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MuskCorp Tries To Bribe Memphis With Cheaper Starlink So They’ll Ignore xAI Data Center Pollution

1 week 5 days ago
Civil rights groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s Colossus xAI data centers in Memphis disproportionately pollute the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn’t bother to get the necessary permits to run the 57 gas turbines […]
Karl Bode

Sony Announces An End To PlayStation Discs & Everyone Hates It

1 week 5 days ago
Sony just gave the world another lesson in how they don’t actually own the content they’ve bought digitally generally, and particularly not through Sony’s digital storefronts. Instead, as readers here will largely know, what is actually being bought is a temporary license to download and play these games, movies, music, whatever. Sony has done this […]
Timothy Geigner

An Indian Billionaire Was Targeted By Trump. Then He Poured Money Into A Startup Secretly Backed by Donald Trump Jr.

1 week 5 days ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On the other was Donald Trump Jr. For months, the […]
Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski

Comcast/NBC To Split Back Into Smaller, Shittier Companies

1 week 5 days ago
For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can’t innovate and generally don’t know how competition works, it never really goes that well. The various Yahoo/Tumblr/Verizon/AOL exploits were a legendary mess, only outshined […]
Karl Bode

Mexico Passed Speech Laws To Protect The Powerless. The Powerful Used Them To Silence Critics.

1 week 5 days ago
For over a decade, a particular argument keeps resurfacing from well-meaning progressives: the rise of authoritarianism around the globe is a good reason to pass laws suppressing speech. The idea is that somehow, magically, without free speech, authoritarians and fascists would never come to power in the first place. This is historically illiterate. It’s also […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Premium Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Super Bundle

1 week 5 days ago
The Premium Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Super Bundle is a twelve-course digital toolkit designed to take you from coding novice to AI architect. The curriculum breaks down complex data science concepts into actionable steps, guiding you through hands-on projects using Python, data analysis tools, and advanced neural networks. Whether you want to automate everyday tasks, […]
Daily Deal

ABC’s The View Wimps Out, Shies Away From Politics After Trump Threats

1 week 6 days ago
Back in February, Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr launched a fake “investigation” of ABC because the network’s comedians and daytime talk show hosts hadn’t adequately kissed Republican ass. Five months later and ABC’s The View is wimping out when it comes to hosting politicians at all, for fear it will upset the country’s mad idiot […]
Karl Bode

Four Years After Dobbs, Anti-Abortion Lawmakers Keep Coming For Online Speech

1 week 6 days ago
Last week marks four years since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for people seeking abortion care. Anniversaries are a moment to take stock, and over the last four years, EFF has seen firsthand how digital rights and reproductive rights have become increasingly intertwined. One major way this has happened: the fight […]
Lisa Femia

ICE Rebuts Nazi Allegations By Going Full Gestapo To Hunt Down Critics

1 week 6 days ago
Oh boy do the Nazi-esque dudes running rampant in our country hate being called Nazis. They love the Nazi chic and the Nazi talk about securing the nation for white, blue-eyed males, but they hate being compared to the thing(s) they resemble most, even when they’re promoting people for actively generating these comparisons. Like any […]
Tim Cushing

The Courts’ Solution To Overpriced Court Records: Make Them More Expensive

1 week 6 days ago
For many, many years on Techdirt we’ve bemoaned the fact that federal court documents are not available for free as they should be. Instead, we have PACER, a bloated, expensive, difficult to use system that charges you for every “page” it loads up for you (including search results). The whole thing is a sham. Indeed, […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows

1 week 6 days ago
Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it’s processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch. You receive licenses for MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, […]
Daily Deal

Corruption Showdown: Verizon, SpaceX Square Off Over Cell Phone Unlocking

2 weeks ago
Earlier this year I noted how the Trump FCC, at the direct request of wireless phone giants, destroyed popular phone unlocking rules that would have made it easier and cheaper to switch wireless carriers. The rules, applied via spectrum acquisition and merger conditions after decades of activism, required that Verizon unlock your phone within 60 days […]
Karl Bode

Yet Another Study Finds No Causal Link Between Tylenol & Autism

2 weeks ago
As you will recall, the combination of RFK Jr.’s announcement that he’d find a root cause for all this autism going around combined with Donald Trump’s idiotic claim that there must be some external environmental cause of all this autism going around resulted in both of these clowns telling America that pregnant women taking Tylenol […]
Timothy Geigner

Wikipedia Banned Its Co-Founder Because Its Rules Mostly Work, Actually

2 weeks ago
In Larry Sanger’s recent failed attempt to start a “WikiProject Intellectual Diversity”, he tried to recruit his followers to help him change Wikipedia’s rules around representation of viewpoints, religions, parties, and nationalities (a version of his earlier “Nine Theses”). The draft WikiProject was not itself a bannable offense, but his approach broke rules that were […]
Britta Gustafson

Censorship Lawsuit Against Disinformation Researchers Dismissed — After Succeeding At Actual Censorship

2 weeks ago
Trump-appointed Louisiana federal judge Terry Doughty has spent years bending over backwards trying to help some MAGA faithful manufacture nonsense claims about “censorship” for some grifters getting moderated on social media. As you’ll recall, he issued a bizarrely problematic ruling on July 4th three years ago, in which he said of perfectly reasonable, non-coercive communication […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Soundfreaq Sound Spot II Bluetooth Speaker

2 weeks 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