sophia scam robot maker in the epstein files? say it ain’t so!

Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xlcmx6ebvwafkuufwnisvrrt/post/3mezudwb6e22k

Happy New Year https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/income_from_wicked_movie_for_lon

As you’re watching a Disney film at Christmas, raise a glass to Disney’s lawyers who, in Florida’s 2021 social media law, had a blanket exemption placed in to except any theme park owner from the definition of ‘social media platform’ www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/HTML

urk, but unsurprising. I once did an access request to Google for all internal emails about me, many years ago now, and received my name on a watchlist of ‘complaints’. https://abovethelaw.com/2025/12/ice-accidentally-publishes-a-watch-list-of-immigration-lawyers-which-is-definitely-a-normal-thing-for-the-government-to-do/

yep, i do on hetzner

this is… just about Azure? do any other cloud providers not offer s3 compatible storage? the article argues that “This "original sin" set each cloud company on a path toward proprietary infrastructure”… but did it really? https://www.techpolicy.press/the-path-to-a-sovereign-tech-stack-is-via-a-commodified-tech-stack/

this is… just about Azure? do any other cloud providers not offer s3 compatible storage? the article argues that “This "original sin" set each cloud company on a path toward proprietary infrastructure”… but did it really? https://www.techpolicy.press/the-path-to-a-sovereign-tech-stack-is-via-a-commodified-tech-stack/

NSF under threat from itself.

Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p66b7zkep57fp4rhrtktsdni/post/3ma3bol7h2s2b

iFixit has fallen 😔🕯️

VPNs starting to enter the regulatory frame: now in Denmark https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/15/denmark_vpn_ban/

#Denmark takes a Viking swing at #VPN-enabled piracy - https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/15/denmark_vpn_ban/ denmark placing #copyright above #humanrights

I pulled all my e-books off Kindle yesterday because of this. It effectively ends my writing career because, despite everyone complaining that Amazon is evil... nobody buys books from the many other stores my books are available on.

I am sad. I am angry. I am *exhausted*.

I am ONE indie author. I am nobody. My protest is utterly meaningless in the face of this ever-expanding AI takeover. Unless all indies do this, and all tradpub authors pressure their publishers to fight Amazon, my pulling my books is not going to do a damned thing to make Amazon stop doing this. All it will do is end whatever tiny little chance I might still have had at having a real writing career.

But I am so sick of AI being shoved into every aspect of my life and not even having the right to opt out of it. This is the ONLY protest I CAN make. So that's what I'm doing. And at least I know they won't be able to use my books this way.

#books #bookstodon #reading #readingCommunity #AmReading #amazon

https://writerbeware.blog/2025/12/12/kindles-new-gen-ai-powered-ask-this-book-feature-raises-rights-concerns/

Not sure the Online Safety Acts — either UK or AUS flavours — are ready for kids setting up and running social media services themselves as regulated entities. This already happens: expect more. I ran online forums *as a child* that would now need child access assessments under the UK OSA!

it's a little known fact but the AI Act bans academic articles containing the words "in the Era of" — sorry if that's you, I don't make the rules

Useful if terrifying read on the Chinese brand of kids smart watches, Little Genius, forming an entire, insular—and seemingly pretty socially unhealthy—platformised, corporatised world. https://substack.com/@ivyyang/p-173510207

Never come across 'WindowsCentral' as a media outlet but this piece is powerful and dense and absolutely spot on about where we are with AI and business models right now. Putting bigger outlets to shame. https://www.windowscentral.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-chatgpt/analysis-openai-is-a-loss-making-machine

On AI’s ‘mediocrity trap’ — experiments indicates that while AI helps the less skilled make something passable, the highly skilled don’t use it to produce something better than they could have; they produce something ok, but lose motivation to make it great. http://www.jin-li.org/uploads/1/1/4/5/114595093/ai_and_motivation.pdf

anyone made a rough calculation of the cost to unis both of the salary sacrifice schemes tax change and the int’l student fee tax? narrative here is surely that the people who are paying for this budget are UG students in their fee rises — these should be turning into teaching, not staying afloat.

me: does this two hour film really need two hours
me: remember to give the students a 5 min break in their two hour lecture

Studies of abusers on dark web forums show that while mainstream AI models can produce CSAM, it’s not very realistic, so they use LoRAs to make it so. This testing won’t really do much because abusers aren’t using vanilla models. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8xq677l9xo