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If you like your dystopia, you can keep your dystopia. That’s where we are right now: dealing with a gunshot AI company that felt compelled to sue journalists for (accurately) reporting on things the company has done as well as offering their opinions on the company’s actions. The company is ShotSpotter. Utilizing microphones and AI […]

Most of the politicians you currently see in the headlines having an absolute embolism over TikTok privacy concerns, don’t seem to appreciate (or don’t want you to understand) how they helped create the problem they’re pretending to be so upset about. The FCC’s Brendan Carr, for example, has been enjoying massive press coverage for weeks […]

Bucking a trend set by two separate Appeals Courts (Ninth and Tenth), a federal court in Texas has said it is actually a violation of rights when cops destroy an innocent person’s home to effect an arrest. What’s more, a jury has backed up that decision with actual compensation. (h/t The Honest Courtesan) Today, a […]

Ten years ago, Techdirt was one of the few sites to be following closely some obscure but important machinations at the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to create a top-down regulatory scheme for the Internet. The fact that the two main proponents of this move were Russia and China gives an idea of the underlying […]

It’s no secret to long term Techdirt readers that Australia truly is the upside down when it comes to internet laws and policy. We’ve discussed in the past things like Australia’s news link tax (they hate when you call it a tax, and insist it’s just a “bargaining code,” but the bargaining is to force […]

Americans received 4.4 billion robocalls in June. It never quite stops being weird how we’ve had to effectively stop using a core voice communications platform because it’s been hijacked by scammers and debt collectors. As we’ve noted numerous times, there are several reasons why our nationwide robocall hell never quite seems to end despite new […]

For many years we’ve written stories regarding various lawsuits over scraping the web. Without the ability to scrape the web, we’d have no search engines, no Internet Archive, and lots of other stuff wouldn’t work right either. However, more importantly, the ability to scrape the web should result in a better overall internet, potentially reversing […]

The Ultimate Excel VBA Bundle and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2021 for Windows will take you from Excel beginner to expert in no time. Over 13 courses, you’ll learn how to use Excel VBA to do a variety of tasks: how to create your first macro from scratch,  how to control mouse and keyboard commands, […]

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — Canada’s federal Dudley Do-Whatevers — is again belatedly admitting it has access to powerful surveillance tech its supposed oversight seems unaware the RCMP possessed. This is par for the RCMP course. The agency tends to admit it has surveillance tech only after extended deployment periods. And, like its […]

Last week FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made headlines by sending a letter to Apple and Google demanding they ban TikTok. Journalists couldn’t be bothered to mention the FCC has no authority over app stores or social media, the letter had no legal backing, or that Carr (a captured regulator largely loyal to AT&T) has no […]

Nearly two years ago, we discussed a fascinating project spearheaded by one dedicated person, going by the moniker Peebs, to digitize every video game manual’s English version for the Super Nintendo system. For those of you not of a certain age, video games used to come in the form of cartridges that you would load […]

Once you’re in jail, you’re just meat the government can abuse with near impunity. You belong to the state now and whatever happens to you is well-deserved — a sentiment not only felt by jailers but by an unfortunately large percentage of the US population. You can be pressed into service, providing nearly free labor […]

Following through on a request by the Biden administration to defend right to repair, the FTC has demanded that Harley Davidson and Westinghouse stop voiding customer warranties over repairs. In an announcement, the FTC noted that both companies used fine print to void a customer’s warranty if they used independent dealers for parts and repairs: […]

This should surprise no one, but Joshua Benton, over at Nieman Lab, has a really fantastically well-reported article about how Facebook basically wants out of the news business entirely. It goes through multiple reasons why this is the case, but a big one is that Rupert Murdoch’s decade-long demands that Facebook and Google simply fork […]

Most of the time, China’s crushing, dystopian, inescapable surveillance/censorship apparatus is terrifying and deeply disturbing. On rare occasions, it’s merely amusing. This is one of those times and South China Morning Post has the details. (h/t The Honest Courtesan) A device that can detect when a man is watching pornography by “reading his mind” has […]

Latitude laptops enable all-day productivity, with the most secure and manageable features, all in a beautiful design you will be proud to carry. The 14″ full HD display is anti-glare and features a narrow border. Built with high-end materials like magnesium alloy, the Latitude E7470 combines premium design with best-in-class durability. This refurbished laptop lets […]

It truly is incredible just how much of a moral panic the media and politicians have created around social media. Once again, the actual research is basically inconclusive that social media is bad. If it were truly awful, it should be showing up in the data, but for the most part it’s not. At all. […]

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe, U.S. tech companies didn’t much want to talk about their role in securing women’s data. And they didn’t want to talk much about it because they know that the privacy standards and oversight of the entire US snoopvertising economy, from adtech and telecom to app […]

There’s a fascinating article by Rebecca Jennings on Vox which explores the vexed question of plagiarism. Its starting point is a post on TikTok, entitled “How to EASILY Produce Video Ideas for TikTok.” It gives the following advice: Find somebody else’s TikTok that inspires you and then literally copy it. You don’t need to copy it […]

This isn’t the kind of response one expects from a firefighter arriving at the scene of a fire. (via Courthouse News Service) In August 2019 [Brad] Cox and other DFD [Dallas Fire Rescue Department] personnel were called to extinguish a grass fire. When Cox and other DFD personnel arrived, [Kyle] Vess, who is mentally ill, […]