#5yrsago Publicly funded private school creates “poor kids’ playground” for kids whose parents wouldn’t contribute to new playground equipment theguardian.com/education/2018… 4/
#5yrsago Federal appeals court blasts North Carolina’s unconstitutional, Republican gerrymandering, orders new districts by Jan 24 nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/…
#5yrsago Federal prosecutors say that Ohio man used MacOS malware that covertly operated cameras and mics and exfiltrated porn searches for 13 years arstechnica.com/information-te… 6/
#5yrsago Adversarial examples: attack can imperceptibly alter any sound (or silence), embedding speech that only voice-assistants will hear arxiv.org/pdf/1801.01944…
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, @beaconPressBks et al) 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."
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 "NYT: Binding Arbitration For Thee, But Not For Me"
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!
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? You can read my work elsewhere, but it is now a #TwitterCrime to tell you how. Please visit my site, pluralistic.net, for links to find me on less-unhinged places (I can only imagine that my days here are numbered). 21/
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It's hard to remember now, but for more than three years under Biden, it was possible to read the headlines and feel your government was taking big, decisive action to tame the corporate behemoths that rip you off, maim you on the job, and undermine our democracy.
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Antitrust surge under Biden was remarkable: a sustained, organized, effective policy to support the interests of the majority of people against the interests of a cohort of ultra-wealthy wreckers and looters. According to political science, that surge is impossible.
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It's not that the Republicans and the Democrats are the same...obviously. But for decades - since Clinton - the Dems have sided with neoliberal economics, just like their Republican counterparts.
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So the major differences between the two related to overt discrimination, to the exclusion of the economic policies that immiserated working people, with the worst effects landing on racial minorities, women, and gender minorities.
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Trumpism is a mixture of grievance, surveillance, and pettiness: "I will never forgive your mockery, I have records of you doing it, and I will punish you and everyone who associates with you for it."
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A law professor friend tells me that LLMs have completely transformed the way she relates to grad students and postdocs - for the worse. And no, it's not that they're cheating on their homework or using LLMs to write briefs full of hallucinated cases.
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The thing that LLMs have changed in my friend's law school is *letters of reference*. Historically, students would only ask a prof for a letter of reference if they knew the prof really rated them.
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I have an excellent excuse for this week's linkdump: I'm in Germany, but I'm supposed to be in LA, and I'm not, because London Heathrow shut down due to a power-station fire.
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:
Which meant I spent all day yesterday running around like a headless chicken, trying to get home in time for my gig in San Diego on Monday (don't worry, I sorted it):
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Paula Le Dieu is one of the smartest, most committed archivists I know. Many years ago, she shared a neat analogy with me about the paywalling of public archives.
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