The Complete 2024 Microsoft Office Mastery Bundle has 9 courses to help you become a Microsoft Office expert. Courses cover Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. It’s on sale for $46. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The […]
Here are two separate stories regarding the mess that is modern copyright law, that is now mostly “mediated” by companies that half-ass randomly deal with things and sometimes do not. While this is, perhaps, a better setup than stupidly suing kids for daring to like or share a song, it still suggests the entire copyright […]
We’ve noted numerous times how U.S. communities are increasingly tired of substandard, expensive broadband caused by market failure, so they’re building their own broadband networks at a record pace. These efforts take a wide variety of forms, whether it’s via a local cooperative, a collection of municipalities, or a city owned utility (see Chattanooga’s huge […]
Last summer, we brought to you the delightful news that Trader Joe’s had joined the list of bad-acting companies that were attempting to play stupid trademark games with their own employees’ unions through bullshit trademark disputes and lawsuits. This appears to be something of a trend brewing, with other companies engaging in this same sort […]
We’re back with another post in our ongoing series on web monetization, the Error 402 series. Before the holidays, we had talked about some of the earlier attempts at monetizing content, which included paywalls, banner ads, search ads, and eventually concepts around upselling into premium services under the banner of “freemium.” I originally was going […]
There’s nothing more urbane than omnipresent surveillance, apparently. London is considered one of the classiest places on earth, what with its wealth of history, iconic landmarks, and… thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras. It’s also home to knife crime, pervasive racism, and soccer hooligans, with plenty of residents exhibiting all three of these traits simultaneously. […]
Ron DeSantis continues to govern Florida as though the Constitution doesn’t exist. It may froth the voting base a bit, but it’s doing almost nothing for DeSantis, much less the people he’s supposed to be serving. Law after unconstitutional law has been passed by the legislature, followed almost immediately by lawsuits and injunctions blocking the […]
The 2024 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner and Architect Bundle has 7 courses to help you learn about the world’s leading cloud infrastructure. There are courses for complete beginners and some for those who already have a basic knowledge but want to level up. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered […]
The Florida legislature (with the support of goon-in-chief Ron DeSantis) really has a thing for unconstitutional bills that piss on the 1st Amendment. I mean, the state is still in a 1st Amendment fight with Mickey Mouse, which should tell you something. The Florida legislature is only in session at the beginning of the year, […]
We’ve long established that U.S. broadband is expansive, patchy, and slow thanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That’s resulted in a growing number of towns, cities, cooperatives, and city-owned utilities building their own, locally-owned and operated broadband networks in a bid for better, cheaper, faster broadband. Regional giants like Comcast, […]
Field drug tests often seem to be more a triumph of imagination than a triumph of science. They’re cheap. Some popular tests run less than $3/per. That’s the literal selling point. When in doubt, a cop can get probable cause by grabbing a substance, dumping it into a field test, and deciding whatever results are […]
Big tech companies have long attempted to monopolize repair options to boost their profits, whether we’re talking about tractors, phones, or game consoles. But in recent years companies like Apple and Microsoft appear to have realized that with state and federal lawmakers and regulators cracking down on this behavior, and right to repair seeing widespread, […]
Last month, we wrote about Apple’s nonsensical attack on Beeper, a universal messaging app that exemplifies many of the things we talk about here on Techdirt, like adversarial interoperability and the value of embracing open protocols over walled platforms. This week, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky joins us on the podcast to talk about the app, […]
Last week I noted that the improperly named Common Sense Media had submitted a very problematic and dangerous California ballot initiative that aims to hold social media companies liable should any harm that happens to any child be loosely connected to social media. As we noted, the research out there does not support the underlying […]
Most courts recognize prior restraint as a First Amendment violation. Most courts. Not all. And the lower you go on the judicial organization chart, the more likely you are to run into a judge who doesn’t seem to realize the Constitution exists. The problem for people being sued in state and county courts is that […]
Headway 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 $60. Note: The Techdirt […]
If you buy products on Amazon, you’re well aware of the Amazon brand spammers. These tend to be drop shippers or small (often Chinese) operations trying to sell knockoffs of whatever products might sell. But the products need brand names. In early 2020, the NY Times did an article about the phenomenon, “All Your Favorite […]
While the telecom industry did manage to successfully defang U.S. consumer protection regulators for the better part of the last decade, they’re still facing some notable headwinds. Broadband growth has dramatically slowed, cable TV customers are leaving in droves, and while they are getting a ton of new subsidies via the infrastructure bill, a lot of that money is […]
Techdirt has been covering the UK’s awful Online Safety Act for nearly five years now. During that time it has changed name — it was originally called the Online Harms Bill — but the many bad ideas have remained. Some have even become worse. For example, the UK government said that it wouldn’t enforce the […]
We’ve expressed our displeasure with geofence warrants multiple times. I’ve often referred to them as “reverse” warrants, a term that implies how these warrants invert probable cause. Those in the business of protecting rights (ACLU, EFF) aren’t fans of that term, but it is useful shorthand. Rather than show a court probable cause exists to […]
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