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Daily Deal: The 2025 Business & Leadership Skills Bundle

3 months 4 weeks ago
The 2025 Business & Leadership Skills Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn skills you need to advance your career. Courses cover strategic planning, leadership styles, marketing communications, the art of professional poise and politeness, office politics, and more. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]
Daily Deal

Trump Promises To Abuse Take It Down Act For Censorship, Just As We Warned

3 months 4 weeks ago
During his address to Congress this week, Donald Trump endorsed the Take It Down Act while openly declaring his plans to abuse it: “And I’m going to use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.” (You might think a former president openly declaring […]
Mike Masnick

Ontario Premier Doug Ford Wisely Rips Up Contract With Starlink He Never Should Have Signed In The First Place

3 months 4 weeks ago
After some initial waffling, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has finally shredded his Province’s $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service. Like many politicians (and shitty c-tier comedians turned podcasters), Ford was apparently tricked into thinking that the expensive, capacity-constrained broadband service was a sort of magic bullet for rural broadband access. But […]
Karl Bode

Make It A Trend Part 1: Valve Releases ‘Team Fortress 2’ Source Code

4 months ago
One of the more frustrating aspects of any conversation we have around the preservation of video games, something that is simply not being done for the most part today for the vast majority of titles created, is how easy and simple the ultimate fix is. It isn’t a secret. It’s not an arduous process. It […]
Dark Helmet

Incoming CBS Boss Jeff Shell Pressuring Underlings To Settle With Trump, Trample Journalistic Freedom, And Kiss Authoritarian Ass

4 months ago
Last October, Donald Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit tramples the First Amendment and editorial discretion. At the same time, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr […]
Karl Bode

The Manifesto Of The Cognitive Revolution

4 months ago
My project thus far has been to educate you, to help you renormalize history from a common ethical center. To show you what should be abundantly clear: that simple truths, all around us, reveal things that are blatantly obvious. That we are now ruled by liars, cheaters, and men with an unbounded appetite for power. […]
Mike Masnick

Trump “Brings Back Free Speech” By [Checks Notes] Threatening To Imprison Protestors And Expose Journalist Sources

4 months ago
It is almost difficult to believe this is a real thing that happened with the President of the United States, but here’s what actually happened on Tuesday. In the morning, Donald Trump threatened to imprison protesters and defund any university that allows certain protests. Then, that same evening, he stood before Congress and declared — […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Complete 2025 Microsoft Tech Training Super Bundle

4 months ago
The Complete 2025 Microsoft Tech Training Super Bundle has 11 courses to help you level up your Microsoft IT skill set. Courses cover Microsoft 365 identity management, Azure administration, cybersecurity, and more. It’s on sale for $59.97. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
Daily Deal

The LA Times’ Political Rating “AI” Is A Silly Joke Aimed At Validating Wealthy Media Ownership’s Inherent Bias

4 months ago
Late last year we wrote about how LA Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong confidently announced that he was going to use AI to display “artificial intelligence-generated ratings” of news content, while also providing “AI-generated lists of alternative political views on that issue” under each article. After he got done firing a lot of longstanding LA […]
Karl Bode

What You Should Do

4 months ago
Okay, people. You keep asking me, “Mike, but what should we do?” I am going to condescend to you now, about what you should do. The only resistance worth a damn is the one where you stop calculating the odds and start living your truth without reservation. What separates the merely clever from the genuinely […]
Mike Masnick

Techdirt Podcast Episode 409: What Twitter Teaches Us About DOGE

4 months ago
Support us on Patreon » We’re finally getting back into the rhythm of things, and in fact right at this very moment Mike is recording a brand new original episode for next week on the podcast — but this week, we’ve got a cross-post and a special extra treat. Mike recently once again joined Andy Levy […]
Leigh Beadon

Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)

4 months ago
While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere “Democrats say this, Republicans say that” dance, tech and legal journalists have been watching an unfortunately recognizable plan unfold — a playbook we’re all too familiar with. We’ve seen how technology can be wielded to consolidate power, how institutional guardrails can be circumvented through technical and legal […]
Mike Masnick

After Killing USAID, MAGA’s Solution: Reinventing USAID, But Worse

4 months ago
The recent book “Character Limit” exposes a perfect case study in destructive arrogance: Twitter was already building more sophisticated versions of everything Musk claimed he wanted. But Musk and his sycophants were so convinced of their own brilliance, and so certain everyone at Twitter was an idiot, they didn’t even bother to understand what was […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The All-in-One Super-Sized Ethical Hacking Bundle

4 months ago
To completely understand computer security, it’s vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It’s also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized […]
Daily Deal

FCC Boss Brendan Carr ‘Investigating’ Verizon For Not Being Racist Enough

4 months ago
Like many big companies, Verizon eagerly signed up for Trump 2.0 excited to get tax cuts, rubber stamped merger approvals, attacks on organized labor, and oodles of unaccountable subsidies. But as is often the deal with authoritarian zealots (and force-wielding intergalactic warlords with deep-rooted mommy issues), the deal you think you struck can and will […]
Karl Bode

Announcing Otherwise Objectionable: A Podcast Series About The Most Misunderstood Law On The Internet

4 months ago
At a time when Section 230 faces unprecedented threats from all sides — with both major political parties gunning for it, albeit for opposite reasons — understanding this crucial internet law has never been more important. That’s probably why our “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230” post remains one of […]
Mike Masnick