Two phrases which should never exist together in any language are “period tracker” and “Peter Thiel”. jessica.substack.com/p/period-tra...

There is a comment on my blog which I’m not going to approve, which is a guy who had a comment but not a question which is just a long angry rant about Facebook, which is not what the post was about. This is exactly what it’s like working in policy.

Why pleasing? Selfishly, because I have been banging on about this for years. More significantly, because it is a foundation of the argument that the #OnlineSafetyAct doesn’t get over the threshold of ECHR compatibility.

Important new report from the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law’s Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy and Practice. Especially pleasing to see this in the section on the #OnlineSafetyAct. binghamcentre.biicl.org/documents/22...

Today I am having a wild party* with my £18 of Q3 book royalties *Greggs

20,000 views, which is 19,998 more than anyone has seen of the actual TCNs heatherburns.tech/2025/11/10/t...

Just the 12,000 hits on this one so far

New post from me, for UK folks only, on how you need to start preparing for Apple to switch off Advanced Data Protection and the end-to-end encryption of the data you store on it. Like I said, UK only. #SunlitUplands heatherburns.tech/2025/11/10/t...

@benwhitelaw.bsky.social The transcript of that Southport hearing with X is up - thank you for sending me down this rabbit hole southport-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/2025/11/Sout...

I’m gonna need a bigger blog news.sky.com/story/the-ri...

This reminds me to re-read "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth (the alternative history of a 1940s fascist Lindbergh presidency in which Father Coughlin figures prominently), as part of my winter retreat into fiction, because what even is fiction or non-fiction anymore

“The real challenge for society lies not just in their online worlds but in how little we have invested in their offline lives…Young people are much better at navigating online harm than we give them credit for. We know there are dangers and so do they.” observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

This is how fast Christian Nationalism is infecting tech policy: X's director of global government affairs told a Parliamentary committee this week that a violent video which inspired the Southport killer was actually a glorious miracle. (source: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home... nb adwall)

Also this video is weirdly American for a British politician to have created. “What are u gonna wear to class tomorrow?” - probably a school uniform, because we’re in the UK. “I’ll pick you up in the parking lot.” - no u won’t, Chad, because this is Birmingham and we call it a car park

Fascinating that you’ve tagged in violence against women charities when among the things that have been forced to age gate or shut down as a result of the #OnlineSafetyAct are reddit support groups for sexual assault survivors. Also… Brits don’t tend to say ‘parking lot’, who made this video?

The FBI has subpoenaed the domain registrar of archive.today, demanding information about the owner.

You'll never guess what's happening to the staff at the Leopards Eating Faces Foundation www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

With apologies to my wonderful German speaking friends - this is outstanding.

I have long had a working theory that given his maternal heritage, Donald Trump is in fact the most Scottish man on the planet, meaning he just wants to be the Big Man at the golf course clubhouse. My theory continues to gather evidence.

You really must take in the batshit response to the news coverage of the proposal to remove differential privacy from the US census, by the people who originated the plan. americarenewing.com/issues/wired...

Glasgow’s public transport is the most backwards and worst system in Europe, so let’s just add “the Chinese-made electric buses which my local bus service runs are remotely hackable” to that list. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

Is CC’s executive director called Demirzel

On the 75th anniversary of the #ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights provides a helpful overview of key cases that demonstrate how the Convention protects human rights

Last night I had a bad dream about that time a certain maliciously chaotic boss put me on a Skype call at 10 PM to *start* writing a Parliamentary committee enquiry submission which was due at 11:59 PM, in case you ever wondered why the entire UK digital rights sector could fit into one small room.

Guys that conference talk I gave in 2017 was meant to be *hypothetical* arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

US citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents children would be coming to get bus, lawyers say

And British.

DHS / ICE appears to have rolled out their new cell phone tracking platform in DC. I'm getting these every 5-10 minutes on my phone. Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, and Pam Bondi need to be jailed for life.

In a world full of clickbait and AI generated news, we are so lucky to have two local, independent, member-driven journalism collectives. Slow down. Read real news. Pay for journalism, not marketing. You get stories like this. www.glasgowbell.co.uk/thomas-hays-...

It finally happened. I put a research question to an LLM and asked it to list some academic papers on the topic. It provided me with a list of eight. I had a look. All eight were hallucinations. Either the journal didn't exist, or it did and the article was made up. Some even had made-up DOIs. Wow.

Last chance to turn it off. On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default. To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

All hail Betteridge's Law.

A superb spot from Graham: the official regulation of “nerd harder to keep children safe” couldn’t even nerd its own back-end systems on its own deadline.

All my personal friendships with Americans fell away long ago due to me being the rock of strength and them being the litany of neuroses, and it took years for me to connect that with the fact that they lived in metal boxes and averaged <2000 steps per day.

Now on Desktop: Customizable chat folders Keep healthy boundaries between friends & family or work & leisure. Filter 1-on-1 and group chats, put all of your unread messages one place, or make project-specific folders for related chats. Settings > Chats Or right-click any chat

ladies and gentlemen...we got him

Today's privacy labour (chapeau @robin.berjon.com) has been porting all my Apple Notes, via the Exporter app, to Standard Notes. I have had to do this because Apple will shortly be removing the ADP end-to-end encryption from Notes in the UK only, thanks to the IPA TCN. Sunlit uplands.

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

On #NationalCatDay, please enjoy my lovely assistant demonstrating The Writing Process.

@paulfscott.bsky.social sent you an email 🙂

NEW Why 'A House of Dynamite' is a good film about how those with power make decisions This unconventional nuclear thriller does something rare in movies By me Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/why-a-hous... Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/10/why-...

My students: But I *own* an NFT Me:

I shouldn't be surprised, given the US contagion, but the Christian misogynist bloc here in Scotland (which, yes, includes women) has decided to give a seat at the table to the religious order which - catch your breath here - ran the Magdalene laundries. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2557513...

I am telling you, they are going to come for web #a11y and its practitioners the way they went for DEI, because to them it’s one and the same. And it involves legal compliance too, and we know how SF bros feel about that.

File under "things I hated having to write": a gentle reminder for anyone doing academic research to check the privacy standards of your citations manager. heatherburns.tech/2025/10/27/f...