www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This is shoddy reporting by the BBC, and stuff like this will massively contribute to the problematic hype around LLMs and AI. Makes it seem like they just said "Hey ChatGPT, design me a vaccine".

Little known fact - he also moonlighted as a @bobgooday.bsky.social impersonator.

I for one will continue to use single sex spaces, and if any so called 'defender of women and girls' tries to stop me from using the toilet, I will gladly piss on their shoes 😤

at least you can be as trans as you want on a hovercraft

This is the problem. A pitch to voters "turning to Greens and Reform". You have to actually choose between the voters who want what they perceive as a socially liberal socialist environmentalist party and the ones who want fascism. You can't appeal to both, and now they all hate you.

Deepfakes are everywhere, but digital forensics investigators are fighting back. Learn more: https://scim.ag/42dMPBg

I'd forgotten how terribly laid out Leeds station is. If you have a platform 0A, something has gone terribly wrong

This year’s “Woman you should know about” for International Women’s Day is Josephine Baker. Dancer, singer, actress, civil rights activist, pilot and recipient of France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour. 🧵 1/22

Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, once asked me if I had ever seen anyone die. When I responded "No", he said "Well, it's only a matter of time" and walked away.

Incredible. I cannot stop watching this!

these memes are fresh

A letter to Martin Rhodes, my MP, regarding the recently-announced budget cuts to astronomy and other curiosity-driven science in the UK. (Full text in on my blog, apologies that I couldn't fit it all in alt text: daniel-williams.co.uk/2026/02/10/l...)

Incredible for a BBC article to just drop this nickname in there with absolutely zero context on who he is (other than "shark expert") and why he has that nickname. No notes.

Are you a data scientist who wants to help improve dog welfare? Come and join my team! R or Python, fully remote within the UK, £37k, closes 29th January. Please reskeet! careers.dogstrust.org.uk/en/postings/...

Are you a data scientist who wants to help improve dog welfare? Come and join my team! R or Python, fully remote within the UK, £37k, closes 29th January. Please reskeet! careers.dogstrust.org.uk/en/postings/...

Additional escalation in my "what's the maddest thing I can transport by cargo bike?" This is a track saw in the panniers plus 2.4m of tracks. Additionally, more bikes should have a rudder to aid steering :D

Happy Feast of the Ass day to all who celebrate

We've been through this. There is no shame in easy mode. There is no shame in reading/watching tutorials. Some people have 80hrs/wk to pump into gaming. The rest of us have families & jobs. A built in "Fuck, how do I get past this so I can start having fun again?" button? Sure. Let people have fun.

calling a military tech company Anduril: honestly, solid name, vibes of Aragorn's sword positive calling a data company Palantir: sinister, but at least in a way that makes sense calling your home security company *Sauron*, a cartoonishly evil villain famously undone by poor threat monitoring: ???

Something worth noting: Rockstar is leaning HEAVILY on the excuse that the unionising employees were "leaking private company information" They want people to assume this means game info or assets. But I will bet you CASH MONEY this translates to: 'they were comparing salaries and work contracts"

If this happened at a steel plant there would be talk of government bail out to secure jobs

Incredible thermal inversion over Edinburgh from the pentlands this morning. Taken from Carnethy hill looking north-east, you can see Turnhouse, Castlelaw, Allermuir and Caerketton hills. What you can't see is any of the city of Edinburgh! @threadinburgh.scot @secretedinburgh.bsky.social

since we're talking about The Other Place, one now pointless gripe I still have is that actually it could have remained a fair bit more pleasant and usable and useful if more people just used the non-algorithmic timeline and I'll never understand why they didn't just do it

Just because an LLM can produce a report with various figures & charts doesn't mean it is good at statistics. Because good statistics is not about producing code. It's about deep knowledge of study design & conduct. In my opinion, 95% of all data science problems come from poor questions & design.

Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI. www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

New blog: we *think* the UK government's crucial Warm Homes Plan will launch next month. So what does it need to do to be a success? I've set out 7 tests for the Warm Homes Plan here - from making electricity cheaper to making local delivery work. www.nesta.org.uk/blog/seven-t...

Despite easily being the most British fighting vehicle ever developed, the mock-Tudor AT-AT programme was sadly cancelled due to budgetary concerns

"but we can't support trans rights, it's unpopular!" just a reminder that US approval for marriage between black and white people at the start of the civil rights movement was 4%, reaching a whopping 20% by the end of the movement it's 95% now you don't wait for popularity for a rights movement

this is called "doing a streeting" which is to position yourself firmly on the wrong side of an issue for no reason and to no one's benefit

Ooof, chilly start to the day...

Oh cool, Windows 11 has tabbed file browsing. That feature that's been in most Linux distributions for 15+ years! Well, better late than never!

one in a billion means statistically it should happen roughly once per lunar cycle in the UK, about 13 times in a calendar year

Found in the Highlands and presented without comment

still possible that Mr Blobby bursts through the window and out onto the balcony overlooking St Peter's Square

the fundamental disconnect between the manosphere and reality is that they are incapable of understanding that this is - according to every woman I’ve ever met - the sexiest thing a man has ever done

happy beltane and international workers day my celts and comrades

My standard rule is that before anyone is allowed to talk shit about a university's economic role, they have to tell me how many people they think it employs. They're normally wrong by a factor of ten. This should also be the first question to any MP offering thoughts on the topic.

Cartoon with caption by my buddy @jackhauen.bsky.social

As the rightwing media machine ramps up the lie that the Spanish Blackout was caused by attempts to mitigate climate-change, it seems that, in fact, it was CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE, in ways we can, presumably, look forward to more of in future.

Glad to see that the EHCR has issued clear guidelines on going into a pub toilet cubicle with a fox and a chicken and a bag of grain.

What they call pedants (people who can’t resist correcting you’re spelling and grammer) in five different countries…. 5. Comma fucker (Finland) 4. Little dot shitter (Switzerland) 3. Whittler of woodchips (Norway) 2. Counter of peas (Germany) 1. Sodomizer of flies (France)

One thing you can guarantee as the new antitrans consensus takes hold across the UK is that there will be absolutely no decline in the prevalence of women being sexually assaulted, and absolutely no increase in the successful prosecution of such assaults.

I am begging anyone with the ability to commission articles in my industry: let trans people write about what is happening to us right now.

Against all odds, a single daffodil growing high in the Pentland hills, overlooking Edinburgh.

Medieval peasant hearing of the baroness’ successful delivery of a male heir: