Colin Perkins

Submit your best applied networking research work to ANRW-2026! Check out the Call for Papers: www.irtf.org/anrw/2026/

If you read 1 thing about Social Media Bans this week, it should be Rod Wilson’s magisterial letter to the WSJ; extract, text & link below “Bans feel decisive, but they avoid the harder truth: The digital environment isn’t temporary, and adolescence can’t be postponed until it becomes convenient for adults. We aren’t raising chi…

If you read 1 thing about Social Media Bans this week, it should be Rod Wilson’s magisterial letter to the WSJ; extract, text & link below
https://alecmuffett.com/article/147467
#SocialMediaBan #censorship #parenting

Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs We show that large language models can be used to perform at-scale deanonymization. With full Internet access, our agent can re-identify Hacker News users and Anthropic Interviewer participants at hig...

And right on schedule: there goes pseudonymity on the Internet. arxiv.org/abs/2602.16800

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students from under-represented groups to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-126 Meeting in Vienna, Austria, in July 2026.

irtf.org/travelgrants/

🧵

One day, I will spell the word "entrepreneur" correctly on the first, or perhaps even the second, attempt. Today is not that day.

I trust you, but your AI agent is a snitch: Why we need a new social contract.

We’re chatting on Signal, enjoying encryption, right? But your DIY productivity agent is piping the whole thing back to Anthropic.

Friend, you just created a permanent subpoena-able record of my private thoughts...1/

China’s genius plan to win the AI race is already paying off A network of ultra-competitive high-school talent streams has been turning out the leading lights of science and tech

Really, to get a long-term economic uplift from AI you need to maintain a high-skills base and, ideally, be an AI creator. Rolling out AI in schools is a massive red-flag for deskilling students and is eg the opposite approach to giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

We have announced the winners of the 2026 Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) of the IRTF. Congratulations to all winners – we are looking forward to an excellent ANRP program in 2026!

www.irtf.org/anrp/

AI is great for scientists. Perhaps it's not so great for science Large language models may start to genre-fy scientific research

www.programmablemutter.com/p/ai-is-grea... How LLMs will probably make science more generic.

Forty years ago, 21 people gathered for the first meeting of what became the IETF. Today, nearly 8000 IETF participants from around the world collaborate in more than 100 working groups and every day billions of people use technologies developed in the IETF. https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-40/

Happy Birthday to us! 🎉 

The University of Glasgow is 575 years old today. We have been changing the world since 1451! 

This year we will be celebrating the centuries of impact of UofG, while looking towards to the future, with our #TeamUofG community around the world.

#UofG575

I've seen others claim that "the internet is destructive… because it destroys the social fabric that binds society and civilization together," but that's a ham-fisted approach to an extremely broad tool. We don't get rid of screwdrivers because pointy/sharp sticks are also used for stabbings.

Update: chair has been reupholstered and nobody died, despite the staple gun

A partially dismantled dining chair, its seat propped up and leaning against the frame, as we prepare to re-upholster the seat. A prominent label on the underside of the chair says “NOTICE: THIS ARTICLE MEETS THE FLAMMABILITY REQUIREMENTS OF CALIFORNIA BUREAU OF HOME FURNISHINGS TECHNICAL BULLETIN 117. CARE SHOULD BE EXERCISED NEAR OPEN FLAME OR WITH BURNING CIGARETTES.” Out of frame: upholstery fabric and a lethal looking industrial staple gun.

Age verification changed the internet in 2025 – here's what it means for your privacy in 2026 From age checks to VPN crackdowns, is this the end of privacy online?

There's a real risk that social media bans will unintentionally hurt many young people while worsening everyone's security.

The ultimate goal should be to keep children safe on the Internet, not keep them off the Internet.

A sparkling bauble, shiny white frosted glass, glinting in the sunlight, hangs from a Christmas tree. On the left, greenery from the tree, the bauble hanging just left of centre. To the right, a deeply blurred background, blue and grey, shows the view out of the window behind the tree, with no details visible. Happy Christmas!

Total success to the first college/university that pledges to be AI-free and brand it as an opportunity to receive a real education.

UK Internet Governance Forum - UK IGF The UK Internet Governance Forum is the national internet governance forum for the United Kingdom. It is a collaborative partnership that provides a local forum in the UK to engage industry, governmen...

I’m attending the UK Internet Governance Forum in London today – looking forward to some interesting discussions ukigf.org.uk

How China Mastered the Geometry of Tech Power Before Anyone Else | TechPolicy.Press China has mastered a marketplace where power does not flow from ideology or from the lofty rhetoric but transactional leverage, Konstantinos Komaitis writes

My latest for @techpolicypress.bsky.social : How China Mastered the Geometry of Tech Power Before Anyone Else - www.techpolicy.press/how-china-ma...

@indexoncensorship.org are right to point out the potentially deadly impact, on certain groups, of being unable to communicate confidentially. But it's equally important to consider the *systemic* damage done by breaking encryption.
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I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.

Diagram of "All Modern Digital Infrastructure" that looks like a block tower. Featuring Microsoft as an Angry Bird projectile, AI destabilizing the stack. AWS, Cloudflare, and unpaid open source developers, supporting the base, and Linux as the foundation. All teetering on a deep sea undersea cable being attacked by a shark while balancing on the World Turtle.

All of this, also an obsession with controversialism over substance on large parts of political coverage such that the best writing often appears in blogs and newsletters

Promotional graphic for DiveIn CDT PhD recruitment. The left side shows individuals working with technical equipment in a lab setting. The right side contains text: “Applications Now Open – Fully-funded 4 year PhD. Applicant Webinar – 26th November. More info at divein.org.uk.” Logos for University of Glasgow, UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and DiveIn CDT appear at the bottom.

📣 Applications Now Open!
🌊 Dive into mission-driven interdisciplinary #STEM research with a fully funded 4-year PhD starting Sept 2026
✅ Co-create your project
✅ Enhanced stipend
✅ Cohort-based experience
✅Partner network
📅 Applicant Webinar: Nov 26
👉More info & registration: www.divein.org.uk/apply

Flyer advertising the DiveIn CDT. On the left, a picture of two students working with some scientific equipment that looks like it might be part of an engineering or physics laboratory. On the right, the logos of the University of Glasgow, EPSRC, and the DiveIn CDT, with the text "Applications now open: fully-funded 4-year PhD. Applicant Webinar, 26th November. More info at divein.org.uk"

The DiveIn centre for doctoral training in diversity-led, mission-driven research at the University of Glasgow is now accepting applications for its fully-funded 4-year PhD programme – more info at www.divein.org.uk

ANRP Applied Networking Research Prize

A reminder that nominations for the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) are due on 17 November 2025 www.irtf.org/anrp/ – please consider nominating; self-nominations are welcomed

ANRP Applied Networking Research Prize

A reminder that nominations for the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) are due on 17 November 2025 www.irtf.org/anrp/ – please consider nominating; self-nominations are welcomed

The Cloisters of the University of Glasgow. Dark under stone arches, looking out into a more brightly lit quad. In the quad, the Alma Mater sculpture, by Jephson Robb.

New post from me, for UK folks only, on how you need to start preparing for Apple to switch off Advanced Data Protection and the end-to-end encryption of the data you store on it. Like I said, UK only. #SunlitUplands
heatherburns.tech/2025/11/10/t...