BUGGENHOUT (ANP) - Bij de aanrijding tussen een schoolbusje en een trein zijn in het Vlaamse Buggenhout vier doden gevallen, zegt minister Jean-Luc Crucke van Mobiliteit tegen RTL. Volgens hem zijn twee tieners, de chauffeur en de begeleider, door het ongeluk overleden.

BUGGENHOUT (ANP) - De Belgische politie maakt nog niets bekend over slachtoffers door de aanrijding tussen een trein en een busje met schoolkinderen in Buggenhout. Eerst moeten eventuele familieleden geïnformeerd worden, zegt politiewoordvoerder Ann Berger tegen VRT NWS. Zij bevestigt dat er aan boord zeven kinderen waren, plus een begeleider en de chauffeur.

Belgische media melden op basis van bronnen dat er meerdere doden zijn gevallen door de aanrijding. Dat bevestigt Berger niet. Ze meldt dat kinderen en familieleden opgevangen worden in de buurt. Ook de inzittenden van de trein worden opgevangen. Volgens de politie raakte daar niemand gewond, maar is wel iemand in shock geraakt.

Het busje reed over een weg die parallel loopt aan het spoor, zegt Berger tegen VRT. Vervolgens sloeg het linksaf, het spoor op. De slagbomen waren gesloten, bevestigt zij na eerdere berichten van de spoorbeheerder. Er lopen nog onderzoeken rond de plek van het ongeluk.

Tegen Het Laatste Nieuws zegt Berger dat het busje reed voor een school voor speciaal onderwijs. De meeste kinderen zouden middelbaar onderwijs volgen.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Personeelstekorten blijven in Nederland problemen geven voor werkgevers. Dat meldt werkgeversvereniging AWVN na een ledenonderzoek. Bijna driekwart van de werkgevers krijgt volgens de onderzoekers hun planning niet rond.

Door die problemen zegt de helft van de werkgevers dat de kwaliteit van productie en dienstverlening onder druk staat. Ruim een kwart kan producten of diensten door het tekort helemaal niet meer leveren. Om dit te ondervangen neemt bijna de helft van de werkgevers mensen aan die nog niet volledig aan de functie-eisen voldoen en leidt hen vervolgens zelf op. Ook wordt van deeltijders gevraagd om meer uren te werken.

Vacatures die lang open blijven, zitten volgens de onderzoekers vooral in techniek, productie en IT. Ook blijven veel sectoren kampen met een tekort aan mbo'ers. De AWVN roept de overheid op om actie te ondernemen. De werkgeversvereniging stelt dat de "onbedoelde groei" van het aantal ambtenaren de druk op de arbeidsmarkt verder heeft verhoogd.

BUGGENHOUT (ANP) - Bij een aanrijding tussen een trein en een schoolbusje zijn in het Vlaamse Buggenhout meerdere doden gevallen, melden VRT Nieuws en Het Laatste Nieuws op basis van bronnen. De details zijn nog onduidelijk.

Het ongeluk gebeurde op een overweg. Burgemeester Geert Hermans zegt tegen HLN dat het busje doorreed terwijl de slagbomen dicht waren. Spoorbeheerder Infrabel meldt hetzelfde. De machinist zou nog geprobeerd hebben een noodstop te maken. De spoorwegen zeggen dat er zo'n honderd mensen in de trein zaten, en dat daar niemand gewond is geraakt.

De regionale televisiezender TV Oost, de VRT en HLN melden op basis van bronnen dat er negen mensen in het busje zaten, onder wie zeven kinderen.

Verslagenheid

De Belgische minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Bernard Quintin zegt "met grote verslagenheid" kennis te hebben genomen van de aanrijding.

De aanrijding gebeurde dinsdagochtend even na 08.00 uur. Op beelden van de plek van het ongeluk is te zien dat het busje op zijn kant naast het spoor ligt.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De fundamenten van de samenleving worden aangetast door ondermijning door de georganiseerde misdaad. In een nieuw rapport wordt gewaarschuwd voor dreigingen voor politiek en economie in de komende jaren.

Volgens het eerste Dreigingsbeeld Ondermijning Nederland tast ondermijning "op sluipende en vaak onzichtbare wijze de democratische rechtsstaat aan en vormt een dreiging voor de nationale veiligheid".

De invloed van criminelen neemt toe. De onderzoekers waarschuwen dat de georganiseerde misdaad alternatieven biedt waar een tekort aan is, zoals huisvesting. Verder dreigen steeds meer mensen betrokken te worden bij ondermijning.

Daarnaast proberen criminelen hun invloed uit te breiden door (lokale) besturen of rechters te manipuleren. Het rapport maakt volgens minister David van Weel (Justitie en Veiligheid, VVD) "pijnlijk duidelijk" dat het "een (gevaarlijke) misvatting is om te spreken van een boven- en onderwereld, alsof het gescheiden werelden zijn".

De fundamenten van de samenleving worden aangetast door ondermijning door de georganiseerde misdaad. In een nieuw rapport wordt gewaarschuwd voor dreigingen voor politiek en economie in de komende jaren.

Volgens het eerste Dreigingsbeeld Ondermijning Nederland tast ondermijning "op sluipende en vaak onzichtbare wijze de democratische rechtsstaat aan en vormt een dreiging voor de nationale veiligheid".

Huisvesting

De invloed van criminelen neemt toe. De onderzoekers waarschuwen dat de georganiseerde misdaad alternatieven biedt waar een tekort aan is, zoals huisvesting. Verder dreigen steeds meer mensen betrokken te worden bij ondermijning.

Daarnaast proberen criminelen hun invloed uit te breiden door (lokale) besturen of rechters te manipuleren. Het rapport maakt volgens minister David van Weel (Justitie en Veiligheid, VVD) "pijnlijk duidelijk" dat het "een (gevaarlijke) misvatting is om te spreken van een boven- en onderwereld, alsof het gescheiden werelden zijn".

Zeker honderd jaar genoten Groningers van een „fantastische” drafbaan in het Stadspark. Tot die opeens werd gesloten door de gemeente. Om meer ruimte te bieden voor topevenementen, zo luidde het verhaal. Liefhebbers van de sport willen zich daar niet bij neerleggen en binden de strijd aan met de gemeente.

Of het nou gaat om realitysterren of wereldmachten, uiteindelijk heeft iedereen behoefte aan vriendschap, zag onze tv-recensent.

Dinsdagochtend botste een trein op een schoolbus. Volgens Belgische media zaten zeven kinderen, een chauffeur en een begeleider in de bus.

Updates from the third day’s play at Roland Garros
Players tackle heat in test of endurance | Mail Daniel

Five games in a row for Walton, who takes the first set off Medvedev 6-2 in just half an hour. I wonder if the no 6 seed is following a kind of José Mourinho arc, where he over-indexes on the confrontational stuff that helped make him brilliant to the exclusion of the other stuff that was equally important, losing the run of himself in the process.

Elsewhere, Alexei Popyrin leads Zachary Svajda 6-3; Donna Vekic is up 5-2 on Alice Tubello; Tallon Griekspoor and Matteo Arnaldi are level at 3-3; with Marin Cilic and Moise Kouame also level, at 2-2. Or, put another way, or better matchups come later in the day.

Continue reading...

Broadcaster describes Robert Kenyon, who is standing in Makerfield byelection, as a misogynist and a ‘cowardly man’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Carol Vorderman has demanded an apology from the Reform UK candidate in the upcoming Makerfield byelection for “disgusting comments” he made about her on social media in the past.

The broadcaster and former Countdown numbers expert described Robert Kenyon, who Reform has backed to face Andy Burnham in next month’s vote, as a “cowardly man” for a series of offensive posts made by the Wigan councillor that have since been deleted, along with his account.

Continue reading...

Some say project Iran is a disaster, but as a get-out-of-jail-free card it’s a winner. He did say he was smart, didn’t he?

How far would you go for your son? For Donald Trump, the answer is simply: “The Bahamas? That is way too far! Why can’t you just get married on the golf course we buried your mother in? Or better still, the one I’m being carted to the second I get off the reinforced toilet I’m typing this on.” And so it was that the president cordially flaked on the latest marriage of his large adult son Don Jr, which took place somewhere in the Bahamas last weekend. If the world felt somehow different to you on Sunday morning, you were right. We now live in a post-troth society.

In other ways, though, the world would have felt quite samey. Those whose notional protest placard reads “IRAN DEAL WHEN?” remain fobbed off round the clock by a US administration that is always “close”, looking at a “pretty solid thing on the table” and debating “specific language in the initial document”. The Iranian government, meanwhile, is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz, expressing “resolute” support for Hezbollah and saying gnomically trolling things like how the two sides are both “very close and very far”. The president loves to imply that deals are always like this, once again confusing commercial Floridian real estate with the fanatical remnants of a dysfunctional regime in whose interest it is to play him.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Five of the deaths were by drowning while two people died competing in sporting events

Seven people have died in France in an extreme early-summer heat event that is affecting a swathe of western Europe, as France and the UK set record highs for May and temperatures were forecast to rise further on Tuesday.

“What I can say today is that there have been seven deaths linked directly or indirectly to the heat,” a French government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, told TF1 television, adding that five of the deaths were by drowning.

Continue reading...

Naar ongeval in België dat doet helaas doet denken aan het Stint-drama hier. Een busje voor speciaal (voornamelijk middelbaar) onderwijs met zeven leerlingen, een begeleider en een chauffeur is door een trein geschept bij Buggenhout. "Uit camerabeelden blijkt dat de overweg gesloten was, en de verkeerslichten op rood stonden." De machinist heeft de noodrem nog ingeschakeld, maar kon een botsing niet voorkomen. "Over de toestand van de slachtoffers is nog niet veel geweten. "Daar willen we nog niets over zeggen", zegt An Berger van de federale politie. "De familieleden worden eerst ingelicht, ze worden opgevangen op een school in de buurt." "Het busje reed voor een school van het buitengewoon onderwijs. Het gaat voornamelijk om middelbare schoolkinderen."" Maar bronnen bevestigen aan VRT meerdere doden, wat helaas niet zo onwaarschijnlijk is. Dit topic wordt geüpdatete.

Today's links

• The AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble: No one had to force-feed the web to workers.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Website graveyard; Anti-librarian witch-hunt; Denmark v Marmite; The unnecessariat.
• Upcoming appearances: London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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 AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble (permalink)

One of the surprise breakout software products of the early web was Lotus Notes, a kind of primitive precursor to all-in-one office productivity suites like GDocs, Office365, etc. It was so important that its creator, Ray Ozzie, was promoted to Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, succeeding Bill Gates himself:

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/the-man-who-would-change-microsoft-ray-ozzies-vision-for-connected-software/

People who remember Notes tend to deride it for its clunky user interface and demi-functional administrative tools. But what made Notes so central to Microsoft wasn't its polish – it was the fact that Notes represented a brokered peace between IT managers, who wanted mainframe-like control over everything their users could do with business equipment, and the users themselves – workers who kept smuggling internet-based tools into the enterprise network on the very sensible grounds that they had a job to do, and these were the best tools to do it.

The arrival of internet-based tools – especially ones that ran in browsers – represented a major challenge to IT departments, who had been long accustomed to dictating terms to their users. If the IT manager and the compliance department decided that the best way to manage disclosure and leak risks was to block all email attachments for outside users, then that was that: no one could send those attachments.

But after the internet arrived on the corporate desktop, employees who needed to get documents to supply chain partners and customers could treat these IT policies as damage and route around them. Just fire up your Hotmail or Yahoo mail window, or hop on MSN Messenger or ICQ or AIM, or drop the file on an anonymous FTP server and send the link to your counterparty. Job done!

IT managers hated this, and to be fair to them, they weren't (always) wrong. These outside tools came from a variety of untrustworthy sources, including malicious sites that pushed virus-infected versions to their users. Also, by evading firewall rules with these tools, users made it impossible to achieve the compliance goals that IT had been charged with enforcing, and it was IT's asses on the line if the company got in trouble as a result.

Foundationally, IT was being asked to do two irreconcilable things: they were supposed to be enabling workers to get their jobs done, and they were supposed to be stopping those workers from doing things that could harm the business. This can't be done, because the only way to eliminate the possibility that a worker will take an action that harms the business is to gag that worker and lock them in a dungeon. Workers need flexibility and freedom to achieve business goals, and that flexibility and freedom means that those workers might (deliberately or accidentally) thwart the business's goals.

What's more, workers will always run into situations that were not anticipated by policy, and if they are denied any agency or initiative, they will fail to get their jobs done. In work, the exception is the rule, hence the importance of "process knowledge" (all the implicit knowledge shared among workers across the firm and its suppliers and customers, which cannot be captured or recorded):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance

Indeed, there's a form of labor action called a "work to rule," in which workers only do the things dictated by their rulebooks, without taking any of the routine additional measures dictated by process knowledge. Merely by following every rule to the letter, workers can grind a shop to a halt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

Since the dawn of personal computers, workers and IT departments have come into conflict, as workers literally smuggled technology into the business that could do things the IT department had (often arbitrarily and capriciously) prohibited. When Visicalc emerged as the killer app for the Apple ][+, workers snuck these computers into work and used them to sort spreadsheets in ways that IT had declined to permit. They didn't do this to cheat or steal from the company – the whole point was to do a better job.

So it was with the early web: workers discovered a myriad of new capabilities in the free-to-use world of web-based tools and realized how these tools would make them much more effective at their jobs. The fact that IT wouldn't let them do these things was just more evidence that IT – and the managers who set IT's agenda – didn't understand the business as well as workers.

It didn't help that IT managers' first line of defense was the high-tech version of abstinence-only education: "You only think you need your work computers to do this, but really, you don't, so stop trying":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jun/16/computer-security-abstinence

Abstinence-only education never works, but where "you only think you need this" failed, Lotus Notes succeeded. Lotus Notes provided a whole suite of tools that largely (if imperfectly) replaced the universe of free tools that workers were using to evade their IT departments' edicts, so they could get their jobs done. At the same time, Lotus Notes provided a set of management tools that let IT fine-tune how these tools worked, giving them (some) of the controls they needed to achieve their compliance goals.

Like all brokered peace settlements, Lotus Notes left both sides feeling like they'd made a compromise they could live with, giving up some of their goals, but keeping the things that really mattered to them.

It's impossible to overstate how important Lotus Notes and similar products were, because workers demanded the right to use the web on their work computers, and they made those demands so forcefully that managers had to completely re-do their IT policies, lest those workers treat them as damage and route around them. Back then, the tech press was full of stories about these conflicts, as workers insisted that the new technology that was sweeping the nation was so foundational and transformative that they had to be allowed to use it.

What we never saw back then were stories about how managers had to monitor workers to ensure that they were using the web as much as possible. No one had to force workers to find ways to integrate the web into their workflows.

In other words, the story of the web at work was the opposite of the story of AI at work. Today, you can't turn around without reading a story about bosses who are threatening to fire workers if they don't increase their AI usage:

https://www.businessinsider.com/boss-track-ai-use-career-2025-8

Virtually every major company now has a program to force workers into using AI:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/ai-use-work-employee-monitoring-tech-surveillance.html

It's conceivable that over the past quarter-century, bosses have become technophiles while workers have fallen prey to superstitious technophobia, but it hardly seems likely. Historically, workers have always been enthusiastic about tools that let them do a better job – indeed, it's a truism that labor-led automation produces improvements in quality, while capital-driven automation increases throughput (often at the expense of quality).

Workers aren't the only typical early adopters who find AI lacking. As a group, teenagers and young adults hate AI:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/style/gen-z-ai-gallup-study.html

That's not what it was like during the early web days. Back then, young people entering the workforce were passionate devotees of the web, to the point where the business press routinely ran articles asking how today's workplaces were going to adapt to the demands of these webbed-up workers.

https://www.nber.org/digest/apr03/internet-changes-labor-market

AI boosters insist that the deficits we see in AI – its lack of profitability, its primitive and error-riddled outputs – are no different from the shakedown problems of the early web (and we know how the web turned out!). But this is a profoundly flawed comparison: the early web and AI are very different from one another.

For one thing, the early web may have lost money, but it had great unit economics. Every new web user brought the web closer to profitability, as did every new use of the web, and every new generation of web technology. By contrast, AI has – in the memorable phrasing of Ed Zitron – "dogshit unit economics." Every new AI user makes AI less profitable, as does every new use for AI, and each generation of AI loses more money than the last. AI is the money-losingest endeavor in human history:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

In other words, the early web was a technology that grew more profitable every day, which workers and young people had to force on their bosses – and AI is a technology that grows less profitable every day, and bosses have to force it on workers and young people.

Now, it's true that some workers don't have to be forced to use AI. Workers who enjoy a high degree of autonomy (that is to say, workers who are positioned to ignore workplace coercion) can adopt AI in ways that they feel suited to, just as those early web users and Visicalc smugglers did. They can fulfill the maxim that labor-driven automation improves quality, while resisting capital's insistence that automation be used to increase throughput at quality's expense.

They can act as centaurs (workers assisted by technology), not as reverse-centaurs (workers who are recruited to serve as peripherals for machines). As with all technology questions, what the technology does is nowhere near as important as who the tech does it for and who the tech does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

And there's another group of workers who adopt AI voluntarily: workers who see that AI can do a lot of work that they view as dull and unimportant for them. These workers might be right – there are plenty of bullshit jobs out there:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/20/david-graebers-bullshit-jobs-why-does-the-economy-sustain-jobs-that-no-one-values/

But it's also possible that they're wrong, and they're substituting AI for something that really should be done by a person.

But on the plus side, at least no one has to force them to adopt AI.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• CBC/Radio-Canada secures second consecutive Broadcaster of the Year honour at NYF Radio Awards https://broadcastdialogue.com/cbc-radio-canada-secures-second-consecutive-broadcaster-of-the-year-honour-at-nyf-radio-awards/

• State of Local AI https://llmrequirements.com/state-of-local-ai/

• Private Equity Blocked from Buying Homes. Mostly. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-private-equity

• Gratitude – Aid Coordination https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/gemma-4-good-hackathon/writeups/gratitude-aid-coordination

• Is AI Profitable Yet? https://isaiprofitable.com/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Website graveyard https://web.archive.org/web/20010516224100/http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/

#20yrsago Canadian students ask govt to save them from copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20060629014007/https://action.web.ca/home/cfs/en_alerts.shtml?x=88910&AA_EX_Session=d56bebd39174d9839ec3ee5fa6fe93a4

#20yrsago Lifespan of best-sellers falls 6/7ths in 40 years https://web.archive.org/web/20060601231943/https://www.lulu.com/static/pr/05_19_06.php

#15yrsago Sarkozy’s false-flag E-G8 attracts withering scorn https://web.archive.org/web/20121109010803/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/france-attempts-to-civilize-the-internet-internet-fights-back/

#15yrsago Tool reveals ISP traffic-shaping https://web.archive.org/web/20120514151210/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/new-shaperprobe-tool-detects-isp-traffic-shaping/

#15yrsago Falun Gong sues Cisco over complicity in China’s “Golden Shield” – allege torture, murder https://web.archive.org/web/20110524065718/http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20065219-93.html

#15yrsago Scenes from Los Angeles’s teacher-librarian witch-hunt https://mizzmurphy.blogspot.com/2011/05/message-received.html

#15yrsago Denmark bans Marmite https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/may/24/uk-should-ban-sandi-toksvig

#10yrsago As mobile carriers ramp up bribery program, Internet coalition says no to “zero rating” https://web.archive.org/web/20160524233609/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/medium-mozilla-and-kickstarter-signed-a-letter-against-zero-rating

#10yrsago Philippines’ new “dictator” will give a hero’s burial to Ferdinand Marcos https://web.archive.org/web/20160526135257/http://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/world/philippine-dictator-marcos-to-get-heros-burial-duterte/ar-BBtnPJH

#10yrsago Judge handcuffs public defender for speaking out in court https://web.archive.org/web/20160525151444/http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/las-vegas-judge-handcuffs-public-defender-courtroom

#10yrsago Sanders donors flock to Tim Canova’s campaign against DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/23/politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-primary-opponent-fundraising/index.html

#10yrsago Algorithmic risk-assessment: hiding racism behind “empirical” black boxes https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

#10yrsago Plagiarism detection app vs Russia’s elites: 1-2 fake PhDs discovered every day https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/the_thriving_russian_black_market_in_dissertations_and_the_crusaders_fighting.html

#10yrsago Technology’s “culture of compliance” must be beaten back in the name of justice https://bb9.berlinbiennale.de/all-problems-can-be-illuminated-not-all-problems-can-be-solved/

#10yrsago Grass in the park at the center of San Francisco gentrification debate is now for rent https://sfist.com/2016/05/23/rec_parks_pilot_program_allows_you/

#10yrsago Lawsuit: Texas’s largest jail is full of people who are locked up for being poor https://web.archive.org/web/20160524134738/https://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/23/3781076/texas-bail-lawsuit/

#10yrsago After the precariat, the unnecessariat: the humans who are superfluous to corporations https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

#5yrsago Watomatic, for lower Whatsapp switching costs https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/24/how-about-nah/#comcom

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• Kansas City: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
  https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow

• LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

• Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

• Toronto: TBA, Jun 23

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Philadelphia: TBA, Jun 25

• Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

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Latest books (permalink)

• "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 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/)

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

• "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

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

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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Met de komst van Robert Eenhoorn haalt Feyenoord volgens oud-teammanager Bas van Noortwijk een bestuurder binnen die precies begrijpt wat topsport vraagt. De voormalig honkballer en directeur van AZ werd afgelopen weekend gepresenteerd als nieuwe algemeen directeur van de Rotterdamse club en dat ziet Van Noortwijk als een logische én slimme keuze.

Het zat er al een tijdje aan te komen, maar toch staat een aantal automobilisten voor een verrasing op dinsdagochtend: de Erasmusbrug is dicht vanwege werkzaamheden. Automobilisten moeten daardoor omrijden, wat op begrip maar ook frustratie kan rekenen: "Ik had het wel anders aangepakt."

calook has added a photo to the pool:

HP appears to have discovered a new subscription tier for printers: "Works until we decide it doesn't." A customer in Quebec claims the company remotely crippled his five-year-old OfficeJet 4650 printer after a firmware update, then spent weeks bouncing him through support queues before admitting internally that an entire generation of printers had effectively fallen off its support cliff. The customer, who says he has filed complaints with both Canada's Competition Bureau and Quebec's consumer protection office, provided internal HP documents obtained through a Canadian PIPEDA access request. Those records, seen by The Register, include an internal alert titled "Gen1 printers losing connection to Web Services," along with notes attributing the failure to "a server update affecting connectivity to HP Instant Ink" combined with the printer being "likely at end of service life." The customer says the OfficeJet 4650 stopped working halfway through printing a book manuscript following a firmware update, after which the printer began repeatedly throwing server connection errors and refused to properly reconnect. The customer does not appear to be alone. In a Reddit thread discussing the issue, another OfficeJet 4650 owner said a printer update left the device unable to connect over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, or even a local network. Factory resets reportedly did nothing, and the user said they eventually gave up and went to a library to print their documents. What followed for the customer in Quebec will sound painfully familiar to anyone who has ever made the mistake of contacting printer support. The user describes weeks of repeated calls to HP support staff, cases mysteriously closed, promised callbacks from escalation teams that never arrived, and repeated attempts to blame local connectivity issues. Eventually, according to the customer, HP supervisors acknowledged the issue was linked to HP servers and was already known internally. One support email reviewed by The Register states that "compatibility with newer devices and connection protocols" had become an issue due to the printer's age, and also references problems with "cloud services linked to our web services." Another internal note states: "The agent acknowledged the printer is old and likely at end of service life. Customer was advised that upgrading the printer may be necessary if issue persists." Which appears to translate roughly as: the printer still turns on, but HP no longer considers that its problem. More problematic for HP is the claim that the printer did not fail on its own but stopped functioning properly due to changes on HP's side. According to the customer, HP staff acknowledged the issue was affecting multiple Generation 1 printers. One support transcript states: "HP is already aware of this issue – it has priority," while another says engineers were working to restore communications between affected printers and HP servers. According to the customer, the issue was never fixed. HP eventually offered the customer a refurbished replacement printer, which he refused. The case risks reviving long-running anger over HP's Dynamic Security system, a notoriously unpopular firmware mechanism that blocks some third-party ink cartridges and has already attracted lawsuits and regulatory attention. While this latest dispute centers more on end-of-life support than on cartridge authentication, the underlying complaint is similar: customers buying hardware they discover they do not fully control. The customer says he is now pursuing additional records related to the internal HP alert and has filed an ethics complaint against the company's executive escalation staff over what he describes as deliberate misdirection during the support process. HP told The Register: "We are aware that some customers using older OfficeJet models have reported concerns with connectivity and certain web-based features. We have not identified a broad or ongoing systemic issue affecting these devices, though we have addressed isolated service disruptions where they have occurred. "Many of the models referenced were introduced several years ago and while designed for reliable performance, the availability of certain cloud-connected features may change over time. "We provide troubleshooting and guidance where issues are reported and remain focused on delivering a reliable, high-quality experience across our products." ®

etsu2 has added a photo to the pool: