Oddly reminded of my previous life in infosec. A Mountie once told me there’s no new crime under the sun—only the same crimes now on a computer.

There’s no new history—only the same history performed with new technologies.

When you understand it this way—as a productivity stealing and laundering machine—it fits very neatly into historical patterns.

AI is just the latest attempt to control new productivity (the Internet) and divert the gains away from the commons.

In that respect, it works. It doesn’t have to increase productivity—in fact can decrease it, as we’ve seen—as long as it diverts more profits into elite pockets.

Like, I don’t want anyone to get the mistaken impression that elites are INTELLIGENT or capable of making solid plans, even just to enrich themselves. They’re often exactly this foolish.

But each individual elite is blindly selfish in the same direction, so it adds up.

Most of history sees a constant shift between sudden advancements in productivity (spinning wheel, industrial fertiliser, the Internet) shortly overtaken by an elite class figuring out how to confiscate all gains, by trick or by force.

It’s not a conspiracy so much as a lack of elite self-control.

Very appreciated!

(Also Orbit, for context, but my main contract goes through Orbit UK, who arranged rights in the US through Orbit US.)

Given that I’m currently between editors, I would appreciate a heads-up on whatever you’re told, if you don’t mind.

I’m not saying that DDoS attacks don’t happen. They do. You can even rent botnets by the hour to carry them out for you. But I honestly don’t see why Bluesky would be a target for anyone other than like… Elon Musk.

Willing to be proven wrong, but my gut says this is another “crying DDoS“ tale.

Also, probably relevant and related: Companies cry DDoS way too much, when often it’s an infrastructure failure or a surge of unique user traffic. Because DDoS is hard to conclusively disprove.

Today is a good day for people to learn that certain state hackers will take credit for ANYTHING they happen to see on the news under the assumption that it earns them clout.

You confirm APT involvement by fingerprinting their code and tactics, not by believing state hacker claims.

Libraries (and Libby) pay the authors/publishers for their copies! So you read/listen for free, and the author still gets paid.

(Authors in countries with Public Lending Right are also given lump sums by their government once per year for each copy of their work in a library.)

My solution was a covered metal cup lol. But to be fair, mine never knocked it off the table that I can recall. I think only open mugs were luxurious enough for her coffee manicures.

OMG MY LAST CAT DID EXACTLY THIS! It drove me up a wall! If I looked away from my mug for even a moment, that paw would be in there like she was getting a manicure.

But actually drink it? God no. Why would she do that.

Crossing fingers for you!!

It's funny you should say that. I moved to France in January of this year, and I feel oddly comforted every time I see the protestors here have set something else on fire.

Rather than becoming more conservative in my cranky old age, I have honestly become more "governments are all as evil as we allow them to be, and only guillotines and local solidarity organisations get anything reasonable done".

Godspeed. I hope the Greens are at least easier to scare into decency.

I fervently hope that the UK continues trending Green. I fear that Canada’s wake-up call will be a long time coming, as long as the US remains a threat and the Liberals shallowly pretend to meet the moment.

We got what we wanted. We got the people who bill themselves as the adults in the room. That’s always been code for “very solemnly hurting people while we say there’s nothing we can do about it”.

I don’t know if there was a better option at the time. But their ongoing popularity says we don’t care.

A hundred years from now, perhaps we’ll get another apology. For now, the Liberals enjoy historical popularity.

This, too, is Canada. It’s who we were before. It’s who we are now.

But as for me: I will never vote for another Liberal again.

In 1939, Canada turned away 907 Jewish refugees from Europe. 254 of them later died in concentration camps.

In 2018, the Canadian government formally apologised for its historical callousness.

In 2026, Bill C-12 has repeated history. We are kicking out refugees en masse.

Like my god, I always try to assume an open mind, but these people can’t even abstract their code, how are they going to create the most powerful security tool in the world

RIGHT? I read through their blog post to dig into the security claims, and the commit hashes nearly made me think “hm, maybe these will eventually come out and be meaningful” and then I remembered the code leak lmao

Frankly, it’s far less common to see the ruling class step BACK from obvious self-implosion.

It HAS happened—but generally under extreme duress. A sudden invasion where they’re forced to share resources or die, for instance.

WAIT BUT YOU STILL OWE ME THE ARC aaaaagh

That’s about where mine was, and it was super useful for certain puzzles!

I understand WHY they're popular. I won't pretend there's no reason for it. But they're still just children's books, and acting like they have some impossible hold over you is still hilariously bizarre.

I just really want bagels now. 😭

I understand. I disagree, but I understand. (He brought the food of my people, so I’m not allowed to be mad.)

I approve of this edit lol, it would be a great reversal after all of the teasing.