Programmer. Writer. Ambulomancer. Non erratum sed designatum.
Hotwells, Bristol
Joined March 2007
- Tweets57.9K
- Following1.9K
- Followers1.7K
- Likes22.2K
Matt Gibson retweeted
Never stop saying "dozen" and "half dozen". Never stop using the word you read in an old novella. Never stop using your regional jargon. Don't succumb to an internationalized English stripped of its whimsy and romanticism in the name of streamlining global commerce.
Matt Gibson retweeted
Just seen this programme on iPlayer called #Threads I'm hoping it will take my mind off current global affairs. I like a drama about 80's fashion
Matt Gibson retweeted
🚨 CRITICAL: Active supply chain attack on axios -- one of npm's most depended-on packages.
The latest [email protected] now pulls in [email protected], a package that did not exist before today. This is a live compromise.
This is textbook supply chain installer malware. axios has 100M+ weekly downloads. Every npm install pulling the latest version is potentially compromised right now.
Socket AI analysis confirms this is malware. plain-crypto-js is an obfuscated dropper/loader that:
• Deobfuscates embedded payloads and operational strings at runtime
• Dynamically loads fs, os, and execSync to evade static analysis
• Executes decoded shell commands
• Stages and copies payload files into OS temp and Windows ProgramData directories
• Deletes and renames artifacts post-execution to destroy forensic evidence
If you use axios, pin your version immediately and audit your lockfiles. Do not upgrade.
Matt Gibson retweeted
What a terrific writer. Among his many masterpieces, SS-GB is the sole really convincing dystopia ever written of Nazi-occupied Britain. RIP.
Len Deighton obituary: How a cookery cartoonist became a master spy writer bbc.in/4sJEKzb
Matt Gibson retweeted
Very sad to learn of the death of Len Deighton, who was one of the two greatest spy thriller writers of all time and in some regards was Le Carre’s superior.
Anyone who has not read Deighton should try Funeral in Berlin, Bomber or SSGB. Most of all they should seek out Berlin Game, the start of an epic 10 book Cold War series focused on Bernard Samson.
Deighton’s writing was sharp, satirical, gripping and often amusing. His office infighting in the intelligence services was delicious and his characters are beautifully drawn.
The Samson cycle starts with a meticulously plotted run of five books (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match, Spy Hook and Spy Line) which all stand alone but tell one big story from the jaded but dedicated perspective Bernard a brilliant field operative. Len’s genius idea was to use the sixth, Spy Sinker, to retell the whole cycle from the perspective of everyone else, exposing what Bernard didn’t know and misunderstood.
There is then an origin story about Bernard’s dad during the war, Winter, and then a concluding trilogy of Faith, Hope and Charity, which is not as high quality but deals with the fallout from the events of books 1-5.
It’s an epic achievement and the greatest long series in spy fiction, accepting that the Smiley series is the greatest short series.
Do yourself a favour, give it a try
Matt Gibson retweeted
On Friday we revealed the Companies House vulnerability letting anyone access the private dashboard of any UK company.
This is the moment I first saw it demonstrated. My reaction says it all.
What do we know? What don't we know? What should companies do now?
Matt Gibson retweeted
The market panicking because AI can rewrite COBOL ignores two things:
1-Tools that rewrite COBOL have existed for decades
2-That's not the hard part
Matt Gibson retweeted
We've lost common sense in infrastructure automation.
I've been implementing Azure infrastructure solutions for enterprise customers for years. Thousands of servers. Security baselines. Compliance monitoring. The real stuff.
Out of all the automation I've built and delivered, I can count on one hand the cases where an AI agent actually made sense. One hand.
The rest? Scripts. Queries. Scheduled tasks. Deterministic logic that does exactly what it's supposed to do, every single time, at a fraction of the cost.
Yet everywhere I look, people are wrapping basic automation in agent frameworks. Diagnostic settings rollout? Agent. Tag compliance? Agent. Resource Graph queries? Somehow, also agent.
Why? Because agents are the shiny new thing. Because it looks good on a slide deck. Because nobody wants to present "we wrote a PowerShell script" at the next team meeting.
Let me be clear: learning new technology is great. Experimenting is great. But shipping unnecessary complexity into production because it feels modern? That's not engineering. That's ego.
Every agent you deploy where a script would do is:
→ More cost (tokens aren't free)
→ More failure modes (now you're debugging AI behavior, not logic)
→ More operational overhead you'll be dealing with for years
Infrastructure automation is about reliability and predictability. Most of these tasks have known inputs, known outputs, and known logic. That's the opposite of where agents add value.
Agents belong where you need genuine reasoning over ambiguous, dynamic problems. Not where a foreach loop gets the job done.
Think before you architect. Common sense still applies.
Matt Gibson retweeted
Remember when Windows added a new “Notepad” app with CoPilot and forced the good old notepad.exe to open the new app instead of itself even if you don’t want it?
Well, a new feature just dropped.
Matt Gibson retweeted
I was prompted to sign into mspaint today.
@Microsoft when you look back and wonder what went wrong for Windows...
It was this. This is what went wrong.
Matt Gibson retweeted
Tailwind lays of 75% of their team. the reason is so ironic:
> their css framework became extremely popular w AI coding agents, 75m downloads/mo
> that meant nobody would visit their docs where they promoted paid offerings
> resulting in 40% drop in traffic & 80% revenue loss
Matt Gibson retweeted
⚠️Burst main in Hotwells , BS9⚠️
08:50
Due to a burst main in Hotwells (BS8) area, you may experience no water or very poor pressure. Our crew is on route to investigate this. We will endeavour to restore your water as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your patience. ^Riley
Matt Gibson retweeted
Parents launch legal action over school merge plan bbc.in/48qg4Ub
Matt Gibson retweeted
Patrick McGoohan: “We needed a car for our hero. Something out of the ordinary. A vehicle fit for his personality...This was it. A symbol of all The Prisoner represented: standing out from the crowd, quickness and agility, independence and a touch of the rebel.”
Matt Gibson retweeted
Next week will mark the 40th anniversary of Troy Kennedy Martin's landmark political thriller Edge of Darkness. No drama had a more profound impact on me as a teenager. Initially broadcast on BBC2, it was given an almost immediate repeat on BBC1 in double-episode chunks. 1/
Matt Gibson retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: Bosses at the Bristol Beacon cancelled an event launching a campaign calling for Bristol Zoo to reopen, hours after private pressure from bosses at the zoo - and then tried to cover it up, Bristol Live can reveal.
THREAD 🧵
bristolpost.co.uk/news/brist…
