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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Feb 28, 2023 • 20 tweets • 23 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: VW wouldn't help find kidnapped child because his mother wasn't paying for find-my-car subscription; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/02/28/kin…

#Pluralistic 1/ A blue vintage VW beetle speeds down a highway; a crying bab
This Thu (Mar 2) I'm in #Brussels for #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy, with a who's-who of EU and US trustbusters. In-person and virtual attendance are free:

brusselsconference.com/registration

On Fri (Mar 3), I'll be in #Graz for @ElevateFestival:

elevate.at/diskurs/progra… 2/
VW wouldn't help find kidnapped child because his mother wasn't paying for find-my-car subscription: All the harms of surveillance, none of the benefits.

3/
Hey look at this

* Amazon Removes Books From Kindle Unlimited After They Appear on Pirate Sites torrentfreak.com/amazon-removes… (h/t @Slashdot)

* Future Fords Could Repossess Themselves and Drive Away if You Miss Payments thedrive.com/news/future-fo… (h/t @Slashdot) 4/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wi
#20yrsago Ipsos-Reid sez P2P doesn’t hurt record sales web.archive.org/web/2003041623…

#20yrsago @CopyrightOffice posts #AntiCircumvention comments copyright.gov/1201/2003/repl…

#20yrsago Weird confluence of Orthodox Judiasm and proprietary software in London web.archive.org/web/2003031410… 5/
#20yrsago Skunk Works: #Enron’s spiritual forebears wired.com/2003/03/silent…

#15yrsago Loony evangelical says he engineered Canadian film tax-credit changes that will doom edgy indie movies web.archive.org/web/2008030415… 6/
#15yrsago Record companies don’t share money extorted from file-sharing fans with artists nypost.com/2008/02/27/inf…

#15yrsago Shrine to bragging, deadly Internet “#MallNinja” lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

#15yrsago @CShirky’s masterpiece: Here Comes Everybody memex.craphound.com/2008/02/28/cla… 7/
#10yrsago Bestiary of unimportant envelopes that look important evilmadscientist.com/2013/envelopes/

#5yrsago My short story about better cities, where networks give us the freedom to schedule our lives to avoid heat-waves and traffic jams theatlantic.com/technology/arc… 8/
#5yrsago The latest “#ReflectionAttack” gooses #DenialOfService attacks by a factor of 51,000 blog.cloudflare.com/memcrashed-maj…

#5yrsago How citizenship-for-sale and statelessness change cities theatlantic.com/technology/arc… 9/
Yesterday's threads: Podcasting "Twiddler"; and more!

10/
My latest book is Chokepoint Capitalism (with @rgibli), nonfiction about monopoly and fairness in creative labor markets.

chokepointcapitalism.com

Signed copies available from @BookSoup:

booksoup.com/book/978080700… 11/ Image: Stephen Drake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.o
My latest novel 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… 12/
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."

craphound.com/shop/ 13/
Upcoming appearances:

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration

* @ElevateFestival (#Graz), 3/3
elevate.at/diskurs/progra…

* Seize the Means of Computation (TU Wein), 3/7
informatics.tuwien.ac.at/news/2373 14/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @utsdct (#Austin), 3/9
eventbrite.com/e/the-buckman-…

* Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture (@umanitobasci), 3/9
eventscalendar.umanitoba.ca/site/science/e…

* @SXSW #ChokepointCapitalism reading (#Austin), 3/10
schedule.sxsw.com/2023/events/PP… 15/
Recent appearances:

* @ANUmedia/@canberratimes Meet The Author
soundcloud.com/experience_anu…

* The Gould Standard
pod.link/thegouldstanda…

* @RNDrive:
abc.net.au/radionational/… 16/
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/2023/02/28/kin… 17/
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 "United We Stand: Creation is collective - and so is bargaining"

doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stan… 18/
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 19/
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). 20/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 25
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.

1/ Norman Rockwell’s ‘self portrait.’ All the Rockwell faces have been replaced with HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ His signature has been modified with a series of rotations and extra symbols. He has ten fingers on his one visible hand. 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/2025/03/25/com…

2/
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.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 22
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.



1/ mystgalaxy.com/32425DoctorowA bloody mary stacked high with many absurd, over-the-top garnishes. Image: TDelCoro https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/48116604516/ CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
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/2025/03/22/omn…

2/
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):

3/
Read 50 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 19
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.

1/ The Columbia University library, a stately, columnated building, color-shifted to highlight reds and oranges. The sky behind it has been filled with flames. In the foreground, a figure in a firefighter's helmet and yellow coat uses a flamethrower to shoot a jet of orange fire. Image: Ajay Suresh https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajay_suresh/52009406881/ CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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/2025/03/19/sel…

2/
This phenomenon has become rampant as public institutions have been pushed to seek private funding to close the gaps left by swingeing cuts.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 18
AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can't do your job:



1/ pcmag.com/news/amid-job-…The capital building, crossed by a yellow hazmat tape emblazoned 'DANGER ASBESTOS.' Behind the tape stands a figure in an old-fashioned hazmat suit. In the background are the blown-up faces of a group of grubby, miserable child miners. The capital dome has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Krd (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DASA_01.jpg CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en -- Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creati...
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/2025/03/18/asb…

2/
If you pay attention to the hype, you'd think that all the action on "AI" (an incoherent grab-bag of only marginally related technologies) was in generating text and images. Man, is that ever wrong.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 15
Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing.

1/ A cylindrical black Alexa speaker on a coffee table; it is wearing a Darth Vader helmet. Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexa_%2840770465691%29.jpg Sam Howzit (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWC_6_-_Darth_Vader_Costume_(7865106344).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/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/2025/03/15/alt…

2/
This will happen even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:



3/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…
Read 48 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 13
My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:



1/ pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the…A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner's stripes. Two of the figures' heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon 'smile' logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure's head has been replaced with a horse's head. Behind the figure is an impatiently poised man in a sharp business suit, glaring at his watch. His head has been replaced with the ...
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/2025/03/13/ele…

2/
When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when *they* complain, they get results.

3/
Read 71 tweets

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