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Daily Deal: Soundfreaq Sound Spot II Bluetooth Speaker

1 week 3 days ago
The Soundfreaq Sound Spot II combines wireless audio performance, ambient lighting, and relaxing sound features in a compact design built for modern lifestyles. Featuring a Bamboo and White finish with eco-friendly materials, this Bluetooth speaker complements bedrooms, offices, living rooms, and personal spaces while delivering both style and functionality. Engineered with a custom-designed audio driver, […]
Daily Deal

Cold TAKE: Amazon’s New Encryption Method Still Doesn’t Deliver Real Privacy

1 week 3 days ago
Amazon recently debuted a new feature for its Ring cameras that the company is calling Throw Away the Key Encryption (TAKE). The idea is to cut back on the amount of video content available to the company, and thus potentially available to law enforcement. But while it might technically add a speed bump to accessing full video […]
Erica Portnoy and Thorin Klosowski

The Metric Is Not The Mission: History Rarely Announces Itself

1 week 4 days ago
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around […]
Konstantinos Komaitis

California AG Rob Bonta Caves, Paramount Merger To Proceed With Flimsy Conditions

1 week 4 days ago
California AG Rob Bonta has caved to what was a relentless, bipartisan pressure campaign to settle the 12 state antitrust lawsuit against Paramount. The AGs sued Paramount last July, arguing (correctly) that the $111 billion deal would largely be anti-competitive, resulting in mass layoffs as the even bigger Larry Ellison-owned company forces labor and consumers […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle

1 week 4 days ago
The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to speed on Amazon Web Services. The courses cover AWS, DevOPs, Kubernetes Mesosphere DC/OS, AWS Redshift, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
Daily Deal

The Apocalypse Will Not Be Sexy

1 week 4 days ago
When we picture the end of the world, the first thing that springs to mind is typically the cinematic version of “things going wrong.” We picture the musical score rising to a crescendo as the climactic events take place.  Our heroes are fighting to stop some big giant, unstoppable threat. Even if they are ultimately […]
Mike Masnick and Dave Willner

Trump Admin Still Being Cagey On $21 Billion In Hijacked Broadband Grants

1 week 4 days ago
I’ve written a lot about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare. The short version: the billionaires convinced […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 week 5 days ago
This week on the insightful side, both top comments come in response to our post about the New York Times bending over backwards to downplay Trump’s criminality and absurdity. In first place it’s Thad thinking about the week in which it happened: In second place, it’s Whoever with a broader comment about journalism: The most […]
Leigh Beadon

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: No Child Left Online

2 weeks ago
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: MOGICS Power Bagel Travel Power Strip

2 weeks ago
The MOGICS Bagel has 5 international AC sockets, dual USB ports, 3ft integrated length-adjustable power cord, and an ergonomic AC plug. Unlike ordinary power strips, the bagel design makes it easier to charge multiple devices giving ample space for each plug. It has a LED power indicator that emits brilliant blue light when power is […]
Daily Deal

Research Shows ICE Raids Are Killing Local Economies

2 weeks ago
Contrary to the “worst of the worst” posturing presented by the Trump administration, it’s long been known that immigrants (both legal or otherwise) commit fewer crimes than natural-born US citizens: Our consistent finding is that legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by illegal immigrants, and that native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants […]
Tim Cushing

Comcast NBC Universal Is Scared To Release The New Elon Musk Documentary

2 weeks ago
Have I mentioned lately that media consolidation is bad and people who care about an informed electorate and democratic integrity should fight to restore federal media consolidation limits illegally destroyed by the Trump administration and FCC boss Brendan Carr? Anyway, there’s a new Alex Gibney documentary coming out about Elon Musk that takes him to […]
Karl Bode