Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

140 followers 440 following 320 posts

Londoner in Malta. Technology & media in society academic. UX, TEL, webdev OS CMS. OS advocate. Emeritus rocknroller. Luddite.

Mostly on Masto, follow me there from here with Bridgy Fed. @DrPen.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

Website: https://penworks.net

Posts Replies Media Videos

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Actual King and Pope in astonishing Sistine Chapel magnificence. Say what you like about this old stuff, but it beats gold appliquéd fireplaces and a Genai ballroom every time.

Incredible photo of the Sistine Chapel interior with priests, royalty and the Pope.

October 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Quality from the mastodon art massive

#dontsmoke #smoking #art #illustration

A Chris Silverman illustration of a shadow man smoking inside a dimly lit room full of industrial revolution type machinery and warning inflammable signs and no smoking signs. Its moody.

October 22, 2025 at 8:22 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Hello Blues-sky. Just checking in to say the world is not all terrible.

Here's an icon of a boombox.

a png icon of a boombox done in semi cartoon vector style.

October 8, 2025 at 6:20 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Londoners! Are you attending Breaking the (G)loom? If not why not? Its tomorrow, its free.
#luddites #london

https://breakingthegloom.com/

https://london.architecturediary.org/venue/set-social-peckham/

Date: 27th September
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Location: SET Social, Red Bar

This event is free, but ticketed!
Please register at: lu.ma/9ddl2shi

Sick of living in the dreams of prepper CEOs?
Feeling doomy about spending the next AI winter in a chatbot cult?
Suspicious that the healthcare implications of AlphaFold might be overshadowed by the broader corrosion of liberal democracy?
Actually pretty optimistic, but would like a break from the hype?

September 26, 2025 at 7:32 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

This is worth reading. Also bc the tech CEO finally discovers that learning to learn is separate from 'training'. He should have attended Gordon Pask classes when he was at comp sci college.

#ai #gordonpask #cybernetics

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/21/aws_ceo_entry_level_jobs_opinion/

Quote highlighted in screenshot of article in the Register.
“I think the skills that should be emphasized are how do you think for yourself? How do you develop critical reasoning for solving problems? How do you develop creativity? How do you develop a learning mindset that you're going to go learn to do the next thing?”

August 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Substack, renowned supporter of nazi rhetoric in the name of 'free speech' anti wokeism, has surveyed its authors about use of 'AI'. TLDR:
older guys most likely
Ideation and 'research' main purpose.
(my comment: translation/transcription shld not be included here)
Tip: use Ghost! Self host!

Who’s using AI?
Out of about 2,000 surveyed publishers:

45.4% said they’re using AI

52.6% said they’re not

2% were unsure

Publishers 45 and over were more likely to use AI than those under 45.

Men reported higher adoption than women (55% vs. 38%).

Women were more likely to express concerns about using AI than men (67% vs. 47%).

In the responses, AI adoption varied widely across publishing categories3. Technology, Business, and Finance had the highest rates of adoption, while Literature, Music, and Art had some of the lowest. A 64-point spread between the Technology and Literature categories marks the widest divide in the responses.

July 27, 2025 at 5:56 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

University: compromising student ethics and integrity one Genai task at a time.

"And you shall know them by their deeds"

A screenshot of a student post in Facebook complaining that they have an assignment for a class that requires the use of AI. They don't want to do it, but their grade will drop too low if they don't.

July 26, 2025 at 6:43 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Open source rules the world. If you won't take the money, no one can control you.

A poster for the VLC video player. 6 billion diwnloads. Still no ads and extra volume.

July 18, 2025 at 6:51 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Gaming the chatbots will become a new pastime for anyone with the nous. Tarpits are the grown up version of this.

Gaming the google meet AI note taker with fantasy nonsense introductions. This is known as Malicious Compliance.

July 12, 2025 at 6:47 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Goodbye CC licences, may they RIP. The level of interpretation of 'fair use' is...? $B in profits obv not relevant. Fact: all CC licences are currently irrelevant - corporate power has total control of all content. CC link in reply.
#academia #education #cc #creativecommons #ai #chatgpt #genai

July 9, 2025 at 6:39 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

This is what you agree to when you review for Elsevier. Why dont HE use this kind of consent/ disclaimer/ warning in all uses of GenAI? Why isnt every Lecturer told this about uploading lecture materials, or student work, into chatGPT or Copilot? Are students told about the risks to them?
See less

The statement on generative AI provided by Elsevier for their peer reviewers. The statement makes it clear that no use of gen AI is acceptable and that the responsibilities associated with peer review are only attributable to humans.

July 7, 2025 at 6:26 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Celebrate another paying customer leaving the Beast.
#degoogle #bigtech #platformmonopoly

A screenshot saying "your membership has ended, Pen", from Google One.

July 7, 2025 at 4:13 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Today is a happy day at least for me. I reached 600 followers on Mastodon, home of the small friendly networks of the interwebs. Ive learned more on Mastodon than any other socmed, ever. And Im a longtime-user baby.

a screenshot of my mastodon account showing my 600 follower count. Yippee! Mastodon is where the coolest ppl are.

June 24, 2025 at 6:20 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

I posted this on FB to reach some of the other academics in my network. No one says anything. I get the feeling the wilful dismantling of human flourishing L&T practice is totally ignored, or in denial in order to comply with policy. It's almost criminal negligence.

#academia #Education #edtech

Following on from my radical candour post about resigning if I was a teacher being asked to use AI in (aka automate and standardise) every aspect of teaching practice, I wonder if I was a parent of school age children, would I join the growing happy band of home schoolers who remove their children from state or even public/private schools? This would mean of course that only privileged parents (for whatever reason) would be able to do that. That would leave the great unwashed hoi-poloi to suffer with no power to fight back or complain, the march of standardised 'average' approaches to L&T. 'Machine say' being the only operative that is significant.

Much of this argument is not (only) about AI, it's about not caring who or what teaches ordinary children from ordinary backgrounds. Its about feeding the edtech industry with billions of $$%££€€ to repay on their stakeholder investment promises.

Luckily, many schools in the developing world still don't have stable electrical power and in the end its that that will save them from this horror extractive capitalism.

May 9, 2025 at 4:10 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

The official statement from #Vivaldi about the #EC ruling on #Apple and #Meta antitrust and the #DMA.

Via Bruce Lawson boost on #mastodon.

April 23, 2025 at 4:35 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Verified ID required to access AI models in #OpenAI's API to prevent IP theft. They went from stealing everything from everyone to now claiming it's their original work, despite hundreds of pending copyright cases against them in the courts.
#genai
Via @cyberciti.biz

OpenAI identity verification screen with "Begin verifying" button.

April 20, 2025 at 6:57 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Being widely shared over on FB. The hate and disgust is real.

A screenshot of a socmed post saying Ai has limitless thirst for water and energy but its a trade off we should make for crap Gen AI content. It is satire.

March 14, 2025 at 6:59 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

It's my birthday. I'm gonna have a feast.

#birthday #party

A photo of an almost empty glass of water, some Trebor mints, a clementine and a full packet of dark chocolate McVities digestive biscuits.

March 10, 2025 at 10:04 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

I hit over 1000 likes for a Masto post on the brandification of words. I'll get to 1000 boosts I think... This post has been shared for 2 days solid. Its my record so far. Masto looks small, but the reach can be greater bc a lot more ppl interact. (at least with me). #mastodon

A screenshot of a popular Mastodon post saying:
Let's play a game.

Don't say PowerPoint presentation, say slidedeck
Don't say Word, say text document
Don't say Photoshop, say image editing
Don't say Excel, say spreadsheet
Don't say...

Language is important. When corporate companies own the names of the tasks or the digital items you create, you have become a cog in their branding machine.

#bigtech #DataSociety #academicchatter

February 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

Surveillance society: #Zoom just updated its T&Cs to listen in and record all your conversations to use in its AI bot training. If you opt out you lose all kinds of functionality. But Id guess if youre an employee and your employer has opted in, then you get no choice. #datasociety

a screenshot of Zoom T&Cs saying you sign away all rights for it to use in any way it chooses including generated data.

February 15, 2025 at 9:18 AM

Dr Pen

@penworks.bsky.social

So the US wants all the rewards without any of the cost and zero responsibility longterm, big support for Russia. The UK must align with Europe.
#ukraine #EU #uk #USPolitics
https://unn.ua/en/news/zelensky-refuses-to-sign-document-on-transfer-of-50percent-of-ukrainian-mineral-resources-to-the-us-wp