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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
May 27, 2023 • 21 tweets • 25 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Steven Brust's "Tsalmoth"; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/27/man…

#Pluralistic

1/ The Tor Books cover for Ste...
I'm at @HTLGIFestival in #HayOnWye:

28/5 1130h: The AI Enigma
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-ai-…

29/5 12h: Danger and Desire at the Frontier
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-dan…

Next, #Oxford!

29/5: @blackwelloxford's 1930h w/@TimHarford:
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

2/ Image
Steven Brust's "Tsalmoth": Swords, sorcery and swooning romance, in a series that is tantalyzingly close to completion.



3/ Image
Hey look at this

* Cops can’t use copyright to block #UseOfForce materials eff.org/deeplinks/2023…

* Helpline fires staff uses #chatbot after #Unionization vice.com/en/article/n7e… (h/t /r/LateStageCapitalism)

* #HP finds new way to #DRM printers! theverge.com/2023/5/25/2373…

3/ Image
#20yrsago #Apple force-feeds customers shit, calls it sunshine memex.craphound.com/2003/05/27/app…

#20yrsago Bungled espionage blows up millions of motherboards web.archive.org/web/2003021907…

#15yrsago #StarTrek cake trekmovie.com/2008/05/25/sta…

4/ Image
#10yrsago TSA random secondary screening is trivial to dodge ip.topicbox.com/groups/ip/Ta67…

#10yrsago #Obama’s trade reps and the @MPAA are killing a copyright treaty that gives rights to #PeopleWithDisabilities huffpost.com/entry/poisonin…

5/ Image
#5yrsago All Rights Reserved: a #YA #dystopia where every word is copyrighted memex.craphound.com/2018/05/27/all…

#1yrago #Wework founder raises $70m for #blockchain-based, "voluntary" #CarbonCredits pluralistic.net/2022/05/27/vol…

6/ Image
Yesterday's threads: How (and why) Biden should overcome the Supreme Court to end the debt showdown; and more!



7/ Image: Joe Ravi (modified)...
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

8/
My latest nonfiction 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…

9/
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/

10/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/28
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-ai-…

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/29
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-dan…

* Red Team Blues event with @TimHarford (#Oxford), 5/29
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

11/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues event with @christreilly (#Nottingham), 5/30
waterstones.com/events/an-even…

* @uclcs Peter Kirstein Lecture, 6/1 (#London):
eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste…

* @CymeraF, 6/3 (#Edinburgh)
cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-event…

12/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues with @Marthalanefox at the @bl, 6/5 (#London):
bl.uk/events/an-even…

* @rightscon, "#Interoperability: from buzzword to a map of solutions," Jun 6 (#CostaRica):
rightscon.org/program/

13/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @republica keynote, 6/7 (#Berlin)
re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-k…

* Otherland event for Red Team Blues, 6/8 (#Berlin)
otherland-berlin.de/de/event-detai…

14/ Image
Recent appearances:

* @machinekillspod
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

* How Big Tech Captured Culture (@TheAgenda)


* Enshittification Part 3: Saving The Internet (@onthemedia)
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

15/ Image
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/2023/05/27/man…

16/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

17/
My latest @Medium column is "Rich People's Gain is Worth Less Than Poor People's Pain: A new way to think about utilitarianism, courtesy of the Office of Management and Budget"

doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-g…

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: mail.flarn.com/mailman/listin…

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).

eof/

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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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