Doctorow has been arguing for a post-American internet/tech industry for a while, but this passage really landed for me:

If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn’t need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the entire Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark still holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark still won’t give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world’s majority of transoceanic fiber. At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world’s supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.

Look, it’s hard to oppose legislation that purports to be “for the kids,” but with the EFF, Mike Masnick, and other voices I respect still firmly against this, I’ll be calling my reps—and encouraging others to do the same.

Fascinating read on web crawlers and robots.txt

When my sister was in town last week, kiddo insisted on drawing her a surprisingly accurate diagram of how data gets transferred over the internet, so I brought it into the office for the next time I have to teach it.

There’s so much inane blathering about free speech on the internet that it’s easy to sometimes forget that it can be a real concern. Here’s one such example.

Lots of interesting ideas in this interview. I particularly like libraries running Mastodon instances.

Internet is a question of infrastructure, and infrastructure is a question of justice.