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These MaxLight mini flashlights are designed to fit in your backpack or pocket. They are super bright and strong enough to be used in emergencies when you need reliable illumination. The 4 modes let you switch from super bright, medium, low, and strobe modes. They have a magnetic base, a kickstand, a rechargeable battery, a [...]

We've already talked a bit about how Rep. Jim Jordan's Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Government" is the exact thing it claims it seeks to stop: a part of the government that is being weaponized to attack free speech. This week, Jordan sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, demanding he reveal a bunch of [...]

While early AI" systems have plenty of creativity and productivity potential, early implementations into the already very broken US journalism and media markets have proven to be an ugly mess. In part because the tech isn't really fully cooked yet. But also because the kind of folks that get to run major modern US media [...]

A previous post discussed what the recently released files of the late Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens revealed about development of the Court's decisions inLotus v. Borland,MGM v. Grokster, andEldred v. Ashcroft. This post looks at the disclosures contained in the files forQuality King v. L'anza,New York Times v. Tasini, andDastar v. Twentieth [...]

The law surrounding vanity license plates is unsettled, to vastly understate the reality. There's no consensus across states, much less federal jurisdictions. Every government seems to have its own idea about what's offensive and what isn't, as well as its own take on whether a personalized plate is government speech or merely the expression of [...]

Last week, we promised an upcoming episode featuring a conversation with Cory Doctorow - and that conversation has been recorded and is arriving next week! But we decided to take a brief intermission this week, since things in the social media landscape are changing so quickly. Mike recently appeared on The Neoliberal Podcast with Jeremiah [...]

People accuse me of unfairly bashing Elon Musk, but I've always highlighted the things he's done that I thought were smart as well, and a big one was his decision nearly a decade ago to free all of Tesla's patents. The company put out a blog post, saying that anyone could use its patents, and [...]

With every government in Europe pitching their own version of acceptable" intrusion, it's hardly surprising France's government wants in on the action. Amid calls to criminalize end-to-end encryption, to mandate client-side scanning, and to otherwise interfere directly with content moderation efforts, the French government's latest move is nothing more than the sort of thing we've [...]

Nibble is an educational tool disguised in the shape of a retro game console. It's a new and improved version of MAKERbuino that makes learning about electronics and programming fun! With a build guide, assembling the kit will be easy peasy. This DIY console comes preloaded with 4 retro games inspired by cult classics - [...]

The tech press often gets called out for lazy journalism, and here we have yet another example. On Monday, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri posted that due to an influx of spam on Threads (and there's been a lot), the company was tightening up its rate limits: He said: Spam attacks have picked up so we're [...]

The FCC, under both Trump and Biden, has made a huge, noisy deal about forcing U.S. telecoms to rip out Chinese telecom gear from U.S. networks, under the argument that the gear is used to spy on Americans (you're to ignore, of course, that the United States spies on everyone, constantly, and has broadly supported [...]

Law enforcement agencies often command an outsized portion of city and county budgets. The argument for this expenditure is basically just Blue Line bullshit: without the police at full staff, surely every locality will descend into criminal anarchy. That's the argument but the facts don't bear it out. There's very little evidence that increased law [...]

Grocery chain Trader Joe's is not a complete stranger to Techdirt's pages, and not for good reasons. The company, in the past, has shown itself to be perfectly willing to abuse trademark law to stop anything it doesn't like, such as a man reselling its goods across borders where the company has no stores (perfectly [...]

Gathering evidence has never been easier than it is now. So much is created so easily and so often. And there are so many access points for law enforcement. Sure, a few outliers (and outright liars [cough] Chris Wray [cough]) may claim everything is going dark," but never before in history have there been this [...]

As you almost certainly know, earlier this month, Meta released Threads, its Twitter-like microblogging service. There are rumors that the company rushed the launch, pushing it up a few weeks to try to capitalize on the latest nonsense at Twitter. And, it seemed to work (to some extent) in that the company was able to [...]

Well, this is an unfortunate turn of events. The last time we discussed this issue in this state (March 2019), a state appeals court came to the opposite conclusion: compelling password production is a violation of rights. That ruling said the foregone conclusion doctrine didn't apply, at least not the way the state wanted it [...]

The 2023 Mobile App Developers Bundle has 7 courses to help you learn how to create your own mobile apps. Courses cover iOS app development, Java for Android, Kotlin, Flutter, Android SQL databases, and more. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all [...]

It seems to anger certain Elon Musk fans every time I mention it, but pre-Elon Twitter was generally doing okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. It wasn't printing cash like Meta or Google, but it had been steadily increasing revenue and was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over. [...]

For more than a decade now, app makers, phone makers, wireless companies - and pretty much everybody else - has been collecting and monetizing your daily movement habits. There's genuinely no reason most of these companies (like, say, your light bulb maker) need this information, but because the U.S. is too corrupt to pass a [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is zeiche with a response to the claim that we have an axe to grind" against In-N-Out because we covered their trademark tourism in Japan: techdirt grinds axes against companies that try to protect trademarks in countries that they don't do business in. that isn't [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, more police were admitting that FOSTA/SESTA made it harder to catch traffickers, while UK Parliament members were looking to enact a similar law of their own. California was cooking up its disastrous privacy bill, while we looked at the censorship potential of the EU Copyright Directive's Article 13. [...]

If you go back and read nearly all of the posts we've done on luxury fashion company Louis Vuitton, you'll see a history of a company that is about as big a pain in the ass when it comes to intellectual property bullying as you'll find. The company often times takes it's protecting" of it's [...]

So we wrote about Judge Terry Doughty's somewhat questionable ruling preventing the Biden White House from communicating with tech companies or researchers regarding certain areas of disinformation. As we noted, there were some good elements in the ruling, reminding government officials of the 1st Amendment restrictions on coercion in attempting to silence protected speech. But [...]

There aren't many sites with tech" in their names that provide this much discussion on the First Amendment implications of vanity plate laws. Maybe it's just us. Or maybe it's just (mostly) me. Whatever the case, I find it fascinating that so many state governments have so many restrictions on what people can express via [...]

Well, well, it appears that rumors of the death of the regulatory battle over the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard purchase have been greatly exaggerated. We just discussed media reports of two items related to the deal. The first was the FTC's loss in court to get a preliminary injunction barring the two companies from consummating [...]

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 [...]

We're getting a bit more clarity and commonsense applied to lawsuits involving constitutional violations by TSA agents. As we're all painfully aware, to fly is to spend some time in often uncomfortably close proximity to a TSA officer. That's the bargain we make when we choose to board a plane. These searches are far from [...]

Last month we noted how the country's top telecom and media regulator has been under the bootheel of industry for the better part of seven years, and nobody much seems to care. For four years under Trump the agency was a glorified rubber stamp to industry interests. Telecom and media giants then lobbied Congress into [...]

Out of all the purveyors of facial recognition tech, Clearview is by far the sketchiest. It has compiled billions of photos and other personal info by doing little more than scraping the internet of anything that isn't locked down. Web scraping isn't inherently evil, but Clearview certainly makes scraping appear malicious. There are any number [...]

Video games are a form of art and a form of expression. While that used to be somewhat controversial to state decades ago, nobody of any value really argues that point any longer. And the moment you accept that simple fact, it throws into light how absolutely absurd it is that the preservation efforts of [...]

Pretty much everyone who isn't a UK legislator backing the Online Safety Bill has come out against it. The proposal would give the UK government much more direct control of internet communications. Supposedly aimed at limiting the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the proposal would do the opposite of its moniker by making [...]

As we've been covering over the last few years, there's been an almost entirely unsubstantiated moral panic over kids and social media." This is despite the fact that multiple large scale studies have found that way more kids have benefitted from social media than have been harmed by it. As we've noted time and time [...]

We just got done noting how Dish Network's long-hyped 5G wireless network is likely doomed. While they're technically building a wireless network," the network's coverage, phone selection, and overall quality has proven laughable so far, and there have been growing worries that Dish is running out of cash. Hoping to distract the press and regulators [...]

No one wants the bulky and tangled chargers anymore... and if all the power we need can be put in a little device, we'd take it, right? This Smart Keychain replaces the typical charging cable and uses the microcomputer electronic system to wirelessly charge the touch-sensitive Apple Watch by simply placing the watch on a [...]

Ever since the fall of 2018, the DHS has been threatening the American public with increased surveillance on top of the insults and intrusions TSA officers physically perform at security checkpoints. The first inklings of this rollout came in the form of a Privacy Impact Assessment released by the DHS in September 2018. The assessment [...]

We just got done noting how there's not much the federal government can do about right wing propaganda outlets like Fox News, given their protections under the First Amendment and the general limitations (both legally and courageously) at regulators like the FCC. But there is one thing that's likely to cause some serious trouble for [...]

The Chicago Police Department is extremely problematic, even by the extremely lax standards of US law enforcement. It has been home to a domestic black-site operation. It has been hit with reform mandates from federal courts. It has shown no interest in rooting out the worst of its officers. And it has engaged in a [...]

We've noted for decades how US broadband caps are little more than a predatory cash grab. The usage limits and overage fees have zero real technical function and don't manage congestion. Instead they're little more than a glorified price hike; a way for regional telecom monopolies to nickel-and-dime captive customers, charging them more money for [...]

Well, one terrible bill won't be a problem this year, though will come back next. The CJPA (California Journalism Protection Act) from Assemblymember Buffy Wick, won't move forward this year. Technically it's become a two-year bill" which basically means they can (and will) pick it back up again next year without having to revisit the [...]

And away we go. The ongoing saga that is Microsoft's attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard has been going on for months now, with a flurry of news and activity occurring over the past couple of those months as the deal sits before three major regulatory bodies in the EU, the UK, and here in America. [...]

It will surprise nobody to learn that when politicians trumpet the First Amendment, they are generally referring only to expression that they agree with. But occasionally, they demonstrate their hypocrisy in a fashion so outrageously transparent that it shocks even the most cynical and jaded First Amendment practitioners. Last week, we were treated to just [...]

As the name suggests, classification algorithms are what allow computers to well... classify new observations, like how your inbox decides which incoming emails are spam or how Siri recognizes your voice. The Essential MATLAB & Simulink Training Course will show you how to implement classification algorithms using MATLAB, one of the most powerful tools inside [...]

If there's one thing nearly everyone on Capitol Hill can agree on, it's that the federal government just isn't interfering enough with social media services. The Democrats think social media services should be regulated because they're allowing too much hate and misinformation to spread. The Republicans think social media services should be regulated because not [...]

I've spent the better part of two decades writing about how telecom monopolization (and the corruption that protects it) results in expensive, spotty, sluggish, broadband and historically terrible customer service. The cause of our substandard broadband isn't much of a mystery, but because of these companies' political influence, state and federal policymakers often lack the [...]

Finally! We've been covering famed burger chain In-N-Out's longstanding bullshit tactic for retaining trademark rights all over the world by standing up popup locations briefly once every couple of years just to satisfy the requirements to use the mark in commerce. What is far too common in the coverage about lawsuits or threats of suits [...]

Let's get this out of the way right up front: NSO Group - as ethically horrendous as it is - offers at least one unbeatable product. Its Pegasus malware is a zero-click exploit capable of fully compromising targets' phones. This means the company is worth something, even if it's not the sort of company most [...]

If you're a Techdirt reader, you're surely familiar with Cory Doctorow: we've written about him often, he's appeared on the podcast several times and, of course, he's a prolific science fiction author whose books brilliantly engage with many of the subjects we cover. Next week, if all goes according to plan, Cory will be joining [...]

Elon Musk's Twitter is apparently really hard up for cash. In addition to not paying rent or other important bills, it is now trying to claw back bills that were paid just prior to Elon getting the keys to Twitter. As you may have heard, last week, Twitter sued Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, well [...]

The worst people can make the best case law. That's the way it works here in the United States, where the court system occasionally works like it should and the old disagree with what you say but defend your right to say it" axiom is upheld by judges who frequently have to deal with speech [...]

The Complete AWS Cloud Engineer, Developer & Architect Course Bundle has 10 courses designed to help you master AWS. You'll learn about the basic use case for cloud computing and specifically for selecting AWS services. Courses will teach you how to become a Cloud Engineer, Cloud Architect, Cloud Developer, and a SysOps Admin. You'll also [...]