#but there is charging for a product and there is buying a company and putting their product behind a ludicrous paywall

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[foxball]

adobe caused me to turn to piracy again after like 15 years... the process is so much smoother today than i remember. it might be because i am no longer 14

[rxmxa]

uranus through the houses + the future <3

I saw this video the other day of this girl (colette bernard) who became a millionaire selling claw clips designed to look like teeth (her audience was dentists) but then she expanded when they were a hit so she has like cute claw clips designs for a dozen of professions. BUT all i remember thinking that stuff like this is so pluto in aquarius coded and we’re going to keep seeing people become successful more and more through their specific interests and hobbies.

she was truly self made and her passion for art changed her ENTIRE life (even though people told her it was a dumb idea). Pluto is gonna be in Aquarius for a long ass time and we know the significance it has on social changes, the collective, the government, community etc etc. This is a time for innovation and transformation, and with Uranus’s energy on your side, you can truly step into a future where you lead the charge in creating something new and lasting ⚡️

the point is your weirdness, your out of the box ideas, the shit you think is straight up weird or maybe mee maw and pee paw call “useless” IS GONNA COME IN FUCKING HANDY!!! people are changing their entire lives everyday online and/or by finding their niche. so whatever “weird” idea or hobby you have, keep investing in it !! im not saying bc it will bring u money instantly (although thats always a plus) but bc it will bring you OPPORTUNITIES.

we all have our own claw clip tooth idea and we can look at uranus to show us the forward thinking/ innovative energy that can help us during pluto in Aquarius :) 💙🦋✨✨🪩✨✨💙💙

uranus in the 1st house: moving forward by embracing your quirks and letting the world see the real you. dont ever ever ever try to dull yourself down. the right people will find you. dont shy away from shaking things up with how you present yourself or how you lead others. the visionary is YOU and during pluto in aqua you can inspire others to embrace their authenticity the way you do. in a way YOU are the “unique idea” so take full ownership. Dont be afraid to experiment with your style and image, especially in the moments where you are feeling the urge to try something different! Step into leadership roles that call to you! Volunteer for projects that require someone open-minded or that align with innovative (like new companies, organizations or small owned businesses that are producing/ delivering new kinds of products or services).

uranus in the 2nd house: think of unique ways to invest your money (ik theres a lot of debate with crypto) but anything thats outside the box could be a worthy venture. think about you can use tech to help you streamline your finances or organize your budget! just be open to trying new financial systems. this placement gives me the energy of investing something that others might see as SUPER random or specific but then it takes off years later. this is not me telling u to put ur savings in electric scooter stocks or something but to just be OPEN to sustainable investments that catch your attention that can help u and even ur community!! this also reminds me of tech inventors or investing in tech or USING technology as a way to help you determine the kinds of values you want to have and/or what you actually wanna stand up for.

uranus in the 3rd house: moving forward by shaking up how you show up in your online communities, or your social media presence. have you ever been interested in starting a podcasts or blogging more? (like those conversations you have with your friends about your interests or hobbies can go far or even commentary on the way media looks like and is being used now. Invest in learning new methods of communication you have been interested in (like buying that new camera or learning how to code or finally starting that youtube channel). Use your platform to reach more people!! This also reminds me of someone who disrupts the status quo with innovation in education like maybe writing new curriculum thats more aligned to our modern generation or any other platforms/ media that are up and coming and useful to students??

uranus in the 4th house: focusing on moving forward with your ideal home environment in mind. visualize it and focus on the ways you can start putting in into action! dont be afraid to start over and re-design! think about the ways you want your environment to be emotionally and physically stable for you and what its gonna look like (eco-living? smart homes? communal living?) this placement reminds me of those people that buy mansions or plots of lands with a group of friends and put their money together to help grow and live together! Don't beat yourself up if your idea of home or family doesnt fit the cookie cutter image (which is honestly going away now slowly and will def shift with pluto in aqua). YOU get to decide what home and family is and you can inspire others to do the same. Your idea of family has to align with your desire for freedom and emotional growth.

uranus in the 5th house: going all out in the ways you experiment with your art and creativity. You could be great at creating "futuristic" type of art haha (or investing in art forms that arent super popular or well known rn but you're ahead of the game and they could be popular in the future). Be bold in all areas that have to do with the 5h (think outside the box with how you express yourself artistically and romantically). Pluto in aqua will support you in u turning your creative work and forms of self expression into something that inspires people and gauges strong emotions from them! that claw clip idea was def giving uranus in the 5h energy. She was HAPPY creating it, it was a hobby first (5h) and then people told her it was useless or strange and she kept going anyway and she got to profit it from it, especially through social media (the 5h-11h axis). trust me when I say there is something out there for everybody. EVERYBODY.

uranus in the 6th house: pluto in aqua will urge you to break free from outdated systems and explore new ways to stay productive and healthy!! The traditional 9-5 might not appeal to you and thats okay because it doesnt to a lot of people and they have created their own way. Think about the tech-driven approaches you want to explore in your daily life (apps, the media you use, how you use tech in regards to your health). Think about how tech can help your productivity and your health!! This reminds me of my coworker who bought like this ultraface ring (I think thats what its called) but she loves it and its super high tech and fancy and shit and it monitors a lot of her health and its motivated her in her routines! The way we motivate ourselves looks different! You can move forward by exploring the most flexible options for you.

uranus in the 7th house: you can move forward by redefining what partnership + relationships actually mean to you. now more than ever its time to focus on partnerships where there is a sense of independence and equality. ESPECIALLY bc pluto in aqua is going to redefine and TRANSFORM (pluto) what community and friendships and relationships (aqua) look like in the first place. so be ahead of the game by surrounding yourself and nuturing your relationships with people that are not scared to break away from the norm and actually want to work together and are built to support mutual growth and freedom. dont stress trying to confine yourself to keep someone who is not open minded enough for you! find your person/ people.

part 2 coming soon!! 🪩✨🦋

[ms-demeanor]

Since some people might want a Mac, I'll offer a Mac equivalent of your laptop guide from the perspective of a Mac/Linux person.

Even the cheapest Macs cost more than Windows laptops, but part of that is Apple not making anything for the low end of the tech spectrum. There is no equivalent Mac to an Intel i3 with 4 gigabytes of RAM. This makes it a lot easier to find the laptop you need.

That said, it is possible to buy the wrong Mac for you, and the wrong Mac for you is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar. Get literally anything else. If it has an M2 chip in it, it's the most recent model and will serve you well for several years. Any new MacBook Air is a good pick.

(You could wait for new Macs with M3, but I wouldn't bother. If you are reading these guides the M3 isn't going to do anything you need done that a M2 couldn't.)

Macs now have integrated storage and memory, so you should be aware that whatever internal storage and RAM you get, you'll be stuck with. But if you would be willing to get a 256 gig SSD in a Windows laptop, the Mac laptop with 256 gigs of storage will be just as good, and if you'd be willing to get 8 gigs of RAM in a Windows laptop the Mac will perform slightly better with the same amount of memory.

Buy a small external hard drive and hook it up so Time Machine can make daily backups of your laptop. Turn on iCloud Drive so your documents are available anywhere you can use a web browser. And get AppleCare because it will almost certainly be a waste of money but wooooooow will you be glad it's there if you need it.

I get that you are trying to help and I am not trying to be mean to you specifically, but people shouldn't buy apple computers. That's why I didn't provide specs for them. Apple is a company that is absolutely terrible to its customers and its customers deserve better than what apple is willing to offer.

Apple charges $800 to upgrade the onboard storage from a 256GB SSD to a 2TB SSD.

A 2TB SSD costs between $75-100.

I maintain that any company that would charge you more than half the cost of a new device to install a $100 part on day one is a company making the wrong computer for you.

The point of being willing to tolerate a 256GB SSD or 8GB RAM in a Windows laptop is that you're deferring some of the cost to save money at the time of purchase so that you can spend a little bit in three years instead of having to replace the entire computer. Because, you see, many people cannot afford to pay $1000 for a computer and need to buy a computer that costs $650 and will add $200 worth of hardware at a later date.

My minimum specs recommendations for a mac would be to configure one with the max possible RAM and SSD, look at the cost, and choose to go buy three i7 windows laptops with the same storage and RAM for less than the sticker price of the macs.

So let's say you want to get a 14" Macbook pro with the lowest-level processor. That's $2000. Now let's bump that from 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to 32GB and 2TB. That gets you to $3000. (The SSD is $200 less than on the lower model, and they'll let you put in an 8TB SSD for $1800 on this model; that's not available on the 13" because apple's product development team is entirely staffed by assholes who think you deserve a shitty computer if you can't afford to pay the cost of two 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredos for a single laptop).

For $3000 you can get 3 Lenovo Workstation laptops with i7 processors, 32GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD.

And look, for just $200 more I could go up to 48GB RAM and get a 4TB SSD - it costs $600 to upgrade the 14" mac from a 2TB SSD to a 4TB SSD so you could still get three laptops with more ram and the same amount of storage for the cost of one macbook.

I get that some people need to use Final Cut and Logic Pro, but hoo boy they sure are charging you through the nose to use products that have become industry standard. The words "capture" and "monopoly" come to mind even though they don't quite apply here.

"Hostile" does, though, especially since Mac users end up locked into the ecosystem through software and cloud services and become uncertain how to leave it behind if they ever decide that a computer should cost less than a month's rent on a shitty studio apartment in LA.

There's a very good reason I didn't give mac advice and that's because my mac advice is "DON'T."

[doubleddenden]

The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.

Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?

To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.

You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)

Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.

Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.

Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.

Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.

I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.

You have 2 options

1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.

2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.

Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.

You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.

But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)

Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.

Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.

Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.

[mariacallous]

In March 2007, Google’s then senior executive in charge of acquisitions, David Drummond, emailed the company’s board of directors a case for buying DoubleClick. It was an obscure software developer that helped websites sell ads. But it had about 60 percent market share and could accelerate Google’s growth while keeping rivals at bay. A “Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat,” court papers show Drummond writing.

Three weeks later, on Friday the 13th, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. The US Department of Justice and 17 states including California and Colorado now allege that the day marked the beginning of Google’s unchecked dominance in online ads—and all the trouble that comes with it.

The government contends that controlling DoubleClick enabled Google to corner websites into doing business with its other services. That has resulted in Google allegedly monopolizing three big links of a vital digital advertising supply chain, which funnels over $12 billion in annual revenue to websites and apps in the US alone.

It’s a big amount. But a government expert estimates in court filings that if Google were not allegedly destroying its competition illegally, those publishers would be receiving up to an additional hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Starved of that potential funding, “publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether,” the government alleges. It all adds up to a subpar experience on the web for consumers, Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser says.

“Google is able to extract hiked-up costs, and those are passed on to consumers,” he alleges. “The overall outcome we want is for consumers to have more access to content supported by advertising revenue and for people who are seeking advertising not to have to pay inflated costs.”

Google disputes the accusations.

Starting today, both sides’ arguments will be put to the test in what’s expected to be a weekslong trial before US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia. The government wants her to find that Google has violated federal antitrust law and then issue orders that restore competition. In a best-case scenario, according to several Google critics and experts in online ads who spoke with WIRED, internet users could find themselves more pleasantly informed and entertained.

It could take years for the ad market to shake out, says Adam Heimlich, a longtime digital ad executive who’s extensively researched Google. But over time, fresh competition could lower supply chain fees and increase innovation. That would drive “better monetization of websites and better quality of websites,” says Heimlich, who now runs AI software developer Chalice Custom Algorithms.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of ad-buying software developer Viant Technology, which both competes and partners with Google, believes that consumers would encounter a greater variety of ads, fewer creepy ads, and pages less cluttered with ads. “A substantially improved browsing experience,” he says.

Of course, all depends on the outcome of the case. Over the past year, Google lost its two other antitrust trials—concerning illegal search and mobile app store monopolies. Though the verdicts are under appeal, they’ve made the company’s critics optimistic about the ad tech trial.

Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

For years, Google publicly has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

Deep Control

The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

[twstfanblog]

How did Mako fuck up a contract so badly that Azul basically sent Yuu over as a pls don’t kill us gift

See I knew I was in trouble with this AU because I started world building XD

This is a very rare all human AU. So no magic sadly.

But Malleus loved the Roaring Drago pocket pet company as a boy. Hearing it was going under, he begged and pleaded with Lilia to buy the product IP/company just so it wouldn't die. And he held onto that IP for a decade. And now it's becoming popular again! Mallues is more so excited to have people with Dragos walking around again because the new line allows your dragos to roam and visit each other if they are close enough.

He wants his drago to have friends so fucking badly. Yes, he just had his old drago put into the new model.

Mako fucks up because Azul's company was charged with reviewing an insane number of files Malleus sent over to prep for the new model launch.

Mako didn't do his randomly accessed task and in fact DELETED THE FILES he was assigned to review. His logic was that the email didn't have Azul's company logo on it, so he thought it was spam and didn't even read what it was.

After Azul rips Mako a new asshole. He scrambles trying to find copies of the files Mako deleted, reassign the tasks to multiple people he now has to pay overtime, AND tell Malleus there was...a problem and their work may not be ready by the agreed deadline.

Malleus, that really scary "quiet enraged" just states that maybe he should just take his business somewhere else (He WANTS those new dragos!!!!)

Azul, panicking and thinking up ways to then shit on Mako for fucking up the deal just kinda...offers Yuu as a pot sweetener while also making the choice to put in more hours to ENSURE the deadline is met.

Yuu ends up pregnant from sleeping with Malleus.

[spaghettioverdose]

regarding your recent posts on petit bougeoisie, one thing ive never managed to understand is how someone like an independent digital artist isnt considered to be selling their labour. in that scenario there is nothing they own that is making them more capable of making artworks, as they could fairly easily just be working off of a library computer or something, and what they’re selling is basicaly just the time and skill they’ve invested into producing their clients request. so besides the fact that they arnt being paid hourly and are instead charging based on how much work they’ve done, i dont really understand how they’re not considered to be selling their labour?

with something like a carpenter selling chairs or something i can more understand it as theres at least a physical thing being owned with the wood, and another being sold with the chairs, but even there it still seems like a stretch to say they’re not selling their labour at least in part, as the increased price of the chair compared to the wood is due to the work the carpeter put into sculpting it.

so far any reading ive done has been only really adressing small buisness owners who employ others and not really touching fully independent people working off of commisions or similar models of buisness, so im hoping you can clarify this for me or direct me to somewhere that does

Firstly, a clarification: a worker is not selling their labour, but rather their labour power. In some of the earlier works by Marx and Engles, they talk about selling their labour, which is later corrected to labour power. This is a more precise and useful term. When we refer to selling labour power, we are talking about the worker selling their ability to work for a given amount of hours in exchange for a wage. The worker who builds phones in a factory does not sell phones to the capitalist and their are not paid per phone. They are paid per hour. What is being purchased is their ability to work during those hours.

According to the formulation of labour in your ask, essentially everyone would be proletarian. In all commodities, regardless of who produces them and how they are made, the labour hours used to create them are factored into the price.

When it comes to independent artists, they are putting their labour power into the commodity (regardless if it is physical or digital) that their are selling, rather than selling the labour power itself. When an artist makes art in exchange for patreon money or doing comissions, the commodity that they are selling is the piece of art that they have made, rather than their labour power. They also receive income in the form of profits and not wages. This is in contrast with, for example, a digital artist who works for a AAA games company and is paid a wage for their ability to produce a certain amount of art per hour, rather than the piece of art itself.

In theory you could be an independent digital artist as someone who draws with a mouse on mspaint at a library computers and perhaps someone has done this before, but it is absolutely not how independent digital artists tend to operate. In reality, an independent digital artist is someone who owns a set of tools (copy of art software, computer, drawing tablet etc.) which act as the means of production when they produce a commodity (a piece of art that they intend to sell). When they invest their money into their further ability to produce more commodities (buying better software or hardware for example), that money acts as capital.

If I misinterpreted any part of your ask, please let me know.

As far as reading recommendations, and assuming that you have read Wage Labour and Capital, I would recommend Value, Price and Profit which touches more on this.

[thepaintedsable]

Uh oh, who let me into a fandom again? Who left the niche within a niche door open??? Y’all should know better.

@sm-baby’s Carnival AU for The Amazing Digital Circus grabbed me by the bootstraps with??? Inspiration??? Not only have I dodged most fandoms and the motivation to draw fanart (not that I don’t want to show support; just no ideas in the noggin), but I genuinely don’t think I’ve sat down and put a non-ironic, genuine OC for a media I like on paper since my Warrior Cats/Creepypasta era. This AU didn’t just get me to sit down and make an OC that fits with the original media, but one that fits with their derivative. I saw other people doing it and it looked like so much fuunnn.

First, have standard TADC version! Either that or a player.

This is Tuus! They’re mainly based on the beanie baby dragon to fit that sweet sweet 90s theme, but generally a mixture of beloved childhood toys I have sitting on my shelf. She’s scruffy, worn, and kinda dirty looking and that’s on purpose. She’s bottom heavy, and I wanted her wings to give off the texture of that basically-plastic shiny fabric you used to see on a lot of toys.

No mouth, but a randomly appearing lizard tongue. For fun.

Tuus deals with the circus by sleeping. A lot. Too much. If you don’t need to sleep, then you don’t need to be awake. If she’s doing to be trapped in a digital hell, she might as well be catching up on her naps. And she will sleep in the worst places. Time for a digital feast? She’s on the table. Caine wants to have an adventure in the lake? Girl is at the bottom. Sleeping with the fishes fr fr. And you need to find her one day? Nowhere to be seen, probably on the roof.

It’s playing on the whole big, lazy, sleeping dragon thing that used to be in a lot of children stories I remember. But also how well loved childhood toys seem to pop up and disappear, there when you aren’t looking but gone when you are. Her name also means “Your” or “Thy.” Your dragon.

BUT AT THE CARNIVAL?

What amusement park is complete without a gift shop? What game doesn’t have a place to buy goofy digital goods? Tuus is the big lady in charge of the gift place of the Carnival! Her room is what should have been a shop of sorts, to buy whatever products that darned company would have tried to push. Cosmetics, virtual toys, digital snacks, whatever. But, uh, I don’t think anyone told them dragons don’t like to…. share. Becoming sentient did wonders for the attitude. You should be just fine if you don’t make too much noise, though! She’s a lazy lizard, and often sleeps sprawled around the place. I imagine the level would be set up like a maze, or a labyrinth. Isles and isles of things, with peaks of a tail or smoke every now and again. Toys, clothing, and even random things that shouldn’t be in there just trash the path. It’s your job not to step on anything! It’s different each time, though (a speed runner’s nightmare). One level you might get lucky and have a straight shot with a sleeping dragon, the next there might be so many things it’s physically impossible to reach any exit at all. Potentially can get out of trouble with some digital coin™, but you’ll have to have found enough hidden in the room to forgive each “damaged item.”

Here she is much, MUCH larger and far cleaner. An oversized display never meant to be bought. A collectors item far too expensive for a child. Think “I used to be a beloved toy and now I’ve been forgotten, even forgetting myself, and this is how I cope” favor VS “I have never known the touch of a person and have been trapped on this shelf only to be abandoned and have the personality of an unsocialized dog” flavor.

She has no mouth, but she bites.

I want to draw more of her :) She’s a goof.

[andmaybegayer]

Hello it's me with another very naive computer question!

One of the really common complaints you see about modern software (from Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) is the move from the single-purchase model to a subscription-based model. While I understand that people are upset about paying more money over time, this also feels like the only viable option for shipping products that work with modern OSes, especially Windows (I don't have any experience with MacOS). Windows pretty regularly updates, and if you want your product to continue to work, you have to continue paying your engineers to maintain compatibility through time.

Obviously I understand that there are lots of FOSS options out there, but for the companies that are built on making money from these sorts of software products, I don't see another way. Am I way off the mark here?

This is a really good question. I don't have a great answer, but the model I have in my head is that "traditional software distribution" is partially an artifact of an era where companies were starting to use computers but internet use was still spotty so providing support for software was just a very different ballgame. A lot of what I'm saying here is not like. Fact as much as it is my understanding of The Software Business from the side of someone who is a little involved in that but mostly not in that.

(This is mostly about "business software", that is to say, accounting packages, creative suites, design packages, modelling tools, etc. This model does not explain like. Spotify. But that's much easier to explain.)

You're not wrong that the subscription model really make sense given modern software development, where patches come out continuously and you get upgraded to the latest version every time something changes, but there has been a significant change in how software is developed and sold that makes it noticeably different. I think that the cause of this is mostly because it's finally practical to do contract-style deals with hundreds of thousands of customers instead of doing one-off sales like we used to do.

In the Traditional model you charge a pretty sizeable upfront cost for a specific version of the software, you buy Windows XP or Jasc Paint Shop 7 or whatever and then you get That Version until we release The Next Version, plus a couple years of security and support. When the next version hits, we stop adding any new features to your version, and when that hits end of life, you maybe get offered a discount to buy licensing for the latest version, or you drop out of support.

Traditional software with robust support typically costs an awful lot, Photoshop CS2 was $600 new in 2005, or $150 to upgrade from CS, because you're paying for support and engineering time in advance. A current subscription for just Photoshop is $20/mo, and that's after twenty years of inflation. Photoshop is also cheap, a seat for something like SolidWorks 2003 could probably have run you $3000-4000 easy. I can't even give you a better guess there because SolidWorks still doesn't sell single commercial licenses online, you have to talk to their salespeople.

The interesting thing to me about Traditional pricing was that I think it was typically offered to medium to small businesses or individuals, because it's an easy way to sell to smaller customers, especially if it's the 90's and you're maybe selling your software through an intermediary reseller who works with local businesses or just a store shelf.

Independent software resellers were a big business back in the day, they served as a go-between for the software company and smaller businesses, they sold prepared packages in a few sizes and handled the personal relationship of phoning you up and saying "Hey there's a patch for your accounting software so that it doesn't crash when someone's surname is Zero, we'll send you a floppy disk in the mail with some instructions on how to install it." Versioned standard releases are a thing you can put in a box and give to resellers along with a spec sheet and sales talking points. This business still exists but it's much smaller than it once was, it's largely gone upmarket.

If you were bigger, say, if you were a publishing house that needed fifty seats of editing software you'd probably call the sales department of Jasc or whoever and get a volume deal along with a support contract.

Nowadays why would you bother going through resellers and making this whole complicated pricing model when you could just sell subscriptions with well-established e-commerce tools. You can make contract support deals with individuals at scale, all online, without hiring thousands of salespeople. You can even provide varying support levels at multiple cost brackets directly, so you don't need to cultivate a direct business relationship with all your customers in order to meet their needs. Your salespeople handle the really big megacorp and government deals and you let everyone else administer themselves.

It also makes development easier. You can also deploy patches over the net, you just do it in software. You can obsolete older versions faster, since you can make sure most people are using the latest version, and significantly cut down on engineering time spent backporting fixes to older versions. I think a lot of this is straightforwardly desirable on most software.

Now, there are still packages sold by the version, and there are even companies selling eternal licenses.

Fruity Loops Studio is still a "Buy once forever" type deal.

MatLab can be purchased as a subscription or as a perpetual one-version license.

Windows is still sold like this, but also direct to customer sales of Windows are minimal, Windows is primarily sold to OEM's who preinstall it on everything.

But it's a dying breed, your bigger customers are going to want current support and while there are industries where people want to hang around on older versions, for a lot of software your customer wants the latest thing with all the features and patches, and they'd rather hold on to their money until later using a subscription rather than spend it all upfront. Businesses love subscriptions, they make accounts books balance well, they're the opposite of debt.

Personal/private users who might just want the features of Photoshop CS2 and that's fine forever don't matter to you. They're not your major customers. This kind of person is not a person who your business cares to service, so you don't really care if you annoy them.

Even in the Open Source business world, subscriptions are how the money is made, just on support rather than for the software itself. You can jump through relatively few hoops to run Ubuntu Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise Linux on your own systems for free, but really there's not much benefit to that unless you pay for the dedicated support subscription.

In many ways I think a lot of things have changed in this way, I have a whole thing about the way medium-scale industrial manufacturing has changed in the past thirty years somewhere around here.

While there are valid reasons you might want to buy a single snapshot of some software and run that forever, the reality is that that's a pretty rare desire, or at least that desire is rarely backed by money. If you want to do that you either need access to the source code so that you can maintain it yourself, or you need to strike a deal with someone who will, or it needs to be software so limited that it (and the system it runs on!) never need updates. Very few useful programs are this simple. As a result subscription models make sense, but until recently you couldn't really sell a subscription to small businesses and individuals. Changes in e-commerce and banking have enabled such contracts to be made, and hey presto, it's subscription world.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Thinking the unthinkable

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Time and again, I find myself thinking about radium suppositories: specifically, I get to thinking about the day that the consensus shifted from "radium suppositories are great" to "stop putting radioisotopes up your ass."

The thing is, people really liked radium-based quack remedies. They drank radium-infused water, smeared radium cream on their faces and bodies, and yes, rammed radium suppositories up their assholes:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/radium-girls/

The fact that this made whatever ailed you sicker didn't deter the radium true believers: if you're getting sicker, then you must need more radium.

When I think about the debate over radium, I imagine that the people who understood that radium was really bad for you must have run up against critics who told them they were being unreasonable. "You can't tell people to stop using radium. Tell them to use suppositories with less radium. Tell them to use them less frequently. But you can't just tell people, 'stop putting radium up your asshole.' They won't take you seriously."

About 20 years ago, I started pitching various institutions that reviewed consumer tech policy on the idea that they should reject any product that had DRM. After all, DRM didn't just restrict how you used a gadget today, it provided a facility for nonconsensually, irreversibly field-updating that gadget to add new restrictions tomorrow. How could a reviewer in good conscience say, "Go ahead and buy this device if you need this feature," if they knew that at any time in the future, the gadget's maker could take that feature away and leave the buyer with no recourse?

Here's the warning I (half-seriously) suggested magazines run alongside such products:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

No one took me up on my offer. Over and over again, magazine editors, managers of nonprofit review outlets, and indie gadget reviewers told me that it was unrealistic to publish a roundup of, say, this year's portable music players with the recommendation, "Just don't buy any of these. None of them are fit for purpose."

In other words: No one wanted to publish, "The correct amount of radium to stuff up your asshole is zero."

But the correct amount of rectal radium for you to administer is "none" and the correct car for you to buy today is none of the cars:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

This isn't the first time the correct automotive recommendation was "don't buy any of these cars." Back before seatbelts came standard in cars, the correct car was "don't buy a car." Sometimes, the correct answer is "none of the above." Even if that makes you sound unserious, the alternative is that you counsel people to put radium up their asses in a bid to seem "reasonable."

Today, DRM-infected products are routinely downgraded and bricked:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/5/24236237/ftc-software-tethering-letter-consumer-reports-ifixit

Even when companies face public uproar over these disastrous decisions and vow to reverse them, they can't, because these downgrades are one way:

https://www.stereocheck.com/news/music/unfortunately-you-cant-revert-to-the-old-sonos-app-anymore/

That's bad enough when it's your smart speakers, but what about when the company bricks your wheelchair:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

Or your $100,000 exoskeleton:

https://paulickreport.com/news/people/paralyzed-jockey-michael-straight-wants-to-keep-walking-but-manufacturer-wont-repair-exoskeleton

The reality is that we're living at the end of a catastrophic experiment in deregulation and its handmaidens, corruption and regulatory capture, and there are lots of "normal" things that we just need to stop doing. Not do less of them – just stop.

Like, the correct amount of collusion between realtors representing sellers and realtors representing buyers is zero:

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2024-03-19/realtor-rules-just-changed-dramatically-heres-what-buyers-and-sellers-can-expect

We got that one right, but there's plenty more that we're still engaged in this pathetic, denialist bargaining over. What's the correct degree to which White House officials should cycle back into working at the industries they oversaw? Zero. How many times should such a person come back to work at the White House? Again: zero:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-19-next-administration-can-stop-ethics-scandals/

When the Biden admin dropped its executive order on ethics just hours after the inauguration, they trumpeted that it "went further than any other towards slowing the revolving door and limiting conflicts of interest while in office":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-ethics-commitments-by-executive-branch-personnel/

And it did. But it was also full of loopholes, because banning these conflicts of interest altogether was viewed as politically unserious, so the correct amount of radium up the administration's asshole was set at non-zero. The result? Well, it's about what you'd expect:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/what-the-hell-is-anita-dunn-even-allowed-to-work-on/

Congress hasn't updated consumer privacy law since 1988, when it took the bold step of…banning video-store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. Since then, a coalition of commercial surveillance companies and the cops and spies who treat their data-lakes as massive, off-the-books anaerobic lagoons of warrantless surveillance data has prevented the passage of any new privacy protections for Americans.

The result? Stalkers, creeps, spies (both governmental and corporate), identity thieves, spearphishers and other villainous scum are running wild, endangering every American's financial, physical and political wellbeing. The correct amount of commercial data-brokerage for America is zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

In other words, we should order every data-broker, every tech giant, every consumer electronics company and app vendor to delete all their surveillance data. All of it. The correct amount of radium in that asshole is – as with every other orifice zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

From the perspective of the radium pitchmen, the most shocking thing about the past four years has been antitrust enforcers – like Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, and Jonathan Kanter – who refused to bargain about how much radium we needed to stick up our butts. Fearless of being branded as "unserious" and "unreasonable," they seriously, reasonably said the right amount is none, actually.

None. Which is why they're so mad at Khan and co. Which is why they're so bent on getting Kamala Harris to fire Khan – despite the fact that this would burn precious political capital in the senate. Some people just love the feeling they get from a radium suppository – especially the suppository salesmen:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-19-lina-khan-doesnt-need-to-be-confirmed-again/

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction/a>

Image: Museum of the Health Sciences https://www.uab.edu/amhs/

[colethewolf]

The hale industries sex bots were once the most advanced and realistic toys anyone can buy, the newest model idea has just been completed and ceo Derek can’t wait for a full demonstration of the Sti-13s abilities tomorrow, the bot, named after its impressive 13 inch cock, will be the most powerful TOPS model they’ve ever made.

the prototype has already been set up in the executive board room, a bed and recording equipment ready for the big debut and Derek’s certain this will be the one to put hale back on top after the disastrous jacks-10s almost bankrupt the company. According to studies People wanted a sex bot that could take charge, initiate foreplay, and pound a hole like no other ever since Argent designed those damned Dom sc-0tts.

The night has run late, Derek’s usually do lately, and everyone has gone home. As the ceo passes the board room he notices the spot lights were never turned off and quickly goes to ensure no bulbs blow out before the big show. The board room was never designed for this kind of display, the large charging boxes containing the sti-13s and er-1ka needed for tomorrows show required the main power outlets, so Derek has to crawl over the mattress in order to unplug the lights but as he bends over the edge of the bed and a pair of robotic hands grip onto his pants he is reminded of the sti-13s “presenting protocol” a self initiated sex protocol that reacts to visual stimulus.

As the bot pins him to the bed Derek can see the blinking red recording light flip on and as the lights dim outside the spotlight on the bed Derek scrambles to remember the briefing and what he needs to do to stop the machine. the prototype of course has a few problems namely a lack of refractory period or auto stop function, hence why the demonstration was supposed to be on another bot in order to secure the funding to fix these problems.

All Derek really needs to do is turn the st-13s off with the remote… which is currently in his office… on the other side of the building… but perhaps the bot will need to charge afterall how long could this thing really go for? desperately he looks to the charging box as his pants are ripped at the seam. Bold lettering on the side taunts him as he reads

“twice the battery life of a Dom Sc-0tt stays charged for a full 48 hours!!”

A week later when hale industries releases the full 9 hour prototype debut video, preorders for the sti-13s breaks company records, not that Derek cares much as the research team take his measurements to begin work on their newest BOTtom line product the H413, specially designed to take the largest cocks and modeled after their most requested hole yet

I fucking LOVE this concept. Also, clever names for the different sex bots. I'm guessing that 48hr play time with the St-13s bot was more than enough proof to the company that Derek was the perfect specimen for a new bot. I sure hope that was recorded by security cams

[dalliansss]

lol please this one my fren

of all the idiots in the world, i'm stuck with you.

I could see popstar au or bitm au

&. 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐬 (𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬?) 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

Mairon Aulëndil cannot believe this is happening.

The one time he and his sugar baby boyfriend took a commercial flight, first class, because the private jet wasn't available for repairs, and they get beset by disaster of epic proportions. He stands there, by the airport, growing red all the way to his ears, arms crossed, and he is tapping his shoe tak -tak -tak, louder and louder, as he waits and waits (he despises waiting. Has despised waiting, unless it will bring him billions in profit that will enable him to buy another island, auction-buy more artwork, buy more jewelry, buy Finrod jewelry and bags and property and cars).

But what is the problem?

The problem is that his precious, his sugarbaby boyfriend, his gorgeous blonde of a pretty thing, Finrod Felagund, has been held up by security. For what reason? He doesn't damn well know. First, Mairon was going through security no problem, Finrod closely at his heels with his cabin-luggage, and then something beeped, and then the security were all over Finrod, and Finrod was now sitting on the floor opening his luggage and unpacking every damn--

Mairon feels the vein throbbing somewhere by his left temple growing by the minute. Will the aneurysm develop right then and there and explode? Maybe they'll find out.

Security has apparently taken issue with many of Finrod's electric things. For one, his high-tech toothbrush. Even his toothbrush is expensive, that iO10 thing from B-oral that had a built-in color display, timer and a sensor magnetic charging stand that amused Finrod to no end because it made sure he brushed his teeth for the dentist-recommended two minutes.

Security has also flagged down his Oreo Eye Massager, and his Oreo Facial Cleaning Tool that Finrod swears works like magic and loves using it with that La Mer cleanser that Mairon always buys for him. He can't take those, security is saying. He should've put them in his check-in luggage, blah blah blah. Also now he can't take his ridiculous amounts of La Mer cosmetics and skin care products, that is just beyond the allowable limits, you should've taken it into your checked in baggage, so sorry Mister Felagund, my daughter is a fan of your music but security is serious business, you know--

Mairon's patience snaps. This is why he despises flying commercial. He steps forward, snarl on his beautiful face.

"Get off him!" He snarls toward one of the security trying to get the toiletry bag Finrod is hugging to his chest. "Don't touch him or I'll make sure you will lose your job!"

Finrod turns to him with those hard-to-refuse-beautiful-blue eyes, his lower lip quivering pathetically, but Mairon grabs the toiletry bag from his hand and throws it on the floor, scattering the jars of cream and eye serum and whatnot-- and he grabs the high-tech toothbrush too and the Oreo face tools, throwing them at the security staff.

Then Mairon grabs Finrod by the hands and pulls him by his feet. "If we can't bring them then take them, eat them, and shove them up your--!"

He herds Finrod with him, keeping an arm around his sweetheart's waist. Finrod is already crying pathetically into a kerchief.

"Hush," Mairon half-snarls. "I'll buy you new ones when we get back to Korea. Hush, I said. It doesn't matter. Come on. I'll buy the company that makes La Mer if it pleases you. Hush now, precious. Hush."

Long story short, they manage to board their flight, and are soon settled in their first class accommodations. Finrod is hugging into his side, still sniffling a little. Mairon pets his golden blond hair.

"This is why I keep telling you not to overpack things," Mairon says. "You will get harassed everytime. You see?! You don't listen to me! Fuck's sake. You can always buy stuff you need when you get to where you're going. Stop now. Stop crying. You'll puff up your nose and you'll look like a stupid tomato. Of all the idiots in the world, I'm stuck with you. Hush. Hush."

Finrod takes one last big sniffle and quiets down. "But you gave me all those as gifts. Of course I'll take them with me. I just..."

Mairon could roll his eyes to the next planet. How he despises this about Finrod, yet also loves it all the same. He kisses his sugarbaby boyfriend's swollen eyelids.

"Quiet down. Look, let's just watch Lord of the Rings, all the extended editions, ok? Go check the food menu and order their chocolate cake. Stop crying. You'll ruin your pretty face. Stop it. I love you. It doesn't matter. I'll buy you more and I'll buy you the entirety of La Mer too. Hush now, my darling."

Mairon fumbles for the remote and selects the first movie they'll watch: The Hobbit, an Unexpected Adventure, extended edition. Finrod stops sniffling completely as the opening credits begin.

@skaelds

[frostyreturns]

Canadians are so dumb, they'l visit Florida and see how much cheaper it is to buy the same exact product there than it is in Canada...then go to the retailer in Canada to complain and will still walk away thinking the price difference and inflation is because of corporate greed. It's like so wait....you think that company is greedy here...but the same exact company in Florida is altruistic. Maybe there's another factor at play here...

I hear all day long...hey this costs x amount in Florida... like they're going to shame the company into charging a fair price and never stop and think...hey maybe the outrageous amount of tax Canada puts on everything has something to do with it? But no they'll complain about prices and then defend there being multiple carbon taxes on top of income, property, a 15% sales tax! import fees, misc taxes on stuff like alcohol ...but that's all needed for muh roads so we need those. Nah the price must be more than double in one place because of greed.

[coolbeesbro]

Printify Shipping wtf 0/10

Ok so I've been using Printify to produce my stickers, pins and prints, and I only now just discovered that they charge shipping per each item and ship them separately? I hadn't noticed it till now because each order I've had before today was 1 item orders.

To explain it better, if I were to put through an order with 3 stickers, they would charge shipping for those stickers 3 times! That's absolutely ridiculous, and it's something they don't tell you until you're going to finalize an order. This is just a warning to other artists out there looking for a print on demand company, although they have a decent array of products, their shipping (for me at least) far outweighs the benefit.

I'm currently looking at VOGRACE to bulk buy stickers, posters and pins, so moving forward in my store, all prints will be in limited quantity once I work that out. I'm literally losing money instead of earning anything here, and I already didn't feel great about the price I was selling them at to earn $.50 per sticker or pin. All stickers, pins and prints have been taken down on Ko-Fi as of right now (any orders put through prior to this will still get sent out and I'll take the L on those, so don't worry about that). Clothing will stay the same since that's a different company (Gelato) that I've had no issues with thus far with bigger orders.

If you can avoid it, don't go through Printify, even if its bulk ordering for conventions and stuff. Printify's pricing for an 8"x11" print is $10.22 per poster (including shipping) so for 10 you're spending $102.18.

The test order through VOGRACE I just placed, including 30 posters (10 of 3 different sizes each and special holographic effects), 10 stickers (2 different finishes), and 6 buttons (2 different finishes) came to a total of $84.80, shipping which was $26.49 (United States), equaling a total of $110.57.

This isn't an advertisement for VOGRACE really, but purely fueled by spite because not only did Printify do me dirty financially, they did it while I'm still getting over a cold as well (though I'm certain they didn't account for that last part, I'm still grumpy about it).

Anyways, fuck Printify; I'm going back to a blanket cocoon and playing Cult Of The Lamb.

[collapsedsquid]

One thing I wonder about is: If you were designing a financial system from scratch, in 2024, would you come up with banking? That central traditional trick of banks — that they fund themselves with safe short-term demand deposits, and use depositors’ money to invest in risky longer-term loans, with all of the run risk and regulatory supervision and It’s a Wonderful Life-ness that that involves — would you recreate that if you were starting over? Part of me feels like, if you started a new civilization and put smart but ahistorical tech people in charge of designing a financial system, it would never occur to them to recreate traditional banking. It is so messy and opaque and imprecise, using a shifting pile of demand deposits to fund long-term loans. Plenty of people — insurance companies, retirement savers — want to earn a return on their money and don’t need it anytime soon; their money can be locked up in long-term loans. The money that people keep in the bank just to pay rent and buy sandwiches doesn’t need to be pooled and invested in risky loans; it should just sit in the vault. [...] I will say, though, that I have also written a lot about crypto over the last few years. Crypto really created a new financial system from scratch, and it started with a very strong philosophical bias against traditional banking. And then it really did recreate traditional banking! And also traditional banking crises: In 2022, it turned out that one of the main uses of crypto was to turn customer demand deposits (of crypto) into extremely risky loans (of crypto), which ended as badly as you’d have expected. “One possibility,” I wrote last year, “is that fractional reserve banking is deeply rooted in human nature.” If you started the financial system over, maybe banking would develop again. Even if actual banking is getting narrower now.

He's saying this like they're two opposed points but "nobody looking to design a financial system would include fractional-reserve banking" and "fractional-reserve banking is an inevitable product of any financial system" makes the whole thing seem like the concept of "fraud"