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Daily Deal: The 2024 Full-Stack Development Mastery Bundle

8 months 4 weeks ago
The 2024 Full-Stack Development Mastery Bundle has 5 courses to help you learn about front-end and back-end design of apps and websites. Courses cover HTML5, JavaScript, Node.js, React, and more. It’s on sale for $35. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Cloudflare Destroys Another Patent Troll, Gets Its Patents Released To The Public

8 months 4 weeks ago
Three years ago, we updated Vizzini’s list of “classic blunders” from The Princess Bride to include “never try to patent troll Cloudflare.” That was when the company announced that patent troll Sable Networks had made that mistake and now needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson is now complete, and Cloudflare has successfully destroyed […]
Mike Masnick

Musk’s ‘Free’ Starlink For Helene Victims Wasn’t Free

8 months 4 weeks ago
Last week I noted how Elon Musk saw fit to inject himself in the middle of the Helene hurricane disaster by falsely claiming that hurricane victims died because the FCC refused to give Starlink a billion dollars in subsidies. I explained at length why that claim was grotesque and incorrect, in part because the subsidies […]
Karl Bode

Warner Bros. Still Cutting Off Harry Potter’s Nose To Spite His Face

8 months 4 weeks ago
It shouldn’t be news to any regular readers here that Warner Bros. has been a ridiculously jealous protector of all things intellectual property when it comes to the Harry Potter franchise. Harry Potter themed fan festivals? That’s banned magic, according to Warner Bros. Want to make a parody condom called “Harry Poppers”? Here comes Warner […]
Dark Helmet

Muscular Dystrophy Took His Mobility, But the Internet Gave Him Community

8 months 4 weeks ago
Sometimes it feels like every story we see these days about kids and the internet is all about how it’s evil, making them depressed, and a huge problem for society. We keep trying to remind people that the actual science on this finds no support of the internet being so horrible. Indeed, the research suggests […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Cybersecurity Projects Bundle

8 months 4 weeks ago
The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, […]
Gretchen Heckmann

FCC Fines T-Mobile $31.5 Million After Carrier Was Hacked 8 Times In 5 Years

8 months 4 weeks ago
U.S. wireless giant T-Mobile gets hacked a lot. In fact, the company has been hacked eight times in the last five years, with several of the intrusions exposing the sensitive personal data of millions of T-Mobile customers. The last hack, revealed in a 2023 SEC filing, exposed the names, addresses, social security numbers, and other […]
Karl Bode

Nintendo DMCAs Switch Emulation Hobbyist YouTube Channel

8 months 4 weeks ago
So by now, assuming you’ve spent any decent amount of time reading Techdirt, you likely know that Nintendo has a reputation for being aggressive and litigious when it comes to intellectual property enforcement. Someone makes a game that is inspired by Pokémon, but does not directly copy it? Lawsuit. Mods for that same game make […]
Dark Helmet

Another Chance To Create Meaningful Surveillance Reforms Is Dying On The Congressional Vine

8 months 4 weeks ago
Trumpist Republican outrage (most of it manufactured) over being spied on by the US government almost led to significant reforms to Section 702 surveillance powers, specifically the loophole the FBI abuses to search for Americans’ communications in the NSA’s foreign-facing haystack. But that all got scuttled during the infighting and increasing desperation to just give […]
Tim Cushing

Chinese Access To AT&T/Verizon Wiretap System Shows Why We Cannot Backdoor Encryption

8 months 4 weeks ago
Creating surveillance backdoors for law enforcement is just asking for trouble. They inevitably become targets for hackers and foreign adversaries. Case in point: the US just discovered its wiretapping system has been compromised for who knows how long. This should end the encryption backdoor debate once and for all. The law enforcement world has been […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle

8 months 4 weeks ago
The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you get the most out of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Elon Musk Is Now Seizing Other People’s Twitter Accounts To Promote Donald Trump

8 months 4 weeks ago
How quickly do you think we’d be having Congressional hearings about “election interference” if Mark Zuckerberg so much as posted a “Harris/Walz” lawn sign in front of his house? Yet, Elon Musk is now directly tweaking the site he owns to push his favored political candidate, even seizing people’s accounts to promote Trump. One of […]
Mike Masnick

Republicans, Musk, Pretend To Care About Media Consolidation… When George Soros (Read: A Jew) Is Involved

8 months 4 weeks ago
Though Republicans are the worse of the two offenders, neither Democrats nor Republicans have cared all too much about preventing media consolidation. As a result, U.S. journalism and media has increasingly fallen into the hands of a handful of wealthy corporations and billionaires; and it’s routinely reflected in terrible journalism (especially political journalism) and bumbling […]
Karl Bode

DOJ Investigation: Mississippi PD Ran ‘Dickensian Debtors Prison,’ Violated Rights Regularly

9 months ago
It’s not just the Rankin County (MS) Sheriff’s Office being scrutinized by the US DOJ. While that’s the main concern following the conviction of six deputies of a self-proclaimed “Goon Squad” who spent hours brutalizing and torturing two black men, the rest of Mississippi apparently isn’t in great shape either. This recently-released report [PDF] details […]
Tim Cushing

Amazon Ratchets Up Enshittifying Prime Video After Public Shrugs At Initial Ads

9 months ago
In the process of enshittification, it seems that the process will not stop until the customer has been well and truly pissed off. It was merely earlier this year that we discussed Amazon taking its Prime Video offering, after gobbling up a huge number of adopters, and suddenly introducing everyone’s favorite thing about television: advertisements! […]
Dark Helmet