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The ChatGPT By OpenAI Training Bundle has four courses to introduce you to ChatGPT. You will learn the fundamentals of working with ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI. You’ll gain hands-on experience using ChatGPT to generate text that is coherent and natural, and you will explore the many possibilities for using this tool […]

As soon as it was announced, we warned that the new “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” (which Kevin McCarthy agreed to support to convince some Republicans to support his speakership bid) was going to be not just a clown show, but one that would, itself, be weaponized to suppress speech (the […]

Earlier this month we noted how a successful, often homophobic smear campaign scuttled the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The GOP and telecom sector, as usual, worked in close collaboration to spread all manner of lies about Sohn, including claims she was an unhinged radical that hated Hispanics, cops, puppies, and […]

Well, well. The fight between Sony and Microsoft over the latter’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues to get more and more interesting. As three regulatory bodies have been poking at the deal — the European Commission for the EU, the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) […]

A middle school in California has screwed up. And now it’s getting taken to court. Hillel Aron gives us the background over at Courthouse News Service: It was, perhaps, inevitable that the strange incident at a Ventura County middle school last year when dozens of students were banned from wearing T-shirts reading “Justice for Lil […]

Freedom of speech and association include the right to choose one’s communication technologies. Politicians shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say, where to say it, or who to say it to. So we are troubled by growing demands in the United States for restrictions on TikTok, a technology that many people have chosen […]

The biggest mistakes people make about Section 230 involve thinking that it is somehow a complicated law. In reality, its operation is not all that complex. Accordingly, determining whether it applies to any particular situation should not be all that difficult to evaluate, even when we think about hard or edge cases. Ultimately what we […]

Well, this is unfortunate. Back in May of last year we wrote about how Missouri and Louisiana had sued the Biden administration, claiming “censorship” over social media based on a bunch of convoluted and nonsensical claims, most of which were about events that happened during the Trump administration. We noted that, when viewed in the […]

Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you’ll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting […]

The international sign language for “go fuck yourself” isn’t just a protected right in the US of A. Although we may make more use of it than most, a Canadian court has declared this particular form of expression to be blessed by [insert deity of choice here]. Canadians may have a reputation for civility, but […]

If you recall, the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai spent several years stripping away popular media consolidation limits established over decades with bipartisan approval. The push was ironically to directly help aid Sinclair broadcasting’s steady consolidation of local broadcast news, which resulted in a homogenized soup of well-funded propaganda and the erosion of real, local […]

Not literally, of course. Let’s get that out of the way. The company was not sending people out to dig up bodies to take photos to add to its facial recognition database. I mean, how would that even work. Not only that, but very few desiccated corpses utilize subscription-based facial recognition services. It’s not a […]

It won’t surprise any regular read here when I say that Marvel is notoriously aggressive on matters of intellectual property. Equally unsurprising will be my reminding our dear readers that this includes the company attempting to use IP laws in the past to un-ring the leak-bell when content has been leaked early. Hell, Marvel gets […]

Given Wall Street’s insatiable demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost, a growing number of companies seem intent on nickel-and-diming once happy customers into oblivion. For many companies, that means taking a feature that was free or already paid for as part of the device’s retail price, then shoving it into a subscription tier […]

Over the last few months, Elon Musk’s handpicked journalists have continued revealing less and less with each new edition of the “Twitter Files,” to the point that even those of us who write about this area have mostly been skimming each new release, confirming that yet again these reporters have no idea what they’re talking […]

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) pretty much unregulated use of surveillance technology. Courts have given considerable leeway to border agencies, reasoning that national security concerns outweigh the countless violations of constitutional rights. The protections the highest court in the land erects are waved away anywhere CBP […]

Portable, sleek and sophisticated, the Nix Mini 2 Color Sensor is engineered with life in mind. It’s perfect for those who find inspiration wherever they go. The Nix Mini can easily identify any color with a simple scan, ideal for those who work with color, or for those who simply want to bring it into […]

Earlier this week there was finally a hearing in the case brought by the big book publishers to kill off libraries. That, of course, is not how the publishers describe the lawsuit, but it’s absolutely what the lawsuit is about. We’ll get to some of the details in a moment, but we’ve joked in the […]

Earlier this month a homophobic smear campaign seeded in the press by the likes of AT&T, Comcast, and News Corporation successfully killed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn. The goal: to keep the FCC in perpetual partisan gridlock, preventing the agency from making any decisions deemed even remotely controversial by the media and […]

A little over a year ago, we discussed Nintendo’s shutdown of the eShop for its 3DS and Wii U consoles. That shutdown ended up being delayed due to a metric ton of outcry from the gaming public, but that was only a stay of execution. In a matter of days, those shops will be discontinued, […]

In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a “surge in hateful conduct,” which its then safety chief put down to a “focused, short-term trolling campaign.” New research suggests that when it comes to antisemitism, it was anything but. Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took […]

Playing to a crowd no one should desire to associate with, Donald Trump understudy Ron DeSantis has been saddling his constituents with a variety of noisy, performative legislation. First, he tried to bypass the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity by hustling through a law aimed at preventing private companies from booting his buddies off […]

Well, here we go again. For years now, the legacy news industry, often led by lobbyists for Rupert Murdoch, have been pushing a bizarre plan to tax links on the internet. The entire rationale for this plan seems to be “news organizations used to be rolling in easy money, they failed to innovate with the […]

Ah, mission creep. The government loves it. Keeps people employed, keeps citizens on their toes, keeps privacy-focused sites in business, etc. In 2017, the DHS began quietly rolling out its facial recognition program, starting with international airports and aimed mainly at collecting/scanning people boarding international flights. Even in its infancy, the DHS was hinting this […]

The 2023 Complete Python Certification Bootcamp Bundle has 12 courses to help you become a Python expert. These courses will take you from beginner to expert in Python. They cover major topics including Object-Oriented Programming, Web Scraping, GUI development, and more. Courses also cover how to build your own smart devices, how to build your […]

Back in January, we wrote about the Seattle public school district filing an absolutely laughable lawsuit against basically all of big social media, based on a bunch of misread and misunderstood studies, and general moral panic that social media must be “bad” for kids. In February, we wrote about the school district in Mesa, Arizona […]

We’ve noted for a while now how the great TikTok moral panic of 2023 is largely a distraction. It’s a distraction from the fact we’ve refused to meaningfully regulate dodgy data brokers, who traffic in everything from your daily movement habits to your mental health diagnosis. And it’s a distraction from our corrupt failure to […]

Searching out stories we have done on intellectual property conflicts surrounding the Pokémon franchise will give you no shortage of results. Part of that is that there is simply a ton of content out there: books, cards, video games, animated TV shows, movies, and mobile games. It is also the case that there are a […]

In 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States overrode the Third Party Doctrine to declare cell site location info (CSLI) off-limits without a warrant. Recognizing the fact that ubiquitous cell phone use was generating reams of data daily that would allow law enforcement to engage in long-term tracking of people’s movements, the Supreme Court […]

If you’re an automaker or oil giant keen on slowing the rise of electric vehicles, there’s no shortage of captured lawmakers ready and willing to implement your terrible ideas, however harmful or impractical. In North Carolina, Republican leaders have pushed a bill demanding locals destroy any free electric vehicle stations on public land, if local authorities don’t […]

The people who claim to be confused about social media services and the First Amendment are never truly confused. It’s always the people you expect to claim they’re “confused.” Most social media users understand they’re playing on someone else’s playground. They know that if they act like inveterate assholes, the social media company will repeatedly […]

Sometimes it feels like we need to keep pointing this out, but it’s (1) often forgotten and (2) really, really important. Section 230 doesn’t just protect “big tech.” It also doesn’t just protect “small tech.” It literally protects you and me. Remember, the key part of the law so that no provider or user of […]

Get more out of your gaming experience with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. With over 100 high-quality games and new titles added all the time, you’ll always have something new to play with friends on console, PC, mobile devices or tablets. Plus, you get instant access to EA Play and other cool member benefits to create […]

The FBI has long enjoyed its close relationship with the NSA… or at least the NSA’s collections. Data and communications collected under the NSA’s Section 702 program contain plenty of “incidental” snooping on Americans. That’s because even though it’s a foreign-facing collection, Americans who communicate with people outside of the United States are swept up […]

Federal law specifically bans Federal Communications Commission (FCC) employees from owning “any stocks, bonds, or other securities of [any company] significantly regulated by the Commission.” That’s apparently news to FCC employees. A new report (hat tip, Ars Technica) by nonprofit watchdog group Campaign Legal Center found that numerous employees hold stock in Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is CSMcDonald with a comment about the comparison between Ron DeSantis attacking Disney and Gavin Newsom attacking Walgreens: One difference.. I don’t like Newsom’s posturing, but he’s just refusing do do business with a company. DeSantis is threatening to ruin a company by not allowing […]

So far in our series of posts on showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927, we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia and Best Visuals winner Urbanity. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the winner of the Best Adaptation category: To And Again […]

Walled Culture is a big fan of the public domain. The amazing artistic uses that people are able to make of material only once it enters the public domain are an indication that copyright can act as an obstacle to wider creativity, rather than something that automatically promotes it. But there’s a problem: because the public […]

Ring offers security products. Shame they’re not all that secure. Sure, things have improved in recent years, but there was nowhere to go but up. In December 2019, multiple reports surfaced of Ring cameras — most of them inside people’s houses — being hijacked by malicious idiots who used the commandeered cameras to yell nasty […]

Mainstream political news outlets like Axios have long been accused of “both sides” or “view from nowhere” journalism where they bend over backward to frame everything through a lens of illusory objectivity as to not offend. This distortion is then routinely exploited by authoritarians and corporations keen on normalizing bigotry, rank corruption, or even the […]

Question Presented: Does Section 230 Protect Generative AI Products Like ChatGPT? As the buzz around Section 230 and its application to algorithms intensifies in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s response, ‘generative AI’ has soared in popularity among users and developers, begging the question: does Section 230 protect generative AI products like ChatGPT? Matt Perault, a […]

Late last year, we wrote about the extremely misleading discussion around “shadow banning” on Twitter. The history of the term is important, as it originated as a tool to defeat trolls, and it had a very specific definition: making users who were deemed problematic to a site think their posts were still getting through, when […]

Project Management Institute Training Bundle has 2 courses to help you become a project management expert. The first course focuses on the basic principles and the lifecycle of project management. You’ll learn about group interactions, managing cost factors, managing risk factors, and more. The second course focuses on Agile project management. It’s on sale for […]

In 2014, Twitter sued the DOJ over its National Security Letter (NSL) reporting restrictions, which limited the company from producing transparency reports with much transparency in them. NSLs were only allowed to be reported in bands. And what broad bands they were. If Twitter received 20 NSLs, it had to report it as 0-499. If […]

A bipartisan coalition of Senators including Roger Wicker (MS), Todd Young (IN), Mark Kelly (AZ) and Ben Ray Luján (NM) are poised to reintroduce legislation supported by telecom monopolies that could ultimately result in tech giants paying telecom giants billions of dollars for no coherent reason. The soon to be reconstituted FAIR Contributions Act, word […]

We haven’t always spoken in glowing terms about Bungie, the game studio behind the Destiny franchise. That being said, in more recent days, Bungie has also taken some very positive steps when it comes to protecting its fans from copyright takedown abuse, while also highlighting for the record that the DMCA takedown process employed by […]

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles is pretty much just renting a car from Hertz. Participating in either system greatly increases your chances of spending time jailed for crimes you didn’t commit. Hertz’s inability to perform basic inventory control functions means renters in good standing are being treated to guns out traffic stops and felony […]

Earlier this month we noted how a sleazy telecom and media giant smear campaign successfully derailed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn, keeping the agency gridlocked (quite intentionally) without the voting majority to do much of anything deemed “controversial” by industry. While the GOP and telecom giants deserve the lion’s share of the […]

You may have heard that the Biden administration has told TikTok that it must be divested from ByteDance or it will be banned in the US. At least that’s what TikTok said the administration has said. The end result of this might well be that ByteDance divests of TikTok, but we should be clear: the […]

The All-In-One Microsoft Excel Certification Training Bundle has 10 courses to help you master advanced Excel dashboards, Google Sheets, data science, and more. You’ll learn about data visualization, VBA programming, business intelligence, Pivot Tables, and more. It’s on sale for $34. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of […]