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Cory Doctorow on America the Technofeudalist State

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Enshittification, Techno-Feudalism, and Failed States

I’ve been listening to Cory Doctorow talk about enshittification for a while now. As a long-time fan, his fiction and essays have deeply influenced my work as a hacker, writer, and activist. Little Brother shaped how I think about surveillance and resistance. Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town was part of the inspiration co-founding Hive13. His ideas about digital autonomy resonate with me.

Cory Doctorow, is a Canadian, and has clearly lived for a long time in countries with functioning governments. On the podcast he suggests that because big tech is protected by digital locks, a product of the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that Canada and the EU have an opportunity to hold firms like Google and Amazon accountable. He advocates for inter operability mandates, so users aren’t forced to abandon their digital communities just to escape enshittified platforms. It’s a very Canadian way to confront the problem.

Let's Talk about NAS

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Bad News from Synology

In previus posts I have talked about the necessity of a cheap NAS appliiance, but then I also mentioned a Synology as a pricey but decent device for your homelab. I need to be clear that I no longer recommend Synology. I use mine because I already have one, but I would not buy a new Synology system today.

New Synologies require you to buy your disks from Synology, (a form of _enshittification _) so unless you can buy a “pre-cataclysm” relic from eBay, go with something else, because “screw Synology and screw enshittification.

Selfhosting as Liberation

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 11:30:47 -0400

In my last writing about The Gentrified Web, I conjured the image of the Soviet AK-47 as a symbol for self hosting. The rifle is a symbol of revolution, but also of liberation. Yeah, I know the Soviet Union sucked. But authoritarianism aside, commodity hardware in the hands of ordinary people can make a difference in people’s lives. By using commodity hardware to free yourself from the gentrified web, you can also begin thinking about other ways to free yourself from other forms of corporate control.

The Gentrified Web

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I was there Gandalf. I was there 30 years ago…

In the days before the original DotCom bubble, the Internet was lawless and free. Like the Wild Wild West. It was a haven for the kind of things that decent people shouldn’t be exposed to. I spent those days honing my nascent Unix skills by defacing white supremacy websites. As investment and profit found its way into the Wild Wild Web, it became civilized.