Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Federal Wallet Inspectors; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/13/uncle-sucker/
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Discussion
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I'm and the end of my tour for my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
My last two events are CCC in #Hamburg, Dec 27-30:
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html
and the Tattered Cover in #Denver, Jan 22:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937
I hope you can make it!
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@pluralistic Sad that Barnes and Noble bought Tattered Cover a few years ago.
@pluralistic when I found out you were coming to town, I rushed to book, but it was sold out.
Didn’t want to annoy you with “can you score me a ticket”, but just wanted to let you know you are too popular and plenty of us missed out due to physics - cheers!
@pluralistic neat! We will be here too :)
@pluralistic see you in Hamburg
Federal Wallet Inspectors: Does tech *really* move too fast to regulate?
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115714189355169060
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@pluralistic There is also the option - which is treated as being unthinkable, not even acknowledged publicly - of not allowing them to do the thing without research and having a regulatory framework built before it can cause catastrophic problems.
Like, with the LLMs - we could have done safety research, and learned they can lead to psychosis-like symptoms, before letting them loose on the general population, and regulated accordingly.
Regulation doesn't have to come *after* harm.
Hey look at this
* Every Drink in “Casablanca” (1942) https://bruces.medium.com/every-drink-in-casablanca-1942-348e7c543810
* clbre is a fork of calibre with the aim of stripping out the AI integration https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre
* EU Report Distills AI-Training Lessons from Napster Piracy Era: Don’t Sue, License https://torrentfreak.com/eu-report-distills-ai-training-lessons-from-napster-piracy-era-dont-sue-license/
* Rebuilding Imaginary Futures: Il Versificatore, 2025 https://bruces.medium.com/rebuilding-imaginary-futures-il-versificatore-2025-3178a12be2aa
* John Varley, 1947-2025 https://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2025/12/john-varley-1947-2025.html
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This quote from the "AI-Training Lessons from Napster" article broke my mind:
“… AI is very different from historical cases of online piracy, as it creates large net benefits for society while using copyrighted works as input."
Both piracy and AI have the problem that artists aren't paid.
Piracy created the biggest media library ever seen in the history of the world, freely accessible by anyone with a connection.
What benefits has AI created compared to that? Besides a bubble?
#20yrsago Americans smile, Brits grimace? https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/national-smiles.html
#20yrsago HOWTO make a soda-can Van de Graaf https://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/electro/electro6.html
#20yrsago Credit-card-sized USB drive https://web.archive.org/web/20051214084824/http://walletex.com/
#20yrsago Homeland Security: Mini-golf courses are terrorist targets https://web.archive.org/web/20060215153821/https://www.kron.com/Global/story.asp?S=4226663
#20yrsago Amazon rents access to a copy of the Web https://battellemedia.com/archives/2005/12/alexa_make_that_amazon_looks_to_change_the_game
#15yrsago Pornoscanners trivially defeated by pancake-shaped explosives https://web.archive.org/web/20101225211840/http://springerlink.com/content/g6620thk08679160/fulltext.pdf
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