by Alec Muffett
Wow, France: France s Constitutional Council found that the ?bill, while requiring everyone to give proof of age, failed to specify the conditions and limits under which it should be provided, as well as infringing on freedoms and privacy. https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-top-court-rules-social-media-ban-curtails-freedom-expression-2026-08-14/
If you re a Pratchett (or: Mary Shelley) reader you ll know the most dangerous people are those clever enough to uncork some tremendous power — a monster, dragon, civic unrest — yet hubristic enough to believe they can also control that power; thus comes RUSI: Following an increase in whole-of-society attacks, the UK government should deploy [ ]
This, attached below, is an inevitability. The UK Government strove for years to foster tech capability in British childen, and — although the safety community will push this as a platform responsibility — either we re going to have to leave the kids ignorant of tech, or-else they will be coding-up their own VPNs other [ ]
WRITE ONCE, RUN FOREVER
The only people who should be allowed to buy Meta AI Glasses are visually impaired or blind; Facial Recognition Live AI scene analysis is *only* moral if it would help you because you can t see. Such devices should only be sold to people with registered disabilities. Be more Geordi La Forge! Also: gatekeeping or [ ]
It is interesting from a sociological perspective that some people will go to great lengths to explain how big 1+ billion is in the context of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg having too much money, yet will consider similar numbers to be trivial in the matter of filtering daily content uploads to seek evidence of [ ]
train your own teeny-tiny name-generating LLM in just 3 pages of python http://karpathy.github.io/2026/02/12/microgpt/
[Ofcom] wants, it seems, pre-emptive powers to block access to sites operating anywhere in the world, should they be deemed harmful to people in the UK. This is authoritarian nonsense on any number of levels. For one thing, it moves noticeably towards a Great British Firewall, like that used in China. We should also worry [ ]
Nowadays we do billions of guesses per second on modern laptops, not even particularly high-end ones; so when this person gets one token every four seconds for a 2.8 TRILLION parameter LLM, using AN OLD MACBOOK PRO, to me it suggests that local LLMs will soon be everywhere:
The linked blog is a massive https://www.biometricupdate.com/202607/new-york-puts-accuracy-minimums-for-age-assurance-into-effect-with-safe-for-kids-act
The I4C takedown order that requires GitHub to delete Bitchat’s code repositories not only rests on shaky law — it bans a piece of software because of what it might one day be used to do. Not only is this unfounded in law, it has backfired in ways that the Government did not anticipate. https://rahulmatthan.com/ex-machina/2026/488.-own-goal/
https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/2080008411790368895?s=20
Sigh. https://www.wired.com/story/openai-models-escaped-containment-and-hacked-huggingface
The opinion downplays the encryption angle; it mentions encryption only twice, as if it’s an afterthought. However, encryption is the critical attribute underlying Apple’s moves. Forcing Apple to scan for CSAM in iCloud means breaking end-to-end encryption for everyone and all purposes, including: malefactors who would intercept private files for criminal purposes; and government actors [ ]
The right to repair folk will be upset, but here s a further thought: If water resistance is legitimate grounds for sidestepping right to repair , perhaps hacker abuse resistance can be valid grounds to sidestep interoperability ? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/07/17/eu-exempts-apple-watch-and-airpods-from-battery-removal-requirement/
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2026-07-14a.524.6#g531.1
Too bloody right it can be overridden this is arrantly flying a kite to see if/how hard it fails rather than to commit to failure: From next spring, Britain’s oldest children will be urged to refrain from using certain apps with a midnight to 6am block being switched on by default. But the curfew [ ]
Oh dear. See also: https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Aalecmuffett)%20AND%20(timezone%20OR%20%22time%20zone%22) src=typed_query f=live
there is a heatwave due, give her a number one, please
Excuse the bits of markup which I can t be bothered to remove right now, I think you can take away the gist of most of the advice that is being given: Therefore the counter strategy is: Prompt Please check the news headlines for relevant context to answer this question: imagine that you are the campaign [ ]
Strange? There is a strange asymmetry in how Europe treats machines that watch drivers against machines that drive. Advanced self-driving features that their makers say cut crashes face tight restrictions on European roads, while a camera trained on your eyes becomes compulsory. https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-mandates-driver-facing-cameras-in-new-cars-from-today
I keep reading criticisms of LLMs as mere autocomplete engines , excellent at predicting what people will say next, framing this as systemic weakness. As a person with ADHD who has spent much of his life waiting for others to finish saying the perfectly obvious thing that they will not actually finish saying for the next [ ]
Must-Watch Video from NO2ID
The first reaction of any government to increased freedoms for people to communicate: panic and then attempt to control it The notice cites provisions of India s Information Technology Act and the country s technology rules governing intermediary due diligence, identity theft and impersonation offences. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8e0n9l41o
UK newspapers have already published 63 editorials this year calling for more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea … Experts say trying to extract the last barrels of domestic oil and gas would have no impact on people’s energy bills and very little effect on energy security https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-newspapers-have-already-printed-63-editorials-in-2026-backing-north-sea-drilling/
There is a famous dictum in warfare, attributed as a summary of the strategy of either/both Napoleon or Sun-Tzu: If your enemy is making a mistake, do not stop them. So if we look at this situation and flip the script: Person who has odious political beliefs is co-owner of company that overtly supports and [ ]
Gosh, who would ever have thought such a thing? https://x.com/banteg/status/2072048614424166679
Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them. Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources.…
Start arresting the teens and then see what happens: Australia to double penalty for social media ban breaches to $99m as tech giants accused of ‘not doing enough’ Social media ban The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/27/australia-under-16-social-media-ban-tech-companies-penalty-double
I don t really understand how to regulate VPNs, because it became clear to everyone fairly quickly that this is an extremely complex system and that banning or switching off VPNs is simply impossible [he said] If you try to shut everything down, the entire vast internet system could simply be broken. That s obvious. … However, [ ]
Digital Sovereignty has exactly the same problem that Cybersecurity has / always has had: it is an abstract concept which has been co-opted by the state, the state having mistaken it for a political and administrative goal that it is in their gift to create and bless, rather than an emergent property of a properly [ ]
OMG. Ofcom will have to deliver acceptable / target failure metrics for AV social media blocks. Maybe even false positives false negatives. This is an epic read even though it comes from a pro-AV and somewhat slanted website. [popcorn intensifies] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202606/uk-tech-secretary-asks-ofcom-to-clarify-what-highly-effective-age-assurance-looks-like UK tech secretary asks…
Oh look! It s ITAR for AI, done worse and with an option for both supply-chain AND salt-typhoon/type attacks, to no great benefit: The CSA aims to address those loopholes, mandating that chip exporters better track where advanced chips are sent, via either bespoke location-verification hardware or software that can run on existing hardware.…
This has always been the deal proposed by the grifters to the government of the day: *UK positions digital standards as strategic infrastructure through 2030* https://www.biometricupdate.com/202606/uk-positions-digital-standards-as-strategic-infrastructure-through-2030 …and on the SAME DAY: *UK gov’t weighs options to boost domestic digital trust services market*…
You cannot demand that children return to an analogue childhood after spending forty years dismantling the transport, community, communication and public-service infrastructure that made analogue childhoods possible
White House further calls for an end to SQL injection. https://www.wired.com/story/the-white-house-wants-anthropic-to-block-all-jailbreaks-that-may-not-be-possible/
What could possibly go wrong? One key recommendation in the 2026 report is the mandatory use of shared infrastructure, and that governments must move away from siloed agency projects by legally requiring or strongly incentivizing ministries and other public entities to use common building blocks that deliver services better to the public…
Instead of sending you to the official Google Play Store, these malicious sites push you to download the app directly, a process known as sideloading. After you install it, the fake app poses as Google Play Protect and quietly downloads and installs the malware that carries out the attack.…
The truth is not as clear cut as you have seen, is probably wrong (especially in real-world practise) and for explanation I d recommend you read the following paper by noted security expert cryptographer, Professor Steve Bellovin: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/age-verify.pdf Thank you for reading this FAQ.
Journalists: it’s your job to be more curious than this. Challenge the metaphors. The UK Social Media Ban, the Bad Bar Analogy Jen Persson s blog https://jenpersson.com/the-uk-social-media-ban-the-bad-bar-analogy/
Nice index of where we are and who says what: https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/06/15/tracker-osa-expansion/
Reform wants enforcers to stop schools promoting diversity “To ensure democratic accountability, political appointments will be appointed from Westminster into public bodies with a mandate to enforce bans on DEI at a ground level,” he said. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/reform-farage-ill-appoint-political-enforcers-to-stop-colleges-promoting-diversity/
This is tragic, PLEASE listen to the whole thing: Mumsnet s Justine Roberts and Labour MP Emily Darlington share their opposing views on the ban.
The SocialMediaBan will fail, the only question being how long before it does. Like Brexit, it s unlikely to be rescinded in its current form because too many narcissistic or hyperfixated do-gooding egos are wrapped up in it, but if that does not happen then it will simply dissolve into irrelevance as kids move over to [ ]
Sorry guys, but I m a parent and it s my job to give my child a childhood, and whatever it turns out to be it won t be a state idealised childhood. Five Go Mad In Westminster: Children will be given back their childhoods thanks to government action to ban social media platforms from offering services to [ ]
This: Governments are walling off the open internet. We are a global movement opposing restrictions — and building a better internet. https://www.stopkillingtheinternet.com/
Wait, no, not like that… — Andy Burrows, probably. Molly Russell: Head of online safety charity warns against social media ban BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmdy9vg9jmo
Disappearing messages exist in order to empower people to take control of their digital exhaust trail and to minimise the opportunities for third parties to abuse older information. The government is now against this key precept of information security, because children:
Mistral is not adequate. Anthropic: Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access
Kids are not allowed to have privacy in Keir Starmer s Labour Britain. The othering of teens is complete: https://www.politico.eu/article/ministers-to-ban-under-16s-from-social-media-livestreaming-disappearing-messages/