Wendy M. Grossman

Software is still forever On October 14, a few months after the tenth anniversary of its launch, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. That is, Microsoft will no longer issue featur

This week's net.wars, "Software is still forever", laments the amount of ewaste about to be produced by the end of Windows 10, and notes new developments in age verification under the Online Safety Act: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/10/10/s...

To be fair, co-author Robert Waldinger does study how children's lives affect them in middle age. But he's working on boomer children...

What qualifies her co-author? He's a psychiatrist who studies adult life.

UK IGF 2025 - UK IGF UK Internet Governance Forum Meeting 2025 Building Digital Governance Together This year’s UK Internet Governance Forum (UK IGF) will follow the same overall theme as the global IGF which took place i...

UKIGF 2025 will take place on December 11 in London. Registration is open here: ukigf.org.uk/events/uk-ig...

Techgrumps 3.32 : Your illegal, racially motivated stops will go more smoothly | Podcast Episode on RSS.com Techgrums 3.32UK Digital IDhttps://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/26/the-absurdity-card/Christie’s has quietly shuttered its digital art departmenthttps://news.artnet.com/market/christies-scraps-...

#Techgrumps 3.32 is now live
Your illegal, racially motivated stops will go more smoothly

rss.com/podcasts/tec...

This time with Me, @wendyg.bsky.social @eastmad.bsky.social @rnalexander.bsky.social

Coming to techgrumps.wordpress.com soon.

I remember the occasion well...

Undue process To the best of my knowledge, Imgur is the first mainstream company to quit the UK in response to the Online Safety Act (though many US news sites remain unavail

This week's net.wars, "Undue process", watches Imgur depart the UK when the ICO threatens to fine it; 4chan and Kiwi Farms sue Ofcom in a US court over the Online Safety Act; and we wave goodbye to AOL dial-up: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/10/03/u...

Childproofing the Internet | Skeptical Inquirer In late August 2025, the American screenwriter Josh Olson posted on Bluesky an image I couldn’t see. Because I am in the United Kingdom, the image was label ...

At @skepticalinquirer.bsky.social , my piece on the UK's ONline Safety Act: skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/ch...

On the BritCard - in theory better government systems are a great idea, but implementing it requires very high levels of management competence to cope with the ambition and complexity; the costs will correspondingly be very high.

The absurdity card Fifteen years ago, a new incoming government swept away a policy its immediate predecessors had been pushing since shortly after the 2001 9/11 attacks: identity

This week's net.wars, "The absurdity card", can't believe we're doing ID cards all over again: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/26/t...

Blur In 2013, London's Royal Court Theatre mounted a production of Jennifer Haley's play The Nether. (Spoiler alert!) In its story of the relationship between an old

This week's net.wars, "Blur", goes to #gikii 2025 and finds its surrealism struggling to keep up with the weirdness of real life: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/19/b...

Review: Tor Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy by Ben Collier MIT Press ISBN: 978-0-262-54818-2 The Internet began as a decentralized system designed to rero

My review of Ben Collier's biography of Tor: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/16/r...

Dethroned This is a version of a paper that Jon Crowcroft and I delivered at this week's gikii conference. She sounded shocked. But also: as though the word she had to p

This week's net.wars, "Dethroned", goes to #gikii and talks about restrospective doping controls that revise history: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/12/d...

Remediating monopoly This week Judge Amit P. Mehta handed down his ruling on remedies in the antitrust case on search. Decided in 2024, this was the first to find that Google acted

This week's net.wars, "Remediating monopoly", ponders the future of AI versus search envisaged by the judge in the (first) Google case: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/05/r...

Someone should do a blind test of this claim.

Passing the Uncanny Valley A couple of weeks ago, the Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub played host to Sophie Nightingale, who studies the psychology of AI deepfakes. The particular project s

This week's net.wars, "Passing the Uncanny Valley", sees Sophie Nightingale deliver the news that training people to detect synthetic facial images has little effect; and we bid goodbye to Typepad (may its bloggers find new homes): netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/29/p...

New @plutopia.io: our conversation with pioneer James L. Wayman on the history of biometrics. "People never have what you think they're going to have where you think they're going to have it.", plutopia.io/james-l-waym...

*And* animals are way smarter than AIs.

Sadly, they've fixed it now. But it gave me a nice opening for a piece I'm writing.

tx for the description. I don't think I want to see that enouhg (or at all) to age verify. :)

Apparently whatever you posted with this is "adult content", not viewable by those in UK who have not verified their age. Fun!

Email to Ofgem So, the US has claimed victory against the UK. Regular readers may recall that in February the UK's Home Office secretly asked Apple to put a backdoor in the A

This week's net.wars, "Email to OfGem", finds the US declaring victory over the UK Home Office's demand that Apple weaken its encryption, and emails OfGem to oppose Tesla's application to enter the UK energy market: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/22/e...

For referencee, the piece was called "Access Denied", and it ran in Scientific American in August, 1998. ACM had done a survey. Number one write-in explanation of why women falling out of compsci: sexual harassment.

Yep. I first wrote about the shrinking pipeline of women in compsci in 1998.

Right. And my email server is in Pitttsburgh.

Drought conditions At 404 Media, Matthew Gault was first to spot a press release from the UK's National Drought Group offering a list of things we can do to save water. The meetin

This week's net.wars, "Drought conditions", finds mad government advice and visit the decision in Wikipedia's case against categorization in the Online Safety Act: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/15/d...

Ironically, the overground sections got A/C years ago - but ISTR the delay in the deep cut portions (notabaly the Piccadilly and Northern lines) has to do with moving the exhausted A/C air out.

Very much so.

John Seabrook: The Spinach King - Plutopia News Network John Seabrook discusses his personal and provocative new book, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.

In the latest episode of the @plutopia.io podcast, we talk to New Yorker writer John Seabrook about his new book, The Spinach King: plutopia.io/john-seabroo...

Machine learning For decades, technologists imagined teaching machines. Instead, although edtech is indeed permeating classrooms, human teachers have remained in demand. And the

This week's net.wars, "Machine learning", chats about chatbots in education with a tiny unrepresentative sample of those dealing with them: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/08/m...