Happy “When is Bin Day” Day to all who celebrate.

Appreciate this piece from Marcus but the piece that’s missing from this essay is the fact that Kenyans and Indians are the primary content moderators or “clean up crew” for the commercially available AI data sets. So yes, he’s right to be upset at the implication but the next step is asking “why?”

Die Hard with a Vengeance is also a Christmas movie. Yes, it’s set in summer, but it has endless Christmas references, jokes, Characters humming carols etc.

Dear Ars Technica, I wish to draw to your attention the error in the image for this article.That’s no moon.

Wish I had an interesting anecdote for this. My own career path is just so cliched, you’re seen it a thousand times. (lecturing in North African history at a Tanzanian University/road safety charity in Huddersfield/privacy NGO/civil service).

A tour-de-force on the history of the lindy hop, written with an infectious joy that appeals even to someone like me who can barely manage the Hokey Cokey.

This is good news! The weapon we have against the AIs conquering the world isn’t military resistance, or that humans are capable of love: it’s cat memes. And if there’s anything the human race is good at, it’s producing inane nonsense on social media. The world is safe.

I originally included a footnote on this very issue in my PhD on the political history of Kilimanjaro. However, I followed the advice of a friend and removed it. I have regretted it ever since.

I don’t know what to worry more about: A) the subeditor who decided that “Pharoh’s anus” would make it click bait; or B) the algorithm that decided I was a Pharoh’s anus kind of guy.

Today in anonymisation is hard: bsky.app/profile/waff...

Was a picture of a larger weevil also submitted to the contest; did they choose the lesser of two weevils?

Update: no.

Will I be able to understand MacOS 26 if I’ve not seen MacOS16 to 25?

Clever people of BlueSky, help me out: a) Putnam’s ant on a beach drawing a caricature of Winston Churchill is disturbingly similar to an AI Chatbot, but why isn’t it? And: b) does that mean I’m a brain in a vat or not?

My daughter ended up in the ICU after one of the rare complications to chickenpox. While she made a full recovery, I’m delighted that no other kid has to go through that. Brilliant news that the vaccination will be offered on the NHS!

Great stuff. I know that these are in no way have personalities, but I do find it amusing how often AI comes across as just being really lazy. For LLMs, it’s always Friday afternoon, with a hangover, in a job they hate.

Hehe President POO-tihn. Yes, I have been spending the a lot of time with my 5-year olds this summer holiday, why do you ask?

Venn diagram

Not now, giant doomsday herring. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“The Boss” (whoever they are) is a a scary villain. Anita is pregnant to the Head of HR, who she started a relationship with when potentially in a vulnerable state after finding out about The Doctor and Rogue. This raises serious questions about the HR policies of this mysterious “Boss” character.

Or “pen name”, which is almost a name.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, yes it will survive.

The head of Teleperformance SE says that Indian accents are “difficult to understand”. www.dailymotion.com/video/x7sr3t

If you’re a fan of superheroes randomly getting new powers halfway through a movie: watch out for the scene in Captain America: BNW where Cap inexplicably gains the power to negotiate plea deals.

A level of soft power that Britain has had for a long time: how many African independence leaders studied in Britain? Nyerere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah.. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Through necessity at work, been dealing with a travel agent all week; dear God, trying to explain what you want with words is so much harder than a well-designed website. Of course, if anything goes wrong, I’ll be glad to have someone at the end of the phone. But I want a human for that.

This story on the impact of quantum computing on cryptography reads like Good News to me: a future problem was spotted; clever people came up with a solution in good time (except for maybe a handful of edge-cases). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As we see once-unstoppable franchises fizzle out, Bond was truly remarkable run of form. I don’t see that continuing under Amazon, to be honest. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/fe...

It’s unprecedented because so much of it MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE.

The world might be in a deeply pessimistic place, but there are people trying to make it better. How awesome would a norovirus vaccine be?

I know things aren't great now, but wait until it's done by AI... www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

There’s a parallel universe when AI didn’t become big when it did, and so Meta was stuck talking about the metaverse. They’d be in serious trouble.

On the plus side, the avatars now have legs! On the down side, I really wish they didn't.

It’s a little on-the-beak.

It is always said that you can't put a price on love, yet that is exactly what happens when people want to marry someone not born in the UK. This #ValentinesDay we are calling on this government to scrap the Minimum Income Requirement and let people be with their loved ones.

A BBC news story is a clearly structured piece of writing; it will have a clarity, and won't contain any tricky things like irony or insinuation. So if an AI has trouble summarising a BBC news report, it's not going to be able to manage anything else.

What gets me is how pointless this whole thing is. Best case scenario: the end result would be a similar number to now with government-issued ID (passports and driving licenses at the moment). Those without access to ID at the moment will be the people who have difficulty getting an ID card.

Lord, we see what you’ve done for dinosaurs and we are ready to receive.

They have top men working on it right now.

I don’t think Gordon Brown gets enough credit for this political master stroke: he was famous for his Golden Rule (of not borrowing for day-to-day spending over the economic cycle). But when the financial crisis hit, how to justify that apparently flying out the window? 1

Fascinating article on accountancy - wait! It really is! - and how it’s alleged “objectivity” played out in nationalisations in Tanzania, Chile. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

It's also based on the idea that the only way that people contribute to this country is through earning a high salary. A brutal view of the world.

Politicizing foreign intelligence is what ended us with the invasion of Iraq. This does not bode well.

Meanwhile, I’m saddened by the death of Aga Khan, who I know little about except from the high-quality hospitals and schools he built. Musk has never appreciated the power (soft and otherwise) of philanthropy.

At last, a Marvel villain able to throw a copper kettle over a pub.

And anyone who thinks setting up surveillance, data and ID systems for Starmer is a good idea, remember you might be setting them up for Farage.

A warning for digital government and DPI around the world: so much can be destroyed in a matter of days, with no democratic oversight.

How he won three elections is now a mystery.

If you wanted no leaks you should have gone into Settings -> Security -> Configure privacy & security -> Privacy options -> Other -> Configure -> Media interface and clicked “Disallow.” The Leak setting is on by default but we understand your privacy is important so we’ve made it easy to opt out

Sam Altman’s next job could be in cybersecurity