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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

6 Dec

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union started to clone DEC's PDP workhorse minicomputers, especially the PDP-8, which was replicated in the USSR as the Saratov-2. Today, the Saratov-2 is a distant memory, with not even a single high-quality photo of the system online.

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@ralphmirebs

Until now. Russian urban explorer @ralphmirebs's photos of a "Soviet Computing Cemetery" (location undisclosed) that features the rotting remains of a Saratov-2 amid the ashes and fire-suppresant residue of a long-ago data-center blaze.

rusue.com/cemetery-of-so…

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The Saratov-2 was wild: it didn't have a microprocessor; rather, it was broken down into components, each in its own drawer: a 12-bit computing unit, I/O, RAM (ferromagnetic cubes).

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

6 Dec

Last week, the largest organized strike in human history shut down India. 250,000,000 people struck against Indian PM Narendra Modi's neoliberal reforms to the agricultural sector.

democracynow.org/2020/12/3/indi…

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These reforms don't just remove the collective bargaining and price controls that protect the ag sector (which employs more than half the Indian working population), but also stripped multinational corporations and government of liability for harms to their workers.

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All this while unemployment is at 27%, and 76% of rural Indians lack the funds to cover their basic nutritional needs. Meanwhile Indian billionaires have increased their wealth by 35% during the pandemic. India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has made $12m per HOUR since March.

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

6 Dec

In my book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" I point out that the claims for Big Tech powers of behavior modification powers emanate from the companies' own self-serving boasts pitched to bring in new ad-tech customers.

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

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I point to the thinness of the external research on ad-tech's efficacy, and the replication failures of its research foundations on things like "sentiment analysis," "microexpressions" and "Big 5 Personalities" - the whole panoply of digital phrenology.

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Meanwhile, there are undeniable, easily measured means by which Big Tech modifies our behavior that don't require us to treat marketing puffery as ground truth.

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

6 Dec

This is still funny to me. explorerrowan.tumblr.com/post/636741980…

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

6 Dec

Batman (1967) atomic-chronoscaph.tumblr.com/post/636728235…

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

5 Dec

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Descartes' God has failed and Thompson's Satan rules our computers; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/tru…

#Pluralistic

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1335302491328532480

Descartes' God has failed and Thompson's Satan rules our computers: Computers, trust, and the knowability of the universe.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1335302491328532480

#15yrago Sony *finally* releases rookit uninstaller — sort of web.archive.org/web/2005120401…

#10yrsago UK govt demands an end to evidence-based drug policy theguardian.com/politics/2010/…?

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