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Mary Branscombe

@marypcbuk.bsky.social
12K followers 1.9K following 58K posts

Omnivorous technology journalist. girl with the USB earring; author of the Cassidy At Large technomysteries. Like my writing? Buy me a ☕ ko-fi.com/marybranscombe. she/her. Warning: contains opinions. signal marypcbuk.44

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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 1h
Tipping it down in Barcelona as we change hotels but it’s actually quite refreshing - we took a stroll along the brutalist/industrial seafront Olympic area and it was a bit humid with all the rain getting ready to fall.
A view of leaves on a tree beginning to turn from green to brown, seen between the grey curtains of a tall narrow window
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I should clarify that I have not been sued, I just don't think I can stand by everything in the article.
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Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 3h
From our streets to our schools, hospitals and workplaces, Black Londoners have helped build the city we know today. This Black History Month, we celebrate the generations of people whose contributions continue to shape London.
Screen on Outernet - reads "[Mayor of London logo] Happy Black History Month, London" with an outline of London featuring different patternsScreen on Outernet - reads "[Mayor of London logo] Honouring our Black British communities"Screen on Outernet - reads "[Mayor of London logo] Those who enrich our city and keep London going" Screen on Outernet - reads "[Mayor of London logo] We pay tribute and thank you for all that you do"
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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 4h
If you're a news outlet and you *haven't* been banned from the Reform and Conservative conferences, is your organization actually doing journalism, or are you doing stenography?
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fuckface "squeaky" from:me @skeet.best · 16h
also, as I have been noting since March, even a model with a probabilistic attention space is capable of functionally deterministic calculations
percepta.ai
Can LLMs Be Computers? | Percepta
We build a computer inside a transformer — executing arbitrary C programs for millions of steps with exponentially faster inference via 2D attention heads.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026
Reading proofs from book & remembering what I wrote in 2015: "I am very concerned about the future of AI. Not because of the risk of rogue machines taking over. But because of the homogeneous, one-dimensional group of men who are currently involved in advancing the technology.”
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András Forgács W @andraswf.bsky.social · 7h
What I wouldn't give for a politican that considers me a human
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 3h
The class action lawsuit that *ought* to be in progress is against publishers who just bailed on doing their job
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Dr Tiffani Angus @tiffaniangus.bsky.social · 5h
Remember, folks: for every author you see on here describing how they’ve filled out forms to get *some* compensation from the Anthropic AI case there are dozens, hundreds, hell THOUSANDS of us who get 0 because our books weren’t registered with the US copyright office yet have UK copyright!
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Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 3h
Agreed. You have multiple tensions pulling the company in different directions from protocol (grow more developers) to get more people on the app (so there are more developers). What is missing is a coherent user experience to help you choose your own adventure. Users find that despite our design.
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Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 7h
The point of Bluesky was to give you power to run your own moderation, manage higher levels of safety in your own communities, create your own labellers. You disagree with my decisions and that’s fine! There’s other providers out there like blacksky or northsky and they keep growing. 5/6
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Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 7h
The point isn’t to create a better Zuckerberg or opposite Elon. It’s to create a different architecture so that neither have the same power in this network. 4/6
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 3h
The irony is that small teams are more likely to reply individually and *both sides* can fail to see the impedance mismatch of small teams talking directly to the small number of people in the large audience; that’s not a criticism, I think it’s how individuals react to direct connections
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Natanael, Tech janitor @natanael.bsky.social · 3h
Georg tells you to get good at data analysis. Gotta up your outliers game.
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emily blight 🐦‍⬛ @threnody.northsky.social · 10h
we have asked you repeatedly to stop responding to surveys and you leave us little choice but to ask you politely again. knock it off. get outta the data pool, georg.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 3h
But the reason why pensioners are less likely to be in poverty is that the current generation of pensioners get most of their pension from defined benefit schemes. Millennials are from the generation that don't have those high quality private pensions so the triple lock is more important.
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David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 23h
In line with the more realistic expectations and indeed the many agreements signed by the EU and Canada over recent years, lots of commitments to cooperate, no particular new structures.
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Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 23h
And this is almost an aside in the story, but also absolutely bonkers. Meta claimed Zuck as a "researcher" to get a $355 million tax break on his $4.1 billion stock-based compensation.
Screenshot from New York Times article: "Meta is already in one sizable dispute with the I.R.S. over this tax break, for using it to subsidize its chief executive’s multibillion-dollar pay package. In 2013, Meta claimed that $4.1 billion of stock options exercised by Mr. Zuckerberg counted as a research expense because he helped invent new software, such as Facebook’s News Feed. The I.R.S. is trying to claw back the company’s resulting $355 million in tax savings, court filings show."
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Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 30/09/2026
Kinda of, I'm trying to get it integrated into the product as a standard defense for dogpiling. Detection is pretty decent, so once we have a rock solid signal, will move to product interventions so that these are the defaults in the app. People will get the chance to opt-out.
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Snowden St. @snowden.st · 23h
And the wild part is that a lot of people now think that the direct-speaking method is *more* reliable, and that folks are *better* at determining truth and logic through videos than reading. And I don't think it's true for most of us, actually.
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Omg on the reading dating app, you take a questionnaire that consists “mostly of this-or-that choices between two different passages from classic books or questions like, ‘How do I feel about my own writing?’” HOW DO I FEEL ABOUT MY OWN WRITING. Is this a dating app or an emotional ambush
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Dear all US friends, this is a fash ‘news’ channel
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I keep typing eventhose instead of eventhouse for a real time data store and I feel like that’s slightly Freudian
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Macron: “Brexit is the biggest lie of the last 30 years. “Those who said, "We will be richer" - eight points of GDP less ten years later. "”We will solve the problem of immigration" - it is more complicated than before. "”We are going to crush it in international trade" - it is worse.”
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Ken Burnside @kenburnside.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The quality of a journalist is directly proportionate to the venality of those they render uncomfortable.
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I swear I read this as the agents really breaking out of their sandboxes for a moment
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Justin Cormack @justincormack.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Er, you missed open source. We went from writing software from scratch to building software 95% out of open source components, for a 20x speedup, after that.
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Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 30/09/2026
The last time building software sped up ~10x (early 2000s, the agile movement), a massive interest in automated testing followed almost immediately (unit tests, TDD, XP etc) Today, building software sped up 10x, easily: and a similar massive interest in automated testing + verification is following
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 28/09/2026
on bluesky i operate under the default assumption that everyone on here is neurodivergent with a few fascinatingly rare exceptions
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Matteo Collina @nodeland.dev · 29/09/2026
Full writeup from the Booking.com team 👇 medium.com/booking-com-...
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Matteo Collina @nodeland.dev · 29/09/2026
Wattpm runs your workers as worker threads and lets the kernel hand out connections with SO_REUSEPORT. No supervisor, no IPC pass-through. Each worker accepts straight from the kernel.
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Alex de Campi @alexdecampi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
With alt text. I know someone who actually did this
kbarton1001
On my first big overseas client conference, I was at a dinner seated next to a drunk client who kept trying to fondle me under the table. I was young, distressed, and had no idea what to do. I moved my legs as far away from him as I could, moving into the space of the man next to me, who then started patting my legs! The Regional Manager was a French woman who caught my eye, gestured for me to go to the bathroom and when I came back had switched chairs with me. What happed next was epic. A few minutes after I sat back down, she raised her hand with his hand captured in hers and announced loudly "Does anyone know whose hand this is? I found it in my lap." There was dead silence at the table. She threw his hand back at him and said calmly "next time I pick it up with my fork." Then she started a new conversational thread and things moved on. After the meeting she found me, gave me a hug, and said seriously "Never be afraid to make some noise. It is their shame, not yours."
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If anyone uses the term Super Intelligence I can only conclude they’re an idiot.
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Greg Wester @gwestr.me · 29/09/2026
Lucy, football
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Violet Blue® @violetblue.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I was just starting to be able to support myself with my erotica and nonfiction sex-ed books when they disappeared from view on Amazon, FB, and search engines. Now almost *three dozen* of those books are in the Anthropic settlement because the same people who disappeared them stole them.
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Stilgherrian @stilgherrian.com · 29/09/2026
“Trial of live facial recognition in London stations leads to a false positive and no arrests” www.theguardian.com/technology/2... “Freedom of information request finds six-month trial cost £320,000, used almost 100 police hours and led to just one – incorrect – alert.”
theguardian.com
Trial of live facial recognition in London stations leads to a false positive and no arrests
Freedom of information request finds six-month trial cost £320,000, used almost 100 police hours and led to just one – incorrect – alert
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 29/09/2026
According to America.gov, it’s not totally clear if it’s illegal to marry an eagle, so I might still have a chance!
what part of U.S. law states that I cannot marry an eagle, because TBH I'm skeptical
There is no statute titled "you cannot marry an eagle." Two separate rules apply.
Marriage is between two people
Federal law treats marriage, for federal purposes, as a union between 2 individuals that is valid where it was entered into.
• 1U.S.C. § 7 7
States issue marriage licenses. An eagle is not a person who can get a license or consent. I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice.
Eagles are separately protected
Bald and golden eagles may not be taken, possessed, molested, or disturbed without a permit.
• Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C.
668-668d) 7
• "Take" includes capture, molest, or disturb.Eagles are separately protected
Bald and golden eagles may not be taken, possessed, molested, or disturbed without a permit.
• Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C.
668-668d) 7
• "Take" includes capture, molest, or disturb.
Trying to "marry" an eagle would still run into those possession and disturbance rules.
I cannot verify a single line of the U.S. Code that saysạẠmarriage to an eagle is prohibited" by those words. The practical bar is that marriage is for two individuals, and eagles are protected wildlife.
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Your periodic reminder that "the company ignored employees' warnings" very often just means "people discussed what to do and not everyone agreed." Having these conversations is good. Fearing that open discussion will lead to gotcha headlines is bad.
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Slightly tipsy tech journo discussion at the bar tonight was how SQL Server just keeps on trucking (the smarts that have been in the SQL Server team over the decades are probably unmatched)
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Killed by Google @killedbygoogle.com · 29/09/2026
Let the countdown begin.
Screenshot of Killed by Google website showing the entry for ChromeOS. On the right is a guillotine icon with June 2034 below it. The description reads:

Done for in almost 8 years, ChromeOS was an operating system that powered Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, tablets, and other devices. It will be about 23 years old.
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Gary Alexander @garyalexander.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Greek life is so cool because, even if they aren't cooking meth in the basement and some are, they create similar disincentives to blow the whistle or confront other members as the mafia: doing the right thing risks blowing up your housing situation, current social life, and future networks.
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Kevin Pilch @pilchie.dev · 29/09/2026
Our 1.0-beta.1 release of the Rust SDK for Azure Cosmos DB is out. We're considering this a release candidate for a 1.0 release coming soon - give it a spin and let us know if you run into any issues. #CosmosDB crates.io/crates/azure...
crates.io
crates.io: Rust Package Registry
crates.io serves as a central registry for sharing crates, which are packages or libraries written in Rust that you can use to enhance your projects
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Ken Tindell @kentindell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“Prosecutors in California claim the US Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service and Department of Defence bought Oxygen Forensics’s software on the understanding that it was American-owned and developed. The developers who write the software are actually based in Russia.”
apple.news
Met stops using software after Moscow spy agency links revealed — The Times and The Sunday Times
Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, the founder of Oxygen Forensics Inc, was in court on Tuesday after being arrested on a US extradition warrant
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Musk, asskissing after Trump’s meeting with TechBros aboutAI: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of AI--Pardon me. Super Intelligence…”
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Joe Uchill @joeuchill.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'm still looking for infosec researchers who've published research outside of traditional academic journals (e.g., at a hacker conference or as a corporate report) for a research project. If that's you, send me a note. Ostrich for engagement.
Woman hitting ostrich skeleton with picnic basket says "take that, you ostrich skeleton!"
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Eden Marie @neonepiphany.com · 29/09/2026
Hey XBOX, this should now be available to everyone, not just Insiders! You may need to restart your console to get the new functionality.
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alexis simpson @amutepiggy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
just a reminder that one reason alt text is cool as hell is: if the website is breaking and the images aren't loading, you can still enjoy the image posts with alt text
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Vikram Saraph @vikramsaraph.com · 29/09/2026
So cool to see this out in public! I don’t think I’ve seen Bluesky’s logo advertised out in the Real World before. @wmata.com
WMATA sign with Bluesky logo
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026
Huge congratulations to our colleagues at @iccl.bsky.social on this win! In a landmark ruling on 25 Sep, the ICCL secured a precedent that will reshape how Big Tech companies defend themselves in GDPR class actions that impact their operations across the entire EU enforce.ie/digital-data...
enforce.ie
ICCL secures landmark precedent against Big Tech - Enforce
Landmark ruling will reshape how Big Tech companies defend themselves in court for EU-wide GDPR class actions
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Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
After a day of talking semantics and data models and the way that every org does things too differently for any of this to be standardised, I find myself wondering “do ontologies replicate philology”
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