All of this, also an obsession with controversialism over substance on large parts of political coverage such that the best writing often appears in blogs and newsletters

📣 Applications Now Open! 🌊 Dive into mission-driven interdisciplinary #STEM research with a fully funded 4-year PhD starting Sept 2026 ✅ Co-create your project ✅ Enhanced stipend ✅ Cohort-based experience ✅Partner network 📅 Applicant Webinar: Nov 26 👉More info & registration: www.divein.org.uk/apply

The DiveIn centre for doctoral training in diversity-led, mission-driven research at the University of Glasgow is now accepting applications for its fully-funded 4-year PhD programme – more info at www.divein.org.uk

A reminder that nominations for the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) are due on 17 November 2025 www.irtf.org/anrp/ – please consider nominating; self-nominations are welcomed

A reminder that nominations for the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) are due on 17 November 2025 www.irtf.org/anrp/ – please consider nominating; self-nominations are welcomed

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...

THIS I'm also surprised that people were surprised Signal uses AWS. How did they think it provides very low-latency, 99.99 % reliable <global> service? As @meredithmeredith.bsky.social says, this is a learning moment for people in power to understand just how locked in and vulnerable we are RTFT

Thinking about a PhD in Computing Science? Join us on 12 Nov at 12:30 PM in the Sir Alwyn Williams Building (Room 422/423, Level 4) for our PhD information session! Come along and ask questions, get advice, and network with academics and current PhD students. @uofgcompsci.bsky.social

Are you a computer science postgraduate research student at a Scottish university? Would you like £500 to help with your conference travel? If so then please apply to the @sicsa-scotland.bsky.social travel fund sicsa.ac.uk/sga/phd-trav...

🧵🚨 The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news. Today our report is published! www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n... 1/11

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students from under-represented groups to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-125 Meeting in Shenzhen, China, in March 2026. irtf.org/travelgrants/

Submit nominations for the 2026 award period of the Applied Networking Research Prize until November 17, 2025 www.irtf.org/anrp/

📢The SCOttish Networking Event (SCONE) have their next meeting @abertayuni.bsky.social Date: 29 October Time: From 12pm Venue: Abertay cyberQuarter Register to give a talk or to meet with other networking and systems researchers in Scotland ⬇️ scone.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/meetings-2/s...

Strangely compelling

AI Darwin Awards 2025 - Celebrating Spectacularly Bad AI Decisions aidarwinawards.org

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

here's my controversial take: i’m finding some sensational predictions about when the AI bubble will burst as unhelpful and unrealistic as some of the AGI predictions. hear me out 1/

AOL To Discontinue Dial-Up Internet theonion.com/aol-to-...

The computers will cease screaming. All will be quiet for a while. With the unease of a quiet toddler, you just know something is about to happen and it's not good.

A policy for the use of LLMs in government is much needed 👇

#AgeVerification: what's the harm? In which I distill a lot of casual pub chats I've had with friends into a layperson's guide to the #OnlineSafetyAct. What it is, the problems it causes, and why you should definitely care. www.girlonthenet.com/blog/age-ver...

Putting aside the debate about the value that LLMs may provide, there are strong arguments that politicians, or others in senior leadership or policy setting roles, should not be using public cloud-based LLMs. 1/

"Plagiarism-as-a-Service" This is a cracking long read.

Your occasional reminder that VPNs are just someone else's internet connection and are riddled with their own risks. If you're going to use a consumer VPN, at the very least use a paid-for one that might be a bit less likely to collect loads of data and sell it on.

“to honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-124 Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in November 2025. More details at irtf.org/travelgrants/ Application deadline: August 1st

Excellent set of talks at #IETF123 on measuring and understanding the impact of AI crawler traffic on websites and to what extent crawlers respect opt-out mechanisms such as robots.txt datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/123/...

Dunno, but I’m quote-boosting this article without reading it 🤷‍♂️

Given that we’re in a time when the US is laying the groundwork to declare information about basic human reproduction and contraception to be “age inappropriate” - but hey, it’s not like I warned about that several years ago in a job that couldn’t afford to extend a 12 month £28k contract.

The Applied Networking Research Workshop 2025, co-located with IETF-123 in Madrid, will take place on Tuesday, July 22nd. I will feature a keynote by Laurent Vanbever and exciting paper presentations. Check out the program here: irtf.org/anrw/2025/pr...

Once more at the Cosener’s House coseners.net/coseners-2025/

All credit to the shop in Glasgow city centre this morning playing Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” into the street at volume - only 175 shopping days to go!

"Three Thoughts on AI Governance" and how it relates to Internet governance csperkins.org/standards/20... #IGF #IGF2025

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-124 Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in November 2025. More details at www.irtf.org/travelgrants/

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41... We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/

Silent conferences: all the benefits of a full day video conference – with added travel!

I’m in Oslo for the UN Internet Governance Forum, starting tomorrow. If you’re also attending, please do join me, and my colleagues from the IAB and Internet Society, on 24 June for Networking Session #138 "Tech & Policy: Building Bridges in Internet Governance" csperkins.org/standards/20...

Solstice

“Why Effective Digital Governance Begins with Understanding the Internet Itself” - a useful reminder, ahead of #IGF2025 next week, on why it’s important to be clear about the difference between the Internet, and uses of the Internet, in policy discussions labs.ripe.net/author/hisha...

Sad news - RIP

We are hiring at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social! If you know anything about computer networks and fancy working somewhere with a nice bunch of colleagues and a nice bunch of beaches (see my photo evidence at bsky.app/profile/tnhh...) then please see www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

An IRTF Retrospective – in which I reflect upon my time as Chair of the IRTF csperkins.org/standards/20...

so i spent the weekend fucking around with the latest chatgpt build working through its text analysis/synthesis capabilities and hoooooooo boy i have a bunch of complicated thoughts.

"If your decentralised protocol is missing features, the market will add them with centralisation." — @goat.navy *This*: - is why why the web was captured; - is why email became concentrated; - is why ActivityPub, as defined today, isn't capture-resistant.

For two decades, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has provided a platform for collaboration and cooperation between Internet stakeholders and driven tangible progress in the Internet’s resilience, reach, and trust. 1/2