What strikes me about the Noah-Smith-cant-follow-signs story isn't that he a) can't follow signs, b) draws broad generalisations from not being able to follow signs, but that c) he only draws attention to the colour of one person's skin in a quite particular way onemileatatime.com/news/economi...

"genAI-created ads...increasing click-through rates by up to 19%...genAI-modified ads show no significant improvement over human-created benchmarks" but "disclosing AI involvement in ad generation significantly reduces advertising effectiveness by up to 31.5%" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A must read, particularly for anyone in politics. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no...

"The company mistakenly included documents indicating it had been transacting with entities based overseas, sources said. Details were written in white text on a white background but were spotted by staff at the regulator" www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I do hope this ain't a hammer/nail scenario www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

$1bn? The BBC should respond by offering Trump a place on one of their reality shows Perhaps Comedians Driving Dangerous Roads? Or would Traitors be more appropriate?

The dog that wants to live on the beach 4evah

I swear, someone *always* resigns when I go on holiday:

"DWP deploys algorithm for UC journals to detect ‘risk of harm’ in two million monthly messages" www.publictechnology.net/2025/11/03/s... HT Digital Welfare State newsletter > www.abdconsultancy.co.uk/digital-welf...

inspired by this, I have done a free extract of this section of the book here. it is about understanding that *with all its problems* the BBC is as important for our intellectual health as the NHS is for our physical health: naomialderman.substack.com/p/the-bbc-an...

BBC-related earworm www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsE5...

Alexei Sayle's Stuff (9th November 1989). The latest teenage craze is a rather unexpected one. And Pete Murray has a complaint from 1960.

"Trump to deport boss of Starmer-linked charity [that is involved in the online safety/free speech fights]" www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025...

Two articles that articulate the dehumanising reality and the brilliantly human possibilities of AI (and other tech) and the importance of where we direct and attention and energy. Guardian piece on medical AI and below in 🧵and great interview with the relational tech project in the US.

Every time a digital team says "personalised services are extremely rare in government" I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices of teachers, nurses, social workers, &c suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

Just shameful.

46% wrong?!?!?!?? They could have just flipped a coin....

Inevitable and there'll be more of this to come in many other areas of public services and from organisations with a range of different values/goals www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

An interesting point at the Data and AI CSO Network this week was the distinction between "digital inclusion by getting everyone to adopt digital" and "digital inclusion by providing non-digital alternatives". The first is impossible, the second shows the limits of the digitalness of digital ID.

Josh Simons, the junior minister responsible for digital ID (and former Labour Together director) has promised govt will embark on “the largest ever digital inclusion programme ever delivered in this country" to deliver digital ID. www.publictechnology.net/2025/11/05/s...

The language in here is really confusing & convoluted Conceptually I think of UK as launching a govt ID verification service with mandatory checks on ID/right to work when starting a job, both physical & smartphone ("digital") alternatives will be available www.publictechnology.net/2025/11/05/s...

*unwriteable swear words* electrek.co/2025/11/06/e...

Our Immigration and Data Security teams worked together this week to understand how immigration-linked data grabs and shoddy facial recognition apps are laying the groundwork for a surveillance state. unbreaking.org/blog/this-we...

I hope this works out - and undoes some of the excessive centralisation in UK govt But "first ever Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) in UK government"? _raises eyebrow quizzically_ ai.justice.gov.uk/blog/announc...

In 2013 MHCLG Local Digital funded a discovery on "Exploring Automated Health and Social Care Assessments" The show and tell is linked from the project page - www.localdigital.gov.uk/funded-proje... - but not accessible at the mo' Does anyone know who worked on it/controls access/have a copy?

❤️ wewinganycar.com

The battle over pay-per-mile road tax could destroy Keir Starmer's government – here's how Labour can avoid disaster (FREE TO READ!) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/pay-per-mi...

On behalf of everyone in UK trying to do useful tech/digital/AI/data stuff that is confidently used by more people than those who'll press any button marked convenience can UK govt be rlly rlly clear that any pay-per-mile scheme for cars will never collect/use/link data for any other purpose? Ta

This is "fun" www.schneier.com/blog/archive...

a progressive case for Anglo-futurism that casually includes the far-right Curtis Yarvin as an example of a person putting forward proposals that aren't "irreducibly right-wing" www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...

The battles between AI agent providers* and other service providers** are going to be so much fun over the next few years/decades www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/bul... * who might also provide other services ** who might also provide AI agents

More than mildly baffling article by The Economist here which, apart from at the very end, fails to recognise that the people who carry out rip-offs have access to the same tools as consumers www.economist.com/finance-and-...

So excited, I have to share some work of ours @connectedbydata.org (well, mostly @timdavies.org.uk's) that has just gone live. We've developed a "Workshop in a Box" for teachers to use to get student feedback into the AI in Education Summit early next year. connectedbydata.org/ai-in-educa...

Good share from the BBC's design team on AI content labelling patterns - something that's going to become increasingly important on public services and sites. Very interested in how GOV.UK might already be going similar research and testing? www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

I’m on the lookout for a new contract (preferably inside). I’ve got over a decade of experience working in the public sector, mostly in agile delivery management. Two weeks notice. Not got DMs here but Signal is zuz.1337, or LinkedIn is good. Thx :)

I made the "necessary choice" to have a couple of crumpets for breakfast today

*sets calendar reminder for 1-2 months away to look for research on whether non-xAI LLM products look up stuff on grokipedia and/or whether grokipedia stuff starts to go into training data* *places small bet that this'll mostly poison human minds, not machines* www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This New Yorker documentary about the 1988 UK government ban on broadcasting the voices of Sinn Féin and I.R.A. leaders is pretty good but they show *that clip from The Day Today with no explanation and no indicator that it is satire. www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...

I know LLMs ain't conscious - for a useful meaning of the word 'conscious' - but this weird thing where people design "threatening prompts" is really weird

Talking with friends with relative with cognitive disabilities who lives independently Their relative needs a smartphone, cos modern life increasingly expects it Every time friends see them they take phone, look for crypto/gambling apps, transfer money out/close accts, block apps Repeat 4evah

Spoke to the BBC about the drivers of deprivation and the impact on families. There's a clear link between living in hardship & feeling socially/politically disconnected. To make meaningful progress, communities must be involved in decisions affecting their lives. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It's sometimes hard to remember that public services can be delivered with pride and self confidence

I know that groups of soldiers have gamified wars for centuries, but doing it on a national scale with data collection/storage/analysis, links to online stores for prizes, &c &c &c just makes me want to go ugh ugh ugh www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Alt: Train derailed in Cumbria, Southern England cut off from civilization

"Due to planned maintenance your train is replaced a 2 hour bus jouney" <--- just when I thought Halloween was over...

That moment when both I and my niece's friend realise he works in a kinda obscure bit of the public sector run by a friend

Talking with friends with relative with cognitive disabilities who lives independently Their relative needs a smartphone, cos modern life increasingly expects it Every time friends see them they take phone, look for crypto/gambling apps, transfer money out/close accts, block apps Repeat 4evah

Our chaos dog who treats everything as a toy to play with, chew and destroy let her mates at doggie day care dress her up in tinsel and deelyboppers