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Wednesday 2026-11-04

09:00 PM

Pluralistic: The AI fatfinger economy has come for my receipts app (04 Nov 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


A many-armed pulp science fiction robot pins a giant finger using its spiked appendages. In the background is an architectural rendering of a grand 16th century city.

The AI fatfinger economy has come for my receipts app (permalink)

"AI is being shoved down our throats" can mean any of several things. It can mean that our bosses are demanding that we use AI in reckless or nonsensical ways on the job:

https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/

It can mean that Elon Musk and the NASDAQ have colluded to force ordinary retirement savers to bail out his emirati and tech oligarch buddies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/technology/spacex-indexes-401k.html

These are arguably the most important ways in which AI is shoved down our throats, but the most visible form of conscription into the number-go-up AI project is happening at the user interface level. This UI fuckery predates AI. For more than a decade, tech companies and their executives have colluded to trick, coerce and force you into using new features that they wanted to sell to their investors as the future of their companies.

Remember Google Plus, the Facebook-killing social layer that was going to give Google access to a new, multi-trillion-dollar market? Bradley Horowitz, then a VP at Google, charged every product team with cramming G+ into their offerings, tying their bonuses to G+ usage (at companies like Google, your bonus can dwarf your base salary).

Now, googlers are bright and resourceful people, and if you tell them that they can double their earnings by getting users to click on Google Plus buttons, they'll come up with all kinds of ways to get you to do this. Some of those gambits will be the kind of thing that Horowitz doubtless hoped for: innovative and creative ways to add value to Google's core offerings with G+ features.

But when the stakes are that high, Goodhart's Law inevitably comes into play: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

The easiest way to get a user to click on a G+ button is to replace whatever button that user hits most often with a G+ version. Rather than introducing users to Google Plus in a way that turns them into G+ fans, you just frustrate them by tricking them into clicking on a useless button.

From a product manager's perspective, it's worth making whatever changes as are needed to ensure that your salary is doubled because you hit your "key performance indicator" (KPI), even if it's at the expense of your users' loyalty to your product. Preserving user loyalty at the expense of half your wages is a bad trade.

When a machine learning system does this, we call it "reward hacking." AI programmers create an "objective function" for their system, a single number that the system will try every tactic to increase; then, more often than not, the AI program finds perverse shortcuts to make the number go up whether or not it achieves the programmer's goal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_hacking

For example, if you charge an AI with coming up with the shortest run through a video game, it might well discover a bug that makes it impervious to enemy attacks or just lets it teleport to the end of the game. To avoid these perverse outcomes, programmers have to add more and more specificity to their objective functions: "speed run the game without teleporting or discovering an immortality hack."

Not for nothing, many science fiction writers (including me) have noted that tech bosses' fear of their own AI systems is a kind of emotional spillover from their frustrations with the corporations they run, where underlings engage in the same kinds of reward hacking that we see from chatbots:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/14/timmy-share/#a-superior-moral-justification-for-selfishness

Despite the ease with which metrics can be gamed, tech bosses remained committed to the use of KPIs to shift the priorities of their organizations, and they use the same objective function refinement technique that programmers use for reward-hacking AIs in a bid to prevent cheating by employees who hit their KPIs any way they can.

This explains a lot about the experience of watching a video on your phone. Any time you tune into a show on a streaming platform, you are forced to handle your phone with the delicacy of a photonegative. If any part of your hand brushes any part of the screen, you will immediately be whisked away from the video you're watching to an entirely different one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/15/the-fatfinger-economy/

Worse, after your program has been replaced with this new one, there's no obvious way to get back to the show you were just watching. This is very weird, considering that the "back button" has been a part of computer interfaces since 1981:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/back%20button

The reason you don't get a back button is reward hacking. Streaming video platforms are under enormous pressure to successfully recommend their back-catalog to their users, because the alternative (commissioning or purchasing a steady stream of popular new shows) is very expensive. Investors put a lot of stock in streaming services' "successful recommendation" rate.

So streaming service bosses charge their product teams with making "successful recommendations." The easiest way to "recommend a show" is to booby-trap the streaming service's UI so that touching any part of the screen takes you to a video you never asked to see.

This is obvious reward hacking, so streaming bosses refined their objective function: they made their teams' bonuses contingent on getting you to watch a new video for a minimum time-frame. This in turn triggered the next volley in the reward-hacking wars, in which product teams took away the back button. This gives users any number of greased slides that whisk them away to a new video. To get back to the old video, users are forced to climb a greased pole.

This is the fatfinger economy: created in the 2010s by teams at large tech companies with KPI-obsessed bosses; refined in the 2020s by teams at bottom-line obsessed streaming media companies; and now perfected by teams being charged with cramming AI into every corner of our lives:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

The fatfinger economy is an extraordinary beneficiary of the drive to add "telemetry" to all of our apps. Today, an app vendor can call up a dashboard and find out which buttons and fields and sliders see the most use, and they can use that ranked list to figure out which buttons to replace with AI-demon-summoning lookalikes that help product teams "prove" to their bosses that they've "successfully integrated AI" and lets their bosses prove to their investors that "users value AI features."

I recently switched from Android to Graphene, a de-googled phone operating system. Graphene's maintainers are blissfully free from the imperative to show that "users value AI features," and that's why I have never accidentally summoned up an undismissable AI by tapping a Graphene UI element.

It's a different story when it comes to apps. Graphene has many different ways to install apps, including via Google Play (Google's default Android store). That's useful because it lets you install your old Android apps after switching to Graphene, but it does leave you exposed to the fatfinger economy.

Last week, I got a painful reminder of the progress of the fatfinger economy outside of Graphene's utopian pocket-universe. I make extensive use of an app called "Genius Scanner," which lets me scan receipts and email them to myself (I do this a lot because, as a freelancer, I have to track a lot of different expenses). I bought a lifetime subscription to Genius Scanner in 2023, after getting burned by Camscanner (my previous, now enshittified scanning app), and I've been perfectly happy with it…until now.

Genius Scanner is obviously under pressure to drive AI adoption. I can tell because they've taken away the most important UI element and swapped it for a worse-than-useless AI button.

Here's how I use Genius Scanner: I press the "make new scan" button and line up the receipt on the screen. Then I press the "retitle" button, which brings up a field that is populated with the current date and time (16 characters in all). This text used to be selected so that hitting the little "x" next to it deleted it, making it easy to title a new scan. After that, I'd just email it to myself.

As of last week, though, there is no button that deletes the date and time so you can enter a useful title. That little "x" has been replaced with a button that brings up an ad for the company's new AI tools, which cost $40/year. There's no way to tell the system that you're not interested in buying a new subscription for the tool that you've already bought a lifetime sub for, and there's no way to get that little "x" back.

To be clear: that little "x" represents one quarter of my receipt scanning workflow. They have swapped it out for an ad for a new subscription AI feature, and gave me 16 new keypresses on the backspace button to replace that single tap on the "x." I have seen that ad about 100 times at this point, because I keep tapping the spot where the "x" used to be.

I'm certain that the company knew that its paying customers relied on the "x" to accomplish a vital function in any scanning app (giving good, descriptive titles to scans). They need the AI number to go up, so they replaced the "x" with the AI ad, which will let them tell their investors that they've got "strong consumer interest in their AI features."

Meanwhile, they already have my money, so there's no way I can punish them for their decision to screw me over to juke a meaningless stat. It's as neat (and depressing) an example of the principle that "even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product" that you could ask for.

It's also a perfect little object-lesson in the ways that companies can report increasing AI interest and usage without generating any interest or usage. In the fatfinger economy, every metric is a target, and is thereby rendered meaningless.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Army Times: Rumsfeld must go! https://web.archive.org/web/20061107220242/http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406Z.shtml

#20yrsago UK is a surveillance society http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm

#20yrsago Record companies sue soccer mom’s kids https://web.archive.org/web/20061104145550/https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110200114.html

#15yrsago HOWTO make your own skateboard truck lazy-susan table https://www.instructables.com/Skateboard-Table/

#15yrsago Home Secretary to OccupyLondon: you’re scaring the tourists https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15588987

#15yrsago Judge whose daughter released video of him beating her suspended from bench during judicial investigation https://web.archive.org/web/20111105234141/http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VIDEOTAPED_BEATING_TEXAS

#15yrsago Prof who keeps announcing links between the Internet, childhood dementia and autism should publish theories in a scientific journal https://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/

#10yrsago Internet of Things botnet threatens to knock the entire country of Liberia offline https://doublepulsar.com/shadows-kill-mirai-ddos-botnet-testing-large-scale-attacks-sending-threatening-messages-about-6a61553d1c7#.zg4448j8w

#10yrsago Black Lives Matter declares its opposition to TPP https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/gauis-publius-tpp-has-picked-up-a-powerful-enemy-black-lives-matter.html

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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


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)

  • "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


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: 544 (32413 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

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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Vietnam Jails Pirate Football Streamers for Up to a Year, Three Escape Prison [TorrentFreak]

buncha TV logoIn May, the U.S. Trade Representative opened a Section 301 investigation into Vietnam, arguing that the country’s piracy prosecutions lacked a deterrent effect.

USTR pointed to recent cases in which defendants received suspended sentences and relatively low fines. A few weeks earlier, Vietnam’s Prime Minister had ordered a nationwide crackdown on copyright infringement. Several criminal cases have since moved forward, including those against the alleged operators of HiAnime and the Xoi Lac TV sports streaming network.

Another site in the crosshairs was Bún Chả TV, which offered Premier League and Champions League streams with Vietnamese commentary. According to police, the site drew hundreds of thousands of visits a day.

Investigators described the site as an underground company, with separate teams for programming, commentary, SEO and accounting. The main revenue came from ads and from redirecting viewers to illegal gambling sites.

On May 15, police from several provinces moved in. They summoned suspects, searched homes and workplaces, and seized 38 computers and 42 phones. Less than two weeks later, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced that Bac Ninh police had charged ten people.

Up to a Year in Prison

That case has now reached a verdict. In a first-instance ruling reported last week, a court in Bac Ninh convicted 14 defendants of infringing copyright and related rights under Article 225 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, VTC News reports.

Four defendants, including the heads of the content, programming and operations teams, were sentenced to 12 months in prison. Five others received ten months, and two were sentenced to eight months.

Notably, three of the site’s commentators were not sent to prison. Their ten-month sentences were suspended.

Sentences per defendant, according to the verdict reports

Defendant Role Sentence
Đặng Thế Anh Content lead 12 months
Nguyễn Thế Anh Programming lead 12 months
Bùi Tiến Dũng Operations lead 12 months
Đinh Thọ Bình Commentator 12 months
Nguyễn Anh Đoàn Operations 10 months
Mai Nguyễn Nhật Minh Operations 10 months
Trương Đình Lộc Operations 10 months
Lê Xuân Sơn Commentator 10 months
Vi Quang Thiện Commentator 10 months
Vũ Ngọc Phát Operations 8 months
Hoàng Thụy Thúy Hằng Operations 8 months
Nguyễn Hoàng Nam Commentator 10 months, suspended
Lê Văn Tuyên Commentator 10 months, suspended
Khiếu Hoàng Anh Commentator 10 months, suspended

All 14 defendants reportedly admitted the charges and cooperated with the authorities. According to investigators, Bún Chả TV streamed more than 150,000 sports matches and it allegedly made more than 20 billion dong, roughly $760,000, in illegal profits from betting and gambling ads.

The defendants in court (photo: Công an Bắc Ninh)

trial vietnam

The verdict reports don’t mention a total. Instead, they list illegal gains per person or team. The leader of the content team allegedly gained more than 430 million dong, while commentators made from more than 31 million to more than 480 million dong each.

‘Strong’ Penalties

The verdict was picked up by Rouse, the law firm that represents the Motion Picture Association in Vietnam. In an article headlined “Strong Vietnam criminal penalties,” published on Lexology on November 3, the firm calls the ruling another victory for Vietnam’s IP landscape.

“The defendants were all sentenced to terms of 8-12 months in prison,” Rouse writes.

From Rouse’s article

lexology rouse's article

While Rouse is correct on the length of the terms, it doesn’t mention that three of the sentences were suspended. Instead, Rouse stresses that the ruling is part of a tougher enforcement trend.

“This ruling reflects a shift in enforcement strategy by Vietnamese authorities, who are increasingly moving past preliminary domain blocking to deliver criminal convictions against the operators of commercial-scale piracy rings,” the firm notes.

“This perhaps reflects the strength of the national crackdown following the USTR pressure in May,” the firm adds.

Organizer Not on Trial?

The 14 defendants worked on the site, but according to the indictment reported by VTC News, the operation was directed by Bùi Bá Hiến, who manages and runs a company called S24. Hiến allegedly instructed employees and hired collaborators to build and run Bún Chả TV.

Hiến is not among the 14 defendants named in the reports, as far as we can see. The reports don’t name any of the impacted rightsholders either.

Interestingly, in September, Bac Ninh police issued a wanted notice for a man of the same name, Bùi Bá Hiến, CEO of esports company Box Vietnam. This person is also charged under the same copyright statute.

Police said this man fled on May 13, two days before the Bún Chả TV raids, but none of the reports we’ve seen confirm that this esports executive is the same person that’s named in the Bún Chả TV indictment.

The USTR has until November 29 to make its Section 301 determination, although it can extend the investigation by three months if needed. On paper, Vietnamese law allows for sentences up to three years for copyright infringement. Whether the 8-12 month sentences are what Washington had in mind when it called for more deterrent punishments has yet to be seen.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

08:00 PM

9-Point Book Sales Checklist for the Holidays [The Business of Printing Books]

9-Point Book Sales Checklist for the Holidays

Wondering how to get more sales of your book this holiday? Now (before people start shopping) is the time to start thinking about how you can take advantage of this unique shopping season.

Like all entrepreneurs, you’re likely selling the majority of your books online. That’s a trend that is going to continue to grow. Reports from last year show that more than half of consumers are doing the majority of their shopping online.

Your book marketing strategy needs to kick into high gear for the holiday season. With an extra emphasis on your target audience and seasonal book sales, this 9-point plan will help you focus and prepare.


Understanding Seasonal Buying as an Author or Entrepreneur

The holiday retail season begins in late October, crescendos in November, and burns bright up to the end of December. But that trend is shifting, with some retailers already starting to promote holiday sales. A longer holiday season and the likely uptick in online sales mean lots of opportunities for you to sell your books to more readers! 

Since you’re selling directly to your audience, you’ve likely got a very good idea about what kinds of people buy your books. This is the core of your author sales strategy—to understand how to increase book sales during holidays, you have to understand your audience. 

Luckily, you’ve already earned some online book sales and started to learn who these buyers are. Seasonal buying for authors like you will focus on two major efforts:

  1. Reaching more readers
  2. Offering unique products

The first is more straightforward—people will be shopping anyway, so you’ll just reiterate whatever book promotion and marketing efforts you’ve already started. The second is a little more difficult. But your existing fans and followers want something new from you; items that make great gifts are ideal. Think about how you can give your best customers more of what they love to make sure you’ve got something they want to buy this year.

Preparing for Seasonal Holiday Book Sales

This 9-point guide to holiday book marketing strategies for authors focuses on the many technical aspects of publishing and selling books.

1. Test Your Site for Increased Traffic

Before the holidays kick off, take some time to review the technical aspects of your website. What that means is testing the site to be sure it runs fast with substantially more traffic. As you promote your books to fans through social media, paid advertising, and search, you’ll be increasing your organic reach. New customers will be discovering you, leading to an increased traffic load on your website.

The bottom line is that your site has to be working if you want readers to buy your books. Take the time to test every aspect of your site, including signing up for emails, clicking various pages, and completing a purchase.

2. Update Your Website

Your brand’s website is the most important hub for you and your holiday sales. Take some time to review your site and make sure it’s up-to-date and working well! 

If you’ve got a relatively small site (less than 500 total URLs), I recommend Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider. Not only does Screaming Frog have a cool name, but their tool will also analyze your site and provide a lot of valuable information.

Use that information to clean up your pages. That includes fixing broken links, updating your page Headings with the most relevant copy, adding holiday-related Calls to Action, improving site speed, and much more. 

Beyond improvements, you should plan how to promote your books during the holidays. That might mean a new homepage featuring your newest or most popular books. Place a button to make buying easy and prominent. 

Direct-to-Reader Book Sales

Use Lulu Direct to sell books on your Wix, Shopify, or WooCommerce website, with a Direct Buy Button, Direct Checkout link, or the Order Import tool.

Learn About Lulu Direct

3. Focus On Your Best Sales Channels

Where do you think most of your book sales online come from? Yes, you can easily count how many sales you’ve made through your site, but do you know how those shoppers found you? The most common channels for entrepreneurs tend to be:

  • Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok)
  • Search (Organic SEO-focused content)
  • Email (for your true fans and followers)
  • Paid Advertising (Search Ads, Print, Video, etc.)

Social media offers a lot of low-cost ways to connect with readers. Search is key if you’re a blogger and create SEO-friendly content. And of course, email is going to be huge if you have even a moderately sized subscriber list.

Paid advertising is mostly a strategy to boost sales on Amazon. We won’t get into it here, but you can learn more about paid advertising from Written Word Media. 

Unless you’ve got a team to help you out, you’ll likely need to focus most of your energy on just one of these channels. So pick the one you’re already seeing the best results from and amplify it!

Create Your Book

Learn how to prepare your print files, upload, create a cover, and publish on Lulu.

Start My Project

4. Stock Up And Plan For Delays

There’s no doubt about it; there will be shipping delays. And since your book is print-on-demand, there could be production delays as well. Plan ahead. 

You should absolutely get a box of books to have on hand. With a stock of books ready to be shipped by you, you can offer faster shipping for shoppers who wait until the last minute.

For authors who use Lulu’s Bookstore or our Global Distribution service, you should consider adding some information from retailers to your marketing plan. The majority of retailers are already getting ahead of likely delays by sharing information and updates regularly. Use that to help you plan and give your own readers the information they need to shop this season and get their books promptly.

Holiday Production And Shipping Guide

Stay ahead of delays and production times by following our quick guide to holiday shipping readiness.

9-Point Book Sales Checklist for the Holidays

5. Special Holiday Products

Print-on-demand makes it simple to update and re-publish your work. For example, you could create a special holiday edition of your book (or books), including a unique message for readers or maybe a bonus short story. Or maybe flex some graphic design skills and offer a special cover for holiday shoppers.

You could create a holiday edition of your book, then include a custom bookmark, a card, or a thumb drive with audio or ebook access, or any other product that might interest your readers. Does the protagonist in your fictional series wear flamboyant scarves? Maybe you offer a bundle that includes one of that character’s scarves!

There really isn’t anything you can’t have custom-made right now, so thinking in terms of bundles or gift packages, particularly if you have dedicated fans, is a great idea.

6. Plan Around Discounts

Here’s the deal—if you sell on the Lulu Bookstore, you can offer your readers our best discount of the year during Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Subscribe to Lulu emails to stay up to date on our current discounts.

Or, if you’re selling from your own site, you can set up your own sales. The Black Friday/Cyber Monday period is still the best time to offer deep discounts, but any point in November is a good time for a sale. Just be sure to share the discount early and often so your readers know about the sale!

7. Create Holiday Assets

You need some eye-catching graphics. You’ll also need clear and direct holiday copy. These two elements make up your holiday marketing assets.

Work on consistent designs for your holiday email and social graphics. Draft blog posts and emails early so they can be revised and updated as needed. Your holiday social posts and emails should look a little different than a normal piece of content you might create, but your followers should still be able to tell it’s yours!

Don’t know where to get started with building your graphics? I recommend trying Canva or Adobe Express. Both platforms let you do basic graphic design with loads of free templates. 

8. Take Advantage of Your Resources

I spend a ton of time reading, watching, and listening to content about publishing. There is so much information out there; you need to take advantage of it. If you’re working this season to sell your book, you have to know a little about a lot of things. 

But you’ve also never had access to more (mostly free) resources than at any other time in history. Right? You can learn how to write, publish, market, and sell, all right from your computer. Check out our Free Resources for Creators and our Partners Page for pros ready to help you with all aspects of publishing.

9. Post-Holiday Retention

Not to disappoint you, but even if the sales rush dies down after Black Friday/Cyber Monday, your work continues. Okay, maybe take a few days off. 

But you don’t want to let all these new customers you just earned slip away! They’ve already contributed to your holiday book sales numbers and, in the process, gave you their valuable contact information. Even if only a few of your holiday customers become regular customers, it all adds up. 

A good strategy is to start sending emails to your new subscribers shortly after the new year begins. Plan to recycle or update your best social posts and blog content to entice these new followers to become fans. 

That’s the big and final takeaway from your holiday sales efforts. Those sales today are great, but the customers who keep coming back for more are the ones who sustain your business.

Get the Most From Your Book Sales

The fourth quarter is always a big one for every business and individual creator trying to sell a product. Seasonal sales are going to be upon us soon, and you’ve got to be ready if you want to capture some of those readers looking for books. 

The best advice is to start now. Stay ahead of potential delays and make sure your customers get their gifts in time for the holidays.

9-Point Book Sales Checklist for the Holidays

The power of sync [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

There’s an overlooked power tool right in front of us. Every individual and organization can use it well, but rarely does. I could write a book on this, but here’s the post instead:

Synchronized work happens together, on a shared schedule, in real time.

Asynchronized work (my spellchecker says this isn’t a real word) happens on our schedule.

Phone calls are sync. Texts are async.

Network TV was sync. Youtube and Netflix are async.

Writing a screenplay is async. Making a movie from that screenplay is sync. Going to opening night is sync, watching it two months later online is async.

Writing a book is async. Publishing a book is sync. Reading it is async.

A staff meeting is sync. A memo is async.

Commercial air travel is sync. A private jet is async.

Each offers costs and advantages.

When I go to a live concert, it’s happening. For me, for the audience, for the act. If any of us is having a bad day, it detracts from the experience. But when it’s right and it’s real, magic ensues. It’s largely unrelated from the experience of listening to the same song streamed (async) or on the radio (a blend of the two).

I imagine that your energy levels and mood fluctuate during the day. When working on async projects, the smart path is to match your internal energy with the work to be done. Write blog posts when you’re on a post-swim high, pay bills when all you can manage is clerical work.

Organizations that don’t account for the cost of sync-meetings waste not just billions of dollars but the insight and energy of the people who might be able to contribute if the timing and approach were different.

Sync has three advantages:

  1. Energy multiplies. When someone is contributing, others seek to catch up. When someone has a good idea, others might work to top it. We have the chance to create an environment that multiplies the effort of all those involved.
  2. It can be more efficient. The donut shop can’t have the frosting person frost whenever it’s convenient. They have to frost right after the donuts come out of the fryer. Many processes depend on the right people being in the right place at the right time.

    One form of this efficiency is that the contributor can see, in real time, how the recipient responds and act accordingly.
  3. It offers command, control and (one kind of) inspection.

But it has costs and risks:

  1. Energy also spirals down. When a team member is emotionally disconnected or physically absent, the entire interaction can suffer.
  2. It can less efficient. There’s less room for slack and resilience, and assembling the right people at the right time comes at a premium. There’s a lot of sitting around on a movie set.
  3. It doesn’t usually match the needs of the worker or the market.
  4. It makes it difficult to be intentional and clear about the details of the work or the arc of the project.

The implications are everywhere we look, and the status quo works to maintain its sync or async status.

Media companies that are in love with whatever sync/async built their organization often flounder when the media consumption axis flips. The only reason Amazon and Netflix exist is that their sync predecessors couldn’t figure out how to deal with an async relationship with the customer. And now that Netflix has a huge advantage, they’re timid about shifting some of the content to a sync model that would create more buzz… and Amazon has failed to capture the real-time shopping experience that’s so common online in China.

When we were forced to work from home six years ago, offices freaked out. Some embraced the async magic it offered, while many bosses were at a loss on how to manage people they couldn’t see in real time.

One reason is that employees had been indoctrinated in the idea that work was what you did when someone was watching. If you were ‘working’ from home, it was okay to also do errands and a workout, because without a hall monitor, you were off the clock.

On the other hand, some used the freedom the way a productive writer does. Without the distractions of real-time sync, there was plenty of time to get some actual work done.

Once you see it, all sorts of new insights come to mind:

The handoffs. Much of the leverage and the friction in our modern world lives at the points where work switches modes. A deadline, for example, is a sync point imposed on async work.

Who owns the clock? Sync is more than a scheduling choice, it’s also a display of power. The person who calls the meeting has already decided to spend everyone else’s time. Bosses call meetings; the employee sends a memo.

Async moves power from the coordinator to the creator.

Flips are opportunities. Why are college applications async, while job interviews are sync? Kickstarter turned product launches async, and Ted Turner turned news into something that broke.

Fake async. Over time, async creeps toward sync. It’s ironic that Slack messages, texts and email which succeeded because they were async, now create an expectation of real-time response. These are async tools used with sync expectations, so you get the interruptions of sync without its energy.

Name it. Protect your work style and the expectations for what you deliver. Organizations can be more mindful of the cost of sync, and creators can properly price their effort for each kind of work. There’s a reason it costs a million dollars to have Bob Dylan sing at your birthday party.

Sync creates cultural side effects. When everyone at the watercooler is talking about the same thing, cultural cohesion follows. When Netflix moved to binge viewing, they used their capital advantage to make it very hard for others to keep up by producing enough shows. But by sticking with this moat, they’ve diminished word of mouth. Far more people talked about Nathan Fielder’s movie during launch week than ever talked about his streaming show.

AI is currently async. An agent never needs a meeting and works at 3 a.m., so humans become the sync bottleneck. But as its power increases, expect AI to be a partner in most sync events.

Trust is built in sync and spent in async. Async works better between people who already know each other. New teams, new hires, and new customer relationships may need sync at first. The alternative is to build systems that are async by nature, enabling new participants to earn trust in powerful new ways. Online reputation systems and thoughtful online communities are getting better at this.

Here are three simple axioms to start the process with:

  1. Don’t make something synchronized unless it delivers valuable advantages over work done asynchronously. Show your work and defend your choice.
  2. When you’re doing async work, match it to your internal chemistry. Get more done, but in a different order than it’s assigned.
  3. Pay attention to the shifts from one to another. That’s where opportunities and pitfalls lie.
      

Kanji of the Day: 重 [Kanji of the Day]

重

✍9

小3

heavy, important, esteem, respect, heap up, pile up, nest of boxes, -fold

ジュウ　チョウ

え　おも.い　おも.り　おも.なう　かさ.ねる　かさ.なる　おも

重要   (じゅうよう)   —   important
三重   (さんじゅう)   —   triple
体重   (たいじゅう)   —   weight
重視   (じゅうし)   —   regarding as important
重い   (おもい)   —   heavy
貴重   (きちょう)   —   precious
慎重   (しんちょう)   —   careful
重ね着   (かさねぎ)   —   layering (clothing)
重ね   (かさね)   —   pile
重さ   (おもさ)   —   weight

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 擦 [Kanji of the Day]

擦

✍17

中学

grate, rub, scratch, scrape, chafe, scour

サツ

す.る　す.れる　-ず.れ　こす.る　こす.れる

摩擦   (まさつ)   —   friction
擦り   (かすり)   —   grazing
擦り傷   (かすりきず)   —   scratch
貿易摩擦   (ぼうえきまさつ)   —   trade friction
擦る   (かする)   —   to graze (e.g., bullet)
擦れる   (かすれる)   —   to get blurred
日米貿易摩擦   (にちべいぼうえきまさつ)   —   Japan-US trade friction
擦れ違う   (すれちがう)   —   to pass (by) each other
摩擦熱   (まさつねつ)   —   frictional heat
頬擦り   (ほおずり)   —   rubbing cheeks together (as a display of affection)

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

StepBy で集める街の点字ブロック情報 〜 Code for Okayama Meetup #1 〜 [OpenStreetMap Japan]

視覚障がい者向け地図情報投稿アプリ「StepBy」を使った、まち歩き・情報収集ワークショップを岡山駅周辺で開催します。 StepByは、点字ブロックのある道を実際に歩いてその位置を記録したり、音響信号機や歩道橋の入口など、視覚障がい者の移動に役立つ情報を写真や説明とともに投稿したりできるWebアプリです。 当日は、StepBy開発者からアプリの開発背景や使い方を紹介した後、グループに分かれて岡山駅周辺を歩き、点字ブロックをはじめとする歩行支援情報を収集します。その後、会場に戻って集めた情報を確認・整理し、OpenStreetMapへの情報の反映にも取り組みます。 単に地図データを増やすだけでなく、普段とは少し違った視点でまちを歩き、視覚障がいのある方の移動という観点から地域を見直すことも、このイベントの目的です。 StepByやOpenStreetMapを使ったことがない方にも、最

GIMP 3.2.8 Released [GIMP]

We’re glad to announce the release of GIMP 3.2.8! This new stable release contains a number of bugfixes and security updates from new and long-time contributors.

This news posts provides an overview of the changes since GIMP 3.2.6. For a more detailed review, check out the NEWS changelog.

Wilber-o'-Lantern
Wilber-o’-Lantern, CC BY-SA 4.0, October 31st, 2026

General Updates and UX Improvements⁠

The Add Border filter now allows you to create semi-transparent borders based on the color you choose in the filter.

Jehan fixed a bug introduced in GIMP 3.2.6 when we added better support for cutting/copying from layer groups. Non-rectangular selections on layers within a layer group will now be copied over correctly.

Bruno Lopes corrected an issue where the cursor coordinates did not always update in the status bar when changing between different applications.

denzjos helped us identify a bug with the Levels tool where picking input levels with the Color Picker tool would report incorrect values when working with non-destructive filters. Jehan then developed a fix for it.

Harsh Verma has implemented a new GUI testing suite in GIMP so we can better check for regressions in the GUI during development. He is preparing a news post that will go over this in more detail, which we will share soon!

Jehan improved our font-loading code so that it can be cancelled early (for instance, when quitting GIMP while the fonts are still loading). This should speed up our shut-down times.

Bruno Lopes made improvements to some dialogs so they appear on the correct screen for users with multiple monitors. In addition, the Dot to Dot setting now works again. It was reporting wrong pixel density since GIMP 3.0.

Jacob Boerema backported some fixes for the Metadata Editor and Viewer feature, as part of his larger work in the development branch.

Alx Sa and Bruno Lopes added more definitions to our theme file so that GIMP looks the same on each platform.

Highlighting New Contributor’s Work⁠

All contributions to GIMP from the community are valued! We want to highlight work from some of the newer contributors here.

Infinity made several improvements to our text tool for this release! In particular, they improved text cursor movement when editing Right-to-Left languages and mitigated issues when editing text with negative kerning.
As a side effect of this bug fix, we actually get much better support of RTL text as well as of mix of LTR and RTL texts. The on-canvas dialog now has two new icons for text directions, and the tool automatically detects your base text direction, as defined by rule P2 of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, unless you manually override by clicking one of the buttons.

Showcasing improved support for RTL text - GIMP 3.2.8

Aruius improved our color picking display GUIs, so you see more minor changes in colors when editing.

Chiem Whua Ma helped resolve an issue on Windows where the UI would appear to freeze when moving the canvas after opening multiple images at once. They also fixed a bug where vector layers would be offset incorrect after the canvas was resized.

Manu Cornet has focused on several performance fixes for GIMP. For this release, they improved caching when drawing gradients larger than 6000 x 6000 pixels. They also made the “marching ants” display for selections run more efficiently. Additionally, they improved how channels are displayed in the Channel dock when a dark theme is set. Finally they sped up the display time for the Preferences dialog.

balooii made several fixes as well. For instance, they updated our external copy and paste code to also pass along the DPI settings for the image; this means that other software can properly rescale what you paste if they have a different setting that what you used in GIMP. They also made our Debug dialog themeable and translatable (though we hope you don’t get the opportunity to see their work in this area!)

MrYoranimo fixed an oversight in our raw data import plug-in, where images were not loaded as binary data on Windows. This is a bit technical, but it meant that some raw data might not be interpreted correctly. Their fix ensures that the data is loaded consistently on Windows as it has been on other platforms.

Dimitriy Ryazantcev has continued their work on Windows icon and animated cursors. In this release, they have updated our loading code to match how Windows orders and groups icons in the file.

abderraouf updated our HEIF loading code to allow for loading larger images.

Chomu updated our menu code to allow plug-in and script developers to add submenus in named menu sections. For instance the following code will add a submenu Custom/ below other Paste as actions and your new plug-in action in it:

gimp_procedure_add_menu_path (procedure, "<Image>/File/[Paste as]/Custom");

Also gimp_plug_in_add_menu_branch() has been deprecated (though it was already not working properly anyway so we expect nobody was using it).

System-specific Updates⁠

Bruno Lopes continues their work to improve GIMP’s integration on different platforms. To name a few updates:

  • On macOS 27+, title bars are displayed with background colors again. Icons on the menu bar should also appear accordingly. Since the release of Golden Gate, these were being rendered transparently due to breaking changes on the macOS side.

  • On macOS 14+, we now use the ScreenCaptureKit API for taking screenshots.

  • On Intel-based macOS, GIMP should run without warnings from GateKeeper thanks to us now consistently notarizing Python.

  • We now display a 1/0 value for switches on macOS based on the “Differentiate without color” setting.

  • Transparency is retained when copying an image from certain apps to GIMP, instead of it showing as black.

  • The longstanding “Blank UI” bug that happened on startup for certain macOS computers should be finally fixed!

  • Print Preview (aka Image Settings tab) should now work with the Windows 11 Unified Print Dialog on that platform. In addition, Page Setup should now use the correct printer, not just the default one on Windows.

  • On Windows, “Merged title bar” settings now play nicer with system features such as minimizing from the task bar and title bar shadowing effets.

  • The Screenshot feature now works better on HDR displays on Windows.

  • AppImage compatibility was improved to support installing Python Wheels from pip like Flatpak and Snap. Note, however, that our minimum version for 3.2 continues to be a distro released after Debian 13 (Trixie).

Security Updates⁠

As many free and open source software projects can attest, we have continued to receive a large quantity of security reports due to recent advances in software scanning and testing programs. Jacob Boerema and Alx Sa along with new contributors Mike Gorse, Dirk Müller, and Alynx Zhou have proactively responded to and patched these reported issues when applicable.

We take security seriously, but this is not quite as scary as it first sounds. There are no personal accounts or banking information to exploit since we of course don’t access or store that information! The most common report that we get is our older image plug-ins and legacy filters are too trusting of the image size information provided by the image file, and if you intentionally alter this information, you could cause the plug-in (not GIMP itself) to crash.

Around GIMP⁠

Documentation for resource makers⁠

Bruno Lopes wrote two new tutorials on developer.gimp.org:

These articles should help plug-in and script developers who want to make their plug-ins translatable, either by themselves or by members of the community. This will be especially helpful as we make progress on creating an built-in Extension repo for easily downloading and installing plug-ins, filters, and more. (More information on that coming soon!)

New Mirrors⁠

Randhost, in Portugal, and ZEROLAG, in Romania, have graciously offered to serve mirrors for GIMP downloads.

Mirrors help GIMP be available for download at high speeds wherever you are in the world.

Does your organization wish to be one of our official mirror sponsors? Create a request to become an official mirror!

Release Stats⁠

Since GIMP 3.2.6, in the main GIMP repository:

  • 82 reports were closed as FIXED.
  • 46 merge requests were merged.
  • 300 commits were pushed.
  • 11 translations were updated: Chinese (China), Dutch, Georgian, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.

27 people contributed changes or fixes to GIMP 3.2.8 codebase (order is determined by number of commits; some people are in several groups):

  • 10 developers to core code: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Alx Sa, Harsh Verma, Manu Cornet, Chiem Whua Ma, balooii balooii, infinity, Chomu, aruius.
  • 11 developers to plug-ins or modules: Alx Sa, Bruno Lopes, Jacob Boerema, Dimitriy Ryazantcev, Alynx Zhou, Dirk Müller, Harsh Verma, Jehan, Mike Gorse, MrYoranimo, phoinix.
  • 11 translators: Anders Jonsson, Dick Groskamp, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Martin, luming zh, Aurimas Aurimas Černius, Baurzhan Muftakhidinov, Ekaterine Papava, Kjartan Maraas, Yuri Chornoivan, Emin Tufan Çetin.
  • 1 theme designers: Alx Sa.
  • 4 build, packaging or CI contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Harsh Verma, Alx Sa.
  • 2 contributors on other types of resources: Jehan, Bruno Lopes.

Contributions on other repositories in the GIMPverse (order is determined by number of commits):

  • The gimp-test-images (unit testing repository) repository had 2 commits by 1 contributors: Jacob Boerema.
  • The flatpak release had 12 commits by 2 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan.
  • Our main website (what you are reading right now) had 65 commits by 3 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Alx Sa.
  • Our developer website had 56 commits by 5 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Harsh Verma, Alx Sa, Denis Rangelov.
  • Our 3.0 documentation had 197 commits by 8 contributors: Jacob Boerema, Dick Groskamp, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Anders Jonsson, Marco Ciampa, Jehan, Balázs Úr, Yuri Chornoivan.

Let’s not forget to thank all the people who help us triaging in Gitlab, report bugs and discuss possible improvements with us. Our community is deeply thankful as well to the internet warriors who manage our various discussion channels or social network accounts such as Ville Pätsi, Liam Quin, Michael Schumacher and Sevenix!

Note: considering the number of parts in GIMP and around, and how we get statistics through git scripting, errors may slip inside these stats. Feel free to tell us if we missed or mis-categorized some contributors or contributions.

Downloading GIMP 3.2.8⁠

You will find all our official builds on GIMP official website (gimp.org):

  • Linux AppImages for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
  • Linux Flatpaks for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
  • Linux Snaps for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
  • Universal Windows installer for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Store for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
  • macOS DMG packages for Intel/x86 and Apple/ARM hardware (64-bit)

Other packages made by third-parties are obviously expected to follow (Linux or *BSD distributions’ packages, etc).

What’s Next⁠

While we’ve been making periodic updates to the stable GIMP 3.2 branch, we’ve also been hard at work on developing the next version of GIMP. There’s a lot of cool things in progress, and we look forward to sharing more about that with you all soon!

Don’t forget you can donate and personally fund GIMP developers, as a way to give back and accelerate the development of GIMP. Community commitment helps the project to grow stronger!

07:00 PM

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 29 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
Vineyards (AOC Languedoc-Cabrières) in autumn at the foot of the Pic de Vissou. Commune of Cabrières, Hérault, France.

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 31 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
MACS 2129-1 Galactic Graveyard: "This chillingly haunted galaxy mysteriously stopped making stars only a few billion years after the Big Bang! It became a cosmic cemetery, illuminated by the red glow of decaying stars. Dare to enter, and you might encounter the frightening corpses of exoplanets or the final death throes of once-mighty stars." NASA Exoplanet Exploration Halloween poster 2020.

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for November 3 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
Orange-lined triggerfish (Balistapus undulatus), Red Sea, Egypt. This demersal triggerfish has a maximum body size of about 30 centimetres (12 in) and is found across the Indo-western Pacific East Africa, Red Sea and Japan, typically in coral reefs ecosystems, coral lagoons, and external reef slopes within this area. Within coral reefs, the orange-lined triggerfish are more versatile than other triggerfish species and can be found at depths up to 50 metres (160 ft), although studies have found that they prefer depths of 2 to 8 metres (6 ft 7 in to 26 ft 3 in). It's an omnivorous feeder that can, because of its strong and heavy teeth, tackle a variety of benthic prey like cnidarians, molluscs, ctenophores, crustaceans, other fish, algae, and echinoderms. This species in particular, given its broad diet and distribution, is a crucial component in coral reef ecosystems through top-down control and especially through consumption of sea-urchin.

05:00 PM

7th Measles Death Of The Year Recorded In New York State [Techdirt]

It’s very gross for this to be any sort of “I told you so” opening to this post, but the measles outbreak in America continues to get worse, as predicted. While last years case counts and deaths from the disease, which had been vaccinated to the point of eradication back in 2000, were a record-breaking shitshow, 2026’s case and death counts have already outpaced it significantly. There are more than double the total cases of measles already compared with last year, and triple as many deaths. Through it all, RFK Jr. and his HHS agency have battled the outbreak through inaction and obfuscation of data.

The worst of the outbreaks has been in Pennsylvania this year. Unfortunately, highly infectious diseases don’t respect state borders. Measles is already spilling out into neighboring states. Weeks ago, New York State declared a state of emergency due to measles infections. And, now, the state has sadly reported its first fatality from measles.

It’s the first known measles-associated death in the state in over 30 years, health officials said.

“We are deeply saddened by the death of a child in Lewis County associated with the ongoing measles outbreak,” the New York State Department of Health and Lewis County Public Health said in a joint statement on Monday. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to the child’s family and loved ones and ask that their privacy be respected during this difficult time.”

No additional information on the case was released.

We don’t have any more information on the specific case or victim beyond that. But we do know that it was another child that died. Children have represented the overwhelming percentage of case counts and fatalities thus far. We also know that this death needn’t have happened. Until RFK Jr. got into government, America had not had a measles fatality recorded in decades. Through vaccination programs and the resulting herd immunity, even those medically unable to get vaccinated against measles were protected. The anti-vaxxer movement undid all of that, of course, and the avatar for that movement is Kennedy.

A major concern among health professionals right now is measles cases occurring during pregnancy, given how dangerous it can be for both the person pregnant and the fetus upon birth. The CDC reportedly wanted to issue an informational alert to health professionals about the dangers of such cases and how to handle them. Unfortunately, it seems the powers running those government health agencies would prefer to hide that information from the public.

Days before the seventh preventable measles death, The Washington Post reported on Kennedy’s latest push to thwart public health efforts: Career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which is under Kennedy’s control—were blocked from publishing an urgent health alert to clinicians regarding the risk and management of measles cases during pregnancy.

Given the previous success of vaccines and vaccination campaigns, many clinicians have never seen such cases in their careers. But measles infections during pregnancy pose severe, life-threatening risks to both pregnant people and fetuses. As such, CDC scientists wanted to issue an informational advisory through the CDC’s Health Alert Network.

But the CDC Director’s Office declined to provide the required approval for the alert, sources told the Post. The scientists have since moved to trying to publish the information in the CDC’s publication, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). But the peer-review process for the publication is longer than that of an advisory. Further, vaccine-related studies already approved for publication in MMWR have been suspiciously delayed, the Post reported.

Here again we see sociopathic behavior from Kennedy and its detrimental impact on the health of Americans. Kennedy doesn’t want government studies on vaccine related information because, obviously, those studies don’t align with Kennedy’s preferred conspiracy theories about vaccines. Likewise, he doesn’t want alerts going out to medical professionals about measles during pregnancy because either they put the lie to Kennedy’s claim that he has this whole measles thing under control, because the advice given in those alerts would be to encourage more vaccination, or both.

There is no explanation for why informational alerts about an ongoing health crisis that were otherwise approved for publication should be blocked by someone with no medical degrees or background. This is hiding information from the public, and from doctors. It’s evil.

People are getting sick and dying, most of them children. That Kennedy is prioritizing his own ego and pet projects over those lives isn’t surprising, but it is horrifying. And it must be stopped.

02:00 PM

Rewriting Copyright Law For Generative AI Would Hurt Everyone [Techdirt]

In courts across the country, publishers and creators are suing large AI companies for training generative AI models on copyrighted works. It’s easy to see these cases as a David-and-Goliath showdown between authors and publishers fighting for a cut of Big Tech company profits. But this fight is actually much larger. It affects billions of people who aren’t represented in the case at all, including researchers, artists, activists, journalists, people with disabilities, and anyone who accesses and shares content online.   

That’s why EFF is stepping in to defend the public’s rights in these cases. Last week, EFF filed an amicus brief in In re OpenAI, explaining how the court’s ruling on fair use could impact people worldwide. If fair use gets narrowed, it will impede work that benefits the public, like medical research and investigative journalism, and even limit access to privacy protection tools.

Let’s be clear: creators and workers deserve support as AI changes their fields, and Big Tech companies must be held accountable for the harms they cause. But giving copyright holders more control over the web won’t accomplish either of these goals. If the plaintiffs prevail in these cases, courts would have to rewrite copyright law in ways that hurt everyone except powerful media and tech companies.

Rewriting Fair Use Makes Everyone Worse Off

Copyright exists for one reason: to stimulate creativity and innovation in service of the greater public good. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are arguing to limit everyone’s fair use rights, in ways that would thwart the basic purpose of copyright. The harms of shrinking fair use will go far beyond generative AI, impacting everyone.

Initial speculation that AI models would be infringement machines, churning out works highly similar to those on which they were trained, has proven unfounded. And courts have already found fair use in cases where copyrighted works were used to train generative AI models, recognizing that training uses those works for a fundamentally different purpose.

Plaintiffs in these cases argue that, even if the use is transformative, using their works to train AI is still unfair, because the AI models could generate new, non-infringing works that might compete with plaintiffs’ own works. They also argue that scraping or downloading the data without permission—or in some cases, from websites containing infringing copies—was independently infringing and/or rendered any subsequent uses of that data unfair.

These arguments would put beneficial research and reporting at risk. First, if copying without permission rules out fair use, the law will never protect transformative uses that benefit us all. Researchers, journalists, and other watchdog groups gather information the same way AI companies do—but they do it to serve the public interest, and often to hold Big Tech itself accountable. For example, journalists and nonprofit researchers have used “crawling” or “scraping” to investigate potentially anticompetitive practices by tech companies, and research misinformation and hateful content posted on X. Their data acquisition techniques are virtually identical to those used by AI giants—but they lack those companies’ deep pockets.

Requiring users to show that copyrighted material was lawfully obtained would also threaten everyday internet use. As EFF’s brief explained, that requirement would “cast legal doubt on the billions of copies we collectively make every day through routine online activities like opening emails, clicking on an embedded link, visiting websites, sharing pictures, streaming music, and watching videos. All of this activity requires intermediate copying.”

Fair use is what lets us all use the internet without being compelled to track the source of every image, video, and article that we click on, and make sure the rights are all cleared.

Additionally, while rightsholders are understandably concerned about competition from AI generated works, copyright law exists to promote new creation, not protect authors who published first. Under the plaintiffs’ theory, no one could stand upon the shoulders of giants. Copyright could prevent people from writing new books inspired by themes in a favorite novel or genre, or prevent academic researchers from publishing literature reviews that distill insights from prior research—simply because readers might prefer those new publications over those that came first.

Finally, general-purpose AI models are neither designed nor usually used to create works targeted at any particular market. These models have been used to generate new insights and tools for medicine, science, journalism, art, and accessibility. For instance, an AI-powered tool called Be My AI uses Open AI’s GPT models to provide visual descriptions for people who are blind or have low vision. Generative tools have also accelerated scientific research, and researchers have used these tools to develop new medical treatments and medications for conditions previously thought to be incurable.

Mandatory Licensing Would Entrench Big Tech

Some creators and publishers argue that AI developers should just get a license. But requiring permission for every work used would give the largest companies massive advantages over small competitors and impede academic research. As Professor Lawrence Lessig recently noted:

If all training requires a license, then none but a handful of tech giants will be able to afford the costs of training. That’s not because authors are greedy but because the copyright system is the least efficient property system known to man.

Moreover, creators are unlikely to benefit from these licensing arrangements in many cases. Media and entertainment giants have exploited the imbalance between themselves and underpaid working artists for decades. Trying to help creators by giving them more rights under copyright is, as Cory Doctorow has written, like trying to help a bullied kid by giving them more lunch money for the bully to take. Artists aren’t getting good deals from record labels or publishers now; there’s no reason to think these companies, which already own the copyrights, will treat artists more fairly once they control the data that powers AI.

The Future of AI Is Too Important to Leave to Big Content or Big Tech

AI technologies will affect all of us, and copyright law is ill-equipped to address many of these consequences. The rules governing these technologies should be rules that serve the public—not just the small number of companies that can afford to litigate copyright battles for decades, or settle for billions.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Techdirt Podcast Episode 454: The Metric Is Not The Mission [Techdirt]

For the past few weeks on Techdirt, we’ve been publishing The Metric Is Not The Mission, a ten-part series by internet governance and digital policy expert Konstantinos Komaitis which is now available as a single, complete paper. This week, Konstantinos joins the podcast to talk all about his argument in the paper and why it’s a necessary part of understanding big tech.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Ex-FBI Boss Sues Trump Administration Over Being Scapegoated For Failed Vindictive Prosecutions [Techdirt]

So, it’s come to this. The good ship USS Revenge Prosecution is sinking. And the deserting rats are deciding which rats should desert first, apparently based on nothing more than the current state of the organizational chart.

Two people figured heavily into the disastrous attempt to prosecute a handful of Chicago residents for engaging in protected First Amendment activity. The DOJ, urged on by the DHS and Trump himself, wanted to ring up hundreds of people on federal charges for engaging in anti-ICE protests. By the time the DOJ got things in front of a grand jury, the number of defendants had dwindled to… six.

They were the so-called “Broadview Six.” And while the DOJ — represented locally by US Attorney Andrew Boutros — thought it had secured a handful of wins via the grand jury sign-off on the charges, it only took an initial visit to federal court to find out how wrong it was.

Here’s what Boutros did to salvage what was left of his reputation when everything suddenly went disastrously sideways in from of federal judge April Perry:

Boutros announced the decision to dismiss the remaining charges in court following a closed-door meeting over redacted grand jury transcripts. He told U.S. District Judge April Perry he was unaware until recently of the alleged misconduct, including a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with the case being dismissed and prevented from participating. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the conduct was upsetting and the reason the case was being dismissed.

“Not good enough!” said the righteously outraged court, which demanded more answers from the DOJ, as well as raising the specter of sanctions if said answers weren’t acceptable:

Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made. I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.

And this was all over a handful of federal misdemeanor charges, after Boutros and his subordinates (1) did shady shit with a grand jury, and (2) couldn’t actually get anyone to bite on felony charges against the “Broadview Six.”

US Attorney Boutros still has his job, despite being this debacle’s ringleader. The person who has been permanently turfed — former special agent in charge of the Chicago field office, Douglas DePodesta — wasn’t actually involved in the failed prosecution. But he was the one who paid the price for this DOJ failure, as WBEZ Chicago reports:

When charges were dropped against the “Broadview Six” amid revelations of apparent prosecutorial misconduct, “Boutros began a campaign within the Department of Justice to blame DePodesta for the unraveling of the case.” Boutros’ complaints to superiors in Washington ultimately led to DePodesta’s ouster, the lawsuit says.

More succinctly put:

“I was forced to leave my job,” DePodesta said. “I was ordered to leave my job.”

DePodesta’s ouster is likely the result of a couple of things. First, Boutros desperately needed a patsy to take the hit on his behalf so he could continue his disservice to his office and his country. Second, DePodesta was a holdover from Christopher Wray’s stint as Trump’s FBI Director — an FBI director Trump only likes slightly more than James Comey.

The lawsuit [PDF] alleges that DePodesta’s rights (First, Fifth, and others) were violated by this forced resignation. It hopes to secure not only back pay and other damages, but also a formal statement from the Trump administration admitting to violating the former FBI SAIC’s rights.

Most likely, none of that will happen. But while it works its way to not happening, we can hope that it will result in a bunch of discovery that exposes more of the inner workings of Trump’s DOJ-enabled revenge operations.

But before we give DePodesta the ol’ “Comey is my homey” treatment, let’s not forget that he wasn’t exactly opposed to Trump’s anti-migrant/anti-civil rights overtures. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune shortly after his elevation to the top spot in the FBI’s Chicago office, DePodesta not only echoed a bunch of dumb fentanyl-related talking points, but also affirmed his loyalty to the Bigoted New World Order Trump sought to create by turning every federal law enforcement agency into little more than DHS deputies:

DePodesta said the Chicago FBI, which has more than 1,000 total employees, has partnered locally with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, embedding some of the FBI’s 450 agents on the street “helping them effect arrests.”

The targets, DePodesta said, “are people that have removal orders that have a criminal history — murderers, rapists,” adding that the effort was “ongoing” and had no timetable for a conclusion.

“It is not a surge; it is a sustained effort,” DePodesta said. He said no new agents have been added to fulfill the FBI’s role in immigration enforcement — instead, agents from other squads have rotated and worked overtime.

DePodesta was onboard with rerouting FBI resources to help with mass deportation efforts. His contribution here contributed to the events that led to the bullshit charges against anti-ICE protesters. And, until we see something in forthcoming documents that states otherwise, there’s little reason to believe DePodesta wasn’t, at best, just saying nothing as the DHS and ICE utilized shared resources to surveil protesters and use whatever they could find to generate criminal charges.

So, while DePodesta wasn’t involved at all with the extremely questionable prosecutions the DOJ engaged in here, he also doesn’t seem to have done much to keep himself or his direct employees from becoming the very tools of vengeful oppression he’s suing about now that he’s out of a job.

Again, some judgment can be withheld here because all the facts aren’t available. But I’m willing to bet that once they are made public (assuming the administration doesn’t just write a check to DePodesta and tell him to walk away from this), it will not only expose the DOJ’s complete subjugation, but will likely show DePodesta’s agreement to contribute to the mass deportation effort won’t see him emerge from this lawsuit as an anti-MAGA hero.

Daily Deal: Luminar Web & Mobile Bundle [Techdirt]

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Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Reddit Keeps Bricking Up The Open Web, One Login Wall At A Time [Techdirt]

While Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have tried to downplay Aaron Swartz’s role in “founding” Reddit, he was still an instrumental part of the company’s early journey. His “infogami” project was rolled into Reddit, and the founder credit was a part of the deal. Part of the point of infogami was to support open access to information — which was Swartz’s lifelong mission. The code behind infogami is considered instrumental in the launch of the Internet Archive’s Open Library.

So it’s a real shame that Reddit has been doing its best to hammer the final nails into the coffin of the open internet. The latest, of course, is Huffman announcing that Reddit is moving to a “logged-in-only” experience.

Reddit will start testing the login requirement in “select,” non-US markets in Q4. The company will use those tests to decide what a logged-in-only Reddit will look like “globally,” per Huffman.

“Pretty much all of the major ad-based platforms have gone through this transition. We are excited and moving quickly,” the CEO added, noting Reddit’s intent to become a “direct daily habit for every Internet user.”

Huffman admits that he’s doing this in part because traffic from Google had declined massively, which can be (understandably) blamed on Google’s AI summaries on search results.

“During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week. If this rate of decline continues, current trends would suggest that total DAUqs [or daily active unique users] could fall in Q4, by a low-double-digit percentage from our current base of 130 million DAUqs,” Huffman wrote.

People have long known that for certain searches on Google you got better results by adding “reddit” to the keywords you searched for, so that Reddit results got prioritized. At the time, people argued that this showed Reddit was becoming a “better search engine than Google,” and that the company had room to build on that and maybe even compete with Google.

It hasn’t really turned out that way. Over the last few years, Reddit and Huffman seem to be seeing how much of the open web they can cut off in pursuit of locking things into silos they can charge for. You may recall three years ago when Reddit cut off a bunch of third party developers (some of whom made it possible for subreddit mods to do their job) all in pursuit of a paid API with the belief that by locking down its tools, the company could profit off the content of its users (despite Reddit not holding the copyright on their content, and not sharing any of the money it would make back with the content creators).

Reddit signed a big $60 million/year API deal with Google, and that should have been seen as the beginning of the end. Now, instead of working on making its site better for users, Reddit was deep down the enshittification curve of making it worse for users to support its business partners who paid the bills. Last year we called out the company for its horrifyingly problematic lawsuit against SerpApi, in which it claimed that because SerpApi made Google search results available to third parties as an API, it violated the DMCA 1201’s anti-circumvention clause.

The whole thing made little sense, because it was difficult to see how Reddit could claim standing with a straight face. It was complaining about a service that operated on Google, not Reddit, that made it possible that others could find links to Reddit posts, with content from Reddit’s users (again, not Reddit’s own IP). That case is still ongoing, but it was yet another attack on the open internet by Reddit, as it seeks to wall off the openness in pursuit of a form of scarcity it can charge extra for.

And, certainly, part of this new effort is in the hopes that the more they lock up their own content, the more they may be able to cut licensing deals.

Cutting off logged-out visitors is just the latest step. In Huffman’s writeup, he admits that this is an anti-open internet move, which he claims is new to him:

And I don’t know about you, but as someone whose life has been defined by the open internet, it’s a big change for me. But I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the right decision for our platform and the right decision for our business.

But, again, Huffman has been moving squarely in this direction for the past three years, so I wouldn’t say it’s entirely accurate to say this is a “big change” for him.

Huffman and Reddit think this will lock more users into Reddit, but I would bet that long term it will do the opposite. Just as locking down the API to cut a deal with Google didn’t bring more traffic to Reddit itself, locking out logged-out readers seems likely to push people toward alternative sources of information rather than into Reddit’s silo. Huffman argues that logged in users are more profitable and valuable for the company, so is betting that this strategy will trade drive-by visitors for more valuable logged-in users, but I wouldn’t take that bet.

There is some extra irony here as well, given that when the Australian government began pushing its “under 16 social media ban” and included Reddit in the list of social media, we were told it wasn’t really a ban, because you could still enjoy Reddit without an account. You just couldn’t have an account if you were under 16. But now, if you don’t have an account, you’ll be much more limited in what you can access. There apparently will still be a front page that you can read without logging in, and they want to build some sort of “incognito” mode, but the site is clearly moving to a siloed logged-in experience.

It’s also why I’m concerned about efforts to require a license for all scraping, which is exactly the logic behind Reddit’s lawsuit. That would also be the death of the open internet. The more we wall off the internet to fight AI, the more we lose the wonders and value of an open internet. If people want to support a true open internet, where anyone can build, we’re going to have to figure out a better overall system than just putting up walls and saying everything must be licensed.

Meanwhile, I’m extremely biased on this, but I will note that ATproto Spaces has been in alpha for a couple months now and should be more widely available soon. And one thing it will enable developers to do is to create Reddit-like spaces on the open internet that no central entity can control. As the old web starts closing down, perhaps we can see the rise of a new open web, where the users are in control, rather than giant companies on the enshittification curve.

The U.S. Midterms Were Once Again Flooded By Fake ‘Pink Slime’ Local Newspaper Propaganda [Techdirt]

For more than a generation, U.S. media academics have warned anybody who’d listen that the death of your local newspaper and the steady consolidation of local TV broadcasters was creating either “news deserts,” or local news that’s mostly just low-quality infotainment and agitprop.

Despite claims that the “internet would fix this,” doing quality local journalism just wasn’t profitable enough for the dipsy brunchlords that fail upward into positions of prominence at most media companies, so the internet… didn’t. As a result, all sorts of terrible stuff has rushed to fill the vacuum where quality local journalism once existed.

That includes not just your usual collection of propaganda like Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Sinclair Broadcasting, etc., but also so-called “pink slime” fake local newspapers that try to look like a real local paper, but are basically just partisan agitprop.

Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University did the definitive study on the subject in 2022, and found that there were 1,200 bogus local news outlets around the country, all feeding gullible readers a steady diet of misleading bullshit. In the years since, such fake newspapers have outnumbered real ones. They’re often even better funded.

This partisan ratfuckery historically was heavily dominated by Republicans. But in recent years Democrats have gotten in on the action. And increasingly as voters turn to AI to inform them about upcoming elections, AI chatbots are leaning on these fake pink slime newspapers as reliable sources of local information:

“As a citation, ChatGPT linked to a website called the Kalamazoo Beacon. The Beacon labels its articles as “news articles” in the website’s source code. The outlet also describes itself in the site’s source code as “Reporting on Kalamazoo, southwest Michigan, and the issues shaping lakeshore communities.”

But the Kalamazoo Beacon has only published 16 stories, all about [Michigan Democrat Democrat Sean McCann], his policy positions and his record as a state legislator, NPR’s review shows.”

When the “both sides” press covers this pink slime phenomenon, they sometimes try to imply that this kind of stuff is happening perfectly symmetrically among both major parties (as this Financial Times story does). But NPR’s own previous reporting (which this newer piece curiously fails to mention) indicates that Republican pink slime efforts outnumber Democrats by around ten to one.

In this newer case, nobody can actually seem to track this new smattering of pink slime newspapers to an actual source:

“It’s unclear who operates the websites. NPR was unable to find or reach the site operators. One of the Democrats promoted by the network, JoAnna Mendoza of Arizona, said she wasn’t behind the websites and doesn’t know who is. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the House Democrats, denied involvement in a phone call with NPR. Other candidates the websites promoted, including McCann, as well as other Democratic super PACs that support the candidates, including American Bridge 21st Century, Tomorrow Together and House Majority PAC, did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.”

Regardless of the party of origin, the tactic represents a very ugly problem in a country increasingly being devoured by artifice and disinformation. There’s an active extraction class effort to not only undermine sources of expertise (journalism and academia), but to “flood the zone with shit” to disorient Americans (or their AI chatbots) that go hunting for reliable information.

The death of local news divides the public, can actively shift electoral outcomes, reduces electoral participation, makes a populace more susceptible to propaganda, and can even increase municipal borrowing costs (less local truth-to-power journalism means less oversight of waste, which results in more waste, which results in higher interest rates for municipal bond lenders).

Journalism ideally is the glue that contributes to a healthy civic nervous system. We’ve lost that tether, and therefore (quite intentionally) our sense of a collective, shared reality. You may have noticed a few… repercussions here and there.

There are ample paths out from inside the problem (better media literacy training, enforcing antitrust law, funding public media, restoring media consolidation and media diversity ownership requirements, creating better funding models for real journalism). And while there are organizations spending a lot of time working on the problem (see: the creation of state “civic information consortiums“) they’re consistently out-financed and in desperate need of additional support.

08:00 AM

The emotions of voting [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Futility: It might feel like it doesn’t matter.
Fear: Of choosing wrong, or doing it wrong.
Responsibility: It isn’t given, it’s taken. Which is why so many leave it on the table.
Possibility: Showing up to have your say could change things for the better.
Identity: This is what people like us do, it’s part of being in this community.
Defiance: Some would rather you stay home. Your vote is a limit on their plans.
Gratitude: For the people who came before, and for the ones who never had the chance.
Dignity: Because for a moment, everyone ought to have the same impact.
Solidarity: Standing with the others when they choose to stand with us.
Hope: This may be our best chance to make things better.

That’s a lot to dance with from one single action. I think it’s worth it.

      

Yes, But How Big a Blue Wave? A Guide To Tonight’s Crucial Midterm Results [The Status Kuo]

I’m writing today for The Big Picture about what I’ll be watching tonight, hour by hour and state by state, to gauge how big the Blue Wave really is.

The forecasters agree that Democrats are favored to take the House, and the Senate is within reach. But a narrow House majority and a 2018-style rout are very different outcomes, and the early returns can be confusing or even misleading. Some states count their rural Republican votes first, others post Democratic mail ballots first, and cable news will be breathless about all of it.

Don’t take the bait. I’ve put together a guide for the night: which polls close when, which states count fast and which will keep us waiting for days, and a handful of races and counties, from Kentucky and Florida to Ohio, Texas and Kansas, that will tell us early on whether the wave is modest, solid or historic. I’ll also share the one simple trick I’ll be using all evening to read the numbers without getting whiplash.

Look for my piece this afternoon if you’re a subscriber to The Big Picture. If you’re not, you can sign up for free or become a valued paid supporter of our work here: https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/subscribe

I’ll be back tomorrow with what I hope will be a victory edition of The Status Kuo.

Jay

07:00 AM

12:00 AM

Pluralistic: Separable (03 Nov 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links

  • Separable: AI makes us deal with paintings without painters, words without writers and mathematics without mathematicians.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: Haircase; There's no copyright policy; Sole and despotic dominion; Trump x fraud; Brexit requires an act of Parliament; Official Air Travel Replacement Knives; UK hospitals v malware.
  • Upcoming appearances: Kilkenny, Courtenay, Vancouver, Folkestone, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
  • 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.


A red-tinted black-and-white photo of a 1930s classroom whose chalkboard is covered with calculus work. The teacher and students have all been replaced with pulp sf magazine robots.

Separable (permalink)

Long before the Turing Test, there was the touring Edison Test: from 1915 to 1925, the scoundrel Thomas Edison put on a traveling show for his phonograph machine, touring venues around the USA. Edison set live performers and an Edison phonograph playing behind closed curtains that would be periodically pulled aside to reveal that the music the audience had taken to be live performance was actually a record player:

https://www.tomedison.org/blog/edisons-tone-tests

Now, if you've ever heard an Edison phonograph, this might seem like yet another tale in which old-timey people are revealed to be credulous yokels. You would never mistake one of those scratchy, hissing recordings for a live performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96gIIFmEjY4

And indeed you wouldn't, but not because the phonograph predates the evolution of the human brain's anti-credulity lobe. The reason old-timey people couldn't tell the difference between a phonograph and a live performance was that before the phonograph, every live performance had a performer.

The two were inseparable, and so when you encountered the sound of a musical performance, your brain would insist that there must be a performer as well. This is a well-understood principle in swindles, magic tricks and literature. It's the basis of Douglas Adams' towel gambit:

For some reason, if a strag discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc, etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost."

All persons heretofore encountered in possession of a towel had all that other stuff, so the mere presence of a towel evokes an overwhelming intuition that all that other stuff must be nearby.

Like every conjuring trick and every swindle, this cognitive illusion swiftly regresses to the mean. After a few exposures to phonographs, the manifest differences between live performance and recordings become impossible to miss, and you stop making that mistake.

If one thing always signifies the presence of another – if a towel always implies a backpack full of supplies or if a performance always implies a performer – there's no reason for you to entrain the neurological patterns needed to detect the performance without the performer. This doesn't mean that it's hard to develop the capacity to make this distinction, just that the ability to detect a phenomenon always post-dates your encounter with that phenomenon.

You've no doubt guessed by now that this is an analogy about AI. The implication of this ability to learn to discern differences after you encounter them (but not before) implies that a chatbot might pass the Turing Test at its introduction, but then come to fail the test after we've all had the experience with it that lets us tune our perceptions to spot the differences, which then become as unmissable as the needle hiss on a phonographic reproduction of a concert pianist.

This is an experience many of us have already had. Prior to chatbot-generated prose, we'd never had experience with writing that didn't have a writer. Prior to image-gen output, we'd never had experience with paintings that didn't have painters. At first, the output from these models was remarkable, and often indistinguishable from human-generated words and images. Even knowing that these works were extruded by an algorithm, it was hard to shake the conviction that they were the product of human creativity. These works were "eerie," in the sense that Mark Fisher uses, "the seeming of intent without an intender":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Just like the strag inferring the existence of "toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc, etc," we automatically imputed to these works both a creator and a creative impulse. We supposed that their words and brushstrokes represented aesthetic and technical choices emanating from human creators who meant something by them (or at least were so satisfied by the accident of their appearance on the page that they left them stand). These creators were figments of our imagination. No one is home inside the AI. The intentionality we imputed to these works was the actual "AI hallucination":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/21/sunsetting/#oh-mr-sun-sun-mr-golden-sun-please-shine-down-on-me

Just as important as the emergence of these hallucinations is their disappearance. For many of us, chatbots that used to pass the Turing Test now flunk it. The chatbots haven't gotten worse at impersonating humans, we've just gotten better at spotting the difference between a human and a bot, just as we got better at hearing the difference between a phonograph and a pianist.

Writing without a writer and paintings without a painter are new phenomena, and learning to separate the formerly inseparable is the first step in our societal metabolization of these novelties. Recordings of musical performance have a place in our world, and so do performers.

This separation process is currently underway in many disciplines, thanks to the extraordinary capital available to AI companies. These companies are incinerating that capital in a series of extremely flash demos that are intended to ensure that the supply of bales of $100 bills that they feed to their money furnaces ("data centers") never stops.

Lately, AI companies have made headlines with a series of mathematical accomplishments that left mathematicians in an uproar and non-mathematicians in a muddle. Obviously, while mathematicians are qualified to assess these accomplishments, the rest of us are not. Beyond simple arithmetic, most of us don't do a lot of math on a regular basis, and even those of us who have to deploy a little geometry or stats typically don't engage with math at a theoretical level.

To make things worse, math – like physics – is a crank-magnet. These highly abstract, closed systems rely on introspection to advance the field, and some of those advances have been contributed by untrained laity, so it can be hard to know if your amazing idea about physics or mathematics represents an outsider's breakthrough or an amateurish cul-de-sac.

Every mathematician and physicist I know receives a steady stream of breathless, over-the-transom "proofs" that solve some long-standing problem in the field, and none of these experts in my orbit has ever found a breakthrough in this material. It's a rare expert who will even respond to these unsolicited manuscripts. That's not their job. As Teresa Nielsen Hayden says, "You are not responsible for the things you do in other people's dreams."

Unfortunately, this is a situation that is perfectly suited to AI. If you've introspected your way into a mathematical "breakthrough" that no mathematician will discuss with you, you can avail yourself of any number of chatbots who will assure you that you've broken exciting new theoretical ground, and these chatbots will even act as "research collaborators," contributing more slop-physics or slop-math to your conclusions.

Again, as far as I know, no one has actually made a breakthrough this way, and the major impact on the field from giving chatbots to excitable outsiders has been to make the unsolicited manuscripts much longer, with the veneer of professionalism that means an expert might have to give them a second or even third glance to realize that they're nonsense.

But some working mathematicians have found chatbots to be extremely useful "collaborators." The most prominent of these is Terrence Tao, a Macarthur-winning mathematician who has excited many mathematicians and lay-people alike by publishing his chat-logs and the resulting mathematical work:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/28/hitl-ers/#ai-ai-oh

One way to understand Tao is as a "centaur," the automation theory term for a worker who is assisted by a machine. For all that Tao describes Chatgpt as his collaborator, it's clear from reading the chat-logs that it's Tao who drives the research agenda. He sets the questions and the direction of the answers. Chatgpt doesn't give him orders – it's the other way around.

But for every problem Tao and Chatgpt solve together there are several mathematical problems that are being solved by chatbots without that kind of human collaboration. In particular, Openai has released a tsunami of "solutions" to longstanding mathematical problems, including some that carry large cash bounties and others that were posed by legends of the field, like Erdos.

This is mathematics without a mathematician, and – as with all the other separations cleft by the AI companies – it's proving difficult to metabolize. Back in September, Fenner Stanley Tanswell published an opinion piece for the Mathematical Intelligencer entitled "The Enshittification of Mathematics" that tried to do just that:

https://rdcu.be/5uYGc2uo454a

Tanswell distinguishes between mathematics as a discipline practiced by mathematicians and the proofs and theorems that those mathematicians produce. He makes the point that when a mathematician finds the answer to some longstanding mathematical puzzle, they do so by creating "scaffolding" that bridges the new insight with the existing commons of mathematical understanding. The thing that makes a "solution" so exciting isn't that a problem has been solved – it's that the method for solving that problem prompts a cascading reconsideration of many other areas of mathematics, prompting shifts to large areas of the discipline.

This point is made even more forcefully by Giordano Scarciotti, a complex systems researcher at Imperial College London and science communicator who vlogs under the Youtube handle "Prof Gio." Scarciotti's most successful video to date is "You Truly Don't Understand What Just Happened to Mathematics," published last month:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqiDqJMxg6o

"You Truly Don't Understand…" makes a similar point to Tanswell's, using a thought experiment in which we wake up one day and discover an American flag on the surface of Mars. Without knowing how that flag got to Mars, the mere fact of its existence doesn't help us get any closer to an actual Mars mission.

The output of mathematical models is a series of faits accomplis, often accomplished through brute-force, or sometimes through opaque methods that lack the "scaffolding" that bridges these outcomes into the broader field of mathematics. Scarciotti cites Euler's work on the longstanding "Seven Bridges of Königsberg" problem, which asked whether it was possible to go on a walking tour of Königsberg such that you crossed each of the city's seven bridges only once:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg

The point of that problem (and Euler's solution to it) wasn't to produce a set of Mapquest directions for a walking tour of Königsberg. In solving the Seven Bridges problem, Euler invented graph theory, an important area of mathematics that is routinely used today for many important applications, including computer networking. You can thank graph theory for helping to route the packets that brought these very words to you.

So far, we've figured out how to get a model to either rule out the possibility of taking that each-bridge-only-once walk or to give us the route map. What this computer-generated "mathematics" is not doing is advancing the field.

Tanswell points out that a world in which chatbots "solve" these problems is one where the role of mathematicians is reduced to being reverse centaurs, assistants to the machine whose job is to clean up after the chatbot's research agenda. But there's nothing about knowing that there's no route map for a seven-bridge walking tour that makes it easier to invent graph theory, and a mathematician might spend years working on the computer's "answer" to that problem only to conclude that the computer's solution didn't add any theoretical insight to the field.

In other words, in a world where mathematicians and mathematics are inseparable, every solution to a longstanding problem heralds an accompanying theoretical insight. Once we separate mathematics from mathematicians, we start to get solutions without insights. These are a lot less interesting than the kinds of solutions that mathematicians come up with.

This is a distinction the AI companies really don't want us to dwell on. We're meant to marvel at these very expensively derived solutions and conclude that the AI companies can be forgiven for spending $1T this year, even if they only grossed $50B in return.

But (as Scarciotti notes), there are real-world consequences in our failure to grasp this distinction: if we convince early-career mathematicians and promising mathematics students that the world no longer needs mathematicians because "the AI can do their jobs," then we will choke off the supply of future mathematicians who we'll either need to work in a Terrence Tao-like, centaurish relationship with chatbots (good), or even to serve as reverse centaurs, marking the chatbots' homework to see if there are any theoretical insights to be found in it (bad).

This is one of the underappreciated consequences of AI mania. AI bosses are particularly interested in convincing us that AI can do the job of skilled professionals in fields where there is a chronic undersupply of experts, like radiology. A chatbot that helps a (centaur) radiologist by suggesting that they double-check some of their results might indeed save lives. But a chatbot that produces thousands of radiology reports for a single (reverse centaur) radiologist to approve at a velocity that precludes careful scrutiny is going to kill people.

Centaur radiology requires more radiologists, not fewer. A centaur radiologist processes fewer X-rays (because sometimes the chatbot tells them to double-check a diagnosis) than an unassisted radiologist. LLM-assisted radiology improves quality, not quantity.

That's not what AI companies are selling. An AI company can't turn a profit by raising the cost of radiology (even if that improves the quality of radiological analyses). So the firehose of announcements from AI companies is always about putting radiologists out on the breadline – not about needing more radiologists, who will get a new radiology tool that helps them work better, if a little more slowly.

The pronouncements of AI companies aren't just marketing hype, they're attempts at self-fulfilling prophecy. If you convince all the would-be radiologists that the profession is about to be vaporized by chatbots, those people will not study radiology, and then we will need to retask the dwindling supply of human radiologists to marking the chatbots' homework and hoping that they don't kill too many people by missing the chatbots' mistakes.

That's the catastrophic outcome that both Scarciotti and Tanswell warn us of: if we convince people that we're heading into a world of mathematics without mathematicians, that's exactly what we'll get, because no one will try to become a mathematician. But because mathematics without mathematicians is a set of guide maps for crossing Königsberg's bridges (but not graph theory), then mathematics without mathematicians is also mathematics without mathematics.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago EFF fights another DMCA abuser https://web.archive.org/web/20061104133502/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004973.php

#15yrsago Staircase covered in a cascade of synthetic human hair https://web.archive.org/web/20111030014202/http://www.jessicawohl.com/hairy-stairs

#15yrsago Entertainment industry incredibly profitable, healthy: but demands special pirate-hunting laws anyway https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/piracy-problems-us-copyright-industries-show-terrific-health/

#15yrsago There is no copyright policy, only Internet policy; there is no Internet policy, only policy https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-its-time-to-stop-talking-about-copyright/

#10yrsago Sole and Despotic Dominion: how a 20th century copyright law is abolishing property for humans (but not corporations) https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-sole-and-despotic-dominion/

#10yrsago Police in Quebec are spying on journalists and Snowden calls that “a threat to democracy” https://web.archive.org/web/20161104150400/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/edward-snowden-quebec-police-journalists-spying-surveillance

#10yrsago Donald Trump weaponized fine-print to make it impossible to sue Wall Street for fraud https://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/how-donald-trump-used-fine-print-make-it-harder-sue-wall-street-fraud-2440890

#10yrsago High Court tells UK government that Brexit requires a vote in Parliament https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37857785

#10yrsago Artist celebrates Patriot Act’s anniversary by handing out “Official Air Travel Replacement Knives” to arriving SFO passengers https://hyperallergic.com/on-anniversary-of-the-patriot-act-artist-passes-out-pocket-knives-at-the-airport/

#10yrsago A journalist finally uncovers the root of Trump supporters’ anger https://www.theawl.com/2016/11/i-talked-to-some-trump-voters-too/#.z9k84oxsg

#10yrsago A fake HP printer that’s actual an office-camouflaged cellular eavesdropping device https://www.wired.com/2016/11/evil-office-printer-hijacks-cellphone-connection/

#10yrsago UK hospitals shut down by malware, advise patients to go somewhere else for the duration https://www.zdnet.com/article/computer-virus-attack-forces-hospitals-to-cancel-operations-shut-down-systems/

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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


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)

  • "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


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: 512 (31870 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

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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"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

Tuesday 2026-11-03

07:00 PM

Weekly deja-vus [F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository]

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Monday, 02 Nov 2026, Week 45

Community News

Dejavu, Your tabs, right where you left them. Workspaces, containers and split view, is a browser built on top of the Firefox components with a different design. Have a try and maybe you’ll feel the déjà vu!

@linsui notes some big updates:

Finamp published 1.0 after 4 years of development with lots of new feathers. But this version on F-Droid is broken, so just skip it for now, we will keep you posted!

i2pd is updated to 3.0.0, a version rewritten from scratch on top of i2pd 3.0.0. It has a new interface, editors for router settings and tunnels, built-in torrents, and full management of the router’s data. The router now runs in a separate process, managed by a foreground service. See more in the changelog.

@shuvashish76 brings more updates:

ShizuCallRecorder is updated to 2.0.0 with a full refactoring.

DetoxDroid: Digital Detox by Default is updated to 3.0.0, bringing lots of new features.

@sidhant947 introduces their set of games on F-Droid:

Degoogling Casual Gaming

Anyone who has tried to play a simple puzzle game on a modern smartphone knows the pain. You download a basic 50MB logic game just to kill ten minutes, and suddenly it wants network permissions, location access, and show you advertising. Worse, you spend 15 seconds playing a level and 45 seconds watching unskippable video ads for sketchy casinos, or hitting paywalls asking you to buy ‘gems’ ‘coins’ ‘diamonds’ just to keep playing.

When I committed to deGoogling my life and reclaiming my digital privacy, the biggest gap I noticed in the FOSS ecosystem was casual gaming. Leaving the centralized store ecosystem shouldn’t mean giving up the games you love to play while waiting for the train or winding down at night or just resting.

That frustration is what pushed me to start building and porting clean, lightweight, open-source games for the F-Droid community. No trackers, no telemetry, no dark pattern, no micro-transactions, and zero ads—ever. Just pure offline gameplay that respects your device and your privacy.

All Games Made yet

Balancing Research Coursework and Bug Squashing

I’m currently juggling these project alongside my academic research coursework, so my schedule gets pretty packed sometime. Even so, keeping these games smooth and bug-free is a massive priority for me.

Whenever someone opens an issue on any of my repositories—whether it’s a UI glitch on a specific screen size, a logic edge case, or a feature request—I actively track it and push fixes as soon as I get a breather between my research deadlines, many issues get stretched due to this which is a weak point currently. Seeing people actually play and enjoy software that doesn’t spy on them makes the late-night debugging sessions completely worth it.

Want a Game Ported to FOSS? Hit Me Up!

My goal is simple: if there is a classic mobile game genre that is currently gate-kept behind proprietary store services, spyware SDKs, and relentless ad networks, I want an open-source version of it on F-Droid for everyone. Sometimes I lack the actual resources to bring a proper port which is why games like Echo Tiles and Jigsaw work when you load your own images and music. I’m working on a drawing game for kids this week, should be fun for them.

If you stumble across a bug, want to contribute translations or code, or have a favorite game you wish had a clean, privacy-respecting port, reach out to me anytime! Drop an issue on my GitHub or email me. Tell me what you want to play next, and let’s keep building a better, ad-free gaming ecosystem together.

Removed Apps

1 apps were removed
  • DeepLAndroid: Unofficial Android App for DeepL Translator (Naming things can be hard even when not touching trademarked ones. We wish for a speedy comeback)

Newly Added Apps

68 apps were newly added
  • Alarm Plus: An app all about alarms
  • Anchor: Connect Android and Linux for messages, files, notifications, camera, and more.
  • Auto Profiles: Lightweight utility for LineageOS that switches System Profiles automatically
  • Blankee: Ambient sound mixer for android inspired by blanket
  • Blazify: Stream millions of songs with synced lyrics, an equalizer and offline downloads
  • BombVault: Watch and open the BombVault backup servers you run yourself.
  • CalibRaw: Non-destructive RAW photo editing with GPU acceleration and local AI masks
  • CarrierPony: Private PGP messenger. End-to-end encrypted chat and file transfer, no account.
  • CastBay: AirPlay and DLNA receiver for Android TVs, TV boxes, car displays and tablets
  • Clean Your TV: Switch off TV bloat and get a calm home screen, from a phone over Wi-Fi
  • Datum: Offline topo, satellite and public land maps. No account, no ads, no tracking.
  • DavNotes: Simple notes synced with your own CalDAV server, such as Radicale
  • Dejavu: Your tabs, right where you left them. Workspaces, containers and split view.
  • DozeOff: Fix delayed notifications. Stop Android Doze from holding back your alerts.
  • Elite Memo Pro: Write, organize, and draw notes with labels, checklists, and reminders.
  • FastTrack: Track what your body is doing while fasting
  • FIfFKon 2026 Schedule: Schedule for the FIfFKon conference at Theater im Delphi Berlin
  • FilmLab: Edit photos on your device with film-inspired looks
  • Firehose Remote: fire TV remote over your own Wi-Fi. No account, no cloud.
  • FocusFeed: Offline Pomodoro with app blocking and earned social breaks
  • Forkray: A V2Ray client for Android, forked from v2rayNG and built from source
  • Homelab: Modern native all-in-one dashboard for self-hosted services and homelabs
  • Immich Wear: Browse your self-hosted Immich photos from your wrist
  • JustQuran: Free, ad-free Quran reader with IndoPak Arabic, English and Urdu translations.
  • Keycard Pal: Sign Ethereum and Bitcoin by QR code with a Keycard NFC smart card
  • Kinetic Kids: Local-first encrypted family tasks and notes with optional WebDAV sync
  • KOOK SESSION: Surf and wingfoil session logbook, stored in your own Nextcloud
  • LibreSpan: XMPP messenger with OMEMO, calls and protected local storage.
  • Life RPG: Gamify your life: complete quests, level up, build streaks.
  • Live Wallpaper for Heroes 3: Animated Heroes 3 maps as your wallpaper
  • MidnightBeam: Screen dimmer and warm filter for Android TV, with phone remote and schedule
  • MultiBooter: Create bootable USB media and boot PCs directly from Android.
  • NPM Mobile: Native Android client for Nginx Proxy Manager: hosts, SSL, access lists, users
  • Nudge: Counts your scrolls across all apps and nudges you toward mindful phone use
  • Osmium: Privacy-first offline TOTP/HOTP authenticator
  • Oxu: Read PDFs and translate any text you select, instantly
  • Parvaz: Farsi-first browser tunnel through a self-hosted Apps Script relay
  • PDF Docket: Keep PDF tickets and passes at hand and show their barcodes in fullscreen
  • PdfCraft: Read, comment, fill, sign and edit PDFs on your phone, all on the device
  • PixelComfort: Turns Comfort View off in the camera and Photos, then restores it
  • QuickWord: Select a word anywhere, get its definition as a notification. Offline.
  • Rando GPX: Record your hikes and export them as GPX, no Google Play Services required.
  • Sceau: Reads and verifies the chip of passports and ID cards, fully offline
  • Seca Contacts: Private contacts: coloured profiles, duplicate merging, no Internet access
  • ShareDing: Save shared links to linkding, even when your server is offline
  • SMS Tech: Private SMS / MMS app with voice messages, encrypted vault, biometric unlock.
  • Space Trader Classic: Trade, fight and explore the galaxy in the classic Space Trader, fully offline
  • SubRead: Line an audiobook up with its ebook: subtitles and video, made on your device.
  • Suivi compteurs: Read your meters and forecast your consumption, weather-adjusted.
  • Switchboard: A LibreChat Mobile App: Native LibreChat client: multi-account, offline reading, dictation
  • TailSocks: Unofficial Tailscale client: local SOCKS5/HTTP proxy, optional VPN, root mode
  • TEA Autonomia: Offline routines, crisis communication and regulation tools for autistic adults
  • TEA Kids: Visual routines, emotion check-ins and calming activities
  • ThothTerm • ThothDock: Docker on your phone, in a Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) terminal. No root.
  • TLgemma: Offline translator based on TranslateGemma
  • Trackhop: Sync playlists across music services, on your phone, with no ads or account
  • TRIK Gamepad: Wireless gamepad for controlling TRIK robots
  • Underfoot: Track walking pad sessions to Health Connect. No account, no analytics.
  • USB Debug Guard: Turn the screen off during long USB debugging sessions while keeping ADB alive
  • Vento RealVNC backend: RealVNC plugin for the Vento remote desktop client
  • Vento RustDesk backend: RustDesk plugin for the Vento remote desktop client
  • Voyage: Matrix client for Android, based on Element Classic
  • wa_logger mobile: Keeps an encrypted log of your WhatsApp messages, including deleted ones
  • Weave: Decentralized social networking with custom profiles, groups and moderation.
  • WeeWX Weather App: Live weather, forecasts and alerts from your own WeeWX weather station
  • Wiki-Say-It!: Record word pronunciations and contribute them to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata
  • YiGame Tabletop Companion: Party game guides, private role cards, random tools and virtual scorekeeping
  • Z2M Dash: A Zigbee2MQTT dashboard that talks directly to your own MQTT broker

Updated Apps

595 apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

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Kanji of the Day: 酸 [Kanji of the Day]

酸

✍14

小5

acid, bitterness, sour, tart

サン

す.い

二酸化炭素   (にさんかたんそ)   —   carbon dioxide
酸素   (さんそ)   —   oxygen (O)
酸味   (さんみ)   —   sourness
酸化   (さんか)   —   oxidation
アミノ酸   (アミノさん)   —   amino acid
有酸素運動   (ゆうさんそうんどう)   —   aerobic exercise
乳酸菌   (にゅうさんきん)   —   lactic-acid bacilli
甘酸っぱい   (あまずっぱい)   —   sweet and sour
酸性   (さんせい)   —   acidity
炭酸   (たんさん)   —   carbonic acid

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 需 [Kanji of the Day]

需

✍14

中学

demand, request, need

ジュ

需要   (じゅよう)   —   demand
需給   (じゅきゅう)   —   supply and demand
内需   (ないじゅ)   —   domestic demand
内需拡大   (ないじゅかくだい)   —   expansion of domestic demand
必需品   (ひつじゅひん)   —   necessities
生活必需品   (せいかつひつじゅひん)   —   daily (living) necessities
外需   (がいじゅ)   —   foreign demand
実需   (じつじゅ)   —   actual demand
特需   (とくじゅ)   —   emergency demands
需要拡大   (じゅようかくだい)   —   increase in (expansion of) demand

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

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