Cory Doctorow

Delta airlines has announced a new surveillance pricing plan: they're going to feed an AI the nonconsensually harvested personal data that data-brokers and credit bureaux hold on you to predict the maximum you're willing to pay, and then price their tickets accordingly:

Fortune

Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket | Fortune

The airline touted a partnership with an AI-enabled revenue system as a step on the road to fully personalized ticket pricing, part of its goal to ...

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

Pluralistic: Delta’s AI-based price-gouging (30 Jul 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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In reading a fascinating and important discussion of the lack of a termination clause in the new Mastodon.social Terms of Service, I was GOBSMACKED to discover that the new ToS including a "binding arbitration waiver," which takes away your right to sue, no matter how badly the service abuses you. These are profoundly unethical, terrible clauses. They should never, ever appear in "adhesion contracts" (that is, contracts that you merely click through, rather than negotiating.)

If there's anything that illustrated the hollowness of the Democratic Party as an effective opposition for me, it's this. Yesterday, I watched a video of a sitting US Senator being thrown to the ground and cuffed by fed goons for asking questions of the fed official he has direct oversight authority over. Within minutes, I'd gotten DOZENS of texts from Dems and Dem orgs asking for $5-$50 to "fight fascism." That's it. "Are you terrified that your country is slipping into fascism? Pay me."

Trump's coalition includes a huge number of people who will suffer terribly from his policies, but who voted for him anyway. Trumpism requires that he find ways to keep those Christmas-voting turkeys happy, or at least distracted. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

Pluralistic: Trump can’t do ANYTHING for his base (12 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Now, that's an audiology bargain!

I'm trying to extract this video of a speech I gave last night (I want to extract the audio and put it in my podcast):

2025 Ursula Franklin Lecture: Cory Doctorow

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist Cory Doctorow presents the 2025 Ursula Franklin Lecture.

Every. Single. Vimeo. Downloader. Fails. They all give some variety of 404 or 505. Does anyone have a RELIABLE Vimeo download recipe that works with THIS file? Thank you!