Phil Wills

Not to pick on Sam here, but this is a useful point to highlight some of the impossibility of trust & safety work. Meta actually used to have a program *exactly* like this, BUT it became a central feature of Frances Haugen's Facebook Files as an example of Meta being evil. I'll explain...

This also captures how I feel about people comparing AI as a whole to crypto.

Hiking in the Brecon Beacons today, despite starting off in pouring rain and was rewarded with most ridiculously archetypal rainbow I've ever seen

I was lucky enough to work with Oli many years ago and it's frankly ridiculous that he's available right now. If anyone's hiring for frontend engineering roles you would be extremely foolish to miss this opportunity to snap him up.

I, a Brit, made an excited noise this morning, when I realised it was raining. That seems like pretty conclusive evidence of climate change.

Only just picked up on this as saw another spate of "how rubbish is our country, we can't do anything, France is special etc" Guys, I hate to tell you. It's one of the worst ideas going, government has actually arrived at the right conclusion... See next post. www.briefs.co/news/the-uk-...

Man, the itv half time chat is relentlessly negative. It really wasn't that bad.

As someone mentions in the comments, Lego City Undercover is basically a cute little GTA, so there's precedent for this.

This thread is worth it for the photos of early EVs alone. (I remember thinking that "Who Killed The Electric Car?" was paranoia and ascribing malice to simple business factors and the utter convenience of liquid fossil fuels, but now I'm not so sure about that).

New personal piece: Why does regulation often feel so toothless? The news is full of businesses behaving badly and seeming to get off very lightly. Why? As someone who used to work for a regulator, I wanted to set out some of the very simple reasons regulators struggle…

this is really well-written and informative tech crit - the best piece i have read on gas town and the future of agent orchestration and distance from code

Help us feed Chicagoans who lost their SNAP benefits! Until the end of the month, buy Logic for Programmers with the coupon `feedchicago` to get 50% off. All royalties from the coupon will be donated to the Greater Chicago Food Depository (@fooddepository.bsky.social) leanpub.com/logic/c/feed...

The new album from Blood Orange is one I keep coming back to. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

This mini thread perfectly captures my feelings on LLMs

I got very lucky and have a place for next year's London Marathon. I'm hoping, as part of that, to raise some money for @jarproject.bsky.social who help children, like my son, that have arthritis. If you'd like to donate 2026tcslondonmarathon.enthuse.com/pf/phil-wills is the place

Handsworth is where my mum worked and I went to scouts and church. It's where my brother and his family live and work. It has people from many backgrounds living with, not just alongside each other. That doesn't matter to those with Jendrick's mindset www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

An excellent game if you like puzzles with many solutions and that don’t punish you for messing around. Also one of the funniest and most charming games. And now: cheaper!

My conclusion after a long drive this summer is that modern EV batteries can go significantly further than me without a fifteen minute break. Maybe there's a use case for people who can't easily charge at home, but a lot of things would need to line up

Finally got round to reading this and what resonated with me most is where it touches on the value of institutions. They will let you down, they should be questioned and doubted, but there's so much of value that just isn't possible without them.

Despite being on a different continent, I'm very much feeling this sentiment.

Innocent subpostmasters went to jail, but now it is clear: the Post Office boss class belong there instead | Marina Hyde

For fans of The Thick of It (who isn't?!), now twenty years old, this is a great read...

Hillel is one of the few people I've come across who looks outside of software for perspectives that could be usefully applied to it. This is a new, to me, and interesting framing for reducing incidentn risk

As part of El's ongoing project, she needed to cover Gaiman. By the time she reached him, we see him in a different light. This is long, detailed, and shines its own light on the writer and the work. If you like criticism and can bear to read on the topic, this feels both essential and definitive.

I keep hearing from healthcare #AI companies that Large Language Models ( #LLMs ) can be made to be "deterministic" as part of arguments around safety. I thought I'd do a little ranty 🧵 to explain why (a) it's not true in the real world, and (b) it's not even the right question. 1/

New: How Roman Abramovich's aides created an elaborate tax-dodging scheme to pretend his superyachts were being used for commercial purposes when in fact the billionaire was using them for pleasure. Experts say it could amount to illegal tax evasion. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

This is a genuinely uplifting story - from diplomatic elite to refugee to volunteer & enterprising student #RefugeesWelcome www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

I am a former incarcerated firefighter. I served in a California fire camp from 2009 to 2012. Misinformation is afire on the internet, so here are facts about the prison firefighter program, all in one place. A thread.

Continuing on my path to making the web better, I’m now looking for an organization who needs help operationalizing excellence in frontend and product design so we can ship world-class experiences together 🚀

In contrast to cynical takes about how of course companies don't care about DEI etc, Dan presents the argument that actually caring about employees and creating fun environments is part of what winning looks like. Every leader should remind themselves of this.

I was preparing to pitch an op-ed on the nationwide protests calling for President Yoon's resignation, aiming to provide global context amid the limited international coverage. Given the urgency, I’m sharing it now. I didn’t expect events to escalate this quickly. #SouthKorea #Democracy

When headline writers say things like “defies known science” or “should be impossible” or “baffles scientists” they’re feeding an attitude that scientific results should all be taken as not just contingent, but completely meaningless. It breeds distrust or even contempt toward science & scientists

This story is one of the most disturbing I've ever covered. It's about how the views of a deeply weird ideological sect affected science, medicine and the media, with devastating impacts on patients. Please read and pass on. This horror has to stop. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A month since the Cumbria Wildlife Trust announced their bid to buy and ecologically revive Skiddaw Forest. They're 91% of the way there, but donations have slowed. Chip in if you can to help get them over the line. And please share this post.

This brilliant, brilliant thing cruelly encapsulates almost my whole digital career. modem.io/blog/blog-mo...

When an important new scientific study comes out, the media's need for novel headlines means it often faces two risks: (1) being discussed out of context (like recent AMOC analyses) and/or (2) being widely misinterpreted—like this a recent study on climate policies. What do I mean? Read on. 🧵

well this is delightful www.theguardian.com/sport/articl...

This is fascinating stuff for a nerd likes me who's a bit too young to remember this period

So claiming the equal pay judgment had bankrupted Birmingham Council was an easy way for the Senior Management Team to avoid admitting it was actually because of a disastrous IT project they've overseen. The city suffers so the SMT's LinkedIn profiles stay clean theconversation.com/how-birmingh...

If environmental protest movements behaved like the farming unions, governments across Europe would have banned them by now as "terrorist organisations" or "organised crime". The double standards in the application of the law are simply gobsmacking.

This is an incredibly wild read. medium.com/@jerrytalton...

News sites should ask what year you got your first job. Then all starter salaries mentioned should be followed, in brackets, by an inflation-adjusted equivalent in that year. "Junior doctors start on £28,000 (roughly equivalent to £16,000 in 2001)" People underestimate the impact of inflation.

ALL WORK IS HARD / ALL JOB'S ARE BAD - dashare.zone ADMIN

OK Strava, but I'm going to go ahead and call that 2,000k:

Everything that makes campaigning against fossil fuels difficult is 10x harder when it comes to opposing #LivestockFarming. Yet, alongside fossil fuels, it's one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. We shouldn't shy away. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Well played, Greenwich Waterstones. Well played.

“We are witnessing the fundamental principle of humanity being openly disgraced … the death sentence [the state of Israel] has handed the people of Gaza is inhumane, indefensible, and cannot continue to be carried out.” www.msf.org/letter-gaza-...