#ResistanceRoots Lynn Conway was born on this day in 1938 in Mount Vernon, N.Y. She was a computer scientist, electrical engineer and prominent transgender rights activist whose work at IBM and Xerox PARC fundamentally reshaped the architecture of modern computing and the semiconductor industry. /1

This guy? www.thecrimson.com/article/1991...

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

I cannot see the slightest justification for allowing anti-trans hate group ‘Sex matters’ to comment on this story. If you agree with me, a complaint to the BBC only takes a few moments. www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was “unanimous.” That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.

It's jingle bells today on the @qmuleecs.bsky.social @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. But they're warning bells, about scams (that can take advantage of the Christmas season). Also take Google's phishing quiz and see how many examples you can spot cs4fn.blog/advent/

‪The @WorldAthletics forced 4 vulnerable females to undergo genital‬ ‪mutilation surgery as a prerequisite to compete at the 2012 Olympic Games. ‪The surgery had zero to do with performance. www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/questions-re...

This is very concerning, and indeed had the ACM thought about it, a potential legal hazard. There are authorial rights that cannot be signed away, and authors could readily take action if the summary is embarrassing.

As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland, anyone who wants to bring terror to, or organise terror from, Australia can get lost. My thoughts are very much with the people impacted by the antisemitic Bondi attack, whatever their background. Neither Sydney nor its Jewish population deserve this.

Thinking about extricating yourself from Big Tech? A Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court, arrived at her home in The Hague and called out “Alexa”. “Alexa was dead. She wouldn’t talk to me.” ICC judges have been forcibly removed from most digital services, credit cards, and banks.

We’re delighted to announce two DECRA recipients at RMIT SCT: the fantastic Senuri Wijenayake and the fabulous Maggie Liu!

This may seem overstated but the right to repair community have discovered how endemic security risk is with “smart devices” ; they typically port much more data than ever will be be necessary to service providers. They are also often poorly protected. By default assume they’re a cyber risk.

For #TransAwarenessWeek - trans computer scientists have driven the frontiers of digital technology. If you're reading this on a mobile device, it almost certainly has an ARM chip, pioneered by Sophie Wilson, who I was lucky enough to know via Acorn. blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/celebrating-...

Watching senior MPs twist the intent of Baby Priya’s Bill into a culture war about abortion, I felt that familiar hollow ache, writes Katherine Berney. womensagenda.com.au/latest/the-c...

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

Dr Emma Briant, an expert on propaganda, sees a worrying pattern: “Pochin’s arguments reflect a public discourse where ‘dog whistles’ to the far right have done their job—they’ve made way for explicit racism to be voiced boldly in public.”

Precisely. Banning young people from social media just so ill-informed boomers can get over their made-up moral panic simply ends up harming the most vulnerable, for whom social media are a critical lifeline. 👇👇👇

Um. There’s a woman presenting this too.

CASE has also published today a useful explainer on the background to the case, in which O'Malley's action has resulted in suppression for the last 9 months of the entire LGBTQI+ special edition of the Journal of Irish Counsellors & Psychotherapists. www.the-case.eu/latest/slapp...

Council of Europe adopts landmark Recommendation on Equal Rights for Intersex Persons www.coe.int/en/web/sogi/...

Over the weekend, Deloitte's contentious report for the Australian Government was 'updated' minus the AI hallucinations it originally had in July. Government policy work, like law, is too important to permit AI use without the very strictest conditions. www.theage.com.au/business/wor...

An 🇦🇺 report evaluating the Cass Review has recommended that it should not be used as a guide of any kind in regards to the care of young trans people. The new report was one of a series published in a special edition of The Medical Journal of 🇦🇺 www.mja.com.au/journal/2025...

It seems the social media industry, which profits significantly from misinformation, is deliberately misrepresenting the problem. Despite Digi's claims, many (often most) responses to misinformation disagree with it. All engagement increases the chances of hate material being seen by others.

Disturbingly we now have a further report of Optus triple zero calls not getting through in NSW; when will this shambles end?

Delighted to present on digital humanities and social media preservation at #TPDL2025 at the University of Tampere.

The @theguardian.com editors need to be more on top of things: now is not the time for the following headline: www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

You either a) believe political violence is bad because it makes civil society impossible for all b) believe violence is bad only if it affects your tribe, but when it does it offers an opportunity to go after the other tribe

The economic dependence of social media on hate speech and pejorative posts has to be broken or democracy is in serious trouble.

Kobi Leins notes that the book reports that removing explicit material from the training data led to a drop in performance; that this revealed ethical and bias problems with the data chosen for training @karenhao.bsky.social #EmpireofAI

Now @karenhao.bsky.social is in conversation with Kobi Leins ; she starts on the links between AI empires and methods of colonialism.

Our @lisagiven.bsky.social is introducing @karenhao.bsky.social at Storey Hall ; on the theme of the Empire of AI.

They’re excluded from Government support that's available for other museums, art galleries and theatres. The Association of Science and Discovery Centres is calling on the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to safeguard these vital institutions for the next generation… 2/3

For over 25 years, science and discovery centres have been at the heart of inspiring millions of people to explore, question, and be part of UK science and technology. But they're seriously under threat… 1/3

Information and Misinformation by Andrew Perfors: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a2555670

Keir Starmer just appointed Tim Allan, a board member of the anti trans hate group, Sex Matters, to be his new communications director.

Looking forward to the new Florence and the Machine album… due out 31st October it seems!

What a wild thing to read. "If such a prompt injection is included in a submission and it consequently results in a positive LLM-generated review, we consider this a form of collusion...that both the paper authors and the reviewer would be held accountable for, blog.iclr.cc/2025/08/26/p...

No surprises here but at least people are speaking. A whole load of stuff follows once the dam breaks & the EHRC Guidance for trans exclusion is announced amid what is already de facto a range of bans of trans people from everyday life. Its about womens' bodies. www.thepinknews.com/2025/08/25/t...

Women whistleblowers in Australia risk careers and wellbeing to expose wrongdoing, yet face harassment, retaliation, and weak protections. womensagenda.com.au/latest/soapb...

A new report from TransActual shows that trans and cisgender people face job loss, violence, vigilantism and wholesale exclusion following the Supreme Court Ruling and EHRC guidance. Read the report at: tinyurl.com/trans-segreg... #Trans #Transgender #Nonbinary #EqualityAct #EHRC #TransRights

In which disabled people don't deserve accessible housing because the cost/benefit analysis is bad for productivity. #AusPol www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

John Boyne is playing the victim having said trans peoples rights are second class ; his position is in direct contravention of the UNCHR. Treating a group as an unter mensch is not something anyone should get away with www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Nearly two weeks ago I came down with a case of RSV. I lost the ability to concentrate, read anything of length, recall and a host of other cognitive abilities. If you have a possible cold, please test for RSV and flu as well as COVID. RSV is at least for some really harsh: look after others.

Chris Kohler's take on Australian corporations' poor sincerity about addressing customer data security is almost painfully accurate: www.youtube.com/shorts/bBKdR...

Toxic framing is a misinformation technique that intentionally limits an argument to an unrepresentative scenario that makes reasonable views appear unreasonable. It can also attempt to make hatred seem reasonable. A lawyer uses it here to claim trans-women are voyeurs www.bbc.com/news/article...

Mental health conditions, like suicides & overdoses, are the leading underlying causes of maternal deaths in the US. Antidepressants save women's lives—& they're safe. So why is RFKJr's FDA hell-bent on undermining their use among pregnant & postpartum moms? www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

A new study of heterosexual couples in Australia and Germany reveals the economic costs to women when their partners work long hours, writes Lyndall Strazdins, Liana Leach, and Tinh Doan, from Australian National University. womensagenda.com.au/latest/new-s...

In the shadow of the Hiroshima blast: the secret romance that bloomed in defiance of the white Australia policy

While the published version of Embodied Experiences of Trans Pregnancy is currently behind a paywall, are a FREE versions available from the University of Glasgow's Enlighten repository, and on my own website.