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Andy Harbison

@andrewharbison1.bsky.social
2.1K followers 2.7K following 3.1K posts

Early refugee from the Bad Place. IT security, forensics and investigations guy with far too many history books. All opinions personal and do not reflect etc. etc.

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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 20h
Check out @markurban.bsky.social ‘s excellent ‘The Man who Broke Napoleon’s Codes’ about George Scovell, Wellington’s code-breaker in the Peninsula. He goes into a lot of (fascinating) detail about how the French used ciphers and the British, with lots of help from Spanish Guerillas, cracked them.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 20h
More AI-boosting bullshit. It wasn’t a code - it was a cipher, and we’ve had the keys to the French Army ciphers pretty much since the 1810s. Anyone could have done this given access to the documents . It didn’t need AI. This thing is looking more and more like a desperate scam.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 20h
Look at the biographies of any of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem and you’ll find someone who exhibited suicidal empathy.
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Martin D.B. Brown @martindbbrown.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
Eh? Nor was it Shanidar A's first rodeo. www.haaretz.com/archaeology/...
haaretz.com
Second Neanderthal killed by spear reported in Shanidar Cave
New archaeological evidence supports mortuary behavior among Neanderthals in Iraq around 70,000 years ago, even if the 'flower burial' of Shanidar wasn't true
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 23h
One of only 3 awards of the bar to the VC. It was only one in WWII and the only once for actions in combat. The other two went to RAMC officers, Arthur Martin-Leake and Noel Chevasse for courage in treating the wounded in extreme peril. (Chevasse’s VC bar was posthumous.)
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 23h
When the second one was gazetted, his commander had to ask for which action, because there were several he could have earned it for. A remarkable guy.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 23h
Not sure a hand-thrown spear could have done the damage described in the article - driven completely through the upper torso. A spear thrust might have done it, or a spear thrown with the aid of a spear thrower (atlatl) at short range, maybe. It’s suspected atlatls were in use by ca. 40,000BC.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
The Return of the King - for Tax Purposes.
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Harry Turtledove @hntdove.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
When I was a very new pro, I did a signing with Theodore Sturgeon and a couple of other people. I was complaining to him about the trouble I was having with a scene. He looked at me and said, in his resonant tenor, "I give you permission to do it wrong." Most liberating thing I ever heard.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
Even 5 years ago it was generally understood that the fundamental legal principle of ‘Nemo judex in causa sua’ (never act as judge in your own case) would preclude Trump pardoning himself. At this point, however, SCOTUS has become so nakedly corrupt and partisan, I don’t think you could rely on that
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
a fashion designer once told me she wished people bought clothes like they buy furniture. when you buy a couch, you know you're going to live with it for 10+ years. clothing purchases are often much more impulsive; the items treated as disposable.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
The Tulip Crash occurred suddenly - the trigger was supposedly a tulip auction in Haarlem being cancelled due to plague. In this case it’s hard to tell. The Dot-Com Bubble deflated over a couple of years, and even the Great Depression took a year or two to kick off. This one could go like a bomb.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
💯 This one looks a lot like the Tulip Crash. In most other crashes there is some residual value left. All that will be left here is data centres full of rapidly depreciating GPU chips. Rationality and proportionality have gone out the window, and the tech is all diminishing returns from this point.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
You should look up the definition of “Paltering”. It’s become ubiquitous in politics and political journalism, and it’s one of the main reasons the profession is nowadays held in such very low regard.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Of course you’re being misleading. There’s more than one way to ban things. “Comply or be censored” is pretty common in this weary World. But go ahead, take your legalistic view. A journalist should know many of the worst actions of authoritarian governments are, strictly speaking, “legal”.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
“Practically speaking, it’s a ban. Faber could keep royalties in escrow” 2nd sentence disproves the first! What rubbish. The fact that they’re not keeping them in escrow indicates that it’s a ban. And your answer to the ban being disproportionate is “so what”, and you call yourself a conservative?!
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
So when Mark talks about PA being a proscribed terrorist organisation, he neglects to mention that it is this very issue Rooney is attempting to highlight. Then again, if you can’t trust the publisher of Conservative Home to give you full and forthright information, who can you trust?
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Mark is eliding the fact that Rooney’s action was intended to highlight the fact that the ban on PA is disproportionate. FYI, the average age of persons arrested for supporting PA is 59 - real menaces to society I’m sure. Practically speaking, it’s a ban. Faber could keep the royalties in escrow.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
I’ve been working in the law for 25+ years, so I already have considerable personal knowledge. AI works well if the person using has a level of expertise in an area. It is a time saver in that can get the data you need together quickly. Wouldn’t use if for anything I don’t know much about.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
That being said, I then double-check every law and precedent to make sure they’re accurate and whatever was used to train the AI interpreted the material correctly. I use Gemini because it provides references for the answers it gives and because Google has access to more material than anyone else.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
I think your precautions are entirely reasonable. I only use for a very narrow range of tasks. E.g. I use it to check legal precedents and statutes as part of my job. There’s a lot of useful material online the AI will have been trained from, and relatively little crap that might contaminate it.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
I’d have assumed these were Bronze Star cases? Not sure they’d get the V device. Depends on whether the attack was still underway when they did their things.
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Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
British Conservatives: "Russia has disgracefully interfered in politics in France, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and invaded Ukraine. They even meddled in the US elections." Also British Conservatives: "What? Russia! Interfere in Brexit? Ridiculous! Just a tired old conspiracy theory."
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Someone very close to recognising a fundamental truth about possessions…
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Peter Thal Larsen @petertl.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Hard to devise a better metaphor for the past decade and a half of Premier League football than Man City winning while playing with an extra man.
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Just Jack @just-jack-1.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
We are all the Reaper…
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
I was shocked to learn that there are still some statues of Jan Pieterzoon Coen standing, most particularly in his birthplace, Hoorn. Mind you, the British still have statues of Oliver Cromwell, a man detested by the Irish.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
It appears Brian May is not merely dead, but dead twice, since he’s standing both behind and beside Freddy Mercury. FYI, May as a PhD in Astrophysics, is a Humanist (Atheist) and I’m pretty sure he detests Trump and all his acolytes. He doesn’t want to be near this even after he’s dead (twice).
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ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The UK subreddits have been saying that pointing with a pinky like that is the sign for "bad" in Makaton, a simplified form of sign language taught to people with significant special needs in the UK. Seems likely the poor guy had a significant disability.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
This man has control over a nuclear arsenal.
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Econ Analytica @econanalytica.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Pete Hegseth's vision of the military: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals.” Inspired by this wisdom, Ann Telnaes @anntelnaes.bsky.social and Andy Borowitz @borowitzreport.bsky.social compiled their own list of people who should be banned from government.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The computer system threw an error, as statistically based computer systems have a propensity to do. It wasn’t rogue. It just was just inaccurate. Such systems quite often are. Calling it rogue humanises it, and gives it an agency it simply doesn’t have in reality. People need to stop doing this.
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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Nav Pillay reminding us that this didn't begin on October 7th.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Got 5 papers published in ML since 2024. This is nothing to do with self-directed action. This is badly designed, badly implemented and apparently completely unregulated software. Anthropic’s BS is about separating the owner/operators of the software from the consequences of their recklessness.
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Xydexx Unicorn 🦄💕🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @xydexxunicorn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
how it started / how it's going
Side-by-side articles of The Onion from April 27 2026 with the headline "DOJ to Bring Back Firing Squad as Means of Entertainment" and Rolling Stone article from October 8 2026 with the headline "The Pentagon is Going to Livestream a Firing Squad Execution"
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Ketchup is going to be hitting the walls at 1600 Pennsylvania Av. this morning. For once, a worthy winner. Navi Pillay stands for practically everything the Trumps, Netanyahus and Putins of this World do not. Sanctions against Norway incoming…?
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Utter barbarism. Like watching the reverse evolution of man into beast.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Trump threatening to attack Iran after the election, and the hurricane threatening oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, apparently.
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Edward Luce @edwardluce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Getting bored of US statesmen grokking "western civilization" to erect intellectually feeble scaffolding to justify attacks on liberal democracy in Europe - most recently Rubio at the Acropolis. Stop plundering Plato to justify your will to power.
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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
No AI for kids. Full stop.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Man, the line for the guillotine is getting longer and longer…
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
“.. one research firm is valuing the artificial intelligence company at a mere $150 billion and says Wall Street is about to face an ‘unprecedented test of investor gullibility.’” @cnbc.com www.cnbc.com/2026/10/07/a...
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I tend to agree with people like Dan Drezner and Cory Doctorow that they can be reasonably categorised as insane. Some seem to be solipsistic beyond the point of sociopathy. It’s just about pushing up the number, and they don’t see anyone else as a “real” person. It’s why Musk calls people NPCs.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
If you had $21t flowing in, your inflation would go into the stratosphere, among other chaos. Ref. Economic History 101, what the Potosi silvermines did to the Spanish Economy. I'm sure Trump has never read about the Potosi silvermines. Or, indeed, Spain... OK, maybe 'read' is a little optimistic
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Who’s the ghoul in the red dress on his left (beside all the other ghouls)?
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I doesn’t matter who started the fucking thing, massacring 1000+ people is ALWAYS wrong. The moment you start trying to justify it, you lose any credibility.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Doesn’t matter. Killing 1000+ people is wrong. Just because Bibi is a monster it doesn’t diminish mass murder. Likewise, just because the Israeli government subsequentlycommitted a greater mass murder, it’s no excuse. There are plenty of explanations of why it happened, but none are justifications.
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Andy Harbison @andrewharbison1.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The original Hamas attack was also genocidal in nature. The Israeli response was a much larger genocide, but under Lemkin’s original definition, October 7 was an atrocity that fell within the bounds of what is genocidal. Killing civilians is ALWAYS wrong. Kidnapping civilians is ALWAYS wrong.
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Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I am very uncomfortable about calling bits of software “agents”. They have no more real agency than a wind-up toy.
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