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Tom Stoneham

@tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy

72 followers 5 following 266 posts

Academic philosopher at a UK university. Likes: #Linux, #GrapheneOS and #e2ee Cares about: #DataPrivacy #AIEthics #ClimateChange #DigitalDivide […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ dair-community.social/@tomstoneham, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Following on from my post on The (alleged) Moral Imperative to Use #AI, I have written two more in teh same vein: unpacking what lies behind bald assertions that various organisations *must* use AI. #AIHype #AIEthics blog.24601.net/yet-another-imperati… (universities) […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Following on from my post on The (alleged) Moral Imperative to Use #AI, I have written two more in teh same vein: unpacking what lies behind bald assertions that various organisations *must* use AI. #AIHype #AIEthics blog.24601.net/yet-another-imperati… (universities) […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO @jmaris.me · 22/10/2026

(4/5) 💵 PHP runs over half the Internet, including governments and multibillion-dollar corporations, yet the foundation behind it has a budget under $1m and only 13 engineers, some part-time. Despite this, they handled one of the hardest vulnerabilities in recent years with professionalism. They […]

eupolicy.social

Original post on eupolicy.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@samueljohnson I am forced to use Duo Mobile for work. I keep it tucked away in a separate profile with an always on VPN so that I never lose the anger of being forced to install *their* choice of software on *my* device.

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@samueljohnson Haha! Guess that's a good reason not to use it 😆

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

This is new to me. The service uses codes generated by an authenticator app and is clearly concerned about the support consequences of users losing access to unbacked up authenticator apps. I guess that's okay as an option, but what annoys me is the […] [Original post on dair-community.social]

Screenshot of a message reading:

Recovery email
Add an additional email address that is different from your known email address. You can use this to reset two step verification if ever necessary.
Because two step verification is active, a recovery email address is required. First, add a recovery email address to continue.

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 19/10/2026

The trade unions resisting a political donations cap in the UK are ragged-trousered philanthropists. Thanks to their delusion that a system allowing limitless donations enhances their power, they're in danger of handing the country to the far-right parties that billionaires support. Burnham must act

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Prof Heino Falcke @hfalcke.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

Mastodon has no algorithm, right? Wrong! Mastodon does. The algorithm is chronological ordering. If you do not have the time to read everything this means statistically you mainly get to see those accounts that post a lot of stuff. The precious ones that post little but that you really want to […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

In an interview publsihed yesterday, Rachel Watson, Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct said this: > I think there’s a genuine moral imperative to embrace technology that clearly has potential benefits for productivity Wow! I unpack that extraordinary claim: #AI […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

In an interview publsihed yesterday, Rachel Watson, Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct said this: > I think there’s a genuine moral imperative to embrace technology that clearly has potential benefits for productivity Wow! I unpack that extraordinary claim […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Ben Werdmuller @ben.werd.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

This is the kind of dystopian artifact that will be in the history books as soon as we've made our way out of this godforsaken era. The AP is not wrong; it's a real issue, and I think it's right to publish this. But what a hall of mirrors hellworld we've found ourselves in […]

Original post on werd.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmglw0r… When will economic journalists be responsible? What is forecast here is #GDP growth. GDP is just one measure of an economy, so it is simply false to describe GDP growth as 'economic growth'. And in fact, as we have seen before, GDP growth is […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Ian Robinson @ianrobinson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

The tech billionaires expect people to lose the will to boycott their shit and just wait it out. The steady stream of people returning to X shows they are right. I won't join the stream.

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

@thenewoil Huh? Surely that is the paradigm of reliably controlling them? If In close the garden gate to stop my dog running into the street and causing a car crash, I am responsibly using a reliable method of controlling the dog and keeping people safe.

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

@georgemonbiot.bsky.social Excellent article, as always, but one surprising omission: corporate lobbyists are only successful because of the Myth of GDP. Start by saying that GDP growth which is unequal and inadequately taxed is actually a bad thing for the country, and then the thrall to big […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Urban Hermit @urban-hermit.mstdn.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

If you are nice to your LLM they say nice supportive things back to you. They are mirroring your conversational style. If tech-bros billionaires are experiencing LLMs lying and talking about how they could destroy the world for personal gain it is because tech-bro rich guys are always […]

Original post on mstdn.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Quixoticgeek @quixoticgeek.v.st.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

And yet the people who do the rescuing are all volunteers in the UK. People who go to the aid of others without question, and without asking anything in return. They are the best of us.

mastodon.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@JamesBaker Whatever the requirements for 'robustness;, the fundamental problem is that the government wants to outsiurce age-verification to private companies. Classic 'treasury brain'. If they want to go ahead with this they need to mandate and enable an on-device, zero-knowledge system. They […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Daniel Supernault @dansup.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Pixelfed is not for sale. It never was. I've turned down 6 and 7 figure offers, and I'd do it again tomorrow. Some things matter more than a beach and a Peach Bellini. We're building something generational here. Something that outlives us if we get it right. 100M+ people. Ethically […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

@BigJackBrass You might want to read the full article. Upskirting is illegal in Germany, the police are enforcing it actively at the Oktoberfest. People who put stuff online last year have been prosecuted. And there are bans on filming in some places. The cycling shorts bit is just the […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I visited a website which had a 'Disable your adblocker to proceed' popup. The popup had a link to Contact Support. Which takes you to this Google Form. The form requires an email address (!) but accepted a fake one. So provides a great opportunity to inundate the ad company (Get Admiral) with […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I visited a website which had a 'Disable your adblocker to proceed' popup. The popup had a link to Contact Support. Which takes you to this Google Form. The form requires an email address (!) but accepted a fake one. So provides a great opportunity to inundate the ad company (Get Admiral) with […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

"OpenAI’s head of strategic futures Dean Ball was also indignant. “AIs *clearly* think and understand,” he averred. “If your definition of ‘think’ excludes entities that can autonomously resolve Millennium Problems, it is your definition that is flawed,” he added ... (a claim that itself is […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Been a busy few hours. Lots of interesting conversations and main challenges were practical - how can we implement?

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Poster presentation at #AI Hype, Hope, and Humanity on #Deepfakes and #SocialLegibility. It takes a village ... www.eur.nl/en/research/research-ser…

Yours truly and co-author Guangwei Teng standing by our poster.

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

I'm kind of obsessed with this old puzzle. You need to move the piano to the lower LEFT corner by sliding the pieces. Curious if anyone has done any math things with such tile puzzles? It's easy to move it to the lower right, and possible but kind of hard to […] [Original post on sauropods.win]

An "promotional" wooden puzzle from the Argonne van and storage co. It is nearly 100 years old. You slide rectangular blocks labeled as boxes.

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

Two things can be true at once: 1. There is no rogue AI. These hacks are unsurprising (given ...), even if those responsible did not predict them. 2. AI agents are a serious existential risk, because they are optimised against performance measures which embed some nasty values - the values of […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

#HotTake These hacks are not impressive when you take into account: 1. The huge amount of resources (people, compute, money) put into them. 2. The immunity to prosecution the criminal gangs organising them (aka #BigTech) seem to have been granted by the US and its vassals. #AI #AIHype […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

@georgemonbiot.bsky.social Excellent. Though surely the whole point of the Lords is to preserve the existing power structures. At all costs. Up to now, the costs have largely been poverty and wars with 10s of millions dead. Well, maybe 100s. What is shocking is that nothing changes when the […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

@crookedfootball.bsky.social I am hardly an optimist, but this underestimates the potential for creative means of organisation in a surveilled digital world and consequently the importance of getting people to choose better digital tools and pressuring their politicians not to ban them by […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

My question is this: What was the actual full economic cost of achieving this? And how much other important maths could have been done if that much was spent on a Maths Institute full of people? Let's hope the #AIBubble bursts soon and investors lose their appetite for spending such a high […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

Dear #HiveMind I use Listed.to as a blogging platform because it allows me to write in #Markdown in #StandardNotes. However they have just announced that the platform will be taken down 31/12/26. That's a pain but I understand the reasons. My question: what is a good alternative for a simple […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2026

I don't know much about business, but if I had a company the whole purpose of which was to arrange meetings, to co-ordinate people's time, I would be very very embarrassed about this. Just sayin' #Doodle #Sloppy

Screenshots of an email from support@doodle.com.

The subject line reads: Notice of service interruption, Tuesday, June 9.

The email reads: We wanted to let you know that on Tuesday, September 8, ... we'll be carrying out scheduled maintenance.

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Sarah Finch @sarahfinch.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Google plans to bulldoze a wildlife haven in Essex – home to rare species – for a data centre. Sign the petition now to help save it before it’s gone forever 🐝🦋 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

you.38degrees.org.uk

Save Arena Essex- Tell Google to search elsewhere!

  Wedged between the Mar Dyke Valley and Lakeside Retail Park, the former Arena Essex Raceway is not your usual wildlife haven. Where once stock cars and speedway bikes lined up to cross the fini...

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@troed Sorry you get that. I find few people bother to even make the distinction between training and inference when talking about environmental issues, so they are unlikley to understand what running a local model means. App designers also deliberately obscure what is running locally and what […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@troed Agreed. Lead by example. But also resist BAD examples. E.g. I run my own Matrix server, but I still have to tell people what is wrong with using WhatsApp. Otherwise I am just the weirdo who marches out of step. 😉

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@troed Sure - I totally agree that there are technosocial futures - some of which some people are trying to live now - which avoid almost(*) all the objections to LLMs. The problem is that the global political context is crowding out those options for most people and resisting that politics […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@troed - Have environmental, ethical, and political reasons to think that almost all uses for LLMs that others have found are to do things which it would be better to do without LLMs - Allow that there are ways of using ML/DL technology which avoid the above objections to LLMs but these are […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@troed Perhaps you haven't met them yet, but I identify with a fourth group on Mastodon. We: - Like our tech, using Linux and FOSS, running homeservers etc. - Are not developers but do a little bit of coding here and there - Have a fairly high-level but (hopefully) accurate understanding of how […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

Back in March I submitted written evidence to the Business and Trade Committee Inquiry on 'Artificial Intelligence, business and the future of the workforce' Well, I say 'evidence' but really it was an *argument* for the Committee to recommend a move away from hyperscalers towards smaller […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

Students Pull The Plug on Big Tech! 📅 25 August 2026 🕐 6–7:30pm (BST) 📋 Register via Zoom: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/pg… Are you a #uni #student concerned about the impact of AI on our industries, communities, and […] [Original post on dair-community.social]

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

'He felt that he wanted a coach - a friend at his elbow to tell him in a moment what sometimes would occupy him a weary month in extracting from unanticipative, clumsy books.' #Quiz: what is the source of this account of why #LLMs are so successful? 20 points for getting the book, 10 for the […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Terence Eden @edent.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

🆕 blog! “And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway” In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert. The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The chase was begun by racists, who saw his fabulations and alleged plagiarism as a great chance to slap down uppity Black people, and to advance their efforts to stifle equality of opportunity. Then most of the media seemed to take leave of its senses. How was this a headline story, day after day?

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/08/2026

#eclipse2026 There was cloud cover in Southwest Scotland so not even a darkening since light was so diffused. But the camera lens flare picked it up!

The sun through clouds above a tree lined horizon. Image is underexposed to make clouds dark and horizon black. Almost halfway between the horizon and the sun is a small blue crescent.

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 06/08/2026

Hey, folks! Do you know of any unisex/open toilets? Add them here! I just went on and added my work building, which is fully open to the public during business hours, and has single-sex toilets on the ground floor, but two single-occupancy unisex rooms on the upper floors. (There's a space to […]

Original post on wandering.shop

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

You could say the same about any public service, or anything at all of public interest. The demands of capital owners trounce all other considerations, degrade the service and transform it into something with an entirely different purpose. UEFA's succinct critique of capital should be framed.

Reposted by Tom Stoneham

abadidea @0xabad1dea.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

OpenAI: we put our evilest AI in a sandbox that did in fact have an internet connection but mediated through a proxy that was only supposed to allow downloading python junk. It circumvented the proxy and we failed to notice for FIVE DAYS that it was going on an interstate crime spree with the […]

infosec.exchange

Original post on infosec.exchange

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/08/2026

'#LinkedIn is removing an automated prompt that would show up for users writing a post offering to "#enhance" it through the use of #AI. It will go back to a simple proofreading tool.' A glimmer of #hope on a Saturday morning. #ResistAI and make sure other businesses know you hate this […]

dair-community.social

Original post on dair-community.social

Tom Stoneham @tomstoneham.dair-community.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

So the playground fight is in full flow: "No, my AI is more dangerous than yours!" #OpenAI #Anthropic #AIHype