Interesting Links for 26-09-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Every UK adult will need 'Brit card' digital ID under Starmer plan to tackle illegal migration

(tags:uk identity )

2. The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand (a review)

(tags:fanfic stephen_king review )

3. Ukraine's Plan to Starve the Russian War Machine (by using their new drone factories to destroy Russian oil refineries and processing plants)

(tags:oil russia ukraine war drones )

4. AI-generated fiction homogenises culture, painting surface-level details over the same story every time.

(tags:ai fiction society )

5. An English teacher experiments with his class and AI. The results are complex and nuanced.

(tags:ai writing university )

6. Microsoft block Israel's access to Azure and genAI tech used to surveil millions of Palestinian phone calls

(tags:microsoft israel )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

#1 - Same process is going on in the US - with not much progress.
#3 - Let's hope; Ukrainian IQ is much higher than that of Russia. But Russia copies fast.
#6 - The funny thing with Palestinian phone calls is that they do have their own country code and phone stations, but nothing actually works, so they use the Israeli phone system and country code. Easy to surveil.

So, we are seeing that technical progress is helping those who are smarter... but challenges remain.

[nancylebov]

2. I got the anthology, and I started reading it at the beginning. I regret it, two stories in.

The review and I agree. King's genius was to have a skilled mix of horror and interesting characters. The stories (those first two) are just unremitting horror. I'll try just reading the recommended stories.

[andrewducker]

Agreed on King's genius.

I hope you enjoy the recommended ones.

[ninetydegrees]

From #5 " If I assign 54 students five double-spaced page of writing, as I often do, I’ve assigned myself 270 pages to grade; most semesters, I easily top 1000 pages of grading. You could reasonably tell me to suck it up and stop complaining, because grading is part of my job, but the counterargument—made by school districts including Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest district in the country—is that the speed and efficiency of AI grading is worth exploring, because it frees up teachers’ bandwidth for individualized, in-person help."

I hate how any discussion around technology usually boils down to this, and never to: maybe I have too many students, maybe I'm asking too much of them, maybe we need more staff to provide in-person help. Like technology like this is a quick fix when here it's just a bandaid on a fundamental, structural issue that is always related to money and the fact that people/companies/orgs use technology to avoid paying and hiring human beings. This is infuriating.

[agoodwinsmith]

Yes.

[bens_dad]

6. Well done Microsoft.
Especially for going back and having a second inquiry and finding evidence that wasn't found (and maybe not present) the first time.