A curio from the archives. Waaaaaay back in 2003, I was working at Vodafone on their graduate training scheme. One of their fancy new ideas was a crowd-sourced employee suggestion box for new business proposals. As an eager young grad I submitted dozens of ideas. Most of them were crap. But, as I looked back over them, this one struck me as being a lot less crap than others. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentLooking through some *very* old documents.Discovered that I pitched the idea of…
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Last year, when doing some digital spring-cleaning, I realised that I had 800 different passwords. I tried going through them, removing long-dead websites, closing old accounts, and deleting anything incriminating. I now have 891 accounts. Arse. I also went through my 31 different 2FA accounts. Getting rid of old employers' email tokens, failed crypto wallet providers, Club Penguin etc. I now have 40 different TOTP tokens. So, about 4% of my accounts have 2FA security. I don't know if…
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My name is Lee and I was born on the 8th January 2025 - the day the Panopticon was turned on. In 2053, Earth is a changed place. City states make their own laws and we’re all watched over by the ever present drones. I reckon the new Earth is a utopia. We’re still alive aren’t we? What more do people want? It’s been more than a decade since the Hot Summer. I remember when none of us thought we’d make it this long. Not everyone agrees our lives are better under the Panopticon. Someone is…
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How well does SIP work on a modern Android phone, with no 3rd party apps? I'm trying to give up my mobile phone contract. As part of that, I'm switching my voice calls to VoIP providers. For family and friends, that usually means WhatsApp, Skype, Signal and other consumer apps. For work, Hangouts, Zoom, and Skype. But what about "normal" people who just want to dial a PSTN number? And what about "abnormal" people who want to dial my VoIP directly? These are my experiments using the OnePlus…
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The first thing I did when getting to the USA as a kid, was to find a payphone where I dutifully called 1-800-STARWARS. I'd grown up with American media. Phonewords - where your phone's dialpad spells out words - were ingrained in my psyche. But the UK never had anything like that. In 2003, a reverse-charges company tried to make it a thing. Here's how they tried to teach UK users how to spell out words on their keypad: Not even Holly Valance could convince the British public to adopt…
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A friend and I were having a good old grouch-and-moan session over a couple of beers. We were being snide and petty about all the people who'd ticked us off that week. "And another thing!" I proclaimed, "Have you seen their Twitter bio? It's all 'Forbes 30-under-30' and 'Global Speaker' and 'Best Selling Author'! Bah! Why can their bio just say 'I like cheese!'?" My friend took a glug of beer. And said he agreed with me - and that made him feel bad. We're a pair of…
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Another weird economic casualty of COVID19. I'm not wearing out my socks and shoes. I cancelled my train season ticket. And now, I'm giving up my mobile contract. For a decade, I worked in the mobile industry - and always had an unlimited SIM card. Rejoining the real world, some years ago, was a bit of a shock to the system. You mean people have to pay for phone calls?!? The pandemic has everyone reassessing their finances, right? Do I need that beer-of-the-month subscription? Should I move …
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A young man embarks on an adventure with another patient at his therapist's office, who he visits every Wednesday. This is, probably, a feel-good movie. No, it's a buddy movie. Well, actually, it's a romantic comedy. Or, possibly, a satire on race-relations in America. Definitely a bleakly hilarious road-trip. J. Lee's debut as a movie direct has a scattergun approach which pays off handsomely. I found myself laughing the whole way through at its wit and absurdity. The movie packs an…
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Twitter has a nifty new feature which allows you to schedule the publication of a Tweet. But, crucially, it doesn't let the reader know when the message was originally written. How can you, as a publisher, prove that you wrote a scheduled Tweet at a specific time? Here's one method. Write a Tweet which contains a timestamp - "This is my message 2020-08-17" Generate a hash of the message - SHA256: BAE149775399E3AEBC9DEF9D4D4468C9217593B58B76655F479C9CEE4FF73CBA Post the hash to Twitter.…
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It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer's gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives? Nadine Akkerman's search for an…
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My mate Dom was moaning to his ISP on Twitter. They sent him a private message so they could look into his account. Blimey! Thankfully, that was a pretty brazen and inept attempt at phishing. Anyone asking for all your card details like that should set the alarm bells ringing. Of course, phishers often target credulous people who don't understand that they're being scammed. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, …
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I've been sent a Flyland USB-C hub to review. It's a small but versatile unit - perfect for people who need to connect legacy equipment to something with USB-C ports. For £21, you get 7 ports: 3x USB 3.0 1x HDMI 4K 1x Micro SD 1x SD 1x USB Power Delivery It worked perfectly on Linux (more below) and Windows. No drivers required. It also worked on Android. Simple plug and play. Exactly the way USB-C should be. Downsides Under heavy use, it does get a bit warm. Not hot to the touch, but …
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