Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 4h

Unlike other revolutionary tech products, LLMs were never able to prove their usefulness on a small scale, so the ‘solution’ was to sink massive amounts of money into them until they achieved success by brute financial force, but it hasn’t succeeded because the tech never lived up to the hype.

Paul Duane 🥔 @paulduane.bsky.social · 1d

'Sora cost $20 a month & subscribers can generate an unlimited number of AI videos... this costs (Sora owners) OpenAI "at least $5 per 10-second video"'.

Journalists, please ask more questions about how this tech could ever in a million years make a profit?

britt hayes @britthates.bsky.social · 1d

studio execs & major outlets claim AI is "inevitable" and poised to take over Hollywood. the reality is much different. i spoke with filmmakers, producers, and editors about how AI is actually showing up in productions – and what it still can't do:

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Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 9h

It’s the 111th anniversary today of the birth of Harry Rée, who was a teacher and conscientious objector when the Second World War broke out, and by the time it ended, when he was 31, had invented ‘blackmail sabotage’ and got a DSO, an OBE, a Croix de Guerre, and a Medaille de la Resistance

b/w photo of a man in socks and sandals, jacket, short and jumper, in front of a wall with a bike leaning on it, and with a pipe in his mouth. If you wanted one image to sum up the word ‘nonchalant’, this would be it

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 22h

The use of AI to marionette a woman whose tortured existence was spent trying to carve her own life and identity out of the space men forced her into is both damningly macabre and a surprisingly perfect encapsulation of the problems with this ghoulish use of technology.

Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 2d

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Want to See Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI Could Make It Soon

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

www.scientificamerican.com

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · Nov 13

Writers, poets, photographers, artists, artisans, academics, activists, musicians, bohemians, beats, boozers, booksellers, radicals... do you require a website or have a website that's in need of a lick of paint? Hit me up. I don't charge the [E]arth. handpressed.net

HandPressed – WordPress Websites That Don't Cost the Earth

Planet-friendly websites built with WordPress. Powered by 100% green energy.

handpressed.net

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Joshua Eaton @joshuaeaton.bsky.social · 22h

If you’re a man in the room and a public official says this about your female colleague, you don’t continue as if nothing happened.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 23h

Trump ignores a question from a woman reporter but says, "I just like to watch her talk. Good job. Thank you darling."

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 22h

An even better way of putting it

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 22h

I will always prefer "sitting deep" (if that's what "low block" means, I'm still not sure).

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 23h

I venerate books in my own way.

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 5d

If mold drives you mad then it's likely I am madder than mad given the state of the room where I spend most of my time. It's all dusty books and mold on the walls behind the books because I am disgusting (this photo was taken five years ago, just imagine how bad it is now).

Black and white photo of a room containing thousands of books, some of which are piled on tables and chairs.

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 1d

#NowPlaying My favourite New Pornographers album. Thankfully pre-dodgy drummer New Pornographers. www.last.fm/user/Guerril...

Twin Cinema (2005) by The New Pornographers album cover.

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 1d

This is why you should self-host, keep control of your content. There's nothing to say the hosted version of WordPress won't go the same way one day. indieweb.org

IndieWeb

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.

indieweb.org

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 1d

Eating as much cheese as you want and losing weight at the same time has blown my mind.

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 1d

I can attest that it works. Fours months without sugar and crappy carbs and I'm wearing t-shirts that haven't fitted me for years. I didn't even have to give up drinking (number one consideration).

Is it true that … cutting out carbs helps you lose weight?

Weight loss is about consuming fewer calories than you burn, and reducing your intake of refined carbohydrates can play a part in that

www.theguardian.com

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 1d

The government’s restrictions on immigration will turn this around any day now.

YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 1d

Latest YouGov government approval ratings, 11-13 October 2025

Approve: 14% (+1 from 4-6 Oct)
Disapprove: 69% (=)
Net: -55 (+1)

yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 1d

God I loved Space Harrier. I would finish my first Saturday job, go to the arcade with my wages, play it for as long as possible, put what money I had left in the slot machines, and go home with no wages. www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

Space Harrier at 40: how Sega’s surreal classic brought total immersion to arcades in the 80s

As they flew above Yu Suzuki’s innovative, psychedelic 3D landscapes combating space dragons and alien rock monsters, the moving arcade cabinet would physically involve players in the action

www.theguardian.com

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Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 1d

“Keep vast numbers of DVDs, CDs and vinyl in case of cyberattack, middle-aged dads told”

Steve Beresford @lostinmilbury.bsky.social · 1d

Then: the office of the future will be paperless

Now: keep paper records

Have plans on paper in case of cyber-attack, firms told

Prepare to switch to offline systems in the event of a cyber-attack, firms are being advised.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 2d

“These findings follow previous research which concluded that the more people learn about how AI works, the less they trust it. The opposite was also true — AI’s biggest fanboys tended to be those who understood the least about the tech.”

The More Scientists Work With AI, the Less They Trust It

A preliminary report shows that researchers' confidence in AI software dropped off a cliff over the last year.

futurism.com

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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 2d

Watching the Bibi & Don Show treat this like some grand victory, while people returning to northern Gaza dig the rubble for loved ones' remains, is pretty revolting.

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 2d

I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAI, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 3d

Everyone knows at least one person (normally, but not exclusively, a guy) whose gone properly mental due to net rabbit holes.

We see public figures regularly go mad and destroy themselves.

And we have, at a policy level, just decided to put our fingers in our ears and go nahnahnah

Alastair Meeks @alastairmeeks.bsky.social · 3d

Last night I heard of another friend of a friend who has been lost to a rabbit hole of online propaganda. We need to start treating this as a serious public health concern.

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 2d

Received an email this evening that might as well have been the theme tune from Last of the Summer Wine the way it made me feel.

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Nat Cassidy @natcassidy.bsky.social · 3d

This photo of Robert Bloch is the most writer photo to have ever writer photo’d. It is Pure Writer Photo.

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N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 3d

I tend to over-hyphenate. Apparently it's "ongoing".

N🗡️🎃k @handpressed.net · 3d

Just took a pencil and marked my height on the kitchen wall and measured it because of on-going concerns that years of hunching over a keyboard (and back issues and getting old) are making me short. Still exactly 72 inches tall. Sunday lunchtime drinking, man.

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 3d

This is it. I didn’t find it at all difficult to leave Twitter in the end: it stopped being fun and became boring and depressing. Whenever I opened it I’d see things that were obnoxious or upsetting. It was a relief not to do that.

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 3d

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

Germany decided not to turn its back on privacy, at the last minute. We're very happy for that.

But we're not out of the woods yet, and awareness raising like this is essential.

Follow bsky.app/profile/figh... to stay up to date, and see a bit more on where we are here: bsky.app/profile/mere...

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 6d

We're so relieved to see Germany reaffirm its opposition to the dangerous Chat Control proposal--the one that would mandate mass scanning of communications. Germany's long been a solid champion of privacy, and the news that it was considering backing mass surveillance was alarming. 1/

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C. Buckthorn @cbuckthorn.bsky.social · 3d

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As 32-year-old Rich points out, though, "it's not like using ChatGPT guarantees success".
When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and swapped social media handles, he asked AI what his next move should be.
ChatGPT discerned that sending an initial message on Monday midmorning would set the right pace. "Then it gave me some options for what the message could be," says Rich.
"Keep it light, warm, and low-stakes so it reads as genuine interest without urgency," the bot advised. "Something like: Hey Sarah, still laughing about [tiny shared moment/reference if you've got one] - good to meet you!" Rich went back and forth with ChatGPT until he felt they'd hit upon exactly the right message ("Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you") but sadly she never replied, he says. "It's been two weeks now."

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