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We’ve Been Doing Newsletters Since Before They Were Cool (Again), And Now We’re Actually Telling You About It

2 weeks 4 days ago
Look, we get it. Your inbox is probably drowning in newsletters right now. Every publication, influencer, and their cousin’s dog walker has suddenly discovered the revolutionary concept of… sending you emails with stuff to read. Who could have predicted that people might want content delivered directly to them? Well, actually, we could have. Because we’ve […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Raspberry Pi Pico W Ultimate Starter Kit

2 weeks 4 days ago
The SunFounder Raspberry Pi Pico W Ultimate Starter Kit offers a rich learning experience for beginners aged 8 and up. With over 450 components, 117 projects, and expert-led tutorials, this kit makes learning microcontroller programming engaging and accessible. It also features 27 video lessons by renowned educator Paul McWhorter, simplifying microcontroller programming and IoT concepts. Packed […]
Daily Deal

9th Circuit Judge Blasts Colleagues For Enabling Trump’s Unconstitutional Military Invasion Of Portland

2 weeks 4 days ago
Two Trump-appointed federal judges just decided that facts don’t matter when the President wants to send the military into American cities. Donald Trump declared Portland a “war-ravaged” city requiring military intervention based on a few anti-ICE protests and imagery from five years ago on Fox News that he apparently thought was happening now. The actual […]
Mike Masnick

Bari Weiss Gets To Work ‘Fixing’ CBS ‘Bias’ — By Making It More Biased

2 weeks 4 days ago
For more than fifty years the U.S. right wing has embraced a neat trick: by claiming that literally anything in factual opposition to their beliefs is “biased” and therefore must be discarded as unreliable, they’ve bullied U.S. media into becoming a feckless mess terrified of accusations of “liberal bias.” Of course, if you ask the […]
Karl Bode

PERA Remains A Serious Threat To Efforts Against Bad Patents

2 weeks 5 days ago
As all things old are new again, a bill that would make obtaining bad patents easier and harder to challenge is being considered in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would reverse over a decade of progress in fighting patent trolls and making the patent system more balanced. PERA would overturn long-standing court […]
Katherine Trendacosta

Because Things Just Aren’t Dystopian Enough, Blacklisted Spyware Firm NSO Group Has Just Been Purchased By A Hollywood Producer

2 weeks 5 days ago
2025 has delivered almost nothing but bad news. Here’s more of that, as first reported by Israeli press outlet, Calcalist: Control of NSO Group is set to leave Israeli hands. A group of American investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds has agreed to acquire the controversial spyware developer in a deal valued at several […]
Tim Cushing

Before Advocating To Repeal Section 230, It Helps To First Understand How It Works

2 weeks 5 days ago
Brian Reed’s “Question Everything” podcast built its reputation on careful journalism that explores moral complexity within the journalism field. It’s one of my favorite podcasts. Which makes his latest pivot so infuriating: Reed has announced he’s now advocating to repeal Section 230—while demonstrating he fundamentally misunderstands what the law does, how it works, and what […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Adobe Acrobat Pro + Microsoft Office Professional License Bundle

2 weeks 5 days ago
The Adobe Acrobat Pro + Microsoft Office Professional License Bundle isn’t around for much longer. It’s a chance to get a 3-year Adobe Acrobat Pro 2024 license and a license for Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for $100. It’s your all-in-one bundle for editing PDFs, creating docs, and working smarter on Windows. Note: The Techdirt Deals […]
Daily Deal

Buggy Software Update Bricks Some Jeep Hybrid Vehicles

2 weeks 5 days ago
Whoops! Some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrid owners were stranded after the company pushed out a buggy software update that prevented the vehicles from running, and, at least according to one Reddit poster, resulted in the vehicle shutting off in the middle of a highway: “I was driving 65 on the left lane of the highway […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

2 weeks 6 days ago
This week, MrWilson takes both top spots on the insightful side (and the top spot on the funny side). In first place for insightful, it’s a comment about Elon Musk’s disastrous impact on the government: The worst part about it isn’t just that the Fox News sponges won’t get the full message, they’ll not understand […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: October 12th – 18th

3 weeks ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Ajit Pai put the final bullet in net neutrality and decided to move forward with unconstitutional rulemaking on Section 230, while Clarence Thomas joined the brigade of opposing 230, and Congress introduced yet another anti-230 bill, because sure why not? We looked at the pretty crummy results of […]
Leigh Beadon

Convicted Fraudster Trevor Milton Rides His Trump Pardon To Another CEO Job, Somehow

3 weeks ago
While we chronicled the fall of Nikola, a company that promised over-the-road trucks built with hydrogen propulsion systems, it’s useful to note that it was literally only this past February that the company declared bankruptcy. What came before that was the company’s previous CEO, Trevor Milton. Milton made wild promises to investors in order to […]
Timothy Geigner

Flock Safety & Texas Sheriff Claimed License Plate Search Was For A Missing Person. It Was An Abortion Investigation.

3 weeks 1 day ago
New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety’s surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and the Johnson County Sheriff that she was “being searched for as a missing person,” and that “it was about her safety.”  The new information shows that deputies had initiated a […]
Dave Maass and Rindala Alajaji

Pokémon Co. Flails Responding To PocketPair’s Examples Of Prior Art In Patent Lawsuit

3 weeks 1 day ago
The lawsuit between Palworld maker PocketPair and The Pokémon Co. (Nintendo included) is still ongoing. As the litigation progresses, PocketPair has been patching out some of the very content and gameplay mechanics that the Pokémon people complained about, which is unfortunate. The patents we’re talking about are quite broad in the realm of video games […]
Timothy Geigner

Judge Releases Final Diss Track In The Drake/Kendrick Feud: Dismissing Drake’s Pathetic Lawsuit Over Not Like Us

3 weeks 1 day ago
In what may be the most legally absurd aftermath of a rap battle in hip-hop history, Drake’s preposterously silly lawsuit against Universal Music has met its predictable end. The artist sued his own record label—not Kendrick Lamar himself—for the crime of also distributing Lamar’s devastating diss track Not Like Us. The judge overseeing the case […]
Mike Masnick

Why Things Are The Way They Are

3 weeks 1 day ago
Right up front, I want to state that this is a very personal post. While it obviously draws from my many years of writing for Techdirt, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am expressing my own opinions about everything discussed below. I’m not immune to reading the comments. In fact, I actually […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle

3 weeks 1 day ago
Linux and UNIX operating systems have become increasingly popular in commercial computing environments. Due to their rapid growth in today’s businesses, Linux/UNIX administrators have also become very much in demand. The Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle will help you prepare for the CompTIA Linux+ and the Novell Certified Linux Professional certification exams. The 2-course bundle is […]
Daily Deal