For as long as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has had scanners, the government has been able to obtain information about senders and recipients. Under the Third Party Doctrine, information shared with third parties (in this case, shared with the government directly) is the government’s to have. No warrant needed. The USPS has been […]
We had just recently written about the American Psychological Association’s very thorough and detailed report going through much of the research about the impact of social media on the mental health of kids. That report was careful, and nuanced, and basically said that there is little evidence that social media is inherently bad for kids. […]
The FBI has fucked around and now it’s on a collision course with Finding Out. The NSA likes its Section 702 collection — an upstream collection authorized to gather communications in bulk from foreigners as well as US persons communicating with foreigners. The NSA is supposed to minimize the incidental collection of US persons’ communications. […]
The TruGolf Mini is a new approach to learning the game of golf. Paired with E6 CONNECT software, this interactive swing studio analyzes and displays swing data after every shot, helping golfers of all skill levels understand the game. With TruGolf Mini, every shot you take is a lesson. It’s on sale for $199.97 until 11:59pm PDT on 5/31/23. […]
Over the last few months, we’ve written a bunch about DoNotPay, the company run by Joshua Browder, claiming that it is the “world’s first robot lawyer” — that is until people take him to court for various things, at which point he says the term is just meant to be for marketing, and not to […]
We’ve mentioned for years how there’s now an absolute ocean of telecoms, services, apps, and other companies that are busy collecting all manner of sensitive location, health, mental health, browsing, and sexual preference data, then selling access to it to a massive array of dodgy and poorly regulated data brokers. Despite this, we consistently refuse […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is TKnarr with a comment about Elon Musk’s troublesome demands of Twitter employees, and those employees being encouraged not to keep written records: This sounds like prime examples of a rule I’ve had for decades: if your bosses don’t want a written record of something, […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, a report confirmed the deep flaws of automated facial recognition software in the UK while its use was spreading in the US, not least because (as the ACLU found out via documents it obtained) Amazon was handing out cheap tech to law enforcement. We looked at how the […]
Ah, Monster Energy. For regular readers of Techdirt, the name of the company alone is enough to get your eyes rolling harder than a teenager at a rave. Posts on the company’s trademark bullying ways are so legion that I dare not even begin listing them; if you’re unfamiliar with them, click the link and […]
We’ve certainly been talking a lot about the “AI Doomers” who insist that AI is all too likely to destroy humanity. However, even people who aren’t fully on board with the existential threat of AI do often say that, at the very least, it’s going to destroy jobs for most people, potentially creating huge problems. […]
Technically we’ve posted this analysis before, when we posted our entire amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case, along with a summary of what we had written in it. But that summary also included other arguments, and a very condensed version of this one, that the First […]
For a few years now, the EU Commission has been pushing legislation that would undermine, if not actually criminalize, end-to-end encryption. It’s “for the children,” as they say. To prevent the distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse material), the EU wants to mandate client-side scanning by tech companies — a move that would necessitate the […]
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. These flashlights have a carabiner, kickstand, long-lasting rechargeable battery, magnetic base, […]
Elon Musk has insisted that “transparency is the key to trust” in rebuilding Twitter in his image. He says it all the time. But, of course, under Musk, Twitter has been significantly less transparent, choosing to skip its transparency reports, and generally close itself off. But one of the key methods for transparency on Twitter […]
We’ve noted repeatedly that as the streaming sector grows and consolidates, it’s revealing many of the same problems we saw inherent in traditional, shitty, cable TV. As in the need to provide Wall Street improved quarterly returns at any cost has them doing the sort of things common in the traditional cable sector they used […]
Here we go again. We’ve talked several times in the past about game publishers and studios going out of their way to shut down fan-run servers for online play. The excuses for doing so mostly amount to either claims that intellectual property laws require this sort of policing action (it doesn’t), that the publisher needs […]
Despite industry best efforts to prevent it, the “right to repair” movement shows no sign of slowing down. This week, Minnesota was the latest state to pass a new right to repair law. State lawmakers added right to repair provisions to an omnibus bill (SF 2774) after obtaining bipartisan support across both chambers. The language requires electronics […]
A whole bunch of media articles are noting that Twitter users who deleted tweets have noticed in recent weeks that the deleted tweets have magically returned. There seems to be little rhyme or reason for which deleted tweets have returned, but it’s definitely happening to many users. In some cases, people said they had deleted […]
In his concurrence, Justice Gorsuch called the Supreme Court’s decision last week in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case a narrow one of statutory interpretation, ostensibly doing nothing more than interpreting the breadth of the first fair use factor (“the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial […]
A robbery/kidnapping case allegedly implicating business owner and immigrant Evgeni Kopankov has resulted in the government losing the evidence it took it oh so long to obtain. And the government has only itself to blame for how this went down. Kopankov was arrested in 2019 for his supposed involvement in a conspiracy to rob (and, […]
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