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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

13 Oct

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Charter uses bad credit threats to corral ex-subscribers; Adobe uses copyfraud to preserve spyware; India funded a starving kids' app, but not food; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/the…

#Pluralistic

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The paperback for Attack Surface - a standalone Little Brother book for adults - is out!

us.macmillan.com/books/97812507…

Signed copies:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

One-month only audiobook sale with Little Brother and Homeland:

sowl.co/uqT2G

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1448105052816621570

Charter uses bad credit threats to corral ex-subscribers: "Resubscribe or we'll keep trashing your credit report."

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1448105052816621570

Read 22 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

13 Oct

The term "#solutionism" gets thrown around a lot. Any time an attempt to address a problem fails, it's easy to point at the technological elements of the failure and deride the whole enterprise as a solutionist muddle.

1/

If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/the…

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Which is a pity, because solutionism is real, and it's a scourge. I mean, it can literally kill.

Take Poshan Abhiyaan, a Modi/World Bank joint project to address malnutrition-based "stunting" in children under six, something 38% of Indian children suffered in 2016.

3/

Read 25 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

13 Oct

The death of Adobe Flash in January 2021 was long overdue; Adobe's hyper-proprietary interactive runtime was a source of persistent, terrifying security vulnerabilities that had harmed web users for decades.

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But the demise of Flash also meant that all the Flash-based media that had been created since its debut (as 1995's "Futuresplash") was snuffed out, orphaned, unplayable and lost to history.

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Adobe may have skimped on security, but it spent lavishly on sales and marketing, so major media and public organizations locked up years and years of media and interactives in the Flash abandonware format.

3/

Read 15 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

13 Oct

Las Luchadoras Contra La Momia (1964) gameraboy2.tumblr.com/post/664896156…

Read 5 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

13 Oct

@GetSpectrum

I'm more of a Charter-@GetSpectrum hostage than a customer: I need the internet to earn my living, and my town (#Burbank) has signed an exclusive deal with Charter, so I send them $134.99/mo for some of the worst internet in California.

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It turns out that Charter doesn't stop abusing you when you stop being a customer: the company is now sending threatening letters ("offers") to ex-customers demanding that they sign up again on pain of a bad credit report.

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That's not how Charter puts it, of course. They say they're extending a lifeline to ex-customers whose years-unpaid bills are in collection, trashing their credit.

theverge.com/2021/10/12/227…

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Read 11 tweets