Time Running Out On Techdirt T-Shirts: Nerd Harder & Home Cooking Both End Soon

from the don't-miss-out dept

As you may know, last month, we ran a t-shirt campaign for our "Nerd Harder" t-shirt, in response to various folks in governments and legacy companies thinking that if only the techies "nerd harder" they can solve everything from terrorism to copyright infringement. The campaign was super successful, with hundreds of folks buying shirts. But, apparently, some of you (you know who you are) somehow missed that campaign. Teespring has a feature where if enough people reserve a t-shirt from a campaign that's completed, the campaign will reopen for a short time -- and that's exactly what's happened with our Nerd Harder t-shirt: But it's for a very limited time: just a few hours left until that campaign closes, and who knows if there will be enough demand to reopen it. So don't miss out. We've already seen lots and lots and lots of happy customers from the first round, so here's a chance to join them. But only for a few more hours.

And, then, of course, we also have our second t-shirt campaign running as well, for our Home Cooking is Killing Restaurants parody of the old "hold taping is killing music" campaign. People seem to really like that shirt as well (and we also have it in hoodie version). That campaign is running through this coming Tuesday, but might as well buy both shirts in one shot. Both shirts come in multiple color choices (buy more than one to have a variety!) and in men's and women's cuts. And, of course, buying these t-shirts not only makes you look cool, but also helps support Techdirt.

Filed Under: home cooking, home taping, nerd harder, t-shirts, techdirt

Awesome Stuff: Nerd Harder T-Shirt From Techdirt (Last Chance)

from the last-chance dept

Last Chance: Support Techdirt and get a "Nerd Harder." T-shirt!

Okay, sure, if you religiously read every post on Techdirt, you're already aware that we're selling a Nerd Harder T-shirt, but I know not everyone reads every post. I've already had quite a few people that I've spoken to admit they didn't know about our limited time T-Shirt sale -- which ends tomorrow -- until I mentioned it, at which point they got excited about it. People seem to clearly like the shirt, and we've sold way more than we initially expected, but if you like it too, we didn't want you to miss out, so for this week's "Awesome Stuff" post, rather than posting some other people's crowdfunding campaigns, we'll post this, which gives you a chance to not only get a really cool t-shirt, but to support Techdirt as well. In case you missed our original post, this T-shirt is a response to the increasing number of claims we've seen lately from non-tech people assuming that technology can do anything if those smart people out in Silicon Valley just put their minds to it. We've seen the FBI claim that if we just worked harder at it, we could build backdoored encryption that doesn't undermine encryption. And then we saw the copyright industry claim that if Silicon Valley can build a self-driving car, clearly it can build a system to block infringing material without destroying fair use. Computer security expert Matt Blaze rebutted this idea beautifully once by saying it's the equivalent of "we put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the sun?" demonstrating the fact that non-tech people don't seem to even remotely understand the relative differences between the things they're suggesting.

Julian Sanchez coined the term "nerd harder" as a short hand for this, and we thought that while it makes for terrible policy, it's a catchy T-shirt slogan. And a nice way to support Techdirt while getting a cool T-shirt at the same time.

It's only available until tomorrow, so don't miss out.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, nerd harder, t-shirt

Techdirt T-Shirt List: Nerd Harder

from the a-short-read... dept

Limited time offer: Support Techdirt and get a "Nerd Harder." T-shirt!

Normally at this time of the week, we post our "Techdirt Reading List" suggestion for a book worth reading, but this week we're suggesting something that's a little shorter to read: Our Nerd Harder T-shirt. The T-shirt has proved more popular than expected, and it's only available for a few more days, so we thought we'd remind folks that it's available before it disappears and you regret it. Because, trust me, you'll regret not getting this T-shirt. We also added an option for women's cut T-shirts, which we didn't have when we launched.

In case you missed our original post, this T-shirt is a response to the increasing number of claims we've seen lately from non-tech people assuming that technology can do anything if those smart people out in Silicon Valley just put their minds to it. We've seen the FBI claim that if we just worked harder at it, we could build backdoored encryption that doesn't undermine encryption. And then we saw the copyright industry claim that if Silicon Valley can build a self-driving car, clearly it can build a system to block infringing material without destroying fair use. Computer security expert Matt Blaze rebutted this idea beautifully once by saying it's the equivalent of "we put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the sun?" demonstrating the fact that non-tech people don't seem to even remotely understand the relative differences between the things they're suggesting.

Julian Sanchez coined the term "nerd harder" as a short hand for this, and we thought that while it makes for terrible policy, it's a catchy T-shirt slogan. And a nice way to support Techdirt while getting a cool T-shirt at the same time.

It's only available until this Sunday, so don't miss out.

Filed Under: nerd harder, t-shirt, techdirt

Nerd Harder: The T-Shirt

from the support-techdirt dept

Limited time offer: Support Techdirt and get a "Nerd Harder." t-shirt!

When the "going dark" encryption debates kicked off, a very, very long list of technology and encryption experts wrote a letter explaining that designing backdoors for encryption was a monumentally bad idea that inevitably would lead to weaker security and more vulnerabilities that made everyone less safe. In response to this, FBI Director James Comey, twisted what the letter said around to claim that the tech industry was claiming that it was too hard to backdoor encryption. But there's a difference between saying "this is hard" and "this is dangerous."

Either way, a bunch of defenders of backdooring encryption started to pick up on this ridiculous framing, leading Julian Sanchez to coin the term "nerd harder!" as a way of describing non-technical policy people insisting that techies can just solve some problem if they put their minds to it. Then, last week, at the Copyright Office's DMCA hearings, I noted a similar kind of thinking, around copyright issues. That time, a lobbyist for legacy content companies insisted that if Silicon Valley was able to build a self-driving car, surely they could build a technology that would stop infringing content, without harming fair use.

It was Nerd Harder all over again.

After commenting on that, a few people suggested that Nerd Harder might make a good t-shirt slogan -- and we agree! So we made one. Nerd Harder may be an absolutely terrible policy idea, but it sure does make a nice looking t-shirt. We're doing this as a bit of an experiment, and we're using Teespring to make it work. Teespring is a t-shirt, crowdfunding setup, and we need to have enough people order the shirts in order to actually get them printed. So if we don't get enough orders, no t-shirts. But this also means that the campaign is for a limited time -- just through May 29th -- so put your order in now!

And, oh yeah, obligatory xkcd:

Filed Under: copyright, encryption, going dark, nerd harder, t-shirts