The world is a complex place. It is tempting to enforce simplicity upon it to make things easier for computers. Gender is a boolean, no one is older than 99, all text flows left to right, and names are always in English. That makes it nice and easy for us to write computer systems - and who cares if it is dehumanising? Recently, I tried to register with phone company EE. When someone asks for my first name, I usually just give my initial. But this box wasn't having any of my nonsense. It…
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Like most of you, I'm inundated with spam calls. So I have a new solution. When an unknown number calls me, they get routed to this audio file. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. This was created with Amazon Polly which is free for casual use. I was pretty impressed with the voice quality. Although there are limits to how well you can control the speed and intonation. While there are a number of accents available, there are only a small number of distinct voices in British English. T…
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I'm doing an apprenticeship MSc in Digital Technology. In the spirit of openness, I'm blogging my research and my assignments. This is my paper from the Technical and Digital Leadership module. I think it is fair to say I didn't get on too well with it. I found it very focused on American companies - which wasn't great for someone working in the UK Civil Service. It also had a weird focus on discredited management fads like MBTI. Considering it was my first ever assignment, I was delighted to …
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I was inspired by this delightful bookshop clock: David Coates@OziasMidwinterBookshop clock... pic.x.com/1tvwjii4kn❤️ 42,165💬 490♻️ 017:03 - Sun 16 May 2021 I wondered - if it was possible to create a similar clock using books from a single author? So here's my first attempt - using Agatha Christie's novels. I've tried to use first edition covers, where possible. There are a few notable absences - 8, 9, and 11. The 2 is represented by "And two other stories" - which is a bit weak! If you c…
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Like many of you, I'm inundated with spam calls. I've suffered endless car accidents, my National Insurance Number has been suspended multiple times, and my broadband will be cut off imminently. Wouldn't be nice to screen out all the fraudsters? So I've set up a Bananaphone. When people ring me, they get 30 seconds of my favourite song. Then the call is passed to me. The theory being that my friends get to enjoy a short ditty but con artists are likely to hang up before the call connects to…
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Bit of a boring write-up, but here we go. Taxi app Gett had a content injection flaw in its search function. By searching for an HTML string, it was possible for an attacker to add links or images to a page. It was really hard to contact them - but the threat of media attention sprung them into action. For example, searching for a specially crafted string meant that an arbitrary SVG could be drawn onto the page like this: Or just a regular <img> element: Links could also be added - like …
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I got a student discount to buy a Google Stadia games system for £60. Seemed like pretty good value. But I didn't buy it - because Google refuses to tell me how much their ecosystem costs. Upfront Cost There's nothing on the main Stadia page which says that you need to pay £9/month to get the 4K version of games. Go on, take a look at https://store.google.com/gb/product/stadia?hl=en-GB. It says "features (including 4K, HDR, 60 fps and 5.1 surround sound) are service-, network-, device- and g…
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Felicity Staples hates reporting on murders. As a journalist for a mid-size New York City paper, she knows she must take on the assignment to research Madison May's shocking murder, but the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway, right before he vanishes. Soon, Felicity senses her entire universe has shifted. No one remembers Madison May, or Felicity's encounter with the mysterious man. And her cat is missing. Felicity…
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I'm an indifferent cook, and mostly-vegan. But I like to be adventurous in my eating habits, when I can. So I decided to follow and then adapt this intriguing recipe for "banana peel bacon". OK. But Why? Food waste is a big issue. People throw away lots of perfectly edible food. They also discard tonnes of packaging. The next logical step, it seems to me, is to have edible packaging. Bananas are well known for their thick protective coating. It's just plant matter, so why can't it be eaten to …
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Here's a little telephony mystery for you - can you find out how much your phone provider charges for 056 calls? (Skip the background and jump to the survey) Background Way back in the mists of time - 2004 - Ofcom decreed that "Voice over Broadband" was going to be the next big thing. VoB (which is like VoIP, but specifically tied to a broadband line) would receive the prefix 056. In that document, they suggested a price cap of 5 pence per minute - considerably lower than other services -…
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M'colleague Charles has introduced me to the most spectacular phrase - "Time To 200". That's a measurement of the length of time it takes a new user to go from signing up to your API to getting their first HTTP 200 response. Think about the last time you started using a new API... Fill in a tediously long registration form Set up billing in case you go over the free trial limits Wait for a confirmation email Unsubscribe from all the marketing emails Find the quickstart documentation Realise …
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Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age – a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven’s world, such material must be closely guarded, so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated. But when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life w…
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