loading . . . Pluralistic: Big Tech joins the race to build the world's heaviest airplane (09 Dec 2025)
# Today's links
* Big Tech joins the race to build the world's heaviest airplane: Die as Microsoft, or live to become the IBM you overthrew.
* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
* Object permanence: Bean-sprouting keyboard; Ink rant; FBI wanted to deport John Lennon; "Concrete Park"; Plutocratic lane-changes.
* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
* 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.
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# Big Tech joins the race to build the world's heaviest airplane (permalink)
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers â chairman of IBM's board of directors â to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC. Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.
IBM could have made its own OS, of course. They were just afraid to, because they'd just narrowly squeaked out of a 12-year antitrust war with the Department of Justice (evocatively memorialized as "Antitrust's Vietnam"):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/02/the-true-genius-of-tech-leaders/
The US government traumatized IBM so badly that they turned over their crown jewels to these two prep-school kids, who scammed a pal out of his operating system for $50k and made billions from it. Despite owing his business to IBM (or perhaps because of this fact), Gates routinely mocked IBM as a lumbering dinosaur that was headed for history's scrapheap. He was particularly scornful of IBM's software development methodology, which, to be fair, was pretty terrible: IBM paid programmers by the line of code. Gates called this "the race to build the world's heaviest airplane."
After all, judging software by _lines of code_ is a _terrible_ idea. To the extent that "number of lines of code" has any correlation with software quality, reliability or performance, it has a _negative_ correlation. While it's certainly possible to write software with _too few_ lines of code (e.g. when instructions are stacked on a single line, obfuscating its functionality and making it hard to maintain), it's far more common for programmers to use _too many_ steps to solve a problem. The ideal software is _just right_ : verbose enough to be legible to future maintainers, streamlined enough to omit redundancies.
This is broadly true of many products, and not just airplanes. Office memos should be long enough to be clear, but no longer. Home insulation should be sufficient to maintain the internal temperature, but no more.
Ironically, enterprise tech companies' bread and butter is selling exactly this kind of qualitative measurements for bosses who want an easy, numeric way to decide which of their workers to fire, and leading the pack is Microsoft, whose flagship Office365 lets bosses assess their workers' performance on meaningless metrics like how many words they type, ranking each worker against other workers within the division, with rival divisions and within rival _firms_. Yes, Microsoft actually boasts to companies about the fact that if you use their products, they will gather sensitive data about how your workers perform individually and as a team, and share than information with your competitors!
https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge
But while tech companies employed programmers to develop this kind of bossware to be used on _other_ companies' employees, they were loathe to apply them to their own workers. For one thing, it's just a very stupid way to manage a workforce, as Bill Gates himself would be the first to tell you (candidly, provided he wasn't trying to sell you an enterprise Office 365 license). For another, tech workers wouldn't stand for it. After all, these were the "princes of labor," each adding a million dollars or more to their boss's bottom line, and in such scarce supply that a coder could quit a job after the morning scrum and have a new one by the pre-dinner pickleball break:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-others
Tech workers mistook the fear this dynamic instilled in their bosses for respect. They thought the reason their bosses gave them free massage therapists and kombucha on tap and a gourmet cafeteria was that their bosses _liked_ them. After all, these bosses were all techies. A coder wasn't a worker, they were a temporarily embarrassed founder. That's why Zuck and Sergey tuned into those engineering town hall meetings and tolerated being pelted with impertinent questions about the company's technology and business strategy.
Actually, tech bosses _didn't_ like tech workers. They _didn't_ see them as peers. They saw them workers. Problem workers, at that. Problems to be solved.
And wouldn't you know it, supply caught up with demand and tech companies instituted a program of mass layoffs. When Google laid off 12,000 workers (just before a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for 27 years), they calmed investors by claiming that they weren't doing this because business was bad â they were just correcting some pandemic-era overhiring. But Google didn't just fire junior programmers â they targeted some of their most senior (and thus mouthiest and highest-paid) techies for the chop.
Today, Sergey and Zuck no longer attend engineering meetings ("Not a good use of my time" -M. Zuckerberg). Tech workers are getting laid off at the rate of naughts. And none of these bastards can _shut up_ about how many programmers they plan on replacing with AI:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/05/ex-princes-of-labor/#hyper-criti-hype
And wouldn't you know it, the shitty monitoring and ranking technology that programmers made to be used on other workers is finally being used on _them_ :
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/microsoft_copilot_viva_insights/
Naturally, the excuse is monitoring AI usage. Microsoft â along with all the other AI-peddling tech companies â keep claiming that their workers _adore_ using AI to write software, but somehow, also have to monitor workers so they can figure out which ones to fire because they're not using AI enough:
https://www.itpro.com/software/development/microsoft-claims-ai-is-augmenting-developers-rather-than-replacing-them
This is the "shitty technology adoption curve" in action. When you have a terrible, destructive technology, you can't just deploy it on privileged people who get taken seriously in policy circles. You start with people at the bottom of the privilege gradient: prisoners, mental patients, asylum-seekers. Then, you work your way up the curve â kids, gig workers, blue collar workers, pink collar workers. Eventually, it comes for all of us:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
As Ed Zitron writes, tech hasn't had a big, successful product (on the scale of, say, the browser or the smartphone) in more than a decade. Tech companies have seemingly run out of new trillion-dollar industries to spawn. Tech bosses are pulling out all the stops to make their companies seem as dynamic and profitable as they were in tech's heyday.
Firing workers and blaming it on AI lets tech bosses transform a story that would freak out investors ("Our business is flagging and we had to fire a bunch of valuable techies") into one that will shake loose fresh billions in capital ("Our AI product is so powerful it let us fire a zillion workers!").
And for tech bosses, mass layoffs offer another, critical advantage: pauperizing those princes of labor, so that they can shed their company gyms and luxury commuter busses, cut wages and benefits, and generally reset the working expectations of the tech workers who sit behind a keyboard to match the expectations of tech workers who assemble iPhones, drive delivery vans, and pack boxes in warehouses.
For tech workers who currently don't have a pee bottle or a suicide net at their job-site, it's long past time to get over this founder-in-waiting bullshit and get organized. Recognize that you're a worker, and that workers' only real source of power isn't ephemeral scarcity, it's durable solidarity:
https://techworkerscoalition.org/
(_Image:Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified_)
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# Hey look at this (permalink)
* Your Data Might Determine How Much You Pay for Eggs https://www.wired.com/story/algorithmic-pricing-eggs-ny-law/
* Judge hints Vizio TV buyers may have rights to source code licensed under GPL https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/05/vizio_gpl_source_code_ruling/
* Chamberlain blocks smart home integrations with its garage door openers â again https://www.theverge.com/tech/839294/chamberlain-myq-garage-door-opener-update-blocks-aftermarket-controllers
* Smart Garage Door Opener https://3reality.com/product/smartgarage-door-opener/
* The Best Books in eBooks and Audiobooks of 2025 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/best-books-of-2025
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# Object permanence (permalink)
#20yrsago WaWa Digital Cameras threatens to break customerâs neck https://thomashawk.com/2005/12/abusive-new-york-camera-store.html
#20yrsago Keyboard used as bean-sprouting medium https://web.archive.org/web/20051205011830/http://www.nada.kth.se/~hjorth/krasse/english.html
#15yrsago Judge to copyright troll: get lost https://torrentfreak.com/acslaw-take-alleged-file-sharers-to-court-but-fail-on-a-grand-scale-101209/
#15yrsago Ink cartridge rant https://web.archive.org/web/20101211080931/http://www.inkcartridges.uk.com/Remanufactured-HP-300-CC640EE-Black.html
#15yrsago 1.1 billion US$100 notes out of circulation due to printing error https://www.cnbc.com/2010/12/07/the-fed-has-a-110-billion-problem-with-new-benjamins.html
#15yrsago EFF wants Righthaven to pay for its own ass-kicking https://web.archive.org/web/20101211011932/https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/payup-troll/
#15yrsago danah boyd explains email sabbaticals https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/12/08/i-am-offline-on-email-sabbatical-from-december-9-january-12.html
#15yrsago TSA subjects Indiaâs US ambassador to public grope because of her sari https://web.archive.org/web/20101211113821/http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2010/12/india-diplomat-gets-humiliating-pat-down-at-mississippi-airport-/134197/5?csp=outbrain&csp=obnetwork
#15yrsago Californiaâs safety codes are now open source! https://code.google.com/archive/p/title24/
#10yrsago When the INS tried to deport John Lennon, the FBI pitched in to help https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/dec/08/john-lennons-fbi-file-1/
#10yrsago The Big List of Whatâs Wrong with the TPP https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/how-tpp-will-affect-you-and-your-digital-rights
#10yrsago Concrete Park: apocalyptic, afrofuturistic graphic novel of greatness https://memex.craphound.com/2015/12/08/concrete-park-apocalyptic-afrofuturistic-graphic-novel-of-greatness/
#10yrsago Denmarkâs top anti-piracy law firm pocketed $25m from rightsholders, then went bankrupt https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-lawyer-milked-copyright-holders-for-millions-151208/
#5yrsago Uber pays to get rid of its self-driving cars https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#goober
#5yrsago All the books I reviewed in 2020 https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading
#5yrsago Ford patents plutocratic lane-changes https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#walkaway
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# Upcoming appearances (permalink)
* Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html
* Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937
* Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/
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# Recent appearances (permalink)
* Enshittification with Four Ways to Change the World (Channel 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQaEeuuI3Q
* The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. (Novarra Media)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wE8G-d7SnY
* Enshittification (Future Knowledge)
https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/enshittification
* We have become slaves to Silicon Valley (Politics JOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzEUvh1r5-w
* How Enshittification is Destroying The Internet (Frontline Club)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovsyzB9L-s
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# Latest books (permalink)
* "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
* "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
* "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
* "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).
* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
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# Upcoming books (permalink)
* "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
* "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
* "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
* "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
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# Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
**Currently writing:**
* "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
* "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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This work â excluding any serialized fiction â is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
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