Techdirt

Officers who handle drug dogs like to claim they're so highly skilled at animal handling they can recognize otherwise imperceptible moves by their animals as the dog alerting," giving them (and, more literally) their animals free rein to perform warrantless searches of vehicles. But when these arguments fail, and it's apparent a K-9 cop just [...]

Italy's newly-installedPiracy Shieldsystem, put in place by the country's national telecoms regulator, Autorita per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (Authority for Communications Guarantees, AGCOM), is already failing in significant ways. One issuebecame evident in February, when the VPN provider AirVPN announced that it would no longer accept users resident in Italy because of the burdensome" requirements [...]

The U.S. is a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with athirty-percent jump in the last decade. That's in contrast toevery other developed country, which saw a decline. So, of course, it's a perfect time to flood American highways with a parade of extremely heavy EVs with unprecedented acceleration. Some of which areextremely pointyand feature half-cooked [...]

With strong bipartisan support, the U.S. Housevoted 352 to 65to pass HR 7521 last week, a bill that wouldban TikTok nationwideif its Chinese owner doesn't sell the popular video app. The TikTok bill's future in the U.S. Senate isn't yet clear, but President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law if it [...]

A lot of police work in the United States is just playing the odds. Roll the dice enough times, and you're sure to come up a winner now and then. The odds really don't matter because law enforcement agencies are playing with house money, so being wrong time and time again will never bankrupt them. [...]

MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a phone stand for 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, and [...]

We already covered the oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case earlier this week, showing that the Supreme Court appears to be quite skeptical of the arguments by the states regarding the federal government jawboning" to convince social media to take down certain content. For months now, we've been pointing out that the factual [...]

Last week the New York Times published a story confirming what everybody assumed was already happening. Automakers collect reams of personal behavior, phone, and other data (without making it clear to consumers) then sell it to a long list of companies. Including insurance companies, who are now jacking up insurance rates if they see behavior [...]

Here we go again. Monster Energy is one of the most prolific trademark bullies in the history of trademark bullying. And the really frustrating part of all this is that at times it can feel like Monster makes trademark bullying a chief international export every bit as much as energy drinks. No trademark concern is [...]

With the standard caveat that reading too much into oral arguments is dangerous, I will note that I am cautiously optimistic after listening to the oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case at the Supreme Court this morning. There are very real concerns about where the line is between government coercion (not allowed) and [...]

Both troubled teens and government agencies are asking, How thin is thin enough?" The teens are thinking about how thin they want to look, while the government is thinking about what's too thin to post online. The refrain is always the same: the platforms need to do more-never mind the difficult details. Platforms need to [...]

The Freedom of Information Act does its best to free information, but it can only do so much when the same government that's supposed to follow it figures it shouldn't abide by a law another branch crafted. Simple refusals are never welcome, but at least they say something: that the government does have these documents. [...]

You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let's focus on the app. Right off the bat, let's be clear about one thing: When we say app" we don't mean that you're limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across [...]

You know that line, every accusation is a confession?" For no reason at all, that's coming to mind all of a sudden. No reason. Anyway, a decade ago, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore wrote a fantastic piece for Foreign Affairs on The End of Hypocrisy" (which we also wrote about here at Techdirt). They argued [...]

For decades, U.S. broadband providers have struck cozy deals with landlords effectively elbowing out competitors and allowing them to create building-by-building broadband monopolies. That stifled competition results in higher costs, slow speeds, and worse overall service. And while the FCC passed rules in 2007 trying to ban the practice, they were so full of loopholes [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Pixelation with a comment about banning TikTok: Banning TikTok will open the door to the real threat, government control of communication platforms. I would say it's a republican wet dream, but it's also a democrat one as well. In second place, it's That One [...]

It's time for another entry in our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We've already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, and today we're taking a closer look at the winner of Best [...]

We haven't talked a great deal about SXSW in some time, but they are back in the news and not for good reasons! The conference and festival kicked off in March as planned, but less planned were the protests that organized against the conference as a result of its affiliations with defense contractors and the [...]

A gentleman's agreement with the UK following years of colonialism has given rise to another form of oppression. China took over Hong Kong in 1997, promising to stay out of the day-to-day business of governing Hong Kong for 50 years. Not even halfway through this promised period of relative autonomy, the Chinese government began imposing [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation's Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. In this week's round-up of news about online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover: The [...]

On Monday, the Supreme Court will be hearing the Murthy v. Missouri case, which we've been following for ages. As we've pointed out repeatedly, the record on the case is full of blatant falsehoods. If the US government was actually doing everything that the lawsuit (and some judges!) claims it did, I would be in [...]

What a day. Texas is now the most populated U.S. state to be geo-blocked by Aylo, the parent company of the popular adult tube site Pornhub.com. With a population of barely over 29.5 million people, residents of the Lone Star State must use a VPN to view porn on Aylo's network of free and premium [...]

The Complete Python Programmer Bundle has nine courses to help you learn more about programming. This bundle starts with fundamental Python functionality such as arithmetic, conditional statements, and working with basic data structures. It then expands upon your working knowledge of data structures to work with full-blown datasets in the Pandas package. You'll learn all [...]

Last month, we wrote about Nevada's Attorney General filing an absolutely preposterous, but extremely dangerous, legal filing, demanding that a court bar Meta from offering end-to-end encryption for its messaging apps. Almost everything about this request was crazy. First, Nevada sued Meta, with vague, unsubstantiated claims of harm to children," and then it filed a [...]

As you probably noticed, the House just passed the controversial ban on TikTok, with 352 Representatives in favor, and 65 opposed. The bill is now likely to be slow-walked to the Senate where its chance of passing is murky, but possible. Biden (which has been using the purportedly dangerous national security threat" to campaign with) [...]

It's been a long and incredibly frustrating road to get here, but the IRS' free Direct File pilot program is now live this tax season in 12 states. We have had a list of posts we have done on the topic of tax filings, most of which revolve around Intuit and some other tax-prep organizations' [...]

While countless lawmakers looking to get on cable TV spent much of the last few years freaking out about TikTok privacy issues, none of those same folks seem bothered by the parade of nasty vulnerabilities in the nation's telecom networks. Hackers are still happily exploiting the SS7 flaw that lets governments and bad actorsspy on [...]

Last year, we wrote about a very silly lawsuit that some big music publishers had filed against ExTwitter, making some silly claims about how copyright law works. It basically ignored the existence of the DMCA, which was designed to prevent lawsuits like this one, where there is some infringement happening on the platform, but no [...]

As the debate over Section 702 continues, more weird stuff keeps happening. For once, there's serious opposition to a clean renewal, and it's coming from both sides of the legislature. Then there are things like this, which is one of the stranger incidents to accompany a surveillance fight, as reported by Dell Cameron for Wired. [...]

The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You'll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated [...]

Over the last few days, we've had a few posts about the latest attempt to ban TikTok in the US (and to people who say it's only a divestiture bill: there is a ban in the language of the bill if ByteDance won't divest). Yesterday, unsurprisingly, the House voted overwhelmingly, 352 to 65, to pass [...]

Ever since AT&T's 2011 Supreme Court victory, the courts have declared it perfectly legal for a corporation to erode your legal rights using fine print. As a result, most every service and company in the U.S. now uses contract fine print to try and prevent you from suing the company (either alone or in a [...]

Well, this is interesting. As part of our many posts about the cord-cutting trend that has been on the increase over the past decade or so, I have long made the point that the only thing keeping cable television looking even remotely like it did twenty years ago has been live sports. With the advent [...]

Oregon has officially become the seventh state (behind New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota) to pass right to repair" legislation, making it easier and more affordable for consumers to independently repair their own electronics. The bill, which passed the Oregon Senate last month 25-5 and the House on Monday 42-13, is a bit [...]

As is tradition, now that we've announced the winners of our latest public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928, it's time for a special episode of the podcast taking a closer look at them. Just like in past years, Mike is joined by myself and our game design partner Randy Lubin to discuss our [...]

The last time we wrote about an interaction between the Supreme Court and the famed art collective/pranksters/social commentators/cultural marketing jammers MSCHF, it was covering their interesting choice of amicus briefs. They sought to comment on the Bad Spaniels" case by making the Justices and their clerks complete connect the dot" artwork as an attempt to [...]

NSO Group rang the bell. Despite all of its ex-intelligence service expertise and backing from its government, it can't un-ring it. What's done is done. And the repercussions just keep on coming, paying back NSO for years of selling powerful phone exploits to some of the worst people on earth. NSO got sanctioned, along with [...]

Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at [...]

Last week, we wrote about Senator Dick Durbin going on the floor of the Senate and spreading some absolute nonsense about Section 230 as he continued to push his STOP CSAM Act. His bill has some good ideas mixed in with some absolutely terrible ideas. In particular, the current language of the bill is a [...]

Last September, Mozilla came out with a privacy study indicating that the auto industry was the worst tech industry the organization tracked. Mozilla found that not only does the industry hoover up a ton of data from your use of vehicles, it collects and monetizes most of the data on your phone. Often without transparency [...]

And here we go again. It's time for another abject lesson in how you don't actually own the things you're buying" in this here digital age. We've covered a ton of these stories at this point, obviously. But there are examples of people learning that they don't actually own the thing they spent their money [...]

The time has come to pay the discovery piper for NSO Group. The phone exploit firm formed by former Israeli spies was supported unilaterally by the Israeli government as it courted human rights abusers and autocrats. The Israeli government apparently felt selling powerful phone exploits to its enemies got caught with its third-party pants down [...]

It's not surprising, but still disappointing, to see companies like Google and Meta, which used to take strong stands against bad laws, now showing a repeated willingness to cave on such principles in the interests of appeasing policymakers. It's been happening a lot in the last few years and it's happened again as Google has [...]

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 [...]

After hearing consecutive FBI directors (James Comey, Chris Wray) drone on and on about how device and communication encryption are nudging us ever closer to the criminal apocalypse, it's kind of refreshing to hear from someone else equally as misguided. An op-ed written by Steven Wasserman recently appeared at The Hill. Wasserman opens his piece [...]

It's potentially forgotten in all the other nonsense that has happened over the past four years, but the initial push to ban TikTok" in the US started right after a bunch of TikTokers reserved fake seats for a rally that Trump's campaign people thought was going to be mobbed by people and ended up being [...]

We've documented in detail how the whole AT&T->Time Warner->Warner Brothers Discovery merger processhas been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku byover-compensated executivesclearlyout of [...]

Over the last decade, increasing numbers of automated license plate readers (ALPR) have been installed on roads, bringing with them a variety of privacy problems, as Techdirt has reported. It's easy to see why ALPR is popular with the authorities: license plate readers seem a simple way to monitor driving behavior and to catch people [...]

Law enforcement investigators and prosecutors have overwhelmingly embraced plenty of pseudoscience over the years, treating everything from bite marks to hair samples as conclusive evidence capable of singling out guilty parties. Most claims were specious, backed only by expert" statements from law enforcement crime lab employees solely interested in confirming prevailing law enforcement theories. And [...]

The Utah state legislature recently adopted a new bill that now requires the pre-installed pornography filters found on mobile devices to be turned on at the point of sale. If a device sold doesn't have these filters enabled, liability for device manufacturers and retailers is quite severe. I wrote about this bill earlier this month [...]