Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

If ONLY they were Bond villains because then we could nip in and blow up their power plant while they’re monologuing

Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 7h

Incidentally, "in 2020, Earth was taken over by a consortium of Bond villains" works PERFECTLY as an explanation for our current situation. Doesn't it?

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

I will have some fruit after I finish or my nice fine free coffee, or put extra oat bran in my muesli!

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

Aaron Parecki @aaronpk.com · 5h

I just finished adding BlueSky support to IndieLogin.com! Now you can log in to websites like indieweb.org with your BlueSky handle!

Adding Support for BlueSky to IndieLogin.com

Today I just launched support for BlueSky as a new authentication option in IndieLogin.com!

aaronparecki.com

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

European Parliament @europarl.europa.eu · 6h

Young Europeans leave their parents’ home at the age of 26 on average.

However, this varies significantly between EU countries.

According to the latest survey, the youngest Europeans to leave home are, on average, Finnish, at 21.4 🇫🇮 and the eldest are Croatians, at 31.3 🇭🇷

An infographic about the average age when people leave their parental home with a map of the EU countries.

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

Any interaction Reform filmed with me would be a closeup of my raised middle finger because they WANT people to debate them, they think that’s engagement.

HK @hkesvani.bsky.social · 10h

There was a reform uk stall on our local high street today, and while it was relatively small they had a guy whose job it is to film interactions between them and locals, which feels both new and also incredibly desperate for attention

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

Corksicle palmpress but I also keep a bag of tea bag paper for filtering cold brew because who wants fines!?

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

Alt text a tweet mocking the fact that Trump got his flu and Covid booster as anti vax in the streets, pro vax in the sheets

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 6h

Meanwhile the White House just illegally laid off dozens of CDC researchers and scientists during the shutdown.

Tweet by Dan Pfeiffer: “Anti-vax in the streets, pro-vax in the sheets.”
Below is Kaitlan Collins’ tweet showing a photo of a White House medical memorandum dated October 10, 2025, stating that President Donald Trump received his flu shot and COVID booster at Walter Reed.

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

Yep, they can’t reuse but if your ecosystem supports it, you can regenerate passkeys on a new device that you authenticate

Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 5h

GenAI gives you something that looks like an answer to something that looks like your question, over and over again

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 10h

We should have @timcappalli.me along in a minute with more details

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 10h

Basically, *you* are the key factor

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 10h

Where regenerate = eg on iOS you use iCloud Keychain and your passkeys will automatically get regenerated when you sign in to your new device and get bound to it

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

I don't think there's any better example of leopards eating faces than the Lebanese immigrant who opened a Trump-themed burger restaurant and then got arrested by ICE.

Chron.com @chron.com · 1d

🍔 Houston’s Trump Burger appears to have shut its doors after a brief run on Chimney Rock: bit.ly/46LpQAx

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

Ole Vet USAF @olevetusaf.bsky.social · 1d

www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth...
“It’s hard to find previous reports of a defense secretary letting his wife sit in on official closed-door meetings or tasking his senior staff with their official duties.

'Shows poor judgment': Hegseth forced top Pentagon aide to back his wife having a key role

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly forced a top Pentagon aide to support Hegseth's wife having a key role in closed-door meetings — an unusual move, and one the aide eventually admitted he didn...

www.rawstory.com

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

I have a postcard that belonged to *her* mother that was always up on the wall, of a painting of a beech wood full of bluebells with sunlight coming through the leaves, so it felt like a way of connecting her to that as well (she never really got over her mother dying and always missed her)

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

She had asked (years before) for a proper old fashioned hearse with horses with black feathers which was the fashion when she was young (she was born in 1920 and wore boots with 13 buttons) and I was slightly sad I couldn’t run to that but I know she would have liked the bluebell wood

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

Alt text screenshot of a tweet and a profile

Can we hear it for nominative determinism

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 1d

Lucy White, GB News regular, an ally and associate of Rupert Lowe, has come up with the send them all back case for remigration + mass deportations

"Millions of people have been imported into our country.

Therefore…

Millions of people will be exported out from our country".

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

The mushroom shroud looks cool but a wicker basket is *right there* (or a cardboard box but wicker looks nicer). Did a green burial for my mum with a wicker casket on a handcart and now she’s part of a baby bluebell wood, something she loved

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

I read it as they were incompetent, he was cautious and responsible and they continue to be incompetent by suggesting bad faith. A wave of permissions being withdrawn and reassigned looks *very* like enemy action (it just wasn’t an external enemy…)

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

Watch the UNO Q with interest ($44 and Debian Linux and Arduino)

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Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

I’ll have a step by step in AskWoody next week but basically when you get the dialogue that asks if you want the work or personal account there is a link at the bottom that says you can rename your personal account. Click it and follow the instructions and put in a different email for the personal

Scary Mary Branscombe @marypcbuk.bsky.social · 23h

Do not get baited to descend to the level of your annoying opponent is a good principle in law, I am told

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

Never Post, Always Reply @fritzby.bsky.social · 1d

To be clear, he is not being charged for an ai service, he used an unrelated ai to make a program that slammed a regular non ai service that Google offers for 40,000 dollars worth of traffic. The 7k is probably the hardware costs of serving the traffic lol

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Reposted by Scary Mary Branscombe

cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 1d

guy in a legal advice reddit wants to know how to get out of paying google the money he owes them after vibe coding one of his apps into running 40 times a second for several days straight, but says it's not his fault bc they should have stopped him by making it harder to use

r/LegalAdviceUK u/ShavedAp3 • 3d
Join
Google want to charge me 7 k for API access what can I do as they are denying appeals
Debt & Money
Hi there and thanks for reading.
I tried to keep this brief and just ended up rambling on trying to get as much in as possible so here is my edited hopefully a lot smaller problem.
Google are charging me 7k for a mistake that I told them about within a day, the bill went from about £45 to 16k in a day! when I asked for help I was told "dont worry well reset it as a one off, you'll need to put measures in place and ill guide you through those after you agree" So i did he then said "I will monitor it for a further 24 - 48 hours and then tell you how to put the measures in place. " Less than 24 hours later the bill was now 23k and I found out how to stop it myself. Then came the long back and forth to get it reset.
Fast forward 5 months they have finally given me a 20k credit but with VAT the total bill at the time of the credit was 27k
The 20k would have cleared the costs at the time of making them aware they claim its both our responsibilities to monitor costs I feel I did that by contacting them as soon as I saw the irregularity.
I asked them to reconsider they said no the appeal has said that is their final offer so 1 now owe 7k.
Is there anything I can do here from a legal standpoint. I don't have 7k I barely have £45.
Thanks for reading I am in England if it helps.

Intentional or not, OP used either 36k (16 + 20) or 43k (16 + 27) of API credit. Obviously what API it is matters, but with google maps, 16k would equate to ten million pulls. Or two hundred thousand Gemini 2.5 calls with 1000 token input and 5k token output.
Those aren't numbers that something running correctly should run up for any average person or company. So either google screwed up something (which is unlikely that it would only happen to one person in the entire network) or OP has some app or something which isn't running properly and is sending too much to the API.
Edit: It was OP's app, polling google maps nearly 40 times a second for days.

tom_watts • 3d
According to other posts he ended up polling Google maps direction API 2300 times per minute for a few days. Looks like a combination of OP not knowing coding and asking ChatGPT to do it for him, and potentially Google's backend doing something weird in interpreting the janky code.
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