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Liam Proven

@lproven.bsky.social
1.1K followers 313 following 3.9K posts

Tall, dark, black-clad, atheist, skeptic, vegetarian, SF fan; writes (mostly about computers) for a living. All opinions expressed are my own & not those of any employer.

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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 17h
Lobbying (Oct 10, 2026) « Have you tried to explain lobbying to a non American unfamiliar with the concept? » buff.ly/exhGLPW
buff.ly
Lobbying
Have you tried to explain lobbying to a non American unfamiliar with the concept?
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 19h
Wherein the slopbros won't stop (from the great JWZ, but on the DNA Lounge blog) buff.ly/Qjuur1V <- If you have a clue, you know AI is evil, but it's more evil than you think
buff.ly
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/10/06.html
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pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
A 19th Century Japanese Depiction of an American
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maud @peloriemate.net · 10/10/2026
i got so many people calling this tweet fakeposting back when i made it but since this is bluesky and things have less reach on here im just going to post the photo
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
four years ago I posted this image of paleontologist Jan Smit looking at rocks and his son-in-law replied with something even better
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I’ve thought since first seeing it that this logo would make great t-shirts for those of us recovering from alcoholism.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
THE SEARCH FOR SALVAGE buff.ly/zND8Abg « In 2011 I heard a piece of music that didn’t make any sense. ... The band was Salvage, & the 2 tracks on the CD I bought were called “Electric” & “Searchlights”. »
shahidhussain.com
The Search for Salvage
15 years ago, a band called Salvage dropped an epic song, and then vanished without a trace. Until now.
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Roz @rozmilner.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
To wit: This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.
Now what exactly is the "vermin" into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly
transformed? It obviously belongs to the branch of "jointed leggers" (Arthropoda), to which insects, and
spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong. If the "numerous little legs" mentioned in the beginning mean more than six legs, then Gregor would not be an insect from a zoological point of view. But I suggest that a man awakening on his back and finding he has as many as six legs vibrating in the air might feel that six was sufficient to be called numerous. We shall therefore
assume that Gregor has six legs, that he is an insect. Next question: what insect? Commentators say cockroach, which of course does not make sense. A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight. Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice
observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that
they have wings.)
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Roz @rozmilner.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
you know Vladimir Nabokov once noted that Gregor samsa never seemed to realize that at a beetle he now had wings and could fly
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
COSMIC shuts the door on AI code as GNOME debates letting bug reports in www.theregister.com/software/202... System76 demands human-written contributions, while a rival desktop developer argues bot-found flaws are too valuable to ignore <- by me on @theregister.com
theregister.com
COSMIC shuts the door on AI code as GNOME debates letting bug reports in
System76 demands human-written contributions, while a rival desktop developer argues bot-found flaws are too valuable to ignore
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Email me? I am easily Googled. This is my real name and real face.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I’m Calling for a Pause in the Development of the Universal Bone Dissolver buff.ly/FitVmLG A recent incident has raised my concerns: Last month, the Bone Dissolver unexpectedly dissolved a number of bones
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Debian's latest kernel security update has 1,313 reasons to patch www.theregister.com/os-platforms... AI-assisted bug hunting adds to maintainers' workload, while broad CVE rules help explain the sprawling tally <- by me on @theregister.com
theregister.com
Debian's latest kernel security update has 1,313 reasons to patch
AI-assisted bug hunting adds to maintainers' workload, while broad CVE rules help explain the sprawling tally
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
> I'm kind of prone screaming and swearing at computers in various languages Me too. I do it often enough that my daughter (7) has started scolding me for it. :-(
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Ubuntu 'Stonking Stingray' beta swims out: Deeper Rust 'oxidization' plus LLM speech-to-text www.theregister.com/os-platforms... GNOME 51 is here, and Ubuntu interim releases are getting interesting again <- by me on @theregister.com
theregister.com
Ubuntu 'Stonking Stingray' beta swims out: Deeper Rust 'oxidization' plus LLM speech-to-text
GNOME 51 is here, and Ubuntu interim releases are getting interesting again
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G @gpatrick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sums up my feelings. 
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Elsa @erli.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I can't stop thinking how wrong the tech bros have understood creativity and creators. Or even just having hobbies. #erliart
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Currently reading, and rather enjoying it.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 05/10/2026
the brazil thing is so depressing because they did the right thing, man they did what we couldn’t, they actually prosecuted their coup and threw bolsonaro’s ass in jail and generally showed the united states what a functional state looks like and now they are gonna elect his dipshit son? really?
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Micah @rincewind.run · 04/10/2026
every election everywhere after one (1) cycle with the fascists out of power: FASCISM NEPOBABY: 50.1% NORMAL POLITICIAN: 49.9%
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com
Title: Just announced! Three new Gruffalo books commissioned from bestselling authors!

Lee Chilld:
The Gruffalo just wants a quiet life, but when a crime syndicate moves into the deep dark wood, he must use his terrible claws and the terrible teeth in his terrible jaws to protect the fellow.

Sally Rooney:
The Gruffalo moves to contemporary Dublin. He  
ill ever see past his orange eyes, purple prickles and poisonous wart.

Kazuo Ishiguro:
After a long absence, the gruffalo returns to the forest and attempts to make sense of his past. Encounters with a mouse, a fox, an owl and a snake uncover long-buried memories, regrets and revelations.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Revive Raskin's 3 laws of software with humane work that considers a dev's duty of care www.theregister.com/software/202... All this, and angry NeoVim users <- by me on @theregister.com
theregister.com
Revive Raskin's 3 laws of software with humane work that considers a dev's duty of care
All this, and angry NeoVim users
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
You've got the year right, but not the motivation. The only editor I like less than Vi is Emacs. I do not have a Meta key, and neither does RMS or a single other bally Emacs user in the smegging world. The KDE people even got that wrong, and they call the Super key "meta" in all the docs, FFS.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Tilde: A text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976 www.theregister.com/software/202... Maybe you're not too cool for intuitive <- by me on @theregister.com – nearly 5Y ago now. Still wondering if anyone's worked out why I used that year in the headline.
theregister.com
Tilde: A text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976
Maybe you're not too cool for intuitive
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 03/10/2026
"I might be totally wrong… but I thought we had a connection. Or, I dunno, like a moment or something. Maybe it’s just me. God, you probably don’t even remember what I look like." buff.ly/Boz4oeT
buff.ly
Missed Connection: You, 30-Something Male; Me, THE VOID
“You were staring RIGHT into me for what felt like a REALLY LONG time …so, after a while, I finally worked up the courage to stare back into you.” Sept 7 202...
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Now That's An Impurity Story (from Derek Lowe, _In the Pipeline_ Analytical Chemistry blog) buff.ly/6W0TbYI
buff.ly
Now That's An Impurity Story
Now That's An Impurity Story
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 02/10/2026
This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Why the Bronze Age collapsed buff.ly/Qp25Rwd Historians like to blame drought, famine and invaders. But this can’t explain why the empires never came back.
buff.ly
Why the Bronze Age collapsed
Historians like to blame drought, famine and invaders. But this can’t explain why the empires never came back.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Coding is NOT solved: Challenging the common narrative pushed by token sellers buff.ly/CRpPx7b <- long, complicated, & falsifies a lot of nice comforting fairy stories the industry currently believes
buff.ly
Coding is NOT solved
Tell me you don’t understand software without literally using those words!!!
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy « Scroll to follow one closed strait into fuel pumps, harvests, bond markets & my own country’s winter heating. » buff.ly/lSneUDj <- a polycrisis is unfolding. Tom W, an optimist, only skims the surface.
buff.ly
September 2026: the world today, as seen by one Polish guy
How a Pole sees the world in September 2026: a scrolling essay that follows one closed strait into fuel, food, bonds, defence and demography.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Support wind farms in the Isle of Man c.org/6kr7N79CPg via @ukchange.bsky.social <- given that there's a very high percentage of Flat Earth types here (COVID denial, anti-vaxxers, global-warming deniers etc.) and active anti-environmental groups, this is great to see.
c.org
Sign the Petition
Support wind farms in the Isle of Man
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is not only not right, it is not even wrong.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is bot slop, and it's _ugly_ bot slop: the horseshoe crab's face is upside down and backwards, with mouth towards tail.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
It’s only an El Niño buff.ly/HK571O6 <- from noted skeptical scientist P Z Myers. This one is off every scale: the world is in the biggest global climate change in 1000 years.
buff.ly
It’s only an El Niño
This is the time of year when we start prepping for winter — we put away the window air conditioner, I’ve got to go drain all the garden hoses, we’re just waiting for all the leav…
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Ian Purser @ip33.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Happy Birthday CD! It's the future! Or the past. Or both. #CD www.tomshardware.com/pc-component...
tomshardware.com
Sony released the first CD audio player on this day in 1982 — player cost $3,700 when adjusted for inflation, but it would be another decade before the CD-ROM-driven multimedia PC era began
The Sony CDP-101 cost around $1,060 at today’s exchange rate, or around $3,700 adjusted for inflation.
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Jordan Kurella @jordankurella.com · 01/10/2026
waking up every day in 2026 like:
a construction sign on the side of the highway that says "IT'S COMING IT'S BAD"
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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...
theguardian.com
‘Hitler was a lazy criminal who slept in until noon’: why most of what we think we know about the rise of the Nazis is wrong
In a new book, German artist and writer Philipp Ruch argues that viewing the ascent of Hitler’s NSDAP through the prism of the Third Reich has distorted our understanding of fascism’s electoral breakt...
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Alan @gammacounter.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Someone took an xray of a bunch of USB drives and it came out kind of menacing.
Xray 5 usb dives
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
El Niño Diablo buff.ly/oKAG9wb « The peak is widely expected to be about 4°C anywhere from Nov-Feb '27, the most powerful El Niño in at least a thousand years. It is so far beyond Super size that scientists are using highly unscientific terms for it: jaw dropping, mind blowing, Godzilla-like. »
buff.ly
El Niño Diablo
Main audience: everyone
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
8Y stuck on the Suez Canal buff.ly/zEuT0oQ « … in 1967 the outbreak of conflict led to several boats being stranded in Egypt for 8 years. In DG #42 we told the story of how an autonomous floating community formed in the middle of a warzone » (A longer version of the story in my previous post)
buff.ly
Eight years stuck on the Suez Canal
The crew on the Melampus faced a dilemma. War between Israel and Egypt appeared imminent, and passing through the Suez Canal could place them right in
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Canonical begins pushing Resolute Raccoon www.theregister.com/os-platforms... Users on Ubuntu 24.04 will begin to get nagged to update to 26.04.1. Here's how to proceed <- by me on @theregister.com
theregister.com
Canonical begins pushing Resolute Raccoon
Users on Ubuntu 24.04 will begin to get nagged to update to 26.04.1. Here's how to proceed
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Stuck in the Suez Canal – the short version buff.ly/gEQ22in <- the 1967 "6 day war" stranded 15 ships in the Great Bitter Lake – for 8 years. A condensed version of the Yellow Fleet's story
buff.ly
Stuck in the Suez Canal – the short version - Cath Senker
Never got round to reading Stranded in the Suez Canal? Don't worry - here's the short version.
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Tallulah Cunningham @yesthattallulah.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Here for ever "æ" I can wedge into a conversation. ægean ægis, æther :D
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billkittle.bsky.social @billkittle.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
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badly drawn boo! 🎃👻🧛🏼‍♀️ @soapachu.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I guess we've just given up noticing that the weather is insane
Screen grab from my phone home screen showing that it's the first of October but will be 21°c / 70°F today
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Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many) @hikari.noyu.me · 31/12/2025
let's start a thread to collect little things we learn about WINE as we tumble down the rabbithole
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 30/09/2026
Esther Rantzen has left us. Thank you, especially for Childline.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Dismiss ye not the timeless genius of the author of "The 16-bit Intel 8088 chip"! allpoetry.com/16-bit-Intel... (P.S. ask Alan if the 8088 was 16-bit or not. Ideally just before you want to sleep.)
allpoetry.com
16-bit Intel 8088 chip by Charles Bukowski
Read the full text of Charles Bukowski's "16-bit Intel 8088 chip." Explore its meaning, poetic devices, and over 13 reader interpretations and comments by fellow poets.
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Liam Proven @lproven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Announcing Cornell University’s Newest Writing Course: Rape Essays 101 buff.ly/5na4oMY « Here at Cornell, we aim to prepare our students for a wide breadth of challenges with our academic offerings. Recent criticism of our assigned Rape Essays has made us reflect on our approach. »
buff.ly
Announcing Cornell University’s Newest Writing Course: Rape Essays 101
“Can a rapist’s prose effectively elicit remorse for sexual assault? What word count best equates to appropriate jail time? In this class, we will dissect wh...
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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”
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