two phrases that have caught my attention this year
1. Cognitive offloading
2. Epistemic contamination
AI and climate change; politics and societal change; rapid evolutions of our age
Gavin's Bindery
A small Friday experiment: a Constellation for data and AI professionals.
Let's connect people:
1. working on problems you care about through shared interests
2. by keep loosely in touch, not a firehose
3. without all the clutter: more signal, less noise
And - of course - without exploiting your data.
If you join today, you'll be one of the first. It's free.
You can help shape it: it's manually curated by me at the moment, so let's see if we can do something useful.
https://norma.cl8.io
Today in "we're not ready":
“Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months,”
https://bit.ly/3QuhU1h
o/h in a large, global company: "both Zoom and Google Meet are blocked on our systems, we only support Teams"
The reason (via a different company's CTO): "we don't want to have to support more than one thing" (nothing to do with security, etc). You do realise you're re-privatising the *telephone* into a walled garden?
Am sure many of you will recognised this pattern: it's interoperability regression.
It's exactly a year to the day since the UK Data Act became law.
Fitting then, that Maria Harris (Open Property Data Association) announce a major programme to help anyone buying a home.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/homebuying-shake-up-to-slash-delays-cut-costs-and-stop-sales-falling-through
#emfcamp people... Experimental EMF Constellation just for us: https://emfcamp.cl8.io
A dozen EMF'ers have signed up in the last few days, would be great to connect on skills and interests
(what is it? https://dgen.net/0/constellation)
today in "we're not ready" + sad-lol-face:
"the keynote speaker said absolutely nothing about using Claude to write his academic work until I intervened in the Q&A"
https://bsky.app/profile/alwaystheself.bsky.social/post/3mohg5hld6s2a
Web 0.0
Is it time?
#emfcamp people... Experimental constellation just for us. https://emfcamp.cl8.io
(guide, based on my dgen one, https://dgen.net/0/constellation)
Today in "we're not ready"
Anthropic has suspended its powerful new AI model after US authorities raised security concerns just days following its public release. Anthropic ordered to suspend foreign nationals from using Fable 5...as "too powerful".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c932g3v3e13o
Isn’t it interesting that the “first trillionaire” is exactly _that guy_ in every possible way you’d expect them to be?
If you're in need of a bit of a Friday boost, you might enjoy this. The act of people just getting together to make things is always just lovely and we reflected that, unlike COVID, the current global sentiment carries different kind of weight https://dgen.net/0/2026/06/12/constellation-reflections/
"outcomes-focused workshop of real-world challenges / problem statements looking for space-based data solutions, for end users & experts", Reading, June 25 12:30-4:30PM
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/space-data-for-national-resilience-a-london-climate-action-week-workshop-tickets-1989224057705
Now you have somewhere to take your evidence to: please do.
UK AI Economics Institute: "Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft…commit to close collaboration…in support of evidence-based policymaking"
https://bit.ly/4urUcRh
Not your normal Sunday evening. Everyone ok, but 3 boats nearly set on fire tonight. Police are investigating whether it was "malicious or just reckless"
Hello broadside users, there's now a Broadside Guide if you want to learn more http://dgen.net/0/broadside
That thing when you go to start a project that you were going to 'get around to' and the find a whole bunch of templates and documents you'd prepared for future-you, dated 8 years ago. Hello weekend.
We finally (sort of) know what the National Data Library is
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/omg-ndl-wtf-bbq
(tl;dr - "data.gov.uk had been rebranded as the National Data Library)
related:
https://ib1.org/2025/10/16/realising-the-potential-of-a-national-data-library/
We finally (sort of) know what the National Data Library is
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/omg-ndl-wtf-bbq
(tl;dr - "data.gov.uk had been rebranded as the National Data Library)
related:
https://ib1.org/2025/10/16/realising-the-potential-of-a-national-data-library/
o/h "If you allow ‘Other’ as a purpose, how does this meet GDPR?"
If you ever encounter someone saying "can we bundle multiple purposes in one consent?" or "can we add 'other'?" then you have unlocked authorisation to use this phrase:
“Dear technologist, here’s a lawyer. You’re welcome.”
The UK’s AI Security Institute / DSIT is hiring for a Director (£100,000 to £162,500) and for a Chief Research Officer (£230,000 to £240,000). https://bit.ly/4uS3gjj
As smart data & ai-enabled innovation accelerates, remember: designing for positive intent is [relatively] easy. We cannot rely [only] on the law to balance the (inevitable) harms ahead, which come at internet-speed.
As design for usability=better websites, so designing for bad actors=robust markets
Today in "we're not ready":
"...survey found nearly a third of employees are quietly sabotaging their own company’s AI rollout"
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/katzyk_publicservices-ai-transformation-share-7467514483926519808-lhFn/
Great summary from Andrew here.
tl;dr "Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) regulation must be retained and strengthened."
Perseus can also really help with this.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewthomasgriffiths_secr-climatepolicy-uksrs-share-7467889600666050562-gPdy