Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 58
February 13, 2016
I was a Jeopardy! clue
I got quite a treat yesterday afternoon when my email and Twitter filled up with people letting me know that I was mentioned in a Jeopardy! clue!
I was joined in a category about science fiction novels with John Redshirts Scalzi, Jeff Annihilation VanderMeer, and Ernest Ready Player One Cline. Presumably, there was a fifth clue, but either it was never revealed or I haven’t been able to find it (please update the comments if you know what it was!).
January 26, 2016
My talk at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE)
Last Friday, I travelled to Pasadena to give the morning keynote at SCaLE; they livecast the whole event, and you can watch it here.
No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing
If cyberwar were a hockey game, it’d be the end of the first period and the score would be tied 500-500. All offense, no defense. Meanwhile, a horrible convergence has occurred as everyone from car manufacturers to insulin pump makers have adopted the inkjet printer business model, i...
January 19, 2016
We’ll probably never “Free Mickey”
It’s Copyright Week, and I’ve kicked it off with a post at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deep Links explaining why, regardless of copyright term extension, Mickey Mouse will probably never be “free” — but that doesn’t mean that Disney is acting irrationally in its fight as hard as they are for eternal copyrights.
Rather, they’re acting in their cold-blooded self-interest, playing a very long game indeed.
That’s because Disney has another body of law it can use to suppress creativ...
January 18, 2016
My University of Waterloo talk: No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing
Late last year, the Computer Science Club at the University of Waterloo (a university I am proud to have dropped out of!) invited me to give a lecture: No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing. They’ve posted it in many formats for your enjoyment.
If cyberwar were a hockey game, it’d be the end of the first period and the score would be tied 500-500. All offense, no defense.
Meanwhile, a ho...
January 15, 2016
India’s Internet activists have a SOPA moment: no “poor Internet for poor people”
My latest Guardian column, ‘Poor internet for poor people': India’s activists fight Facebook connection plan, tells the story of how India’s amazing Internet activists have beaten back Facebook’s bid to become gatekeeper to the Internet for the next billion users.
They’ve been assisted in this by Facebook’s own stupid mistakes, to be sure, but all credit is due to them for refusing to settle and for rallying mass support to the cause of Net Neutrality in India.
The interesting question f...
January 7, 2016
Resilience over rigidity: how to solve tomorrow’s computer problems today
My new Locus Magazine column, Wicked Problems: Resilience Through Sensing, proposes a solution the urgent problem we have today of people doing bad stuff with computers. Where once “bad stuff with computers” meant “hacking your server,” now it could potentially mean “blocking air-traffic control transmissions” or “programming your self-driving car to kill you.”
The traditional regulatory model for solving this kind of problem — making it technologically difficult to accomplish this badness...
December 25, 2015
Podcast: Happy Xmas! (guest starring Poesy)
It’s been a year since I sat down at the mic, but it’s Christmas and we have a tradition to uphold. Now we’re settling in here in Burbank and I’ve got a new computer, I’m hoping to get everything running again and get back to a regular schedule.
December 23, 2015
If you think self-driving cars have a Trolley Problem, you’re asking the wrong questions
In my latest Guardian column, The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?, I take issue with the “Trolley Problem” as applied to autonomous vehicles, which asks, if your car has to choose between a maneuver that kills you and one that kills other people, which one should it be programmed to do?
The problem with this formulation of the problem is that it misses the big question that underpins it: if your car was programmed to kill you under normal circumstances, how would th...
December 13, 2015
Interview on Paul Holdengraber’s “Call from Paul” podcast
I appeared on the current episode of “A Call From Paul” (MP3), a podcast created by Paul Holdengraber, who curates the NY Public Library’s amazing interview series. Paul and I talked about London, UK politics, class war, education, and books.
December 11, 2015
What I told the kid who wanted to join the NSA
In my latest Guardian column, I tell the story of my recent lecture at West Point’s Cyber Institute, where a young cadet took me aside as asked what I thought of their plans for joining the NSA.
The cadet had good reasons to want to join the NSA: they were justly concerned about the Internet security of their loved ones, and felt that if no one who cared about lawfulness joined NSA, it would only get worse. But I had some questions for them.
“Snowden was gung-ho,” I explained. “He was p...
