Google is expanding its Android Earthquake Alerts System from 98 to more than 200 regions worldwide, using smartphone sensors to detect early earthquake activity and warn users before potentially dangerous shaking begins. The update also enhances the system's "Be Ready" alerts with estimated earthquake magnitudes, epicenter information, maps showing affected areas, and additional safety guidance. From a Google blog post:
Be Aware: A straightforward alert for estimated light shaking, letting you know an earthquake has been detected nearby.
Be Ready: A detailed alert for stronger shaking, alerting you to prepare to take action.
Take Action: A full-screen alert for moderate to heavy shaking, giving you immediate advice on how to stay safe.

We've built-out our Be Ready alert with new helpful guidance. In the coming months, you'll see a map with a radius of where we've detected shaking, estimated earthquake magnitude, action you can take, and a button to learn more about the earthquake as information comes in.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hiro_A has added a photo to the pool:

kiri-fuda has added a photo to the pool:

Late Sunday night, a still-unknown cybercriminal or group hacked thousands of remote-controlled refrigeration systems across hundreds of French grocery stores, spiking temperatures, spoiling food, and sparking fires. This is part of an ongoing trend of attacking physical systems that can do damage in the real world. In August, a ransomware attack disrupted building-management systems at a Canadian hospital, affecting door access controls, central HVAC monitoring, and the issuing of staff access cards. And three years ago, cyberattacks hit Las Vegas casinos, causing slot machines to go dark, preventing payment kiosks and ATMs from spitting out cash, and locking guests out of their rooms when the electronic keys stopped working. Not all digital intrusions remain in cyberspace, and attackers don’t need to encrypt files and steal data to cause chaos. Hitting physical systems often produces more severe consequences - and turns up the heat on executives to pay an extortion demand. “There was one gig where the customer was refusing to pay, and so the threat actor was like, ‘Hold my beer, have fun getting into your offices,’ and locked everybody out,” Tim Beasley, a senior incident response consultant at Semperis, told The Register. Beasley won’t name the customer, or provide any incriminating information, but said the incident response involved police smashing glass in addition to his team recovering compromised data. “The cops had to break in, and literally get into the building, breaking some windows, so the customer was able to finally get back in,” he said. We asked if the customer paid the ransom demand, and Beasley yelled: “Oh, hell, no!” A report published earlier this month by ServiceNow’s Armis Labs found increasing evidence of ransomware attackers using physical consequences as leverage in their intrusions. “Today’s BAS operate at the intersection of IT and OT worlds, creating unprecedented exposure,” the report said. Ransomware with physical consequences Building automation systems - BAS - are the critical systems that control and monitor facilities’ HVAC, lighting, energy usage, and water consumption. They also oversee badge readers, door locks, surveillance cameras, fire alarm control panels, and other physical safety equipment. As such, BAS make very attractive targets for ransomware operators looking for high-pressure ways to extort organizations into paying multi-million ransom demands. These systems also appeal to government-backed goons and hacktivists looking to ensure maximum psychological and physical impact during destructive cyberattacks. Armis Labs found 73 percent of organizations own BAS that have been used in ransomware attacks, and this same percentage have known exploited vulnerabilities in at least one of their building automation systems. Additionally, 91 percent of BAS communicate over insecure protocols - opening up an even bigger attack surface for cyber-miscreants wanting to cause physical harm. “The primary thing that we see with any attack on building management systems or physical systems: It’s a great place for the threat actor to hide,” Michael Freeman, ServiceNow’s senior director of threat research, told The Register. “It's easier for them to compromise, and it's easier for them to hide in.” BAS and operational technology (OT) in general have fewer security controls than IT systems. Most require continual uptime, which makes them harder to patch or even scan for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations as this may lead to outages. “One case in particular, against a very large financial institution, the threat actors were staying low and quiet by attacking their BMS systems, and then pivoting into the IT environment,” Freeman said. The intruders were routinely caught - and booted from - the financial institution’s IT systems, so they built backdoors into the BMS to ensure persistent access to both OT and IT networks. “We're also seeing threat actors using AI to understand more building automation systems, especially ones that are using obscure OSs like VxWorks, older Unix-type systems,” Freeman said. AI has entered the chat As multiple security experts have told us in previous interviews, security through obscurity is dead. Not only does AI make it easier for attackers to find bugs – some very obscure and decades old - but it also means criminals no longer need to be OT experts to carry out destructive cyberattacks on critical networks and facilities. Instead, they can use AI to learn all about the obscure protocols and proprietary hardware and software that historically made industrial control systems black boxes. “It’s easier to understand what the controls are,” Freeman said, using the example of an attacker trying to take down a plane, or some similar catastrophic cyberattack. Historically, even advanced, government-backed hacking squads would “be quiet, because you don't know what changing certain settings is going to do,” Freeman explained. “Now you can use AI to say, ‘If I compromise a weight and balance system for airlines, all I need to do now is move this number here to this number, and I just told the system to load heavy stuff on the right side of the plane instead of equal distribution.'” Freeman told us he has seen attackers break into airlines’ OT gear in the past. “But they didn’t know what they were getting into, and so they left them alone,” he said. “Those do cause me concern because in the past I've helped to kick people out of those types of systems.” Industrial orgs increasingly under attack OT security provider Dragos tracks ransomware groups’ claims against industrial organizations on the criminals’ leak sites, along with publicly disclosed intrusions affecting manufacturing and other critical sectors. To be clear: claims on leak sites aren’t always accurate or even true, and the claim itself doesn’t mean operations or control systems were hit. Since 2022, however, “the numbers have been consistently increasing,” Lexie Mooney, senior threat analyst at Dragos, told The Register. The cybersecurity firm tracked 995 ransomware attacks against industrial orgs in 2023, a 49.5 percent increase from 2022. That number jumped more than 87 percent in 2024. Active ransomware groups targeting industrial orgs also grew in 2024 to 80 groups, up from 50 the year before. Dragos tracked 119 ransomware groups impacting more than 3,300 industrial organizations in 2025, and the incidents have steadily increased every quarter this year: 1,020 incidents in the first quarter of 2026 and 1,140 incidents in Q2. “The vast majority of cases are opportunistic,” Abdul Alamri, a senior threat analyst at Dragos, told us. “In some of the cases that we have seen an operational impact, either physical systems or an OT operation, it’s just the nature of the opportunism on the part of those ransomware groups.” This is partially due to the complexity of OT systems, he added. “Ransomware groups want to disrupt operations, and put pressure on the victims to pay the ransom,” Alamri said. “They don’t want to invest that time and effort to target complex systems." It’s usually quicker and easier for financially motivated crims to affect operations via IT systems - as the extortionists did in the August 2025 Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) breach, which halted manufacturing and crippled business operations for months. Internet-connected OT: the next 'low-hanging fruit' The other side of this complexity, however, is that many organizations themselves still lack visibility into their OT environments. Dragos estimates that fewer than 10 percent of OT networks worldwide currently have sufficient network monitoring in place. Plus, in 30 percent of incidents the security firm responded to in 2025, the investigations did not begin with a detection alert, but with someone noticing that “something seemed wrong” in operations. This lack of visibility, combined with threats from AI, worries Alamri. “If you compare the risk that we have seen from humans, to what we are about to face in the near future with AI agents who might continuously try to break into those systems - it’s a pretty dark future if we don't take the right measures to protect ourselves against it.” As organizations get better at patching and securing IT systems, attackers will likely look to internet-connected OT systems where digital compromises have real-world consequences, according to Matt Hayden, VP of cyber and emerging threats at General Dynamics Information Technology. “We all anticipate that as we get better at reducing the IT low-hanging fruit, OT will become a vector of much more scrutiny and much more attention,” Hayden told The Register. Before joining GDIT, Hayden served as the assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy at the US Department of Homeland Security. Compliance vs. security “There is a big focus on the hardware being connected for the purpose of compliance - and to make sure that, in the name of compliance, we aren't opening back doors, to devices that traditionally wouldn't have to be connected to facilitate their service,” he said, using refrigeration units as an example of one such system that is now internet-connected for compliance purposes. This was prior to the French supermarket hacks. Refrigeration units’ monitoring systems connect to the internet so their owners and operators can prove to regulators that the units maintain their uptime and temperature in accordance with regulations. “So if the health department comes by, they say, ‘Look, my refrigerator was at 27 degrees for the last 72 days,' and they have a check mark, and they get their A plus. But that simple connectivity is also a vector in which that particular refrigerant unit could be targeted for disruption,” Hayden said. About a week after our interview, criminals did exactly that. “The recently reported exploitations of commercial refrigeration units represent a significant example of devices without digital value, no sensitive data or extended enterprise access, being exploited by being connected to the internet with unpatched firmware,” Hayden told us in a subsequent email. He said he expects the attribution to be “less nation-state, and more likely those looking for targets of opportunity to identify what could be done with the unpatched systems.” “The consequences are food supply degradation at a small scale, but it is an important example of what could happen at scale very quickly with more consequential operating equipment,” Hayden said.®

Social

Eindelijk. Iemand die precies zegt wat de meerderheid (!) van Nederland diep van binnen denkt. Die Bolle Jos, dat is zo'n slechte vent nog niet. Er zit gewoon een vleugje romantiek aan. De Pablo van ons kikkerlandje. Een dikke Brabotokkie die uitgroeit tot de grootste drugsbaas van Europa, die jaarlijks genoeg geld bij elkaar harkt om een land te kopen en dat dan OOK GEWOON DOET. VOC-mentaliteit ten top. Alex Soze snapt het, komt met een SUPPORT JOS-kledinglijn en wil Bolle Jos opzoeken in Sierra Leone. De collab van de eeuw. Make it happen! Hoe is het eigenlijk met ome Jan?

Today's links

• Israeli ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware": And they used Google, Facebook and every other major ad platform to do it.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Big Mouth Billy Bass x Linux; No-Fly lists v common sense; Lemony Snicket advises the 1%; "Aloha From Hell"; KSR v Elon Musk; "Everything Belongs to the Future"; Trump's mail-servers run Win2003; Copyfraud v covid.
• Upcoming appearances: Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Vienna, Kilkenny, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
• 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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Israeli ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware" (permalink)

More than half of all internet users have installed an ad-blocker; Doc Searls calls it the largest consumer boycott in history. As large as that boycott is, everyone – yes, everyone – should block every "programmatic" ad, because the entire system is so insecure that failing to do so could result in the total compromise of any or all of your digital devices.

That's the inescapable conclusion of Citizen Lab's latest blockbuster investigative report, "Exposing AdFection," which reveals how the largest ad-tech companies in the world, including Google and Facebook, allowed themselves to be hijacked by a "mercenary spyware" company that used the ad system to locate targeted individuals and serve "zero-click malware" that took over their computers and phones without them having to take any action:

https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/

These tech giants amassed detailed surveillance dossiers on virtually every internet user, and they've assigned each of us unique, persistent identifiers, like a Social Security Number for spying. These companies also allow advertisers – or anyone pretending to be an advertiser – to serve blobs of code (which is all an ad is) to anyone based on those identifiers.

This allowed an Israeli spyware company called Discover-Tech (which masquerades as an ad-tech company) to sell totalitarian governments and sleazy corporate mercenaries the ability to pluck individual internet users out of the billions who log in every day and then serve "malicious ads" (that is, blobs of arbitrary code) to those targeted users. These malicious ads contained "no-click, zero-day" attacks, which meant that they exploited previously unknown vulnerabilities to take over devices without any user interaction. The mere act of loading a web-page or opening an app that relied on one of these gigantic ad-tech companies to serve ads was enough to compromise your device. No clicks needed, and no warning.

Among the targets of this attack campaign were the computers of workers at Al Jazeera. They were attacked with malware from the mercenary spyware company Candiru (which now calls itself "Integrity Labs" because irony is not dead). Beyond Candiru, Discover-Tech also facilitates attacks by numerous criminal mercenary spyware companies, serving ads on hundreds of thousands of sites and apps.

Discover-Tech was "certified" as a safe supplier by Google, Yandex, Microsoft, Beeswax (a division of Comcast) and IAB, the ad-tech industry's leading professional association. Ironically, Discover-Tech even attacked users by serving them malicious GDPR notices that appeared to let users opt out of commercial surveillance.

Because Discover-Tech was certified by all these industry bodies and firms, it had access to more than four billion ad-auctions, meaning that on billions of occasions, it was able to collect the identities of users loading apps and visiting websites, check them against the list of targets, and attack any victims it discovered through this dragnet.

Discover-Tech is an Israeli company with ties to other Israeli spyware and hacking companies, including through its board, whose members included Eric Banoun ("One of the pioneers of offensive cyber in Israel" –Haaretz). They have overlaps, relationships and affiliations with a rogue's gallery of Israeli companies, including the notorious NSO Group, who routinely sell cyber-weapons to the world's worst governments and whose products have been used to attack journalists, embassy workers, and activists.

The whole incident highlights the monumental insecurity of the ad-tech industry, whose indiscriminate and voracious surveillance and manifestly insufficient vetting and security auditing now exposes every internet user in the world to terrifying targeted attacks. These companies – including Google, a thrice-convicted monopolist whose surveillance tendrils are wrapped around the whole world – claim that they operate their networks with prudence and oversight. But the proof is in the pudding: for years, they've played host to a murderer's row of cyber-mercenaries who used their infrastructure to attack journalists and others.

The only way to avoid this is to block ads. This is easy enough to do in a browser (which is why the majority of internet users have installed an ad-blocker in their browsers), but it's illegal to reverse-engineer and modify an app so you can block the ads in it:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/21/dickovers/#block-element

Many websites run anti-ad-block scripts that push out nagging, guilt-tripping notices that call you a thief and a cheapskate for blocking ads. Ignore those notices: if a website is running "programmatic" ads that allow arbitrary third parties to spy on billions of people and target individuals for malicious device takeovers, they are charging too high a price to see their content.

Some sites go further: their notices demand that you either turn off your ad-blocker or pay for a subscription. This "pay or okay" scheme is illegal in Europe, California and other territories with strong privacy laws, and they are morally bankrupt besides. Privacy shouldn't be a luxury item and everyone deserves to be secure from cyber-attacks:

https://noyb.eu/en/noybs-pay-or-okay-report-how-companies-make-you-pay-privacy

This report also provides the most comprehensive rebuttal to a dangerous idea that refuses to die: that we should improve competition in the ad-tech sector by assigning every internet user a mandatory, government-issued advertising ID to "democratize" ad-targeting and followup (which the sector calls "attribution"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Despite all this, none of it is an indictment of ads per se. The problem here isn't advertising, it's surveillance. The ad-tech sector has convinced advertisers that targeting ads to users rather than content will massively improve ad performance. The evidence for this is very poor: targeted ads improve clickthrough rates by less than 5% (relative to content-based ads that relate to the substance of the page you're looking at), and they're incredibly expensive (and very dangerous!) to serve.

On top of all that, surveillance-based ads shift power away from publishers (who know more about the materials they publish than any ad-tech company ever will) to spying ad-tech companies (who can spy on users in ways that no publisher could ever match). Whatever minor additional revenues surveillance advertising can wring out of the market are totally swamped by the cost of the ad-tech sector's own operations, which the ad-tech sector makes up for by grossly underinvesting in security and by colluding to cheat publishers and advertisers, charging more for ads and paying less to the websites that run them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

If we want to improve competition in advertising services, the answer isn't to facilitate spying (which also allows the world's scummiest cyber-mercenaries to stage and serve targeted attacks). We should ban surveillance advertising altogether, restoring context-based ads to their role as the way that publishers make an honest living without selling out their audiences:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/31/context-ads/#class-formation

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Philips updates instructions for ultrasound system linked to 4 deaths https://www.medtechdive.com/news/philips-updates-instructions-for-ultrasound-system-linked-to-4-deaths/832692/

• Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/02/1145639/dont-be-fooled-llms-dont-reason/

• Beneath resilient financial markets, risks remain elevated and vulnerabilities persist https://www.imf.org/en/publications/gfsr/issues/2026/10/13/global-financial-stability-report-october-2026

• Ultimate gridfinity drawer configurator https://makerworld.com/en/models/2737065-ultimate-gridfinity-drawer-configurator

• Is Blockbuster Video the Answer to Our Digital Privacy Woes? https://www.thenation.com/article/society/digital-privacy-salazar-paramount/

• Trump Is Encouraging Airlines to Scam Passengers in Every Way Possible https://newrepublic.com/article/216435/trump-airline-fees-fines-passenger-rights-scam

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Linux on a Big Mouth Billy Bass https://web.archive.org/web/20010927153043/http://bigmouth.here-n-there.com/

#20yrsago No-Fly lists even stupider than suspected https://web.archive.org/web/20061019002553/http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fstories%2F2006%2F10%2F05%2F60minutes%2Fmain2066624.shtml

#20yrsago Canadian MP booted for his blog https://web.archive.org/web/20061026153747/http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/18/turner-caucus.html

#20yrsago Recording industry shuts out Brazilian legal scholars https://web.archive.org/web/20061103225020/http://www.a2kbrasil.org.br/ENG/SIGN-A-PETITION-FOR-AMENDING-THE

#20yrsago How pickpockets work https://web.archive.org/web/20070110023812/http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/11/mystory.html

#15yrsago Why are more people opting for legal name-changes than ever before? https://web.archive.org/web/20111020163908/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15333140

#15yrsago Advice to the 1% from Lemony Snicket https://occupywriters.com/works/by-lemony-snicket/

#15yrsago Proposed Australian law makes it an offense to insult Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien https://web.archive.org/web/20120507161803/http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/surely-this-is-a-joke/story-fn7x8me2-1226167552466

#15yrsago Aloha From Hell: Sandman Slim goes back to Hell and kicks more ass https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/18/aloha-from-hell-sandman-slim-goes-back-to-hell-and-kicks-more-ass/

#10yrsago California DMV thinks “INFOS3C” is a dirty word https://www.techdirt.com/2016/10/17/california-dmv-rejects-1nfos3c-vanity-plate-because-sexual-connotation/

#10yrsago Howard Stern won’t release Trump tapes https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/howard-stern-on-replaying-his-donald-trump-interviews-it-would-be-a-betrayal-7542079/

#10yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson says Elon Musk’s Mars plan is a “1920s science-fiction cliché” https://web.archive.org/web/20161018043554/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/why-elon-musk-s-mars-vision-needs-some-real-imagination

#10yrsago UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal says GHCQ illegally spied for 17 years https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13305270/uk-illegal-surveillance-gchq-investigatory-powers-tribunal

#10yrsago Project Include cuts off Y Combinator because Peter Thiel is a part-time investor there https://web.archive.org/web/20161019043240/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/horrified-by-trump-silicon-valley-leaders-debate-cutting-ties-to-peter-thiel

#10yrsago Islamophobic terrorist cell planned a “bloodbath” in Kansas, wanted to kill Muslim babies https://web.archive.org/web/20161018144035/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/15/it-will-be-a-bloodbath-inside-the-kansas-militia-plot-to-ignite-a-religious-war/?utm_term=.a9d769256cf6

#10yrsago Everything Belongs to the Future: a tale of pharmadystopian, immortal gerontocrats https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/18/everything-belongs-to-the-future-a-tale-of-pharmadystopian-immortal-gerontocrats/

#10yrsago UK government proposes issuing Britons with unique porn-viewing ID numbers https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/a-database-of-the-uks-porn-habits-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

#10yrsago Donald Trump’s mail-servers are running Windows 2003 https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#core

#5yrsago Copyfraudster censors investigation of implausible covid gadget https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#copyfraud

#5yrsago Corporatism made John Deere ripe for a strike https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#deere-dash

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01

• Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
  https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

• Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

• Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
  https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

• Vienna: TED AI, Oct 28-30
  https://tedai-vienna.ted.com/

• Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
  https://kilkenomics.com/

• Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
  https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

• Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
  https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

• Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
  https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html

• Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
  https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

• Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
  https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/

• Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
  https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

• Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
  https://montreal2027.ca/en

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Life After AI (Brain Bar)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI

• Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
  https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

• AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
  AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

• AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
  https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

• How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

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Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "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 (thebezzle.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)

• "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, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 563 (26602 total).

• "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. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• 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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Everton are currently in a good humour as well. Should they win this afternoon – and given how they’ve triumphed in this fixture in six of its last nine stagings, losing just the once, that’s very much a live prospect – they’ll move into fourth spot in the Premier League, for a couple of hours at least. Chelsea can do likewise.

Fun: Chelsea have it. But for how long?

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It was a Bledisloe Cup mauling at the arena where Australia will host a home World Cup at which they must perform or perish as a rugby power

The honeymoon is over for Les Kiss and Doomsday protocols have been activated. Australia’s embarrassing capitulation to the All Blacks – their 13th in a row – is a cold reminder of where the Wallabies sit in rugby’s world order. In a year these teams meet in Sydney again at a World Cup. But the gulf between them remains massive.

The Kiss Army’s defeat of world No 1 South Africa last month filled the golden sails with wind and left the Wallabies unbeaten after six Tests. Last week at Eden Park they at least held the All Blacks to parity at half-time before giving up 26 unanswered points. But this was an understrength All Blacks and the men in gold still got monstered.

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CRCK/LCKS (‘Kurakku Rakkusu’) combineert een zekere gelikte, jazzy R&B-sound met ontregelende elementen, bijvoorbeeld een plotselinge free-jazz-sessie met fladderende saxofoons en chaotische drums in het funky eerste nummer van hun nieuwe, zeer gevarieerde album Mani Mani, of de polyritmische percussie rondom de strakke baslijn in het nummer T.I.C., dat ergens in het midden opeens in elkaar lijkt te zakken. Kleine muzikale valstrikken, Trojaanse paarden, deconstructies van hun eigen muziek die meteen weer overgaan in hun strakke popgrooves. Maar het nummer Oki ni Detara is een meeslepend, melodieus nummer dat harmonieus uitmondt in een soort muzikale epifanie. Verrassend, maar toch logisch. Het zijn knap gecombineerde nummers van begaafde muzikanten, die allemaal hun eigen bands hebben en voor wie CRCK/LCKS blijkbaar hun vrije keuzeruimte is. Een band om in de gaten te houden.

Het bericht De muzikale Trojaanse paarden van de ontzettend lekkere band CRCK/LCKS verscheen eerst op Frontaal Naakt.

DanÅke Carlsson posted a photo:

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

People. They were who Laurent Mekies considered the most important part of the Red Bull team he took charge of last summer, and they were the ones he listened to and the ones he prioritised getting in the right place over the last 12 months as he plotted their return to the top.

The bold new Rwanda agreement has finally opened the way for a crucial continent to write a completely new chapter in its great F1 history, writes F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne.

SHANGHAI (ANP) - Hetty van de Wouw heeft op de wereldkampioenschappen baanwielrennen in Shanghai haar titel op de kilometer tijdrit moeten afstaan. De renster uit Kaatsheuvel reed op de Chinese piste naar het zilver in 1.05,223.

Ze moest haar meerdere erkennen in de Duitse Pauline Sophie Grabosch, die het goud veroverde in een tijd van 1.04,572. Sofie van Rooijen won verrassend de bronzen medaille met haar tijd van 1.05,398.

Van de Wouw raakte in Shanghai ook al haar vorig jaar in Santiago veroverde wereldtitels op de teamsprint en de sprint kwijt. De 28-jarige Brabantse werd op de sprint in de kwartfinales uitgeschakeld. Op de teamsprint ging Van de Wouw er samen met Steffie van der Peet en Kim Kalee al in de eerste ronde uit.

VATICAANSTAD (ANP) - Paus Leo mag het ziekenhuis in Rome zaterdag verlaten, waar hij deze week aan longkanker is geopereerd. Volgens zijn artsen is hij voldoende hersteld van de ingreep, zo maakt het Vaticaan bekend.

De paus werd dinsdag opgenomen in het Gemelli-ziekenhuis waar een kwaadaardig knobbeltje in zijn long werd verwijderd. Ook is de onderste kwab van zijn rechterlong weggehaald. "In het licht van de bloedtesten en de röntgenfoto van de longen die vanochtend zijn uitgevoerd, en na een beoordeling van zijn klinische toestand, is de Heilige Vader geschikt bevonden voor ontslag uit het ziekenhuis", hebben de doktoren laten weten.

De kerkleider keert al in de middag terug in het Vaticaan. Zondag zal hij voorgaan in het gebed vanuit zijn raam in het pauselijk appartement.