Nibble is an educational tool disguised in the shape of a retro game console. It’s a new and improved version of MAKERbuino that makes learning about electronics and programming fun! With a build guide, assembling the kit will be easy peasy. This DIY console comes preloaded with 4 retro games inspired by cult classics — […]
The tech press often gets called out for lazy journalism, and here we have yet another example. On Monday, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri posted that due to an influx of spam on Threads (and there’s been a lot), the company was tightening up its rate limits: He said: Spam attacks have picked up so we’re […]
The FCC, under both Trump and Biden, has made a huge, noisy deal about forcing U.S. telecoms to rip out Chinese telecom gear from U.S. networks, under the argument that the gear is used to spy on Americans (you’re to ignore, of course, that the United States spies on everyone, constantly, and has broadly supported […]
Law enforcement agencies often command an outsized portion of city and county budgets. The argument for this expenditure is basically just Blue Line bullshit: without the police at full staff, surely every locality will descend into criminal anarchy. That’s the argument but the facts don’t bear it out. There’s very little evidence that increased law […]
Grocery chain Trader Joe’s is not a complete stranger to Techdirt’s pages, and not for good reasons. The company, in the past, has shown itself to be perfectly willing to abuse trademark law to stop anything it doesn’t like, such as a man reselling its goods across borders where the company has no stores (perfectly […]
Gathering evidence has never been easier than it is now. So much is created so easily and so often. And there are so many access points for law enforcement. Sure, a few outliers (and outright liars [cough] Chris Wray [cough]) may claim everything is “going dark,” but never before in history have there been this […]
As you almost certainly know, earlier this month, Meta released Threads, its Twitter-like microblogging service. There are rumors that the company rushed the launch, pushing it up a few weeks to try to capitalize on the latest nonsense at Twitter. And, it seemed to work (to some extent) in that the company was able to […]
Well, this is an unfortunate turn of events. The last time we discussed this issue in this state (March 2019), a state appeals court came to the opposite conclusion: compelling password production is a violation of rights. That ruling said the foregone conclusion doctrine didn’t apply, at least not the way the state wanted it […]
The 2023 Mobile App Developers Bundle has 7 courses to help you learn how to create your own mobile apps. Courses cover iOS app development, Java for Android, Kotlin, Flutter, Android SQL databases, and more. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all […]
It seems to anger certain Elon Musk fans every time I mention it, but pre-Elon Twitter was generally doing okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. It wasn’t printing cash like Meta or Google, but it had been steadily increasing revenue and was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over. […]
For more than a decade now, app makers, phone makers, wireless companies — and pretty much everybody else — has been collecting and monetizing your daily movement habits. There’s genuinely no reason most of these companies (like, say, your light bulb maker) need this information, but because the U.S. is too corrupt to pass a […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is zeiche with a response to the claim that we have “an axe to grind” against In-N-Out because we covered their trademark tourism in Japan: techdirt grinds axes against companies that try to protect trademarks in countries that they don’t do business in. that isn’t […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, more police were admitting that FOSTA/SESTA made it harder to catch traffickers, while UK Parliament members were looking to enact a similar law of their own. California was cooking up its disastrous privacy bill, while we looked at the censorship potential of the EU Copyright Directive’s Article 13. […]
If you go back and read nearly all of the posts we’ve done on luxury fashion company Louis Vuitton, you’ll see a history of a company that is about as big a pain in the ass when it comes to intellectual property bullying as you’ll find. The company often times takes it’s “protecting” of it’s […]
So we wrote about Judge Terry Doughty’s somewhat questionable ruling preventing the Biden White House from communicating with tech companies or researchers regarding certain areas of disinformation. As we noted, there were some good elements in the ruling, reminding government officials of the 1st Amendment restrictions on coercion in attempting to silence protected speech. But […]
There aren’t many sites with “tech” in their names that provide this much discussion on the First Amendment implications of vanity plate laws. Maybe it’s just us. Or maybe it’s just (mostly) me. Whatever the case, I find it fascinating that so many state governments have so many restrictions on what people can express via […]
Well, well, it appears that rumors of the death of the regulatory battle over the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard purchase have been greatly exaggerated. We just discussed media reports of two items related to the deal. The first was the FTC’s loss in court to get a preliminary injunction barring the two companies from consummating […]
Portable, sleek and sophisticated, the Nix Mini 2 Color Sensor is engineered with life in mind. It’s perfect for those who find inspiration wherever they go. The Nix Mini can easily identify any color with a simple scan, ideal for those who work with color, or for those who simply want to bring it into […]
We’re getting a bit more clarity and commonsense applied to lawsuits involving constitutional violations by TSA agents. As we’re all painfully aware, to fly is to spend some time in often uncomfortably close proximity to a TSA officer. That’s the bargain we make when we choose to board a plane. These searches are far from […]
Last month we noted how the country’s top telecom and media regulator has been under the bootheel of industry for the better part of seven years, and nobody much seems to care. For four years under Trump the agency was a glorified rubber stamp to industry interests. Telecom and media giants then lobbied Congress into […]
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