Pluralistic: Skinnamarinkstump Linkdump (15 Feb 2025)


Today's links


A subterranean corridor at LAX connecting two wings of Terminal 4. The ceiling is open, revealing a mess of pipes and infrastructure, festooned with colored, dangling ribbons.

Skinnamarinkstump Linkdump (permalink)

It's Saturday and I'm on a book tour, and the world is in chaos, and there are more links to write about than I could fit in to this week's newsletter, so time for a cubic linkdump, the 27th such:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

A video of a 3D-printed, spring-loaded, clockwork chess pawn that uses a magnet to sense when it has reached the end of the board and SPROING! turns into a queen.

Let's start with the best thing I saw all week: a 3D-printed, spring-loaded, clockwork chess pawn that uses a magnet to sense when it has reached the end of the board and SPROING! turns into a queen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSOnnle3zbA

The whole video is a fascinating account of the design process, from idea to prototype to finished item, but if you're impatient and want to skip right to the eyeball kick, it's at 12:27-12:35. And if you want to print your own, the files are $12 (cheap!):

https://www.patreon.com/WorksByDesign/shop/queen-pawn-3d-printing-files-614491?source=storefront

Regrettably, not every tech project is a good one. This week, Google abandoned its AI ethics pledge. Unlike most AI ethics pledge, which are full of nonsense about not accidentally creating a vengeful god that turns the human race into paperclips, Google's AI pledge was actually very important, in that the company promised not to make AI that violates human rights, international law, or privacy. There comes a point where harping on Google's abandoned "don't be evil" motto can feel a little hacky, but in this case, I'll make an exception. My EFF colleague Matthew Guariglia tears Google a much-deserved new AIhole over this latest heel turn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/google-wrong-side-history

Not all bad technology is evil. Some of it is merely very, very stupid. How stupid? Check out Thom Dunn's Wirecutter review of The Heatbit Trio, a space-heater that uses Bitcoin-mining GPUs to generate some of its heat, very slightly offsetting the cost of warming your room – but at a rate that would take decades to recoup the $700 price-tag. Thom got some spicy quotes from Molly White for this one – possibly the first time she's been cited in a home appliance review:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/heatbit-space-heater-review/

Staying with crypto freaks for a moment here, Adam Levitin dissects the cryptocurrency "industry"'s latest chorus of aggrieved whining over "debanking":

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2025/02/debanked-by-the-market.html

As Levitin writes, banks aren't kicking cryptocurrency "companies" off their books because the government wants to punish them. Banks have a very good reason to want to avoid doing business with high-dollar scams that have highly correlated implosions, which is to say, times when everyone wants their money back from the cryptocurrency "company" the bank is handling charges for. For a longer explanation that gets into the nitty gritty of bank supervision, check out Patio11's excellent, detailed explainer:

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunking/

As all the real heads know, "crypto means cryptography," and cryptographers continue to contrive privacy marvels. This week, Kagi – the best search engine, a million times better than Google – released a Privacy Pass authentication plugin, which lets you login to Kagi and run searches without Kagi being able to connect any of the searches you make with your account:

https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass

As an sf/crime writer who sometimes (often) searches for information on committing ghastly crimes and 'orrible murders, the fact that my favorite search engine will be technically incapable of tying those searches to my identity is quite a relief. Read my review of Kagi here:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you're one of those marvel-contriving hackers, cryptographers, security researchers or tinkerers, you should really consider attending this summer's Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), 2600 Magazine's (now) annual (formerly biennial) hacker con. They've just posted their CFP – get those submission in!

https://www.hope.net/cfp-talks.html

Well, I have to post this and get ready for this morning's virtual book tour event with Yanis Varoufakis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

But before I go, one more link: Kevin Steele's 2005 essay on Hypercard, "When Multimedia Was Black & White," an absolute classic, and a beautiful meditation on the art and promise of early hypertext:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240213190609/http://www.kevinsteele.com/smackerel/black_white_00.html

I've known Kevin for most of my life, long before he helped found Mackerel, the pioneering Toronto multimedia company. Long after Mackerel, Kevin went on making wonderful things. In 2023, he published a monumental act of portraiture – a "sequential art" time-series of panoramas of Toronto's hip, ever-changing Queen Street West strip:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/13/spadina-to-bathurst/#dukes-cycle

Comparing Kevin's more recent work with that lovely old essay reveals deep correspondences and the progress of a unique and creative soul.


A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Apple and Sony sued for non-interoperable DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20050216045927/http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39127844,00.htm

#20yrsago Private Eye covers from 1961 on https://web.archive.org/web/20050205084651/http://www.ugandandiscussions.co.uk/

#20yrsago My latest short story: I, Robot http://infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/i-robot.html

#20yrsago Bill Gates: Denmark supports software patents or we shut down our Danish operation https://web.archive.org/web/20100505075316/http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050215071109231#comments

#20yrsago SHA-1 “hashing” algorithm broken https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.html

#15yrsaog Fixing US copyright law with the US Copyright Reform Act https://web.archive.org/web/20100219215359/http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2906

#15yrsago Clockwork Fagin: young adult steampunk story podcast https://craphound.com/news/2010/02/15/new-podcast-story-clockwork-fagin-ya-steampunk-story-for-kelly-link-and-gavin-grants-forthcoming-anthology/

#15yrsago TSA forces travelling policeman to remove his disabled four-year-old son’s leg-braces https://web.archive.org/web/20100217215434/http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/84368492.html

#15yrsago Amazon/Macmillan: Price discrimination and demand elasticity https://web.archive.org/web/20100219070055/http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/449137-With_a_Little_Help_The_Price_Is_Right.php

#15yrsago Broke-ass Washington State set to give MSFT $100M annual tax cut and amnesty for $1B in evasion https://web.archive.org/web/20100218211101/http://microsofttaxdodge.com/2010/02/washington-state-about-to-give-microsoft-a-100-million-tax-cut-annually.html

#10yrsago Facebook tells Native Americans that their names aren’t “real” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/facebooks-name-policy-strikes-again-time-native-americans

#1yrago Prison-tech is a brutal scam – and a harbinger of your future https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

#1yrago How a billionaire's mediocre pump-and-dump "book" became a "bestseller" https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, holding a mic.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


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 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: Metafilter (https://metafilter.com), VGA256 (https://www.dialup.cafe/~vga256/).

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

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/02/09/mlms-are-the-mirror-world-version-of-community-organizing/

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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