It’s already bad news for Elon Musk that advertisers have been abandoning the site in droves. But, Musk keeps trying to claim that it’s worth it so long as users are using the site more. Unfortunately for him, it appears that many users are either leaving or posting a lot less. A new study from […]
Automakers are increasingly obsessed with turning everything into a subscription service in a bid to boost quarterly returns. We’ve noted how BMW has embraced making heated seats and other features already in your car a subscription service, and Mercedes has been making better gas and EV engine performance something you have to pay extra for […]
The ACLU has been helping victims of the Kansas Highway Patrol hold the agency (and its troopers) accountable for their actions. Multiple lawsuits have been filed targeting the “Kansas two-step” performed by troopers. After delivering citations or otherwise making it clear drivers are free to go, the troopers take a step back to the car […]
One hurdle defeated, two more to go. For months now, we have been discussing Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision for $69 billion. What would be the largest video game studio acquisition in history has faced several hurdles along the way, primarily from the EU, the UK, and the United States. While the UK’s CMA has […]
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the role of AI and copyright, with much of it focused on fretting by various copyright maximalists about how things created by AI need more copyright or how AI systems are violating the copyright of artists, both of which seem to be fairly questionable claims at best. […]
There may be an entire commission behind the push to mandate client-side scanning in the European Union, but there’s one truly propulsive force behind it: Commissioner Ylva Johansson, the person in charge of the Home Affairs office. Johansson is the one who penned a largely incoherent defense of the proposal back in August 2022, long […]
It turns out that if you fire basically all of the competent trust & safety people at your website, you end up with a site that is neither trustworthy, nor safe. We’ve spent months covering ways in which you cannot trust anything from Twitter or Elon Musk, and there have been some indications of real […]
The 2023 Ultimate Learn Unreal Game Development Bundle has the best Unreal courses all in one place! Learn Unreal, C++, and game development. Want to level up your game development skill? This series of highly-rated Unreal Engine courses, created in collaboration with Epic Games, can help! Anyone who wants to learn to create games: Unreal […]
The FBI has never not been abusing its access to Section 702 collections. This collection includes communications, scooped up by the NSA during its so-called “foreign facing” surveillance. The thing about this collection is it also obtains communications from US persons to foreign individuals. The NSA can collect the latter, but not without grabbing the […]
We’ve noted more than a few times that Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a dumb cash grab, and illustrative of the company’s inevitable transition from innovative disruptor to the type of nickel-and-diming cable company Netflix originally disrupted. Netflix’s biggest innovation in the last five years is this new plan to sock you with a $2-3 extra […]
There is a long history of trademark silliness concerning the phrase “Taco Tuesday.” As with many trademark stories, the original sin in all of this was committed by the USPTO , which in the ’80s somehow managed to grant the Taco John’s chain a trademark on the term, despite it being both very descriptive and, […]
After Donald Trump was forced to vacate the Oval Office to make way for its newest tenant, he apparently decided to cement his legacy by walking off with boxes full of classified documents. When the National Archive and Records Administration began filing away the records Trump actually deigned to turn over to it, it found […]
Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah to overturn Senate Bill (SB) 287 – the new law that requires age verification for all adult websites. As I wrote about in my last entry for this site, SB 287 prompted the leadership of […]
There have been various chapters in the new large language models (LLMs) story. First, people were amazed that systems like ChatGPT could write a sonnet about bananas in the style of Shakespeare, and in just a few seconds. Soon, though, they realized that chatbots’ replies might be grammatically correct, but they were frequently peppered with […]
Remember, according to Elon Musk, one of the worst things that old Twitter did was “shadowban” people. There was a whole “Twitter Files” about the practice, which Musk insisted was a horrible practice that was censorship. Except… at the same time he had no problem using it to silence accounts he personally disliked. Hilariously, he […]
The Complete Microsoft Office Mastery Bundle has 9 courses to help you become an Office expert. The courses cover Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, and Access. 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 products […]
A lawsuit [PDF] against a cheat creator has swung almost completely in Bungie’s direction, mainly thanks to the Danish defendant being unwilling to travel across the pond to defend himself in court. The claims are numerous, ranging from copyright infringement to trademark infringement to CFAA violations to the ever-popular (but rarely successful) RICO. While Bungie […]
We’ve noted in detail how the AT&T/Time Warner/Discovery mergers have been an apocalyptic mess that aptly demonstrates the U.S. obsession with utterly pointless megadeals and a “growth for growth’s sake” mindset. Hundreds of billions of dollars later and the companies have produced a product that’s notably shittier than when they started, laying off thousands of people, cancelling popular brands, […]
For more than a decade, the Massachusetts State Police crime lab hid information from judges, prosecutors, and criminal defendants. This is nothing unusual for this state and its crime labs. The words “Massachusetts,” “crime lab,” and “scandal” have gone hand-in-hand for years. [Heads up, I will be using “state” to refer to the Massachusetts government […]
There are lots of reasons why trademark disputes get really stupid, really fast. The mother of all those reasons is, of course, the USPTO’s inability to cast a critical eye towards the applications its receives. Far too many trademarks are granted for words and terms that are not unique source-identifiers of goods and services. But […]
stLouIST