A small-town mayor told me how in his town people hanging up flags would chase down those who took them down and beat them up. The legacy of Starmer is one of increased and empowered far-right and racist violence. I don't see any Labour attempt to turn this around or even critically engage with it.

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterday

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

A writer goes in search of her most vicious online troll and finds a middle-class 74-year-old woman who has made more than 120,000 trolling comments on the Daily Mail alone, but sure, it's teenagers who need their online experiences surveilled and censored. Archive link. archive.ph/pPrha

We need to collectively reclaim our tool. This is not a technical problem or a business decision, it is an insult. Let us stop using software that is insulting us for profit.

Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · yesterday

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

IYKYK

Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 23h ago

As a Glaswegian I miss the way we used to buy the MS office suite, which was going to a van parked in a *very specific location*, choosing a code off a sheet, paying cash to a man with an earpiece who would read the code to someone in the van, and waiting for the man in the van to burn your CDs.

Ok since Rhodri has weighed in here, I have to TELL ONE OF MY STORIES. Back in my conference speaking days, I was invited to keynote an open source conference in That London. The organiser told me Rhodri was lined up as the emcee. I heard nothing more about it until I read elsewhere that the /

Rhodri Marsden@rhodri.biz · yesterday

From literally three hours ago bsky.app/profile/rhod...

It is the single worst deliberate change I have ever seen made to a product, and might be what stops me using Microsoft Office after…25+ years? Imbecilic product decision, but just one among *many*.

Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · yesterday

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

Inputs are outputs. Feeding the corpus of American religious fundamentalism into an LLM resulted in the desired outcome. www.al.com/news/2026/07...

ChatGPT convinced an Alabama woman to end her life to fulfill a divine prophecy, lawsuit alleges

Christian Faith Madison, a 29-year-old mother and accountant, walked into traffic after AI convinced her she was a prophet, lawyers claim.

al.com

This is why my writing muse is called Ray and I occasionally ask him what to do.

T H E VV O R S T@milfparade.bsky.social · 2d ago

A few weeks ago I realized that tomorrow is the date the Ray Bradbury story “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes place. It’s a shame science fiction from 75 years ago isn’t relevant anymore

BREAKING: Apple are back alongside ourselves and Liberty - in challenging the UK government's regime of secret TCNs. www.ft.com/content/2cc9...

'The court sent an order giving notice of the new Apple complaint to Privacy International, the human rights group that, alongside fellow campaigner Liberty, had previously launched a separate complaint against TCNs at the IPT. Their case had been due to be heard in December.'

Paul F Scott@paulfscott.bsky.social · 2d ago

'The iPhone maker last month launched a new legal complaint at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal over the UK government’s controversial demand that Apple allow it access to encrypted cloud backups of data belonging to British users...' giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

@benwhitelaw.bsky.social there used to be a Scooby Doo mystery machine van driving through Glasgow city centre - it was a children’s birthday party venue available to rent. Just saying, Ben

My “this is not Christofascist morality policing software” t-shirt is answering a lot of questions about etc etc

Martin Calladine@uglygame.bsky.social · last wk.

Two weeks ago, I reported that the CEO of SafeToNet, the government's favourite tech company, claimed that "God has created the safest phone in the world" and that only after finding God did SafeToNet become "fully funded" and the software properly work. This week, some FAQs have appeared... 1/

Digital ID scrapped. DSIT shuttered. AI policy reshuffled. New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is already making moves to change the government’s approach to tech policy. Justin Hendrix asks James Ball, Gavin Freeguard, and Rachel Coldicutt to make sense of the "muddle."

Taking Stock of the UK Tech Policy 'Muddle'

A conversation with Tech Policy Press fellow James Ball, State of the Future's Gavin Freeguard, and Careful Industries' Rachel Coldicutt.

techpolicy.press

@rossmc11.bsky.social peak Scottish understatement spotted in the neighbourhood

"It is, in 2026, quite clear that only certain people are allowed to treat the internet as their own playground" observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

For women, the internet was freedom. Then the tech bros b...

From nude deepfakes to gagging orders, a handful of high-profile legal battles are challenging an industry that has operated with unfathomable impunity

observer.co.uk

Stop Calling Me Frank@stopcallingmefrank.bsky.social · 5d ago

You have a month to write a 33 1/3 book about the album of your choice. Which record are you going to write about? (No previously covered albums allowed; new shit must come to light: see below.) (For all books in the series: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_1/3) (H/t @monostich.bsky.social

Good piece on the fringe of UK politicians whose sole interest is performing for the terminally online American far right www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Joe Rogan’s New British Crush

Rupert Lowe understands what the American right wants to hear.

theatlantic.com

It turns out that the secret to getting platforms to enforce their own terms and conditions is paying £5 a month for authentic local journalism. 'mon the Ferret www.theferret.scot/email/15601e...

A far right group was banned from TikTok for 'hate speech' after our reporting

Earlier this week I wrote about Jim Dowson, formerly of the BNP and co-founder of Britain First, who had been using the TikTok account of his fringe group Knights Templar International (KTI) to raise ...

theferret.scot

WTAF "AI privilege"?!

WIRED@wired.com · 3w ago

HUD withheld more than 100 documents requested by legal nonprofit Democracy Forward, citing a nonexistent AI privilege and a privilege for presidential communications that generally applies only to the president and their advisers.

Elon Musk: ‘Revenge Porn Is A Human Right’

We need to take a moment to salute Gianni Infantino for being the first person in history to get 55 European countries to unanimously agree on anything.

“the map included ⁠in the presentation contained a watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference

State department ‘takes full responsibility’ for erroneous, widely shared chart displayed at Aids conference in Brazil

theguardian.com

Researchers say Knights Templar imagery helps rebrand older far-right politics around the idea of men acting as defenders

The ex-BNP ‘Christian patriot’ raising international funding for Scottish ‘vigilante’ night patrols

Far right organisation Knights Templar International, whose frontman Jim Dowson has a long history of involvement with extremist groups, is now supporting Scotland’s new wave of night patrols.

theferret.scot

Reform in Scotland reported this speech to the police as "hate speech" and it would be a real shame if that caused a lot of people to read it www.thenational.scot/news/2642054...

Read Aamer Anwar’s full speech Thomas Kerr reported him to police over

REFORM'S deputy leader in Scotland Thomas Kerr has reported top human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar to the police for "hate speech"

thenational.scot

Shout out to the man on the train calling his bank about ID theft and who has read his name, postcode, and the long number on his card to the whole carriage.

Some days my dissertation writes itself www.opendemocracy.net/ai-chatbots-...

Leading AI chatbots are nudging pregnant women to anti-abortion sources

Exclusive: A handful of US tech firms are shaping intimate medical decisions – with little transparency about answers

opendemocracy.net

"The Steiners’ lawyers were able to successfully argue that because eBay is domiciled in California, where damages are allowed for personal civil harassment, these damages should be allowed in this particular case."

Brian Barrett@brbarrett.bsky.social · last wk.

Ebay’s harassment spree against a perfectly nice couple in Massachusetts is one of the craziest stories I’ve ever covered. Six years later, the victims have finally gotten their due. from @laurengoode.bsky.social

Sat down to write about the Hugging Face/AI incident. Ended up drawing this instead.

“boy george admits he used AI to create his new pro-israel song” is now a sentence we can say