a Better Bubble™

TechDirt 🕸

The Utah Cookie Wars Are Over: Crumbl Settles Trademark Suit With Dirty Dough

1 year 6 months ago
In the middle of last year, we talked about an odd lawsuit between two bakeries, Crumbl and Dirty Dough. Crumbl’s suit against Dirty Dough claimed both theft of trade secrets and trademark infringement, the latter of which revolved around two major claims. First, the owner of Dirty Dough used to work for Crumbl. That obviously […]
Dark Helmet

Peering Through The Fog Of War With Open Source Intelligence

1 year 6 months ago
“The fog of war” is a phrase that has been used for over a hundred years to describe the profound uncertainty that envelops armed conflicts while they are happening. Today, the uncertainty for non-combatants is exacerbated by the rapid-fire nature of social media, where people often like or re-post dubious war-related material without scrutinizing it […]
Glyn Moody

Daily Deal: The Lean Six Sigma Career Advancement Bundle

1 year 6 months ago
Lean Six Sigma is one of the most popular business strategies for reducing waste, accelerating product delivery, and ultimately driving profit. With 4 courses, this bundle will help you learn lean project management principles and implement them with your organization’s overall business process. This will contribute to making data-driven decisions, saving more time, and improving […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Tired Of Being Ripped Off By Monopolies, Cleveland Launches Ambitious Plan To Provide Citywide Dirt Cheap Broadband

1 year 6 months ago
Cleveland has spent years being dubbed the “worst connected city in the U.S.” thanks to expensive, patchy, and slow broadband. Why Cleveland broadband sucks so badly isn’t really a mystery: consolidated monopoly/duopoly power has resulted in a broken market where local giants like AT&T and Charter don’t have to compete on price, speeds, availability, customer […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 year 6 months ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about Clarence Thomas using an originalism argument against the actual malice standard: I once again note that if Clarence Thomas truly believed in constitutional originalism⁠—i.e., the notion that the ghosts of the Founding Fathers and the original form […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: October 15th – 21st

1 year 6 months ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we featured a pair of posts examining the recent court ruling in the copyright lawsuit over Stairway to Heaven. A new study on the FCC public comment fiasco showed that 99.7% of the real, original comments opposed the net neutrality repeal, while the New York AG was trying […]
Leigh Beadon

California Bans ‘Excited Delirium’ As A Cause Of Death

1 year 6 months ago
Excited delirium is a very unique medical condition. It almost always kills its victims. The victims of this apparent sudden cause of death are almost always in the presence of police officers when they die. And the victims are almost always of a certain… type. A 2021 data analysis found that at least 56% of […]
Tim Cushing

Supreme Court Takes Up Case Regarding White House Pressure On Social Media Moderation, While Alito, Thomas & Gorsuch Seem Confused

1 year 6 months ago
We’ve been following the bizarre and frequently problematic case initially brought by Louisiana and Missouri against the Biden administration, claiming that the administration’s coordination with researchers and pressure on social media companies regarding how they moderate content violates the first amendment. As we’ve said for quite some time, there are legitimate and important questions about […]
Mike Masnick

Techdirt Podcast Episode 368: Trust & Safety Tycoon

1 year 6 months ago
As you hopefully know by now, earlier this week we launched our new game, Trust & Safety Tycoon. It’s a free, browser-based game (playable on desktop or mobile, though we recommend desktop for the best experience) that puts you in the shoes of the head of trust and safety at a rapidly growing social media […]
Leigh Beadon

IRS Pilots Direct File Program While Tax Prep Industry Flails In Response

1 year 6 months ago
We have long detailed through a series of posts, most of them based on fantastic reporting from Pro Publica, Intuit’s shady bullshit when it comes to its supposed “Free to File” program offered through a longstanding deal with the IRS. The summary is: massive tax prep companies cut a deal with the IRS so that […]
Dark Helmet

Daily Deal: 4-in-1 USB-C Charger for Apple Devices

1 year 6 months ago
This 4-In-1 Apple Watch & iPhone Charging Cable will allow you to charge up to 4 devices at the same time while saving space. It comes with 2 Lightning, 1 USB-C & 1 Watch charger ports, and the watch port is magnetic. It’s a perfect cable to carry when traveling or just to keep around […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Comcast Takes Heat For Misleading ’10G’ Cable Broadband Branding

1 year 6 months ago
Back in 2019 the cable industry, envious of all the attention 5G wireless was getting, pulled a new marketing term completely out of its ass. It simply started calling ordinary cable broadband upgrades 10G, based on absolutely no real-world standards or definitions. It was a hollow attempt to capitalize on wireless 5G hype because these […]
Karl Bode

Starbucks Joins The List Of Companies Using Trademark Law To Bully Its Own Union

1 year 6 months ago
The trend continues. One of the things we’ve noticed more frequently as of late has been larger companies attempting to use trademark law as some kind of cudgel against employee unions. This has taken several forms, from Wal-Mart attempting to shut down a union website for accurately calling itself a union of Wal-Mart employees, Medieval […]
Dark Helmet