business mobile · 1 comment · 750 words
Another in an occasional series of blog posts where I discuss products I've worked on which failed. It boiled down to this. Was there a way we could make normal people want to be on a conference call with their family and friends? Let me explain. ARPU - Average Revenue Per User - that's all mobile network operators care about. When it's up, the money flows like wine. When it's down... the…
Continue reading →future · 2 comments · 350 words · Viewed ~221 times
There's a new energy provider launching in the UK soon, Elektrique Power. They've got an innovative pricing structure that I'd like to discuss. As a base rate, they charge 12p/kWh - that's one of the cheapest on the market. But that's where the good deals end. That 12p is only for domestic 13amp sockets. For a 32amp socket - like your oven - that will cost you 17p/kWh. To be clear, you can…
Continue reading →future robots · 1 comment · 200 words · Viewed ~992 times
This is a question I often ask my students. Typically they say a robot looks like this: Or this: Broadly human, but mostly metal. Occasionally, I get non anthropocentric answers like this mule: Or even something stark and industrial like this: One is experimental, the other is rarely seen in day-to-day life. The truth is, we're surrounded by robots. This is what a robot looks like: …
Continue reading →data personalisation privacy · 6 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~10,839 times
Another privacy nightmare. An airline wants its cabin crew to know your birthday and favourite drinks order, to better personalise its service to you. My first instinct is to recoil in horror. It sounds like every dystopian sci-fi epic. But why do I feel this way? Partly it is the lack of genuine personality behind the interaction. It is the Uncanny Valley of sincerity. When Facebook wishes you …
Continue reading →HTML HTML5 standards web · 9 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~417 times
How much do you know about the humble <title> tag? It has been there since the earliest HTML specification. The 1995 spec says: There may only be one title in any document. It should identify the content of the document in a fairly wide context. It may not contain anchors, paragraph marks, or highlighting. Remarkably little has changed in the intervening decades. The modern HTML5 spec…
Continue reading →art blockchain satire technology · 50 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~30,446 times
Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", Verisart will ✨hand wavy magic✨ increase the trust in art dealers and reduce f…
Continue reading →451 gdpr standards · 13 comments · 800 words · Viewed ~5,740 times
Hello, it's me - the idiot who helped inspire the HTTP 451 status code. I graciously allowed Tim Bray to do the hard work of getting it through the IETF process, and now it is an official RFC. Recently, I've seen lots of people getting het up about its "misuse" - so I want to clarify a few things. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) gives people in the EU strong data protection…
Continue reading →ethics technology · 29 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~619 times
In 2005, Sony put malware on their music CDs and then illegally infected customers' machines. I've not purchased a Sony product since. Their new TVs look amazing, but I've decided I don't want to reward a company which behaved so despicably. Is that sensible? 13 years later and I'm still holding a grudge. Is that healthy? It it useful? I was reading a discussion on Microsoft aquiring GitHub -…
Continue reading →blockchain · 3 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~527 times
In most civilised countries, there is a central authority which inspects restaurants for hygiene and safety. Their job is, broadly, to stop people getting poisoned, falling sick, or dying. That's a pretty good feature of civilisation, I'd say. We think that most restaurant owners are probably good people - but it seems sensible to have someone check that they're not dropping rat shit in our…
Continue reading →blockchain cryptography pgp · 1 comment · 950 words · Viewed ~507 times
Every time someone mentions BlockChain, I have to down my drink. Those are the rules. You see, most uses of Distributed Ledger are really just a way to get people interested in cryptographic signing. There's lots of money and attention flowing to projects which have no need to publish to an energy-inefficient global database. They would be better suited to public-key cryptography. Let me give…
Continue reading →ethics gdpr privacy schadenfreude security · 2 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~385 times
I'm going to tell you an anecdote which is a gross oversimplification of a complex topic. In the early half of the twentieth century, certain physicists made breakthroughs in relativity, quantum mechanics, and nuclear energy. Many of these scientists were Jewish. The Nazis called these heretical ideas "Jewish Science" and suppressed their teaching. Jewish physicists based in Germany fled the…
Continue reading →evoluent hardware linux mouse review · 500 words · Viewed ~379 times
Can a mouse ever be worth £100? Yes. Let's get that out of the way. If you spend all day working with your hands, you owe it to yourself to give them the best possible equipment to protect them. For me, that's a vertical mouse with re-mappable buttons to help prevent RSI. Over the last few years, I've purchased several Evoluent mice. They've kindly sent me their latest model so I can write a …
Continue reading →