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© Valve Corporation. All rights re­served. All trade­marks are prop­erty of their re­spec­tive own­ers in the US and other coun­tries. Privacy Policy |  Legal |  Accessibility |  Steam Subscriber Agreement |  Refunds |  Cookies

We read an en­tire scroll — with­out ever open­ing it

PHerc. 1667, sealed since the erup­tion of Vesuvius in 79 AD, has been vir­tu­ally un­wrapped and read from be­gin­ning to end.

June 25th, 2026

Read the preprint: Complete vir­tual un­wrap­ping and read­ing of a rolled Herculaneum pa­pyrus (PDF). The data is openly avail­able at scroll­prize.org/​data, and the code on GitHub.

For al­most 2,000 years, the car­bonized li­brary of Herculaneum has kept a cruel bar­gain: its scrolls sur­vived the erup­tion of Mount Vesuvius, but only by be­com­ing too frag­ile to open. To read one was to de­stroy it. Hundreds of rolls have there­fore re­mained sealed, their con­tents pre­served yet un­reach­able.

Today that changes. We have com­pletely vir­tu­ally un­wrapped and read PHerc. 1667 — the scroll the Vesuvius Challenge com­mu­nity knows as Scroll 4 — with­out ever touch­ing its pages. It is the first Herculaneum pa­pyrus to be dig­i­tally un­rolled and read in full, end to end, and made avail­able for sus­tained schol­arly study.

From a sealed lump to a read­able book​

PHerc. 1667 be­gan as a black­ened, rolled mass of car­bonized pa­pyrus. To read it, we never un­rolled it phys­i­cally. Instead, we scanned it with high-res­o­lu­tion X-rays, re­con­structed the wound sheet in­side the vol­ume, flat­tened it into a read­able sur­face, and used ma­chine learn­ing to bring out the faint traces of an­cient ink.

The work reaches be­yond a sin­gle scroll. Alongside the com­plete read­ing of PHerc. 1667, the re­search es­tab­lishes a method that holds up un­der in­de­pen­dent checks and scales to other rolls.

PHerc. 1667 — read in full​

PHerc. 1667 is what sur­vives of a larger roll: ear­lier at­tempts to open it by hand — in the nine­teenth cen­tury, and again in 1969 and the 1980s — de­stroyed its outer lay­ers and left only the com­pact in­ner core, about 8 cm of an orig­i­nal height of 19 – 24 cm. From that sur­viv­ing por­tion we have now re­cov­ered and read the text in full — the lower parts of some twenty-two columns, tran­scribed and re­viewed by pa­py­rol­o­gists. It is the first time the pre­served text of a rolled Herculaneum scroll has been read con­tin­u­ously, end to end, rather than in iso­lated words or patches.

The re­cov­ered text is a philo­soph­i­cal trea­tise on ethics, and the ev­i­dence points to a Stoic work: it turns on hu­man na­ture, im­pulse, and the moral progress of hu­man be­ings, and its fi­nal pre­served col­umn names Aristocreon — nephew and dis­ci­ple of the great Stoic Chrysippus — which, to­gether with the lan­guage and themes of the text, places it in a Stoic con­text and dates it to the 2nd cen­tury BC.

Because the pa­pyrus is dam­aged, the read­ings are frag­men­tary, with gaps where the sur­face is lost. Even so, sev­eral pas­sages can be read clearly for the first time in two thou­sand years:

“…we will in­quire into some­thing, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we de­part from our­selves and from our own na­ture…”

“Having…strained our­selves to the ut­most through re­search and learn­ing…pos­sess­ing the same prac­ti­cal wis­dom…”

“…such be­ing the goods for us, even from the op­po­site evils there will be nei­ther any­thing good — let alone beau­ti­ful — nor any­thing bad — let alone ugly — nor hap­pi­ness…”

Translated from the Greek; the full col­umn-by-col­umn tran­scrip­tion is in the preprint.

PHerc. Paris 4 — ink made vis­i­ble by higher res­o­lu­tion​

In a sec­ond scroll — PHerc. Paris 4, the scroll the Vesuvius Challenge com­mu­nity knows as Scroll 1 — a higher-res­o­lu­tion imag­ing tech­nique makes the ink di­rectly vis­i­ble in­side the scroll it­self, in the three-di­men­sional X-ray data, for the first time. Segmented in 3D and pro­jected back onto the un­wrapped page, that ink matches the text read in the 2023 Grand Prize one-to-one — an in­de­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion, from bet­ter data, that the read­ing is real.

PHerc. 139 — a ti­tle, and an au­thor​

In a third scroll, PHerc. 139, we re­cover the scrol­l’s ti­tle and au­thor at­tri­bu­tion: the work is iden­ti­fied as Philodemus, On Gods, Book 8 — a trea­tise by the Epicurean philoso­pher whose works fill so much of this li­brary. Reading the ti­tle of a closed scroll tells schol­ars what a roll con­tains be­fore a sin­gle col­umn of its body is stud­ied.

How it was done​

The scans were ac­quired with high-res­o­lu­tion phase-con­trast X-ray mi­cro­to­mog­ra­phy on the BM18 beam­line at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble — an in­stru­ment able to re­solve the wafer-thin, densely packed lay­ers of a Herculaneum roll. The work was car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the National Library of Naples “Vittorio Emanuele III”, which safe­guards the Herculaneum pa­pyri. From those vol­umes, the team re­con­structed the scrol­l’s geom­e­try, traced and flat­tened its sur­face into a read­able sheet, and trained ma­chine-learn­ing mod­els to de­tect ink that is al­most in­dis­tin­guish­able from the car­bonized pa­pyrus be­neath it. Each read­ing was then ex­am­ined and tran­scribed by pa­py­rol­o­gists.

Crucially, all of this is open. The to­mo­graphic data, re­con­structed sur­faces and tran­scrip­tions are re­leased un­der a Creative Commons li­cence at scroll­prize.org/​data and archived at the ESRF, and the code is on GitHub. Anyone can check the work, build on it, and ap­ply it to the scrolls that re­main.

A vic­tory for open, global sci­ence​

This is what open sci­ence makes pos­si­ble. The vir­tual un­wrap­ping of the Herculaneum scrolls was pi­o­neered at EduceLab by its prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor, Professor Brent Seales. In 2023 Seales opened his lab’s imag­ing and soft­ware tech­nol­ogy to the Vesuvius Challenge — a pub­lic, do­na­tion-funded ef­fort he co-founded with Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to read the scrolls in the open — and from there a global com­mu­nity took up the prob­lem. The first let­ters and the 2023 Grand Prize were won by con­tes­tants from across the world.

What is less widely known is what hap­pened next. Most of the Vesuvius Challenge re­search team first ar­rived as con­tes­tants. They en­tered the open com­pe­ti­tion, won prizes for the break­throughs they made, and were then re­cruited onto the team that has now read an en­tire scroll. The peo­ple be­hind this break­through are, in large part, the global com­mu­nity the Challenge it­self cre­ated.

What’s next​

PHerc. 1667 is one scroll. Hundreds more re­main sealed — an en­tire li­brary of phi­los­o­phy, po­etry and prose wait­ing to be read for the first time since an­tiq­uity. The method shown here is built to scale, and every­thing needed to ap­ply it is open.

If you want to help read the rest of the li­brary:

Read the sci­ence: the preprint (PDF).

Get the data and code: scroll­prize.org/​data and GitHub.

Join the ef­fort: get started and be­come part of the com­mu­nity read­ing the scrolls.

The thoughts of the an­cient world, sealed in dark­ness for two mil­len­nia, are com­ing back into the light — a whole scroll at a time.

If you want to share some­thing that does­n’t fit in a com­ment, please drop a link to it.

If you want to share some­thing that does­n’t fit in a com­ment, please drop a link to it.

My con­do­lences to fam­ily and friends. I’ve been read­ing Om’s blog for years and al­ways en­joyed his in­sight, and es­pe­cially his in­ter­weaved cre­ative en­deav­ors. His pho­tog­ra­phy has al­ways been strik­ing. He’ll be missed.

Om was such a force around in­no­va­tion through­out the early 2000s.. I re­lied on his writ­ing and coun­cil as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist with Orange Ventures any nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles on the work we did through­out the early days of Android. He had a tal­ent for hon­ing it on and dis­till­ing lead­ing tech­nolo­gies help oth­ers un­der­stand their po­ten­tial. and for the past decade or more it’s been fun to see the world through his lens and his pho­tog­ra­phy posts. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

My con­do­lences to fam­ily and friends. I’ve been read­ing Om’s blog for years and al­ways en­joyed his in­sight, and es­pe­cially his in­ter­weaved cre­ative en­deav­ors. His pho­tog­ra­phy has al­ways been strik­ing. He’ll be missed.

Om was such a force around in­no­va­tion through­out the early 2000s.. I re­lied on his writ­ing and coun­cil as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist with Orange Ventures any nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles on the work we did through­out the early days of Android. He had a tal­ent for hon­ing it on and dis­till­ing lead­ing tech­nolo­gies help oth­ers un­der­stand their po­ten­tial. and for the past decade or more it’s been fun to see the world through his lens and his pho­tog­ra­phy posts. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

Om was such a force around in­no­va­tion through­out the early 2000s.. I re­lied on his writ­ing and coun­cil as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist with Orange Ventures any nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles on the work we did through­out the early days of Android. He had a tal­ent for hon­ing it on and dis­till­ing lead­ing tech­nolo­gies help oth­ers un­der­stand their po­ten­tial. and for the past decade or more it’s been fun to see the world through his lens and his pho­tog­ra­phy posts. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

I did­n’t know Om well, but I sa­vored my en­coun­ters with him, the last of which was a year ago at WWDC. He had been do­ing the best writ­ing of his life in re­cent months on this site, and in his ab­sence, we will all un­der­stand the tech in­dus­try a lit­tle less well. I’m so very sorry.

A sad day when we lose one of the most sup­port­ive and bright­est. He was a fa­ther and men­tor to the en­tire Gigaom fam­ily, help­ing us be­come bet­ter writ­ers, and hu­mans, than we thought we could be. I will miss you, Om. Peace to you and yours.

I did­n’t know Om well, but I sa­vored my en­coun­ters with him, the last of which was a year ago at WWDC. He had been do­ing the best writ­ing of his life in re­cent months on this site, and in his ab­sence, we will all un­der­stand the tech in­dus­try a lit­tle less well. I’m so very sorry.

A sad day when we lose one of the most sup­port­ive and bright­est. He was a fa­ther and men­tor to the en­tire Gigaom fam­ily, help­ing us be­come bet­ter writ­ers, and hu­mans, than we thought we could be. I will miss you, Om. Peace to you and yours.

A sad day when we lose one of the most sup­port­ive and bright­est. He was a fa­ther and men­tor to the en­tire Gigaom fam­ily, help­ing us be­come bet­ter writ­ers, and hu­mans, than we thought we could be. I will miss you, Om. Peace to you and yours.

The best.

The best.

We never met, never even talked re­ally- just a cou­ple of brief pleas­antries ex­changed here and there over shared in­ter­ests… yet this news is like a gut punch. Om was an in­sight­ful, steady­ing voice through­out my time as­so­ci­ated with the tech­nol­ogy in­dus­try- his ex­pe­ri­ence calmed choppy wa­ters, and was of­ten a much needed dose of per­spec­tive in a world in­creas­ingly happy to fo­cus on style over sub­stance. His es­says felt like a throw­back in the best pos­si­ble way, and his pas­sion for el­e­gance and crafts­man­ship was in­fec­tious. I thank him for the gift of his knowl­edge, and his un­err­ing pas­sion for the in­ter­est­ing. I hope his legacy brings com­fort to his fam­ily and loved ones.

Om was a pi­o­neer, al­ways cu­ri­ous, in­tel­lec­tual depth, an as­tute chron­i­cler of our time and fore­most a good per­son

We never met, never even talked re­ally- just a cou­ple of brief pleas­antries ex­changed here and there over shared in­ter­ests… yet this news is like a gut punch.

Om was an in­sight­ful, steady­ing voice through­out my time as­so­ci­ated with the tech­nol­ogy in­dus­try- his ex­pe­ri­ence calmed choppy wa­ters, and was of­ten a much needed dose of per­spec­tive in a world in­creas­ingly happy to fo­cus on style over sub­stance. His es­says felt like a throw­back in the best pos­si­ble way, and his pas­sion for el­e­gance and crafts­man­ship was in­fec­tious.

I thank him for the gift of his knowl­edge, and his un­err­ing pas­sion for the in­ter­est­ing. I hope his legacy brings com­fort to his fam­ily and loved ones.

Om was a pi­o­neer, al­ways cu­ri­ous, in­tel­lec­tual depth, an as­tute chron­i­cler of our time and fore­most a good per­son

Om was a pi­o­neer, al­ways cu­ri­ous, in­tel­lec­tual depth, an as­tute chron­i­cler of our time and fore­most a good per­son

A great man. What a ter­ri­ble loss for the SF com­mu­nity.

OM was a pi­o­neer. I have been deeply shaped and in­flu­enced by his writ­ings, learn­ings that he shared via his blogs, newslet­ter, talks etc. Very sad to hear of his pass­ing. Shall pray for his peace. Condolences to his fam­ily and friends.

A great man. What a ter­ri­ble loss for the SF com­mu­nity.

OM was a pi­o­neer. I have been deeply shaped and in­flu­enced by his writ­ings, learn­ings that he shared via his blogs, newslet­ter, talks etc. Very sad to hear of his pass­ing. Shall pray for his peace. Condolences to his fam­ily and friends.

OM was a pi­o­neer. I have been deeply shaped and in­flu­enced by his writ­ings, learn­ings that he shared via his blogs, newslet­ter, talks etc.

Very sad to hear of his pass­ing. Shall pray for his peace.

Condolences to his fam­ily and friends.

This is ter­ri­ble news … so so sad i have never met him in real life only fol­lowed through on­line blogs and also on his site …life is frag­ile, may his soul rest in peace …all we have got is to­day and thats re­al­ity 🙁 We will learn some amaz­ing things he taught us via his writ­ing and some ob­ser­va­tions… Words , emo­tions, in­ter­ac­tion via com­ments re­ally have mean­ing … Thank you Om …May you rest in peace and strength to fam­ily

This is ter­ri­ble news … so so sad i have never met him in real life only fol­lowed through on­line blogs and also on his site …life is frag­ile, may his soul rest in peace …all we have got is to­day and thats re­al­ity 🙁 We will learn some amaz­ing things he taught us via his writ­ing and some ob­ser­va­tions… Words , emo­tions, in­ter­ac­tion via com­ments re­ally have mean­ing … Thank you Om …May you rest in peace and strength to fam­ily

Om was al­ways thought­ful and smart, with his unique per­spec­tive on tech, pens, health, pho­tog­ra­phy and so many other things. We first met when he was an Advisor to about.me, where I worked. He re­sponded any­where. My con­do­lences to his fam­ily and loved ones.

Om was al­ways thought­ful and smart, with his unique per­spec­tive on tech, pens, health, pho­tog­ra­phy and so many other things. We first met when he was an Advisor to about.me, where I worked. He re­sponded any­where. My con­do­lences to his fam­ily and loved ones.

My con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily and friends. I have been a long-time reader of his work for so many years. Rest in peace, and let’s all take care of and ap­pre­ci­ate each other while we can.

My con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily and friends. I have been a long-time reader of his work for so many years. Rest in peace, and let’s all take care of and ap­pre­ci­ate each other while we can.

This is hor­ri­ble news. I’m so sorry to hear. I met Om once for cof­fee and we emailed each other with talk of cam­eras and set­tings and all that good stuff. He will be thought of of­ten and missed im­mensely. — Matt

This is hor­ri­ble news. I’m so sorry to hear. I met Om once for cof­fee and we emailed each other with talk of cam­eras and set­tings and all that good stuff. He will be thought of of­ten and missed im­mensely. — Matt

I met Om al­most 13 years ago via Matt Mullenweg. Om was so gen­er­ous with his time, ad­vice, and great at mak­ing a founder feel like a friend. I still re­mem­ber our meet­ing and time spent. My con­do­lences, he will be missed and very much re­mem­bered.

I met Om al­most 13 years ago via Matt Mullenweg. Om was so gen­er­ous with his time, ad­vice, and great at mak­ing a founder feel like a friend. I still re­mem­ber our meet­ing and time spent. My con­do­lences, he will be missed and very much re­mem­bered.

I’m so sad to hear this — I never met a kinder en­tre­pre­neur. I only met Om a hand­ful of times, but he shared two last­ing lessons with me. The first was when he was run­ning GigaOm and I was a cub tech re­porter at the SF Chronicle. He was skep­ti­cal about hir­ing me, he said, be­cause news­pa­per writ­ers were gen­er­ally too slow and did­n’t un­der­stand web-era pub­lish­ing. He was right, and it pushed me to leave news­pa­pers as quickly as I could to prove that I could evolve. The sec­ond was many years later, when I was hav­ing a drink with him and some other re­porters. We asked him what ad­vice he had for us, and he said: never name your blog af­ter your­self. I’m happy to have known him even a lit­tle, and my con­do­lences to his friends and fam­ily.

I’m so sad to hear this — I never met a kinder en­tre­pre­neur.

I only met Om a hand­ful of times, but he shared two last­ing lessons with me.

The first was when he was run­ning GigaOm and I was a cub tech re­porter at the SF Chronicle. He was skep­ti­cal about hir­ing me, he said, be­cause news­pa­per writ­ers were gen­er­ally too slow and did­n’t un­der­stand web-era pub­lish­ing. He was right, and it pushed me to leave news­pa­pers as quickly as I could to prove that I could evolve.

The sec­ond was many years later, when I was hav­ing a drink with him and some other re­porters. We asked him what ad­vice he had for us, and he said: never name your blog af­ter your­self.

I’m happy to have known him even a lit­tle, and my con­do­lences to his friends and fam­ily.

Om was one of the greats. A ter­rific jour­nal­ist, a fix­ture of Silicon Valley, and a good friend. He was al­ways bru­tally hon­est and usu­ally right. He will be missed.

Om was one of the greats. A ter­rific jour­nal­ist, a fix­ture of Silicon Valley, and a good friend. He was al­ways bru­tally hon­est and usu­ally right.

He will be missed.

I’m so very sorry. Om was a good per­son, To sort care­fully about every­thing from friends to fam­ily, I will miss him. My con­do­lences.

I’m so very sorry. Om was a good per­son, To sort care­fully about every­thing from friends to fam­ily, I will miss him. My con­do­lences.

Om, I’m so glad we made time to meetup at the SF Pen Ahow last fall. Pens, pa­per, writ­ing, friend­ships. Your happy place. You were run­ning late be­cause you were vol­un­teer­ing and help­ing the show for a com­mu­nity you loved so much. Thank you my sweet, sweet friend.

Om, I’m so glad we made time to meetup at the SF Pen Ahow last fall. Pens, pa­per, writ­ing, friend­ships. Your happy place. You were run­ning late be­cause you were vol­un­teer­ing and help­ing the show for a com­mu­nity you loved so much.

Thank you my sweet, sweet friend.

My con­do­lences. Om’s writ­ing was a calm space in the whirling dervish that is the in­ter­net. I’ll miss read­ing his mis­sives and wit­ness­ing more of his pho­tog­ra­phy.

My con­do­lences. Om’s writ­ing was a calm space in the whirling dervish that is the in­ter­net. I’ll miss read­ing his mis­sives and wit­ness­ing more of his pho­tog­ra­phy.

I’m so sad. Om was a true pi­o­neer and a role model. My great­est sym­pa­thy to his fam­ily. I’m truly shaken by this news.

I’m so sad. Om was a true pi­o­neer and a role model. My great­est sym­pa­thy to his fam­ily. I’m truly shaken by this news.

Deepest con­do­lences. This is crush­ing for the Malik Family, and his mas­sive fan­dom. When one read his note about tak­ing a short break, lit­tle did we know that would be his last mis­sive. Au Revoir, Om. Your words will con­tinue to in­spire.

Deepest con­do­lences. This is crush­ing for the Malik Family, and his mas­sive fan­dom.

When one read his note about tak­ing a short break, lit­tle did we know that would be his last mis­sive.

Au Revoir, Om. Your words will con­tinue to in­spire.

Thoughtful, Wise and Sincere. Responsive to com­ments. I learned so much read­ing and re­flect­ing on his writ­ing.

Thoughtful, Wise and Sincere. Responsive to com­ments. I learned so much read­ing and re­flect­ing on his writ­ing.

I too was a ca­sual friend (more ca­sual than I wish I had been) but I re­call fondly every in­ter­ac­tion we had over the years, when I moved to the Bay Area back in 2006, Om was one of the friend­liest and also best folks to know in the tech scene here. I re­mem­ber great dis­cus­sions at var­i­ous events over the years and as Harry notes his writ­ing in re­cent months has been fan­tas­tic. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

I too was a ca­sual friend (more ca­sual than I wish I had been) but I re­call fondly every in­ter­ac­tion we had over the years, when I moved to the Bay Area back in 2006, Om was one of the friend­liest and also best folks to know in the tech scene here. I re­mem­ber great dis­cus­sions at var­i­ous events over the years and as Harry notes his writ­ing in re­cent months has been fan­tas­tic. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

I will miss “On my Om” and I’m sure I won’t be alone in that. Rest in peace, Om, and con­do­lences to fam­ily and friends.

I will miss “On my Om” and I’m sure I won’t be alone in that. Rest in peace, Om, and con­do­lences to fam­ily and friends.

My heart­felt con­do­lences. We’ve ex­changed thought­ful com­ments on this blog and con­nected a few times on so­cial me­dia, but I will truly miss his end­less cu­rios­ity about the world. His pas­sion ex­tended be­yond tech­nol­ogy; he had a re­mark­able abil­ity to cap­ture the mo­ments he ex­pe­ri­enced through the lens of a cam­era. He did­n’t just trans­port you to those scenes; he also made you aware of why they mat­tered and why you should care. There are very few newslet­ters I ea­gerly an­tic­i­pate, de­spite sub­scrib­ing to nu­mer­ous ones. His was one of the four that I looked for­ward to with gen­uine en­thu­si­asm. Om will be deeply missed by many, as his writ­ing ac­com­plished some­thing few oth­ers achieve to­day: it in­spired us to strive to be bet­ter hu­man be­ings. R.I.P.

My heart­felt con­do­lences. We’ve ex­changed thought­ful com­ments on this blog and con­nected a few times on so­cial me­dia, but I will truly miss his end­less cu­rios­ity about the world. His pas­sion ex­tended be­yond tech­nol­ogy; he had a re­mark­able abil­ity to cap­ture the mo­ments he ex­pe­ri­enced through the lens of a cam­era. He did­n’t just trans­port you to those scenes; he also made you aware of why they mat­tered and why you should care.

There are very few newslet­ters I ea­gerly an­tic­i­pate, de­spite sub­scrib­ing to nu­mer­ous ones. His was one of the four that I looked for­ward to with gen­uine en­thu­si­asm. Om will be deeply missed by many, as his writ­ing ac­com­plished some­thing few oth­ers achieve to­day: it in­spired us to strive to be bet­ter hu­man be­ings. R.I.P.

Om was one of my first bosses in jour­nal­ism, and the lessons he taught me have been a part of my daily life ever since. Following him through blogs and so­cial me­dia in the time since, I al­ways ad­mired how kind and cu­ri­ous he al­ways was, in ad­di­tion to be­ing one of the sharpest minds about tech out there. Shocked and sad­dened by the news, and deep­est sym­pa­thies to his friends and fam­ily.

Om was one of my first bosses in jour­nal­ism, and the lessons he taught me have been a part of my daily life ever since. Following him through blogs and so­cial me­dia in the time since, I al­ways ad­mired how kind and cu­ri­ous he al­ways was, in ad­di­tion to be­ing one of the sharpest minds about tech out there. Shocked and sad­dened by the news, and deep­est sym­pa­thies to his friends and fam­ily.

When I first started spend­ing time on the web and read­ing a lot about tech news, GigaOm was one of the best web­sites I reg­u­larly vis­ited. When I joined Twitter, Om was among the first per­sons I fol­lowed. When I started lis­ten­ing to pod­casts, Om was one of the voices I liked the most (I be­lieve he was a reg­u­lar on Twit dot TV). When I fi­nally got to work in the in­dus­try my­self, I had the chance to meet him and tell him in per­son, in Paris, at the Le Web event, while shak­ing his hand, that I was a big fan. I re­mem­ber this mo­ment very clearly (it was in the me­dia break room) as I felt so lucky to meet one of my web he­roes. I was very shy, and I could have (should have) told him that he was one of my in­spi­ra­tions. Ever since that mo­ment, Om kept on prov­ing he was one of the best ob­servers and com­men­ta­tors of the in­dus­try, and one of the best writ­ers. His blog is so good. This feels so sud­den, too soon. My thoughts are with his loved ones. I’m so sorry. His words, his writ­ing, his thoughts, his im­pec­ca­ble taste will be missed.

When I first started spend­ing time on the web and read­ing a lot about tech news, GigaOm was one of the best web­sites I reg­u­larly vis­ited. When I joined Twitter, Om was among the first per­sons I fol­lowed. When I started lis­ten­ing to pod­casts, Om was one of the voices I liked the most (I be­lieve he was a reg­u­lar on Twit dot TV). When I fi­nally got to work in the in­dus­try my­self, I had the chance to meet him and tell him in per­son, in Paris, at the Le Web event, while shak­ing his hand, that I was a big fan. I re­mem­ber this mo­ment very clearly (it was in the me­dia break room) as I felt so lucky to meet one of my web he­roes. I was very shy, and I could have (should have) told him that he was one of my in­spi­ra­tions. Ever since that mo­ment, Om kept on prov­ing he was one of the best ob­servers and com­men­ta­tors of the in­dus­try, and one of the best writ­ers. His blog is so good. This feels so sud­den, too soon. My thoughts are with his loved ones. I’m so sorry. His words, his writ­ing, his thoughts, his im­pec­ca­ble taste will be missed.

Sad to hear of Om’s pass­ing. We kept in loose touch over nearly two decades. I was for­tu­nate to have a few meals with him and trea­sured our con­ver­sa­tions and his com­pany. Outstanding writer, kind hearted, warm spir­ited, and very in­sight­ful. Loved talk­ing watches with him as well. He was al­ways open to in­ter­est­ing ideas, no mat­ter where they came from. A won­der­ful hu­man, a gift to know. ❤️

Sad to hear of Om’s pass­ing. We kept in loose touch over nearly two decades. I was for­tu­nate to have a few meals with him and trea­sured our con­ver­sa­tions and his com­pany. Outstanding writer, kind hearted, warm spir­ited, and very in­sight­ful. Loved talk­ing watches with him as well. He was al­ways open to in­ter­est­ing ideas, no mat­ter where they came from. A won­der­ful hu­man, a gift to know. ❤️

I ad­mired Om as a pi­o­neer in tech jour­nal­ism, but also as a man with a kind heart and soul. At the height of his pow­ers, he was a gi­ant, but a gi­ant with a con­science. His loss leaves us all a lit­tle poorer at a time when we need a mind and a con­science like his more than ever. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

I ad­mired Om as a pi­o­neer in tech jour­nal­ism, but also as a man with a kind heart and soul. At the height of his pow­ers, he was a gi­ant, but a gi­ant with a con­science. His loss leaves us all a lit­tle poorer at a time when we need a mind and a con­science like his more than ever. May his mem­ory be a bless­ing.

Inna lil­lahi wa inna ilayhi ra­jioon (RIP). I am in shock. I knew Om from when he was still an ac­tive jour­nal­ist, be­fore even GigaOm, and re­mem­ber fondly our geeky con­ver­sa­tions on how to free jour­nal­ism from its Big Tech shack­les us­ing RSS. He was not much older than me, and I kept bump­ing into him at ran­dom when I still lived in San Francisco. My sin­cere con­do­lences to his fam­ily and friends.

Inna lil­lahi wa inna ilayhi ra­jioon (RIP).

I am in shock. I knew Om from when he was still an ac­tive jour­nal­ist, be­fore even GigaOm, and re­mem­ber fondly our geeky con­ver­sa­tions on how to free jour­nal­ism from its Big Tech shack­les us­ing RSS. He was not much older than me, and I kept bump­ing into him at ran­dom when I still lived in San Francisco.

My sin­cere con­do­lences to his fam­ily and friends.

I met Om a few times, talked on the phone with him a cou­ple times, but I wish I’d known him bet­ter. He was a gi­ant in our busi­ness, and even though he’s gone, his in­flu­ence con­tin­ues on.

I met Om a few times, talked on the phone with him a cou­ple times, but I wish I’d known him bet­ter. He was a gi­ant in our busi­ness, and even though he’s gone, his in­flu­ence con­tin­ues on.

I am shocked, he was a close friend, we are the same age and grew up in New Delhi, first met him in the 90’s when he in­ter­viewed me, and af­ter that we shared our love for tech­nol­ogy and pho­tog­ra­phy… I dont even know what else to say, I wanted to show him what I was work­ing on these days, and he had not re­sponded was strange… he leaves a huge gap in the world, there was only one OM

I am shocked, he was a close friend, we are the same age and grew up in New Delhi, first met him in the 90’s when he in­ter­viewed me, and af­ter that we shared our love for tech­nol­ogy and pho­tog­ra­phy… I dont even know what else to say, I wanted to show him what I was work­ing on these days, and he had not re­sponded was strange… he leaves a huge gap in the world, there was only one OM

My con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily. He was an in­cred­i­bly kind soul to all of us en­tre­pre­neurs dur­ing the resur­gence of the web (“Web 2.0” as it came to be known). Rather than try­ing to be the clever an­a­lyst, he was al­ways re­spect­ful, al­ways kind and most im­por­tantly, al­ways ex­cited in a way that was so in­fec­tious to all of us around him. We will truly miss him but his spirit will live on in the count­less peo­ple he touched over a ca­reer of bring­ing so much pos­i­tive en­ergy into the world.

My con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily. He was an in­cred­i­bly kind soul to all of us en­tre­pre­neurs dur­ing the resur­gence of the web (“Web 2.0” as it came to be known). Rather than try­ing to be the clever an­a­lyst, he was al­ways re­spect­ful, al­ways kind and most im­por­tantly, al­ways ex­cited in a way that was so in­fec­tious to all of us around him. We will truly miss him but his spirit will live on in the count­less peo­ple he touched over a ca­reer of bring­ing so much pos­i­tive en­ergy into the world.

When some­thing in­ter­est­ing is hap­pen­ing, es­pe­cially when it’s tech­nol­ogy re­lated, and es­pe­cially when I’ve been stew­ing on it and had a hard time so­lid­i­fy­ing my own un­der­stand­ing, some­times I think, “I won­der what Om’s take is.” There have only ever been a hand­ful of voices worth turn­ing to like that, be­cause the kind of care Om put into his thoughts and his abil­ity to turn his thoughts into words is rare. So sorry for this world to lose him. Condolences to his fam­ily, friends, and com­mu­nity.

When some­thing in­ter­est­ing is hap­pen­ing, es­pe­cially when it’s tech­nol­ogy re­lated, and es­pe­cially when I’ve been stew­ing on it and had a hard time so­lid­i­fy­ing my own un­der­stand­ing, some­times I think, “I won­der what Om’s take is.” There have only ever been a hand­ful of voices worth turn­ing to like that, be­cause the kind of care Om put into his thoughts and his abil­ity to turn his thoughts into words is rare. So sorry for this world to lose him. Condolences to his fam­ily, friends, and com­mu­nity.

Om, I un­for­tu­nately never met you in per­son but your writ­ing al­ways hit the spot. You’ll be missed. ♥️ My heart goes out to your fam­ily and friends.

Om, I un­for­tu­nately never met you in per­son but your writ­ing al­ways hit the spot. You’ll be missed. ♥️

My heart goes out to your fam­ily and friends.

Om’s uniquely in­formed per­spec­tive re­sulted in writ­ing that con­tained equal mea­sures of kind­ness and can­dor about two fields that of­ten clash, news and tech. He was as warm and thought­ful in per­son as on the page and had given me some great ca­reer ad­vice early on in mine. Deepest sym­pa­thies to those who knew and loved the man.

Om’s uniquely in­formed per­spec­tive re­sulted in writ­ing that con­tained equal mea­sures of kind­ness and can­dor about two fields that of­ten clash, news and tech. He was as warm and thought­ful in per­son as on the page and had given me some great ca­reer ad­vice early on in mine. Deepest sym­pa­thies to those who knew and loved the man.

I’m heart­bro­ken to read this! Sending my con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily and friends– I never got to know him in per­son, but al­ways cher­ished our few on­line in­ter­ac­tions and have long ad­mired both his writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy. He’ll be long re­mem­bered and missed by so many!

I’m heart­bro­ken to read this! Sending my con­do­lences to Om’s fam­ily and friends– I never got to know him in per­son, but al­ways cher­ished our few on­line in­ter­ac­tions and have long ad­mired both his writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy. He’ll be long re­mem­bered and missed by so many!

I’ll re­mem­ber him, not only from his writ­ing, but also from his ex­pres­sion of his sen­si­bil­i­ties through his pho­tog­ra­phy. RIP

I’ll re­mem­ber him, not only from his writ­ing, but also from his ex­pres­sion of his sen­si­bil­i­ties through his pho­tog­ra­phy. RIP

I never met Om, but greatly ap­pre­ci­ated his pro­found in­sights on the com­plex­i­ties & im­pli­ca­tions of tech­nol­ogy as well as his pho­to­graphic artistry & love of foun­tain pens & inks. I al­ways in­tended to send him a note, which I re­gret I never did. My con­do­lences to his fam­ily & friends.

I never met Om, but greatly ap­pre­ci­ated his pro­found in­sights on the com­plex­i­ties & im­pli­ca­tions of tech­nol­ogy as well as his pho­to­graphic artistry & love of foun­tain pens & inks. I al­ways in­tended to send him a note, which I re­gret I never did. My con­do­lences to his fam­ily & friends.

Imagine your fa­vorite team just scored an in­cred­i­ble, last-sec­ond goal at the World Cup. So you log on­line to cel­e­brate with other fans. But, us­ing data it’s al­ready col­lected on you, the so­cial me­dia plat­form you like to post on wrongly guesses that you’re un­der 16 so it forces you to go to a third-party ver­i­fi­ca­tion app and pro­vide im­ages of your face or your gov­ern­ment-is­sued ID. You don’t re­ally know much about the ver­i­fi­ca­tion app, what coun­try it’s based out of, what hap­pens with your in­for­ma­tion, and whether you’re pro­tected from hack­ers or data breaches. You’re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your pass­port and hope it does­n’t come back to haunt you.

Now imag­ine that in­stead of post­ing about sports, you’re crit­i­ciz­ing a pow­er­ful politi­cian, or talk­ing about your ex­pe­ri­ences with abuse or ad­dic­tion, or dis­cussing em­bar­rass­ing med­ical is­sues you’re fac­ing. Suddenly this “papers, please” ap­proach to the in­ter­net sounds even more in­va­sive, right? Unfortunately, that’s the di­rec­tion we’re all headed — even here in the United States — and we have good rea­son to be wary of the global rush to sac­ri­fice user pri­vacy on the al­tar of age ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

Australia’s so­cial me­dia ban for un­der-16s went into ef­fect in December 2025 and set a land­mark stan­dard many other na­tions now look to when craft­ing their own such reg­u­la­tions. As a pre­lim­i­nary mat­ter: This law is not work­ing as in­tended. The gov­ern­men­t’s own re­search found that months af­ter the in­sti­tu­tion of the ban, roughly seven out of 10 kids still were us­ing so­cial me­dia. And a study just re­leased in the British Medical Journal found “little ev­i­dence was found of im­me­di­ate sub­stan­tive re­duc­tions in re­ported so­cial me­dia use by ado­les­cents un­der 16 years.” Secondly, phones are al­ready banned in Australian schools, so this ban is in­tended to ad­dress what kids do on the in­ter­net in their own free time, not dur­ing class time.

So, what ex­actly does this law — one that is ren­dered ir­rel­e­vant dur­ing the school day, and is­n’t even work­ing prop­erly out­side it any­way — ac­tu­ally man­date? Well, pretty much what was in the hy­po­thet­i­cal de­scribed ear­lier in this piece, ex­cept it’s not at all a hy­po­thet­i­cal any­more.

Essays

Cassius Marcellus Clay brought can­nons to a free press fight

·

Jun 25

In June 1845, Cassius Marcellus Clay launched an anti-slav­ery news­pa­per in Lexington, Kentucky, one block from one of the largest slave mar­kets in the United States. He called it The True American. Published by William L. Neale and edited by Clay, the pa­per openly chal­lenged Kentucky’s slave­hold­ing es­tab­lish­ment. Its ed­i­tor was a son o…

Australia’s law man­dates that so­cial me­dia com­pa­nies, at risk of mas­sive fines, col­lect ei­ther bio­met­ric info, gov­ern­ment-is­sued IDs, or other data from users be­cause they now have a duty to take suf­fi­cient steps to en­sure users un­der 16 are kept logged out. In some cases, plat­forms can use ex­ist­ing data they have on users to ver­ify age, like if an ac­count has been open for a suf­fi­cient num­ber of years, but will in many sce­nar­ios need to ver­ify in­de­pen­dently by gath­er­ing more user data. This is where third-party ver­i­fi­ca­tion tools come in.

Look at Snapchat, for ex­am­ple. Snapchat uses k-ID, a com­pany based in Singapore, and al­lows ver­i­fi­ca­tion through a bank­ing con­nec­tion, gov­ern­ment ID scan, or selfie the com­pany uses to pro­vide an age range. This re­quires quite an in­vest­ment of trust on the user’s end. How do third-party com­pa­nies like this re­tain and pro­tect data? What kind of laws gov­ern these com­pa­nies abroad? Is such a com­pany in an­other coun­try more sus­cep­ti­ble to cen­so­r­ial re­quests from lo­cal or for­eign gov­ern­ments?

Australia does or­der that per­sonal in­for­ma­tion col­lected for age ver­i­fi­ca­tion “must be de­stroyed once all pur­poses have been met.” But those pur­poses in­clude chal­lenges and com­plaints, so it’s un­clear ex­actly how long data will be re­tained on users who ob­ject to wrong age clas­si­fi­ca­tions. Worryingly, in re­search con­ducted be­fore the ban went into ef­fect, Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial “found some con­cern­ing ev­i­dence that in the ab­sence of spe­cific guid­ance, ser­vice providers were ap­par­ently over-an­tic­i­pat­ing the even­tual needs of reg­u­la­tors about pro­vid­ing per­sonal in­for­ma­tion for fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tion…which could lead to in­creased risk of pri­vacy breaches due to un­nec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate col­lec­tion and re­ten­tion of data.”

The longer that in­for­ma­tion is re­tained, and the more that is col­lected for ver­i­fi­ca­tion, in­creases the risk of breaches or hacks that threaten a user’s pri­vacy. Now mul­ti­ply that in­di­vid­ual risk by mil­lions.

We don’t even need to imag­ine the hy­po­thet­i­cal here, be­cause it hap­pened to nearly 70,000 Australians just weeks be­fore the un­der-16 ban went into ef­fect. A breach of a third-party cus­tomer ser­vice app Discord used “mainly to deal with” — guess what — “complaints re­lat­ing to the plat­for­m’s age as­sur­ance processes” was hacked, lead­ing to the re­lease of “government ID im­ages, names, user­names, email ad­dresses, and some lim­ited billing in­for­ma­tion.”

Expect more such at­tacks in the fu­ture.

In ad­di­tion to in­tro­duc­ing new risks from data breaches and hacks, the Australian gov­ern­ment ad­mits that man­dated age ver­i­fi­ca­tion in­tro­duces new risks for phish­ing at­tempts by scam­mers seek­ing to take ad­van­tage of con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the ban. But the gov­ern­ment puts much of the onus on so­cial me­dia plat­forms to en­sure users un­der­stand the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process and on users to read up to make sure they aren’t be­ing scammed.

We have, quite rea­son­ably, spent much of the 21st cen­tury de­bat­ing what should be our re­la­tion­ship to tech com­pa­nies and what amount of our per­sonal lives and de­tails we are com­fort­able hand­ing over, know­ingly or not. Governments have even been haul­ing tech CEOs in to ques­tion them about their in­take of in­di­vid­u­als’ data. Yet now coun­tries like Australia are man­dat­ing that they col­lect it or face con­se­quences.

As the Australian Human Rights Commission ex­plains, even if some user ac­counts ul­ti­mately evade age checks, this sig­nals a broader shift in how peo­ple use the in­ter­net:

The eSafety Commissioner’s guid­ance tries to re­as­sure us: ‘No, not every ac­count holder will go through an age check process if the plat­form has other ac­cu­rate data.’ But that does­n’t ac­tu­ally mean you es­cape scrutiny. It just means that plat­forms will use what they al­ready know about you to make the call. That’s the real shift that is hap­pen­ing here. We’re mov­ing to a world where the law re­quires you to be pro­filed in or­der to par­tic­i­pate.

The eSafety Commissioner’s guid­ance tries to re­as­sure us: ‘No, not every ac­count holder will go through an age check process if the plat­form has other ac­cu­rate data.’ But that does­n’t ac­tu­ally mean you es­cape scrutiny. It just means that plat­forms will use what they al­ready know about you to make the call. That’s the real shift that is hap­pen­ing here. We’re mov­ing to a world where the law re­quires you to be pro­filed in or­der to par­tic­i­pate.

The on­line world we’re mov­ing to­ward is a “papers, please” one, where vi­tal venues of pub­lic dis­cus­sion might now only be open to those who are will­ing to trust tech com­pa­nies and the third party ver­i­fi­ca­tion apps they use with in­for­ma­tion that can elim­i­nate their anonymity on­line, and the gov­ern­ments re­spon­si­ble for man­dat­ing the col­lec­tion of that in­for­ma­tion.

Many users will very likely pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion they need to log on and con­tinue com­mu­ni­cat­ing with their friends and fam­i­lies. But maybe they’ll think twice about what they say and do. This new era of the in­ter­net is un­likely to be sig­nif­i­cantly safer for chil­dren. But it will be much less free for every­one.

You’ve likely heard by now that the UK (along with France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia, Greece, Denmark, Norway, and the European Union) is pur­su­ing its own un­der-16 ban.

The ban will hap­pen even though the ex­act de­tails for its en­force­ment and ver­i­fi­ca­tion meth­ods are not yet pub­lic — but the UK in­tends to avoid Australia’s fail­ures. That’s why Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised this month that the British ver­sion will be “Australia-plus,” as the UK will “learn the lessons from Australia’s ex­pe­ri­ence” and “make it far harder for chil­dren to by­pass safe­guards.” (Starmer has since re­signed as prime min­is­ter but there is cur­rently no in­di­ca­tion that the gov­ern­men­t’s plans for the pol­icy will change.)

UK cit­i­zens have rea­son to worry. Australia’s en­force­ment of its un­der-16 ban comes with a wealth of risks to user pri­vacy, so to see gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials sig­nal that they in­tend more se­vere en­force­ment sug­gests the po­ten­tial for even greater pri­vacy threats.

Perhaps even most alarm­ing is of­fi­cials’ open in­ter­est in tar­get­ing vir­tual pri­vate net­works to crack down on ver­i­fi­ca­tion eva­sion. VPN use rose last year af­ter the roll­out of the UK’s sim­i­larly messy Online Safety Act, when in­ter­net users sought to avoid road­blocks from the gov­ern­ment against on­line “harms.” After the Online Safety Act was im­ple­mented, UK of­fi­cials said they were “gather[ing] in­for­ma­tion on VPN us­age.” And as I ex­plained at Persuasion last week:

One prob­lem fac­ing ad­vo­cates of in­ter­net re­stric­tions is the avail­abil­ity of vir­tual pri­vate net­works (VPNs), which reroute traf­fic and al­low users to ac­cess banned con­tent or sites from be­hind fire­walls or blocks. The UK gov­ern­ment is well aware of the chal­lenge VPNs may pose to its un­der-16 ban, and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall an­nounced this week that the gov­ern­ment “will make fur­ther state­ments in July about VPNs.” Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister has said there are “options there about whether we could age-gate VPN use, which would be re­ally wel­come.”

One prob­lem fac­ing ad­vo­cates of in­ter­net re­stric­tions is the avail­abil­ity of vir­tual pri­vate net­works (VPNs), which reroute traf­fic and al­low users to ac­cess banned con­tent or sites from be­hind fire­walls or blocks. The UK gov­ern­ment is well aware of the chal­lenge VPNs may pose to its un­der-16 ban, and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall an­nounced this week that the gov­ern­ment “will make fur­ther state­ments in July about VPNs.” Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister has said there are “options there about whether we could age-gate VPN use, which would be re­ally wel­come.”

Many UK cit­i­zens no doubt have valid and rea­son­able con­cerns about the way their chil­dren ex­pe­ri­ence the in­ter­net and so­cial me­dia. But they may be shocked and sur­prised by the amount of power and con­trol UK of­fi­cials claim they need to solve the prob­lem. Should UK of­fi­cials travel down the path of tar­get­ing VPN us­age, they may find them­selves more in line with coun­tries like China, Iran, and Russia. It’s not good com­pany.

Alarmingly, yes. The home of the First Amendment is on course to em­brace the “papers, please” era of the in­ter­net and has been slink­ing to­wards it for years now.

A num­ber of states have been de­vel­op­ing and pass­ing bills, many of which are fac­ing chal­lenges, that pose many of the same con­cerns we’ve raised in the in­ter­na­tional con­text. At least 19 states have passed leg­is­la­tion ad­dress­ing mi­nors’ ac­cess to so­cial me­dia or “addictive” feeds, but some are en­force­able, some en­joined, and some not yet ef­fec­tive. And more than 20 states have en­acted age-ver­i­fi­ca­tion laws for adult-con­tent web­sites, many of which be­came more se­cure af­ter the Supreme Court’s de­ci­sion in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton in 2025. Separately, app-store age-as­sur­ance laws are be­ing lit­i­gated in states such as Texas and Utah.

While this takes place among the states, at the fed­eral level we’re see­ing a num­ber of pro­pos­als be­ing con­sid­ered, in­clud­ing the so-called “Kids Online Safety Act,” or KOSA, which was in­cor­po­rated in the House’s broader KIDS Act pack­age and has been the sub­ject of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Senate and the White House. The House and Senate have slightly dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the bill, but both would im­pose reg­u­la­tions that would ef­fec­tively force so­cial me­dia web­sites and other plat­forms to con­duct age ver­i­fi­ca­tion of their users. And since it’s a fed­eral bill, states that wanted to main­tain a free and open in­ter­net would be over­rid­den. The en­tire coun­try would be forced to re­veal their iden­tity and data be­fore they could speak on­line.

Tech

How does the First Amendment ap­ply to AI?

·

Jun 24

This is the sec­ond ar­ti­cle in a weekly se­ries on AI and Free Speech. You can read the first ar­ti­cle ex­plain­ing why the First Amendment is so im­por­tant in the age of AI here.

What this means for the American peo­ple is that both the state and fed­eral gov­ern­ment could be man­dat­ing col­lec­tion of in­for­ma­tion about you at every step you en­gage with the in­ter­net. Soon, every­thing you do on­line could have an el­e­ment of age as­sur­ance or ver­i­fi­ca­tion, from down­load­ing an app in the app store to mak­ing an ac­count to post­ing a photo, whether you’re a 14-year-old try­ing to game or a 40-year-old post­ing about recipes. The de­bate is rapidly ex­pand­ing to in­clude video games and AI chat­bots as well.

And that cre­ates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data col­lec­tion and re­ten­tion, cen­so­r­ial le­gal de­mands for col­lected data, cor­po­rate and gov­ern­men­tal malfea­sance, pres­sure to self-cen­sor, and per­haps bla­tant First Amendment vi­o­la­tions. Every new layer and every new man­date brings more po­ten­tial for risk. As we’ve un­for­tu­nately seen many times over the years, peo­ple in­clud­ing high-level gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials will ma­li­ciously seek to root out the iden­ti­ties of their crit­ics, so the more lay­ers of anonymity we can pre­serve in on­line speech, the bet­ter.

Americans can take se­ri­ously the need to pro­tect kids on­line while still rec­og­niz­ing that many of the pol­icy and leg­isla­tive so­lu­tions of­fered to­day are cre­at­ing in­tol­er­a­ble bur­dens on our abil­ity to speak freely and anony­mously on the in­ter­net. The re­al­ity is that age ver­i­fi­ca­tion to a large ex­tent re­quires us to con­firm iden­tity, and we will come to re­gret so closely ty­ing our ex­pres­sive ac­tiv­ity on­line to gov­ern­ment-man­dated age and iden­tity ver­i­fi­ca­tion. Once we cre­ate this leg­isla­tive in­fra­struc­ture of sur­veil­lance we may find it very dif­fi­cult to tear down.

deno desk­top turns a Deno pro­ject (anything from a sin­gle TypeScript file to a Next.js app) into a self-con­tained desk­top ap­pli­ca­tion. The out­put is a re­dis­trib­utable bi­nary that bun­dles your code, the Deno run­time, and a web ren­der­ing en­gine into one bun­dle per plat­form.

Coming in Deno 2.9

deno desk­top ships in Deno v2.9.0 and is not in a sta­ble re­lease yet. To try it now, run deno up­grade ca­nary to in­stall the ca­nary build. The com­mand, con­fig­u­ra­tion keys, and TypeScript APIs may still change be­fore the fea­ture is sta­ble.

Why deno desk­top Jump to head­ing

Web tech­nol­ogy is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Desktop apps built on web stacks (Electron, Tauri, Electrobun) take ad­van­tage of that, but each has trade­offs you have to live with: huge bi­na­ries, miss­ing plat­form sup­port, no JavaScript ecosys­tem, no built-in up­date story, no frame­work in­te­gra­tion.

deno desk­top is opin­ion­ated about those trade­offs:

Small by de­fault, full Node com­pat­i­bil­ity. The de­fault WebView back­end uses the op­er­at­ing sys­tem’s own we­b­view for small bi­na­ries, and you still have the en­tire npm ecosys­tem avail­able through Deno’s Node com­pat layer. Opt into the bun­dled Chromium (CEF) back­end when you need iden­ti­cal ren­der­ing across ma­cOS, Windows, and Linux.

Framework auto-de­tec­tion. Point deno desk­top at a Next.js, Astro, Fresh, Remix, Nuxt, SvelteKit, SolidStart, TanStack Start, or Vite SSR pro­ject and it runs: the pro­duc­tion server in re­lease mode, the dev server with hot re­load un­der –hmr. No code changes are re­quired to take an ex­ist­ing web pro­ject to the desk­top.

In-process bind­ings in­stead of IPC. Backend and UI com­mu­ni­ca­tion goes through in-process chan­nels, not socket-based IPC. Values are still en­coded as they cross the call bound­ary, but there is no cross-process round-trip be­tween your Deno code and the we­b­view.

Cross-compile from one ma­chine. The same ma­chine can build for ma­cOS, Windows, and Linux. Backends are down­loaded as needed, not built lo­cally.

Built-in bi­nary-diff auto-up­date. Ship a sin­gle lat­est.json man­i­fest and bs­d­iff patches; the run­time polls, ap­plies, and rolls back au­to­mat­i­cally on failed launches.

Hello, desk­top Jump to head­ing

Create a one-file desk­top app:

main.ts

Deno.serve(() => new Response(“<h1>Hello, desk­top</​h1>”, { head­ers: { “content-type”: “text/html” }, }) );

>_

deno desk­top main.ts

The com­piled bi­nary opens a win­dow pointed at a lo­cal HTTP server bound to your Deno.serve() han­dler. Run it di­rectly:

>_

./main # ma­cOS / Linux .\main.exe # Windows

Deno.serve() au­to­mat­i­cally binds to the ad­dress the we­b­view nav­i­gates to, so you do not need to pass a port or host­name. See HTTP serv­ing for de­tails.

What’s in this sec­tion Jump to head­ing

Configuration: the desk­top block in deno.json.

Backends: CEF, we­b­view, raw; how to choose.

HTTP serv­ing: Deno.serve() in­te­gra­tion and the serv­ing model.

Frameworks: Next.js, Astro, Fresh, Remix, Nuxt, SvelteKit, and oth­ers.

Windows: Deno.BrowserWindow life­cy­cle, mul­ti­ple win­dows, events.

Bindings: call­ing Deno code from the we­b­view via bind­ings.<name>().

Menus: ap­pli­ca­tion and con­text menus.

Tray and dock: sys­tem sta­tus icons and the ma­cOS dock.

Dialogs: prompt(), alert(), con­firm() as na­tive pop­ups.

Notifications: na­tive OS no­ti­fi­ca­tions via the Web Notification API.

Hot mod­ule re­place­ment: –hmr for frame­work and non-frame­work apps.

DevTools: uni­fied DevTools at­tached to both the Deno run­time and the we­b­view.

Auto-update: Deno.autoUpdate(), man­i­fests, bs­d­iff, roll­back.

Error re­port­ing: cap­tur­ing un­caught ex­cep­tions and pan­ics.

Distribution: cross-com­pi­la­tion, out­put for­mats, in­stallers.

Comparison: how deno desk­top re­lates to Electron, Tauri, Electrobun, Dioxus.

deno desk­top CLI ref­er­ence: the com­mand, its flags, and the deno.json desk­top schema.

At bunny.net, our mis­sion has al­ways been am­bi­tious but fo­cused: help make the in­ter­net hop faster.

To do that, we’ve built a mas­sive global net­work span­ning 119 lo­ca­tions and count­ing. Today, this net­work pow­ers over 1.5 mil­lion web­sites and con­sis­tently de­liv­ers some of the fastest con­tent de­liv­ery around the globe. But while de­ploy­ing thou­sands of servers glob­ally is an im­pres­sive feat on its own, the hard­ware it­self does not ex­plain how bunny.net is able to de­liver such an im­pres­sive level of per­for­mance.

The real se­cret hides un­der the hood, em­bed­ded in the rout­ing en­gine that di­rects every re­quest, every user, and sends traf­fic ex­actly where it needs to go. That en­gine is Bunny DNS.

From in­ter­nal en­gine to 200 bil­lion cus­tomer queries per month

Originally, Bunny DNS was built with one sim­ple goal: to build the most ad­vanced rout­ing en­gine pos­si­ble, ca­pa­ble of an­a­lyz­ing every DNS query and di­rect­ing it to the op­ti­mal des­ti­na­tion for serv­ing your con­tent. Even to this day, it’s what makes Bunny CDN achieve it’s ex­cep­tional per­for­mance.

Four years ago, we took every­thing we had learned from de­sign­ing and run­ning this sys­tem and turned it into a prod­uct our users could use them­selves. With Bunny DNS, we’ve up­graded DNS from be­ing a ba­sic record lookup table into a glob­ally dis­trib­uted, smart rout­ing en­gine. Instead of just re­turn­ing sta­tic records, it al­lows de­vel­op­ers to use la­tency data, health checks, and even JavaScript to dy­nam­i­cally de­ter­mine ex­actly where re­quests should go.

We ap­plied our tra­di­tional mantra. We made it af­ford­able, scal­able, and added a gen­er­ous free tier. The re­sponse was in­cred­i­ble, and to­day, Bunny DNS pow­ers over 300,000 do­mains and han­dles nearly 200 bil­lion queries every sin­gle month.

But as we looked closer at our mis­sion, we re­al­ized some­thing needed to change.

Dealing with in­fra­struc­ture costs is al­ready no­to­ri­ously com­plex. You should­n’t have to stress about pric­ing tiers or whether a sud­den spike of a mil­lion queries is go­ing to re­sult in an un­pre­dictable bill.

If we truly be­lieve in our mis­sion to help make the in­ter­net hop faster, then the fun­da­men­tal sys­tem that sits be­tween your users and your ser­vices should­n’t be a pre­mium add-on. It should be ac­ces­si­ble to every­one.

So, we’ve elim­i­nated DNS query fees en­tirely.

Bunny DNS no longer charges for DNS queries and in­cludes free DNS host­ing for up to 500 do­mains per ac­count. There are no query lim­its, no per-re­quest billing, and no crit­i­cal fea­tures hid­den be­hind en­ter­prise plans. (Yes, that in­cludes smart records and health mon­i­tor­ing too.)

As with all bunny.net ser­vices, ac­counts us­ing the plat­form are sub­ject to our stan­dard $1/month min­i­mum spend, but DNS it­self no longer in­curs any us­age-based charges.

The en­try point for every­thing else

Making Bunny DNS free does­n’t mean we’re los­ing in­ter­est in it. Quite the op­po­site. More than ever, we view DNS as the core prod­uct that glues our en­tire plat­form to­gether. It’s the start­ing line for every­thing else your ap­pli­ca­tion does.

Getting that start­ing line set up is now eas­ier than ever. If you’re mi­grat­ing from some­where else, our new au­to­matic zone scan­ning checks your do­main’s most com­mon record names and types, re­con­struct­ing your zone so you only have to make a few tweaks in­stead of start­ing from scratch. (You can also just up­load a BIND file if you pre­fer.)

Once your records are in place, the real magic hap­pens. With 1-Click Acceleration, you can en­able the CDN di­rectly from your DNS records. We’ll spin up a Pull Zone be­hind the scenes and in­stantly start rout­ing re­quests through our edge net­work. Once traf­fic is flow­ing, 1-Click Security lets you en­able Bunny Shield in­stantly to fil­ter traf­fic at the edge, block­ing com­mon ex­ploits and ab­sorb­ing DDoS at­tacks be­fore they ever touch your ori­gin server.

Performance, se­cu­rity, and rout­ing are now uni­fied in one place, rather than stitched to­gether af­ter the fact. Our goal is to keep evolv­ing this with even more ad­vanced record types.

Beyond mak­ing it free, we’re also mak­ing it bet­ter

Saving on costs is great, but ul­ti­mately, what dri­ves us at bunny.net is build­ing in­cred­i­ble prod­ucts. While all of that was hap­pen­ing, we’ve also been mak­ing steady changes to DNS it­self. There haven’t been many ma­jor re­leases, but rather a lot of smaller im­prove­ments over time.

IPv6 is no longer op­tional

More and more net­works de­fault to IPv6 now, es­pe­cially on mo­bile. So we made sure every­thing on our side just works in a dual-stack world.

If you’re us­ing Bunny DNS, your name­server records al­ready re­solve over both IPv4 and IPv6. There’s noth­ing to con­fig­ure, noth­ing to mi­grate. It just works the way it prob­a­bly should have a while ago.

We’ve added DNSSEC, with­out the usual trade-offs

DNSSEC is one of those things peo­ple want in the­ory but hes­i­tate to adopt in prac­tice.

Part of that is the com­plex­ity, but part of it is also that tra­di­tional DNSSEC can ex­pose in­for­ma­tion about your zone that you might not want to share.

We im­ple­mented DNSSEC with NSEC Black Lies to get around that. You still get the val­i­da­tion and pro­tec­tion against tam­per­ing, but with­out mak­ing it easy for some­one to walk your en­tire do­main struc­ture.

It’s one of those de­tails most peo­ple won’t no­tice di­rectly, but it does change how com­fort­able you can be with turn­ing DNSSEC on.

We’ve mod­ern­ized record types

DNS has moved far be­yond sim­ple ad­dress records. Modern ap­pli­ca­tions in­creas­ingly rely on DNS not just to point a name at an IP ad­dress, but to de­scribe how clients should con­nect, how cer­tifi­cates should be val­i­dated, and how se­cu­rity set­tings should be man­aged over time.

That’s why we’ve been ex­pand­ing Bunny DNS with sup­port for more ad­vanced record types.

We’ve added sup­port for HTTPS and SVCB records, which let you hint how clients should con­nect to your ser­vices. TLSA records are there if you’re us­ing DANE and want tighter con­trol over cer­tifi­cate val­i­da­tion. And CDS and CDNSKEY help au­to­mate DNSSEC key man­age­ment so you’re not ro­tat­ing things by hand.

None of this is par­tic­u­larly flashy, but it’s the kind of stuff you end up need­ing once you move past a ba­sic setup.

Helping you build faster

We take our mis­sion se­ri­ously, and the “help” part of it is per­haps the most im­por­tant. By drop­ping us­age charges for DNS and in­te­grat­ing it deeply with the rest of our stack, start­ing with CDN and Shield, we want to help you build faster, safer, and more re­silient ap­pli­ca­tions with­out wor­ry­ing about ar­bi­trary lim­its.

In a world where every­one sim­ply wants to ship as many fea­tures as fast as pos­si­ble, we’re fo­cused on some­thing else: mak­ing Bunny DNS in­cred­i­ble to use and seam­lessly in­te­grated into every­thing else we do, so you can build faster, sleep eas­ier, and ul­ti­mately cre­ate build bet­ter user ex­pe­ri­ences for every­one.

If you haven’t tried Bunny DNS in a while, now’s a good time to take an­other look. You can add your zones, point your do­mains, and leave it at that, or start lay­er­ing on CDN and Shield when you need them.

It’s free now, so you can log in or sign up and start us­ing it straight away.

Today’s links

Spying on kids to save kids from spy­ing is very, very stu­pid: First they came for the VPNs.

Hey look at this: Delights to delec­tate.

Object per­ma­nence: RIP Darwin’s tor­toise; ISPs con­spire to cre­ate copy­right jail; Waxy v fair use; Broken Windows is BS; Google is a ma­chine-learn­ing com­pany; “Writing the Other”; Canadian wealth-tax.

Upcoming ap­pear­ances: Toronto, NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.

Recent ap­pear­ances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep read­in’ em, I’ll keep writ­in’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writ­in’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

Spying on kids to save kids from spy­ing is very, very stu­pid (permalink)

The lit­er­a­ture on harms to kids from on­line plat­forms is com­plex and nu­anced, rife with peo­ple cit­ing small, am­bigu­ous stud­ies as iron-clad ev­i­dence that kids are be­ing de­stroyed by the in­ter­net:

https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Ype6c6D­dHQY

It’s a weird coali­tion of anti-Big Tech cam­paign­ers (who are rightly an­gry at the plat­forms’ cal­lous dis­re­gard for user wel­fare) and Heritage Foundation-backed cul­ture war­riors (who think that if their kids aren’t ex­posed to LGBTQ con­tent they won’t come out as queer). While there’s plenty these groups dis­agree about, they share one con­sen­sus: there should be a “minimum age” for cer­tain kinds of in­ter­net use.

The prob­lem is, there’s no such thing as “age ver­i­fi­ca­tion” for the in­ter­net. What we call “age ver­i­fi­ca­tion” is ac­tu­ally mass sur­veil­lance, so in­va­sive and per­va­sive that it makes the ad-tech in­dus­try’s com­mer­cial sur­veil­lance look like some kind of cypher­punk dark­net pi­rate utopia:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2025/​08/​14/​bellovin/#​wont-some­one-think-of-the-cryp­tog­ra­phers

“Age ver­i­fi­ca­tion” means that every­one who does any­thing on­line will have to sub­mit to fine-grained track­ing and record­ing of all their on­line ac­tiv­i­ties. This night­mare is the sur­veil­lance ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try’s fond­est dream, a world where it’s lit­er­ally il­le­gal to avoid their track­ing, all in the name of sav­ing kids…from them!

So it’s not just a weird al­liance of anti-Big Tech cru­saders and the con­spir­a­to­r­ial right that’s push­ing for age ver­i­fi­ca­tion — they are un­wit­ting al­lies of the very tech in­dus­try they think they’re fight­ing. Those tech in­dus­try in­sid­ers are fully aware that an “age ver­i­fi­ca­tion” man­date is re­ally a way for the gov­ern­ment to teach every child how to use a VPN. They’re also fully aware that the next move is to ban VPNs:

https://​www.ex­press.co.uk/​news/​uk/​2217934/​vpn-ban-table-july-labour

Tech bosses are the ones sit­ting on our shoul­ders say­ing, “Go ahead, swal­low that fly — it’ll be fine. And if you do have to swal­low a spi­der af­ter­ward, well, that’ll surely be the end of it”:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2026/​05/​19/​shes-dead-of-course/#​con­sen­sus-hal­lu­ci­na­tion

Behind them is a long line of caliper-wield­ing grifters who claim they can use your phone’s cam­era to dis­tin­guish a child who is 17 years, 364 days old from an adult who’s just turned 18:

https://​www.gov.uk/​gov­ern­ment/​pub­li­ca­tions/​fa­cial-age-es­ti­ma­tion

It’s be­yond farce. After all, what­ever harms you be­lieve the in­ter­net is in­flict­ing on kids — and there’s ab­solutely some kids who are be­ing harmed by their in­ter­net use — those harms all start with sur­veil­lance. Your kids can’t be tar­geted by al­go­rithms with­out the sur­veil­lance data that’s be­ing used to tar­get them. They can’t be fun­neled into pro-anorexia con­tent or ex­treme misog­yny fo­rums with­out that fun­nel be­ing primed by com­mer­cial spy­ing.

Why do tech com­pa­nies spy on your kids? The same rea­son your dog licks its balls: be­cause they can, and no one stops them:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2026/​03/​10/​ice-tech/#​fore­see­able-out­comes

America has­n’t up­dated its con­sumer pri­vacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the dis­clo­sure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the coun­try where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, be­cause any tax haven in­evitably be­comes a crime haven:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2025/​10/​31/​los­ing-the-crypto-wars/#​sur­veil­lance-mo­nop­o­lism

Other coun­tries have pri­vacy laws to vary­ing de­grees, but are grossly out­matched by US tech gi­ants, who have fused with the Trump regime, to the ex­tent that Trump will im­pose penal­ties on your coun­try if you at­tempt to reg­u­late his tech com­pa­nies — he’ll even have your top of­fi­cials cut off from the in­ter­net in re­tal­i­a­tion:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2026/​04/​04/​dig­i­tal-sub­ju­ga­tion/#​green­lands-next

Any at­tempt to save kids from on­line harms should start with sav­ing kids from on­line sur­veil­lance, but that’s the op­po­site of what we’re do­ing to­day. After decades of fail­ing to pass and en­force pri­vacy con­trols for the in­ter­net, those same gov­ern­ments are break­ing all land-speed records to pass “age ver­i­fi­ca­tion” laws that make pri­vacy il­le­gal:

https://​bsky.app/​pro­file/​re­bec­ca­w­illiams.info/​post/​3moviqzdit22z

The fact that these bills have the firm back­ing of the tech in­dus­try’s most con­trol­ling, most spy­ing com­pa­nies tells you every­thing you need to know about them:

https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20260315022337/​https://​tbotepro­ject.com/

Kids are be­ing harmed by on­line spy­ing, and so are the rest of us. Whether you think that the al­go­rithm made Grampy go Qanon or you’re sus­pi­cious that on­line sur­veil­lance data was used to deny you a loan, a job, or a lease, you should want pri­vacy:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2023/​12/​06/​pri­vacy-first/#​but-not-just-pri­vacy

Online sur­veil­lance is be­ing used to raise the prices you pay and lower the wages you’re of­fered:

https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2026/​04/​06/​em­piri­cism-wash­ing/#​veena-dubal

And the same data that’s be­ing used to “verify age” to­day will be used by ICE to­mor­row to fig­ure out who to round up for a con­cen­tra­tion camp:

https://​www.wired.com/​story/​ice-asks-com­pa­nies-about-ad-tech-and-big-data-tools/

You can’t pro­tect kids from on­line sur­veil­lance by spy­ing on them. You just can’t. Anyone who tells you oth­er­wise is try­ing to get you to swal­low a fly so they can sell you a spi­der, a bird, a cat, and an ICE chud in a gaiter, Oakleys and plate car­rier (beneath which lurks a stick-and-poke Totenkopf tat­too).

Hey look at this (permalink)

AI doomerism is mis­placed. Here’s what it will take to pop the bub­ble https://​www.sa­lon.com/​2026/​06/​22/​ai-doomerism-is-mis­placed-heres-what-it-will-take-to-pop-the-bub­ble/

Visa and Mastercard: The Original Gangsters of Electronic Collusion https://​www.thes­ling.org/​visa-and-mas­ter­card-the-orig­i­nal-gang­sters-of-elec­tronic-col­lu­sion/

Visa and Mastercard: The Original Gangsters of Electronic Collusion https://​www.thes­ling.org/​visa-and-mas­ter­card-the-orig­i­nal-gang­sters-of-elec­tronic-col­lu­sion/

Has it hap­pened yet? https://​ha­sithap­penedyet.org/

Has it hap­pened yet? https://​ha­sithap­penedyet.org/

Platform-Controlled Search and Distortions in Attention Allocation https://​tin­ber­gen.nl/​dis­cus­sion-pa­per/​6496/​26 – 035-vii-plat­form-con­trolled-search-and-dis­tor­tions-in-at­ten­tion-al­lo­ca­tion

Platform-Controlled Search and Distortions in Attention Allocation https://​tin­ber­gen.nl/​dis­cus­sion-pa­per/​6496/​26 – 035-vii-plat­form-con­trolled-search-and-dis­tor­tions-in-at­ten­tion-al­lo­ca­tion

Object per­ma­nence (permalink)

#20yrsago Darwin’s tor­toise dead at 176 https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20060704143750/​http://​news.ya­hoo.com/​s/​afp/​20060623/​od_afp/​aus­trali­aan­i­mal_060623102146;_ylt=Ave_b4P­s2r9T­GX­qs5nZIV­Io­FO7gF;_ylu=X3oDM­TA5bGV­na3N­hB­HN­lY­wNzc3JlbA–zoo

#15yrsago Major US ISPs set to limit re­peat in­fringers with throt­tling, lim­it­ing ac­cess to 200 web­sites, and copy­right reed­u­ca­tion school https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20111105225114/​http://​news.cnet.com/​8301 – 31001_3 – 20073522-261/​ex­clu­sive-top-isps-poised-to-adopt-grad­u­ated-re­sponse-to-piracy/

#15yrsago Why fair use does­n’t work un­less you’ve got a huge war-chest for pay­ing lawyers https://​waxy.org/​2011/​06/​kind_of_screwed/

#15yrsago Model net neu­tral­ity rule for mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20110626114610/​http://​en­vi­sion­seat­tle.org/​2011/​06/​model-net-neu­tral­ity-or­di­nance-for-seat­tle.html

#15yrsago Campus hookups: col­lege sex is­n’t new, but hookups are dif­fer­ent https://​the­so­ci­ety­pages.org/​socim­ages/​2011/​06/​21/​the-promise-and-per­ils-of-hook-up-cul­ture/

#15yrsago A Brief History of the Corporation: un­der­stand­ing what an at­ten­tion econ­omy is and where it comes from https://​rib­bon­farm.com/​2011/​06/​08/​a-brief-his­tory-of-the-cor­po­ra­tion-1600-to-2100/

#15yrsago Eliza: what makes you think I’m a psy­chother­a­peu­tic chat­bot? https://​www.fil­fre.net/​2011/​06/​eliza-part-1/

#10yrsago Broken Windows polic­ing is non­sense https://​www.nyc.gov/​as­sets/​oignypd/​down­loads/​pdf/​Qual­ity-of-Life-Re­port-2010 – 2015.pdf

#10yrsago How it feels to be un­der DDoS at­tack https://​www.or­eilly.com/​radar/​ddos-emo­tions/

#10yrsago 2016: the first pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 50 years with­out Voting Rights Act pro­tec­tions https://​www.rolling­stone.com/​pol­i­tics/​pol­i­tics-news/​wel­come-to-the-first-pres­i­den­tial-elec­tion-since-vot­ing-rights-act-gut­ted-179737/​3/

#10yrsago Google is re­struc­tur­ing to put ma­chine learn­ing at the core of all it does https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20180530051703/​https://​www.wired.com/​2016/​06/​how-google-is-re­mak­ing-it­self-as-a-ma­chine-learn­ing-first-com­pany/

#10yrsago Misconfigured data­base ex­poses sen­si­tive data for 154 mil­lion US vot­ers https://​dai­ly­dot.com/​pol­i­tics/​154-mil­lion-voter-files-ex­posed-l2

#10yrsago To un­der­stand the Trump cam­paign, study real-es­tate de­vel­oper hus­tle https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20161028030522/​https://​storify.com/​KC_EDM/​trump-is-run­ning-his-cam­paign-like-a-real-es­tate-d

#10yrsago Writing the Other: in­tensely prac­ti­cal ad­vice for rep­re­sent­ing other cul­tures in fic­tion https://​memex.craphound.com/​2016/​06/​23/​writ­ing-the-other-in­tensely-prac­ti­cal-ad­vice-for-rep­re­sent­ing-other-cul­tures-in-fic­tion/

#1yrago The case for a Canadian wealth tax https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2025/​06/​23/​bil­lion­aires-eh/#​galen-we­ston-is-a-rat

Upcoming ap­pear­ances (permalink)

Toronto: The Sovereignty Debate (IAB Canada’s State of the Nation), Jun 23 https://​iab­canada.com/​state-of-the-na­tion-2026

Toronto: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (Osler Records/Type Books), Jun 23 https://​www.eventbrite.com/​e/​cory-doc­torow-book-launch-and-talk-tick­ets-1991501299998

Toronto: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (Osler Records/Type Books), Jun 23 https://​www.eventbrite.com/​e/​cory-doc­torow-book-launch-and-talk-tick­ets-1991501299998

NYC: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24 https://​www.strand­books.com/​cory-doc­torow-the-re­verse-cen­taur-s-guide-to-life-af­ter-ai.html

NYC: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24 https://​www.strand­books.com/​cory-doc­torow-the-re­verse-cen­taur-s-guide-to-life-af­ter-ai.html

Philadelphia: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25 https://​www.eventbrite.com/​e/​cory-doc­torow-book-event-tick­ets-1990110326559

Philadelphia: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25 https://​www.eventbrite.com/​e/​cory-doc­torow-book-event-tick­ets-1990110326559

Chicago: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26 https://​ex­ilein­bookville.com/​events/​50628

Chicago: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26 https://​ex­ilein­bookville.com/​events/​50628

London: Idler Festival, Jul 11 https://​www.idler.co.uk/​fes­ti­val/

London: Idler Festival, Jul 11 https://​www.idler.co.uk/​fes­ti­val/

Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17 https://​www.ed­book­fest.co.uk/​events/​the-front-list-cory-doc­torow-and-jimmy-wales

Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17 https://​www.ed­book­fest.co.uk/​events/​the-front-list-cory-doc­torow-and-jimmy-wales

Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23 – 24 https://​fes­ti­val­of­dan­ger­ousideas.com/​cory-doc­torow/

Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23 – 24 https://​fes­ti­val­of­dan­ger­ousideas.com/​cory-doc­torow/

Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25 https://​www.wheel­er­centre.com/​events-tick­ets/​sea­son-2026/​cory-doc­torow-en­shit­ti­fi­ca­tion

Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25 https://​www.wheel­er­centre.com/​events-tick­ets/​sea­son-2026/​cory-doc­torow-en­shit­ti­fi­ca­tion

Brighton: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8 https://​brighton­dome.org/​whats-on/​LSC-cory-doc­torow-the-re­verse-cen­taurs-guide-to-life-af­ter-ai/

Brighton: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8 https://​brighton­dome.org/​whats-on/​LSC-cory-doc­torow-the-re­verse-cen­taurs-guide-to-life-af­ter-ai/

London: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle’s Picadilly), Sep 9 https://​www.foyles.co.uk/​events/​en­shit­ti­fi­ca­tion-cory-doc­torow-ri­ley-quinn

London: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle’s Picadilly), Sep 9 https://​www.foyles.co.uk/​events/​en­shit­ti­fi­ca­tion-cory-doc­torow-ri­ley-quinn

South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6 https://​franco.nd.edu/​events/​2026/​10/​06/​an-evening-with-cory-doc­torow/

South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6 https://​franco.nd.edu/​events/​2026/​10/​06/​an-evening-with-cory-doc­torow/

Recent ap­pear­ances (permalink)

How to Mess with Big Tech Oligarchs (Fighting Fascism) https://​pod­casts.ap­ple.com/​us/​pod­cast/​how-to-mess-with-big-tech-oli­garchs-w-cory-doc­torow/​id1888647397?i=1000773711479

Reverse Centaur with Angie Coiro (Kepler’s Books) https://​www.youtube.com/​live/​cWN6XBa73xA

Reverse Centaur with Angie Coiro (Kepler’s Books) https://​www.youtube.com/​live/​cWN6XBa73xA

How to Think About AI Before It’s Too Late (Galaxy Brain) https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=SPQN­PJ0­CEPo

How to Think About AI Before It’s Too Late (Galaxy Brain) https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=SPQN­PJ0­CEPo

The fu­ture of world gov­er­nance, with Kim Stanley Robinson (UN Independent Expert on International Order) https://​www.youtube.com/​live/​wJvB­vY­daAMY

The fu­ture of world gov­er­nance, with Kim Stanley Robinson (UN Independent Expert on International Order) https://​www.youtube.com/​live/​wJvB­vY­daAMY

How to Think About Artificial Intelligence (KUER) https://​ra­diow­est.kuer.org/​show/​ra­diow­est/​2026 – 06-16/​cory-doc­torow-on-how-to-think-about-ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence

How to Think About Artificial Intelligence (KUER) https://​ra­diow­est.kuer.org/​show/​ra­diow­est/​2026 – 06-16/​cory-doc­torow-on-how-to-think-about-ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence

Latest books (permalink)

“Canny Valley”: A lim­ited edi­tion col­lec­tion of the col­lages I cre­ate for Pluralistic, self-pub­lished, September 2025 https://​plu­ral­is­tic.net/​2025/​09/​04/​il­lus­tri­ous/#​chair­man-bruce

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