#SF Tech-Tech

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Brave Little Toaster

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908

Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/

As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:

http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/

The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.

So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:

https://ia803103.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212_Brave_Little_Toaster.mp3

A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar – I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg

My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

All right, on to the story!

One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."

But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.

Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.

"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.

"It was spoiled," it said.

#

But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.

"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.

"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.

He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.

#

The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.

"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"

So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.

"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.

"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.

#

Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"

The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!"). The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.

"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.

#

They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.

"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.

When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.

#

Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.

Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.

From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.

How inconsiderate!

#

The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.

It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.

"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.

"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!" The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.

"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.

Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.

The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.

#

The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.

Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.

But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.

He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.

#

If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification?ref=created_projects

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[blogfanreborn777]

Portal by Donato Giancola

[doolallymagpie]

hm. not a huge fan of the female character art in the character archetype section of AToW.

well, I mean, they're all serving, which is fine in a vacuum, but all of the guys are aggressively covered-up.

except the Elemental, who's...uh.

I have to assume he's completely naked in that thing (or is wearing only a tiny little speedo or something) or else I start getting really mad

[andthatsp1]

Apparently some people are saying that the 'brake issue' that Charles had in testing was actually not because something was wrong on the actual brake but because the new push rod suspension doesn't suit his signature brake technique? And that's why he seemed tentative under braking? What do you think?

I am once again giving the disclaimer that I’m not totally caught up/informed, but my understanding is that the new suspension is actually the pull-rod style (they were already running this in the rear), which is what Red Bull uses and what has worked just fine with Max’s similarly aggressive style, so I don’t think it’s a fundamental problem with the suspension layout. And before we doompost about Red Bull’s current issues— McLaren runs a pull-rod on their front suspension as well!

From what I’ve seen, it was rear grip that he lacked, which could possibly be at least somewhat resolved with that higher downforce rear wing that they didn’t have handy, or other setup adjustments. This also probably explains the way he was braking: poor rear-grip = careful braking to avoid a lockup/slide/spin.

Also, and I could be somewhat wrong here, but I believe the brake technique you’re referencing is meant to help with controlling the balance of the car through the middle phase of a corner, so it shouldn’t be affected by how early or late he initially hits the brakes. It’s also something that can be used to fight an understeering car, which this Ferrari obviously wasn’t doing since there was no rear grip— but that has been a characteristic of their previous cars. The telemetry shows that he was still successfully picking up the throttle early, it was just the initial phase that was more tentative, which to me is what points to just not enough grip to feel comfortable braking hard.

I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, but the conditions in Bahrain were all over the place and it was the first time out with this new design + this season’s tires. I think there’s still plenty of reason to hope that they can find a good setup window for this car.

[cyberpunk-lesbians]

so glad it cut me off before I committed a crime against my school. Any way to hell with u(sic)ga😂 bc

WHAT’S THE GOOD WORD?

TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!

be prepared for incoming songs bc GT n my frat have GR8 songs 💕🫦😤

[swtechspecs]

Slayn & Korpil A/SF-01 B-Wing Heavy Assault Starfighter

Source: The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels (Del Rey, 1996)

[charles-leclerc-official]

Ferrari have made some small modifications to the floor of the car for this weekend's race. These changes are small, and are aimed at added stiffness in the floor which should offer some more stability cornering.

This isn't a long term solution, but it should help in the meantime for both drivers. Any small adjustments between now and more substantive changes for current problems will be greatly appreciated.

The team does seem to feel they have a direction again. We will see after summer if that is true. I will be interested to see how this modification as well as in inboard upgrades in Spa handle.

source

[kitkatcodes]

✨ sf day adventures ✨

took my cousins to visit Salesforce Park for the first time 🌲

actually was so clear and beautiful until it turned very windy foggy and cold obv

[foundationsofdecay]

Friends also got their visas approved and are bouncing like immediately to portugal like why is everyone i know up by me moving a bajillion miles awayyyyyyy

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 3

Translation notes:

So, uh. Elliot's name is rendered with two t's in the og game, but a single one in the GBA version. I had never paid attention to that at all until I had already edited all these pages, and I don't care enough to change it.

Cain's sword causes an explosion here. In the game, it is indeed capable of summoning flames.

This is a perfect illustration of how I feel about these names, but I do wonder what the actual intention was, since Cain is supposed to be already gone. The original image is even cut off weirdly in the middle of the text, and i don't think it's a problem with the scan, since every scanned page has a black border showing that the paper itself doesn't cut there. I wonder about the production of this thing, but i'll wait until i translate the author's comments before saying more.

The map in the previous chapter was very accurate to the beta map of the game. The smaller map here showing Rindo however looks off, the coast is different, and there seems to be a river directly to the north of Rindo, as opposed to the path to Shade Abbey. Perhaps fitting since Shade is skipped here.

Metaphaluna, huh? Needlessly to say, the country of the gods/Ancients is called only Metapha in the final game. Also, in this panel, it pops up as an alternate reading for 前世紀 (ancient times), not the name of a country specifically. I chose to romanize the last part as "luna" for three reasons. One is that the continent of Rune is actually rendered as Lune in at least two guides. I take romanizations from JP guides with a grain of salt since they sometimes look bad/unnatural, or are inconsistent (Pelle's name for example has been romanized as both Peil or Payle depending on the book). I checked though, and town names however are consistent in both the books I've seen romanizing things. The second reason is that the beta map used at this point has a fairly noticeable crescent moon shaped island right in the middle. In the final game, we can't know exactly where Metapha is, because you only teleport there. But I wonder if this island had something to do with it at some point. The third reason is simply I saw no better reason. Metaphalna and Metapharuna would be just as valid, but don't have any meaning to them. Update: I didn't know back when I translated this, but it turns out the names "Metaphaluna" and "pseudo-magic" are also mentioned in Doom Blade, a spinoff manga done by Yoshitaka Tamaki himself (character design and one writer of the original game). This implies that these terms were really created by the game's staff, even if they are not mentioned in the actual game.

The biggest equation next to Tao as she explains the magic types is very clearly a E=mc². Look close.

I've retranslated Elliot's scenes from the game thinking it would be relevant to these notes. Now I feel it really isn't, but you get more content so you should be happy.

My main point with that is that Elliot does not say anything about Cain in the game. In the GBA version, Balbazak does try revealing Max, Cain and Darksol's identities before dying, but that's not a thing in the og. So yeah I really translated a bunch of stuff for nothing this time! Except not because Darksol is awesome in that scene and everyone should get to see it.

Now let's talk about Otrant. I have mentioned before that Otrant's gender is never explicitly said, and they speak in a mostly gender neutral way (I feel like there's a few masculine patterns in some lines, but I'm not confident enough to say for certain). What I hadn't noticed is that they also use lipstick in the games, which is probably what sparked these observations to begin with, but i'm uh, occasionally not smart. In any case, if any of these aspects were done at this point in development the artist here sure ignored them, and drew a regular old man who gets called an old man. They hate to see an androgynous boss winning.

I don't recall Otrant's third eye being called "Eye of Truth" anywhere else, but the manual of the game does say it can see the past and the future.

Otrant's naming of the Shining Force is a bit more elaborate here, but the wording is very similar to the actual game.

Finally, let's play spot the cameo!

We've got Gong, Zylo, one of the birds, and probably Anri. Easy.

Here, besides the obvious three who were actually introduced in the story, we again have a bird, Anri between Ken and Hans, Gong to the right, and Mae and Gort behind Luke. If you read the pre-release page you know that Gort was meant to be Mae's servant at some point, so this might be why they're together, or it's just coincidence because they still join around the same time in the final game. More importantly, to Ken's left we have...

Some guys. Who are these. They could be made up by the artist (there will be another case of this), but I find it curious that the artist had to do that when there are so many character to pick from, and he clearly wanted to depict official characters here. For one, there's evidence that Earnest was already designed at that point in development. However, that link also shows that Vankar didn't have a portrait by that time at least, and Vankar would have already joined by this point in the story. So could the bald centaur here be a beta Vankar, or the artist's interpretation of Vankar via unfinished art? Maybe, but just a guess in the end. Mostly I'm just fascinated by how detailed this guy is compared to even Mae and Gort's cameos. The other guy isn't so i don't think about them nearly as much.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tech workers spent a whole generation conceiving of themselves as entrepreneurs who bargained, nerd-to-nerd, with other entrepreneurs who needed workers as much as workers needed paychecks.

These workers allowed themselves to be convinced that being “extremely hardcore” — that is, working body- and mind-ruining hours (without overtime pay) was a badge of honor.

They let themselves believe that their bosses gave them gourmet cafeteria food, “on-campus” fitness centers and daycare because they were valued workers — and not because this created the conditions where workers could be induced to put in longer hours without additional pay.

They conceived of themselves as ascetic monks, a priesthood that labored every hour God sent to bring digitization to the world. Meanwhile, their bosses’ wealth soared, even as their own working conditions deteriorated.

Tech workers may be prone to the same rationalization and self-deception as the rest of us, but (like the rest of us), they aren’t fools. Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.

As conditions and prospects worsened, tech workers’ identities as workers emerged from a generation-long coma. They penned manifestos, walked off the job, and formed unions.

-The proletarianization of tech workers: If there is hope, it is in the proles

[blogfanreborn777]

Portal - Pathways by Donato Giancola

[handmedownpocketpussy]

OK tech people I have a question: why is twitter still alive? I've seen articles like this: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/05/business/advertisers-x-withdrawal/index.html

ever since musk bought the thing. I also know Tumblr has been 'about to shut down!!!!' for like a decade now, so I just have 0 faith in any tech or econ reporting on websites.

I remember when twitter got bought and everyone was fired 'it will be shut down next week' and when they moved a bunch of servers in a uhaul 'this will kill the company' when advertisers pulled out when they made blue checks paid for 'its joever'

so like what gives? I will never believe anyone who says a website is 'going to be shut down tomorrow' since the tech info out there seems to always be 110% bullshit.

I'm a mechanic by trade and our whole thing is 'if i tell you this will break by next week it breaks by next week' so i just dont trust tech industry people becuase it's all hyperbole

am I wrong? is every single article just for clicks and there's nothing behind it? what is the point of having so many voices of the industry sound the death knell for big companies more than the boy who cried wolf?

[andthatsp1]

Since aus gp will have a pretty high chance of rain, do you think the main reason ferrari was bad in rain last year was because of their tyre warm up problem? Do you think if they fix this problem they could be decent and have a chance in the rain?

Honestly I think Charles wasn't bad in the cold last year. Brazil was good until they pit him behind traffic. Even then he still recovered and managed to hold back the mclarens. Vegas, I think he could have battled it out with hamilton if sainz didn't do what he did to him. But idk if that's because I just rep Charles too much

I also rep Charles too much, so there is bias here too 😂 + I really only have a pretty basic understanding of how these cars function—

That said, I do think the tires played a big role in the SF-24’s struggles in the rain because it made it so difficult to get them in the correct window and keep them there. So I’d caution a guess that it should improve their performance in the rain, at least somewhat, if they’ve found a fix for the warm-up phase that doesn’t throw away the gains they made in degradation.

I’d say Charles maximized his results in all conditions more often than not last year. He held his own in Brazil for sure, but Vegas was a real tire nightmare in general so I’m not sure if he could’ve done much more against the Mercs there but he definitely could’ve beaten Carlos 🙃

[tamaharu]

okay thats interesting! in the SF try-outs during the song "legally blonde" she sings about how she cant be legally blonde, while in the official version AND THE DEMO she sings about letting her be legally blonde. which means that at some point they changed the lyrics around, and then changed them back! laurence o'keefe.... nell benjamin.... what occurs in your twisted minds

[imgonnagetkilledbynutstink]

Idk why I decided Todd was a hippie