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Pluralistic: How much (little) are the AI companies making? (30 Jun 2025) by Cory Doctorow
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 9:04 PM

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Today's links


A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.

How much (little) are the AI companies making? (permalink)

If there's one area where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

The all-time world champeen of this kind of finance fraud is Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, who acts as the bagman for the Saudi royals' personal investments. Remember last decade when the tech press was all abuzz about "unicorns" – startups that were worth $1b? That was Son: he would take a startup like Wework, declare its brand to be worth $1b, invest an infinitesimal fraction of $1b in the company based on that valuation (sometimes with a rube co-investor) and declare the valuation to be "market-based." A whole string of garbage companies achieved unicornhood by means of this unbelievably stupid trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/27/voluntary-carbon-market/#trust-me

Of course, every finance bro is familiar with Stein's Law: "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Sure, the Saudi royals could be tapped to piss away $31b on Uber, losing $0.41 on every dollar for 13 years, but eventually they're going to turn off the money spigot and attempt to flog their shares to retail and institutional suckers. To make that work, they have to invent new accounting tricks, like when Uber "sold" its failing overseas ride-hailing businesses to international rivals in exchange for stock, then declared that these companies' illiquid stock had skyrocketed in value, tipping Uber into the black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk

Even companies that are actually profitable (in the sense of bringing in more revenue than it costs to keep the business's lights on) love to juice their stats, and the worst offenders are the Big Tech companies, who reap a vast commercial reward from creating the illusion that they are continuing to grow, even after they've dominated their sector.

Take Google: once the company attained a 90% global search market-share, there were no more immediate prospects for growth. I mean, sure, they could raise a billion new humans to maturity and train them to be Google customers (e.g., the business plan for Google Classroom), but that takes more than a decade, and Google needed growth right away. So the company hatched a plan to make search worse, so that its existing users would have to search multiple times to get the information they sought, and each additional search would give Google another chance to show you an ad:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

But that was small potatoes. What Google – and the rest of the tech sector – needed was a massive growth story, a story about how their companies, worth trillions of dollars, could double or triple in size in the coming years. There's a kind of reflexive anti-capitalist critique that locates the drive to tell growth stories in ideology: "endless growth is the ideology of a tumor," right?

But spinning an endless growth story isn't merely ideological. It's a firmly materialistic undertaking. Companies that appear to be growing have market caps that are an order of magnitude larger than companies that are considered "mature" and at the end of their growth phase. For every dollar that Ford brings in, the market is willing to spend $8.60 on its stock. For every dollar Tesla brings in, the market is willing to spend $118 on its stock.

That means that when Tesla and Ford compete to buy something – like another company, or the labor of highly sought after technical specialists – Tesla has a nearly unbeatable advantage. Rather than raiding its precious cash reserves to fund its offer, Tesla can offer stock. Ford can only spend as many dollars as it brings in through sales, but Tesla can make more stock, on demand, simply by typing numbers into a spreadsheet.

So when Tesla bids against Ford, Ford has to use dollars, and Tesla can use shares. And even if the acquisition target – a key employee or a startup that's on the acquisitions market – wants dollars instead of shares, Tesla can stake its shares as collateral for loans at a rate that's 1,463% better than the rate Ford gets when it collateralizes a loan based on its own equity:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

In other words, if you can tell a convincing growth story, it's much easier to grow. The corollary, though, is that when a growth company stops growing, when it becomes "mature," it experiences a massive sell-off of its stock, as its share price plummets to a tenth or less of the old "growth" valuation. That's why the biggest tech companies in the world have spent the past decade – the decade after they monopolized their sectors and conquered the world – pumping a series of progressively stupider bubbles: metaverse, cryptocurrency, and now, AI.

Tech companies don't need these ventures to be successful – they just need them to seem to be plausibly successful for long enough to keep the share price high until the next growth story heaves over the horizon. So long as Mister Market thinks tech is a "growth" sector and not a "mature" sector, tech bosses will be able to continue to pay for things with stock rather than cash, and their own stockholdings will continue to be valued at sky-high rates.

That's why AI is being crammed into absofuckinglutely everything. It's why the button you used to tap to start a new chat summons up an AI that takes seven taps to banish again – it's so tech companies can tell Wall Street that people are "using AI" which means that their companies are still part of a growth industry and thus entitled to gigantic price-to-earnings ratios:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

The reality, of course, is that people hate AI. Telling people that your product is "AI enabled" makes them less likely to use it:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2368040#d1e1096

People – who have had an infinitude of AI crammed down their throats – are already sick of AI. Policymakers and financiers – credulous dolts who fall for tech marketing hype every! fucking! time – are convinced that AI Is The Future. This presents a dilemma for tech companies, who research the hell out of how people actually use their products and thus must be extremely aware of how hated AI is, but whose leadership is desperate to show investors that they are about to experience explosive growth through the miracle of AI.

The reality is that AI is a very bad business. It has dogshit unit economics. Unlike all the successful tech of the 21st century, each generation of AI is more expensive to make, not cheaper. And unlike the most profitable tech services of this century, AI gets more costly to operate the more users it has.

You can be forgiven for not knowing this, though. As Ed Zitron points out in a long, excellent article about the credulity and impuissance of the tech press, the actual numbers suuuuuck:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/make-fun-of-them/

  • Microsoft

Spending: $80b in 2025

Projecting: $13b in 2025

Actually: $10b comes from Openai giving back compute credits Microsoft gave to Openai, bringing the true total to $3b.

  • Meta

Spending: $72b in 2025

Receiving: At most $600m in gross revenue from selling "smart" Raybans, which might not actually be loss-leaders, meaning it's possible that they're making less than $0.00.

  • Amazon

Spending: $100b in 2025

Projecting: $5b in revenue in 2025

  • Google

Spending: $75b in 2025

Projecting: They won't say, possibly zero.

As Zitron points out: this industry is projecting $327b in spending this year, with $18b in revenue and zero profits. For comparison: smart watches are a $32b/year industry.

Now, what about Openai? Well, they're one of Masoyoshi Son's special children, of a piece with Wework and Uber. Openai is projecting $12.7b in revenue this year, with losses of $14b. Add in a bunch of also-rans like Perplexity and Surge, and the revenue rises to $32.3b. But…if you chuck them in, you also get total expenditures of $370.8b.

These are by no means the only funny numbers in the AI industry. Take "Stargate," a data-center initiative with a price tag of $500b. Actual funds committed? $40b.

These are terrible numbers, but also, these are some genuinely impressive accounting gimmicks. They are certain to keep the bubble pumping for months or perhaps years, convincing gullible bosses to fire talented employees and replace them with bumbling chatbots that will linger for years or decades, the asbestos in the walls of our high-tech civilization.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Wil Wheaton’s Slashdot interview https://slashdot.org/story/05/06/27/0926218/wil-wheaton-strikes-back

#20yrsago Anti-DRM badges https://web.archive.org/web/20050701004506/http://nootropic.blogspot.com/2005/06/gallery-of-drm-related-antipixel.html

#15yrsago ACLU: America is riddled with politically motivated surveillance https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Spyfiles_2_0.pdf

#15yrsago Toronto cops justify extreme G20 measures with display of LARPing props, weapons from unrelated busts https://web.archive.org/web/20100702002151/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/weapons-seized-in-g20-arrests-put-on-display/article1622761/

#15yrsago Copyright best practices for communications scholars https://web.archive.org/web/20100628005458/http://centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/related-materials/codes/code-best-practices-fair-use-scholarly-research-communication

#15yrsago G20 police used imaginary law to jail harass demonstrators and jailed protestors in dangerous and abusive “detention center” https://memex.craphound.com/2010/06/29/g20-police-used-imaginary-law-to-jail-harass-demonstrators-and-jailed-protestors-in-dangerous-and-abusive-detention-center/

#15yrsago Canada repeating Britain’s dirty copyright legislation process https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jun/29/canada-copyright-digital-economy

#15yrsago London cops enforce imaginary law against brave, principled teenaged photographer https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/officers-claim-they-don-t-need-law-to-stop-photographer-taking-pictures-2012827.html

#15yrsago Globe and Mail journalist arrested and kettled at G20 Toronto https://web.archive.org/web/20100630110103/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/toronto/caught-in-the-storm-penned-in-at-queen-street/article1621255/

#15yrsago UK government hushed up internal analysis of anti-drug strategy to avoid ridicule https://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/06/home-office-internal-document-reveals.html

#15yrsago My Twitter debate with Minister who introduced Canada’s DMCA https://memex.craphound.com/2010/06/28/my-twitter-debate-with-minister-who-introduced-canadas-dmca/

#10yrsago Why I’m leaving London https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/29/why-im-leaving-london/

#10yrsago Neal Stephenson on the story behind Seveneves http://www.bookotron.com/agony/audio/2015/2015-interviews/neal_stephenson-2015.mp3

#10yrsago Brian Wood’s Starve: get to your comic shop now! https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/29/brian-woods-starve-get-to-your-comic-shop-now/

#10yrsago BBC’s list of pages de-indexed through Europe’s “right to be forgotten” https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Finternet%2Fentries%2F1d765aa8-600b-4f32-b110-d02fbf7fd379

#5yrsago NYC housing lottery favors the least-needy https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#market-failure

#5yrsago Facebook and Trump collaborate on rule-rigging https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#fb-hearts-dt

#5yrsago How to break up Google https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#braygoog

#5yrsago Female Furies https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#apokolips-now

#5yrsago Bailouts should come with strings attached https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/28/kings-shilling/#tanstaafl

#1yrago The reason you can't buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • 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/

  • 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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – 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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ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links


A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.

How much (little) are the AI companies making? (permalink)

If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

The all-time world champeen of this kind of finance fraud is Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, who acts as the bagman for the Saudi royals' personal investments. Remember last decade when the tech press was all abuzz about "unicorns" – startups that were worth $1b? That was Son: he would take a startup like Wework, declare its brand to be worth $1b, invest an infinitesimal fraction of $1b in the company based on that valuation (sometimes with a rube co-investor) and declare the valuation to be "market-based." A whole string of garbage companies achieved unicornhood by means of this unbelievably stupid trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/27/voluntary-carbon-market/#trust-me

Of course, every finance bro is familiar with Stein's Law: "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Sure, the Saudi royals could be tapped to piss away $31b on Uber, losing $0.41 on every dollar for 13 years, but eventually they're going to turn off the money spigot and attempt to flog their shares to retail and institutional suckers. To make that work, they have to invent new accounting tricks, like when Uber "sold" its failing overseas ride-hailing businesses to international rivals in exchange for stock, then declared that these companies' illiquid stock had skyrocketed in value, tipping Uber into the black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk

Even companies that are actually profitable (in the sense of bringing in more revenue than it costs to keep the business's lights on) love to juice their stats, and the worst offenders are the Big Tech companies, who reap a vast commercial reward from creating the illusion that they are continuing to grow, even after they've dominated their sector.

Take Google: once the company attained a 90% global search market-share, there were no more immediate prospects for growth. I mean, sure, they could raise a billion new humans to maturity and train them to be Google customers (e.g., the business plan for Google Classroom), but that takes more than a decade, and Google needed growth right away. So the company hatched a plan to make search worse, so that its existing users would have to search multiple times to get the information they sought, and each additional search would give Google another chance to show you an ad:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

But that was small potatoes. What Google – and the rest of the tech sector – needed was a massive growth story, a story about how their companies, worth trillions of dollars, could double or triple in size in the coming years. There's a kind of reflexive anti-capitalist critique that locates the drive to tell growth stories in ideology: "endless growth is the ideology of a tumor," right?

But spinning an endless growth story isn't merely ideological. It's a firmly materialistic undertaking. Companies that appear to be growing have market caps that are an order of magnitude larger than companies that are consisdered "mature" and at the end of their growth phase. For every dollar that Ford brings in, the market is willing to spend $8.60 on its stock. For every dollar Tesla brings in, the market is willing to spend $118 on its stock.

That means that when Tesla and Ford compete to buy something – like another company, or the labor of highly sought after technical specialists – Tesla has a nearly unbeatable advantage. Rather than raiding its precious cash reserves to fund its offer, Tesla can offer stock. Tesla can only spend as many dollars as it brings in through sales, but Tesla can make more stock, on demand, simply by typing numbers into a spreadsheet.

So when Tesla bids against Ford, Ford has to use dollars, and Tesla can use shares. And even if the acquisition target – a key employee or a startup that's on the acquisitions market – wants dollars instead of shares, Tesla can stake its shares as collateral for loans at a rate that's 1,463% better than the rate Ford gets when it collateralizes a loan based on its own equity:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

In other words, if you can tell a convincing growth story, it's much easier to grow. The corollary, though, is that when a growth company stops growing, when it becomes "mature," it experiences a massive sell-off of its stock, as its share price plummets to a tenth or less of the old "growth" valuation. That's why the biggest tech companies in the world have spent the past decade – the decade after they monopolized their sectors and conquered the world – pumping a series of progressively stupider bubbles: metaverse, cryptocurrency, and now, AI.

Tech companies don't need these ventures to be successful – they just need them to seem to be plausibly successful for long enough to keep the share price high until the next growth story heaves over the horizon. So long as Mister Market thinks tech is a "growth" sector and not a "mature" sector, tech bosses will be able to continue to pay for things with stock rather than cash, and their own stockholdings will continue to be valued at sky-high rates.

That's why AI is being crammed into absofuckingloutely everything. it's why the button you used to tap to start a new chat summons up an AI that takes seven taps to banish again – it's so tech companies can tell Wall Street that people are "using AI" which means that their companies are still part of a growth industry and thus entitled to gigantic price-to-earnings ratios:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

The reality, of course, is that people hate AI. Telling people that your product is "AI enabled" makes less likely to use it:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2368040#d1e1096

People – who have had an infinitude of AI crammed into down their throats – are already sick of AI. Policymakers and financiers – credulous dolts who fall for tech marketing hype every! fucking! time – are convinced that AI Is The Future. This presents a dilemma for tech companies, who research the hell out of how people actually use their products and thus must be extremely aware of how hated AI is, but whose leadership is desperate to show investors that they are about to experience explosive growth through the miracle of AI.

The reality is that AI is a very bad business. It has dogshit unit economics. Unlike all the successful tech of the 21st century, each generation of AI is more expensive to make, not cheaper. And unlike the most profitable tech services of this century, AI gets more costly to operate the more users it has.

You can be forgiven for not knowing this, though. As Ed Zitron points out in a long, excellent article about the credulity and impuissance of the tech press, the actual numbers suuuuuck:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/make-fun-of-them/

  • Microsoft

Spending: $80b in 2025

Projecting: $13b in 2025

Actually: $10b comes from Openai giving back compute credits Microsoft gave to Openai, bringing the true total to $3b.

  • Meta

Spending: $72b in 2025

Receiving: At most $600m in gross revenue from selling "smart" Raybans, which might not actually be loss-leaders, meaning it's possible that they're making less than $0.00.

  • Amazon

Spending: $100b in 2025

Projecting: $5b in revenue in 2025

  • Google

Spending: $75b in 2025

Projecting: They won't say, possibly zero.

As Zitron points out: this industry is projecting $327b in spending this year, with $18b in revenue and zero profits. For comparison: smart watches are a $32b/year industry.

Now, what about Openai? Well, they're one of Masoyoshi Son's special children, of a piece with Wework and Uber. Openai is projecting $12.7b in revenue this year, with losses of $14b. Add in a bunch of also-rans like Perplexity and Surge, and the revenue rises to $32.3b. But…if you chuck them in, you also get total exenditure of $370.8b.

These are by no means the only funny numbers in the AI industry. Take "Stargate," a data-center initiative with a price tag of $500b. Actual funds committed? $40b.

These are terrible numbers, but also, these are some genuinely impressive accounting gimmicks. They are certain to keep the bubble pumping for months or perhaps years, convincing gullible bosses to fire talented employees and replace them with bumbling chatbots that will linger for years or decades, the asbestos in the walls of our high-tech civilization.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Wil Wheaton’s Slashdot interview https://slashdot.org/story/05/06/27/0926218/wil-wheaton-strikes-back

#20yrsago Anti-DRM badges https://web.archive.org/web/20050701004506/http://nootropic.blogspot.com/2005/06/gallery-of-drm-related-antipixel.html

#15yrsago ACLU: America is riddled with politically motivated surveillance https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Spyfiles_2_0.pdf

#15yrsago Toronto cops justify extreme G20 measures with display of LARPing props, weapons from unrelated busts https://web.archive.org/web/20100702002151/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/weapons-seized-in-g20-arrests-put-on-display/article1622761/

#15yrsago Copyright best practices for communications scholars https://web.archive.org/web/20100628005458/http://centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/related-materials/codes/code-best-practices-fair-use-scholarly-research-communication

#15yrsago G20 police used imaginary law to jail harass demonstrators and jailed protestors in dangerous and abusive “detention center” https://memex.craphound.com/2010/06/29/g20-police-used-imaginary-law-to-jail-harass-demonstrators-and-jailed-protestors-in-dangerous-and-abusive-detention-center/

#15yrsago Canada repeating Britain’s dirty copyright legislation process https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jun/29/canada-copyright-digital-economy

#15yrsago London cops enforce imaginary law against brave, principled teenaged photographer https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/officers-claim-they-don-t-need-law-to-stop-photographer-taking-pictures-2012827.html

#15yrsago Globe and Mail journalist arrested and kettled at G20 Toronto https://web.archive.org/web/20100630110103/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/toronto/caught-in-the-storm-penned-in-at-queen-street/article1621255/

#15yrsago UK government hushed up internal analysis of anti-drug strategy to avoid ridicule https://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/06/home-office-internal-document-reveals.html

#15yrsago My Twitter debate with Minister who introduced Canada’s DMCA https://memex.craphound.com/2010/06/28/my-twitter-debate-with-minister-who-introduced-canadas-dmca/

#10yrsago Why I’m leaving London https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/29/why-im-leaving-london/

#10yrsago Neal Stephenson on the story behind Seveneves http://www.bookotron.com/agony/audio/2015/2015-interviews/neal_stephenson-2015.mp3

#10yrsago Brian Wood’s Starve: get to your comic shop now! https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/29/brian-woods-starve-get-to-your-comic-shop-now/

#10yrsago BBC’s list of pages de-indexed through Europe’s “right to be forgotten” https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Finternet%2Fentries%2F1d765aa8-600b-4f32-b110-d02fbf7fd379

#5yrsago NYC housing lottery favors the least-needy https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#market-failure

#5yrsago Facebook and Trump collaborate on rule-rigging https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#fb-hearts-dt

#5yrsago How to break up Google https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#braygoog

#5yrsago Female Furies https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#apokolips-now

#5yrsago Bailouts should come with strings attached https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/28/kings-shilling/#tanstaafl

#1yrago The reason you can't buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • 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/

  • 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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – 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.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

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$219 Springer Nature AI textbook was written with a chatbot by David Gerard
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 4:05 PM

Pivot to AI
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“Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced” by Govindakumar Madhavan was published in April by Springer Nature. It’s $169 as an ebook, or $219 as a hardback. [Springer, archive]

Retraction Watch heard from a reader who was cited in the book — but his cited papers didn’t … exist. A lot of citations in the book don’t exist. [Retraction Watch]

Retraction Watch asked Madhavan to comment on whether he’d written his book on AI with an AI. Madhavan answered this yes-or-no question as follows:

reliably determining whether content (or an issue) is AI generated remains a challenge, as even human-written text can appear ‘AI-like.’ This challenge is only expected to grow, as LLMs continue to advance in fluency and sophistication.

That’s great, thanks.

Madhavan is the founder and CEO of SeaportAI, which offers services dealing with the risks of AI fraud. [SITE]

The book warns to take care with ChatGPT:

the technology raises important ethical questions about the use and misuse of AI-generated text.

Retraction Watch commenter Peter Vamplew says:

I wouldn’t expect an answer from Springer any time soon. I reported a similar case of a book chapter which contained hallucinated references, including one which it attributed to me which doesn’t match anything I’ve actually written. It’s been 4 months now and I’m still waiting for their investigation to reach a conclusion.

Springer publishes 14,000 books a year with 9,000 employees. Nobody at Springer even looks at the books. Springer concerns itself with the important part — charging $200 for a pile of chatbot spew.

 

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LEGO Group Opens Dynamic + Playful New Boston Hub by Caroline Williamson
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 9:43 AM

Design MilkDesign Milk
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LEGO Group Opens Dynamic + Playful New Boston Hub

The LEGO Group has officially unveiled its new U.S. headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, ushering in a bold new chapter for the iconic Danish brand on this side of the Atlantic. Located at 1001 Boylston Street in the heart of Back Bay, the new Boston Hub is a thoughtfully designed, purpose-driven environment that reflects LEGO’s core mission: to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow through the power of play.

Modern office kitchen with a bright green circular ceiling fixture, three people conversing near LEGO-green counters, and one person standing separately; plants and seating visible.

Spanning over 157,000 square feet across six floors, the Boston Hub was conceived with employees’ creativity, well-being, and collaboration in mind. The space includes more than 660 workstations, 90+ meeting spaces, and vibrant, open common areas designed to encourage spontaneous connection and teamwork. Sky terraces offer sweeping views of the city, while amenities like flexible wellness areas, parents’ rooms, and complimentary gym access promote balance and inclusivity for all employees.

Three people sit on blue modular sofas in a bright, modern lounge with colorful wall art and a large mural of a LEGO cityscape with trees.

The building is both LEED Gold and WELL Gold certified, reflecting a strong commitment to sustainability, healthy materials, energy efficiency, and an employee-first philosophy. The office’s design also incorporates playful elements and LEGO-themed features throughout – subtle reminders that even in the workplace, joy and creativity should never be too far from reach. “This new Hub is a home for our incredible U.S. team and a reflection of our values as a company,” says Niels B. Christiansen, CEO of the LEGO Group. “Boston has a vibrant innovation culture, outstanding talent, and a strong connection to education and families, making it an ideal city to help drive our long-term growth across the Americas.”

Modern office kitchen with a blue circular light fixture, lounge seating, dining tables, and LEGO-inspired design elements, where people interact near large windows overlooking the city.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony, held on June 19, 2025, welcomed a host of dignitaries including Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen. LEGO executives, employees, design collaborators, and community partners gathered to celebrate the milestone. The celebration wasn’t just about business growth – it was also about deepening community impact. At the event, LEGO announced a $5 million philanthropic commitment to the Boston area, spread over two years, aimed at expanding access to playful learning opportunities for children and families across the city.

A spiral staircase with a white railing curves around a modern, glass-walled office space, featuring colorful LEGO-like panels and city views in the background.

The multi-pronged initiative includes several key partnerships:

Boston Public Library Collaboration: LEGO will fund playful learning programs at the Central Library and all 25 neighborhood branches. These programs are designed for children from birth to age 13 and will include hands-on activities, workshops, and storytelling experiences that encourage creativity and curiosity.

Support for New Families: A pilot program will deliver resources to new parents in Boston, focused on introducing the benefits of play during early childhood development. The initiative underscores LEGO’s belief that play isn’t just fun – it’s foundational.

Expanded Educational Programs: LEGO will grow its existing partnerships with local institutions such as the Boston Children’s Museum and the Museum of Science to bring even more free, play-based learning opportunities to Boston-area children.

Modern office space with colorful walls, modular seating, large windows with city views, and playful wooden rocking toys and LEGO sets near the windows.

“Play fuels learning, emotional development, and connection. Through these partnerships, we’re making play accessible to more kids and families, regardless of background,” said Colette Burke, Chief Commercial Officer at the LEGO Group. “We’re building more than just a headquarters – we’re building a lasting relationship with the Boston community.”

Reception area of an office with signature LEGO branding, featuring a large circular ceiling design, colorful LEGO panels, modern furniture, and indoor plants.

This philanthropic effort builds on a legacy of Boston-based engagement for LEGO. Since 2015, when the company opened its LEGO Education office in the area, employees have volunteered thousands of hours toward play-centered programs. In 2021, LEGO partnered with the Boston Children’s Museum through the Playful Learning Museum Network, and in 2023 extended its outreach to the Museum of Science.

A person descends a yellow spiral staircase, seen from above, with bright yellow railings and a central column dominating the composition—almost resembling a giant LEGO structure in its bold, playful design.

A modern interior with a yellow curved partition, floral rug, two round wooden stools, a white pedestal holding books and LEGO creations, and a black crow sculpture.

Modern open-plan office with rows of desks, computer monitors, empty chairs, LEGO-inspired yellow accents, natural light, and ceiling lights. Glass-walled meeting rooms line the left side for a playful yet professional atmosphere.

The new Boston office represents one piece of LEGO’s broader investment in the U.S. market. In addition to its new Hub, the company is also constructing a state-of-the-art factory and regional distribution center in Chesterfield County, Virginia, set to open in 2027. Once operational, the facility will employ approximately 2,000 people and will be powered entirely by renewable energy.

A person walks up a bright orange, LEGO-inspired spiral staircase inside a modern building with minimalistic decor and curved architectural features.

Globally, LEGO operates major hubs in Copenhagen, Singapore, Shanghai, and London, alongside 37 sales offices and six factories. The company employs over 31,000 people worldwide and continues to grow its team of designers, engineers, educators, and storytellers committed to making play a powerful force for good.

A person stands next to a bank of pink elevators in a brightly lit hallway, with a LEGO sign on the wall and playful LEGO-themed decor throughout the space.

A pink wall with circular holes, each showcasing a LEGO minifigure, sits beside a pink sign labeled "B.

Ultimately, LEGO’s new Boston Hub is a physical expression of the company’s values – creativity, connection, care, and fun. It brings together a diverse team with a shared mission and places them at the heart of a city known for its energy, intellect, and entrepreneurial spirit. By combining workplace innovation with deep community engagement, LEGO is doing what it does best: building something meaningful, one brick at a time.

Modern open-plan office with rows of desks, computer monitors, ergonomic chairs, pink cabinets, and large windows providing natural light—decorated with playful LEGO accents for a creative touch.

A modern conference room with colorful chairs, reminiscent of LEGO bricks, faces a presenter at a screen. Large windows and a ceiling adorned with wooden slats and greenery complete the inviting space.

For more information on LEGO or the LEGO Group, head to lego.com.

Photography courtesy ©2025 The LEGO Group.

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Bang & Olufsen’s Beosystem 3000c Brings Back a Vinyl Icon by Christian de Looper
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 9:42 AM

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Bang & Olufsen’s Beosystem 3000c Brings Back a Vinyl Icon

Bang & Olufsen, the Danish audio design house renowned for its fusion of technology and timeless design, has unveiled its latest homage to hi-fi history: the Beosystem 3000c. This limited-edition release brings the beloved Beogram 3000 turntable from 1985 into the present day, coupling it with state-of-the-art Beolab 8 wireless speakers in a fresh package that honors the past while embracing the future.

A modern, minimalist Beosystem 3000c turntable with a clear cover and wooden accents sits on a textured beige surface.

The Beosystem 3000c is the third entry in Bang & Olufsen’s Recreated Classics program – an initiative launched to breathe new life into iconic products through a mix of restoration, reengineering, and contemporary design updates. This program celebrates more than nostalgia – it leans into sustainability, circular design, and the enduring value of exceptional craftsmanship. According to Mads Kogsgaard Hansen, Head of Product Circularity & Portfolio Planning at Bang & Olufsen, the Recreated Classics initiative is about extending the lifecycle of iconic design while enabling music lovers to rediscover the tactile and emotional connection that vinyl offers.

A Beosystem 3000c record player with the lid open sits between two speakers on a white ledge, with a candle, books, and a magazine on the striped rug in front.

At the heart of the Beosystem 3000c is the Beogram 3000c turntable. The 1985 model was known for its compact, minimalist form and innovative technology, which ensured more accurate playback and reduced record wear. In its modern incarnation, every component has been carefully reimagined. While the form remains true to the original, the internals and exterior are brand new – from the precision-machined walnut back cover and re-anodised aluminum panels to a newly engineered pickup cartridge built for contemporary performance.

A man lies on a bed in a room filled with large stacks of vinyl records, with a Beosystem 3000c and houseplants on a nearby table by the window.

Even the smallest details, like the dust lid and fabric-wrapped cables, reflect the same dedication to quality that made the original so beloved. The components have been manufactured and hand-finished in Struer, Denmark, where Bang & Olufsen continues to produce its most exclusive offerings.

A smartphone displaying a music app, a modern speaker, and a Beosystem 3000c turntable with a clear dust cover are arranged on a beige surface.

Complementing the turntable are Bang & Olufsen’s latest Beolab 8 speakers, a compact powerhouse of modern sound engineering. For this release, the speakers have been customized to match the player – featuring walnut lamellas and pearl-blasted aluminum accents that mirror the aesthetic of the Beogram. While their look may give nod to the past, their functionality is firmly in the present, with support for Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, Bluetooth, and wired or wireless integration into multiroom setups.

A modern Beosystem 3000c record player with a clear dust cover, silver circular platter, and wood accents sits on a light-colored surface.

The result is a versatile system that balances analog warmth with digital convenience, perfect for those who appreciate the ritual of vinyl but live in a world of streaming and smart speakers.

Close-up of a Beosystem 3000c turntable stylus and tonearm resting on a vinyl record.

Close-up view of the corner of a book with a wooden-textured spine, reminiscent of the Beosystem 3000c design, and a page labeled "Recreated Limited Edition 1/100" in small print.

Rectangular audio system inspired by the Beosystem 3000c, featuring a wood top panel, silver front, and radial black lines surrounding a central circular speaker grille.

A modern wall-mounted range hood with a circular vent pattern, glass front panel, and wood accent on top, inspired by the sleek aesthetic of the Beosystem 3000c, photographed against a white background.

A modern Beosystem 3000c record player with a transparent dust cover open, showcasing the turntable and sleek minimalist design.

Close-up of a modern, minimalist stainless steel scale with a circular dial—its aesthetic echoes the sleek design of Beosystem 3000c—featuring fine black markings and a small rectangular display on the left side.

The Beosystem 3000c is a collector’s item, available in a limited run of just 100 individually numbered units worldwide. Each set is made to order and priced at $30,000 (26,000 EUR), a reflection of the extensive craftsmanship, hand assembly, and rare materials involved in its production.

A modern Beosystem 3000c turntable with a clear dust cover is positioned between two matching oval speakers featuring vertical wooden slats on the front.

For more information or to secure one of the 100 Beosystem 3000c systems, head to bang-olufsen.com.

Photography courtesy of Bang & Olufsen.

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Always liked their visual / product design. The sound? Not so much.
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StudioPROBA Brings Maximalist Magic to HOKA’s Most Iconic Sneakers by Vy Yang
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 9:42 AM

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StudioPROBA Brings Maximalist Magic to HOKA’s Most Iconic Sneakers

We didn’t have “multidisciplinary art and design studio remixes ultra-cushioned trail runners” on our 2025 design bingo card, but we’re so glad it’s here. The just-dropped HOKA x StudioPROBA collab gives a maximalist makeover to HOKA’s most iconic sneakers, transforming them into walking works of art with candy-colored palettes and playful patterns that wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery. Unexpected? Absolutely. Unmissable? Also a resounding yes.

A pair of white running shoes are placed on a rock surrounded by green grass and pink wildflowers under a clear blue sky

We’ve long admired Alex Proba, founder of StudioPROBA, for her unmistakable aesthetic – a vibrant fusion of color, joy, and pattern that animates everything from pools and tiles to digital art and rugs. Now, she brings that same expressive lens to HOKA’s performance-forward silhouettes, creating sneakers that quite literally walk the walk. “Translating my art from large-scale sculptures and murals to sneakers felt like a natural evolution, especially since my earliest work began on posters and small scale,” Proba tells Design Milk. “My practice has always been rooted in joy, movement, and nature, so bringing that energy to something that literally moves with people made perfect sense. Every line and color wrap the shoe as it would a wall or pool, but here, wear and the elements, mud, sun, and adventure, add a new dimension, turning each pair into a living, ever-changing canvas.”

A pair of colorful sneakers in a box surrounded by an arrangement of vibrant artificial flowers in various colors

A colorful running shoe in a box surrounded by assorted vibrant flowers, including orange, yellow, and purple blooms

A person reviews colorful sneaker design sketches at a pink table, with two sample shoes and design materials, in a room with green shelving

Alex Proba of StudioPROBA

Proba began the design process by asking herself what emotion she wanted the shoes to spark. “I always begin with the feeling I want to evoke – joy, energy, and movement – and how that can live on something as personal and functional as a shoe,” she reflects. She mocked up patterns on paper and digitally, embracing the challenge of designing for a 3D object that moves. Hidden shapes and organic forms are tucked into curves and creases, revealing themselves as the sneaker moves to life. “Just like my larger works, the magic is in the details.”

A person sits at a pink desk with sneaker design sketches, color swatches, a pen, and two sneakers—one white with purple accents, one green—placed on the papers

Several printed sheets with colorful sneaker design patterns, color swatches, and two pens lay on a pink textured surface

A person holds a sneaker illustration while arranging colorful sneaker drawings on a wall display grid

The limited-edition collab spans three HOKA styles: the Speedgoat 6, Ora Primo, and Kawana Mid. A youth version of the Speedgoat 6 means even the littlest sneakerheads can join the fun. And Proba hopes they do. “I love that these shoes will collect dust, mud, and stories,” she says. “They’re made to be worn and changed by the world – like a painting that keeps evolving.”

A person opens a shoebox containing a pair of colorful sneakers, surrounded by similar boxes

A pair of colorful athletic shoes with mismatched laces, featuring orange, purple, teal, and blue accents on a chunky lavender sole

Youth Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

So whether you’re hiking a muddy trail or just power walking in the neighborhood, the sneakers are designed to move with you, with every scuff and speck of dirt becoming a part of your story. Who says art has to hang on a wall?

A pair of brightly colored athletic shoes with mismatched designs, viewed from above on a white background

Youth Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

Close-up of the heel of a multicolored HOKA running shoe with "PROBA" on the pull tab and a stylized logo above the speckled blue sole

Youth Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

Close-up of a colorful running shoe with a multicolored upper, speckled teal sole, orange accents, and coral pink laces. The brand name "HOKA" is visible on the side

Youth Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

A pair of multicolored athletic sneakers with orange soles, purple and pink laces, and a patterned upper, displayed on a white background

Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

Close-up of the heel of a HOKA running shoe with a colorful design, "PROBA" label, and visible Vibram sole branding

Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

Close-up of a colorful, patterned running shoe with purple laces, orange and red overlays, and white midsole, showing the word "SPEEDGOAT" on the tongue

Speedgoat 6 StudioPROBA

A pair of white athletic sneakers with chunky soles and orange accents; one shoe has multicolored laces, the other has plain white laces

Kawana Mid StudioPROBA

Close-up of the heel and side of a white Hoka running shoe with red-orange accents, textured sole, and "PROBA" and "HOKA" branding visible

Kawana Mid StudioPROBA

colorful laces on a white snaker

Kawana Mid StudioPROBA

A pair of colorful, low-top sneakers with multicolored panels, patterned laces, and thick, textured soles on a white background

Ora Primo StudioPROBA

Close-up of the heel and sole of a colorful, patterned sneaker with shades of orange, purple, blue, and yellow on a plain white background

Ora Primo StudioPROBA

Close-up of a multicolored sneaker with abstract patterns, black laces, a red tongue, and a speckled purple sole

Ora Primo StudioPROBA

Close-up of a colorful sneaker heel featuring a yellow pull tab with the word “PROBA” and a textured, multicolored sole

Ora Primo StudioPROBA

To hit the ground running – and in style – with the HOKA x StudioPROBA collaboration, head to hoka.com.

Photography courtesy of HOKA.

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Fußballliga der humanoiden Roboter by Ronny
Tuesday July 1st, 2025 at 9:06 AM

Das Kraftfuttermischwerk
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Für die Sportbegeisterten unter euch: China hat jetzt eine Liga in der humanoide Roboter gegeneinander antreten. Gespielt wird drei gegen drei und das hier ist ein Halbfinal. Dabei traten das Vulcan-Team der Tsinghua-Universität und das Blaze Light-Team der Beijing Information & Science Technology University an. Jetzt noch die Ultra-Kurven voll mit humanoiden Roboter und dann haben wir’s.


(Direktlink)

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