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xcivxciv.bsky.social
Paul
@xcivxciv.bsky.social
230 followers 400 following 410 posts
Internetter since '94, sarcastic, IT, technology, photography, DIY/maker.

🇬🇧 London and Kent, England.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Paul
emptywheel.bsky.social
Wild graphic on front page of WSJ.
A graphic from the front page of the WSJ, titled, "The Epstein Email Cache: 2,300 Messages, Many of Which Mention Trump." Using blue does it compares how many of the email threads released by Oversight are about various people. 1,670 are about Trump. 207 mention Michael Wolff. 155 Kathryn Ruemmler, 117 Larry Summers, and 512 Clinton.
November 14, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Paul
karaswisher.bsky.social
Btw as with his not releasing his taxes, it is a way of not releasing the Epstein files since it is “under investigation.” He looks guiltier than ever.
November 14, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Paul
thetnholler.bsky.social
They’re all just looting the treasury now
November 14, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Paul
edzitron.com
The AI Bubble inflated by a dereliction of duty from those meant to seek out and publish the truth. LLMs have been sold on myth and outright lies about what they do or will do, and when the bubble bursts, retail investors will be left with the consequences.

www.wheresyoured.at/premium-the-...
Why Are We In A Bubble? You’re tired, I’m tired, we’re all god damn tired of the AI bubble. It’s been three years and very little has actually happened other than hundreds of billions of dollars being incinerated to build data centers or sustain the reckless and directionless ambitions of Sam Altman and OpenAI, or any number of near-identical AI startups that all claim to be worth somewhere between $5 billion and $500 billion. Yet what truly upsets me about AI is the lies. Despite the fact that Large Language Models cannot really be trusted to do any particular job without endless prompt engineering and tinkering, so many people talk about them as if they’re the second coming of Christ, capable of doing just about anything if you put your mind to it. In reality, LLMs are capable of some stuff but not a lot of stuff and most people you talk to use it as either a coding assistant (that they have to either give very simple tasks or constantly check up on) or as a replacement for Google search that may or may not be better. Yet for years people have said things about LLMs that they don’t actually do, and when pressed to explain further, they’ve said that “these models are getting exponentially better.” We have seen a dereliction of duty by those who are meant to know the truth — the media and analysts — who are either ignorant of reality or refuse to live within it, saying instead that every bit of proof that we’re in a bubble is just “doomerism” or “skepticism” or proof of some sort of corruption or animosity toward the future, rather than an attempt to speak of what’s actually happening and inform the public. LLMs are limited! What they do today is similar to what they did a year ago, and what they’ll do a year in the future! The time of LLM innovation is over, this era is over, and every day we extend it only beckons further retail investors to throw themselves into an active volcano after being convinced that it’ll transform them into a golden god. It’s insu… It is insane to me that we still, to this day, have people claiming that “agents are coming,” or still peddling out the dog-brained “Uber and Amazon Web Services burned a lot of money” talking points, or somehow justifying the hundreds of billions of dollars burned by saying that “ChatGPT is really popular,” as if that makes up for the theft of millions of people’s art or the destruction of our planet. We’ve known that OpenAI was burning billions of dollars since the middle of 2024, as we’ve known the same of Anthropic, as we’ve known that every AI company is unprofitable, as we’ve known that models will hallucinate forever, as we’ve known that the “scaling laws” paradigm was a bucket of bullshit. These facts have sat baking in the sun for anywhere from a year and a half to two years, yet the media narrative has only fairly recently shifted to consider whether there’s any problem with an entire industry of unprofitable companies building wrappers on top of models made by unprofitable frontier AI labs. AI has proven that we live in an era of high information and low processing, and that the majority of people — the media, investors, analysts, and even government officials — simply take the top-line analysis from whatever the most “trustworthy” source they can find. As a result, TV networks like CNBC publish outright nonsense to back up things like OpenAI promising to pay $1.4 trillion in compute costs in five years with “trustworthy” analysts like Futurum’s Dan Newman, who had this to say about how OpenAI might afford it: This is a company that its biggest backers and investors believe will become the largest hyperscaler in the future. So it isn’t just going to compete for these software and for these ChatGPT and video making, uh, models, they're going to be focusing on taking over this AI layer, going down the path of Anthropic, playing the enterprise, developing these biggest models, and then ultimately developing a model to make money. This is a fucking analy… This is why people are going to lose so much money! This is why people are being failed! The mainstream media is deliberately, aggressively pushing nonsense narratives with enough buzzwords to keep the bubble inflated. In reality, our society is built on a lot of beliefs that are extremely thinly-held, and LLMs took root because society has been primed by science fiction to believe that it’s inevitable that we’ll have an autonomous computer in our lifetimes. We are trained to follow smart-sounding people from birth, and what constitutes “smart’ is judged by a combination of right-sounding words and braggadocious confidence, and while that’s sort of worked before, Large Language Models feel as if they’re purpose-built to exploit these semiotic tropes. ChatGPT can convince an imbecile he knows quantum physics because it gives him the topline definition in simple enough terms that he can repeat. ChatGPT can give a convincing-enough impression of a person that it can convince somebody that it wants him to leave his wife. ChatGPT can give a convincing-enough impression of writing code that it can convince basically every investor and member of the media that it will replace software engineers in mere months. And because ChatGPT did a convincing-enough impression of a person writing something, Satya Nadella decided to buy as many GPUs as possible, and because Satya Nadella was doing a convincing-enough impression of a CEO who knew what the fuck he was doing, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Andy Jassy immediately copied him, so that they too could do convincing-enough impressions of executives that knew what they were doing. And because we live with markets that are poisoned by growth-at-all-cost thinkers, they fell in line behind the hyperscalers, claiming that the “era of AI” was here without any proof that was the case, all because the already-existing businesses underpinning the magnificent 7 kept growing. That, and the media has entirely failed to hold the… There is only one way to avoid this happening again: holding every single booster’s feet to the fire for months and months after the bubble bursts, and make sure that any other hype cycles they push are met with venom and receipts the likes of which God has never seen. If I sound like I have an axe to grind, it’s because I do. Regular people are already getting hurt — their communities destroyed by data centers, their art stolen, their loved-ones driven mad by AI psychosis, and, most likely, their 401Ks ravaged when this ends. I will have no mercy for those who failed to do their jobs. Will you?
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Paul
timbale.bsky.social
Forgive me if I'm wrong, I can't think of a single politician who campaigned hard for Brexit who has since come out and said that they think it was a mistake. Surely, in their heart of hearts, literally one or two of them must know that. So is it that they can't admit it to themselves or just to us?
November 14, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Paul
bylinetimes.bsky.social
Read this thread laying out some of the astonishing emails between MAGA architect Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein across 2018 and 2019
November 14, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Paul
stephencollins.bsky.social
Every ad now
[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]
November 13, 2025 at 5:38 PM
xcivxciv.bsky.social
AI is bullshit.

Change my mind.
katymorris.bsky.social Katy Morris @katymorris.bsky.social · 1d
From the always interesting AI Shift newsletter by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @sarahoconnorft.ft.com:

AI is maximising job applications and word counts, in vicious circle of doom kind of ways
Extract from the FT AI Shift newsletter: Another way of putting all of this is that the use of LLMs in job applications made the market much less meritocratic, with a 19 per cent fall in hiring for the most capable workers and a 14 per cent boost for the least capable. Oh, and the number of applications and length of cover letters roughly doubled, meaning more time needed to sift through less useful and often actively unhelpful submissions. Good job, everyone!
November 13, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by Paul
eddavey.libdems.org.uk
Trump wants to destroy the BBC and Farage is egging him on.

To all those who love the BBC, now is the time to speak up.
November 13, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Paul
robertsaunders.bsky.social
This is always a danger when authoritarians come under pressure: that they respond either by ramping up the assault on their enemies, to distract attention, or by seizing more power, to fortify their position.
gregsargent.bsky.social Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d
Really unnerving point from Nicole Hemmer, historian of the right: Trump's Epstein fiasco could drive MAGA to push him to go even fuller authoritarian, because the whole project is now in such serious doubt. She's so good on MAGA's future.

Check out this exchange:

newrepublic.com/article/2031...
November 13, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Paul
jaywillis.net
The woman whom the House Ethics Committee determined Matt Gaetz paid for sex when she was 17 years old was living in a homeless shelter, working at McDonald's, and needed the money for braces www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...
She was 17 and a high school junior in Florida. She was working at McDonald’s. And she was living in and out of a homeless shelter. Hoping to save up to buy braces to fix her teeth, she falsely advertised herself in 2017 as 18 years old on a website that matches men looking for “companionship” with young women looking to make money. What followed would set off a chain of events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and help upend the political career of one of the men she would encounter, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican.
November 13, 2025 at 6:31 PM
xcivxciv.bsky.social
This is the correct response.
scottygb.bsky.social Scott Bryan @scottygb.bsky.social · 1d
BBC Breaking:

BBC has said Chair Samir Shah has sent a letter to Trump to apologise for the edit of the President’s speech.

Also: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
November 13, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Paul
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
In Bovino's upside down world, there is no difference between an armed gang member preying on others in his community and a guy working 12 hours a day washing cars, flipping burgers, or installing sheetrock to feed his family — and he wants you to hate and fear both men equally.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d
Bovino: "Whether they were criminals or individuals that were taking jobs from Americans -- you name it, that's what they were doing. And I'll tell you what's gonna happen. We're gonna go even harder on the streets. If he releases those 650, we're gonna apprehend 1,650 on the streets of Chicago."
November 13, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Paul
bgrueskin.bsky.social
This story by @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social about Landon Thomas, former NYT reporter now appearing in the latest email tranche, soliciting a $30k contribution from Jeffrey Epstein?

Yes, you can read it here

www.npr.org/2019/08/22/7...
November 12, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Paul
cethanleahy.com
Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.
November 12, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Paul
jamesrball.com
Two of the top bosses of the BBC resigned this week, after allegations in a dossier claimed Panorama had altered a Trump quote.

One problem: that dossier altered the Trump quote, too
www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-e...
Exclusive: the error at the heart of Trump’s BBC attack
A report alleging Panorama broadcast misleading Trump quotes contains misleading quotes itself
www.thenewworld.co.uk
November 12, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Paul
josiah.writes.news
Robbie Gibb should have been ruled out of the running for the BBC Board in 2021: it was clear he'd been closely involved in setting up GB News - an ideological project aiming to rival to the BBC, & therefore a clear conflict of interest. The fact he was still allowed to join always rang alarm bells.
November 12, 2025 at 1:47 PM
xcivxciv.bsky.social
Ohh the Online Safety Act has unintended consequences does it. 🤦🏻‍♂️
mikestabile.bsky.social Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 3d
The British government admits it is now monitoring VPNs use by UK residents. Regulator Ofcom has contracted with an AI-powered surveillance service to detect the number of citizens using VPNs to evade the Online Safety Act.

The UK tech minister has said a VPN ban is on the table.
Exclusive: Ofcom is monitoring VPNs following Online Safety Act. Here's how
Ignoring VPNs risks creating ineffective laws, but tracking them threatens people's privacy
www.techradar.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Paul
joxley.jmoxley.co.uk
Sun up the level of rot in British police in one paragraph:
November 12, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Paul
nixonsimon.bsky.social
Lots of stuff here that you won't read in most of the legacy media which seems completely uninterested in the backgrounds, associations and possible motivations of those behind the BBC crisis.

Why was the BBC having its homework marked by a lobbyist who hasn't worked as a journalist for 20 years?
bylinetimes.bsky.social Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 3d
🧵On our revelations today about the BBC Coup and the Prescott Dossier.

The leaked ‘BBC Bias’ memo Trump used to attack the BBC was authored by Michael Prescott — a Hanover lobbyist paid by US tech/media giants tied to Trump. Full story: bylinetimes.com/2025/11/11/b... 1/12
'BBC Bias' Memo Was Authored by Lobbyist Tied to Pro-Trump Tech Giants
The leaked memo that fuelled Trump’s attack on the BBC was written by a lobbyist at a firm paid by US tech giants tied to the President
bylinetimes.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Paul
chrischirp.bsky.social
Information underpins democracy and the BBC is a key part of that.

We need to protect our institutions

open.substack.com/pub/christin...
Information underpins Democracy – why the BBC must be defended
Recent events at the BBC have wide-reaching implications for our democracy - and the sooner we realise it, the better
open.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Paul
sharonk.bsky.social
w h a t
h
a
t

has someone done a welfare check on Karp?
Is there anyone you consider a competitor? Our competition is political. The woke left and the woke right wake up every day, figuring out how they can hurt Palantir. If they get into power, they’ll hurt Palantir. And by the way, it’s global. I view Democrats as my party, but if the Mamdani wing of the party takes over? If that’s my party, I’m not in it. Or the right woke wing, which is like, everything is a conspiracy, any use of technology is actually going to only be used to eviscerate and attack us? Palantir is literally the hardest software to abuse in the world, but they don’t seem to want it. If you don’t want meritocracy, you hate Palantir. That is our competition. My head’s spinning a little. How did Mamdani get in there? If you explain to the world that labor is going to be valueless, people are going to elect the most ridiculous people ever. They’re afraid of an AI-driven, AGI environment where no one has a job. Universities and elite institutions have played a corrosive role here. People are teaching pagan religion views—a new religion with sacrifices. Who’s the sacrifice? Me, I’m the sacrifice.
November 11, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Paul
edzitron.com
Me in March, me in August. Nobody bothered to see if CoreWeave even has the capacity to serve its OpenAI deal, or cared that Core Scientific, who had never built AI data centers, didn't seem to have the capacity either
www.wheresyoured.at/core-incompe...
www.wheresyoured.at/ai-bubble-20...
As of now, Core Scientific holds, according to CEO Adam Sullivan, "the largest operational footprint of Bitcoin mining infrastructure," and per the above analyst quote, it's very obvious that you can't just retrofit a crypto mining rig to start "doing Al," likely because the GPUs are different to the ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) used in crypto mining, meaning the server hardware is different, which means the entire bloody thing is different. Nevertheless, CoreWeave's S-1 repeatedly mentions that it's made an agreement with Core Scientific for "more than 500 MW of capacity." Right now, however, it's unclear how much capacity Core Scientific actually has, despite both its and CoreWeave's suggestions. Core Scientific, as of February 2025, had approximately 166,000 bitcoin miners — which, I should add, are likely all application-specific chips that only mine bitcoin!, which means that none of that has (or, potentially, any of their data center operations have) anything to do with GPUs or compute for Al. Even if the deal goes through, CoreWeave's second big loan, which likely sits at around $8 billion, will come due in October 2025, just as OpenAI begins to pay its fees for compute...which assumes that the compute will be available. Having spoken to some infrastructure providers, there are doubts that this will be the case — and plans are reportedly being made to provide redundancy if CoreWeave fails to deliver on time.
November 11, 2025 at 5:49 PM
xcivxciv.bsky.social
We know that SO much of council spend is adult social care.

BUT we seem to have just accepted ~£5K/month pricing without question. Been pondering this for some time, does it represent the real costs?

40% profit margin???!

Why is government/CMA not questioning this…?

@cjayanetti.bsky.social
premnsikka.bsky.social Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 3d
7,261 elderly/vulnerable people in care homes given ‘notice to quit’.

Major reason: "revenge evictions’. people “threatened with eviction as a result of raising a complaint"

Care homes are mostly in the private sector, owned by corporations and private equity, profit margins of up to 40%.
Revealed: Thousands of elderly people evicted from care homes every year
Thousands of elderly and vulnerable people have received eviction notices from their care homes in the last year, the Big Issue has found.
www.bigissue.com
November 11, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Paul
thehistoryguy.bsky.social
'They were those like Sir Oswald Mosley who were fascinated by the spectacle of brutal power. They would like to use it themselves. They grovelled to Nazi dictatorship in order that they could make people in their turn grovel to them'

Winston Churchill, 1936
adambienkov.bsky.social Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 3d
Conservative Shadow Culture Secretary Nigel Huddleston tells GB News that the BBC should "grovel" to Trump.

Amazing how many British 'patriots' are spending their time telling our national broadcaster to prostrate itself before a hostile foreign leader
November 11, 2025 at 12:23 PM