#5yrsago Congressional Democrats have so little faith in Trump’s leadership that they’ve awarded him the power to conduct limitless, warrantless mass surveillance of Americans theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the… 8/
#5yrsago Peter Thiel, “libertarian,” wants to buy Gawker’s archive, which would give him the power to censor stories he didn’t like reuters.com/article/us-gaw… 9/
#5yrsago German steelworkers demand the right to take two years’ worth of “work-life balance” 28-hour work weeks to look after children or aging parents theguardian.com/world/2018/jan… 10/
Yesterday's threads: Booklist on "Red Team Blues"; and more!
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). 22/
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As a science fiction writer, I find it weird that some sf tropes - like space colonization - have become culture-war touchstones. You know, that whole "we were promised jetpacks" thing.
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I confess, I never looked too hard at the practicalities of jetpacks, because they are so obviously either used as a visual shorthand (as in the Jetsons) or as a metaphor.
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Residents of 21 Utah cities have some of the fastest, cheapest broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/mo. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading *and* downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.
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Of course this is delivered via fiber optic. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s - fiber is *1,000* times faster:
When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics.
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I am, on balance, opposed to AI art, but there are some important caveats to that position. For starters, I think it's unequivocally wrong - as a matter of law - to say that scraping works and training a model with them infringes copyright.
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Like Oscar Wilde, "I can resist anything except temptation," and my slow and halting journey to adulthood is really just me grappling with this fact, getting temptation out of my way before I can yield to it.
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Behavioral economists have a name for the steps we take to guard against temptation: a "Ulysses pact." That's when you take some possibility off the table during a moment of strength in recognition of some coming moment of weakness:
The "Tragedy" hoax said that moving land from collective ownership "rescued" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who cared for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":
Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.
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But *unsubscribing* from Prime? That's a fucking *nightmare*. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave.
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