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Daily Deal: The Academy of Game Art Bundle

2 weeks ago
The Academy of Game Art Bundle teaches you the basics of how to create video game art. You’ll learn how to use Inkscape to create logos, 2D backgrounds, pre-defined modules, UI designs, and characters. A course on using DragonBones will teach you how to animate your characters as well. The bundle is on sale for […]
Daily Deal

Newsmax Didn’t Like Its NewsGuard Rating, So The FTC Attacked NewsGuard, And Now NewsGuard Is Suing

2 weeks ago
We’ve written a few times now about how the GOP’s “free speech warriors” have been waging an absolutely absurd campaign against NewsGuard, a company whose entire business model is… expressing opinions about the reliability of news sources. You know, speech. The kind of thing that’s supposed to be protected by that First Amendment thing the […]
Mike Masnick

Trump Wants An Airport Renamed After Him While His Company Trademarks Those Same Names

2 weeks 1 day ago
Remember how Donald Trump was going to “drain the swamp” as president? The idea, spilling out from his first campaign for president, was that Washington was horribly corrupt, that politicians and unelected government stooges were making money from their positions of power, and that even politician’s families were in on the grift. The only reason […]
Timothy Geigner

New York’s New 3D Printing Law, As Written, Is Extremely Harmful And Annoying

2 weeks 1 day ago
The good folks over at Adafruit are raising the alarm about a new New York State 3D printing law that could greatly imperil the public’s freedom to tinker and could generally make life way more annoying for the schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses, hobbyists, and garages that utilize 3D printers. New York’s 2026–2027 executive budget […]
Karl Bode

Wikipedia Grapples With New Challenges From AI

2 weeks 1 day ago
Wikipedia celebrated its 25th birthday last month. Given the centrality of Wikipedia to so much activity online, it is hard to remember (or to imagine, for those who are younger) a time without Wikipedia. The latest statistics are impressive: That’s testimony to the global nature of Wikipedia. But there’s something else, not mentioned there, that is of great […]
Glyn Moody

Daily Deal: The Complete Big Data And Power BI Bundle

2 weeks 1 day ago
The Complete Big Data and Power BI Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn how to effectively sort, analyze, and visualize all of your data. Courses cover Power BI, Power Query, Excel, and Access. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all […]
Daily Deal

DOGE Bro’s Grant Review Process Was Literally Just Asking ChatGPT ‘Is This DEI?’

2 weeks 1 day ago
Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were “related to DEI.” That’s what the newly released proposed amended complaint from the Authors Guild against the US government reveals about how DOGE […]
Mike Masnick

CBS Decides That NOT Airing Associates Of Sex-Trafficking Pedophiles Would Be Woke

2 weeks 1 day ago
We’ve noted how Bari Weiss’ tenure at CBS (or what’s left of it) isn’t really going very well. Hired by Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison to turn what’s left of CBS into a right wing extraction class-friendly agitprop mill, Weiss has been accosted on all sides for her clumsy mismanagement, ham-fisted enabling of government censorship, uninteresting […]
Karl Bode

Vinay Prasad: The One Man Roadblocking An mRNA Flu Vaccine

2 weeks 2 days ago
Dr. Vinay Prasad is currently the FDA’s top vaccine regulator. He’s also one of many medical goons hand-picked by RFK Jr. to help lead his decidedly anti-vaxxer movement. In fact, the last time we discussed Prasad, it was over his selective censorship attempts at avoiding public criticism for his anti-vaxxer nonsense. If you show clips […]
Timothy Geigner

“Free” Surveillance Tech Still Comes At A High And Dangerous Cost

2 weeks 2 days ago
Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm. The cost of “free” surveillance tools — […]
Beryl Lipton and Sarah Hamid

How Close Can AI Get To Writing A Techdirt Post?

2 weeks 2 days ago
I’ve talked on Techdirt about just a few of my AI-related experiments over the past few years, including how I use it to help me edit pieces, which I still write myself. I still have no intention of letting AI write for me, but as the underlying technology has continued to level up, every so […]
Mike Masnick

Brendan Carr’s Abuse Of FCC ‘Equal Opportunity’ Rule Completely Blows Up In His Face

2 weeks 2 days ago
Yesterday we noted how CBS fecklessly tried to prevent Stephen Colbert from broadcasting an interview with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico. Which, as you’ve probably already seen, resulted in the interview on YouTube getting way more viewers than it would have normally, and Texas voters flocking to Google to figure out who Talarico is: […]
Karl Bode

Daily Deal: Luminar Neo Bundle

2 weeks 2 days ago
The Luminar Neo Bundle includes a one time purchase of the software, an introductory course on how to use it, and 6 add-ons. Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different […]
Daily Deal

The ‘Most Massive Attack On Free Speech’ Is Happening Right Now, And The Twitter Files Crew Is Mighty Quiet

2 weeks 2 days ago
For the last five years, we had to endure an endless, breathless parade of hyperbole regarding the so-called “censorship industrial complex.” We were told, repeatedly and at high volume, that the Biden administration flagging content for review by social media companies constituted a tyrannical overthrow of the First Amendment. In the Missouri v. Biden (later […]
Mike Masnick

Ars Technica Retracts Story Featuring Fake Quotes Made Up By AI, About A Different AI That Launched A Weird Smear Campaign Against An Engineer Who Rejected Its Code (Seriously)

2 weeks 2 days ago
Last week, Denver-area engineer Scott Shambaugh wrote about how an AI agent (likely prompted by its operator) started a weird little online campaign against him after he rejected its code inclusion in the popular Python charting library matplotlib. The owner likely didn’t appreciate Shambaugh openly questioning whether AI-generated code belongs in open source projects at […]
Karl Bode