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Dave

@irksomelib.bsky.social
343 followers 905 following 547 posts

lib. postdoc. computer scientist (computational linguistics/natural language processing). british. likes metal, sci-fi and fantasy. extremely bad at posting. OCD-haver, ace/aro. he/him.

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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Not being harsh here or anything, but at certain point Tuomas and Emppu should just call it a day shouldn't they? www.loudersound.com/news/floor-j...
loudersound.com
“It was a hard decision to make”: Floor Jansen parts ways with Nightwish
The Finnish symphonic metal giants claim it was a mutual decision
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Rob 🏳️‍🌈 @rotster.net · 12/10/2026
People to be put in the subco are new ‘teaching fellows’ and professional services staff, so in short they’re depleting the terms and conditions of those people who are overwhelmingly already the lowest paid in the institution. I hope that campus in Kazakhstan was worth it.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Ruin a book by adding a word: In Dubious Battle Royale
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Rose Runswick @rosenstead.co.uk · 10/10/2026
If Ed believes in his vision for the Liberal Democrats he should be unafraid to call a leadership race and run against whoever wants to challenge him, this would be far more productive for the Party than a coup. #LettheLibDemsVote I say!
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
So I recently bought this lovely David Birch coffee grinder, and I was wondering if anyone had any guides on grind settings for it? #coffeesky
A David Birch coffee grinder
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Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Decompiling closed source software using Claude into non-functional open source software is not how this shit works but more to the point if I go to a project’s website that purports to be about this shit and see “Pricing” that’s a huge red flag.
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@bobhudson.bsky.social @bobhudson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Jeffrey Archer - far from the ‘colourful’ and endearing rogue. Just a nasty piece of work - @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social explains… brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/here-lies-...
brokenbottleboy.substack.com
Here lies Jeffrey Archer
The death of one of Britain’s most infamous liars brings back memories of Monica Coghlan.
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Jake @jake.sooscreek.productions · 05/10/2026
I see a lot of people fall back to open weight models as a counter example and I really need those people to understand the difference between publicly visible weights and training data There is not enough public data to train a model to a useful dimensionality
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
it would be nice if this was accurate but it is not. nothing that even vaguely resembles modern generative AI is possible without mass copyright violation.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
What if we kissed under the 88 foot AI Slop Tory Bayeux Tapestry 😳😳
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
guys that article is so fucking funny
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Tom Gordon MP @tomgordonld.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I listened to Ed Davey on the Today programme this morning, and frankly, I think he missed the point. The idea that we're keeping the triple lock to help millennials is at best for the birds, and at worst downright insulting. I say that as a millennial.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I stopped reading at "which has not been peer reviewed"
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
There is this wild question that I was asked, and I later found out is a standard question lots of firms in the UK ask... "How many windows do you think there are in Manchester?"
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Previously unheard of levels of Yer Da.
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Tom Ewing @tomewing.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Narnia books as Isekai Manga
1. My Sweet Tooth Made Me The Villainess’ Slave
2. In Another World, The Dwarves Picked Me To Lead The Revolution
3. All At Sea With My Level 0 Sailing Skills
4. On A Mission In Another World And I Can’t Remember The Cheat Codes
5. That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Horse
6. Help! My Uncle’s In Love With The Demon Queen!
7. Reincarnated In Another World Just As The Game’s Ending
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Do they just think they can get away with anything they fucking want?
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👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 18/09/2026
if you EVER get called for a meeting and they say “don’t bring a union rep” bring a union rep
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Just received the latest @tamarindlit.co.uk Absolutely stunning cover! Can't wait to read it!
The latest issue of Tamarind magazine (issue 10)
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Taproot is as mediocre a band as you can find but Poem is an absolute banger.
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 16/09/2026
imagining the look of horror on a guy who thinks AI is alive's face when my robot vacuum says "cleaning makes me happy" on startup
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A phone notification and now a breaking news story about a glorified nextdoor campaign. The BBC is absolutely cooked www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Piddington in Oxfordshire votes to leave UK over asylum plans
Piddington residents voted over proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers nearby
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 14/09/2026
UCU members at Brighton University face the threat of derecognition. We have called an emergency rally tomorrow at 1:15pm. It would be amazing to see as many #TUC26 delegates as possible in attendance. 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 0JY
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
man, shut the fuck up
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Hitler and Stalin made it heaven? Damn! Guess the moonies were right.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Can confirm. Was in sixth form (senior high if you're American) at the time, and we'd only *heard* about it mid afternoon (only an hour or so before the end of the school day).
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Siobhan "Shiv" Craig - DarkEden21 @darkeden21.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Yo if anyone follows me on twitter still, can you highlight that I've been hacked, blocked out of my account, and I'm trying to recover it but it's not looking good. The current @darkeden21 on Twitter is a hacker who has stolen my account.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
But what if the fruit-fly brain learned to play factorio?
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
People insult Sundar Pichai (and rightly so he sucks) but at least Google occasionally produces some genuinely cool and interesting research; unlike say whatever ridiculous hype OpenAI/Anthropic is constantly trying to sell us.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
There has rightly been a lot of discussion on ai-fuelled delusions in ordinary people who get addicted to AI, but more needs to be said about how the developers of LLMs seem just as susceptible to them (which seems obvious when you think about it).
Three tweets by Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) saying:
I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below

Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Sorry for yer da at this difficult time.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I could swear I recall @ifbookspod.bsky.social talking about her bringing up this exact same dumb anecdote a while ago.
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Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau @alexiajm.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Simple beats complicated: We show that switching to a sliding-window attention mask with attention sinks (at no cost) beats linear attention post-training. Huge thanks to my collaborators Rhea Sukthanker, ‪Pashmina Cameron‬, and Emy Gervais. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2608.28444
arxiv.org
Sliding-window beats linear attention
Due to the nature of quadratic attention, Large Language Models (LLMs) consume a lot of memory and energy. Every new token costs more than the previous one. For each additional token, the keys and val...
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Jane @jane.meangirls.online · 29/08/2026
It’s fucking crazy that someone can say something this bizarre and antisocial and not be immediately chased into the forest with torches and pitchforks.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
A single sentence perfectly sums up the authors (incredibly bad and stupid) perspective.
Text saying "Unfortunately, in 2026, postdoc unions are proliferating. And because of them, a key element of training for young scientists may be doomed.

Postdoctoral fellows working in research labs are also apprentices—and one need not argue that all lab directors are geniuses on par with"

with 

"Postdoctoral fellows working in research labs are also apprentices" highlighted
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Disgraceful that this was written. Disgraceful that it was published.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I have very distant memories (in fact they may be among my first memories) of sitting by a television while my parents were telling me (in terms suitable for a four year old) about the Berlin wall coming down. First proper memories are of the first gulf war.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
If anything tragic happens to Jeff Bridges in the near future we'll know who was responsible.
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P(aul) Frazee @pfrazee.com · 25/08/2026
X shuts down apps that show its posts. Bluesky exists to ernable it. One of these networks is about promoting freedom, the other is not.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
“It’s impossible that Jason Arday could have got his post without DEI,” say people about an industry which can find 200 academics willing to sign a letter in support of David Miller and another 200 academics willing to support Nathan Cofnas.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I'm sorry, but if you think Nathan Cofnas being suspended for being a racist is an 'academic freedom' issue you are the dumbest fucking mark alive.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Peter Singer, Stephen Pinker, Lawrence Krauss, Amy Wax, Jo Phoenix, Jerry Coyne,Frank Furedi, Alan Sokal. Absolute rogues gallery of all the worst people in/adjacent to academia.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Fallout New Vegas? Oh I'm *dead* dead.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
There are specific institutional failings that are shared with Cambridge's broader approach to descent - but too much of the coverage, both before and after his tragic death, has had too much of a 'a black person can't be a successful fabulist!'
ft.com
The difficult truth about Jason Arday
From the beginning, investigations were accompanied by a cloud of excessive references to his race
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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 18/08/2026
The greatest trick LLM hypemen ever pulled was getting media to absorb all data-driven prediction and decision software under the same umbrella term, "AI," as LLMs.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
First time in a while I literally lol'd at something.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
One of my absolute favourite factoids is that Orville Wright lived to see Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier, who in turn lived to see the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers land on Mars.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Also a great number of early RPG creators were virulent racists and you have no obligation of respect to any of them.
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Attended my first #FormulaE race today, and can I just say it was fucking amazing (gutted for Jake Dennis though)
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Dave @irksomelib.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Artificial Neural Networks (the mathematical structures that form the basis of all LLMs) are so simple that most people could design one by hand.
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