [...]

As you've likely heard, this morning the Senate did one of its semi-regular hearings in which it drags tech CEOs in front of clueless Senators who make nonsense pronouncements in hopes of getting a viral clip to show up on the very social media they're pretending to demonize, but which they rely on to pretend [...]

Lots of things look pretty great up front but completely terrible in retrospect. Most of us, however, tend to weather our worst decisions without getting a foreign military force involved. Unfortunately for UK resident Aditya Verma, something that seemed funny at the moment soon turned into an international incident. Here's how it started, as reported [...]

Headway Premium is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It's on sale for $49.97. Note: The [...]

Starting this week, Amazon Prime Video customers (who already pay $140 per year) will be charged $3 extra every month just to avoid ads that didn't previously exist. Shifting toward ad-based tiers has been popular among streaming companies like Netflix, Max, Disney+, and Paramount. But whereas those services make a cheaper ad-based tier an opt-in [...]

Well, this is not that much of a surprise, but in the leadup to the Senate child safety" dog and pony show that will be happening in a few hours, Microsoft decided to twist the knife in to some of its competitors. Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith (who was formerly the company's general [...]

And here we go. We have spent the past couple of years discussing Microsoft's acquisition, and all the trials and tribulations that led to it, of Activision Blizzard. This deal, that faced mostly flaccid opposition from several national regulatory bodies throughout the world, cost Microsoft $69 billion, with a b", to consummate. And that's just [...]

You probably recall the subreddit WallStreetBets from the whole GameStonks! episode three years ago. Over the last year or so there's been a different legal issue related to that subreddit, though. Jaime Rogozinski, who created the WSB subreddit, ended up suing Reddit, after they shut down his account. There were a few different issues at [...]

First Amendment principles are nothing new. A ton of precedent has been established that firmly limits what the government can do to stop someone from saying something (and, less often, to force someone to say something). Prior restraint is pretty easy to recognize. And yet, every so often, a judge decides to rewrite the First [...]

The DOJ can be some vindictive sons of bitches. This has nothing to do with justice at all. This is just pure spite. As has been detailed over and over again, while the public story was that Backpage was taken down for facilitating sex trafficking, the real story is very, very different. The site actually [...]