Comics... Such a great gateway to literacy. Plus they're just fun www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

See, it _can_ be done without Copilot.

“Moominmamma cooks a real magic potion following Grandmother’s infallible recipe”, by Tove Jansson, as used on the cover of 1989’s exhibition catalogue of Jansson’s work as shown at Finland’s Tampere Art Museum.

So farewell, Java Applets: "The entire java.applet package has been removed from JDK 26, which will release in March 2026." inside.java/2025/12/03/a...

this is one of the more thoughtful and balanced things i've read about LLMs in a while! it hits a lot of my feels about social dynamics and use within a team.

Day 6 of Advent of Compiler Optimisations! Divide by 512—just a shift, right? But the compiler adds extra instructions. Why? A subtle difference between what you asked and what you meant! xania.org/202512/06-di... youtu.be/7Rtk0qOX9zs #AoCO2025

A lovely intro into modern tech publishing. This sounds very similar to much of the work I was doing at Semantico, fifteen years ago! se-radio.net/2025/11/se-r...

Puffling Patrol!

movie: we can't trace their payload, it's behind two layers of base64! computer knowers: *groan* reality:

Some notable things in what's being called the "Trump peace plan" but which could not have been more clearly written in Moscow if it came with a 2 for 1 deal on tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet. 🧵

The basic problem with the temporary refugee status policy - especially one lasting up to 20 years - is it leads to very few removals (based on Denmark's experience) but does significantly worsen integration.

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu

Every ad now

When I heard this on the news this morning, my first thought was that somebody must be taking the piss. Apparently not. bbc.com/news/article...

it's probably not going to explode! but if it does, RIP Sheerness

Trump Threatens To Sue BBC Over Misleading Edit Of ‘The Vicar Of Dibley’ https://theonion.com/trump-threatens-to-sue-bbc-over-misleading-edit-of-the-vicar-of-dibley/

One of the reasons I've enjoyed working at Google is that such a high proportion of people to whom I have reported (and higher) know what the heck they are talking about. This is a large contrast to my previous roles.

Good morning 😊 Yes, Sir Clive hated that the Spectrum was popular because of the games and a C5 could never go this fast, but I had a lot of fun making this tribute to Sir Clive Sinclair ZX Spectrum 👍 Animation made in Blender, sountrack made in Studio one #zxspectrum #retrogaming #8bitgaming

Well that should wake you up

Crikey Spotify, Manchester is not "near me," I'm near Brighton!

"RetroSpectrum - Reloaded" Digital collage made in Photoshop based on the glorious games of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 😍 #zxspectrum #retrogaming #pixelart #8bitart

This was a tough but necessary decision - I posted my own notes on this here, from the perspective of a current PSF board member simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/27/...

Daylight savings in action

Well fuck me @theorblive.bsky.social were bloody amazing at Patterns. Again.

A wonderful alt-movie poster for 1979’s “Alien” by Laszlo Nagy.

It's lovely to see a concrete list like this. It helps others define what they need in their own circumstances.

While I agree in the main, you also need constitutionalists. A written constitution is no good if it's ignored by those charged with upholding it

Incredibly, some good news about government IT!

An interesting pre-print on how Google is migrating to Arm. I was tangentially involved with some of this work. arxiv.org/abs/2510.14928

Somehow I missed this last year. Porting the Fish shell to rust, how and why. fishshell.com/blog/rustport/

I have since worked with some people I consider to be real geniuses. What marks them out is an ability to grasp, immediately, the many facets of a problem and a gift for explaining it simply. /3

This is funny, but at the same time, sympathies to those at AWS having to actually fix this and get it up and running again

ULEZ means about 1,500 sq kilometres - the whole of Greater London - is covered by road emissions control. Stop and think about that for a second. It's incredible. Its impact on public health has been huge. Studies said it would take 200 YEARS to reach this emission level. Khan did it in five.

This 👇🏻

“…ah yes… fungus” here’s a Mushroom Fairy for Drawtober!

This would be such a massive improvement

You know what, it’s one of those days, have Cookie Monster kaiju again.

GIL sans?

One day the industry will recognize the drawbacks of AI agents and nondeterministic automation, and rediscover the UNIX philosophy of chaining together small purpose built tools in a low cost and predictable way, otherwise known as shell scripts.

A reminder that there's a massive #cartoon #comics fair at #BrightonOpenMarket in 10 days on Sat. 18 October! LOADS of creators including @streakofpith.bsky.social @zaraslattery.bsky.social @frasergeesin.bsky.social Sara Kenney, Danny Noble, Dan Locke, Paul Garner, Ilya & many more! #Brighton

Sometimes I think about how from 1935-1975ish, Bell Labs produced an insane amount of revolutionary science and technology, including 11 Nobel Prizes, the transistor, UNIX, C, the laser, the solar cell, information theory, etc. The secret? Provide scientists with ample, steady, no-strings funding.

Low, who regularly infuriated leading Nazis, was in the Gestapo’s Black Book, to be dealt with as a first priority when & if the UK was invaded. Tyrants hate mockery founded in truth. Low knew what was ahead if the worst came to the worst, & for awhile it looked as if it would. It didn’t stop him.

I've just listened to Chetan talking, and what a fabulous evening. So many great ideas about, fundamentally, doing less work! asyncjs.com/sandboxed-ja...

Happy 75th Birthday Peanuts

Marx jokes? In _my_ comic? It's more likely than you think!

Tory party’s long journey away from science, reason, responsibility, common sense and truth is complete

A fascinating story, as ever, but I still can't get over the description of Marx as a "messy bitch". 🤣

Fascinating stuff! This is my wheelhouse, I've worked on internal tooling for (very nearly) 16 years. GCP is great… it's just that the incredibly tight integration you get from our internal stack is missing.