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ATproto: The Enshittification Killswitch That Enables Resonant Computing

1 week 2 days ago
Disclosure: I’m on the board of Bluesky, which was inspired by my “Protocols, Not Platforms” paper. But this post isn’t about Bluesky the app. It’s about the underlying protocol and what it enables for anyone who wants to build technology (even competitive to Bluesky) that actually respects users. Last month, I helped release the Resonant […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 + The Premium Learn to Code Bundle

1 week 2 days ago
Visual Studio Professional 2022 is a fully featured development environment. Their first 64-bit IDE makes it easier to work with even bigger projects and more complex workloads. Enhance your productivity, write high-quality code, and re-imagine collaboration with an advanced suite of tools and built-in integrations to tackle the most challenging development workflows and deliver innovative […]
Daily Deal

The Trump Administration Is Losing The Support Of Local Law Enforcement

1 week 2 days ago
The thing with an invasion is that it makes enemies of everyone being invaded, even those who may nominally support the end goal. Law enforcement officers and officials are no exception, especially when they see the invading force creating problems they shouldn’t be expected to solve. Trump has treated multiple American cities like war zones. […]
Tim Cushing

Brendan Carr Again Threatens Talk Shows That Refuse To Coddle Republicans

1 week 2 days ago
For more than fifty years the U.S. right wing has accused academia, journalism or science of having a “liberal bias” if it reveals absolutely anything the right wing doesn’t like. It’s an easy way to quickly discredit any critics of your worldview without having to engage in thinking, introspection, or debate, and it’s been on display for longer […]
Karl Bode

Shift Up’s CEO Says They Need AI Because Of The Chinese Boogeyman

1 week 2 days ago
In my previous posts about the use of generative AI tools in the video game industry, I have tried to drive home the point that a nuanced conversation is needed here. Predictably, there were many comments of the sort of stratified opinions that I was specifically attempting to avoid, but I always knew they’d be […]
Timothy Geigner

Ten Shots

1 week 3 days ago
Alex Jeffrey Pretti was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. He spent his days caring for American veterans—the men and women who served this country and came home broken in body or mind. He wanted to make a difference in this world. That is what his parents said, in a statement released hours […]
Mike Brock

Right Wing Influencers Caught Copy Pasting Identical Rants Against New AI Regulations

1 week 3 days ago
If you’re not aware, America’s unholy alliance between U.S. corporations and the right wing grifter economy has an elaborate public messaging and manipulation system that continues to demonstrate its influence and power. The latest case in point: K Street policy and lobbying firms appear to have leveraged a bunch of right wing influencers to launch […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: Tinymoose Pencil Pro Plus for iPad with Wireless Charging

1 week 3 days ago
The Pencil Pro Plus is your all-in-one tool for smooth, precise, and natural writing or drawing on any iPad Air, iPad Pro, or iPad mini released from 2018 to 2025. Designed for creators, students, and professionals alike, it features tilt sensitivity for shading, palm rejection for effortless hand placement, and a smart shortcut button for […]
Daily Deal

An American Murder

1 week 3 days ago
Two weeks ago, ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. I said then that we had to abolish ICE and impeach Trump & Noem before they incited another murder. As more details have emerged, it’s only looked worse. Multiple angles of video showed Good was trying to avoid hitting anyone. Ross, […]
Mike Masnick

‘Trump Phone’ Still Doesn’t Exist, Pre-Order Totals Appear Completely Made Up

1 week 3 days ago
Last year the fraud-prone Trump organization announced a half-assed wireless phone company. As we noted at the time, calling this a “phone company” is generous; it was just a lazy marketing rebrand of another, half-assed, MAGA-focused, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Patriot Mobile, which itself just resells T-Mobile service. So basically just another lazy […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 week 4 days ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the idea from DHS that it’s un-American to refuse to house federal officers: Except for the fact that we literally have an amendment in our constitution that says nobody has to house soldiers. These people really are […]
Leigh Beadon

There’s One Week Left In The Public Domain Game Jam!

1 week 5 days ago
We’re nearing the end of January, and you know what that means: we’re on the home stretch of the latest installment of our annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! We’ve already gotten some intriguing submissions, and we expect to get plenty more before the deadline of January 31st, but just because time […]
Leigh Beadon

Techdirt 2025: The Stats

1 week 5 days ago
Every year, a little after New Years, I do a post about the previous year of Techdirt traffic and comments. You may notice that we skipped last year’s for 2024. 2025 was so crazy with everything happening, we just didn’t get around to it, and I kept saying I would and then I looked up […]
Mike Masnick

A Year In, And It’s Time To Recognize: The Oval Office Is Empty

1 week 6 days ago
It will be to the everlasting shame of all Americans that impeachment has not yet been accomplished to formally remove Trump from office. Not in his previous term, and not this one, at least not so far. In fact, this term it has hardly even been attempted. If it weren’t for Representative Green honoring his […]
Cathy Gellis

Got Ideas For Growing The Open Social Web? Bring Them.

1 week 6 days ago
Register here for our Growing the Open Social Web Un-Workshop. For over three years now, since Elon Musk decided to spend $44 billion turning Twitter into his personal playground, we’ve been watching the open social web slowly, sometimes painfully, come into its own. Bluesky. Mastodon. The broader ATmosphere and fediverse along with a few other […]
Mike Masnick