Author: tio

  • ☺️ Trust Us With Your Face | EFFector 38.4

    Do you remember the last time you were carded at a bar or restaurant? It was probably such a quick and normal experience, that you barely remember it. But have you ever been carded to use the internet? Being required to present your ID to access content online is becoming a growing reality for many. We’re explaining the dangers of age verification laws, and the latest in the fight for privacy and free speech online, with our EFFector newsletter.

    For over 35 years, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This issue covers Discord’s controversial rollout of mandatory age verification, a leaked Meta memo on face-scanning smart glasses, and a Super Bowl surveillance ad that said the quiet part out loud.

    Prefer to listen in? In our audio companion, EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rin Alajaji explains how online age verification hurts free expression for all users. Find the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive.

    LISTEN TO EFFECTOR

    EFFECTOR 38.4 – ☺️ Trust Us With Your Face

    Want to stay in the fight for privacy and free speech online? Sign up for EFF’s EFFector newsletter for updates, ways to take action, and new merch drops. You can also fuel the fight against mandatory age verification laws when you support EFF today!

  • How to Pick Your Password Manager

    Phishing and data breaches are a constant on the internet. The single best defense against both is to use a password manager to generate and automatically fill a unique password for every site. While 1Password has recently raised their prices, and researchers have recently published potential flaws in some implementations, using a password manager is still a critical investment in keeping yourself safe on the internet. There are free options, and even ones built into your operating system or browser. We can help you choose.

    Password managers protect you from phishing by memorizing the connection between a password and a website, and, if you use the browser integration, filling each password only on the website it belongs to. They protect you from data breaches by making it feasible to use a long, random, unique password on each site. When bad actors get their hands on a data breach that includes email addresses and password data, they will typically try to crack those passwords, and then attempt to login on dozens of different websites with the email address/password combinations from the breach. If you use the same password everywhere, this can turn one site’s data breach into a personal disaster, as many of your accounts get compromised at once.

    In recent years, the built-in password managers in browsers and operating systems have come a long way but still stumble on cross-platform support. Within the Apple ecosystem, you can use iCloud Keychain, with support for generating passwords, autofill in Safari, and end-to-end encrypted synchronization, so long as you don’t need access to your passwords in Google Chrome or Android (Windows is supported, though). Within the Google ecosystem, you can use Google Password Manager, which also supports password generation, autofill, and sync. Crucially, though, Google Password manager does not end-to-end encrypt credentials ​​unless you manually enable on-device encryption. Firefox and Microsoft also offer password managers. All of these platform-based options are free, and may already be on your devices. But they tend to lock you into a single-vendor world.

    There are also a variety of third-party password managers, some paid, and some free, and some open source. Most of these have the advantage of letting you sync your passwords across a wide variety of devices, operating systems, and browsers. Here are four key things to look out for. First, when synchronizing between devices, your passwords should be encrypted end-to-end using a password that only you know (a “master” or “primary” password). Second, support for autofill can reduce the chance that you’ll get phished. Third, security audits performed by third parties can increase confidence that the software really does what it is designed to do. And finally, of course, random generation of unique passwords is a must.

    Don’t let uncertainty or price increases dissuade you from using a password manager. There’s a good choice for everyone, and using one can make your online life a lot safer. Want more help choosing? Check out our Surveillance Self-Defense guide.

  • Sperm swim more quickly in summer, study finds

    Understanding the seasonal patterns of sperm could improve fertility treatments, by optimising the timing of treatment, the reasearchers say.
  • Thermal Drone Footage Shows Musk’s AI Power Plant Flouting Clean Air Regulations

    This story was originally produced by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action, in partnership with The Guardian. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.

    Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.

    State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long required that such pollution sources be permitted under the Clean Air Act.

    Any exemption for these machines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all,” the agency wrote in a January final ruling.

    However, thermal images captured by Floodlight — and analyzed by multiple experts — show more than a dozen unpermitted turbines still spewing pollutants at the plant nearly two weeks after the EPA’s recent ruling. 

    “That is a violation of the law,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations.

    “That is a violation of the law.”

    xAI, which is seeking permits for dozens more turbines in Southaven, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The EPA, which under President Donald Trump has initiated a record-low number of enforcement actions, declined to answer questions about the turbines at Musk’s AI facilities and deferred to local authorities on permits.

    Hundreds of people showed up to protest at the first and only public hearing on the matter on February 17, the last day of public comment.

    The Trump administration has made AI a priority, but as data centers proliferate across the country, regulators are struggling to keep pace with the industry’s increasing reliance on custom-built power sources and their public health impacts on surrounding communities. And Southaven, where state regulators are at odds with federal guidance, is a prime example. 

    The turbines there help power Grok, the company’s controversial chatbot, and emit harmful pollutants linked to health problems such as asthma, lung cancer and heart attacks.

    xAI parked 27 unpermitted turbines on tractor trailers at its complex in Southaven, Miss., a suburb of Memphis, Tenn., to power the company’s nearby data center. (Floodlight/Evan Simon)

    “The risk of living next to this type of power plant is well documented,” said Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside associate professor who specializes in the health impacts of data centers. “From the health perspective, we know that this is not good.” 

    Southaven residents have voiced concerns for months over the noise and pollution emanating from the 114-acre site that is largely hidden from public view — a site xAI is looking to expand. 

    “For them to be releasing so much pollution in such a populated area, not to mention that there are at least 10 schools within a two-mile radius of the facility, is really concerning,” said longtime resident Shannon Samsa. “It’s horrifying to me that we’re allowing this in our community.”

    From Memphis to Mississippi

    The Southaven turbine cluster is part of xAi’s rapidly growing footprint along the Tennessee-Mississippi border. That expansion began in the spring of 2024 in South Memphis, next to historically Black neighborhoods, with the construction of Colossus 1, which the company touted as the world’s largest AI supercomputer.

    The Southern Environmental Law Center released thermal images in April revealing that xAi had been operating more than 30 unpermitted gas-powered turbines at that site.

    “We were hopeful that the Health Department would step in,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at the SELC. “That never happened.” 

    County officials in Tennessee maintained the turbines did not require a permit despite longstanding EPA policy that they do. In July, amid local pushback, the county permitted 15 turbines for use at Colossus 1.

    On Jan. 15, the EPA reiterated its decades-old policy that such machines need a permit. By then, xAi had already built a second data center in the area, Colossus 2. To power it, the company parked 27 turbines just across the state line in Southaven, a diverse suburb of Memphis with higher than average levels of air pollution. 

    “When you’re talking about these turbines, think of the jet engine,” said Buckheit.  

    Thermal drone imagery captured by Floodlight in late January shows some of the 15 turbines operating with permits at xAI’s Colossus 1 facility, touted as the world’s largest AI supercomputer. (Floodlight/Evan Simon)

    Despite the EPA’s recent directive, Floodlight’s thermal imagery — analyzed by multiple experts — shows 15 unpermitted turbines in operation at Southaven. Public records obtained by Floodlight show at least 18 of the 27 turbines there have been used since November.

    “One might easily have expected, since this has been going on for some months, at least [authorities would issue a] stop work order,” said Buckheit, who served during the Republican Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations. He also said the EPA could refer the case to the Department of Justice for investigation. 

    “But apparently that didn’t happen.”

     xAI’s gas plant in Southaven, Miss., has been operating unpermitted turbines to power the company’s nearby datacenter since at least November, according to documents obtained by Floodlight. (Floodlight/Evan Simon)

    Playing by a different set of rules

    An EPA spokesperson did not answer Floodlight’s questions relating to its enforcement options, instead saying, “EPA does not approve the operation of gas turbines at facilities, that would be the state or local air permitting authority.” 

    Air permits are traditionally handled by state agencies. However, according to its own website, the EPA is responsible for making sure these agencies comply with federal regulations and “generally will take enforcement action” if a state government fails to “take timely and appropriate action.”

    xAI “violated the Clean Air Act the first time, and now they’re gonna copy and paste and do it again,” said Anderson. “I maybe had some naive hope that the regulators who are most in the day-to-day business of implementing the Clean Air Act in Mississippi would do the right thing.” 

    In response to Floodlight’s questions, a spokesperson from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said the EPA’s recent rule leaves permitting decisions to state authorities. 

    “The turbines currently operating at the Southaven facility are classified as portable/mobile units under state law and therefore remain exempt from air permitting requirements during this temporary period,” they said. “Nothing in the EPA’s January 15 rule altered that determination under Mississippi regulations.”

    Krystal Polk, who has asthma, said she was forced to empty the home that’s been in her family for generations and cancel her plans to retire there because of health concerns after xAI began operating gas-powered turbines directly across the street. (Floodight/Evan Simon)

    Longtime resident Krystal Polk said she had no idea xAI was coming to Southaven until black fences were set up across the street from her house. The area, she said, was once quiet and serene, with an abundance of wildlife, but is now bombarded by ceaseless noise and pollution. 

    “I do feel like xAi is playing by a different set of rules,” she said. 

    Polk, who has asthma, said she was forced to empty out the home that’s been in her family for generations and cancel her plans to retire there out of concerns for her health.

    “We are a casualty of the whole data center race,” she said. “I feel that my voice doesn’t matter.”

    The spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said the agency takes public concern around emissions, noise and overall quality of life seriously, and though the turbines — in their view — do not require permits, all “applicable air quality standards still apply.”

    Krystal Polk’s family home, foreground, sits directly across the street from xAI’s plant in Southaven, Miss. (Floodlight/Evan Simon)

    AI’s increasing thirst for fossil fuels 

    Despite lofty sustainability goals put forward by industry leaders, data centers across the country are increasingly turning to fossil fuels to power the AI boom by using custom-built power plants like the ones in Southaven.

    Roughly 75% of this power comes from natural gas, according to a recent report by Cleanview, which tracks clean energy and data center projects. 

    “Nearly every project we reviewed mentions renewables, hydrogen, or nuclear in its public announcements,” the report noted, but renewables aren’t scheduled until 2028 or later.

    And “nuclear is a decade away,” the report said.

    Now, xAI is seeking to expand in Southaven, applying in January for a permit to operate 41 turbines at the site. 

    The facility could emit more than 6 million tons of greenhouse gases and over 1,300 tons of health-harming air pollutants every year, according to xAI’s permit application. That would make it among the largest fossil fuel power plants in the state. The company also purchased property in Southaven for a third data center that, when completed, would make the Colossus cluster — spanning Memphis to Southaven — one of the largest data center complexes in the world.

    Shannon Samsa, a physician’s assistant, had hoped to raise a family in Southaven, but the presence of xAi’s gas-powered turbines has made her and her husband reconsider. “I don’t want my children to be growing up around such massive amounts of air pollution,” she said. (Floodlight/Evan Simon)

    “It would be devastating,” said Samsa, the Southaven resident. “No community in their right mind would want something like this in their backyards.”

    Samsa, a physician’s assistant, had hoped to raise a family in Southaven, but the presence of xAi’s gas-powered turbines has made her and her husband reconsider. She has helped collect more than 1,000 signatures for a petition demanding Mississippi authorities shut down the plant. 

    “I don’t want my children to be growing up around such massive amounts of air pollution,” she said. “I don’t want them to have to live in a place where their health and their overall well-being is not considered over economics.”

    Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

    The post Thermal Drone Footage Shows Musk’s AI Power Plant Flouting Clean Air Regulations appeared first on Truthdig.

  • Global Operation Shuts Labs, Seizes 33M Euro in Fake Drugs

    Authorities in 30 countries seized counterfeit medicines, doping substances and illegal supplements worth more than 33 million euros ($38.86 million) and shut down five clandestine laboratories in a coordinated crackdown on pharmaceutical crime, Europol said Wednesday.

    The operation was carried out between April and November 2025 and targeted networks trafficking fake and misused medicines that pose serious public-health risks. Investigators prosecuted 3,354 suspects and identified 43 organized crime groups. 

    Europol said the operation highlighted emerging health threats, including counterfeit products sold as fat-burners and other fake medicines. Criminal networks are exploiting rising demand for weight-loss drugs, performance enhancers and recreational substances, often distributing falsified products through unregulated online platforms that bypass safety controls.

  • Glyphosate Remains Controversial

    Glyphosate is the most used herbicide in the world, with farmer applying about 750 million kg per year. The US is the heaviest user, responsible for 19% of global use. The chemical is popular among industrial farmers because it is safe and effective, and yet it also remains highly controversial. It is also back in the news, and so an update on […]

    The post Glyphosate Remains Controversial first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

  • South Sudan: Funding gaps threaten nearly 2 million displaced people

    Funding shortfalls are putting the lives of more than 1.9 million displaced people in South Sudan at risk amid rising humanitarian needs, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday. 
  • World News in Brief: Arab economies rise, rights experts call for police reform in India, Ukraine school closures, Myanmar airstrikes

    A new UN report forecasts that the Arab region is seeing a gradual economic recovery despite continuing geopolitical uncertainties.
  • Pluralistic: The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (25 Feb 2026)

    Today’s links



    A giant pile of money bags; climbing out of it is the bear from the California state flag. The background is an Amazon box, with the smile logo pointing in the opposite direction to the bear's motion.

    The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (permalink)

    Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.

    That’s a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it’s not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America’s affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define “affluent household” it’s north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year’s worth of shipping, so it’s only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they’ve already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you’d pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.

    At this point you might be thinking a couple things:

    I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and

    II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what’s the problem if everyone shops there?

    The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.

    Let’s start with selling to non-affluent households – basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn’t in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It’s not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It’s also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a “K-shaped” recovery, in which “economic recovery” means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.

    For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was “buy-now/pay-later” services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.

    This produced a median American who isn’t just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And – with the exception of a brief Biden intercession – every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years – for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:

    https://prospect.org/2025/12/16/gop-forcing-eight-million-student-loan-borrowers-into-repayment/

    The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

    There’s plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy – big things like “political instability” and “cultural chaos” (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller’s perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they’re increasingly too broke to buy anything:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations

    Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it’s easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.

    Which brings us to the second question: if Amazon has the best prices, what’s the problem with everyone shopping there?

    The answer is to be found in the California Attorney General’s price-fixing lawsuit against Amazon:

    https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-exposes-amazon-price-fixing-scheme-driving-costs

    The suit’s been running for a long time, but the AG’s office just celebrated a milestone – they’ve finished analyzing the internal memos they forced Amazon to disgorge through civil law’s “discovery” process. These internal docs verify an open – and very dirty – secret about Amazon: the company uses its power to push up prices across the entire economy.

    Here’s how that works: sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they’re losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors.

    Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they’d have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing on its sellers.

    Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn’t have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.

    Like I say, this isn’t really a secret. MFN terms were the basis of DC Attorney General Ken Racine’s case against Amazon, five years ago:

    https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

    Amazon’s not the only company that does this. Under the Biden administration, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Pepsi because Pepsi and Walmart had rigged the market so that when Walmart raised its prices, Pepsi would force everyone else who carried Pepsi products to raise their prices even more. Walmart still had the lowest prices, but everything everywhere got more expensive, both at Walmart and everywhere else:

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart

    Trump’s FTC dropped the Pepsi/Walmart case, and Amazon wriggled out of the DC case, but the California AG’s office has a lot more resources than DC can muster. This is a timely reminder that America’s antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level as well as by the federal authorities. Trump might be happy to let Amazon steal from Americans so long as Jeff Bezos neuters the Washington Post, writes a check for $1m to sit on the inaugural dais, and makes a garbage movie about Melania; but that doesn’t stop California AG Rob Bonta from going after Amazon for ripping off Californians (and, in so doing, develop the evidentiary record and precedent that will allow every other state AG to go after Amazon).

    The fact that Amazon’s monopoly lets it control prices across the economy highlights the futility of trying to fix the Amazon problem by shopping elsewhere. A “boycott” isn’t you shopping really hard, it’s an organized movement with articulated demands, a theory of change, and a backbone of solidarity. “Conscious consumption” is a dead-end:

    https://jacobin.com/2026/02/individual-boycotts-collective-action-ice/

    Obviously, Californians have more to worry about than getting ripped off by Amazon (like getting murdered or kidnapped by ICE agents who want to send us all to a slave labor camp in El Salvador), but the billions that Amazon steals from American buyers and sellers are the source of the millions that Bezos uses to support Trump’s fascist takeover of America. Without billionaires who would happily support concentration camps in their back yards if it means saving a dollar on their taxes, fascism would still be a fringe movement.

    That’s why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

    The material support for Trump’s ideology of hate, violence and terror comes from Trump’s program of unregulated corporate banditry. A promise to claw back every stolen dime might cool the ardor of Trump’s corporate supporters, and even if it doesn’t, zeroing out their bank-balances after Trump is gone will be an important lesson for future would-be billionaire collaborators.


    Hey look at this (permalink)



    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #20yrsago Princeton prof explains watermarks’ failures https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/02/24/how-watermarks-fail/

    #20yrsago Palm Beach County voting machines generated 100K anomalies in 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20060225172632/https://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/19421.html

    #15yrsago Sharing the power in Tahrir Square https://www.flickr.com/photos/47421217@N08/5423296010/

    #15yrsago 17-year-old Tim Burton’s rejection from Walt Disney Productions https://web.archive.org/web/20110226083118/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/giant-zlig.html

    #15yrsago Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust https://web.archive.org/web/20110225145556/https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/635610

    #15yrsago Sony considered harmful to makers, innovators and hackers https://web.archive.org/web/20151013140820/http://makezine.com/2011/02/24/sonys-war-on-makers-hackers-and-innovators/

    #15yrsago MPAA: record-breaking box-office year is proof that piracy is killing movies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office/

    #15yrsago Super-wealthy clothes horses and their sartorial habits https://web.archive.org/web/20110217045201/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146420210142748.html

    #15yrsago Visualizing the wealth of America’s super-rich ruling class https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph/

    #10yrsago Obama’s new Librarian of Congress nominee is a rip-snortin’, copyfightin’, surveillance-hatin’ no-foolin’ LIBRARIAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU8vXDoBB5s

    #10yrsago Math denialism: crypto backdoors and DRM are the alternative medicine of computer science https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible

    #10yrsago Uganda’s corrupt president just stole another election, but he couldn’t steal the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20160225095947/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/uganda-election-day-social-media-blackout-backlash-mobile-payments

    #10yrsago Archbishop of St Louis says Girl Scout Cookies encourage sin https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/23/girl-scouts-cookies-missouri-catholics-st-louis-archbishop

    #10yrsago After appointed city manager illegally jacked up prices, Flint paid the highest water rates in America https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/16/study-flint-paid-highest-rate-us-water/80461288/

    #10yrsago Baidu browser isn’t just a surveillance tool, it’s a remarkably sloppy one https://citizenlab.ca/research/privacy-security-issues-baidu-browser/

    #5yrsago Why Brits can no longer order signed copies of my books https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#brexit-books

    #5yrsago Court rejects TSA qualified immunity https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#junk-touching

    #5yrsago The Mauritanian https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#gwb-and-gitmo

    #5yrsago EVs as distributed storage grid https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#mobile-batteries

    #5yrsago Bossware and the shitty tech adoption curve https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

    #1yrsago How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/24/surfa/#mark-ellis


    Upcoming appearances (permalink)

    A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.



    A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

    Recent appearances (permalink)



    A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

    Latest books (permalink)



    A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

    Upcoming books (permalink)

    • “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
    • “Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

    • “Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

    • “The Memex Method,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027



    Colophon (permalink)

    Today’s top sources:

    Currently writing: “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1020 words today, 37190 total)

    • “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
    • “The Post-American Internet,” a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

    • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING


    This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.


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    When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla

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