Below are posts associated with the “link” type.
🔗 linkblog: OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI
I was already planning to voice skepticism about Apple partnerships with universities in a manuscript I’m writing, but now I’ve got this to cite as well.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic
I appreciate Masnick’s roundup of all the stupid things going on re: tariffs.
🔗 linkblog: Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s
Well, if he’s going to ruin the economy, at least he can come by his strategy in the dumbest possible way.
🔗 linkblog: Best printer 2025: just buy a Brother laser printer, the winner is clear, middle finger in the air
I didn’t need to read a printer recommendation article today, but I’m so glad I did. The rage about the world we live in is great.
🔗 linkblog: 'I Want to Make You Immortal:' How One Woman Confronted Her Deepfakes Harasser
Studio Ghibli pictures are neat (legitimately! it’s one of the first generative AI things that’s tempted me!), but these deepfakes are the price we pay for them, and I think that’s too high a price.
🔗 linkblog: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects
I think this is a good example of why digital labor is a particularly salient critique of generative AI. Yes, Wikimedia content is licensed, but not as strictly as copyrighted works. Yet, ripping off of their work is arguably worse than grabbing some copyrighted works.
🔗 linkblog: OpenAI's Studio Ghibli meme factory is an insult to art itself
I skipped over this article the first few times I saw it, but I think there’s some good stuff in here. Is defying Ghibli the point?
🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds
Masnick’s writing has never struck me as inflammatory or rushed. If he’s using this language, we should all be worried.
🔗 linkblog: Nintendo’s new system for sharing digital Switch games, explained
This seems… good? So good that I’m suspicious I’ve missed something.
🔗 linkblog: OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns | TechCrunch
Generative AI products make me mad, I don’t like them, and I’m not going to defend them. That said, if this gets framed as a copyright problem, is there any way to give Studio Ghibli (or Pixar or the Seuss estate) power to cry foul here that doesn’t also shut down fan art, parodies, and the like? I’m skeptical, and that’s why I think “labor” is the more productive—if more legally ambiguous—framing here.
🔗 linkblog: Beshear vetoes bill Kentucky professors say erodes academic tenure at public universities • Kentucky Lantern
This is unlikely to make a difference, but I’m grateful anyway.
🔗 linkblog: How ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ rewrote the indie movie marketing playbook
Word of mouth and website games are exactly what got me to watch Napoleon Dynamite.
🔗 linkblog: How the Ph.D. Project, and 45 colleges, became a target of the Trump administration
This is what my employer cut ties with.
🔗 linkblog: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
Where does one start with how wild this story is?
🔗 linkblog: Palestinian deaths in Gaza rise above 50,000 as Israel expands its military campaign
50,000 is roughly as much as all students, faculty, and staff at the University of Kentucky. The whole university gone.
🔗 linkblog: Humming along in an old church, the Internet Archive is more relevant than ever
Let’s all support the Internet Archive—that goes for you, too, publishers.
🔗 linkblog: No DEI allowed for US mergers and acquisitions, says the new FCC chair
What a dumb, petty administration this is.
🔗 linkblog: Etats-Unis : un chercheur français refoulé pour avoir exprimé « une opinion personnelle sur la politique menée par l’administration Trump »
C’est du n’importe quoi, ça. Quelle honte, ce pays.
🔗 linkblog: UK ends relationship with nonprofit amid Trump admin investigation
On one hand, if the university’s connections are tenuous, I can understand making the easy move to get the administration off our back—especially when I’m confident that UK is pushing back against NIH indirect costs and other issues. On the other, I certainly hope that our response to every attack isn’t going to be to roll over and wash our hands of things.
🔗 linkblog: Facial Recognition Company Clearview Attempted to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots for its Database
Surveillance sucks, and here’s the latest example.
🔗 linkblog: The future of search isn’t Google — and it’s $10 a month
I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.
🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: You can’t save an institution by betraying its mission (19 Mar 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Some good things to think about right here.
🔗 linkblog: Rather than lower rates, Arkansas jail simply cancels all inmate phone calls
Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle continues to play out in real life.
🔗 linkblog: “Awful”: Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen
This weekend, I visited family and complained to myself that their Amazon Fire sticks were emphasizing ad delivery over being a TV. I guess that’s the future for my Roku stick, too? What a sucky future we live in.
🔗 linkblog: AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality
The “brute force” metaphor is helpful here, and the article also draws attention to the vulnerability of algorithmic media to generative AI brute forcing.
🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading (15 Mar 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
I’ve been trying to figure out how angry to be about this move from Amazon, and Doctorow’s thinking is helpful: Very angry. (I don’t own and would never own an Echo, but it still makes me mad).
🔗 linkblog: They look like Nazi salutes. Here's why some people think they're a joke'
Acknowledging the ambiguity in Musk’s salute is important: not to let him off the hook, but to recognize how much more dangerous things are when they’re ambiguous than when they’re straightforward.
🔗 linkblog: OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use'
I believe that scraping the internet to profit off of generative AI is ethically problematic BUT I concede that it should be fair use BUT this is still a soulless and terrible argument.
🔗 linkblog: NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile,' French University Says'
I mean, I’ve always wanted to live and work in France, but I’ve never wanted to feel like I would have to.
🔗 linkblog: War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon's DEI purge'
If I don’t bookmark this article, I will quickly forget how dumb this whole thing has been (not to mention petty and mean).
🔗 linkblog: Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data'
Posting this in the interest of fairness, but I’m still not happy with Mozilla right now.
🔗 linkblog: Changes Our University Is Making to Pre-Comply with Possible Future Regulations'
Laugh to keep from crying.