A wide-ranging interview with Cory Doctorow on lessons from science fiction, Big Tech’s comeuppance, surveillance capitalism, smart contracts, dApps, and more (Christopher Byrd/New Yorker)

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:
Quentin Tarantino and Miramax settle their copyright infringement lawsuit over Pulp Fiction NFTs and say they may collaborate on more NFTs  —  Quentin Tarantino and Miramax have settled their copyright infringement lawsuit over the “Pulp Fiction” NFT project.

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Amazon Fire TV Cube (2022) review: fast, hands-free voice controls, nice design, and great live TV integration, but so many ads, slow ports, and mediocre remote  —  The fastest Fire TV yet offers extensive hands-free voice controls that you can’t get from any other streaming player, but it still puts too many ads in your face

New York Times:
An investigation, based on ~160K documents from Roskomnadzor, details Russia’s vast surveillance and censorship apparatus, which helps Putin maintain his regime  —  Four days into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus was already hard at work.

Stephen Witt / New Yorker:
A deep dive into the race to develop a quantum computer, which could help address climate change and food scarcity, break current encryption protocols, and more  —  Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet.  Will the U.S. or China get there first?

Michelle Toh / CNN:
The UK government asks its departments to stop installing Chinese surveillance cameras at sensitive sites, after calls to ban devices from Hikvision and Dahua  —  Hong Kong CNN Business —  Hikvision, a leading Chinese surveillance company, has denied suggestions that it poses a threat …

New York Times:
China is using phone trackers and other tools to track protestors, the first time mass surveillance has been directed at middle-class people in affluent cities  —  After a weekend of protests, the authorities in China are using the country’s all-seeing surveillance apparatus to find those bold enough to defy them.