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Welcome To The Brave New World Of Vehicle Insurance Fraud Powered By Shallowfakes

1 year 2 months ago
The harms of deepfakes have been evident for a while. Recent examples include a Biden deepfake designed to influence voters, and the rising use of AI “nudification” apps to produce deepfake nudes of students, often female minors. But alongside the application of sophisticated AI programs to produce deepfakes there are other, lower-tech scams, often known […]
Glyn Moody

The U.S. House Version Of KOSA: Still A Censorship Bill

1 year 2 months ago
A companion bill to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was introduced in the House last month. Despite minor changes, it suffers from the same fundamental flaws as its Senate counterpart. At its core, this bill is still an unconstitutional censorship bill that restricts protected online speech and gives the government the power to target services and content […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Babbel Language Learning (All Languages)

1 year 2 months ago
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 […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Funniest/Most Inisightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 year 2 months ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about the lawsuit between cops that resulted more than $23 million in damages: ‘They hospitalized a cop, but he’s a black guy and they’re white so…’ The injuries:And he’s already secured a settlement from the city for $5 […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: April 28th – May 4th

1 year 2 months ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Texas began pushing its bill that would allow the state to sue Twitter for banning conservatives, while Facebook filed a questionable lawsuit over fake followers and likes, and a New York saxophonist became the latest to join the bandwagon of suing Fortnite developers. The Supreme Court asked the […]
Leigh Beadon

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: This One Weird Trick To Save The Open Internet

1 year 2 months ago
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, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Leigh Beadon

Three Cities Sue Axon; Claim It Has A Monopoly On Body Cams, Electronic Weapons

1 year 2 months ago
As much as I dislike and distrust Axon (formerly Taser and the leading proponent of the “excited delirium” theory of cop exoneration), I just don’t think there’s much going on here. Sometimes there are actual monopolies. And sometimes, one business is just better at business than its competitors. But that’s what a few cities are […]
Tim Cushing

Student Journalists Convince School To Ditch Its Spyware, But School Only Agrees To Not Spy On Its Journalists

1 year 2 months ago
Schools have always kept tabs on students using school-issued devices. Prior to the pandemic, this had mostly been limited to filtering software that prevents students from accessing content schools don’t approve of. Of course, this has also kept students from accessing content that might be useful to them personally (self-harm prevention, LGBTQ+ content) or scholastically […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Kodak Slide N Scan Film & Slide Scanner

1 year 2 months ago
Embrace the evolution of image scanning technology with the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner. This state-of-the-art device is designed to digitally preserve and enhance your cherished memories, ensuring they stay vivid for years to come. The Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner can effortlessly scan color and B&W negatives (135, 110, 126) and […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Hours After Aussie Gov’t Greenlights Online Age Verification Pilot, Breach Of Mandated Verification Database For Bars Is Revealed

1 year 2 months ago
It’s almost laughable that these two stories happened so close to one another. The Australian government has just announced a pilot program to test an online age verification system: And then, just hours later, it was reported that law enforcement is investigating an apparent breach of club and bar patrons’ personal data, which the venues […]
Mike Masnick

Court Supports NY State’s Quest To Require $15 Broadband For Poor People, Much To Big Telecom’s Horror

1 year 2 months ago
When the Trump administration killed net neutrality, telecom industry giants convinced them to push their luck and declared that not only would federal regulators no longer try to meaningfully oversee telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T, but that states couldn’t either. They got greedy. The courts didn’t like that much, repeatedly ruling that the FCC […]
Karl Bode

Pro-Cop Coalition With No Web Presence Pitches Report Claiming Criminal Justice Reforms Are To Blame For Higher Crime Rates

1 year 2 months ago
Because it sells so very well to a certain percentage of the population, ridiculous people are saying ridiculous things about crime rates in the United States. And, of course, the first place to post this so-called “news” is Fox News. An independent group of law enforcement officials and analysts claim violent crime rates are much higher than […]
Tim Cushing

Wyden Presses FTC To Crack Down On Rampant Auto Industry Privacy Abuses

1 year 2 months ago
Last year Mozilla released a report showcasing how the auto industry has some of the worst privacy practices of any tech industry in America (no small feat). Massive amounts of driver behavior is collected by your car, and even more is hoovered up from your smartphone every time you connect. This data isn’t secured, often […]
Karl Bode

Axon Wants Its Body Cameras To Start Writing Officers’ Reports For Them

1 year 2 months ago
Taser long ago locked down the market for “less than lethal” (but still frequently lethal) weapons. It has also written itself into the annals of pseudoscience with its invocation of not-an-actual-medical condition “excited delirium” as it tried to explain away the many deaths caused by its “less than lethal” Taser. These days Taser does business […]
Tim Cushing