This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era.
Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/
www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...
A Spotify page showing the lyrics "I'm the one who had your baby's eyes"
Spotify's lyrics for Blue Boy's Remember Me make it sound like it's written from the perspective of an especially evil serial killer
You expressed interest to invest £100,000 in what3words on 13 Apr 2026 View Expressions of Interest This opportunity is approved by Crowdcube This opportunity was approved as a financial promotion by Crowdcube Capital Limited on 13/04/2026, 14:23. Every opportunity on Crowdcube is reviewed to ensure it is fair, clear and not misleading.
I was recreationally reading the What3Words accounts and noted they'll need to raise more money soon, but surely they wouldn't dare run another crowdfunder given the hilariously bad financials.
Well apparently they would. Here we go again.
www.crowdcube.com/early-access...
Dull greens and gold.
Trying out a new design & layout for https://openbenches.org/ but I hate the colour scheme I've chosen.
Can anyone suggest a palette which looks clean, modern, and is accessible?
Any and all suggestions welcome.
Note to political types, aside from Palantir's leadership's values...
i) Palantir don't only sell software to NHS, there's embedded consultancy/hosting too
ii) if you need "same software" across NHS to make sharing info simpler/more secure then that software is not as well-designed as it should be
**A message from Palantir: Palantir software is helping to deliver better patient care through the NHS Federated Data Platform - including 110,000 additional operations to date, a 15% reduction in discharge delays, a 6.8% increase in patients finding out whether they need cancer treatment within 28 days, and the safe removal of 797,728 patients from waiting lists. But that is what it is - software. How that software is used is controlled by the NHS Trusts who use it, with data - legally and contractually - only able to be processed strictly in accordance with their instructions. And while each hospital Trust controls its own instance of the software, because it is the same type of software, sharing information is simpler and more secure – where Trusts decide that doing so can benefit patients. Discover how hospitals in North Cumbria, Chesterfield and across England are using the FDP to improve patient care.
Fun to see Palantir pushing their messages in the widely read UK Politico Playbook this am. Billboards at Westminster tube station next?
"DINUM announces its exit from Windows in favour of workstations running on the Linux operating system"
www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/es...
I've not looked at Martingale - I keep a particular eye on parts of the political right I'm familiar-ish with - but need to give it/others a read around at some point so I understand the broader landscape!
*glares at Claude Code*
"You're right to flag this — those URLs don't exist. I made them up when I created the sample data....For a tool whose whole value proposition is provenance, that's a significant bug: fabricated sources are worse than no sources at all."
(files alongside Civic Future and, for an earlier age group, Works in Progress's Invisible College")
The Centre for Government Reform: "Finding and preparing a new cadre of leaders to radically reform and competently run government at the highest level"
govtreform.com
Status: "...now leave the ragu to slowly simmer for at least 3 hours..."
"At first I thought" that should say, I'm only on my first coffee!
MSAI’s website also said the heat generated by the Nvidia chips is diverted into vertical farms, and featured the following quote from an unnamed Manchester food bank director: “Fresh produce is often the hardest thing for us to source, and Media Stream Al's vertical farms provide consistent, high-quality vegetables to families who need them most." The Salford site was empty when a reporter visited this week Lucy McLaughlin Kenna first said he was unaware of this quote, then suggested any of MSAI’s employees could have added it, and finally that Claude, the AI system it used to build its website, had likely added it erroneously. The claim was removed from MSAI’s website after we asked Kenna about it – and many of the company’s claimed achievements were reframed as targets.
At first though I the fake quotes allegedly made up by Claude as the fantasist data company's website was vibe built would be the :chefskiss: in here, but then I got to the bit with claims around military experience...
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/4833...
Over ten years ago I reviewed a book predicting the Professions like law would be drastically disintermediated by the advent of AI. My strong suspicion that they would not was based on their market power and control over their commercial environment... 1/
And obvs AISI should be able to access _some_ quant and qual data from within DSIT too.
A question I get repeatedly asked is:
+ "how are people currently using AI agents with UK public services?"
And there's no public answer yet - or someone who'll fund a small team, inc me!, to find out! ;))
If the AI agent providers aren't going to provide data to AISI on agent-like tool usage then some qual research would have been helpful here, dig under the hood of how people are actually using tools, what services for, where they've backed away from using them (as not a good experience yet), &c &c
"How are AI Agents used? Evidence from 177,000 AI agent tools [using quant data collected from MCP repositories]"
www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/how-are...
a social media post from an editor at The Spectator asking if it's "fair" for people on benefits - like pension credit, UC, housing benefit - get discounts at London attractions
Reform's Robert Jenrick saying "no, working people are being taken for a ride. Under a Reform UK government you won't be able to use benefits to get discounts like this" in response
Strange right wing commentator Max Tempers describing the discounts as part of the "Martin Lewis Extended Universe (MLEU)"
Sam Bowman of Stripe and Works in Progress describing this as interesting and using some strange economics thinking to describe it as "off balance sheet redistribution" and talking about it as a "significant negative externality" that makes it more costly for people to get off benefits
I see the more, um, authoritarian bits of the UK's political right like the Spectator, Reform and the Stripe/WiP/Foundations crew are now using the politics of "unfairness" to go for discounts at museums and zoos
(Ps Claude Mythos - and the stuff that follows - is just as/more important in broader AI policy, but part of the story should be why the UK isn't prepared for that inevitability yet - as amply shown by the wide range of hacks across UK...)
LRT: anyone taking OpenAIs claims about why they're cancelling Stargate UK at face value, or surprised at many of tech deals announced during Trumps visit last year slowly collapsing, is probably either a rube _or_ preparing to sell their next monorail idea...
Companies have been blaming AI for cutbacks which are really caused by economic conditions & weaknesses in their business model.
Now we have an AI giant blaming wider economic & regulatory conditions for a cutback actually caused by weaknesses in its own business model
www.bbc.com/news/article...
[muffled explanation]
bsky.app/profile/debb...
Me writing up my notes on an online event I listened to today and wondering how to describe the moment when someone seemed to turn their mic on so they could shout "Oh fuck off!" at a presenter
A social media post from Matt Clifford quoting someone else commenting on Claude Mythos' impact on cybersecurity and saying "This is correct. Extraordinary that we have this game changing moment unfolding in front of us and most elite discourse is still fake news about AI water usage or three-year-old angst about hallucinations."
It feels quite strange to have a very well-connected & wealthy tech investor who has advised two UK PMs from different political parties on AI talking about "elite discourse"
In memory of Phil Ochs - singer-songwriter, anti-war activist, father, true patriot - who took his life fifty years ago today
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmb0...
Oh yes!
