thexiffy

Last.fm last recent tracks from thexiffy.

The Glimmers - Physical

The Glimmers

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Bosses weren’t being paranoid: Remote workers more likely to start their own biz

All those return to office mandates make a lot more sense now

Companies with higher levels of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic saw more of their employees launch startups, economists have found. They argue this entrepreneurial spillover is a factor policymakers and firms should weigh when shaping remote work policies.…

Los Arcos Steak and Lobster

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Los Arcos Steak and Lobster

And In This Endless Race for Property

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

And In This Endless Race for Property

Cut and Dry

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Cut and Dry

Six and a Half Minutes on a Ski Gondola with Robert Scoble

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Six and a Half Minutes on a Ski Gondola with Robert Scoble

Found Slide

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Slide

kottke.org

Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products

The Trumpist assault on the federal government is a “civil war by...

The Trumpist assault on the federal government is a “civil war by other means”, says Rebecca Solnit. “It is a war against the government of the United States and the land and people of this country.”

“The Trump administration’s policy ideas to incentivize women to have more kids...

“The Trump administration’s policy ideas to incentivize women to have more kids resemble those pushed by authoritarian regimes throughout history.”

Behance Featured Projects

The latest projects featured on the Behance

tvN


Illustrations for tvN's 'Salon de Yuval Harari'

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Opluchtingsrally op Wall Street na doorbraak in handelsoverleg

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenkoersen op Wall Street gingen maandag hard omhoog, nadat de VS en China tijdelijk lagere importheffingen hadden afgesproken. Hierdoor namen de zorgen over een recessie onder beleggers af en stortten zij zich massaal op technologieaandelen.

China en de Verenigde Staten lieten na handelsgesprekken weten hun importheffingen flink te verlagen voor een periode van negentig dagen. De twee grootste economieën ter wereld krijgen daarmee extra tijd om hun geschillen op te lossen.

De Dow-Jonesindex eindigde met een winst van 2,8 procent op 42.410,10 punten. De S&P 500-index klom 3,3 procent tot 5844,19 punten en techgraadmeter Nasdaq steeg zelfs 4,4 procent tot 18.708,34 punten. Op de beurzen waren eerder juist grote zorgen dat een handelsoorlog tussen China en de VS tot een wereldwijde recessie zou leiden. Inmiddels zijn de beurzen volledig hersteld van de zware koersval die volgde op de aankondiging van de handelstarieven door de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump begin april.


Havenondernemers Rotterdam overwegen rechtszaak om stikstofbeleid

ROTTERDAM (ANP) - De ondernemers in de haven van Rotterdam zijn klaar met het in hun ogen te weinig doortastende stikstofbeleid van het kabinet. Ze onderzoeken de mogelijkheid om een rechtszaak aan te spannen tegen de overheid, heeft voorzitter Victor van der Chijs van belangenvereniging Deltalinqs gezegd tijdens een jaarlijks diner met de ondernemingen.

Landbouwminister Femke Wiersma kwam vorige maand met een reeks stikstofmaatregelen en 2,2 miljard euro om de vergunningverlening weer op gang te helpen. Maar volgens Van der Chijs "helpt dit beleid niet om de stikstofimpasse nu echt te doorbreken".

"De vergunningverlening zit volledig op slot zolang de natuur niet hersteld wordt en het kabinet niet doorpakt. De vernieuwing en verduurzaming stokt op alle punten als de overheid niet handelt en maar blijft treuzelen en uitstellen. Het kost ons miljarden aan investeringen als we niet opletten. Deze stikstofsoap duurt nu al zes jaar", staat in een persbericht over de toespraak van Van der Chijs.

Verder pleiten de havenbedrijven voor een gelijk internationaal speelveld, verwijzend naar onder meer de relatief hoge energiekosten in Nederland en de CO2-heffing. "Dit moet fundamenteel anders voor we basisindustrie in de haven kwijtraken", aldus de voorzitter, die vraagt "dit als harde doelstelling in het kabinetsbeleid op te nemen".


MetaFilter

The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

Venom? Not even scared of 'em

Snakes bite millions of people every year, and cause between 81,000 and 138,000 deaths, making snakebite a Neglected Tropical Disease, but they're difficult to treat with antivenom without knowing the species of snake that bit the victim. However, researchers are working on a type of treatment that would target entire classes of toxins, with the assistance of a man with an astonishing qualification: he's let himself get bitten by snakes over 200 times.

Tim Friede [CW: snakes, snakebite, blood] used to hunt garter snakes growing up in Wisconsin, and his first bites, from a cobra--which is what he had on hand at the time, I guess--put him in a coma. Researchers have published their results in the journal Cell [PubMed citation] and said that the research shows a lot of promise.

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Nvidia Reportedly Raises GPU Prices by 10-15%

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new report claims that Nvidia has recently raised the official prices of nearly all of its products to combat the impact of tariffs and surging manufacturing costs on its business, with gaming graphics cards receiving a 5 to 10% hike while AI GPUs see up to a 15% increase.

As reported by Digitimes Taiwan, Nvidia is facing "multiple crises," including a $5.5 billion hit to its quarterly earnings over export restrictions on AI chips, including a ban on sales of its H20 chips to China.

Digitimes reports that CEO Jensen Huang has been "shuttling back and forth" between the US and China to minimize the impact of tariffs, and that "in order to maintain stable profitability," Nvidia has reportedly recently raised official prices for almost all its products, allowing its partners to increase prices accordingly.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not Every Tree Survived

Markus Branse has added a photo to the pool:

Not Every Tree Survived

Charred tree trunk, Batchelor, Northern Territory, Australia

Feitelijke Pakistaanse machthebber vindt dat moslims in Indiase deel van Kasjmir bij Pakistan horen

Dat Asim Munir ooit de machtigste positie in Pakistan zou innemen, lag niet altijd voor de hand. Hij geldt als een hardliner die vindt dat hindoes en moslims niet samen in één land kunnen wonen.

In het Vaticaan kunnen ze snel en efficiënt vergaderen – nu wij nog

Krap twee dagen vergaderd en er was al een nieuwe paus. is onder de indruk. „Laten we ze in Den Haag ook samen in een hok zetten. En dat ze er niet uit mogen voor er een beslissing is genomen. Dan zijn al onze problemen zo opgelost.”


Het Rotterdamse penthouse van Memphis Depay in het Stamcafé

Heeft u nou altijd al willen wonen in de voormalige woning van een Oranje-international die nooit echt een wereldster is geweest maar zich toch altijd zo heeft gedragen en er toch heel vaak bij was en ook wel belangrijk maar ja niet echt dat je zegt wauw die Oranje-international speelt kom we gaan naar het stadion want dat wordt spectaculair? Dan heeft u nu de UNIEKE KANS om dit penthouse in de Montevideo-toren in Rotterdam te kopen. Die was namelijk van Memphis Depay, die rare snuiter van die iconische haarband. Die heeft natuurlijk zelf de woning niet meer nodig, want hij beleeft tegenwoordig een heldenavontuur in Brazilië en spendeert de rest van zijn tijd aan dronken rondjes rijden in Monaco. Wat valt er op aan het sjieke flatje van Depay? Er staat een VLEUGEL, misschien wel gebruikt voor het componeren van die geweldige hiphopdeuntjes van hem. Verder vooral een schitterend uitzicht over Rotterdam, en dat voor maar 4.950.000 euro. KOOPJE!


Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Nieuw boek met échte Rotterdamse citaten: 'De zwaan is aanstellerig bouwsel'

Honderden citaten en typisch Rotterdams. Schrijver Herco Kruik heeft er 750 verzameld en gebundeld in Het Groot Rotterdams Citatenboek. De bundel vertelt iets over de creativiteit van Rotterdammers en de citaten geven ook een tijdsbeeld.

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Pluralistic: Trump can't do ANYTHING for his base (12 May 2025)


Today's links



A playground slide. Standing atop it is a male figure in early 20th century garb, who is tipping a barrel of oil down the slide; the oil has pooled at the slide's base. The figure has Trump's grinning head. The background is a blown up, dark, halftoned detail from a US $100 bill.

Trump can't do ANYTHING for his base (permalink)

Trump's coalition includes a huge number of people who will suffer terribly from his policies, but who voted for him anyway. Trumpism requires that he find ways to keep those Christmas-voting turkeys happy, or at least distracted.

Trump's go-to move for keeping his base happy is inflicting pain on people they hate, like immigrants, racialized people, queers and women. That goes a long way, obviously: there's a kind of person who can be distracted from their own deteriorating material condition by the spectacle of cruel treatment for their enemies.

But Trumpism can't just run on sadism. There's a lot of people who enjoy the sadism, but not so much that it cancels out their own rage at their deteriorating personal conditions. Trump's main tactic is to blame the suffering of his base on the rest of us: "radical leftists," "wokeism" and other hobgoblins of the small-minded. That, too, has its limits – especially when Trump controls Congress, the courts, the senate and the White House. Obviously, Trump isn't above blaming his own people for being traitors (e.g., by sending a literal noose-bearing lynch mob after his own vice president), but there are limits to this, even for Trump. If all the power-brokers in Trump's coalitions are branded as disloyal, cowardly, or traitorous, Trump will have no one left to do the actual work of advancing his agenda.

Ultimately, keeping Trump's base happy requires providing some form of material benefit to that base. Every authoritarian has a version of this – like the cash handouts that Poland's former far-right government gave out:

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/poland-model-promoting-family-values-cash-handouts

For Trump, this presents a problem: because he represents the interests of exploitation, extraction and looting, everything nice that he gives to everyday people in his base potentially gores the ox of someone who really matters to him. It's no surprise, for example, that he reversed Biden's price-cuts for Big Pharma's most expensive drugs – the cheaper drugs are for sick people, the less profitable they'll be for pharma companies:

https://www.levernews.com/trump-already-disarmed-the-war-on-drug-prices/

Luckily (for Trump), Biden's consumer protection and antitrust agencies teed up a long list of extremely good policies that would directly shift money from rich parasites to everyday people. For example, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau passed a rule that would make it very easy to find out which bank would charge you the least and pay you the most, and let you switch banks with one click:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

It was a move that would have shifted $667m/year from banks to everyday people, every year, forever. But Trump's most important barons, like Elon Musk, hated the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and insisted that it be shuttered, so that $667m/year will go to the banks after all – indeed, virtually none of the good things Biden's CFPB decreed the American public would enjoy henceforth have been destroyed. Sure, Trump would have liked to have taken credit for these, but the conflict between stolen valor and displeasing Shadow President Musk will always cash out in Musk's favor.

It's not just the CFPB. The FTC also set up a whole roster of ambitious projects to improve life for Americans. Some of these made the news in a big way, like the antitrust case against Meta:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

Trump has lots of upsides from pursuing the Meta case. Everyone hates Meta products, including (especially) the people who are trapped using them because that's where their friends, family, communities, customers or audiences are. Breaking up Meta would be hugely popular with the American people. But also, once a court has convicted Meta of violating antitrust law, Trump can solicit favors – cash and favorable algorithmic treatment – from Meta in exchange for ordering his FTC to go easy on Meta in the "remedy phase," letting them off with a fine, rather than forcing them to spin out Whatsapp and Instagram:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

But even if Trump lets Meta walk, there's plenty of great stuff Biden's FTC did that he could take credit for – policies that would help everyday people.

The most prominent of these is the FTC's "Click to Cancel" rule. It's a pretty simple rule: companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up for it.

In other words, they can't do that thing – beloved of everything from the New York Times to every manosphere influencer's supplement business – where you can sign up for a subscription with one click, but you can't cancel unless you phone them, wait on hold, and beg them to let you off the hook.

Companies do this on purpose, because it's super profitable. Amazon executives carried on internal email threads where they straight up said that they'd deliberately made it confusingly easy to sign up for Prime and basically impossible to stop paying for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

This is a no-brainer. Companies make signing up for subscriptions into a greased slide, and they make canceling subscriptions into a greased pole.

No wonder, then, that when the FTC solicited public comments on a proposed "click to cancel" rule, they had no trouble building up the evidentiary record needed to pass the rule.

Now, Trump's FTC has announced that they are delaying enforcement of the rule until mid-July:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/10/ftc-delays-enforcement-of-click-to-cancel-rule/

This is the second time they've delayed enforcement (originally, the rule was supposed to go into effect in January). Trump FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson had no trouble getting the votes for the suspension, because he illegally fired the two Democratic Commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter:

https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/657115/ftc-bedoya-slaughter-trump-fired-supreme-court-interview

Ferguson is proof that the FTC can't do anything material for Trump's base. Sure, he can set up a snitch-line so tht FTC employees can rat each other out for being "woke":

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-statement-emergency-motion.pdf

This should be a slam dunk. It epitomizes the "unfair and deceptive" business practices Section 5 of the FTC Act empowers the agency to snuff out. The Trump admin is unwilling to gore the ox of out-and-out scammers, people who trick you into unkillable subscriptions. It seems that there's no material benefit that Trump's oligarch backers are willing to cede to working people. All they can offer is cruelty.

(Image: Vis M, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)


Hey look at this (permalink)



A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago BBC’s RSS: Why do we need a license to aggregate, period? https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/09/bbcs-rss-why-do-we-need-a-license-to-aggregate-period/

#20yrsago Hillary “RIAA” Rosen: iPod DRM is cruel and unfriendly! <a "="" dracula="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050511014032/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/steve-jobs-let-.html'>https://web.archive.org/web/20050511014032/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/steve-jobs-let-.html</a>

#20yrsago Stoker’s Dracula as a blog <a href=" https:="" infocult.typepad.com="">https://infocult.typepad.com/dracula/

#20yrsago Canadian MP blogs from Parliament’s floor https://web.archive.org/web/20050514023619/http://www.montesolberg.com/2005/05/voting.htm

#20yrsago Journal of Ride Theory amazing zine is now an amazing book https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/11/journal-of-ride-theory-amazing-zine-is-now-an-amazing-book/

#15yrsago FOR THE WIN launches today https://memex.craphound.com/2010/05/11/for-the-win-launches-today/

#15yrsago IT in developing nations makes women and poor people happier https://www.bbc.com/news/10108551

#15yrsago Heinlein freaked out at “invasive” review of STRANGER IN A STRANGER LAND https://web.archive.org/web/20100514220628/https://thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/05/robert-a-heinlein-algis-budrys-and-me/

#10yrsago Copyfighting, jailbreaking legend Ed Felten is the White House’s new deputy CTO https://web.archive.org/web/20150512045054/https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/05/11/white-house-names-dr-ed-felten-deputy-us-chief-technology-officer

#10yrsago Finance deserves its corrupt reputation https://web.archive.org/web/20150618083908/https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/luigi.zingales/papers/research/Finance.pdf

#10yrsago Librarians: privacy’s champions https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/librarians-versus-nsa/

#10yrsago Teacher forced into retirement for showing archival queer-scare movie https://www.nydailynews.com/2015/05/07/retiring-missouri-teacher-suspended-after-showing-1959-anti-gay-boys-beware-video-to-class/

#10yrsago Citizen journo who videod Eric Garner’s murder now hounded by NYPD https://web.archive.org/web/20150426160713/https://www.vice.com/read/nine-months-after-he-filmed-eric-garners-killing-the-cops-are-trying-to-put-ramsey-orta-behind-bars

#10yrsago Senators demand CIA boss admit he lied about hacking torture committee https://www.dailydot.com/debug/senate-democrats-john-brennan-cia-computer-search/

#10yrsago Commercial prison messaging system’s terms of service lands inmate in solitary https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/jpay-will-no-longer-claim-ownership-over-inmate-family-correspondence

#10yrsago DOJ tells judges they don’t get a say in whether information is classified https://web.archive.org/web/20150510081211/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/08/governments-bid-keep-gitmo-force-feeding-videos-secret-runs-skeptical-judges/

#5yrsago The real Lord of the Flies kids were really nice to each other https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/09/im-gonna-say-it-now/#humankind

#5yrsago Brett Favre received $1.1m in welfare money for speeches he never gave https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/09/im-gonna-say-it-now/#welfare-fraud

#5yrsago Flooding Ohio's "work-refusal" snitchline https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/09/im-gonna-say-it-now/#chaffing

#5yrsago Armed Michigan voters escort their state rep to work https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/09/im-gonna-say-it-now/#arms-racism

#5yrsago Facebook's "supreme court" https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#star-chamber

#5yrsago Podcast of "Rules for Writers" https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#turkey-city

#5yrsago NLRB nukes Hearst's union-busting https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#rosebud

#5yrsago The bailout is working (for Wall Street) https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#guillotine-watch

#5yrsago Shanghai Disneyland re-opens https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#splash-mountain

#5yrsago 80% of Britons want happiness, not growth <a #the-algorithm-tm"="" 05="" 11="" 2024="" for-you="" href="https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#line-go-up'>https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#line-go-up</a>

#1yrago Algorithmic feeds are a twiddler's playground <a href=" https:="" pluralistic.net="">https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

#1yrago AI is a WMD https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon


Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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



A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)



A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • 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/

  • 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



Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

Latest podcast: Nimby and the D-Hoppers CONCLUSION https://craphound.com/stories/2025/04/13/nimby-and-the-d-hoppers-conclusion/


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.

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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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