The perfect New Year’s Eve comedy turns 30
There aren’t that many movies specifically set on New Year’s Eve, but one of the best is The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Joel and Ethan Coen’s visually striking, affectionate homage to…
The Biggest Challenges Create The Biggest Opportunities
As is the tradition on Techdirt, my final post of the year is about optimism and how I continue to be optimistic about innovation and online community, even in the…
Manta rays inspire faster swimming robots and better water filters
Manta rays are elegantly shaped. They swim by flapping their fins like enormous wings, and their gills filter for plankton with the utmost precision. These creatures have now inspired human…
New U.S. DoJ Rule Halts Bulk Data Transfers to Adversarial Nations to Protect Privacy
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a final rule carrying out Executive Order (EO) 14117, which prevents mass transfer of citizens’ personal data to countries of concern such…
Chinese APT Exploits BeyondTrust API Key to Access U.S. Treasury Systems and Documents
The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a “major cybersecurity incident” that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. “On December 8, 2024,…
Misconfigured Kubernetes RBAC in Azure Airflow Could Expose Entire Cluster to Exploitation
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three security weaknesses in Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory Apache Airflow integration that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker to gain the ability to conduct…
Embodied Is Actually Trying To Release ‘Moxie’ Robots To The Open Source Community
A couple of weeks back, we discussed the implosion of startup company Embodied and the resulting bricking of its $800 “emotional support” robots designed for children. Like many other stories…
2024: AI Panic Flooded The Zone, Leading To A Backlash
Last December, we published a recap, “2023: The Year of AI Panic.” Now, it’s time to ask: What happened to the AI panic in 2024? TL;DR – It was a…
‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Suspends Critics On ExTwitter, Asks People To Be Nicer
The inevitable has happened and Elon has started banning and suppressing the speech of folks who were “on his team,” leading to many suddenly realizing that maybe he wasn’t such…
Trump told SCOTUS he plans to make a deal to save TikTok
In the weeks before Donald Trump takes office, he has moved to delay a nationwide TikTok ban from taking effect until he has a chance to make a deal on…