Richard Urwin
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soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Richard Urwin
@soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
280 followers 1.2K following 410 posts
Writer, technical proof-reader, software engineer
Books:
Artificial Intelligence: The Quest for the Ultimate Thinking Machine -- lay person's introduction
Artificial Intelligence in easy steps -- developer's introduction
WIP:
Return to Fairyland
Posts Replies Media Videos
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
This is what I found when going to bed one night.
A black cat stretched all the way across the top edge of the duvet, taking up the absolute maximum amount of space it can. Text above and below the image reads "I need this space, human can have sofa."
September 17, 2025 at 2:28 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
This seems an appropriate sacrifice.
An obvious photoshop of a massive Duracell battery on the back of an articulated lorry.
August 29, 2025 at 3:08 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
My timeline for a WIP. It might get interesting for a while. As an upside, it's a forced end to fossil fuel and we'll be getting psychic powers.
An excerpt from a spreadsheet showing Oumuamua in 2017 and against 2025 it says "Flotilla Arrival"
August 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
August 9, 2025 at 10:38 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Here's a couple I made. The longer one is around 3 feet long. Pine, finished with beeswax.
Two wooden swords, one longer, one shorter, lying on woven carpet. The blades are tapered in both width and thickness and the wood glows a soft gold. The guard of the shorter is diamond shaped, that of the longer is a parallelogram, giving the impression of a curve.
August 6, 2025 at 4:26 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
This is Cassie
A black belgian shepherd with sable boots is sitting on a lawn staring curiously upward and the right of frame.
July 31, 2025 at 12:07 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Yoti does have the data, so I checked their privacy policy and found this. They immediately delete the face data and do not store the credit card number.
For the paranoid, the elided paragraphs and paras 5-10 are those services KWS doesn't allow, so they aren't relevant here.
3/6
1. Facial Age Estimation This check uses your selfie to analyse and estimate your age. You’ll be asked to take a selfie using the camera on your device. This captures a single facial image which will be analysed by our age estimation technology to determine whether you are over or under the required age. If requested by the Yoti Client, we analyse the image with liveness detection technology to ensure it is of a real person and not a 2D image, mask, or bot. Yoti deletes the image as soon as an age estimate is given – no images are shared with the Client. 4. Credit Card check This check uses your credit card details to verify your age. You’ll be asked to enter your credit card details and postcode, we will send these details to a payment provider and place a temporary £0.30 hold on your card. This is to verify that your card is current and valid. We use this to determine that you are over 18 and remove the £0.30 hold on your card once the age check is complete. You will not be charged to verify your age. We never store or share your credit card details with anyone other than the provider.
July 25, 2025 at 3:44 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
See www.yoti.com/privacy/age-...
Excerpt from the Yoti Age Verification Privacy Policy: " 1. Facial Age Estimation This check uses your selfie to analyse and estimate your age. You’ll be asked to take a selfie using the camera on your device. This captures a single facial image which will be analysed by our age estimation technology to determine whether you are over or under the required age. If requested by the Yoti Client, we analyse the image with liveness detection technology to ensure it is of a real person and not a 2D image, mask, or bot. Yoti deletes the image as soon as an age estimate is given – no images are shared with the Client."
July 25, 2025 at 2:53 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
They answered me this morning. The lack of ID documents is a problem in my opinion. Many people have bad cameras and no credit card. What worked for me was to take my phone outside in sunlight. My good quality webcam failed every time.
screenshot of the body of an email from KWS support. It reads, "Support <parents@kidswebservices.com> 10:23 AM (4 hours ago) to soronlin+bsky@googlemail.com Hello, I am sorry to hear that you’re having trouble with verification. Unfortuantely, we're not able to offer ID scanning as a verification method for BlueSky. When attempting to verify with Face Scan, please ensure you are in a well-lit room, your face is positioned within the frame and that the image taken is clear. If you encounter errors or difficulty scanning, try using an alternative device or ensuring your face is clearly visible, and not obscured by hair or shadows. Due to certain laws and regulations in the UK, we can only accept credit cards at this current moment in time. This is to ensure the person attempting verification is of adult age. Is the card you're using a debit card? When verifying via credit card, please ensure your bank is not preventing or blocking 'Kids Web Services’ from performing a monetary transaction. If a small, but required, monetary transaction cannot be made to your payment card, your identity cannot be verified. If you continue to experience issues verifying with one particular payment card, please try a different payment card where possible. I hope this helps. Kind Regards,"
July 25, 2025 at 2:01 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Here's the similar paragraph from BSky. I guarantee you will find similar paragraphs on every platform you use. It refers to exactly the same information, just in vaguer terms.
Screen capture of part of the Bluesky App Privacy Policy: Usage Information. When you use the Bluesky App Services, we collect certain information automatically, including your Internet protocol (IP) address (which can be used to derive your general location), user settings, cookie identifiers, mobile carrier, other unique identifiers, browser or device information, and Internet service provider (ISP). We may also collect personal information about your use of the Bluesky App Services, such as the posts you view on the Bluesky App, the links you click within the Bluesky App, the frequency and duration of your activities, and other similar information.
July 25, 2025 at 1:48 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
The three herbs that I know I can't kill*.
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OK, so I killed my rosemary plant this year. I've killed a cactus through under-watering; it's always a risk.
A trough planter with a small rosemary and sage plants. A bucket alongside, holds a mint plant.
July 20, 2025 at 2:52 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
One was the requirement that everything I said was true, but there was no right to read the proofs. So I had no control over typos that they had introduced.
Excerpt from an email: I have difficulty with requiring all facts are true. Truth in science changes over time as new discoveries are made constantly and conventions shift. While you will expect me to be duly diligent, I don't expect to become Pope in the next six months. Can we change the wording to "true at the time of writing, to the best of the Author's knowledge"?
June 30, 2025 at 3:00 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Case in point. Raw materials cost around £150.
A black kitchen storage unit on castors. Something over a foot square and worktop height. It has four wire baskets that can slide out. On the sides are four chrome bars with hooks on the sides, from the lower two of which white baskets hang.
June 17, 2025 at 11:35 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
I put some shelves up recently. I can't drill into the walls, so I made them free-standing, in a corner to add stability. It was simple. I just measured the same height on three lengths of timber. Then I corrected for the "hardwood" floor.
Bookshelves high on two adjoining walls, supported by vertical timber in the corner and both ends. A middle shelf holds a clock and has a whiteboard hanging from it and two pictures hang from the picture rail under the high shelf. A block of wood in the corner of a room, between a door and a radiator, supporting a vertical timber.
June 15, 2025 at 8:45 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
My letter to Liz Kendal
I hear that your government (certainly not mine) have been overturned in the Lords for the fifth time over the AI bill. This is not an ultra-conservative house of peers sneering at the working class. This is functional government standing up for the working class and the government in bed with an abusive industry. The creative industries contribute £124 billion to the UK economy and employ 2.4 million people. Your government is throwing them all under the bus in the interests of half a dozen huge, loss-making, energy guzzling corporations who believe they cannot make a profit without raping and pillaging your constituents. For goodness sake, get your head out of the sand and stand up for something. Accept the Lords' amendment for transparency in the AI bill. Sincerely, Richard Urwin, Author
June 5, 2025 at 10:42 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Mine isn't as pretty. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hv2b4...
Spreadsheet graph showing a word count over time. There are lines for Expected, Achieved and Shortfall.
May 21, 2025 at 12:06 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Working on it.
A large wooden cat exercise wheel in front of a stone hearth. It bears an uncanny resemblance to a stargate.
May 10, 2025 at 12:15 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Once you've tried to use a BBC Microcomputer joystick, no design can ever be bad. (No tilt control or anything, just the joystick and a fire button.)
Two BBC Microcomputer joysticks sitting on a red background. It has been said they were designed for giants with two thumbs because no human hand fit those "finger" imprints on the "pistol grip". If they did, the fire button is where your thumb might go. Even then the joystick on top would be angled away from you and absolutely need a second hand to be used. If you used it with the fire button under your finger, the moulding is all wrong and only a giant would be able to reach their thumb up to the joystick.
May 8, 2025 at 11:22 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Joseph Weisembaum, the creator of ELIZA, warned about exactly this and described the mechanism back in 1966.
[...] If, for example, one were to tell a psychiatrist, "I went for a boat ride" and he responded "Tell me about boats", one would not assume that he knew nothing about boats, but that he had some purpose in so directing the subsequent conversation. It is important to note that this assumption is one made by the speaker. [..] In human conversation a speaker will make certain (perhaps generous) assumptions about his conversational partner. As long as it remains possible to interpret the latter's responses consistently with those assumptions, the speaker's image of his partner remains unchanged, in particular, undamaged. Responses which are difficult ro so interpret may well result in an enhancement of the image of the partner, in additional rationalizations which then make more complicated interpretations of his responses reasonable. [...] The whole issue of the credibility (to humans) of machine output demands investigation. Important decisions increasingly tend to be made in response to computer output. The ultimately responsible human interpreter of "What the machine says" is, not unlike the correspondent with ELIZA, constantly faced with the need to make credibility judgements. ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy ot is to create and maintain the illusion of understanding, hence perhaps of judgement deserving of credibility. A certain danger lurks there. -- excerpts from Joseph Weisenbaum (1966) ELIZA -- A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine
May 5, 2025 at 1:48 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
This is all the stories I wrote before I left full-time education. Shortly thereafter I got a BBC Micro with WordStar.
An artfully chaotic pile of card folders, many of them with more or less elaborate titling, each holding many pages of typescript.
May 1, 2025 at 11:10 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
PDF available here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w9ey6...
Feel free to reuse. I have it hanging on my wall. CC-By-SA (4.0) Attribution required.
A picture of by Fred Wierum (CC-BY-SA 4.0) of a feathered Deinonychus, the dinosaur that Jurassic World called a Velociraptor. Under it is the following poem by Emily Dickinson (Public Domain): “Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops - at all And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm I’ve heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest Sea Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me,
April 23, 2025 at 4:59 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
My letter to Liz Kendell
A screenshot of an email. It reads "I am your constituent. My name is Richard Urwin and I live in the [REDACTED] postcode. I have discovered that my book Artificial Intelligence, The Quest for the Ultimate Thinking Machine, published by Arcturus in 2016, has been illegally pirated by Meta and used to train its AI engine. As I am sure you are aware, the government has just held a public consultation on ways the copyright laws should be modernised to take AI training into account. Meta did not ask for permission to use my book, or any of the other thousands of books that they used. According to court documents, they considered licensing the works they needed and decided that it would take too long and cost too much. Instead, they downloaded pirated copies en mass. It is illegal to download a book without a license to do so. This is established law in both the USA and the UK. Meta did not want to use my book for research or for any other fair use. Their purpose was to create a machine that could compete with the authors who's work they copied and thereby make a profit for themselves. Companies do not admit to the data they use to train their engines, precisely because they know it is illegal and unethical. Meta did not admit to using the pirated archive libgen until forced to do so by the court. This is one tiny glimpse behind the curtain; no company building a Large Language Model AI considers copyright, they believe they are above the law. I hope you will take my concerns to those responsible for the copyright review and represent my interests in the strongest terms. Regards, Richard Urwin"
March 22, 2025 at 2:32 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Me today
March 14, 2025 at 2:45 PM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
Age yourself with the first computer you used.
A Hewlett Packard 2000F minicomputer in two six-foot racks.
February 17, 2025 at 2:46 AM
soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
This is all public domain, so feel free to use it. I have it framed and hanging in my office. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w9ey6...
A Deinonychus (Jurassic Park's Velociraptor) by Fred Wierum, with Emily Dickenson's poem: "Hope" is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm - I've heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.
January 23, 2025 at 12:14 PM