iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Would you be free to send me a DM? I’m looking into the bridge attacks. Would appreciate your input.

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Protests across France in the capital today. With @paulybrown.bsky.social for the BBC live page. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm...

Two screengrabs from social media videos filmed on 2 October showing smoke from the same fire in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
In one, taken at ground level, people crowd and film near the fire, the other is taken from a rooftop view showing a high-rise building and a tall white chimney, as well as the smoke.

000

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Joe Tidy BBC News @joetidy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Bizarre update/ twist in the FBI hack case. The hackers - Shiny Hunters - are now saying that they won't publish the stolen data on their darknet site and actually 'never intended to'. They sent me and other reporters this ridiculous statement saying the media 'took the story out of context'.

2188

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There's a social media scam featuring AI-generated injured soldiers shilling moody goods. Be on the lookout. Great story from Nick Stapleton for BBC Morning Live. AI detection and sense-checking from me and @shayan86.bsky.social

914291

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Joe Tidy BBC News @joetidy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Exclusive: Special agents' blood and urine test results stolen in FBI hack. Cyber-criminals who hacked the FBI say they have extremely sensitive medical data for thousands of its special agents. BBC News has seen samples of the stolen "fitness-for-work" medical examinations, which...

3138

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Bees United @beesunited.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

25 years ago, Bees United held our first-ever AGM. It was part of a chain of events that helped BU save the club & set the foundations for today's successes www.beesunited.org.uk/in-focus/how-…

022

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

BRENTFORD, the numbers. End the weekend unbeaten. 4th in the Prem 3rd highest scorers 4 wins from 7 games this season 2 tricky away cup ties overcome 18 goals scored 11 different scorers Not bad for the 13th stop for the 267 from Hammersmith to Hounslow.

static.klipy.com

Nyet967304 Igor Thiago

Alt: Igor Thiago of Brentford hugs Beto of Everton

160

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

How close were Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt and many European security advisors to at least two Russian drone strikes on Sunday? Lots of geo work, down to Polish train timetables and timing sight:sound difference of an explosion. With @shayan86.bsky.social, edited by @olgar.bsky.social.

34219

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Bit of background for Houthi's anti-Saudi actions since Iran asked, and they agreed, to target "regional enemies". For BBC Verify / live page: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm...

Satellite images show Houthi strikes on Saudi oil refineries in July
published at 17:05
17:05
By Richard Irvine-Brown

If the smoke plume visible today on Saudi Arabia’s oil pipeline which connects the Gulf to the Red Sea is confirmed to be from a Houthi attack, it would be the latest incident where the Iran-backed armed group has targeted Saudi oil infrastructure.

On 27 July, the Houthis claimed to have struck oil refineries in both the east and west of Saudi Arabia.

Satellite images on the day confirmed a large, dark fire at the south east corner of the refinery at Aqabiq, on the east coast.

Planet Labs satellite image of an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. A grid of buildings, tiny at this size, laid out in a grid pattern against the very faint yellow sand of a desert. To the bottom right is a large, dark column of smoke.

Text: A larger smoke plume was seen on 26 July on the Saudi west coast, at the refinery north of Jazan.
Image: A massive black column of smoke, seen on a Sentinel-2/Copernicus satellite image, stretching for miles over the faint blue sea, down the Saudi Arabian west coast. A smaller black column of smoke is beside it from a second fire.

031

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Joe Tidy BBC News @joetidy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I started writing this BBC InDepth feature on Tuesday. Then the story evolved quite significantly. Writing it became a live fire situation as more and more news came in. AI safety has never been more pressing and I have tried to explain it all here. Ahttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74edv9887eo

bbc.co.uk

Can humans stay in control of AI?

AI agents went on an uncontrolled hacking spree, leaving some in the industry worried

2197

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

(Other restaurants are available.)

000

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

So, well done, this is the end. The pics appear not to be gen-AI. At first glance, there are warnings of other digital manipulation (is photoshopping a brand name?). However, every test shows these warnings are only warnings, not proof. But please try these things for yourself!

020

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Noise residuals (cf. the face to the rest of the photo): The granular detailing of the face in the close-up pic is the same level as the rest of the photo. The detailing of the face in the other pic is above the background, but the background is more washed-out, possibly due to lighting.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Boundary test: Is there speckling all around the face, caused by it being digitally imported from somewhere else? There's a little at the sides, against the stark walls, but not under the chin where it meets the neck. Or: No abrupt noise discontinuity.

Screengrab from Forensically website, using the magnification tool, showing natural transition between face and neck in a picture of Nicolas Maduro.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Testing the hands and face for things like colour and edging, they appear in the same ballpark. Or: Wherever the hands and face came from is probably the same source, and there's no evidence of AI doing anything.

Screengrabs from MeVer, three blue images of a picture of Nicolas Maduro, with hands and face highlighted in red and green.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The pics have consistent lighting, shadow and pixel resolution between the face and the rest of the picture, so this may be MeVer detecting Maduro's face is unlike anything else in the grey/lined photos. Essentially, it's the most complicated part of the pictures.

120

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

MeVer, an image verification site, flagged Maduro's face being photoshopped in. For starters, we can at least say AI didn't do this. Let's put them through Forensically, a hands-on verification site with a range of tools...

Screengrab from MeVer website analysis of pictures of Nicolas Maduro, showing three blue images, with parts highlighted in red.

130

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Whatever AI detector you use, and you should use them, use a few. You can't use too many. Google, TikTok, Meta, OpenAI and others are all trialling tools anybody may use. These Maduro pictures were run through six detection engines, all came back as no AI generation detected.

120

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

What about the AI clues we all know to look for? Hands / face / clothing material: All look consistent. Not too much of anything. No blending. Note: Fingers, which AI engines used to struggle with, aren't really a giveaway anymore. Thank you, Snopes: www.threads.com/@snopesdotco...

threads.com

snopes.com (@snopesdotcom) on Threads

❌ No, Trump didn't post an AI photo of a 6-fingered Navy sailor.

130

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Both photos have the same luminance and chrominance, and are both progressive JPEGs. Whatever else, these two photos went through very similar final encoding processes. (Which wouldn't be apparent in standard gen-AI, unless prompted to make two images look like JPEGs with the same encoding.)

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

We can, however, show digital tampering such as local processing / manipulation is unlikely, by performing a masked-glyph test. Basically, pretend the stamp isn't there and compare the pixels around the area. The changes in pixel busyness can be explained by the difference in the underlying photo.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Second, the noise around the first timestamp isn't a neat rectangle, which makes it most likely the noise is a result of what is immediately behind the time-date stamp in each photo.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

First, we can discount the idea the the timestamp from one has been overlaid on the other. We can be confident these are not the same raster object (digital image arranged in a grid). One is 335x53px, the other is 315x51px.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

However, magnifying the date/time stamp shows they appear inconsistently applied. Note the different degrees of speckling around the numbers. If these were applied in the same way, we'd expect them to have the same level of noise around them.

Details from pictures of Nicolas Maduro, with the date stamp of 2026 magnified to show different levels of noise.

110

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Don't take 25 June as definite. The date could be overlaid at any point. The camera's settings could be off. (We've all had cameras with mad date settings we haven't fixed, right?) We can't tell from meta data as social media platforms overwrite or erase data in different ways.

120

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

But they are the same background. We can tell from the faded right-angled line drawn in black. The colour change could be from different lighting, particularly if one photo was taken with a flash, the other wasn't.

Details from two pictures of Nicolas Maduro in grey, against a breezeblock wall. The focus is on a hand-drawn black right-angled line on the wall.

120

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The time/date display is from a DVR/DSLR (or mocked up to be). They display the same time to the minute. This suggests the images were taken at the same time, but the background colour looks different.

Details from two photos of Nicolas Maduro, in grey, against a breezeblock background, with a time/date display of 18:05 on 25 June 2026.

120

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Check for consistent social media use of the images: There was! The copies used for AI detection were from X (~64kb each), but the copies above are from Telegram, in higher quality (~100kb each) to use for digital manipulation tests. The pics also appeared on Maduro's FB and TT pages.

A file browser screengrab showing four JPG files downloaded on 31 August 2026. Two have filesizes around 100kb, marked TG, and two have filesizes around 64kb, marked X

130

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Were pictures of ex-president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro in prison were real or AI-generated? There was some debate last weekend. We didn't find any AI generation, but there is enough about the images to test for other digital forgery. Here's a how-to for anybody to try. THREAD...

Nicolas Maduro, with dark hair and moustache, smiles and flashes a V-victory sign with his right hand, while holding his glasses in his left hand. He wears a light grey sweater and is stood against a plain breezeblock wall of off-white and mid-grey.

Nicolas Maduro, with dark hair and moustache, wearing glasses, smiles and flashes V-victory signs with both his hand. He wears a light grey sweater and jogging bottoms, with white trainers, and is stood against a plain breezeblock wall of off-white and mid-grey.

1154

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

We Geek Girls @wegeekgirls.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

‘Batman: The Animated Series’ premiered on this day 34 years ago! (September 5, 1992) 🦇 Created by Bruce Timm & Eric Radomski. Voice cast: Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Loren Lester, Bob Hastings, Robert Costanzo, Richard Moll, Mari Devon, & more. #OnThisDay #BTAS

471889774

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

900 dead in Gaza this year; 1,300 since the ceasefire. @emmapengelly.bsky.social presenting our work. With verification also by @paulybrown.bsky.social and @benedictgarman.com.

12924

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Jack (tehTrunk) @tehtrunk.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Can I get from Tottenham to Nottingham using only public bus services?

2027167

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

10 acts you’ve seen as support acts: Comeback Kid The Descendents Money Mark Tryptikon Built To Spill DJ Shadow A Wilhelm Scream Soundgarden Faith No More Grant Hart

040

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Bianca Britton @biancabritton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

🧵 BBC Verify spent this week investigating the floods that devastated the Nepal-Tibet border. We verified more than 30 videos, used satellite imagery and CCTV to trace the path of the floodwaters, and investigated what caused it Here’s some of our work from the past few days:

1134

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

James #Webb Space Telescope Stellar Populations and the Interstellar Medium Initial mass function in the lowest metallicity protocluster in the Galaxy - From Jacint Roger (landru79.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/2paZywk

Initial mass function in the lowest metallicity protocluster in the Galaxy
date_obs: 2022-10-19
targname: #Sh2-284
instrume: #NIRCAM

NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/j. Roger

012527

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Rocky Horror and Jolene are huge memories for me. So was the Winnie the Pooh cartoon, Transformers, Gremlins and Predator. Peter Cullen’s voice of Eeyore, Ironhide and Optimus Prime, plus his noises for some of my favourite monsters will always be with us. Legend. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Peter Cullen: Optimus Prime and Eeyore voice actor dies

Cullen voiced the heroic Optimus Prime in the Transformers TV series and then the Hollywood films.

081

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Laura Cress @cressup.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My exclusive interview with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma up now - video to come www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

3357

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

It’s good! The songs are short! They’re mates with Arab Strap.

010

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Lewes train derailment investigation. How early verification work can spearhead a news story: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6...

Early images from derailment examined by BBC Verify
published at 13:36 19 August

By Adam Durbin and Richard Irvine-Brown

Shortly after reports of the derailment emerged, photos showing overturned carriages began to circulate on social media.

BBC Verify examined many of them to check their authenticity as AI-generated images and old pictures claiming to be new can circulate when news breaks.

One image that we verified as authentic was taken from some distance way and gave us an early indication that at least two carriages had derailed and an emergency response was under way.

Perhaps the most striking picture that we confirmed was real showed at least four people standing on top of a train carriage while one man could be seen peering out of an opened set of doors.

But the key point of interest in the image was what appears to be buckling in the rails behind the overturned carriage.

020

Reposted by Richard Irvine-Brown

Richard Courtice @richardcourtice.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Indeed, might you have time to plug a sensible and informative programme about ADHD? www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... it features an archive clip of your good self.

bbc.co.uk

Archive on 4 - Trouble Staying Still: ADHD's Identity Crisis - BBC Sounds

Sally Marlow reveals the changing faces of ADHD and why it remains so contentious.

2396

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Which would be roughly: 51.603624, 0.538502 Or 800m further to the east.

Composite of image of helicopters landed in a dry, grassy field near suburban homes in Wickford, Essex, next to an image from Google Maps showing the same location in a representative 3D satellite image.

000

Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

We can do the same to verify the images of the air ambulance in this post: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6... Simply looking for the nearest space open enough for a helicopter to land.

A red and yellow air ambulance helicopter flying over the brown roofs of suburban homes in Wickford, Essex.

100