A Spanish court has granted precautionary measures against NordVPN and ProtonVPN, ordering the two popular VPN providers to block 16 websites that facilitate piracy of football matches.

The restrictions will apply to a dynamic list of IP addresses in Spain, and there will be no opportunity for appeals. The measures were taken ‘inaudita parte’, meaning that the defendants weren’t called to participate in a hearing.

LaLiga – the country’s professional football organizer, and its broadcasting partner, Telefónica, are required to “preserve sufficient digital evidence of the unlawful transmission of the protected contents.”

LaLiga showed a strong stance against the piracy ecosystem in recent years, previously targeting Cloudflare, accusing the internet giant of facilitating illegal sports streaming.

The two organizations proved that the VPN providers fall under the EU Digital Services Regulation, and therefore have a duty to help prevent copyright infringement carried out through their infrastructure.

“The orders identify how VPN systems prove to be a suitable means, ‘highly effective and accessible to generate the possibility of access to content not accessible in certain geographic points,’ distorting the real geographic location of online access, and facilitating ‘access to websites that broadcast protected content illegally,’” reads LaLiga’s announcement.

“What is more, the orders highlight how the defendant companies acknowledge and even advertise that their system is excellent at evading restrictions.”

LaLiga characterized the ruling as unprecedented in Spain, aligning it with similar decisions in France, and celebrated that the liability of VPN providers for piracy is clearly recognized.

In response, ProtonVPN took to Twitter to question the decision, declaring a total lack of awareness of the proceedings and stating that they have not been formally notified.

“Any judicial order issued without proper notification to the affected parties, thereby denying them the opportunity to be heard, would be procedurally invalid under fundamental principles of due process, stated the VPN service provider.

“Spanish courts, like all courts operating under the rule of law, are bound by procedural safeguards that ensure parties are given a fair opportunity to present their case before any binding judgment is rendered.”

In a request for comments to BleepingComputer, NordVPN’s spokesperson Laura Tyrylyte stated that the company was not involved in any legal proceedings in Spain.

Tyrylyte stated that the process for blocking domains is ineffective in the fight against piracy as it does not address the root cause. Instead, hosting providers should be the target, since pirates can use subdomains to bypass the restrictions.

“Effective piracy control should focus on eliminating the source of the content, targeting hosting providers, cutting off financing for illegal operations, and increasing the availability of legitimate content.”

Through its representative, NordVPN said that the measures affect mostly reputable, paid VPN providers, while free services continue to operate largely unhindered.

“Free VPNs are often harder to regulate and, since users who seek to avoid paying for content are unlikely to pay for a VPN either, these services remain a loophole for pirates to bypass restrictions.”

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Lowe’s Home Improvement grew the old-fashioned way, working its way up from a single, small, family-owned North Carolina general store founded in 1921. But the Lowe’s hardware store empire is plenty big these days. A tool-filled Lowe’s superstore is now about as big as a New York City block. The focus stays mostly on appliances and tools for the home DIYer, more than large building contractors. I like to pop in for grill and griddle tools, or just some propane. But you can also buy a pre-finished door complete with the frame—or the lumber, sanders, routers, and saws you’d use to make your own door, including the hinges and the wood stain. It’s easy to get lost in the endless aisles if you love the smell of plaster and wood dust, but it’s easier to find the best Lowe’s deals on the website. This roundup includes Lowe’s daily deals, a promo code, and Lowe’s offer code for 40% off appliances, plus info on the Lowe’s rewards program and military discounts.

Save Up to 40% on Select Major Appliances at Lowe’s

Until February 25, there’s a Lowe’s offer code for up to 40% off major appliances. The biggest deal I saw was a steep $1,700 discount on an LG fridge with a filtered water and ice dispenser, but some of the already discounted washers and dryers also offer $50 or $100 off if you buy them as a set. Purchase includes free next-day delivery and installation.

Quick Ways to Save at Lowe’s: Text Alerts and Daily Deals

Lowe’s wants to be able to tell you about its deals, hoping you’ll be tempted to take advantage of them. If you’re a consistent DIYer, it’s likely worth getting a heads-up on the Lowe’s Deals of the Day, delivered to your phone via text message. This might be anything from drills to snow blowers or lawn mowers, plus the best package deals on appliances, refrigerators, washers, and dryers. Each of these deals is one-day only. If you sign up for text messaging about Lowes’ daily deals, you get $5 off a $50 purchase.

Join the MyLowe’s Rewards Program, Get Maximum Benefits

If you’re planning on doing some major work this year, or just like to putter around, it’s probably worth picking up a MyLowe’s Rewards Program membership. Each eligible purchase accrues points that’ll pay out in increments of $5 in-store credit at Lowe’s. Like a lot of loyalty programs, you get more benefits if you spend more at the store, including free shipping on all purchases including the small ones, member-only discounts, and point boosters for better discounts.

There are three tiers of memberships, depending what you buy. One large appliance might already qualify you for the highest tier of rewards, at which point you might as well. These are the three tiers, based on the total cost of what you’ve bought at Lowe’s in the past year. Bronze ($0-$499): $35 minimum for free shipping; 1 point per $1 spent. Silver ($500-$1,999): Free shipping; 1.25 points per $1 spent. Gold ($2,000+): Free shipping; 1.5 points per $1 spent.

For contractors, there’s a separate MyLowe’s Pro Rewards Program that offers Lowe’s in-store credit in increments of $1 for every 100 points earned. (Points expire in half-yearly increments, on June 30 and December 31.) Benefits include member-only deals, volume discounts, free standard shipping in the contiguous United States, and a 20% paint discount after annual spend of $3,000 or more. Other benefits include analytics and spend reports, online order quoting, and purchase authorization for specified crew members.

10% Military Discount, Plus Free MyLowe’s Silver Status

All verified active military, veterans, and military spouses are eligible for a 10% discount on full-price items—meaning things don’t have to be on sale to be on sale. This is available through what Lowe’s calls the Everyday Military Discount program. When you enroll, you also get an immediate upgrade to Silver status on the MyLowe’s Rewards program, which means more rewards points earned per dollar, and free shipping on all orders in the contiguous United States.

Get a free Silver status upgrade instantly when you enroll in our Military Discount program and validate through ID.me. MyLowe’s Rewards Silver status members receive free standard shipping (excludes AK and HI) and earn more points per dollar.

Save 5% on Everyday Purchases at Lowe’s

Like a lot of big retailers, Lowe’s also has a store credit card with discounts attached. The MyLowe’s Rewards Credit Card offers 5% off qualified purchases, with a whole bunch of asterisks. Specifically, the discount applies after all other discounts and can’t be combined with other programs like contractor bulk discounts, employee discounts, or military discounts. It also doesn’t work on Weber, Miele, or Kichler products. Scroll to the bottom here, for APR and exceptions. The smart person signs up during a big purchase: When you sign up and get approved, you get 20% off an in-store purchase (up to $100 off).

Another way to get 5% off on items you need regularly is to set up a Lowe’s subscription. This is good for items ranging from cleaning products, air and water filters, lawn care, pet goods, plumbing, and batteries. Shipping is free, and delivery happens automatically.

Just as people were settling in to primetime viewing hours on the east coast in the US and the end of the workday in the west, YouTube seemed to take a nap as more than 800,000 people in the US and hundreds of thousands elsewhere in the world reported the loss of the feed, according to Downdetector. The outage started to gain traction at 5 p.m. PT and quickly spiked to 338,308 reports by 5:10 p.m., according to Datadetector’s graph.

As of 6:30 p.m. PT, the number of reports had dropped to under 50,000. Google (which owns YouTube) provided a status update naming an “issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids).”

YouTube told CNET that the outage was due to an issue with the company’s recommendation system which has since been resolved.

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CNET staffers who noticed the outage saw YouTube’s familiar home screen with a search bar and side column, but no videos. YouTube apps, such as on an iPad, showed a 1980s-style pixel artwork and the message “Something went wrong.”.

(Disclaimer: Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

from the thank-god dept

The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent.

In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state.

The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt.

But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way.

Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state.

Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe.

“The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said.

Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it.

Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger.

Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles.

“I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said.

Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned.

But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger.

Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates

from the “pathetic,”-said-eeyore dept

The right wing extremist takeover of CBS continues to go just about how you thought it might.

CBS is under fire yet again, this time for forcing Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” to cancel a scheduled appearance with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico because it might upset our full-diapered president. Colbert acknowledged the cancellation on his Monday evening show, saying CBS lawyers explicitly forbade him from broadcasting the interview:

“He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”

Colbert says he was also told by network lawyers that he also couldn’t mention he was told by CBS to not have him on, a request he proceeded to immediately ignore in a lengthy rant about Brendan Carr and the censorial, authoritarian, and pathetic Trump FCC:

“Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper.”

As we’ve noted previously, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been threatening to leverage the “equal time” rule embedded in Section 315 of the Communications Act to take action against daytime and late night talk shows that don’t provide “equal” time to Republican ideology. He most recently tried to threaten ABC’s The View.

Carr’s goal isn’t equality; it’s the disproportionate coddling and normalization of an extremist U.S. right wing political movement that’s increasingly despised by the actual public. It’s also an attempt to create a climate where media giants are afraid to host voices critical of the president for fear of being drawn into expensive and costly legal battles, even though Carr has little hope of actually winning any.

The “equal time” rule is a dated relic that would be largely impossible for the Trump court-eviscerated FCC to actually enforce. The rule was originally created to apply specifically to political candidate appearances on broadcast television, since back then, pre-internet, a TV appearance on one of the big three networks could make or break and politician attempting to run for office.

In the years since, the rule has seen numerous exemptions and, with the steady evisceration of the regulatory state by the right wing, is not something viewed as seriously enforceable.

Enter Carr, who is distorting this rule to suggest that it needs to apply to every guest a late-night talk show has. It’s a lazy effort by Carr to pretend his censorship effort sits on solid legal footing. It does not. The FCC’s lone Democratic Commissioner accurately pointed out that Carr has no authority to do any of this:

It’s a legal fight that CBS could easily win, but because the network is owned by Trump billionaire donor Larry Ellison, it’s too feckless, pathetic, and corrupted to bother. Ellison very clearly purchased CBS (and installed contrarian troll Bari Weiss at CBS News) to create a safe space for right wing interests; one of his first orders of business was firing Colbert last year. His show is now scheduled to end in May.

Ellison has been hoping the Trump DOJ will scuttle Netflix’s pending merger with Warner Brothers so that Ellison can further expand his planned media empire with the inclusion of Warner IP, CNN, and HBO. To gain approval of that transition, CBS lawyers and executives are further incentivized to be abject cowards.

The ham-fisted effort by Trump and his FCC earlobe nibblers will, of course, only act to drive more attention to Colbert’s interview with Talarico on YouTube. As of my writing this sentence, the video has over a million and a half views, a number I suspect will be significantly higher in short order. The comment section is filled with people with lots of nice things to say about CBS and Brendan Carr:

Obviously this is an ugly assault on free speech and the First Amendment by a sad and desperate authoritarian government, but at its heart it’s just foundationally, historically pathetic. It’s also another sad chapter in the embarrassing capitulation of what’s left of modern corporate broadcast media, which is positively begging for irrelevance at the hands of more modern alternatives.

Filed Under: brendan carr, censorship, equal time, fcc, first amendment, free speech, james talarico, media, stephen colbert, trump

Companies: cbs

The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses for 30 days because the EV maker has stopped using the term “Autopilot” in the marketing of its vehicles in the state.

The decision, issued late Tuesday, means Tesla can continue selling its EVs in California without interruption and officially settles a case that has been dragging on for nearly three years. California is Tesla’s biggest U.S. market.

In November 2023, the DMV filed accusations that Tesla violated state law by using deceptive marketing of Autopilot, its basic advanced driver assistance system, as well as its more capable Full Self-Driving driver assistance software. The state regulator argued that the terms mislead customers and distorted the capabilities of the advanced driver assistance systems.

Tesla stopped using the term “Full Self-Driving Capability,” and instead used Full Self-Driving (Supervised) to more accurately describe the system and clarify that drivers were still required to monitor it. But Tesla held on to the Autopilot term, prompting the DMV to refer the case to an administrative law judge at the California Office of Administrative Hearings.

In December, the administrative law judge agreed with the DMV’s request to suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses in the state for 30 days as a penalty for its actions. The DMV agreed with the ruling, but didn’t pounce; instead, the state regulator gave Tesla 60 days to comply.

“Since then, Tesla took corrective action and has stopped using the misleading term ‘Autopilot’ in the marketing of its electric vehicles in California,” the DMV stated in a release posted on its website. “Tesla had previously modified its use of the term ‘Full Self-Driving’ to clarify that driver supervision is required. By taking this prescribed action, Tesla will avoid having its dealer and manufacturer licenses suspended in the state for 30 days by the DMV.”

Tesla didn’t just stop using the term Autopilot, though. In January, the company discontinued Autopilot in the U.S. and Canada altogether. The move not only helped it comply with the DMV but was also viewed as a way to boost adoption of FSD, which unlike Autopilot, requires the owner to pay for the upgraded system.

FSD Supervised, which until February 14 required an $8,000 one-time fee, is now only available through a monthly subscription of $99. That subscription fee is expected to increase as the system becomes more capable, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said.