Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur believes the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was "not a bad weekend" as both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton reached the points in the final race of the season.

Carlos Sainz hopes Williams' point-less finish in the Abu Dhabi season finale serves as a "wake-up call" for the team, with the the Spaniard believing it is the best catalyst to take into the off season.

Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.

The new features are expected to launch in 2026 through Sora, OpenAI's short-form video platform, and ChatGPT. A selection of user-generated short videos will also be available to stream on Disney+. The licensing agreement excludes any talent likenesses or voices. Disney will receive warrants to purchase additional OpenAI equity as part of the arrangement, and its employees will gain access to OpenAI tools including ChatGPT for building new products.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Opera has opened its AI-powered browser Neon to the public after a couple of months of testing, and anyone interested in trying it will need to pay $19.90 per month. The Norway-based company first unveiled Neon in May and launched it in early access to select users in October. Like Perplexity's Comet, OpenAI's Atlas, and The Browser Company's Dia, Neon bakes an AI chatbot into its interface that can answer questions about pages, create mini apps and videos, and perform tasks. The browser uses your browsing history as context, so you can ask it to fetch details from a YouTube video you watched last week. The subscription also grants access to AI models including Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.1.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De aandelenbeurs in Amsterdam is donderdag met winst geëindigd. Beleggers verwerkten het besluit van de Federal Reserve in de Verenigde Staten om voor de derde keer op rij de rente te verlagen, wat eerder al voor opluchting zorgde op Wall Street. Tegelijkertijd drukte een tegenvallend kwartaalbericht van het Amerikaanse softwarebedrijf Oracle op techaandelen op het Damrak.

De AEX steeg 0,3 procent tot een stand van 946,28 punten. De MidKap steeg 0,5 procent tot 905,6 punten. Op andere Europese beurzen was de stemming goed. De hoofdgraadmeters in Londen, Parijs en Frankfurt gingen tot 0,8 procent omhoog.

Oracle rapporteerde woensdagavond zijn kwartaalcijfers, waarbij de prognoses tegenvielen bij beleggers. Daarnaast nemen de zorgen toe over de hoge kosten en schulden die gepaard gaan met de uitbreiding van het bedrijf op het vlak van kunstmatige intelligentie. In Amsterdam was chiptoeleverancier Besi de sterkste daler van de hoofdfondsen met een verlies van 2,3 procent. Ook branchegenoten ASML en ASMI eindigden lager.

HAMAR (ANP) - Schaatser Joep Wennemars gaat vrijdag bij de wereldbekerwedstrijden in het Noorse Hamar van start op de 500 meter, maar zal die race niet uitrijden. De 23-jarige schaatser heeft last van een liesblessure, maar start omdat hij met de punten die hij verdient in de top 21 van het wereldbekerklassement blijft. Dat is voor de Nederlandse schaatsbond KNSB belangrijk om met het maximale aantal van negen schaatsers te mogen deelnemen aan de Olympische Spelen van Milaan in februari.

Wennemars brak afgelopen zondag bij de wereldbeker in Heerenveen zijn race op de 500 meter ook meteen na de start af. Toch verdiende hij zo 22 punten voor het klassement, waarin hij op de zeventiende plaats staat. Met zijn start van vrijdag in de A-groep kan hij in ieder geval 21 punten verdienen. Daarmee moet hij een plaats bij de beste 21 in het klassement hebben veiliggesteld. Team Essent meldt dat Wennemars na de race van vrijdag weer vertrekt en zondag niet in actie komt op de tweede 500 meter.

BRUSSEL (ANP) - Er komt geen volledig verbod op de verbrandingsmotor in auto's, zegt de voorzitter van de grootste partij in het Europees Parlement EVP, Manfred Weber, tegen de Duitse krant Bild. Eerder is afgesproken dat per 2035 nieuw gemaakte auto's in de EU geen CO2 meer mogen uitstoten. Weber zegt dat dat nu is teruggebracht naar 90 procent. Die aanpassing zou volgende week bekendgemaakt worden door de Europese Commissie.

Ook komt er geen verbod van 100 procent uitstoot voor auto's per 2040, stelt Weber. "Dit betekent dat het verbod op verbrandingsmotoren van tafel is", zegt hij. Weber is partijgenoot van voorzitter van de Europese Commissie Ursula von der Leyen.

Het verbod ligt al maanden onder vuur van lidstaten met een grote auto-industrie. De Duitse bondskanselier Friedrich Merz zei vorige maand dat hij zich tegen het verbod zou verzetten. De Tweede Kamer zei vorige week dat Nederland ook tegenstand moet bieden aan het verbod.

TER APEL (ANP) - Vakbond CNV is positief over nieuwe, ingestelde veiligheidsmaatregelen rondom "de beruchte" buslijn Emmen-Stadskanaal, die via Ter Apel gaat. Asielzoekers maken gebruik van de lijn en de afgelopen periode is het aantal incidenten fors toegenomen, meldde busvervoerder Qbuzz eerder deze week. Het gaat dan om intimidatie, bedreigingen en fysiek geweld aan het adres van buschauffeurs, stelt CNV.

Om lijn 73 te ontzien, kunnen asielzoekers voortaan in een aparte bus "vrij pendelen" tussen het azc en station Emmen. "Er is nu voortdurend gedoe, vooral met zwartrijdende 'veiligelanders', die zich behoorlijk intimiderend kunnen gedragen", zegt CNV-onderhandelaar Niels Rook. "Daar gaan andere passagiers zich dan soms weer mee bemoeien. Dat levert bijzonder onveilige situaties op. Met die pendelbus worden de reizigersstromen fysiek gescheiden", hoopt hij.

Een andere maatregel is dat extra boa's worden ingezet in het stationsgebied van Emmen en bij bushaltes waar zich nu geregeld problemen voordoen, aldus Rook.

KYIV (ANP/RTR/AFP) - Oekraïne wil de bevolking laten beslissen over het Amerikaanse voorstel dat Oekraïne de resterende delen van het door Rusland opgeëiste oosten van het land opgeeft. Dat kan in een referendum of een verkiezing, zei president Volodymyr Zelensky donderdag. Oekraïne verzet zich fel tegen het afstaan van grondgebied en voert daarbij steevast aan dat de bevolking dat niet wil.

Sommige mensen lijken feilloos te weten wat er in anderen omgaat. Ze merken subtiele signalen op, begrijpen emoties zonder uitleg en voorspellen vaak hoe iemand zal reageren. Wetenschappers noemen dit empathische accuraatheid: het vermogen om de gedachten en gevoelens van anderen correct te lezen. Uit tientallen psychologische en neurowetenschappelijke studies blijkt dat bepaalde gedragingen sterk wijzen op zo’n uitzonderlijk inlevingsvermogen. Herken jij jezelf hierin?

1. Je ziet micro-expressies die anderen missen

Onderzoek van psycholoog Paul Ekman toont aan dat sommige mensen beter zijn in het oppikken van micro-expressies: ultrakorte gezichtsuitdrukkingen die echte emoties verraden. Wie hierin uitblinkt, kan spanningen, onzekerheid of irritatie herkennen nog vóór iemand het zelf toegeeft.

2. Je hersenen spiegelen automatisch emoties van anderen

MRI-studies laten zien dat mensen met een hoge empathie sterkere activiteit hebben in het zogeheten mirror neuron system - hersencellen die emoties van anderen als het ware naspelen. Hierdoor voel je intuïtief aan wat iemand doormaakt, zelfs zonder woorden.

3. Je merkt subtiele veranderingen in stem of houding

Volgens onderzoek van de University of Cambridge zijn non-verbale signalen, zoals kleine verschuivingen in toonhoogte of lichaamshouding, cruciaal voor sociale intuïtie. Mensen die extreem gevoelig zijn voor deze signalen pikken sneller op wanneer iemand nerveus, verdrietig of opgewonden is.

4. Je kunt emoties juist inschatten, zelfs bij vreemden

Studies naar empathische accuraatheid (o.a. van Ickes et al.) tonen aan dat sommige mensen zelfs bij onbekenden verrassend precies kunnen voorspellen wat ze voelen of denken. Dit gaat niet om raden, maar om een combinatie van observatie, ervaring en intuïtie.

5. Je merkt ‘tussen de regels door’ wat iemand echt bedoelt

Taalkundig onderzoek wijst uit dat empathische personen bovengemiddeld goed zijn in het interpreteren van de verborgen betekenis achter woorden. Je hoort het meteen als iemand 'het gaat goed' zegt, maar het niet meent.

6. Je past je gedrag automatisch aan anderen aan

Volgens sociaal-psychologische studies vertonen mensen die goed aanvoelen wat anderen nodig hebben vaak automatisch behavioral mimicry: subtiel spiegelen van lichaamstaal of spreektempo. Dit gebeurt onbewust en zorgt ervoor dat anderen zich begrepen voelen.

7. Je hebt een sterk ontwikkeld empathisch netwerk in de hersenen

Neuropsychologisch onderzoek laat zien dat hoog-empathische mensen meer activiteit hebben in hersengebieden die betrokken zijn bij emotieverwerking en dingen in perspectief zien. Dit maakt dat je sneller doorhebt hoe iemand zich echt voelt.

Herken jij deze signalen?

Mensen die anderen extreem goed aanvoelen, combineren biologische gevoeligheid met sociale ervaring. Het is geen magisch talent, maar een mix van aandacht, observatievermogen en emotionele intelligentie. Als je meerdere van deze tekenen herkent, behoor je waarschijnlijk tot de kleine groep mensen met een bovengemiddeld empathisch vermogen.

In Den Haag is donderdag aan het eind van de middag het eerste overleg van de nieuwe informateur Rianne Letschert met de leiders van D66, CDA en VVD begonnen. De bijeenkomst is vooral bedoeld om de agenda voor de komende dagen vast te stellen. Letschert heeft tot eind januari om haar opdracht af te ronden.

Volgens Rob Jetten (D66) is het ook hard nodig om eind volgende maand klaar te zijn, gezien de internationale veiligheidssituatie en de grote binnenlandse opdrachten zoals de aanpak van de woningcrisis. Henri Bontenbal (CDA) hoopt dan "zo'n volledig mogelijk akkoord" te hebben en Dilan Yeşilgöz (VVD) heeft "vertrouwen dat we een heel eind gaan komen".

Letschert en de partijleiders praten zondag en maandag op landgoed De Zwaluwenberg. De formatieruimte in de Tweede Kamer is niet de "meest inspirerende", reageerde de CDA-leider. Het is volgens Yeşilgöz "nuttig" om elkaar in een andere omgeving te ontmoeten. Dan kan er langer worden doorgepraat en gewerkt worden aan het opbouwen van een relatie.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het rode gebied in het reisadvies voor het grensgebied van Thailand en Cambodja is door het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken uitgebreid. In plaats van een rood reisadvies voor stroken van 20 kilometer vanaf de grens beide kanten op, gaat het nu om 50 kilometer. Volgens het ministerie is de situatie ter plekke "gevaarlijk en onvoorspelbaar".

In juli kostten gevechten in het gebied meer dan veertig mensen het leven, waarna een staakt-het-vuren werd gesloten. Die afspraak staat inmiddels onder druk. Begin deze week braken nieuwe gevechten uit in het grensgebied tussen Thailand en Cambodja, waarbij raketten worden afgevuurd. Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken adviseert om in geen enkele situatie naar het gebied af te reizen. "Het is er te gevaarlijk."

BRUSSEL (ANP) - Dat de Europese Unie akkoord gaat met het vrijhandelsverdrag met de Mercosur-landen Argentinië, Brazilië, Paraguay en Uruguay lijkt nog niet zeker. Hiervoor is een ruime meerderheid van de EU-lidstaten nodig, en het is nog niet zeker dat die er is, laat een hooggeplaatste EU-bron weten.

Voorzitter van de Europese Commissie Ursula von der Leyen is voornemens op 20 december naar Brazilië af te reizen voor de officiële ondertekening van de handelsdeal. Daarvoor moet een ruime meerderheid van de EU-landen volgende week wel akkoord zijn. Als dat niet gebeurt, is er maar weinig kans dat de deal op een later moment wordt voortgezet, aldus de EU-bron.

Met name Frankrijk is fervent tegenstander van de deal. Dat land is bang dat eigen boeren worden weggeconcurreerd door landbouwproducten uit de Latijns-Amerikaanse landen. Daarop zijn al "waarborgen" in het voorstel verwerkt, waarmee bepaalde EU-producten geen nadeel ondervinden van toenemende import.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De ondernemingskamer van het gerechtshof in Amsterdam heeft vastgesteld dat Gerard Sanderink wanbeleid voerde bij zijn ict-bedrijf Centric. Hij was ook verantwoordelijk voor wanbeleid bij Strukton-moederbedrijf Oranjewoud, stellen de rechters vast.

Sanderink bezat en bestuurde de bedrijven jarenlang, maar de ondernemingskamer schorste hem in respectievelijk 2022 en 2023 als topman bij Centric en Oranjewoud. In de jaren die daaraan voorafgingen, kwam hij regelmatig in het nieuws omdat hij privéconflicten publiekelijk uitvocht.

Nadat Sanderink een relatie was begonnen met zelfverklaard cyberdeskundige Rian van Rijbroek, beschuldigde hij zijn ex onder meer van fraude, iets wat zij zelf met rechtszaken bestreed. Centric en bouwbedrijf Strukton werden meegesleept in dat conflict.

Nu wanbeleid is vastgesteld, ontslaat de ondernemingskamer Sanderink als bestuurder. In het geval van Centric houden de rechters Sanderinks echtgenote Van Rijbroek medeverantwoordelijk voor het wanbeleid, evenals enkele andere bestuurders.

Op de ‘s-Gravelandseweg in Schiedam, onderaan de afrit van de A20, heeft donderdagmiddag een forse aanrijding plaatsgevonden. Een auto kwam in botsing met een bestelbus. Het busje reed vervolgens tegen een verkeerslicht aan, dat hierdoor uit de grond werd gewipt en omviel.

Op het nieuwe gedeelte van de A16 richting Hoek van Holland hebben drie auto’s elkaar donderdagmiddag hard geraakt. Twee personen zijn na het ongeval naar het ziekenhuis gebracht. De weg lag, ter hoogte van afslag Berkel en Rodenrijs, bezaaid met brokstukken van de drie voertuigen.

Een man die bij Feyenoord net was begonnen als supportersbegeleider, wordt verdacht van zwaar geweld tegen de politie. De club loopt risico's door met leden van de harde kern samen te werken, weet ook de gemeentepolitiek. Maar had de aanstelling van deze man voorkomen kunnen worden?

Op de rotonde bij de Mozartlaan in Maassluis is donderdagmiddag een fietser aangereden. De dame in kwestie reed op een elektrische fiets en kwam bij het oversteken in botsing met een auto die de rotonde afreed.

Musin was accused of intentionally misleading the government about the radios’ required country-of-origin criteria.

Today's links

• Instacart reaches into your pocket and lops a third off your dollars: A/B splitting your way into doing a total fucking racism.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Predicting the present; Caller eye-deer; RIP Robert Sheckley; Student protesters and Google Maps vs kettling; If your kids like computers, they're criminals; A billion CC licenses; The moral character of cryptographic work; EC resurrects link-taxes.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Instacart reaches into your pocket and lops a third off your dollars (permalink)

There's a whole greedflation-denial cottage industry that insists that rising prices are either the result of unknowable, untameable and mysterious economic forces, or they're the result of workers having too much money and too many jobs.

The one thing we're absolutely not allowed to talk about is the fact that CEOs keep going on earnings calls to announce that they are hiking prices way ahead of any increase in their costs, and blaming inflation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/quiet-part-out-loud/#profiteering

Nor are we supposed to notice the "price consultancies" that let the dominant firms in many sectors – from potatoes to meat to rental housing – fix prices in illegal collusive arrangements that are figleafed by the tissue-thin excuse that "if you use an app to fix prices, it's not a crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading

And we're especially not supposed to notice the proliferation of "personalized pricing" businesses that use surveillance data to figure out how desperate you are and charge you a premium based on that desperation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Surveillance pricing – when you are charged more for the same goods than someone else, based on surveillance data about the urgency of your need and the cash in your bank account – is a way for companies to reach into your pocket and devalue the dollars in your wallet. After all, if you pay $2 for something that I pay $1 for, that's just the company saying that your dollars are only worth half as much as mine:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

It's a form of cod-Marxism: "from each according to their desperation":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

The economy is riddled with surveillance pricing gouging. You are almost certainly paying more than your neighbors for various items, based on algorithmic price-setting, every day. Case in point: More Perfect Union and Groundwork Collaborative teamed up with Consumer Reports to recruit 437 volunteers from across America to login to Instacart at the same time and buy the same items from 15 stores, and found evidence of surveillance pricing at Albertsons, Costco, Kroger, and Sprouts Farmers Market:

https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/instacart/

The price-swings are wild. Some test subjects are being charged 23% more than others. The average variance for "the exact same items, from the exact same locations, at the exact same time" comes out to 7%, or "$1,200 per year for groceries" for a family of four.

The process by which your greedflation premium is assigned is opaque. The researchers found that Instacart shoppers ordering from Target clustered into seven groups, but it's not clear how Instacart decides how much extra to charge any given shopper.

Instacart – who acquired Eversight, a surveillance pricing company, in 2022 – blamed the merchants (who, in turn, blamed Instacart). Instacart also claimed that they didn't use surveillance data to price goods, but hedged, admitting that the consumer packaged goods duopoly of Unilever and Procter & Gamble do use surveillance data in connection with their pricing strategies.

Finally, Instacart claimed that this was all an "experiment" to "learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable." In other words, they were secretly charging you more (for things like eggs and bread) because somehow that lets them "keep essential items affordable."

Instacart said their goal was to help "retail partners understand consumer preferences and identify categories where they should invest in lower prices."

Anyone who's done online analytics can easily pierce this obfuscation, but for those of you who haven't had the misfortune of directing an iterated, A/B tested optimization effort, I'll unpack this statement.

Say you have a pool of users and a bunch of variations on a headline. You randomly assign different variants to different users and measure clickthroughs. Then you check to see which variants performed best, and dig into the data you have on those users to see if there are any correlations that tie together users who liked a given approach.

This might let you discover that, say, women over 40 click more often on headlines that mention kittens. Then you generate more variations based on these conclusions – different ways of mentioning kittens – and see which of these variations perform best, and whether the targeted group of users split into smaller subgroups (women over 40 in the midwest prefer "tabby kitten" while their southern sisters prefer "kitten" without a mention of breed).

By repeatedly iterating over these steps, you can come up with many highly refined variants, and you can use surveillance data to target them to ever narrower, more optimized slices of your user-base.

Obviously, this is very labor intensive. You have to do a lot of tedious analysis, and generate a lot of variants. This is one of the reasons that slopvertising is so exciting to the worst people on earth: they imagine that they can use AI to create a self-licking ice-cream cone, performing the analysis and generating endless new variations, all untouched by human hands.

But when it comes to prices, it's much easier to produce variants – all you're doing is adding or subtracting from the price you show to shoppers. You don't need to get the writing team together to come up with new ways of mentioning kittens in a headline – you can just raise the price from $6.23 to $6.45 and see if midwestern women over 40 balk or add the item to their shopping baskets.

And here's the kicker: you don't need to select by gender, racial or economic criteria to end up with a super-racist and exploitative arrangement. That's because race, gender and socioeconomic status have broad correlates that are easily discoverable through automated means.

For example, thanks to generations of redlining, discriminatory housing policy, wage discrimination and environmental racism, the poorest, sickest neighborhoods in the country are also the most racialized and are also most likely to be "food deserts" where you can't just go to the grocery store and shop for your family.

What's more, the private equity-backed dollar store duopoly have waged a decades-long war on community grocery stores, enveloping them with dollar stores that use their access to preferential discounts (from companies like Unilever and Procter & Gamble, another duopoly) to force grocers out of business:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Then these dollar stores run a greedflation scam that is so primitive, it's almost laughable: they just charge customers much higher amounts than the prices shown on the shelves and price-tags:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/do-all-those-low-dollar-store-prices-really-add-up-120325.html

When you live in a food desert where your only store is a Dollar General that defrauds you at the cash-register, you are more likely to accept a higher price from Instacart, because you have fewer choices than someone in a middle-class neighborhood with two or three competing grocers. And the people who live in those food deserts are more likely to be poor, which, in America, is an excellent predictor of whether they are Black or brown.

Which is to say, without ever saying, "Charge Black people more for groceries," Instacart can easily A/B split its way into a system where they predictably and reliably charges Black people more for groceries. That's the old cod-Marxism at work: "from each according to their desperation."

This is so well-understood that anyone who sets one of these systems in motion should be understood to be deliberately seeking to do racist profiteering under cover of an algorithm. It's empiricism-washing: "I'm not racist, I just did some math" (that produced a predictably racist outcome):

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/insight-amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK0AG/

This is the dark side and true meaning of "business optimization." The optimal business pays its suppliers and workers nothing, and charges its customers everything it can. Obviously, businesses need to settle for suboptimal outcomes, because workers won't show up if they don't get paid, and customers won't buy things that cost everything they have⹋.

⹋ Unless, of course, you are an academic publisher, in which case this is just how you do business.

A business "optimizes" its workforce by finding ways to get them to accept lower wages. For example, they can bind their workers with noncompete "agreements" that ban Wendy's cashiers from quitting their job and making $0.25 more per hour at the McDonald's next door (one in 18 American workers have been locked into one of these contracts):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/09/germanium-valley/#i-cant-quit-you

Or they can lock their workers in with "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) – contractual clauses that force workers to pay their bosses thousands of dollars if they quit or get fired:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

But the most insidious form of worker optimization is "algorithmic wage discrimination." That's when a company uses surveillance data to lower the wages of workers. For example, contract nurses are paid less if the app that hires them discovers (through the unregulated data-broker sector) that they have a lot of credit-card debt. After all, nurses who are heavily indebted can't afford to be choosy and turn down lowball offers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

This is the other form of surveillance pricing: pricing labor based on surveillance data. It's more cod-Marxism: "From each according to their desperation."

Forget "becoming ungovernable": to defeat these evil fuckers, we have to become unoptimizable:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/20/billionaireism/#surveillance-infantalism

How do we do that? Well, nearly every form of "optimization" begins with surveillance. They can't figure out whether they can charge you more if they can't spy on you. They can't figure out whether they can pay you less if they can't spy on you, either.

And the reason they can spy on you is because we let them. The last consumer privacy law to pass out of Congress was a 1988 bill that bans video-store clerks from disclosing your VHS rental history. Every other form of consumer surveillance is permitted under US federal law.

So step one of this process is to ban commercial surveillance. Banning algorithmic price discrimination is all well and good, but it is, ultimately, a form of redistribution. We're trying to make the companies share some of the excess they extract from our surveillance data. But predistribution – ending surveillance itself, in this case – is always far more effective than redistribution:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/31/losing-the-crypto-wars/#surveillance-monopolism

How do we do that? Well, we need to build a coalition. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we call this "privacy first": you can't solve all the internet's problems by fixing privacy, but you won't fix most of them unless we get privacy right, and so the (potential) coalition for a strong privacy regime is large and powerful:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

But of course, "privacy first," doesn't mean "just privacy." We also need tools that target algorithmic pricing per se. In New York State, there's a new law that requires disclosure of algorithmic pricing, in the form of a prominent notification reading, "THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA."

This is extremely weaksauce, and might even be worse than nothing. In California we have Prop 65, a rule that requires businesses to post signs and add labels any time they expose you to chemicals "known to the state of California to cause cancer." This caveat emptor approach (warn people, let them vote with their wallets) has led to every corner of California's built environment to be festooned with these warnings. Today, Californians just ignore these warnings, the same way that web users ignore the "privacy policy" disclosures on the sites they visit:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/19/gotcha/#known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer

The right approach isn't to (merely) warn people about carcinogens (or privacy risks). The right approach is regulating harmful business practices, whether those practices give you a tumor or pick your pocket.

Under Biden, former FTC chair Lina Khan undertook proceedings to ban algorithmic pricing altogether. Trump's FTC killed that, along with all the other quality-of-life enhancing measures the FTC had in train (Trump's FTC chair replaced these with a program to root out "wokeness" in the agency).

Today, Khan is co-chair of Zohran Mamdani's transition team, and she will use the mayor's authority (under the New York City Consumer Protection Law of 1969, which addresses "unconscionable" commercial practices) to ban algorithmic pricing in NYC:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority

Khan wasn't Biden's only de-optimizer. Under chair Rohit Chopra, Biden's Consumer Finance Protection Bureau actually banned the data-brokers who power surveillance pricing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

And of course, Trump's CFPB (neutered by Musk and his broccoli-haired brownshirts at DOGE) killed that effort:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/15/asshole-to-appetite/#ssn-for-sale

But the CFPB staffer who ran that effort has gone to work on an effort to leverage a New Jersey state privacy law to crush the data-broker industry:

https://www.wired.com/story/daniels-law-new-jersey-online-privacy-matt-adkisson-atlas-lawsuits/

These are efforts to optimize corporations for human thriving, by making them charge us less and pay us more. For while we are best off when we are unoptimizable, we are also best off when corporations are totally optimized – for our benefit.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Uber is selling your ride and food ordering data to advertisers for marketing insights https://boingboing.net/2025/12/08/uber-is-selling-your-ride-and-food-ordering-data-to-advertisers-for-marketing-insights.html

• 404 Media Is Making a Zine https://www.404media.co/404-media-is-making-a-zine/

• Maybe a General Strike Isn’t So Impossible Now https://labornotes.org/2025/12/maybe-general-strike-isnt-so-impossible-now

• The Naibbe cipher: a substitution cipher that encrypts Latin and Italian as Voynich Manuscript-like ciphertext https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2025.2566408

• Bringing organizational maturity to radical groups https://blog.bl00cyb.org/2025/12/bringing-organizational-maturity-to-radical-groups/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Free voicemail helps homeless people get jobs https://web.archive.org/web/20051210021850/http://www.cvm.org/

#20yrsago Anti-P2P company decides to focus on selling music instead https://de.advfn.com/borse/NASDAQ/LOUD/nachrichten/13465769/loudeye-to-exit-content-protection-services-busine

#20yrsago Caller Eye-Deer’s eyes glow when phone rings https://www.flickr.com/photos/84221353@N00/71889050/in/pool-69453349@N00

#20yrsago EFF to Sunncomm: release a list of all infected CDs! https://web.archive.org/web/20051212072537/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004245.php

#20yrsago Only 2% of music-store downloaders care about legality of their music https://web.archive.org/web/20051225200658/http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/5002/tempo2005.html

#20yrsago Dykes on Bikes gives the Trademark Office a linguistics lesson https://web.archive.org/web/20060523133217/https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/09/MNGQOG5D7P1.DTL&type=printable

#20yrsago Robert Sheckley has died https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007078.html

#20yrsago Xbox 360 DRM makes your rip your CDs again https://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-xbox-360-hands-on-report/1100-6139672/

#20yrsago Music publishers: Jail for lyric-sites http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm

#15yrsago 2600 Magazine condemns DDoS attacks against Wikileaks censors https://web.archive.org/web/20101210213130/https://www.2600.com/news/view/article/12037

#15yrsago UK supergroup records 4’33”, hopes to top Xmas charts https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/dec/06/cage-against-machine-x-factor

#15yrsago FarmVille’s secret: making you anxious https://web.archive.org/web/20101211120105/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6224/catching_up_with_jonathan_blow.php?print=1

#15yrsago Rogue Archivist beer https://web.archive.org/web/20101214060929/https://livingproofbrewcast.com/2010/12/giving-the-rogue-archivist-to-its-namesake/

#15yrsago Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan temporarily released from Iranian prison https://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/2010/12/09/iranian-blogging-pioneer-temporarily-released-from-prison/

#15yrsago Student protesters in London use Google Maps to outwit police “kettling” https://web.archive.org/web/20101212042006/https://bengoldacre.posterous.com/student-protestors-using-live-tech-to-outwit

#15yrsago Google foreclosure maps https://web.archive.org/web/20170412162114/http://ritholtz.com/2010/12/google-map-foreclosures/
#15yrsago Theory and practice of queue design https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/third-queue.html

#15yrsago Legal analysis of the problems of superherodom https://lawandthemultiverse.com/

#10yrsago A great, low-tech hack for teaching high-tech skills https://miriamposner.com/blog/a-better-way-to-teach-technical-skills-to-a-group/

#10yrsago In case you were wondering, there’s no reason to squirt coffee up your ass https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/12/10/starbutts-or-how-is-it-still-a-thing-that-people-are-shooting-coffee-up-their-nether-regions

#10yrsago Survey of wealthy customers leads insurer to offer “troll insurance” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/insurance/12041832/Troll-insurance-to-cover-the-cost-of-internet-bullying.html

#10yrsago US State Department staffer sexually blackmailed women while working at US embassy https://web.archive.org/web/20151210230259/https://www.networkworld.com/article/3013633/security/ex-us-state-dept-worker-pleads-guilty-to-extensive-sextortion-hacking-and-cyberstalking-acts.html

#10yrsago Robert Silverberg’s government-funded guide to the psychoactive drugs of sf https://web.archive.org/web/20151211050648/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-us-government-funded-an-investigation-into-sci-fi-drug-use-in-the-70s

#10yrsago Toy demands that kids catch crickets and stuff them into an electronic car https://www.wired.com/2015/12/um-so-the-bug-racer-is-an-actual-toy-car-driven-by-crickets/

#10yrsago The crypto explainer you should send to your boss (and the FBI) https://web.archive.org/web/20151209011457/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/08/you-already-use-encryption-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-it/

#10yrsago French PM defies Ministry of Interior, says he won’t ban open wifi or Tor https://web.archive.org/web/20160726031106/https://www.connexionfrance.com/Wifi-internet-ban-banned-17518-view-article.html

#10yrsago The no-fly list really is a no-brainer https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/09/no-fly-list-errors-gun-control-obama

#10yrsago America: shrinking middle class, growing poverty, the rich are getting richer https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/

#10yrsago Marriott removing desks from its hotel rooms “because Millennials” https://web.archive.org/web/20151210034312/http://danwetzelsports.tumblr.com/post/134754150507/who-stole-the-desk-from-my-hotel-room

#10yrsago China’s top Internet censor: “There’s no Internet censorship in China” https://hongkongfp.com/2015/12/09/there-is-no-internet-censorship-in-china-says-chinas-top-censor/

#10yrsago Stolen-card crime sites use “cop detection” algorithms to flag purchases https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/12/when-undercover-credit-card-buys-go-bad/

#10yrsago UK National Crime Agency: if your kids like computers, they’re probably criminals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjYrxzSe3DU

#10yrsago US immigration law: so f’ed up that Trump’s no-Muslim plan would be constitutional https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/opinion/trumps-anti-muslim-plan-is-awful-and-constitutional.html?_r=0

#10yrsago Ecuador’s draft copyright law: legal to break DRM to achieve fair use https://medium.com/@AndresDelgadoEC/big-achievement-for-creative-commons-in-ecuador-national-assembly-decides-that-fair-use-trumps-drm-c8cdd9c57e01#.n1vkccd3r

#10yrsago One billion Creative Commons licenses in use https://stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/

#10yrsago The moral character of cryptographic work https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf

#10yrsago Everybody knows: FBI won’t confirm or deny buying cyberweapons from Hacking Team https://web.archive.org/web/20151209163839/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-wont-confirm-or-deny-buying-hacking-team-spyware-even-though-it-did

#10yrsago European Commission resurrects an unkillable stupid: the link tax https://web.archive.org/web/20160913095014/https://openmedia.org/en/bad-idea-just-got-worse-how-todays-european-copyright-plans-will-damage-internet

#5yrsago Why we can't have nice things https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/10/borked/#bribery

#5yrsago Facebook vs Robert Bork https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/10/borked/#zucked

#1yrago Tech's benevolent-dictator-for-life to authoritarian pipeline https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/10/bdfl/#high-on-your-own-supply

#1yrago Predicting the present https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
  https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html

• Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937

• Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
  https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet (Capitalisn't)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34gkIvYiHxU

• Enshittification on The Daily Show
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE

• Enshittification with Four Ways to Change the World (Channel 4)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQaEeuuI3Q

• The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. (Novarra Media)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wE8G-d7SnY

• Enshittification (Future Knowledge)
  https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/enshittification

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Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• "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

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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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