London, UK >  A cyber security professional observing technology, business, and culture with a skeptical – but never cynical – eye, and scratching a writing itch from a previous life as a journalist.

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Self-driving cars are here, but the friction is in the sale
 -  On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I was tempted to take one of the Waymos or Robotaxis that so casually roam the streets. One day, I was even offered one as an alternative to waiting 11 minutes for an Uber driver. I probably would have taken the ...
Field Notes 5 // ChatGPT Atlas and the Claude café
 -  I'm feeling bullish on technology in a way I haven't since the mid-2010s. I'm still not fully convinced on the AI non(?)-bubble, but it feels like the sector has regained some of its soul recently. At least in my circles, there's been pushback aga...
ChatGPT Atlas positions AI as the internet's gatekeeper
 -  We’re shoehorning AI into everything else, so why not your web browser? That was presumably the thinking when OpenAI launched ChatGPT Atlas, an AI-augmented browser that it says will change the way we use the internet. Launched on macOS on 21st Oc...
EtherHiding: When good blockchains turn bad
 -  With AI stealing the limelight over the last few years, it’s been a while since it was fashionable to talk about the blockchain. But it’s still out there, most famously used to track cryptocurrency transactions and hold smart contracts. Part of wh...
The untapped potential of AI for security operations
 -  In August 2025, Anthropic announced it had caught a threat actor using Claude in a series of cyber attacks. The large language model (LLM) helped the attacker in their reconnaissance and network compromise, but also in more strategic tasks: choosi...
Field Notes 4 // New York, note taking, and Blindr
 -  Welcome back to Field Notes. The eagle-eyed might have noticed that it is October, and not August. The end of July into September was a testing period for me. I was often exhausted to the point that I could do nothing on evenings and weekends exce...
Claude's café pop-up convinced me to switch LLMs
 -  There’s a new cool kid on the AI block, and its name is Anthropic. On my recent trip to New York, I noted the huge poster campaigns for its Claude large language models (LLMs), but it turned out that was just the beginning. Just after I flew back ...
New York City: Observations and recommendations
 -  I first visited New York in 2024, and those few rain-drenched days left a deep impression on me. I did my lap of the usual tourist sights, but my affection for the place lay elsewhere. Something excited me about the city at street level - an inspi...
Take note: How to waste less time on the internet
 -  We all waste far too much time online. There’s overt time wasting, like the mindless auto-queued videos on TikTok, and less obvious time wasting, like time spent browsing Hacker News and reading semi-technical blog posts. “But Matt,” you might say...
A reminder that you can just do things... kind of
 -  “You can just do things” has become common advice online. It’s a modern iteration on the ethos that fortune favours the brave - a proclamation that you’re only one bold move away from the life you’ve always dreamt of. Yeah right, was my initial re...

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Digital journalism
Coincidentally, in the space of a week I encountered both Zach Seward's article about Quartz and Craig Mod's excellent podcasts with Tim Ferriss. Both evoked fond memories of my time in journalism and the buzz surrounding digital journalism and media in the 2010s

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