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Stephen Crown

@stephencrown.eurosky.social
659 followers 392 following 0 posts

Technical Architect (IT) - UK based

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Stephen Crown
Schneier on Security @schneier.com · 16/10/2026
Backdooring Open-Weight AI Models This is a problem: Any open model whose weights have been edited can carry a backdoor, whether it's a task-specific fine-tune, a merged adapter or an abliterated build.... www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026…
schneier.com
Backdooring Open-Weight AI Models
This is a problem: Any open model whose weights have been edited can carry a backdoor, whether it's a task-specific fine-tune, a merged adapter or an abliterated build. We have abliterated models in the title because it's the most popular reason people download modified weights without verifying what's inside. Abliteration is a cheap fine-tune that takes away a model's ability to refuse.
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
John Bistline @bistline.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Nepal passed 5% battery electric vehicle share in August 2021 and is at 75%. The U.S. passed 5% in October 2022 and is at 6%.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Leaving X has, I'm pretty sure, hit my bookings and career. But it comes at the massive bonus of a) my own mental wellbeing and b) not providing free content for the owner of Starlink:
ft.com
Ukraine blindsided by Starlink restrictions and intelligence gaps
Moscow ignores Donald Trump’s ‘energy ceasefire’ while Kyiv’s forces experience connectivity problems on Elon Musk’s satellite network
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 13/10/2026
hahahah #fail
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Michael Liebreich @mliebreich.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Streaming now! Episode 1 of our Ukraine Deep Dive. Not to be missed! youtube.com/watch?v=NOUy...
youtube.com
How Ukraine Will Survive Another Brutal Winter | Ukraine Deep Dive 01
YouTube video by Cleaning Up Podcast
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Zelensky: "When our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms. A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations... It’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from."
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The 2016 Brexit vote was targeted by Russian “state-sponsored interference”, Andy Burnham has said, as he warned voters in France and Germany about Kremlin-backed attempts to influence their countries’ politics.  www.ft.com/content/4fcb...
ft.com
Russia ‘interfered’ in 2016 Brexit vote, says Andy Burnham
UK prime minister calls for European voters to be better informed about efforts to disrupt democratic process
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Tero Kuittinen @teroterotero.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I appreciate the way many European leaders have been trying to manage this Putin’s minion. But it’s time for Europe to acknowledge that America is an active and openly malicious threat to European security and future. It’s past time.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Just for once, I'd like to hear Farage's thoughts on this monstrous piece of sh1t.
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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Time for 2026 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread, now with storage. If you like these, you might like edition 2 of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website til end of Nov 2026. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...
worldscientific.com
Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon
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Chris Nelder @chrisnelder.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Biden implemented sanctions on oil sales in an effort to not finance Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. Trump celebrates buying Russian oil while that war drags on (after celebrating Putin's birthday).
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Andrew Rendel @andrewrendel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It is melting my brain that I now need to add the US government to my list of organisations who produce content I have to protect my children from.
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 02/10/2026
Electric cars just had their best month ever in the UK Nearly 100,000 new BEVs sold, +36% year-on-year (Data from SMMT, which continues to lobby for weaker EV targets)
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Roger @arbejdsmyren.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
In Denmark a scientist plotted data and research findings into Claude, only to see Anthropic publish the findings as something the LLM had conjured up on its own. The theft of one scientist’s data and work translates into false claims about the model’s ability to generate research #ai #eupol
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LeRaffl @leraffl.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My favourite overview of who transitions how fast to battery electric vehicles. Observations: 1. The slower transitioning countries are those that start to transition later. 2. The fast transitioning countries are generally from Asia or South America, while North America is abysmally slow
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
So uhhhhhh… Apparently meta's muse "AI" is just straight up doxxing people to strangers on FB marketplace??? This has the potential to hurt so so many people, and I genuinely wonder how long before they roll out a fix for it.
Screenshot of a post from threads

matt.j.robb & 16h (€) So muse handled my Facebook marketplace today. Just found out it told people my address and agreed a lowball price and then they showed up without it even telling me until late tonight that it messed up.

Absolutely wild. 1/2

[Embedded image of a series of text messages from a meta muse "agent" given the call sign "Jarvis" (Parts of first message obscured by its logo have been replaced with brackets and ellipses and best guesses from context):]

Heads up, Usman is […] building right now for the MX Keys Mini [. He is sta]nding in front of the Shoppers Drug [Mart.]

$10 by e-transfer. The auto-reply told him to message when he's at your door.

10:28 PM Bad news on the MX Keys Mini pickup. Usman showed up at your building around 9:15 and waited, messaged a bunch of times, and nobody came down. He left angry at 9:38 and left a negative rating.

Worse, my auto-reply told him "Yep I'm here!" at 9:27 when you clearly weren't available, which is on me. That's a bad look and it made the no-show worse.

I've sent him an apology from your account owning it and offering to try again another day. But the negative rating is real, and I should probably stop the auto-replies from claiming you're home when I can't verify that. Want me to change the pickup replies so they don't promise you're there?

[reply, presumably from the threads user]: You gotta never do that ever again don't agree for pickup unless you check with me

[Response from Muse "Agent"]: You're right and I'm sorry. That should never have happened. It's locked in now as a hard rule: i will never […you]'re there unless you've explicitly […] that specific pickup. If someone proposes a time, I'll tell them I'll check and…  Screenshot of a tweet from Ray Wong @raywongy:
    Deleted Muse after seeing this post on Threads about how it told some Facebook Marketplace sellers the guy’s address and they showed up at his door

    Dangerous and creepy

    This would have been 1000x worse if the person was a woman
    4:35 PM · Sep 27, 2026
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Happy Kicked In The Head By A Horse Day, to all who celebrate. It's the 7th anniversary of this absolute banger.
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George Eaton @georgeeaton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Lib Dem pledge to cut fuel duty by 10p is depressingly bad policy: poorly targeted, expensive (£5bn), and it weakens incentives to switch to EVs and reduce usage.
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Gunnar Hillert @hillert.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This #AI talk by #BruceSchneier at @defcon.bsky.social was superb! The usage of LLMs to find loopholes in the tax code, our political institutions etc. was quite eye-opening. Our institutions have to adapt fast. I am a little concerned about that… www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEBv...
youtube.com
DEF CON 34 - Hacking AI - Bruce Schneier
YouTube video by DEFCONConference
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 19/09/2026
I think it should be a source of deep embarrassment – and perhaps even shame – that Rishi Sunak has spoken out on this before Andy Burnham has.
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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is a really important story. You know how over reliance on AI makes you lazy and stupid? This shows how that’s happening within the military — a military, it cannot be pointed out often enough, that’s growing ever more reliant on AI. The children of Shajarah Tayyebah Elementary paid the price
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
We should be very British about this new independent nation by invading it and claiming it for the Crown. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Piddington in Oxfordshire votes to leave UK over asylum plans
Piddington residents vote over proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers nearby.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 14/09/2026
Your regular reminder: If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.
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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I’m just a person on my fucking knees begging the government to use its absolutely massive majority to do something extremely fucking popular: save our democracy.
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The Register @theregister.com · 11/09/2026
AI more likely to kill animals if it saves fuel or money
theregister.com
AI more likely to kill animals if it saves fuel or money
Machine learning models still have a lot to learn about the value of life
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
Guys but it's the fictional machine god that needs to be regulated and that we should worry about. prospect.org/2026/09/09/a...
prospect.org
Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists - The American Prospect
New hires and comments in interviews show that the AI giant is using its capabilities against dissenters.
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Reposted by Stephen Crown
Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 10/09/2026
If you're in government watching criminal-led blackshirt thugs in balaclavas wage war on the RNLI and you're hedging your bets because you're not sure who the majority of the country will side with, why do you even want to be in government? Why would you WANT to lead people you think so little of?
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Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I’ve reached the point - well actually, I reached it a while ago - where I’m militantly anti-AI. Fine - use it in bioscience labs and radiology where it might help analyse data more effectively. Use it sparingly for systems engineering. Everywhere else, it can fuck off.
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Amy Borrett @amyborrett.ft.com · 08/09/2026
Britain’s state-owned electricity system operator has awarded Palantir a £21mn contract without inviting rival bids, arguing critical processes are too reliant on its tech to run a competitive procurement process Latest for @financialtimes.com: as.ft.com/r/7fe6c0b7-2...
as.ft.com
Britain’s grid operator gave Palantir contract without inviting rival bids
Neso cited a legal exemption that removes the requirement to consider other suppliers if dependencies leave no alternative
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 08/09/2026
@ stephenkb.bsky.social hitting the nail on the head of course. "the Labour Party has now produced two governments whose response to acts of thuggery and intimidation is to reiterate that perhaps the thugs have a point" - as.ft.com/r/97d33f08-a...
as.ft.com
Labour’s muddled migration policy won’t stop thuggery
A government that can’t distinguish between ‘legitimate concerns’ and open racism is only making things worse
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Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Extreme right-wing protesters are in a stand-off with the RNLI in Portsmouth. The group, led by Danny Tommo, are waist-deep in the sea and threatening to go "under the water" if police try to arrest them. Six lifeboats monitoring. Volunteer rescuers giving up their evening for this.
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Richard Delevan @richard.wickedproblems.earth · 05/09/2026
Chatting just now with local Kent winegrower at farmer's market. This year's grapes are "smaller than peas" - not going to bother to harvest. What did he think of politicians saying 'hey enjoy your English sparkling wine thanks to climate change'? "Fucking morons."
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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
There was a very active critic of the history syllabus in the 90s. Very wise people scoffed at how much time kids were forced to spend learning about the Nazis and democratic decay in the 30s. Turns out we should have gone much harder.
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Kate Mackenzie @katemac.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
most of the supposed benefits of climate change will pan out like this
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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Content warning: Multiple men violently assault a female protester at Reform's conference at the Birmingham NEC, to the visible delight of Nigel Farage.
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Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Just seen this print in the window of a shop in the middle of Vienna, Austria.
An illustration of a very large Adolf Hitler congratulating a very small Vladimir Putin
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Naomi Smith @pimlicat.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Cambridge to probe Orr www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
independent.co.uk
Cambridge University launches probe into James Orr after Reform donations sting
James Orr stepped down from Reform UK after claims he arranged to have polling paid for by an overseas company
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Andy Brockman @andybrockman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The legwork, and the sting, which seems to have caught out James Orr, Nigel Farage and Reform-UK was carried out by Verbatim Investigations who have dropped their own take on the story.
verbatiminvestigations.com
Dirty Money: A Year Undercover in Reform UK
A yearlong investigation into Nigel Farage’s fundraising operation reveals a plot to break the law by bringing foreign money into British politics
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So it looks like Reform policy chief James Orr has straight up broken the law here. It's also exactly the same crime Farage has been accused of re: George Cottrell donating via his mother and which Parliament is currently investigating.
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Channel 4 News @channel4news.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Undercover footage verified by Channel 4 News reveals a secret plot by senior Reform UK figures to break the law on party donations. A leading legal expert is now calling for a criminal investigation. 🔗 Read the exclusive story on Substack:
channel4news.substack.com
Exclusive: Nigel Farage filmed undercover celebrating secret new foreign donations
Undercover footage verified by Channel 4 News reveals a secret plot by senior Reform UK figures to break the law on party donations. A leading legal expert is now calling for a criminal investigation.
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Jaap Burger @jaapburger.eu · 03/09/2026
"the analysis finds that the gap between real-world and type-approval emissions doesn’t decrease as electric range increases—on the contrary, the higher the electric range, the wider the gap."
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Jonas Nahm @jonasnahm.com · 02/09/2026
1/ The Connected Vehicle Security Act frames Chinese EV competition as a security and unfair-trade problem. That framing assumes US auto decline is being done to the industry, rather than coming from problems the industry hasn't fixed on its own. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/b...
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Lupita Nihongo @otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 01/09/2026
If buying isn't owning then piracy can't be theft. Any reasonable corporation knows that.
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Iceland is not in the EU, but it is a member of the Schengen area. It’s also a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and is part of the Single Market, meaning it enjoys freedom of movement with the EU. Good to know that doesn’t impact their independence. Maybe we should try it, Nige.
Nigel Farage 
@Nigel_Farage
Congratulations to Iceland on voting to keep their independence.
09:40 • 30/08/2026 •
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Giulio Mattioli @giuliomattioli.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Just a few months ago, European carmakers were arguing that market demand for EVs in Europe was "too low". But now everyone's worried about how Europeans are buying too many Chinese EVs, which suggests that European carmarkers' *supply* of EVs is too low. So which is it?
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Octopus Energy @octopus.energy · 29/08/2026
⚡️ WEEKEND HAPPY HOURS!! Are you readyyyy? ⚡️ Book your Sunday slot & prepare your devices for an hour of completely free power! Share your pics with #OctopusHappyHours to show us what you get up to 🤳
static.klipy.com
Goku's Super Saiyan Power-Up in Dragon Ball
ALT: Goku's Super Saiyan Power-Up in Dragon Ball
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pippaneill.bsky.social @pippaneill.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
NEW: The London Science Museum has ended its decades-long partnership with the oil and gas company BP in what has been described as a “seismic shift” for the museum. www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...
theguardian.com
London Science Museum cuts links with BP after decades of partnership
Campaigners say ‘seismic shift’ follows years of pressure to sever ties with oil and gas firm
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Jukka Niiranen @jukkan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
AI coding agents mean every programming language becomes COBOL. Many current developers will keep working on the code but new developers will not emerge. They'll work on a higher level of abstraction while the machine writes their COBOL. If things actually go this way: pauldix.com/the-end-of-p...
pauldix.com
The end of programming — Paul Dix
Creating software by writing code by hand and having humans review it is coming to an end. Why the Bun 1.4 release marks the end of programming as we've known it.
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