The malwarebytes Google opting-your-emails-into-ai-training thing is not true. The post is based on one bad tweet. I know anti-tech lamenting is a Bluesky core principle, but please use the same judgement you would for any other clickbait. www.theverge.com/news/826902/...

I wrote a long feature for @prospectmagazine.co.uk earlier this autumn about how the stats we rely on for our national debate are falling apart, and that basically no-one is doing anything much to address it. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/busine...

ONS is so bad. (This is about specifically British nationals.) www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

I had high hopes for this lot, I really did. But this is nasty and vicious and cruel, and has no place in any nation that calls itself civilised.

Maybe also why ‘I don’t watch mainstream media’ is so reliably correlated with going off the deep end

Most predictions don’t come true. So you can have a perfectly viable career writing articles about why x won’t happen. Don’t, though.

The golden birches of Glen Feshie, wider view of the previous post of the same scene. Loved the way the tilted tree was seemingly basking in the sunlight, the breeze shimmering the leaves like golden coins #Scotland #GlenFeshie #Cairngorms #Rothiemurchus www.damianshields.com

Nobody wants to admit that Swatch Internet Time would fix all their problems

I am absolutely determined not to become a language peever as I age. I feel the pull, but I will not, I will not

Now this is a story all about how My life got flipped, turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the king of kings; look on my works, ye mighty, and despair

Re AWS, just goes to show why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Everyone knows the ideal situation is multiple baskets of eggs.

The penalties for dangerous driving should be largely unrelated to whether you got unlucky while doing so, which means we should have many many many more driving bans and slightly fewer jail sentences

I hope as we move past the first wave of AI criticism ("it doesn't work, all hype") we get a new wave of AI criticism rooted in the acknowledgement that, yes, these systems are very powerful & quite useful and focusing a deep exploration of when AI uses are uplifting and when they are detrimental.

This is wonderful

Now we’ve found a cure for the em-dash virus, dark mode mania is next

I love the overnight shift from AI is no good to AI is too good

Sonnet 4.5 in Claude Code is *so fast*

@lizlutgendorff.bsky.social have you read the Steerswoman books? I am loving them and they seem very much in your wheelhouse

After reading it, this does seem like a big deal Industry experts outlined important, real-world, hard tasks for AI to do. Other experts were asked to do the tasks themselves (avg time: 7 hours) & yet others graded human & AI output Models approached parity with humans & AI is getting better fast.

How the government's new digital ID will work… and why I’ve changed my mind on ID cards (FREE TO READ!) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/how-the-uk...

Very excited for this

Fairness sensitivity is wild. Some people are fine if something’s a bit unfair but works out ok for everyone. Others find the exact same thing violently, pathologically, obsessively upsetting. These are all normal people.

There's a real paucity of policy discussion on the left about the problems we're going to face if AI does in fact carry on getting better.

My boss would be mad at me if I ran a story with the headline "that 16 billion password breach story is a pile of bullshit" so this will have to suffice cyberscoop.com/colossal-dat...

Hopefully things change here, as my big worry about AI talk on this site is that people are being misled about the capabilities of AI by influencers who are telling them what they want to hear. AI is not going away, it will impact all of our futures, and it needs more voices shaping its direction.

I mean, that’s why I watched it

the existence of Mini Eggs implies the existence of "eggs"

I feel like they’re gonna default on the libs

Seeing the "shingles vaccine protects from dementia" claim going around again. Unfortunately the main study it's based on is just not convincing. @epiellie.bsky.social has written a great post about why:

Can Labour not, like, hire a PR firm or something

Stupid trees and their stupid pollen. Elsa had the right idea

If you like the #superbowl you should try the #hyperbole. It's a million times better.

@davidhobby.bsky.social I really liked your book! I wrote a glowing review: awest.uk/2024-books-t...

So glad I have the BBC News app to keep me up to date on the Christmas murder

This fog is because 2025 is going to be a big year and needs more time to load

Enjoyed this. Tempting to replace ‘madness’ with ‘complete moral vacuum’ or indeed ‘borderline psychopathy’

A lot of online businesses fail in their first year but they also don’t put Christmas delivery deadlines on their websites so swings and roundabouts

It hurts my head that so many people's take away from Twitter was that we need another free speech platform where the left has the same level of free speech as far-right hate accounts did on Twitter, and not that those accounts should simply not be allowed on any serious platform.

50% of cybersecurity is endlessly explaining that consumer VPNs don’t address any real cybersecurity issues. They are basically only useful for bypassing geofences and making money telling people they need to buy a VPN

Man-in-the-middle attacks on Public WiFi networks haven't been a realistic threat in a decade. Almost all websites use encryption by default, and anything of value uses HSTS to prevent attackers from downgrading / disabling encryption. It's a non issue.

Drone panic and chemtrail panic are crossing streams, and it's giving us hay fever.

It’s worse than that: I hear there are these places called ‘art schools’ where people ingest your work and then produce their own stuff which *competes with you*. Huge, irreversible harm.

Look up. #Superman is only in theaters July 11.

The Aurora in May were picturesque, but in space they were making a lot of work for satellite operators. The solar activity causes the atmosphere to balloon out, increasing drag, changing orbits. A lot of satellites had to maneuver to avoid collisions. https://t.co/YSRxPyhR59 https://t.co/C58g4ubk62

every site needs a version of somethingawful's "we can just ban you" policy to use against bad actors who make a game of ruining the site while making sure to always stay 1% shy of violating the rules as-written

A List of Things People Blamed on the Tango 🧵

bashar al-assad won't read your posts celebrating his downfall, but all your friends who have deployed chemical weapons against children might. watch what you say and remember, be best.

It’s amazing how much of left wing thought around foreign policy in the West is basically just: “Surrender to fascist Russia, you bloodthirsty warmongers”