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Daily Deal: 6-in-1 Wireless Charger Stand with Clock & Alarm

10 months 2 weeks ago
Charge your device or illuminate your desk with this innovative 6-in-1 Wireless Charger. It’s easy to use with its touch buttons and Qi wireless charging for Qi-enabled devices. Beautifully made with a modern look, it can quickly charge your device and is touch-sensitive allowing you to show the digital clock. For your convenience, this charger […]
Gretchen Heckmann

‘The Messenger’ Promised To Revolutionize Journalism, Then Fell Flat On Its Face

10 months 2 weeks ago
Early last year new journalism outlet named “The Messenger” launched to great fanfare. The brainchild of former The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, the new news empire launched with $50 million in backing and a lot of chatter about how it was going to revolutionize U.S. journalism. Finkelstein claimed he wanted to build “an alternative to a national […]
Karl Bode

FCC Continues To Punt On The Hard Questions Surrounding Media Ownership

10 months 2 weeks ago
Between the holidays, and to minimal fanfare, the FCC released a decision in the 2018 Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership policy. The timing of the release was no surprise, as the agency had been ordered by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to conclude the proceeding by December 27th. The FCC’s decision, which made only […]
Karl Bode

Section 702 Gets Four-Month Extension At The Last Minute

10 months 2 weeks ago
Just when it finally looked like the FBI’s year of abuse might catch up to it, it (along with the NSA and other beneficiaries of this surveillance authority) has been granted a four-month reprieve. The FBI made a lot of enemies with its continuous abuse of this surveillance authority — a foreign-facing “collect it all” […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Award-Winning Luminar Neo Bundle

10 months 2 weeks ago
Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Leading ‘Save The Kids!’ Advocate Pushing Absolutely Dangerous ‘Protect The California’ Ballot Initiative That Will Do Real Harm To Children

10 months 2 weeks ago
Over the last few years we’ve pointed out time and time again that the evidence regarding the supposed “harm” of social media to teen mental health just isn’t supported by the data. But it seems it’s never enough to stop savior-complex folks in the media, the advocacy community, and the political class from insisting it […]
Mike Masnick

U.S. ‘Cord Cutting’ Sets New High. Again.

10 months 2 weeks ago
Back in 2019, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge proudly declared that the trend of cord cutting — or people ditching traditional cable television and switching to streaming — was finally coming to an end. According to Rutledge, the worst was now behind the cable industry, and the trend was finally slowing down. Yeah, about that. According […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

10 months 2 weeks ago
This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come in response to worrisome ruling in California that denied Section 230 protections to Snapchat because it has disappearing messages. In first place, it’s radix with thoughts on the potential implications: I can’t wait for every document shredding company to be swept up in every […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: December 31st – January 6th

10 months 2 weeks ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we kicked off the new year with a copyright lawsuit over dance moves in Fortnite, while the EU made its first attempt at listing pirate sites and included a bunch of non-infringing sites. Similarly, we looked at how antipiracy outfits routinely claim copyright infringement against sites that simply […]
Leigh Beadon

Police Union Defends Forfeiture By Saying Anyone Carrying A Bunch Of Cash Is Probably A Criminal

10 months 2 weeks ago
I’m always heartened to see another local news team start digging into asset forfeiture. Especially the ones that don’t sugarcoat the findings with headlines that read like they were crafted by law enforcement officials. Charlotte, North Carolina’s NBC affiliate, WCNC, tells it like it is. Although it puts quotes around a couple of phrases, it […]
Tim Cushing

Company Threatens To Sue Cyclist For Trademark Over ‘Near Miss’ YouTube Video

10 months 2 weeks ago
It’s no secret that there are mountains of examples of companies and individuals attempting to use intellectual property laws merely to silence critics and disappear information from the internet. While I’m sure this sort of thing must somtimes work, it’s also quite common for these would-be censorial folks to be introduced to the Streisand Effect […]
Dark Helmet

Copyright Liability On LLMs Should Mostly Fall On The Prompter, Not The Service

10 months 2 weeks ago
The technological marvel of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, developed by AI engineers and experts, has posed a unique challenge in the realm of copyright law. These advanced AI systems, which undergo extensive training on diverse datasets, including copyrighted material, and provide output highly dependent on user “prompts,” have raised questions about the bounds […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2024 Complete Godot Stack Development Bundle

10 months 2 weeks ago
Dive into Godot – a rising star in the game engine world. You’ll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you’ll also explore techniques for game design and game asset creation – giving you the ultimate techniques to […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Utah Governor Absolutely Positive That Social Media Harms Kids Despite Study After Study After Study After Study After Study Saying He’s Wrong

10 months 2 weeks ago
Okay, look, at this point, we need to start calling out those in positions of power who insist that it’s unquestionable that social media is harmful to kids when the don’t present any evidence at all to back up those assertions. Because as we’ve been documenting, every single study that comes out these days seems […]
Mike Masnick

Prepare For A Ton Of Dumb, Counterproductive Streaming Video Mergers

10 months 2 weeks ago
While Comcast’s streaming service Peacock has now reached 30 million subscribers, Comcast has been taking an absolute bath on the proposition. Comcast CEO Mike Cavanagh says the company lost nearly $3 billion dollars on the effort last year alone. The other streaming giants haven’t fared a whole lot better. Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, and Paramount all […]
Karl Bode

Chinese Official Fired After Backlash Over Latest Gaming Industry Regulatory Plans

10 months 2 weeks ago
The war on China’s video game industry by the Chinese government continues, but it appears that its casualties aren’t only within the industry itself. Over the last couple of years, the Chinese government has put more and more restrictions on the gaming industry, primarily aimed at youths, that were designed for everything from restricting how […]
Dark Helmet