Today's links

• The actual epistemic crisis: AI's assault on reality is an opportunistic infection.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Disney goths; Running a con room party; Equation Group's fuggly sourcecode; "Bubble"; "The Weight."
• Upcoming appearances: Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
• 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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The actual epistemic crisis (permalink)

AI is alarming for many reasons: it's a dangerous financial bubble, an environmental catastrophe, and a tool for eroding wages and labor power. But in addition to all that, AI is an epistemic disaster.

We've had photoshopped images, voice impersonators and visual effects for years, of course, but with deepfakes, we've democratized access to reality-bending images, sounds and videos that appear real but are not. It's harder than ever to know what's true. Politicians and celebrities and activists show up in our feeds, declaring their fealty to this cause or product, or their fury at some turn in the world's events. Battlefields mound high with bodies and influencers marvel at impossible, sumptuous meals. It all seems plausible, and some of it is real, but not all of it, and because we know some of it is fake, we can't be sure if any of it isn't.

It's a very putinesque way of living. Vladislav Surkov was Vladimir Putin's media strategist, and he had a deadly effective tactic: he announced that he was covertly funding some of the groups that publicly opposed Putin, but did not disclose which of those opposition groups were fake. That meant that any of the groups could be fake, which meant that any discussion of the opposition was liable to devolve into an argument about its authenticity. Anything could be a lie, so nothing was necessarily true. Putin's method isn't to get you to believe a lie – it's to keep you from believing that anything is true.

That's life under AI – a world of uncertainty, an epistemological void full of plausible phantasms, some of which are actually real. A world where it's impossible to know what's true, and where anything might be fake.

But here's the thing: AI's assault on our ability to know isn't a new battle – rather, it's the latest barrage in a war that's been waged for years, as corporations grew larger and more powerful, capturing their regulators, who let them lie to us and abuse us with impunity.

This complicated, technical world – the world that produced AI – is full of complicated, technical questions, and none of us can answer these questions for ourselves. You're not stupid, but even a generational genius could not acquire the expertise to answer the long list of life-or-death questions we face every day.

Are the food hygiene standards followed by your grocer or lunchtime spot adequate, or will your dinner make you shit yourself to death? Are the building codes that specify the alloys in the steel joists that hold up the roof over your head sufficient, or are you about to be crushed to death? Is the software in your anti-lock brakes any good, or will you die in a fireball on the way to work?

From food additives to pedagogy, psychotherapeutic techniques to retirement savings, it would take a hundred lifetimes for you to acquire the 200 PhDs needed to answer these questions for yourself.

Thankfully, we don't have to answer those questions for ourselves. Instead, we defer to expert agencies: governmental regulators that assess truth claims by soliciting input from all comers, publicly deliberating about the evidence they've gathered, and then making a rule in public. These regulators are meant to be experts, nonpartisan and neutral, operating with the highest degree of probity, recusing themselves in the event of even a whiff of conflict.

It has to be that way. You may not be able to assess claims about the safety of vaccines – or opioids – but you can see for yourself whether the FDA is full of ex-pharma execs. You can see for yourself whether pharma company lobbyists all used to work for the FDA. You don't need to be a virologist or a cell biologist to tell whether the system that's supposed to sort truth from lies is fit for purpose.

It is not fit for purpose. When arguments broke out over covid vaccines, many vaccine advocates characterized their opponents as foolish people engaged in foolish conspiratorialism. They argued that the corporations that produced the vaccines and the regulators who oversee them were intrinsically trustworthy, and on that basis, we should all get vaccinated.

Now, I happen to be a big believer in vaccination. I've had so many covid jabs that I glow in the dark and get five bars of 5G in a coal-mine. But I didn't get vaccinated because I trust pharma companies or their regulators. A string of scandals – most notably the Sacklers' Oxycontin murder-spree – has proven that pharma will kill you for a nickel and that the FDA will let them get away with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

From tobacco safety to food safety to the climate emergency, it's obvious that the system of expert agencies that we rely on was terminally compromised by corporate power and regulatory capture:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is the epistemological void we were already adrift in before AI came along: a world of unresolvable, urgent, terrifyingly high-stakes questions.

When you get a call from "your bank" and accede to the demand that you hand over all kinds of personal information before they will disclose the call's purpose, you're not being naive or foolish – you're doing the thing that our banks have conditioned us to do for years by engaging in exactly this behavior (my bank did this to me this week!). Why are banks allowed to get away with engaging in this kind of outrageous conduct? Because – as we've repeatedly discovered through crisis after crisis – banks are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.

Why is it so believable that a loved one might call you in a panic because they've been arrested or injured and need an immediate cash payment before they can get bail or doctor's treatment? Because our criminal justice system and our health care system are already plagued by this kind of inhumane, high-handed, extortionate behavior.

Why do you fall for a deepfake of celeb shilling for supplements or a shitcoin? Maybe it's because celebs actually shill for supplements and shitcoins, and face no consequences for helping rope us all into scams:

https://gizmodo.com/matt-damon-crypto-com-crypto-bitcoin-1850282413

Not just celebs – also our newspapers:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/technology/cryptocurrency-crypto-guide.html

We laugh when other people fall for newspaper articles making absurd claims – but after living through a time in which our most respected journalistic outlets credulously helped a dishonest government lie the world into a war that's still smoldering more than a generation later, who can be sure when to trust the papers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html

One of the reasons it is so hard to agree on covid's death-toll is that so many of the people who died of covid were already compromised by chronic illnesses or "pre-existing conditions" from cancer to heart disease. Those people did die of covid – and they died of cancer or heart disease or some other comorbidity. Covid was an opportunistic infection that inflicted disproportionate harms on people who were already suffering.

The epistemic void created by AI is another opportunistic infection. Our ability to know things has been in decline for generations, as monopolies shredded our truth-assessment systems, rendering us all incapable of knowing the truth in a world where believing lies could bankrupt you or kill you dead.

If you could trust your government's expert agencies and if they had reliable systems for making their findings known; if your bank was banned from engaging in conduct indistinguishable from phishing; if the health-care and criminal justice systems never forced the people they ensnared to call their relatives and beg for money, then deepfakes would have a much harder time penetrating our cognitive immune systems.

It's not so much that AI is a powerful way of lying – rather, we have been made progressively more vulnerable to lies for decades, leaving us at an epistemic death's door, and AI has arrived to deliver the coup de grace.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• The $1 Trillion Black Box https://www.propublica.org/article/military-defense-spending-budget-series

• The Right Word is Wrongness https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/the-right-word-is-wrongness/

• Yes Obviously the Senate Should Be Abolished https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/yes-obviously-the-senate-should-be

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Goth day at Disneyland photos https://flickr.com/photos/doctorow/tags/batsday/

#20yrsago HOWTO run a successful sf convention room party https://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/how_to_throw_a_1/

#20yrsago Yahoo: Go ahead and remix our brand https://web.archive.org/web/20061111175912/http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000348.html

#10yrsago The Equation Group’s sourcecode is totally fugly https://web.archive.org/web/20160818012451/https://www.cs.uic.edu/~s/musings/equation-group/

#5yrsago Bubble https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/21/podcasting-as-a-visual-medium/#huntr

#1yrago Melissa Mendes's "The Weight" https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/21/weighty/#edie-is-a-badass

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
  https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/program/

• Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
  https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• London: AI and the Enshittification of the Media, NUJ (Sep 2)
  https://www.nuj.org.uk/learn/ems-event-calendar/ai-and-the-enshitification-of-the-media.html

• Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
  https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/

• London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
  https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Deflating the AI Bubble (Do Not Pass Go)
  https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/deflating-the-ai-bubble-with-cory

• Technofeudal Enshittification (Fucking Cancelled)
  https://www.fuckingcancelled.com/p/technofeudal-enshittification-with

• Who The Machine Serves (EFF)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-who-the-machine-serves

• Speculative Fiction for Social Change II (Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff)
  https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/08cbb840-a6ae-013a-d8aa-0acc26574db2/part-two-cory-doctorow-on-speculative-fiction-for-social-change/937e8800-9404-45a6-b5e3-90ebee2cfaea

• Speculative Fiction for Social Change I (Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff)
  https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/08cbb840-a6ae-013a-d8aa-0acc26574db2/part-one-cory-doctorow-on-speculative-fiction-for-social-change/15ad467c-0832-44c9-91ea-59defd783dba

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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: 533 (8263 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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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

The Israeli ambassador has claimed ‘a court came to a decision that there’s no criminal liability’ but there is no evidence that any court has been involved

Zomi Frankcom did not deserve to die. She and her six colleagues were traveling in a clearly marked humanitarian convoy to distribute food to starving Palestinians on a route that had been communicated well in advance to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It bombed them deliberately and repeatedly. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced the next day that the attack was a “mistake” and a few days later its two commanders were forced to retire, and three others were disciplined. An internal inquiry followed, but this week – well over two years later – the IDF announced that there would be no further investigation because there could be no suspicion that any crime had been committed: it was merely a mistake. This is a serious misunderstanding of the law of war.

Mistakes may have fatal consequences and, if they are the result of gross negligence or reckless or irresponsible conduct, they are culpable and deserving of punishment. The crime of manslaughter in Australian and English law reflects this grave level of criminality. In war law, under article 8 of the statute of the international criminal court (ICC) “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such an attack will cause loss of life to civilians” and “directing attacks against personnel or vehicles involved in humanitarian assistance” are serious war crimes which may be committed by mistakes made through negligence or blind eyes turned to their foreseeable consequences. The IDF decision not to investigate Zomi’s killing on the grounds that it was merely a “mistake” is not a legitimate reason and the Israeli government’s refusal even now to apologise is despicable.

Continue reading...

President’s one-time ‘attack dog’ became his fierce critic – but now Cohen says he has forgiven his former boss

Donald Trump has given a radio interview to none other than Michael Cohen, his former longtime personal fixer turned fierce critic, after an apparent reconciliation set the stage for their first public conversation in eight years.

Cohen once had such a tight relationship with the US president that he described himself back in the day as his “attack dog with a law license”, but later became the star witness in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.

Continue reading...

Manchester United’s new-look midfield, Ipswich’s ambition is tested and Kevin Keegan tributes at Newcastle

While Myles Lewis-Skelly looks likely to remain at the Emirates, the same can’t be said for Ethan Nwaneri. The 19-year-old was outstanding in his breakthrough season for Arsenal in 2024-25 but barely featured last season and was sent on loan to Marseille. That didn’t really work out and Arsenal are now exploring another temporary move to ensure Nwaneri gets regular football this season. Milan, RB Leipzig, Dortmund and Fulham are all thought to be interested, with Nwaneri unlikely to feature on the bench for Friday’s opener against Coventry as a result. Whether Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus are available remains to be seen as Arsenal attempt to find suitors for the Brazil duo. Ed Aarons

Arsenal v Coventry City, Friday 8pm (all times BST)

Hull City v Manchester United, Saturday 12.30pm

Ipswich Town v Sunderland, Saturday 3pm

Nottingham Forest v Leeds, Saturday 3pm

Brighton v Aston Villa, Sunday 2pm

Manchester City v Bournemouth, Sunday 2pm

Continue reading...

Sunderland fans hope Régis Le Bris and his talented squad can continue to surprise the pundits and Opta

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 14th (NB: this is not necessarily Louise Taylor’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 7th

Continue reading...

• 10-man Rangers hang on for 1-0 win against Jablonec

• Tromsø 0-0 Brighton; Hearts 2-2 Rapid Vienna

Ryan Naderi’s second-half strike gave an unconvincing Rangers a narrow 1-0 win in the first leg of their Conference League playoff tie against Czech side Jablonec at Ibrox. Derek McInnes got his first win as Rangers manager at the fifth time of asking with a 5-1 thumping of St Mirren on Sunday but there was regression in the goalless first half which brought boos at the interval whistle.

The Govan side pepped up after the break and Naderi opened the scoring from close range in the 50th minute but in the 78th minute the substitute Cammy Devlin was sent off – minutes after coming off the bench – for a high tackle on Jiri Slama to leave Rangers to see out the game with 10 men.

Continue reading...

Weer voor Rotterdam 🌕 - 21-08-2026 01:16 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 16.7°C · Helder 🌕 | Min 16.1°C / Max 21.2°C | Kans op neerslag 73%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 16.1°C, Max 21.2°C (Zware regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 27.5 mm, Kans op neerslag 73%, 🧭 1009.9 hPa ↗️ +2.6 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.5 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 225°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 16.5°C (Helder) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 55%, 🧭 1007.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.6 km/u (2.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 229°
• 03:00: 16.3°C (Helder) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 51%, 🧭 1007.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.9 km/u (3.3 m/s), richting: ↗ 231°
• 04:00: 16.3°C (Helder) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 49%, 🧭 1007.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.5 km/u (3.2 m/s), richting: ↗ 238°
• 05:00: 16.5°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 45%, 🧭 1007.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.0 km/u (2.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 226°
• 06:00: 16.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 32%, 🧭 1007.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 234°
• 07:00: 16.6°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ⛅, Kans op neerslag 16%, 🧭 1007.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.6 km/u (2.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 227°
• 08:00: 17.3°C (Zonnig) ☀️, Kans op neerslag 10%, 🧭 1008.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 5.4 km/u (1.5 m/s), richting: → 280°
• 09:00: 17.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 21%, 🧭 1008.9 hPa ↗️ +0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 5.4 km/u (1.5 m/s), richting: ↓ 345°
• 10:00: 18.1°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ⛅, Kans op neerslag 42%, 🧭 1009.4 hPa ↗️ +0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 6.1 km/u (1.7 m/s), richting: ↘ 334°
• 11:00: 18.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 61%, 🧭 1009.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.6 km/u (2.1 m/s), richting: ↓ 341°
• 12:00: 18.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 77%, 🧭 1010.2 hPa ↗️ +0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↓ 348°
• 13:00: 18.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 91%, 🧭 1010.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.0 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ↓ 10°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• zaterdag 22 augustus: Min 16.1°C, Max 19.4°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 49%, 🧭 1018.1 hPa ↗️ +8.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↘ 330°
• zondag 23 augustus: Min 15.0°C, Max 18.3°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 4.5 mm, Kans op neerslag 42%, 🧭 1024.3 hPa ↗️ +6.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↘ 323°
• maandag 24 augustus: Min 13.7°C, Max 19.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1023.0 hPa ↘️ -1.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 11.8 km/u (3.3 m/s), richting: ↘ 318°
• dinsdag 25 augustus: Min 11.2°C, Max 19.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.9 hPa ↘️ -9.1 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 85°
• woensdag 26 augustus: Min 12.9°C, Max 22.9°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 5%, 🧭 1012.2 hPa ↘️ -1.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.6 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ← 89°
• donderdag 27 augustus: Min 18.5°C, Max 24.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 4.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 26%, 🧭 1013.1 hPa ↗️ +0.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.0 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↑ 186°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 16.7°C (Helder)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 16.8°C (+0.1°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 8.6 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ↑ 202°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 15.1 km/h (4.2 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 87%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1007.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 10.8 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 06:34 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 20:56

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 31 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 4.4 μg/m³
• PM10: 7.6 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide September 1959

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

For years, I’ve wanted to have a standalone version of Apple’s Touch ID authentication feature for my Mac, but without having to use an Apple keyboard. (I generally like their keyboards, but my daily driver keyboard these days is a big clicky mechanical beast.) I’d gone down various dead ends of trying to find substitutes, and even checked out the efforts where people had ripped apart expensive Apple keyboards just to scavenge the Touch ID sensors out of them. None of them quite solved the problem.

So today, I’m sharing an open source project called Dashboard Touch, which lets you make your own Touch ID-style sensor for your Mac, using low-cost off-the-shelf part. It’s based on an extensive refactoring of the excellent tinyTouch project by Zimeng Xiong, who recently cracked the code on how to make a useful fingerprint scanner system that’s also reasonably secure for regular Mac users. (You should definitely check out his project and support his new hardware build if you’re interested in this stuff.)

I took my own approach to this work because I wanted to focus a lot on having a friendly web interface for configuring exactly how the fingerprint sensor system works on your computer. When you get Dashboard Touch set up, it presents you with a nice web interface that runs right on your own Mac, letting you do things like set the color of the ring light on the fingerprint sensor, or capture your fingerprints so they’re recorded in the system.

Behind the scenes, the way the system works couldn’t be simpler. You buy a little fingerprint sensor, and a small microcontroller, wire them together (it was actually fun to get back to soldering stuff!), and then plug them into your computer with a regular USB cable. After you run the setup script, you just go to the web interface and add your finger(s) to the system.

Once you’re running, your Mac runs as normal, except any time the system prompts you to type in your password, you can just swipe your fingertip on the sensor and Dashboard Touch will type your password in for you. At a technical level, the device is actually literally pretending to be a keyboard. (You can look over the code on GitHub and get a feel for the approach pretty quickly.)

After it’s installed, it’s basically a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. You don’t need to do anything else for it to Just Work. Your password is only ever stored securely on your Mac, and your fingerprints are only ever stored securely on your sensor. You can erase them at any time and nothing talks to the internet at all except the one manual update checker, where you can see if there’s a new version of Dashboard Touch, but only when you intentionally click the button to request it to do so.

Overall, this isn’t the kind of system you should use if you’re protecting a bank vault, but if your computer is physically secure and nobody is going to have extended unsupervised access to your Dashboard Touch setup without your permission, you should be fine.

Dash, not bored

Personally, it’s been really fun to get back to making things. As you can see in my introductory video, I ended up creating an enclosure for my fingerprint sensor in my woodshop, so that it would match my desk that I recently built. Even creating and editing the intro video was a fun project that took me out of my usual comfort zone.

Nearly every task in this project has had me stretching to do things that I’m pretty bad at, from firmware coding to security review to detailed carpentry to video editing. But I just love the idea of putting things out there again for people to hack on, and there's also something really satisfying about being able to be super-opinionated about the design and user interface of something after so many years of working on teams where I had to collaborate. (Even though I always got to collaborate with brilliant people, it's different when you get to pick every pixel!)

I just also have been missing the era of the web when most of what I saw online was weird and fun things that regular people were building, and I realized that I can't mourn the absence of those kinds of projects unless I invest my own energy into building some of those kinds of things myself. So, here's one! Let me know what you think, and if you've got any ideas for how to make this thing better. Or, of course, if you find any bugs that I should fix.

I hope you have fun touching the blinking lights!

Russian attacks on Ukrainian publishing infrastructure in July and August destroyed roughly 10 million books, which equates to about 30% of Ukraine's annual book output. The Ukrainian Book Institute is warning of a potential "collapse of the entire book ecosystem" and is calling for international financial and industry support to help publishers, printers, and distributors recover. The Guardian reports: A major attack on August 1 hit warehouses belonging to the RNK-Ranok publishing group in Kharkiv, destroying approximately 8m books, following July attacks in Kyiv which led to the loss of more than 1.5m books. In all, the recent attacks have led to the destruction of approximately 30% of the volume of books produced annually in Ukraine.

The RNK-Ranok logistics centre, which stores books for the company's many imprints, is also the distribution centre for the national bookselling chain KnyhoLand, which runs 51 shops and several websites. Along with the estimated 8m books lost, a further 600,000 school textbooks were destroyed. The total loss has been preliminarily estimated at almost 1bn hryvnias (16.5m eueros). "At this stage, we face the risk of the collapse of the entire book ecosystem," said Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute. The institute is asking for donations to support Ukrainian publishers, and is calling on the international publishing community to work with Ukrainian publishers and raise awareness about Russian attacks on Ukrainian culture.

On August 16, a Russian attack on Kyiv led to a fire breaking out at the Pochaina book market, destroying several rows of stalls, books and vendors' property. The Pochaina market, founded in 1997, was once one of Ukraine's largest book markets, with hundreds of stalls and books from more than 120 publishers. The institute said the book industry was of "strategic importance" to Ukraine, preserving and promoting Ukrainian culture and giving the country's voice a platform at home and abroad. [...] The institute also called for an end to cooperation with Russian publishers and literary agencies, saying that solidarity with Ukrainian publishers was crucial to preserving cultural heritage that Russia was "deliberately trying to destroy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rokasalaheldean has added a photo to the pool:

John from Brisbane has added a photo to the pool:

from which she came, the HMQS Gayundah is now on her last legs at Woody Point, Queensland where she has been beached since 1958.

"HMQS Gayundah was a flat-iron gunboat operated by the Queensland Maritime Defence Force and later the Royal Australian Navy (as HMAS Gayundah). She entered service in 1884 and was decommissioned and sold to a civilian company in 1921. She then served as sand and gravel barge in Brisbane until the 1950s, when she was scrapped. In 1958, Gayundah was run aground at Woody Point near Redcliffe, to serve as a breakwater structure".

Overlooked now by high rise home units, she is so badly deteriorated and dangerous to anyone who explores her, large sections of the seaward side have been removed in recent times.

The Cormorants think she makes a great home!


EXIF data is not correct!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMQS_Gayundah

Jane's Addiction

TILBURG (ANP) - Over auto's, motoren en andere voertuigen ontstaan vaker juridische geschillen tussen klanten en ondernemers. Dat signaleert verzekeraar Achmea. Een onderdeel voor rechtsbijstandsverzekeringen kreeg vorig jaar 5451 meldingen binnen over dit soort geschillen, een stijging van 78 procent in vergelijking met 2021. De autobranche bevestigt de toename.

Volgens Stichting Achmea Rechtsbijstand (SAR) komt die toename deels doordat er simpelweg meer voertuigen zijn. Maar er is meer aan de hand, stelt de organisatie die Achmea-klanten met een rechtsbijstandsverzekering juridische hulp biedt. Zo zijn auto's technisch complexer geworden. Gebreken aan software of elektronica zijn regelmatig lastig aan te tonen. "We zien in de praktijk dat consumenten in dit soort gevallen vaker juridische hulp zoeken wanneer zij er niet uitkomen met de verkoper of fabrikant", zegt jurist Martijn Walschots van SAR.

Klanten met klachten staan tegenwoordig ook juridisch sterker. Als er binnen een jaar een aantoonbaar gebrek optreedt, wordt aangenomen dat dit al aanwezig was bij de aflevering van het voertuig. Voor april 2022 was die termijn slechts een halfjaar. Dit levert volgens SAR in de praktijk meer discussie op over de vraag of er echt sprake is van een aantoonbaar gebrek.

SAR wijst ook op schaarste aan onderdelen en personeel in de autobranche en alle openstaande terugroepacties. Reparaties kunnen daardoor langer op zich laten wachten.

Brancheorganisatie voor autobedrijven Bovag herkent de trend dat er meer geschillen zijn. Volgens de organisatie speelt ook de opkomst van AI-hulpmiddelen een rol. Met hulp van een programma als ChatGPT kunnen klanten binnen een handomdraai juridisch ogende documenten opstellen als ze een klacht hebben.

"En de consumenten voelen zich door AI ook vaak gesterkt in hun eigen gelijk, zo'n chatbot praat je toch vaker naar de mond", zegt een woordvoerder van Bovag. "Een consument gooit misschien in vijf minuten al zijn emotie in een AI-document. Maar voor onze leden levert dat een heel proces op. Die moeten het lezen, beoordelen en eventueel met een advocaat bespreken."

Bovag heeft een bemiddelingsdienst die optreedt als klanten en autobedrijven er samen niet uitkomen bij een klacht. Onopgeloste kwesties kunnen bij een onafhankelijke geschillencommissie terechtkomen. Volgens de Bovag-woordvoerder is de verdeling van oordelen in het voordeel van de klant of ondernemer al jaren in grote lijnen hetzelfde. "Het is nog altijd fiftyfifty wie gelijk krijgt van de geschillencommissie."

WASHINGTON (ANP) - President Donald Trump wil dat er meer Amerikaanse ruimtelanceringen worden uitgevoerd. Hij ondertekende donderdag een memorandum waarin hij overheidsinstanties opdraagt maatregelen te nemen om tegen 2030 jaarlijks minstens duizend lanceringen mogelijk te maken.

Vorig jaar voerden de Verenigde Staten 178 ruimtelanceringen uit. Dat aantal is tien keer hoger dan in 2013.

In het memorandum roept Trump overheidsinstanties op om de ontwikkeling van infrastructuur voor ruimtevervoer samen met partners uit de private sector te stimuleren. Ook wil hij dat vergunningsprocedures en milieubeoordelingen sneller gaan voor ruimtelanceringen.