Over the years we’ve written about plenty of “cyberespionge” companies. Some engage in spyware or surveillance ware. Others actively hack devices. Almost all of these eventually get exposed through dogged investigative reporting. A few people reached out to point to this rather concerning Editor’s note that was posted to Reuters this week: Reuters has temporarily […]
Back in September Mozilla released a scathing report showing how modern vehicles are a privacy shitshow. After studying vehicle systems for over 600 hours, researchers found that most cars hoover up vast swaths of sensitive location and other information on consumers, then, like most companies, sell access to that data to pretty much any nitwit […]
In October, California became the first state in the nation to ban “excited delirium” as an official cause of death. While this was a positive development, the question remains: why did it take so long? “Excited delirium” was never a real thing. It has always been a convenient excuse for deaths at the hands of […]
For some reason, there are enough people who are ignorant enough about trademark law such that every once in a while you get people who don’t like a thing trying to trademark that thing thinking they can prevent that thing from being done or used. It’s a form of trademark squatting. Confused? An example would […]
We’ve seen lots of… shall we say… misguided libel lawsuits here at Techdirt. We’ve also seen plenty of lawsuits filed for the sole purpose of bullying someone into silence for reporting inconvenient facts. This case is more of the “misguided” variety. Someone who clearly doesn’t understand the basics of libel law filed a lawsuit against […]
Twitch has announced that the company is shutting down in Korea after regulators there imposed a ridiculous new regulatory framework that drove the company’s operational costs through the roof. Basically: Korean telecoms convinced gullible regulators to pass a new regulatory framework wherein edge providers and content companies are forced to pay telecoms additional fees just […]
This Apple Watch Portable USB Charger allows you to charge anytime, anywhere. With a built-in magnetic adsorption module, you can charge your watch immediately after contact. This charger has the ability to charge your watch within 2 to 3 hours fully. It’s lightweight and portable, so you can charge your watch while traveling, when working […]
Over the past few days I’ve been hearing lots of buzz claiming that either today or tomorrow Senator Josh Hawley is going to push to “hotline” the bill he and Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced months back to explicitly exempt AI from Section 230. Hotlining a bill is basically an attempt to move the bill quickly […]
Americans pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for broadband due to consolidated monopoly power and feckless regulators. It’s a problem the U.S. government lacks the competence or political integrity to fix. So what we usually get are strange Band-Aids that treat the symptoms of the underlying problem (unchecked corporate power muting […]
Thank you for joining us for your latest lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you buy when you buy them digitally. Over a year ago, we discussed a story out of Germany and Austria where a deal expired between Sony and movie distributor StudioCanal, which resulted in 100s of movies being delisted […]
Last week we wrote about how Montana’s ridiculous TikTok ban was blocked by a judge for being fairly obviously unconstitutional. But in the rush of the moral panic over TikTok coming from all over, I had missed that Indiana had sued the company. The argument was that TikTok had violated “child safety laws,” and in […]
We’ve got another cross-post episode this week! Recently, Mike joined the debut episode of the new Dot Social podcast from Flipboard CEO Mike McCue for a discussion about decentralized social media and the open social web, and the ways in which they are poised to spur widespread innovation. You can listen to the whole conversation […]
On one hand, the Lina Khan FTC has been the toughest agency in history when it comes to “right to repair” reform — or efforts to let you affordably repair your own tech. On the other hand, given past regulatory actions have been minimal, that’s not historically saying much. Still, the FTC under Khan’s leadership […]
It seems that every other day or so we get another story of big tech companies tossing principles out the window and caving to ridiculous government demands. The latest is Google, yet again, which has cut a deal with the Canadian government to bribe news orgs with $100 million to pay them off to avoid […]
Embark on the journey of language learning with the Rosetta Stone lifetime subscription for all languages. Trusted by top-tier organizations like NASA and TripAdvisor, Rosetta Stone has been the go-to software for language learning for the past 27 years. With its immersive and intuitive training method, you might be reading, writing, and speaking a new […]
Looks like everybody who’s anybody has got a set of hacking tools in Canada. Well, at least in terms of the federal government. Documents obtained by the CBC shed some light on the prevalence of phone-cracking tech within the government. And what that light shows isn’t all that flattering. Tools capable of extracting personal data […]
Automakers are increasingly obsessed with turning everything into a subscription service in a bid to boost quarterly returns. We’ve noted how BMW has embraced making heated seats and other features already in your car a subscription service, and Mercedes has been making better gas and EV engine performance something you have to pay extra for — even if […]
Earlier this year we discussed an app being removed from the Google Play store over copyright concerns and a DMCA notice that was sent in by a firm representing several Israeli television networks. The app, called “Downloader,” was created by Elias Saba, and he was very confused by the takedown. The reason for his confusion […]
I continue to be sickened and saddened that this country — considered the Land of the Free — continues to devolve (rapidly!) into a place where intolerance and bigotry are being written into law. And all it took was a four-year calamity headed up by one of the worst presidents in history, Donald Trump. His […]
About a year ago, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web asked if I would help edit and compile a “magazine” talking about decentralization and why it’s important. It was a fun and interesting challenge, and now the final product is out, the D-Web Digest. There are a bunch of fascinating articles in there, which […]
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