This day in history

2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022.

Cory Doctorow
2 min readDec 4, 2023

Tomorrow (Dec 5), I’m at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org’s Bill McKibben called “The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful.”

#20yrsago Stephen King: forget piracy, boomers are just tired of buying crap https://ew.com/article/2007/02/01/stephen-king-laziness-baby-boomers/

#15yrsago Britain ordered to destroy its database of innocents’ DNA https://web.archive.org/web/20130905083503/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/dec/05/dna-database-civilliberties

#10yrsago Charity sends Amazon a cake celebrating 3d anniversary of unpaid invoice https://twitter.com/MusicBrainz/status/408000817048731648

#10yrsago Blues Brothers mall car-chase recreated in Lego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_uqlNgSU8

#10yrsago NSA’s talking points for friends and family — rebutted https://web.archive.org/web/20131202215105/http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/12/02/nsa-sent-home-talking-points-for-employees-to-use-in-conversations-with-family-friends-during-holidays/

#5yrsago Malware authors have figured out how to get Google to do “irreversible takedowns” of the sites they compete with https://torrentfreak.com/scammers-hit-pirate-game-sites-with-irreversible-google-takedowns-181130/

#5yrsago Facebook lured charities to its platform, then abandoned them once they got hacked https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-facebook-get-hacked-need-help/

#5yrsago Thousands of Wisconsinites turn out to protest outgoing Republicans’ plan to seize power after electoral defeat https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/04/coup-protests-engulf-wisconsin-capitol-outgoing-scott-walker-and-gop-move-cripple

#5yrsago Facebook made itself indispensable to media companies, “pivoted to video,” changed its mind, and triggered a industrywide mass extinction event https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-digital-media-bubble-is-bursting-thats-hurting-a-generation-of-promising-young-journalists/2018/12/03/d7887d30-f6f2-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html

#1yrago Yes, It’s Censorship https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes-its-censorship/

It’s EFF’s Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I’ve worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been — and remain — a major donor, because I’ve seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow

Written by Cory Doctorow

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https://pluralistic.net; Mailing list: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list; Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr

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