Nick B 🔶

Quad9 helps protect internet users from malware and phishing. Now copyright site-blocking orders are pushing it out of France.

Can we just tell these villages they are welcome to leave, just as soon as they've constructed their own sewage treatment plants, power generation, and landfill or incinerators for rubbish? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Will AI make us collectively more productive, saving time and money? It's caused a surge in spurious, and overly long and complex complaints against companies and public bodies. app.independent.co.uk/edition/uk.c...

In one day, two politicians - Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vucic in Serbia - with ties to Trump have lost surprise elections thanks to high turnout. The rise of the international far-right is not inevitable.

Morning...

Well done Brazil 👏👏👏 The Trump-backed candidate loses again... www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm...

"I had the chance to make poor people's lives even more miserable and I didn't take it. I shall never forgive myself."

'distinctly British' AI, when asked to translate anything into a foreign language, will just repeat it in English only louder.

No, that would be "anti-business".

Our plan, I gather, is for a “distinctively British” approach to AI which will have none of the risks but all of the benefits. No other nation would have thought of just having the upsides. Makes you proud. 🇬🇧

Morrison's in Up Hatherley, Cheltenham adopted this strategy years ago.

It's political correctness gone mad....

Have we rioted yet?

Err, the inexorable passage of time?

This film is extraordinary and frightening.

"Criminal law in cases of domestic abuse has seen decades of failure so civil law is used to try and make the systems better and nowhere more so than in violence against women and girls."

Ten years ago today. In just the last few days: Trump made a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel, an economic lifeline for Putin; he and Elon Musk blamed each other for an order that slowed down Starlink satellite connectivity over Ukraine...

mic drop 👏

I mean if he wants every American to have stake in SpaceX I guess we better go ahead and nationalize it.

This is a very silly story. There is no "plot" and no "raid". Just a hysterical misunderstanding of a technical consultation. There *is* a real issue - but it's likely unintended and I expect it will fixed in the legislation. A 🧵 on what's really going on

The reason we must stay in the ECHR is because we have to protect British people’s rights. That’s something the Conservatives and Reform just don’t get. Highlights from my speech in the House of Commons last week:

And he could do just the same here in the UK - unless the Representation of the People Bill is both strengthened and passed.

So they're at it again 🙄 Torturing valid HMRC data to create wildly misleading headlines, designed to invoke fear and anger about immigrants. Same old, same old... (and you'll see just how old shortly!) 🧵1/28

Read how Leicester Gazette journalists were arrested for reporting on a demonstration in the city.

Extraordinary undercover reporting in Reform by ITV, uncovering what many of its councillors and activists are really like, when they think the cameras are off. A racist party which attracts racist people. www.itv.com/news/2026-10...

Tell you what Donald - come over here, get into the enclosure with that same tiger, and show us how it's done for real.

It's we who should thank Zelenskyj

Fuck off. There is no such thing as ethical AI use within the terms of copyright generally understood by authors and required by us to make a living. This is surrender.

No, AI can't experience pain, it can only mimic what it has learned of human reactions to it. The bigger issue is whether humans should be allowed to develop their appetite for cruelty by allowing them to practice, free of consequences, on AI bots? www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-pain...

As a counter to those who think Ed Davey isn't cutting through, AI bots are joining the pile-on....

our continuing failure to tackle social care; the fascist politics behind the US public execution; what happened to the Lib Dems' ambition?; AI and the future of work; Richard Dadd at the RA; 15 of the best movie car chases

Kemi Badenoch’s inheritance tax proposals are myth-based policy making at its worst. That's the verdict from @jillongovt.bsky.social following the leader of the opposition’s conference speech this week. Read the full comment here: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/kemi...

To put this in perspective, the world burns 45 tonnes of diesel *per second*, so the initial 300k tonnes is less than 2 hours worth of global consumption. And that's before the Ukrainians cast their vote via Flamingo missile. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Lib Dem leadership challenge? I wrote this the day before I heard that Charlie Maynard had resigned to trigger a leadership challenge against Ed Davey. Yes Ed led us to our best ever General Election result, but as a Party we need to look forwards not backwards. www.libdemvoice.org/a-plea-from-...

I predict that when AI starts to threaten the UK's lucrative computer gaming industry, our Government will start to care about copyright again.

This prompted me to go back and check the claim that "On current DWP forecasts, from the 2024 election until 2030, Labour will have increased working-age benefit spending by a further £51.6 bn/year." It appears to be equally fictional/spreadsheet error. Correct figure is maybe £36bn..

If you need help getting off Facebook I recommend reading Sarah Wynn-Williams' book 'Careless People'.

I can smell an early General Election in the air....

NEW: Kemi Badenoch’s flagship party conference policy document, The Right Way, overestimated the cost of net zero by nearly £500bn, seemingly after someone accidentally double-counted figures on a spreadsheet. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Kemi Badenoch wants to exempt the family home from inheritance tax. But that creates a perverse incentive for elderly people to *upsize* to save IHT. That could double the cost of the policy, and push £100bn+ from savings into housing. A 🧵 on bad tax cuts.

Woman ‘posed as substitute teacher to insult students because she hates kids’ 🏆 #LiberalEnglandHeadlineOfTheDay

Kemi returns to traditional Conservative values.....

She's one of those arrogant and over-confident politicians who is simply incapable of not talking when a microphone is in front of her. She could have simply said "we're releasing all the details next week" or even "ask James Cartlidge" but no, she had to waffle for a minute and a half not answering

How I arrived on Bluesky.

Sam says we should accept some "bad things happening" for the "benefits" of AI. What bad things, for what benefits? Does the public get a vote on this? A cynic might suggest we are being asked to accept some bad things otherwise OpenAI will never make a profit....