Stealth privatisation was always the endgame for public-private-partnerships. — Britons are divided on many matters, but one uniting force that cuts across regional, party and class lines is jealous pride for the NHS and fierce resistance to its privatisation and the importation of America’s grisly omnishambolic health care “system.” But while the British people oppose privatisation, the British investor…

2002, 2007, 2012, 2017. — #20yrsago Danger Hiptop reviewed https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Likable-Sidekick-is-priced-right-2765968.php #20yrsago Distributed.net cracks the RC5–64 cipher https://web.archive.org/web/20030710002806/https://www.distributed.net/pressroom/news-20020926 #20yrsago Kevin Mitnick’s laptop, signed by Woz, on eBay https://forums.atariage.com/topic/14593-own-a-piece-of-hacking-history/#comment-145970

2002, 2007, 2017, 2021. — #20yrsago Dan Gillmor responds to Jack Valenti https://web.archive.org/web/20021012222914/https://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4175607.htm #20yrsago 2000+ year old Greek computer reinterpreted https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2002/09/19/the-clockwork-computer #15yrsago Guerrilla librarians free the $86k Library of Congress copyright database https://web.archive.org/web/20071011005126/http://bulk.resource.org/copyright/

Chokepoints, compliance, weakest links. — In 2018, Tumblr announced a ban on “adult content.” That call was made by Verizon, Tumblr’s erstwhile owner, and to call the resulting mess “a shitshow” is an insult to good, hardworking shitshows all over the world. Verizon enforced this policy with an automated filter, which was charged with analyzing…

2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021. — #20yrsago My talk at UT Austin https://web.archive.org/web/20021022184450/https://www.weblogsky.com/2002_09_01_blarchive.html#85498216 #15yrsago Pratchett’s Discworld: a reading-order guide https://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/ #15yrsago New AT&T terms of service: We’ll cut off your Internet connection for criticizing us https://web.archive.org/web/20071011020653/http://home.bellsouth.net/csbellsouth/s/s.dll?spage=cg/legal/att.htm&leg=tos

Microsoft, Oracle and other cloud giants use their terms of service to prevent competition. — Correction: An earlier draft of this article incorrectly stated that John D Rockefeller owned the railroads that shipped product for the Standard Oil Company. In reality, Rockefeller controlled those railroads through bribery and coercion, not an equity stake. I regret the error. “There is no cloud, there is only other…

2007, 2012, 2017, 2021. — #15yrsago Terry Pratchett’s “Making Money” — economic comedy https://memex.craphound.com/2007/09/28/terry-pratchetts-making-money-economic-comedy/ #10yrsago UK banks use robo-callers to make fraud-check calls, conditioning customers to hand out personal information to anonymous machines that phone them up out of the blue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/27/automated-calls-fraud-banks

Corporations don’t have First Amendment rights except when they’re making political donations, refusing to bake cakes, or blocking birth control. — There are lots of cleavage lines between “left” and “right” (“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect” -F. Wilhoit), and here’s a crucial one: the left knows its ideology…

2002, 2012, 2017, 2021 — #20yrsago Software Defined Radio defined https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/09/27/1420201/eric-blossom-on-gnu-radio #10yrsago Former top US copyright bureaucrat thinks all communications/entertainment technology should be illegal until Congress approves it https://www.techdirt.com/2012/09/27/former-copyright-boss-new-technology-should-be-presumed-illegal-until-congress-says-otherwise/