🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Thinking the unthinkable (19 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'

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Compelling metaphor. link to “Pluralistic: Thinking the unthinkable (19 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow”

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Unauthorized Bread, by Cory Doctorow

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This is one novella in Doctorow’s “Radicalized” collection, so I guess I could wait until I read all four and review them together, but I’d rather do four separate reviews. This story is so, so good. It’s an excellent anti-DRM screed and a compelling example of the social harms that can be done by technology to marginalized groups. Reading this back in 2019 is what got me (back) into Doctorow’s fiction, because it’s a perfect example of what he does best.

📚 spreading the word about the Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle 📚

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Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve also (mostly) appreciated the work of Humble Bundle over the past decade. When I learned this weekend that there’s an ongoing bundle of Doctorow’s fiction, I was ecstatic. The only thing that I was disappointed about is that I’ve already bought so many of these titles… however, that still wasn’t enough to stop me from buying all 18 items (it helps that while I own many of these already, most of the ones I own are in formats rather than epub, so now I’m a multimodal owner).

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Bezzle (A Martin Hench Novel), by Cory Doctorow

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I feel like I say this whenever I talk about Doctorow, but I love that his fiction reads like an op-ed. While waiting for this book to come out, I’ve been slowly reading his co-authored book Chokepoint Capitalism, and I feel like The Bezzle is all his (and Rebecca’s) critiques about large and greedy companies wrapped up in a fun, action-driven narrative. Here’s the thing about me: I’m an academic, and I respect facts, reason, and citations.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Chokepoint Capitalism can break you free from big tech and big content - The Verge'

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It’s a long interview, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but what I did read made me want to read this book even more. I have a copy, I just need to open it up. link to ‘Chokepoint Capitalism can break you free from big tech and big content - The Verge’

Wil Wheaton on general purpose computing

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I am very near the end of Wil Wheaton’s updated/annotated memoir Still Just a Geek, which I bought over the summer on a short family trip. I have lots of thoughts—most of them positive—about the memoir and may write a bit more about it once I finally finish. For now, though, since I wrote last week complaining about companies like Apple and ClassDojo restricting hardware and software to support their bottom line at the expense of users, I was struck by a short passage Wheaton included making a case for general purpose computing:

Apple and artificial restrictions on file syncing

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A week ago today, my MacBook Pro suddenly stopped being able to communicate with its SSD. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I spent most of my Tuesday afternoon wiping everything from the drive and reinstalling macOS so that I could get back to work. While I haven’t kept a physical backup for a couple of years (I accidentally fried mine when moving back into my campus office in Fall 2020), I have all of my most important documents scattered between three cloud services, so this wasn’t too painful of a process.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why none of my books are available on Audible | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com'

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Doctorow convinced me years ago that Audible was terrible, but here, he showed me just how bad they are. link to ‘Why none of my books are available on Audible | Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'You Don’t Own What You’ve Bought: Sony Removes 100s Of Movies Bought Through PS Store | Techdirt'

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This is why I’m trying to buy more physical copies of things—or at least DRM-free stuff. I have lots of regrets about the size of my Kindle library, for example. link to ‘You Don’t Own What You’ve Bought: Sony Removes 100s Of Movies Bought Through PS Store | Techdirt’

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Grumpy about DRM today. So much content I’ve purchased but am forever beholden to Amazon to access.

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The artwork on the “cover” of a Kindle book has been updated since the last time I read it. It’s a relatively minor change but reminds me that you never truly own an e-book you buy from Amazon (and why I now try to buy hardcopy).

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Reading Cory Doctorow’s “radicalized,” and it’s great so far. Funny how a story like “Unauthorized Bread” can make me angry in a way that reading news stories and blog posts on the same subject just can’t compete with.