Today's Twitter threads (a thread).

Inside: Sci-Fi Genre; Saudi Aramco is gushing debt; Emailifaction is digital carcinization; Cheap Chinese routers riddled with backdoors; Talking interop on EFF's podcast; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/11/24/zaw…

#Pluralistic

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Sci-Fi Genre: Sarah Gailey and Chuck Wendig on the Attack Surface Lectures.



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Saudi Aramco is gushing debt: Vision 2030 strikes again.



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Emailifaction is digital carcinization: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.



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Cheap Chinese routers riddled with backdoors: Actively exploited by Mirai.



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Talking interop on EFF's podcast: We call it competitive compatibility.



6/
#10yrsago Menstruating woman subjected to TSA grope because panty-liner obscured her vulva on pornoscanner blog.gladrags.com/2010/11/24/tsa…

#5yrsago Randall “XCKD” Munroe’s Thing Explainer: delightful exploded diagrams labelled with simple words memex.craphound.com/2015/11/24/ran…

7/
#5yrsago Shamrock shake: Pfizer’s Irish “unpatriotic loophole” ducks US taxes arstechnica.com/science/2015/1…

#5yrsago WTO rules against US dolphin-safe tuna labels because they’re unfair to Mexican fisheries theintercept.com/2015/11/24/wto…

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#5yrsago J Edgar Hoover was angry that the Boy Scouts didn’t thank him effusively enough muckrock.com/news/archives/…

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#1yrago Peak billionaire: a billionaire tries to purchase a party nomination to outflank anti-billionaires so he can run against another billionaire time.com/5735384/capita…

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#1yrago A poor, Trump-voting Florida town opened a government grocery store to end its food desert, but it’s “not socialism” washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11…

#1yrago I made Wil Wheaton recite the digits of Pi for four minutes, then a fan set it to music soundcloud.com/nicholasland/p…

11/
#1yrago The Lincoln Library executive director got fired for renting Glenn Beck the original Gettysburg Address chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/11/22/lin…

12/
Yesterday's threads: Opsec and personal security; Australian predictive policing tool for kids; A textbook grift; Labor and large firms; The power of procurements; Guatemala's guilltoines; Someone Comes to Town part 24; and more!



13/
My latest novel is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books. @washingtonpost called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance."

Get signed books from @darkdel: darkdel.com/store/p1840/Av…

14/
I have a (free) new book out! "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is an anti-monopolist critique of Big Tech that connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposes a way to deal with both:

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

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My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

craphound.com/shop/

16/
Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, Cybersummit 2020, Nov 26 cybera.ca/cyber-summit-2…

* Keynote, Cologne Futures, Nov 27 medienpolitik.eu

* Beaverbrook Lecture: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Nov 30, mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/…

17/
Recent appearances:

* Nerdcanon Podcast:
nerdcanon.com/episode-25-cor…

* Plutopia Podcast:
plutopia.io/2020/11/23/cor…

* Talkingheadz Podcast:
talkingpointz.com/talkingheadz-w…

18/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

19/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2020/11/24/zaw…

20/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧟‍♂️". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: pluralistic.net/plura-list

21/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @pluralistic@mamot.fr.

Here's today's edition: mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1…

22/
Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (nakedcapitalism.com), Slashdot (slashdot.org), Deeplinks (eff.org/deeplinks/).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

26 Nov
Follow Us to Walt Disney World (1984) adventurelandia.tumblr.com/post/635810395…
Follow Us to Walt Disney World (1984) adventurelandia.tumblr.com/post/635810395…
Follow Us to Walt Disney World (1984) adventurelandia.tumblr.com/post/635810395…
Read 5 tweets
25 Nov
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Tech in SF; Office 365 spies on employees for bosses; A state-owned Amazon; Random Penguin to buy Simon & Schuster; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the…

#Pluralistic

1/ Image
On Monday, Nov 30, I'm giving a talk based on my short book "HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM" as part of McGill University's Beaverbrook Lectures; it's a counterpoint to a lecture delivered by Shoshanna Zuboff last Monday. It's free to attend:

mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/…

2/ Image
Tech in SF: Annalee Newitz and Ken Liu in the final Attack Surface Lecture.



3/ Image
Read 20 tweets
25 Nov
Publishing is dominated by just five giant players: Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Harpercollins and Macmillan.

1/ Image
Within that five-company oligarchy, one company stands out as a true monopolist: Penguin Random House, the megafirm created when Random House's owner, Bertelsmann, executed a merger-to-monopoly by buying Penguin in 2013.

2/
Now, Penguin is about to effect another monopolistic merger, by acquiring Simon & Schuster from Viacom, which bought the company in 1994. The acquisition was always a bad fit: it was driven by a desire to create a vertical monopoly.

3/
Read 11 tweets
25 Nov
In most of the world, the lockdown has destroyed small businesses while increasing the profits of Big Tech intermediaries like Amazon, who control access to customers on one side, and access to merchants on the other.

1/ Image
The government of Argentina is trying to avert this fate. Their postal service is launching a "state-owned Amazon" called Correo Compras, which will offer low-cost ecommerce listings to businesses, and do fulfilment through postal workers.

correocompras.com.ar

2/
Correo Compras competes directly with Mercadolibre, a latinamerican ecommerce titan with a well-deserved reputation for squeezing suppliers and workers - its deliveries are made by precarious gig economy drivers.

opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/…

3/
Read 18 tweets
25 Nov
The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve describes the process by which oppressive technology is normalized and distributed through all levels of society. The more privilege someone has, the harder it is to coerce them to use dehumanizing tech, so it starts with marginalized people.

1/ Image
Asylum seekers, prisoners and overseas sweatshop workers get the first version. Its roughest edges are sanded off against their tenderest places, and once it's been normalized a little, we inflict it on students, mental patients, and blue collar workers.

2/
Lather, rinse, repeat: before long, everyone's been ropted in. If your meals were observed by a remote-monitored CCTV 20 years ago, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Today, it's because you bought a home video surveillance system from Google/Apple/Amazon.

3/
Read 18 tweets

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