Nick Harkaway
@nickharkaway.com
Author. Also husband, dad, clothing-repairer, dog-walker. Decreasingly rigorous on social media. Happy to receive simple work queries here; anything more involved contact Patrick Walsh @ PEW Literary in London or email me. www.linktr.ee/harkaway He/him
I would be EXTREMELY annoyed to discover my PR is "AI"-generated, and as someone bombarded with dozens of "AI"-generated emails daily, I assure you the stink of "AI" is immediately noticable and immediately dismissible. Publishers are not doing their new books any favors in using it.
Adam Morgan@adamm0rgan.bsky.social · 3d agoFor @wired.com, I spoke with workers about the quiet push to experiment with AI tools from book publishing executives at the Big Five. www.wired.com/story/book-p...
This is the real Russia Report, suppressed five years ago by Boris Johnson “I asked the question coming to Downing Street: was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? And I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was.” @andyburnham.bsky.social
It would be remiss of me not to mention to @nickharkaway.com and @aidantruhen.bsky.social 😉 that last night we binged half of Kill Jackie and we’re really enjoying it.
I suppose it’s interesting that people inside the bubble are giving up the best things to AI models so they can do less good things with their time.
🎃👻🧙♀️ Vio the VVitch 🧙♀️👻🎃@viothevvitch.myatproto.social · 4d agothis is so fucking sad
Blimey.
François Guité@francoisguite.bsky.social · 2d agoUsing AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things | University of California Berkeley news.berkeley.edu/2026/10/09/u... AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance | arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721 #freeaccess
Carson would be a win for people who write totally bonkers psychescapes and do not care whether you find them easy to understand and I would be down with that. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/o...
Anne Carson and Can Xue favourites to win Nobel prize in literature
The Canadian poet and Chinese experiment writer are the bookmakers’ favourites to win, with Haruki Murakami, Gerald Murnane and Margaret Atwood also in the mix
theguardian.com
I swear: on present showing, if an actual asteroid is detected on course to wipe out the UK in fifteen years, our governing apparat will spend the entire time blathering on about immigration, then proudly unveil a largely nominal affordable housing scheme at the projected impact site.
Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway.com · 5d agoThere‘s a fair amount of whiffle kicking around in this piece, but one para stands out to me: “...It is currently illegal to develop a frontier large language model based on the transformer architecture, given the copyright position that we have,” www.techpolicy.press/uk-wants-to-...
There‘s a fair amount of whiffle kicking around in this piece, but one para stands out to me: “...It is currently illegal to develop a frontier large language model based on the transformer architecture, given the copyright position that we have,” www.techpolicy.press/uk-wants-to-...
UK Wants to Lead the World on AI Safety. It Can’t Decide Where To Start
Evie Breese reports on the UK's push to lead AI regulation as ministers grapple with how far rules should go and which risks to target.
techpolicy.press
ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...
Unsolicited writing advice, no. 118: Most of your writing happens away from your desk, when you’re driving, walking, going about your daily business. To activate that mode, add ONE sentence to your WIP as you get up every morning, and keep the mental plates spinning for the rest of the day..
Currently suffering from a plague of rat. Yes, rat. Just the one, but it's very persistent.
Local greengrocer appears to have closed. Really great fruit apparently not sufficient to stay open.
Pleased to report that my page is a) basic b) largely impersonal and c) wrong. Still creepy as shit, though.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6d agoLaunched in May, “the page uses data from customers’ activity to generate details about them in categories like Product Preferences, Interests & Hobbies, and Home & Family, which Amazon then uses to personalize users’ product experiences.”
Why would a VPN trigger a “can’t find server error” error when opening an unsubscribe link from an email?
Paging @chuckwendig.bsky.social
Kwiaht@kwiaht.org · last wk.The Heritage Apple Corps have found trees in central Oregon that are genetic matches for some of the rare "lost" apple varieties we find in the islands. With more sampling, both here and there, we hope to be able to properly identify these varieties and bring them back into production.
There is just so much going on in this short article. You kind of have to read it.
Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · last wk.
It's not exactly the book, and that's fair... and on its own terms, Kill Jackie is just so much bloody fun. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6q_...
KILL JACKIE | Official Trailer (2026) 4K
YouTube video by JoBlo Movie Network
youtube.com
Watching now. Fkn great telly. CZJ and her thick accent. Boss moves 🙌🏼
Is anyone still selling reusable FFP2 masks at this point? Or are we back to the standard disposables? (I always really wanted that insane geometric mask someone came up with...)