Back in November, we learned that Disney had pulled a breathtakingly criminal wage-theft manuever on one of science-fiction's most beloved authors, Allan Dean Foster, an elderly cancer-patient caring for his sick wife. 1/

It's been eight years since @aaronsw  took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act #CFAA ) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR  database of scholarly articles. 1/

Alan Dean Foster is an sf legend - a writer who produced a shelf of original novels but also made a reputation novelizing movies and TV from Star Wars to Aliens, turning out books that transcended quickie adaptations, becoming beloved bestsellers in their own right. 1/

Dutch resistance members celebrate at the moment they heard of Adolf Hitler’s death over the radio, May 1945. (Colorized)

Today in "Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion" news, Amazon has released a landlord edition of its Alexa surveillance speaker that can be forced upon tenants. 1/

You know that free-floating sense that multinational corporations are above the law, able to buy their way out of consequences for even the most blatant, heinous crimes? There's a (nearly) unbelievable, highly concrete example of it underway right at this moment. 1/

Periodically, some dimbulb will pop up and say, "Hey, you love unions but you hate police brutality - so how about police unions, huh? Ever think of that? Huh? Huh?" Yeah, I know. Thing is, police unions aren't "unions" in the traditional sense. 1/

When Oxford University began work on its covid vaccine, it promised that the resulting work would be patent-free, with an active tech-transfer assistance program so that developing nations could manufacture their own supplies. 1/

When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals. 1/

I spend a lot of time looking in detail at abusive situations where tech plays a starring role: stalkerware, bossware, remote proctoring, etc. But nothing I'd read really prepared me for the tale of @AriseVSInc , an abuser without parallel. 1/