Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 15, 2022 30 tweets 33 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: This weekend, I watched a hacker jailbreak a John Deere tractor live on stage; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/08/15/dee…

#Pluralistic 1/
Tonight (Aug 15), I'll be joining the @buildbridges4am Book Club for the final installment of their discussion of my 2019 book "Radicalized":

mobilize.us/buildbridges4a… 2/
This weekend, I watched a hacker jailbreak a John Deere tractor live on stage: Total pwnage, with a a side of copyfraud.

3/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
Hey look at this

* A Taxonomy of Access Control schneier.com/blog/archives/…

* @HankGreen Explains the Climate Bill

* Lock and unlock grocery store shopping carts with your phone speaker begaydocrime.com/carts 4/
#15yrsago An anonymous Disney employee vandalized the Wikipedia entry on DRM by removing all mentions of me opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-op…

#15yrsago Catalog of Fox News Wikipedia whitewashes web.archive.org/web/2007101313… 6/
#15yrsago George Orwell on getting shot rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldi…

#10yrsago Civil rights implications of Big Data radar.oreilly.com/2012/08/big-da…

#10yrsago @HachetteUS to @TorBooks authors: you must keep the DRM on your ebooks publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/co… 8/
#10yrsago What to do if your car gets broken into and you’re the @MPAA techdirt.com/2012/08/13/if-…

#10yrsago 2BainCapital buys profitable American plant, ships it to China; soon-to-be-jobless workers train their overseas replacements theguardian.com/business/2012/… 9/
#10yrsago Animation teacher faces the sack for refusing to push “unnecessary, expensive” textbooks at hedge-fund invested Art Institute of California web.archive.org/web/2012081423…

#10yrsago @remixeverything’s TED Talk: “Embrace the Remix” – a must-see 10/
#10yrsago RIP, Harry Harrison whatever.scalzi.com/2012/08/15/rip…

#10yrsago A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books memex.craphound.com/2012/08/15/a-m…

#10yrsago Neo-Nazi MEP from Hungary discovers he is Jewish web.archive.org/web/2012081500… 11/
#5yrsago CEOs quit Trump: The 1% can’t win elections unless the 99% turkeys vote for Christmas memex.craphound.com/2017/08/15/ceo…

#5yrsago A new edition of @DanielPinkwater’s happy mutant kids’ classic, “Lizard Music” memex.craphound.com/2017/08/15/a-n… 12/
#5yrsago In NYC, every tenant facing eviction is now entitled to a lawyer bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

#5yrsago School to parents: a $100 donation gets your kids to the front of the lunch line abcactionnews.com/news/region-po… 13/
#5yrsago Russian inequality is worse than imagined; worse than other post-Soviet states piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/NPZ2017W…

#5yrsago Republican lawmakers double-down on legalizing the vehicular murder of protesters theintercept.com/2017/08/14/bac… 14/
#5yrsago The secret text of the @GOP’s border bill reveals plan to dramatically increase surveillance of Americans and visitors arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#5yrsago Donald Trump will not condemn the terrorist attacks on anti-Nazi protestors memex.craphound.com/2017/08/13/don… 15/
#10yrsago Great writing advice from this year’s @ClarionUCSD writing workshop samjmiller.com/clarion-2012-e…

#5yrsago @Airbnb’s preferred smart lock vendor accidentally bricks 500 door-locks bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/… 16/
#5yrsago Real people don’t (just) need encryption phys.org/news/2017-08-e…

#5yrsago So the Alt-Right is coming to your campus splcenter.org/sites/default/…

#1yrago Provocateur copyrights a Magic: The Gathering Deck pluralistic.net/2021/08/14/ang… 17/
#1yrago End of the line for #Reaganomics pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/pos…

#1yrago Smart cities are neither, 2021 edition pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/pos… 18/
Friday's threads: The FTC takes aim at commercial surveillance; and more!

19/  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wi
My latest book is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books, now in paperback, wherever books are sold.

Signed copies at @darkdel:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co… 20/
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/ 21/
Upcoming appearances:

* Talking "Radicalized" with the @buildbridges4am Book Club, Aug 15
mobilize.us/buildbridges4a…

* Launch for @Motherboard's Terraform anthology, @Vice offices (Los Angeles), Aug 18
eventbrite.com/e/terraform-bo… 22/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Radical Interoperability: An Internet Disassembly Manual, Aug 29 15h (@BurningMan Center Camp)

* Chokepoint Capitalism: a Better Deal for Creative Labor, Aug 30, 13h (@BurningMan @PalenqueNorte, 915 and B) 23/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Interview with @BunnieStudios on the Precursor and Trusting Trust, Aug 31, 12h (@BurningMan Liminal Labs, 945 and Rod's)

* #UnfinishedLive (NYC), Sept 21-24
live.unfinished.com 24/
Recent appearances:

* DRM Secretly Polices You (@dtnsshow)
dailytechnewsshow.com/2022/07/29/drm…

* Bricking Tractors (Inside Agri-Turf)
inside-agriturf.captivate.fm/episode/bricki…

* Blockchain, Bitcoin & Selling The Brooklyn Bridge (@MMTPodcast):
pileusmmt.libsyn.com/135-cory-docto… 25/
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 @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe… 26/
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/2022/08/15/dee… 27/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest Medium column is "Takes One To Know One"

doctorow.medium.com/takes-one-to-k… 28/
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 29/
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… 30/

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More from @doctorow

Jan 6
Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities.

1/ A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2026/01/06/100…

2/
AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:



Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets.

3/pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/eco…
Read 48 tweets
Dec 16, 2025
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Dec 13, 2025
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
Dec 9, 2025
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red.   Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Nov 20, 2025
Well, this fucking *sucks*. A federal judge has decided that Meta is not a monopolist, and that its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were not an illegal bid to secure and maintain a monopoly:



1/ gizmodo.com/meta-learns-th…The classic Puck Magazine editorial cartoon entitled 'The King of All Commodities,' depicting John D Rockefeller as a man with grotesquely tiny body and a gigantic head, wearing a crown emblazoned with the names of the industrial concerns he owned. Rockefeller's head has been replaced with that of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The names of the industrial concerns have been replaced with the wordmarks for Scale AI, Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. The dollar-sign at the crown's pinnacle has been replaced with the Facebook 'f' logo. The chain around Rockefeller's neck sports the charm th...
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2025/11/20/if-…

2/
This is particularly galling because Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly, explicitly declared that these mergers were undertaken *to reduce competition*, which is the only circumstance in which pro-monopoly economists and lawyers say that mergers should be blocked.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Nov 18, 2025
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called *Who Censored Roger Rabbit?* which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

1/ The final scene of Disneyland's 'Roger Rabbit's Toontown Spin,' in which Roger Rabbit is deploying a pair of portable holes; the holes have been replaced with copyright symbols, which are partially cropped.  Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/  CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
If you'd like an essay-formatted 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/2025/11/18/im-…

2/
But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets

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