Emrys Schoemaker
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emryss.bsky.social
Emrys Schoemaker
@emryss.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.8K following 370 posts
digital, social & political transformation; research & policy @ Caribou Digital & fellow @ LSE & Graduate Institute, Geneva; RT ≠ endorsement

X: @emrys_s
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Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
bloomberg.com
China’s legislature approved revisions to the country’s foreign trade law, incorporating provisions to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests
China Revises Foreign Trade Law to Safeguard National Interests
China’s legislature approved revisions to the country’s foreign trade law, incorporating provisions to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday.
bloom.bg
December 27, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
rosamundevb.bsky.social
High profile digitalisation and Big Data project of the Belgian police in cooperation with Sopra Steria I-Police is cancelled after four years as it does not work.
December 26, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
sarahkendzior.bsky.social
The court document below is NOT new. I reprinted it in my 2020 book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT when discussing Trump's history with Epstein. Others also covered it. It was publicly available. Garland of course knew too and protected Trump. And Dems protected and defended Garland. Why pretend otherwise?
pamkeithdc.bsky.social Pam Keith @pamkeithdc.bsky.social · 3d
Merrick Garland hid this from us for 4 YEARS,

and allowed this disgusting monster to be reelected
December 25, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
marceloteson.com
Ask Yourself: Could this meeting be a zoom? Could this zoom be a phone call? Could this phone call be an email? Could this email be a text? Could this text be unsent? Could we in silence retreat into the forest? Could we, by game trails and forgotten paths, vanish into the trees?
December 24, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
gquaggiotto.bsky.social
Update on lives lost from USAID cuts www.cgdev.org/blog/update-...
Update on Lives Lost from USAID Cuts
In this blog, we report on an update to our earlier estimates of the potential mortality impacts of the administration’s aid cuts. A similar approach to our original estimates using financial data to ...
www.cgdev.org
December 22, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
bubbaprog.xyz
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
December 23, 2025 at 1:28 AM
emryss.bsky.social
AI based knowledge tools are a poor, partial and pitiful representation of the world:
faineg.bsky.social Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 5d
i am actually working on an article right now about how the vast majority of the world's information - and so many current events - are not at all legible to LLMs, a fact that a startling number of people never seem to think about
amaliasl.bsky.social Amalia S. Levi, PhD @amaliasl.bsky.social · 6d
Wait until you hear that LLMs can only train on digitized/datafied info.

Most of the FACTS scholars use are in archives/libraries.

Less than 1% of archival colletions worldwide have been digitized.

Also: lots of facts are not even in archives, but in the attics.
December 22, 2025 at 9:26 PM
emryss.bsky.social
“Their advice to other European governments is clear: be brave, involve management, and start. "You don't achieve digital sovereignty overnight," Ollrom tells The Register. "You have to do this in many steps, but you have to start with the first step. Don't just talk about it, but execute it."
Europe gets serious about cutting US digital umbilical cord
Feature: Public bodies migrate in the bloc as hyperscalers claim sovereignty
www.theregister.com
December 22, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
bloomberg.com
At the Humanoids Summit, robots could pour lattes but struggled to fold a t-shirt — a snapshot of a sector full of promise but still wrestling with real-world hurdles.
Humanoid Robots Are Coming, As Soon As They Learn to Fold Clothes
At a Silicon Valley summit, small robots roamed and poured lattes, while evangelists hailed new AI techniques as transformative. But full-size prototypes were scarce.
bloom.bg
December 21, 2025 at 9:30 PM
emryss.bsky.social
Data, sovereignty and new scramble for Africa
Viewed through a financial and legal lens, the Kenya-US framework represents a case of incomplete technology transfer.
www.businessdailyafrica.com
December 21, 2025 at 9:19 PM
emryss.bsky.social
Digital ID is at the heart of agentic AI - and it’s not even close to being solved…
December 21, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
jonmarkhicks.bsky.social
A Stranger Things CYOA book? With that iconic cover design? I like it.
December 20, 2025 at 11:17 PM
emryss.bsky.social
#sovereignty for #security
Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud
Exclusive: Tech exec admits not dead cert it'll find the right solution
www.theregister.com
December 20, 2025 at 9:08 PM
emryss.bsky.social
Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud
Exclusive: Tech exec admits not dead cert it'll find the right solution
www.theregister.com
December 20, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
sdp.bsky.social
Time to find those old hard drives…

www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...
Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever
If you used a digital camera in the early 2000s, there's a good chance whole chapters of your life have been erased.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 20, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
duncanbell.bsky.social
Post-doc positions:
"Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..."

uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...
Call for Applications: Early Career Rescue Fellowship – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
uni-freiburg.de
December 19, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
iipp-ucl.bsky.social
☮️ Peace as an Economic Strategy

What would an economy oriented around a peace mission look like in practice? IIPP Director @mazzucatom.bsky.social and Co-Deputy Director @rainerkattel.bsky.social explore this in their latest @projectsyndicate.bsky.social article.

🔗 Read more here: buff.ly/Jv2ZeSc
December 19, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
petersuber.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Update. The Danish government is moving away from #Microsoft products to #opensource alternatives.
https://itsfoss.com/news/denmark-road-traffic-authority-ditches-microsoft/

#Denmark
Denmark Begins its Exit from Microsoft — and This is Just the Beginning
The move is part of a government-wide effort to reduce dependency on Microsoft software. The traffic department's move is just the beginning.
itsfoss.com
December 18, 2025 at 6:34 PM
emryss.bsky.social
“Oracle will oversee the algorithm that recommends videos in users’ feeds — the crucial technology that makes the app so popular with young people. It will be retrained using US user data to “ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation”, according to Chew’s memo.”
December 19, 2025 at 5:31 AM
emryss.bsky.social
TikTok says Chinese owner will retain core US business
TikTok says Chinese owner will retain core US business
Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to invest in new data security joint venture as part of Trump-brokered deal
giftarticle.ft.com
December 19, 2025 at 5:25 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
omarsakr.bsky.social
Everyone knows about Ahmed al-Ahmad, the Syrian Muslim migrant who took down one gunman. Another man, a Middle Eastern refugee, ran into a firefight and kicked the gun away from the other gunman. Police shot him, and bystanders kicked him in the head while he was down, thinking he was the terrorist.
Headline: Bondi bystander who ran towards gunman facing deportation The refugee worked his way towards the footbridge using cars and trees for cover, before kicking the weapon away from the shot gunman.
December 18, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
aial.ie
We're hiring a postdoc to identify, map and evaluate commercially used age verification systems

Closing Date: 16 January 2026

Apply here: aial.ie/hiring/postd...
About the role Age verification systems are increasingly being deployed in ways that rely on inferring the age or age range of the user from data such as live selfies or conversational analysis. These systems pose challenges regarding accuracy, bias, privacy, and most importantly raise questions around the scientific legitimacy and methodological soundness underlying the very process. Furthermore, commercially deployed age-verification systems and processes operate in non-transparent ways with no recourse from errors and deficiencies. Currently, information on where, how, and when such technologies are being developed and deployed is extremely scarce, as well as which actors are becoming established as market leaders and key vendors. The AIAL seeks to understand this challenge better through high-quality, high-impact research that helps uphold the principles of scientific validity, methodological rigour, transparency, accountability, and equity. To directly tackle this urgent problem, the AIAL is looking for a highly driven Post-Doctoral Researcher who can identify and map the current state of commercially used age verification systems, the techniques being used, and the key actors in the development and deployment pipeline. Based on publicly available information, the researcher will closely replicate the techniques used in commercial age-verification systems and undertake socio-technical audits with a focus on assessing the scientific legitimacy, epistemic and methodological validity of the overall approach as well as assessing the accuracy, discrimination, and privacy risks. The output of this work is expected to contribute to advancing the state of the art in accountable governance and responsible practices, and will support the application of relevant laws such as the GDPR and the AI Act. Ultimately and in the best case scenario, insights from this work would feed legal or other mechanisms to gain access to real-world deployed age-verification systems.
December 17, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
sdp.bsky.social
“In space, there is no air.”
abeba.bsky.social Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 24d
an important read for at least 2 reasons:

1. shows how big tech operates on intuitions and vibes and not rigorous research

2. this is a masterpiece in how to breakdown complex scientific concepts in simple language and elegant pros that captivate the lay reader

taranis.ie/datacenters-...
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.
taranis.ie
December 17, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Reposted by Emrys Schoemaker
gquaggiotto.bsky.social
Digital public infrastructure is not new, nor is digital public infrastructure an inherently good public good. State power is state power is state power, and there are few cases where government infrastructure has been universally accessible www.policyready.ca/policymaking...
Less as more: decomputing in the age of tech accelerationism — Resources for today's policymakers
By Bianca Wylie In 2021, in the Journal of Social Computing, historian Jonnie Penn made the argument for “Algorithmic Silence: A Call to Decomputerize.” As he summarizes:   “Tech critics become...
www.policyready.ca
December 17, 2025 at 8:53 AM
emryss.bsky.social
December 17, 2025 at 10:50 PM