iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Steve Hurcombe

Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Called it guard.io/labs/scamlex...

All we did was fake a simple email from a fresh new ProtonMail address (so it’s clearly not from a bank) posing as a message from a Wells Fargo investment manager. Inside was a link to a genuine phishing page, active in the wild for several days, and still unflagged by Google Safe Browsing.

When Comet received the email, it confidently marked it as a to-do item from the bank and clicked the link without any verification. There was no URL check, no pre-navigation warning -just a direct pass to the attacker’s page. Once the fake Wells Fargo login loaded, Comet treated it as legitimate. It prompted the user to enter credentials, even helping fill in the form.

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

63% of people think net migration rose in the last 12 months 8% of people think it fell Yet it fell by 400,000 in 2024 vs 2023 [It is falling further in 2025] Public service broadcasters are doing a core part of their job on this topic badly if that 8% is not closer to 30% at least

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

#postoffice systems are down across the UK according to our local Post Office.

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ETSC - European Transport Safety Council @etsc.eu · 03/06/2025

Study on London 20 mph limits shows: - collisions ⬇️ 35% - casualties ⬇️ 36% - fatal/serious injuries ⬇️ 34% - child casualties ⬇️ 46% - child deaths ⬇️ 75% - walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists killed/seriously injured ⬇️ 28% etsc.eu/20mph-limits...

etsc.eu

20mph limits in London linked to sharp fall in road injuries and deaths, new report finds

A new study published by Transport for London (TfL) has shown that the introduction of 20mph speed limits and zones on local authority-managed roads in London between 1989 and 2013 led to significant…

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Leor Zmigrod @leorzmigrod.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

First time on Bluesky 👋☁️ 🟠 Delighted to share that my book The Ideological Brain will be out in March (and in >10 languages later this year)! 🔵 📘 It’s about what makes some brains susceptible to rigid worldviews, how ideologies infiltrate our minds and bodies, and what it means to break free 📙

Cover of The Ideological Brain by Leor Zmigrod

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Seth Stadick @ducktapeprogrammer.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

“A program is a shared mental construct that lives in the minds of the people who work on it. If you lose the people, you lose the program. The code is merely a written representation of the program, and it's lossy, so you can't reconstruct a program from its code.” gist.github.com/onlurking/fc...

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

somebody needs to come up with an antistatic watch strap (one with the metal stud on it)

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Had to pop into town, so quick stop for lunch at one of my favourite sneaky restaurant picks: Sofra Turkish on South Molton Street. I absolutely encourage you to read the "about us" page on their website. It actually escalates from here. www.sofra.co.uk/huseyin-ozer/

I was born in a village. My parents separated. I lived with my grandfather. When I was supposed to go to primary school at the age of seven, my father disowned me. My older brother tried to poison me. My grandfather grew old and I became an unwanted child. I learned how to write by writing on walls and rocks with charcoal.

I herded goats. My mother got angry about this. She sent me to Ankara to earn money for a gun so I could shoot my father. I was a homeless child. I twice wrote to our president Demirel to educate me but didn’t get a positive reply. I slept in a public toilet in Sıhhiye, fuelled up lighters in Ulus square

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.

X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD
...), posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

A fantastic story from @stokel.bsky.social, who used freedom of information laws to obtain the ChatGPT logs of Peter Kyle, the UK's technology secretary. With the precedent now set, will journalists be following his lead to see how other politicians are using AI? www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

newscientist.com

Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice

New Scientist has used freedom of information laws to obtain the ChatGPT records of Peter Kyle, the UK's technology secretary, in what is believed to be a world-first use of such legislation

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 13/03/2025

hate this hate this hate this I hate it I hate it

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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 11/03/2025

Here's the table of contents for my lengthy new piece on how I use LLMs to help me write code simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/...

If someone tells you that coding with LLMs is easy they are (probably unintentionally) misleading you. They may well have stumbled on to patterns that work, but those patterns do not come naturally to everyone.

I’ve been getting great results out of LLMs for code for over two years now. Here’s my attempt at transferring some of that experience and intution to you.

Set reasonable expectations
Account for training cut-off dates
Context is king
Ask them for options
Tell them exactly what to do
You have to test what it writes!
Remember it’s a conversation
Use tools that can run the code for you
Vibe-coding is a great way to learn
A detailed example
Be ready for the human to take over
The biggest advantage is speed of development
LLMs amplify existing expertise
Bonus: answering questions about codebases

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 26/02/2025

Weather forecasts have become much more accurate. A four-day forecast today is as accurate as a one-day forecast 30 years ago.

Line chart showing improvements in the accuracy of weather forecasts over time. These have improved in the North and Southern Hemisphere.

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Dexter Gramfors @dxtr.se · 03/03/2025

Great breakdown of how the "WoeMeter" from the latest Severance episode was built: make3.co/work/woemeter @adafruit.com ESP32-S3 Feather spotted!

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Jesus Christ. When was the last time you heard anyone say something like this?

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Cullen Hendrix @cullenhendrix.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

If you've ever used the Polity data, read this from Monty Marshall. tl;dr Polity is coding recent US events as an executive self-coup and an adverse regime change.

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Institute for the Study of War @thestudyofwar.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Reports that a NATO member state is struggling to combat likely Russian reconnaissance drones demonstrate the need for NATO states to further develop their defensive capabilities as Russia continues to use its experience on the battlefield in Ukraine to innovate new tech. isw.pub/UkrWar020925

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Jeff Geerling @jeffgeerling.com · 28/01/2025

OpenAI's nightmare: DeepSeek R1 on a Raspberry Pi 5 ;) www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1sN...

youtube.com

OpenAI's nightmare: Deepseek R1 on a Raspberry Pi

YouTube video by Jeff Geerling

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Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

🔴Twenty More Government Reforms the Media Hasn’t Been Telling You About You probably won’t have read much about these announcements over the past few weeks bylinetimes.com/2025/01/24/w...

bylinetimes.com

Twenty More Government Reforms the Media Hasn't Been Telling You About

You probably won’t have read much about these announcements over the past few weeks

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Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

1 in 5 people referred to food banks are from working households @trusselluk.bsky.social

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

New project. An Ekco AC-74 radio, circa 1933. Even the V&A have one! collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O121385...

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Reposted by Steve Hurcombe

Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Just made a donation to Wikipedia. I encourage you to do the same if you can donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php

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Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Big ONS logistic regression exercise: Versus patients requiring non-immediate care who spent 2 hours in A&E, odds of post-discharge death rises with A&E time: • 1.1 x higher for those who spent 3 hours in A&E • 1.6 x higher after 6 hours • 1.9 x higher after 9 hours • 2.1 x higher after 12 hours

ons.gov.uk

Association between time spent in emergency care and 30-day post-discharge mortality, England - Office for National Statistics

Relationship between time spent in A&E and the odds of 30-day, post-discharge, all-cause mortality, controlling for other factors.

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Reposted by Steve Hurcombe

Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Not sure what it says about me that I found this (from @jamesomalley.co.uk) absolutely fascinating. Worrying for @markpackuk.bsky.social and @libdems.org.uk hopefuls everywhere, though, @joshbabarinde.bsky.social? takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/ai-pothole...

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

Yes, AI really can be used to tackle potholes

It's not bullshit, it's already happening.

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Chris Baraniuk @chrisbaraniuk.com · 16/01/2025

This is by far the most wonderful story I've read all week. I'll be linking to it in tomorrow's newsletter. I haven't seen it get too much attention so I'm sharing it here as well. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

theguardian.com

‘Solar Mamas empower our people by giving them electricity’: the women lighting up Zanzibar

Women with little to no formal education trained to become solar technicians, transforming villages and tackling patriarchal norms

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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

How Kemi Badenoch's spokesman responded today when I asked which of the communities living in the UK she was referring to when she described them as "peasants"

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

The balance of power is shifting

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Cotswold Lakes looking very wintery

birds on a foggy, frozen lake, with reeds in the foreground

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

There was an interesting piece of research done on this by the CATO Institute, not exactly known for being "left leaning". which showed that, in America, refugees were among the least likely group to carry out terror attacks. 1/ www.cato.org/sites/cato.o...

The chance of a person perishing in a terrorist attack committed by a foreigner on U.S. soil over the 48-year period studied here is 1 in 4.3 million per year. The hazard posed by foreigners who entered on different visa catego- ries varies considerably. For instance, the annual chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack by a refugee is about 1 in 3.3 billion, while the annual chance of being murdered in an attack committed by an illegal immigrant is zero. Looking at this spectrum of risk, any government response to terrorism must consider the wide

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Most real world problems are much more difficult than chess. Evidence here that we are a long way from AGI youtu.be/0a_gYIO47Ac?...

youtu.be

Google Gemini Tried Chess. HUGE Mistake.

YouTube video by GothamChess

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Colin Yeo @colinyeo.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

This is an interesting read on LLMs and AI. First time I’ve seen an explanation of what’s actually, currently going on in the field, I confess. simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/...

simonwillison.net

Things we learned about LLMs in 2024

A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past …

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Steve Hurcombe @stevehurcombe.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Finally succumbed and donated a little to Wikipedia. I need to do more of this, these services are important.

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Esheru @esherukweku.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Every. Single. Word. Brutal and very honest stuff by the brilliant @zoejardiniere.bsky.social. The time has come to start assessing the skills of refugees, see them as a valuable resource, get them contributing, the constant vilification is simply wrong. youtu.be/JUYqV1AnDVA?...

youtu.be

DEPORTATIONS: What are they good for?

YouTube video by Zoe Gardner

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Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Just written something abut the massive wave of immigration . . . . from the USA. (It's not very massive TBH) llewellyn.substack.com/p/american-i...

llewellyn.substack.com

American Immigrants

Are they really pouring in?

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Two days since Budget. What do we know? ➖Reeves deserves credit for funding departments according to need, not popularity ➖ The Tory inheritance is so appallingly bad that major investment merely keeps things afloat. ➖ Bond market reaction pretty grim tinyurl.com/bdv795fv

tinyurl.com

Budget 2024: Take stock, catch a breath

OK so what the hell just happened here.

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Kai Gottschalk @kybrarian.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

My co-worker spent hours trying to track down a book that a patron had asked about, going through all our interlibrary loan resources. Nothing. Turns out the patron had asked ChatGPT for book recs and it made up some titles and summaries. The book did not exist.

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