Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet
55 points by koomi
55 points by koomi
Cory Doctorow is a legend.
Reading this made me sad though, we used to somewhat escape reality playing with technology; reality sadly caught up even here.
Reading about Uber pricing algorithms reminded me of anecdote someone told not long ago about another giant taxi aggregator service: they increase the price for customers if their cellphone battery is low. Natural time pressing. Genius and repugnant at the same time.
When taking an Uber I always tip with cash, because the company knows how much money drivers need to make per day (including tips) in order to not quit, and they monitor that value. If you give a big tip on the app they will offer a smaller payment for the next ride, because they know that the driver is more more likely to accept it [source: friend who works there].
But of course if everyone tipped with cash the system would autocorrect back into paying less per rides anyway.
I can’t see how escaping reality can ever last. Changing it is difficult and dangerous, but it’ll catch up to you regardless. But I guess doing the work is hard and procrastination and escapism is easy.
We’re all escaping it to some extent :D Any kind of hobby or pastime is essentially not doing work. I might’ve phrased myself poorly there, but still wouldn’t think anyone could actually judge me :)
Not necessarily, a lot of artistic processes are actually great for engaging with the world around you in a productive way. By “the work” here I’m specifically referencing “necessary political work to change the status quo to something less horrible”. I’m not judging anyone for holding a job, its not like its optional. Making space for hobbies and pastimes is laudable, but not so much if you use them to pretend like reality isn’t out there being shitty to vulnerable people.
I really appreciate his perspective and seen a bunch of his content, so most of this is stuff I’ve seen already, but I noticed at least one interesting new point he brought up here. He pointed out that the world chaos with respect to tariffs is an opportunity for affected countries to retaliate not ineffectively with their own tariffs but rather with ignoring US DRM protections, Apple 30% platform cut, soft-locked feature protections (e.g. expensive vs cheap Teslas is only software-locked). Could be a win for digital rights if those governments have the cajones for it.
Here is the video link from the end of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydVmzg_SJLw
I read some of this, my Google search results seem fine. I don’t know if it’s because if I use DuckDuckGo, it’s maybe 10% worse than it used to be. On the other hand, some of the llm stuff can really help. The unfortunate part is the theft of knowledge that the LLM requires in order to work properly. I sometimes wonder if it’s just us folks getting older thinking that things used to be better through the rosed colored glasses of yesterday
The unfortunate part is the theft of knowledge that the LLM requires in order to work properly.
Knowledge cannot be stolen in any meaningful way. You knowing something does not prevent me from knowing it.
(I get your general gist, but words matter. That’s how they get you.)
Google is mostly fine. ddg has been crap for years (it ignores quotes and inurl:), but I use it anyway.
it ignores quotes and inurl:
As I recall, it was Bing which dropped support for a bunch of things, and Bing is one of DDG’s biggest/most important backend sources. DDG did not, as far as I know, actively choose to reduce their supported set of search operators.