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Frank Wales

@frankwales.bsky.social
49 followers 136 following 24 posts

Founding partner @corrickwales.bsky.social & girly swot. (Privacy+software+music+tech)*(sarcasm+puns+WTFs). Personal account; reposts aren't endorsements; IANAL HTH HAND

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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
My wife unearthed this trove of LinkedIn-grade sloponium from eBay, with such nuggets as: “AI will eventually get us to 90%, but the remaining 10% is where we unlock 100x leverage—and that last 10% is defined by a company’s specific context and human variance” innovation.ebayinc.com/stories/ai-t...
innovation.ebayinc.com
AI Trends to Watch In 2026
We asked leaders across eBay for the most transformative tech trends to watch in the year ahead. Here’s what they had to say.
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Kathryn Corrick @kcorrick.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
- Goes to the ICO website to check a registration - Opens the page to find the ICO has added a chatbot (inward sigh) - Notices where the chat data goes to - waves to Microsoft and Google - Clicks on privacy notice link - Finds the longest layered policy I've ever seen - Where to even begin?
ICO's digital assistant
I'm here to answer your questions.
Hi, I’m the ICO’s Digital Assistant. I can help you with your registration queries, for example whether you need to pay and how much, and if you need to appoint a Data Protection Officer.

You won’t need to tell me any personal information.

If you use this service, the contents of your chat will be shared with services provided by Microsoft and Google, that interpret and answer your questions. To find out more, read our privacy policy."This privacy notice tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information when you make contact with us or use one of our services."

"This notice is layered. So, if you wish, you can easily select the reason we process your personal information and see what we do with it."

Not sure I agree with you ICO. The layered list has around 54 items. Too many to list here within the character limits.
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Kathryn Corrick @kcorrick.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This is a fascinating thread, and I feel for the academic who has been made to feel useless by AI. But what I don't understand, for anyone using AI in an academic setting, is the lack of references and citations. If you use AI refer to it as you would any other source. Log your prompts/responses.
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Crystal Fleming is on sabbatical @alwaystheself.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +
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Tom Coates @tomcoates.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Trump is dismantling the network that monitors ocean around the US and checks things like temperature, CO2 and marine ecosystem health. This is clearly appalling. But right now I want you to read Michael England’s PR statement. What absolute bullshit. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...
Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, "aligns with N.S.E's wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its
portfolio of research infrastructure."
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
New research examines Waymo's California robotaxi trips btw Aug 2023 and Dec 2025. Conclusion: 46% of miles driven involved no one inside the car. That's 40 million miles of deadheading, with Waymo vehicles using road space w/o transporting a human. doi.org/10.32866/001...
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Violet Blue® @violetblue.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
New: hackers on 0day revenge spree vow to 'shatter Microsoft's bones', Adafruit goes dark after CFAA threats, Huawei thanks the US for changing the chip market in their favor, Timnit Gebru was right, SF Airbnbs wrecked by dishonest housecleaning bot startup, more: www.patreon.com/posts/cybers...
patreon.com
Cybersecurity: June 2, 2026 | Threat Model
Cybersecurity: June 2, 2026 by Threat Model on Patreon. Join Threat Model's community for exclusive content and updates.
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
This just in from someone pretending to be our Senior Instagram Correspondent: <typing noises> "I'm in." www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUkD...
youtube.com
Log into any Instagram by asking Meta’s AI nicely
YouTube video by Pivot to AI
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✨️🌈Ewan🌈✨️ (Katarsis' Version) @brewansometea.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
OMG LORDI ROCK SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME! RELEASE IT NOW! #Eurovision
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Horizontalsrich @richienb.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Pick a Bond from photos you already have in your phone
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
"Thank you for contacting Allbirds customer service, how can we help?” “Yeah, I ordered some blue sneakers in size 10 but got two Nvidia GPUs and they’re green and don’t fit” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Allbirds shares soar 580% after pivot from shoes to AI
The company is selling off its shoe brand as it plans to shift to providing technology infrastructure.
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Tell me your developers have trouble properly sanitising and handling data without telling me… (and, by extension, telegraphing where your service might be vulnerable to hacking)
Warning from a web site to not include '&' and '<' characters in messages, as if it's the user's responsibility to pre-sanitise data that the service can't cope with
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
"A 2025 study by Ibrahim, Hafner, and Rocher found that warm or empathetic models had error rates 10–30% higher than their original versions. System prompts designed to add warmth produced 12-14% drops in reliability.” www.nngroup.com/articles/hum...
nngroup.com
Humanizing AI Is a Trap
LLMs humanize by design. Adding personality/emotion amplifies risk. Design real tools, not fake friends.
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
"Would you like nudes with your nukes?"
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Introducing Microsoft Copilot 365 Office Premium Family Copilot Standard for Windows Copilot app youtu.be/HU8iL0jOHO4?...
youtu.be
Microsoft have lost their minds
YouTube video by Tech Dregs
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Not sure why this dross, dated Dec 1, seems to be circulating now (and why it didn't cross my feed a month ago), but wow what a terrible essay. A few comments, in a short 🧵>> bigthink.com/the-present/...
bigthink.com
The rise of AI denialism
Computer scientist Louis Rosenberg argues that dismissing AI as a “bubble” or mere “slop” ignores the tectonic technological shift now unfolding.
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Kathryn Corrick @kcorrick.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
The guidance for how Public Charge Point data should be published is here: www.gov.uk/government/p... 'Data must be open in line with the Open Government Licence'. The guidance is a bit open to interpretation but I don't think could be stretched to, "Pop us an email we'll see what we can do".
gov.uk
Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 guidance
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Kathryn Corrick @kcorrick.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Updating myself on how the UK's #EV chargepoint operators are publishing their data openly. Shell Ubitricity are the largest operator in the UK, so I started there. At best, Shell have misunderstood what #opendata is, and/or the regulations don't explain how to publish ubitricity.com/en/pcpr-data...
ubitricity.com
PCPR Data Request
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Lost Glasgow @lostglasgow.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
'I just have talent, Margaret has genius.' CRM
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
If I can't stop my phone appearing in the reflection, I might as well make a feature of it
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PinkNews @pinknews.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Alan Cumming wants his new LGBTQ+ festival to be a ‘beacon of hope’ uplifting queer and trans voices www.thepinknews.com/2025/10/27/alan…
thepinknews.com
Alan Cumming's Scottish LGBTQ+ festival will be a 'beacon of light, hope and fun'
Alan Cumming opens up about Scotland’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre's Out in the Hills LGBTQ+ festival and Russell T Davies show, Tip Toe.
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Mike McMahan @mikemcmahan.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Lower Decks pals just reminded me I designed the original Moopsy, which I had totally forgotten. The artists love to laugh at me for my crappy drawings. Enjoy.
original Star Trek Lower Decks Moopsy design that looks like a load of bread with a face and feet. Purple dry erase marker on whiteboard.
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The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 05/08/2025
Written by Michael and Denise Okuda, “Lost Voyages: Phase II and the Rebirth of Star Trek” is a great documentary about Trek projects (show, movies) abandoned in the second half of the 1970s, which led to The Motion Picture. With fascinating interviews, and some cool ships. Warmly recommended! 🖖
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amy brown 👻 @amybrown.xyz · 03/07/2025
the article is like “it’s not a vacation, it’s a different thing!” btw (it’s vacation)
fastcompany.com
What is a micro-retirement? Inside the latest Gen Z trend
Burned out and ladened with debt Gen-Z is getting a jump on retirement by going on short unpaid breaks from work: "micro-retirements."
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amy brown 👻 @amybrown.xyz · 03/07/2025
the zoomers have rebranded vacation
What is a micro-retirement? Inside the latest Gen Z trend (Fast Company)
Gen Z is rethinking retirement—by taking it in mini doses. The rising trend of *micro-retirements* means career professionals are
pressing pause for 1-2 weeks every year to avoid burnout and boost well-being. While it's gaining traction (even among non-Gen Z workers), experts warn these breaks could come with long-term financial and career tradeoffs. Is unplugging worth the risk? Here's what to consider before booking your
"someday" now.
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Meanwhile, in "no-one proof-reads titles" news...
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
There's something bizarre about framing livestreams of the horrible things that happen in real life as a _child safety_ issue; Southport, after all, was local dads and granddads.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
A depressing policy exercise: read Ofcom's post-Southport proposals on how they want livestreams to be restricted, whilst remembering that it was a 17 year old girl minding her own business who filmed George Floyd's murder. Then consider these proposals in the current US political context.
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Linda Butler @heninahat.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Boooo Paramount made me take these off Et$y but they can still be yours!!!! Who wants a Lower Decker on their head? (I'm beyond broke at the moment so an order would help me out enormously 🙏) #StarTrek #StarTrekLowerDecks #crochet #cosplay
Dr T'Ana,  Rutherford, Sending, Boimler and Mariner as crochet hats.
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Michael Socolow @michaelsocolow.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Just went looking for something at the excellent Hagley Digital Archives, and was greeted by the message below. They're being overrun by bots, as "AI systems increasingly target sites like ours to train machine learning models." The web is being murdered. So aggravating. digital.hagley.org
"The Hagley Digital Archives is currently offline due to a sustained bot attack" begins a message from the archive, explaining that AI is using bots to train machine learning learning models.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 11/06/2025
“It’s important to a community that wants to be an immigrant sanctuary to also be a data sanctuary, and that means to collect and retain as little information as possible about immigrants,” EFF’s Adam Schwartz told @chicagotribune.com.
chicagotribune.com
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration says no obligation to hand city ID records to ICE
City lawyer Mary Richardson-Lowry said the administration won’t cooperate with the subpoena because doing so would expose vulnerable applicants.
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 11/06/2025
1. The US Transgender Survey has finally been released, and the results are stunning. - <1% of people are less satisfied after HRT. - The most common reason for detransition, pausing transition, or stopping transition is transphobia. The latest from S. Baum. Subscribe to support our journalism.
erininthemorning.com
Largest Trans Survey Ever: Top Reason Trans People Stop Transitioning Is Transphobia
“In almost every single case, the reason was anti-trans discrimination in the form of pressure to ‘detransition’ from one’s family, friends, or community.”
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SwiftOnSecurity @swiftonsecurity.com · 12/06/2025
There is a maximum amount of time each day you're supposed to focus on the world's problems instead of your own, after which you have a legitimate need for therapy on your thought processes being self-destructive. At some point you have to stop scrubbing your hands you are bleeding into the sink.
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nora @nora.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
If your DMs are “encrypted” but one org holds all the keys, you haven’t distributed trust – you’ve built a backdoor. Juicebox only works when boundaries are real. Separation isn’t optional. Replication != distribution.
juicebox.xyz
Don’t Put All Your Juice in One Box
At Juicebox, we believe key recovery should be secure, user friendly, and actually… work. That means it has to be more than cryptographic theater. It has to reflect the real world, where systems get h...
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nora @nora.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
I'd argue it's less than not great, it's bad. Since they're not using HSMs for Juicebox, and they control all the realms, they have the ability to easily brute force anyone's 4-digit PIN and get their stored secret. It's basically just backdoored.
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Matthew Garrett @mjg59.eicar-test-file.zip · 06/06/2025
This is just a flat out lie and everyone involved is either malicious or incompetent
Screenshot of a dialog from Twitter. It says:

"Messages are now fully encrypted

End-to-end encryption: messages are end-to-end encrypted across all your devices.

State-of-the-art privacy: There's no way for anyone, including X, to read your messages.

Set up a passcode: In order to secure your messages, you'll need to set up a 4-digit passcode."
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 23/04/2025
let’s be clear that personalisation amounts to determining a person’s future based on recurring patterns of the past. if you belong to a groups that society has not been kind to in the past (black & brown, LGBTQI, poor, disabled, etc), AI personalisation ensures your future encodes past injustice
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Matthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
I wrote a bit more about X’s new encrypted DMs and the Juicebox protocol. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/06/09/a...
blog.cryptographyengineering.com
A bit more on Twitter/X’s new encrypted messaging
Matthew Garrett has a nice post about Twitter (uh, X)’s new end-to-end encryption messaging protocol, which is now called XChat. The TL;DR of Matthew’s post is that from a cryptographic…
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
This maniac has been drawing all the #Eurovision performers bsky.app/profile/happ...
bsky.app
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HappyToast @happytoast.co.uk · 17/05/2025
I've not seen today's Doctor Who Eurovision special yet, but I assume this happens. #doctorwho #eurovision
A cartoon of a dalek and cyberman singing Bucks Fizz's Making your mind up, the cyberman is singing in to the Dalek's 'microphone' arm and whipping off its skirt. With the lyrics "and if you want to see some more" across the top.
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Scott Bryan @scottygb.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
The BSL during Finland was sensational #Eurovision
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Isn't Parg the bad guy on Star Trek? #eurovision
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Tim Stahmer @timstahmer.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
If you’re watching Eurovision and don’t know what to make of the contest, read the in-depth analysis by NPR’s Glen Weldon. Insightful and very funny.
npr.org
The 10 best songs of Eurovision 2025 — and their chances to win
The grand final of this year's Eurovision Song Contest takes place on Saturday, May 17, in Basel, Switzerland. It's an annual celebration of melody, rhythm, fabulousness and glitter.
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Tom Coates @tomcoates.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Boom. www.tvzoneuk.com/post/doctorw...
tvzoneuk.com
DOCTOR WHO WILL CONTINUE WITH FURTHER SERIES ON BBC ONE, IRRESPECTIVE OF DISNEY DECISION
After months of rumours and speculation, it has been revealed that Doctor Who will continue on BBC One for further series beyond this year, but fans may have to wait until 2027.The Mirror reports that...
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Ukraine's song feels like two songs riffle-shuffled together #eurovision
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Frank Wales @frankwales.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Am I slightly missing the point by being impressed with all the screen technology they have on stage these days at #Eurovision ?
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Mike Okuda @mikeokuda.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied chains us all irrevocably.” Picard's speech from "The Drumhead" remains powerful, and even more important than ever. youtu.be/K5Po40kvI9c
youtu.be
Picard speech with the first link the chain is forged
YouTube video by HD_Picard
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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
A reminder that many period tracking apps (not all but many) are created by forced-birth, anti-abortion evangelical organizations.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
While you are all enjoying the partial phase of the #lunareclipse <shakes fists at clouds here> a fun fact: you can use a lunar eclipse to calculate the radius of the moon, relative to the radius of the Earth. 🤓 🧪🔭
Using a Lunar eclipse to estimate the size of the moon:
A diagram of a partial lunar eclipse
1) Follow the curvature of the shadow on the Moons surface to complete a the full circle of the Earth’s shadow
2)Estimate the size of the moon's radius
3)See how many moon radio fit into the Earth's shadow
4) Conclusion: The Earth is roughly 3 times larger than the moon
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