Platform Engineering
Bristol, UK | Porto, PT
Joined April 2011
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My latest blog post is out now: "Distributed compiling with Gentoo Linux and WSL2" noiselabs.io/distcc-distribu… #Gentoo #WSL #Distcc
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Over the past few days, I've taken the time to summarize my thoughts on the recent incidents involving agents’ misaligned behavior. We don't know with certainty what comes next, but we know where these issues originate, and this can help us plan the path forward.
Please feel free to ask your questions in the replies, and I’ll try to answer some of them in the coming weeks.
yoshuabengio.org/en/publicat…
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
Vítor Brandão retweeted
‼️🇵🇹 BLAT Studio (blatstudio.com), a Lisbon-based creative digital agency, has allegedly been breached, exposing personal data of Portuguese PSD political deputies and hashed credentials from multiple Portuguese university student associations.
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‣ Threat Actor: Boogeymann
‣ Category: Data Leak
‣ Victim: BLAT Studio (with downstream impact on PSD deputies and Portuguese universities)
‣ Industry: Marketing / Political / Education
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The actor states the data was obtained through an exposed Firebase database instance left without security rules. The breach impacts BLAT Studio's clients, which include Portugal's Social Democratic Party (PSD) and several student associations across Portuguese universities (ISCAL, IST, FADU, ESML, and others).
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What's in it:
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▪️ 119 university emails from student associations with hashed credentials (Base64 encoded + bcrypt)
▪️ 127 records of PSD political deputies, including names, addresses, phone numbers, work and personal emails, positions, and social media links (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn)
▪️ 1,018,396 lines of internal BLAT Studio communications with clients, including message bodies, timestamps, user IDs, attachments, and conversations
Vítor Brandão retweeted
I've spent the past few weeks reading 100s of public data sources about AI development. I now believe that recursive self-improvement has a 60% chance of happening by the end of 2028. In other words, AI systems might soon be capable of building themselves.
Vítor Brandão retweeted
NEW: We've issued Bristol City Council with an enforcement notice for their failure to respond to the public's information requests. Subject access requests are a fundamental right, this action requires them to clear their SAR backlog and make lasting improvements.
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Are you looking for a thread on the trade deal between the UK and India and the lies some people are telling about it, from a cat? If so, you're weird but in the right place...
Yesterday the UK and India announced a new free trade agreement, which it s estimated will add £5bn a year to the UK economy
gov.uk/government/news/uk-in…
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Have a look at the £2bn Bristol City Council ‘Leap Energy Partnership’ contract; to ‘support the aim of Bristol becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030’. One of my followers @WhatNeverNext highlighted this…. joannab.substack.com/p/ex-ma…
Vítor Brandão retweeted
THREAD: If you want an example of the huge regional inequalities in the NHS which sees the West Country massively underfunded & neglected compared to London, the SE & the North, this story is a great example.
have a read:
bristolpost.co.uk/news/brist…
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Cancer cells hijack T-cells, making it harder for the body to fight back!
Researchers discovered a surprising way cancer evades the immune system. It essentially hacks the immune cells, transferring its own faulty mitochondrial DNA into the T-cells meant to attack it. 1/
Vítor Brandão retweeted
I captured the entire "Planetary Parade" using my 11" telescope, and combined everything into one composite photo that stayed true to the angular scale of these objects.
Made entirely with real photos, I hope this composite helps illustrate the scale of these things!
Vítor Brandão retweeted
UK energy storage boom
30GWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) UK planning applications were submitted, with over 35% coming from the last quarter alone.
energy-storage.news/uk-energ…
Vítor Brandão retweeted
🧵 NEW: Are recent immigrants massively over-represented in Britain’s social housing?
In a word: no
But that doesn’t mean Britain’s social housing is immune from immigration pressures. A thread…
1/8
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Test doubles (aka “mocks”) often get a bad rap, but are they really the problem—or is it how we use them?
This talk revisits their origins, explores best-use scenarios, and shows how to make them reliable with contract and collaboration tests.
🎟️ For more talks like this, grab your ticket for PHP UK Conference 2025: buff.ly/46tnXXo
Jakub's (@jakub_zalas) talk is available here: buff.ly/4j6ZuNq
#phpuk #phpuk25 #testing #phpc #php
Vítor Brandão retweeted
What happens in China never just stays in China. There is a surge in influenza A in the U.S. as well this winter. We rarely test whether the virus is conventional flu, or H1N1 swine flu, H5N1 bird flu. But the crowded ERs seen in many places are indications something is afoot.
Vítor Brandão retweeted
Does HS2 have a future?
And why might that question hinge on an unseen government document and a sugar mill in Nottinghamshire?🧵
Vítor Brandão retweeted
When I had a mobile phone snatched by a biker, I gave the police precise GPS details of its two UK locations, including Google maps pictures of front doors. The police refused to go to the addresses or investigate.
This was maddening. The officers said they were not allowed to act on GPS locational data - and also that there are so many street crimes that they can’t cope. But they did want to visit me to take a pointless statement and offer me victim support, when what I actually wanted was my phone back. It is now in Algeria.
The police are significantly under-resourced but there is also an issue about how the existing resources are being deployed.
The Home Secretary says she will give the police the power to act on location data. But it is unclear when this will happen, and why the police can’t even now simply go to a property and knock on a door as a warning to the thieves that they are being watched. And as for the failure to use cctv images, don’t get me started.
Of course thefts and crimes such as the one I experienced are trivial compared to many that go unsolved. Which is why what is reported below will resonate widely.
PS I am not being funny but I thought the most counter-intuitive aspect of the Louise Haigh case is that a decade ago the police took an interest in where her phone might be
Vítor Brandão retweeted
NEW
Might remember I cornered Rwandan President Paul Kagame in January and asked if UK would get money back if no migrants were transferred to Rwanda… answer revealed today: Govt paid £715m so far until June of this year
“not recoverable under the terms of the Treaty”
Vítor Brandão retweeted
ChatGPT refuses to say the name “David Mayer,” and no one knows why.
If you try to get it to write the name, the chat immediately ends.
People have attempted all sorts of things - ciphers, riddles, tricks - and nothing works.
