This is a retropost. Written in January 2023 but published long after I left the Civil Service. One of the weird things about working in Westminster is how terrifyingly normal it becomes to work in grand old buildings, stuffed with grand old artworks, and staffed with grand old politicians. You turn a corner and there's a bit of Henry VIII's tennis court. There's a Tracy Emin hanging on the wall. That's the table where that peace treaty was signed. For goodness sake - don't sit on that chair! …
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You're a big Doctor Who fan, right? If I asked you what the world DALEK meant, you'd probably tell me that it is an anagram of KALED - the original name of their species. You'd be wrong. In 1965, it was clearly established by a canonical source, that the world DALEK stands for: Destroy without pity Attack without fear Live without conscience Eliminate without worry Kill, kill, kill, kill! I ain't even lying! WTAF? A few years ago, I picked up a copy of this - The DALEK World. A 1965…
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I bloody hate hardware manufacturers. I wanted to use HDR on my PlayStation 5. The console supports it, my TV supports it, my amp supports it, my cables support it. Yet it wasn't working. I tried everything - updating firmware, replacing cables, and even reading the manual. Nothing. And then I stumbled on the answer thanks to a random forum post. Perform the following procedure when the unit is on. 1. While pressing DIMMER on the main unit, press AUTO/DIRECT to display the current…
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This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, but published long after the events. The day the EU referendum was announced, the then Prime Minister came to visit our office. We were given a chance to talk to him in front of TV cameras. This was my chance. I could ask a question - the perfect question - which would win the referendum and bring down the government. I spent the morning practising what I would say. I psyched myself up, and…
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You're in a restaurant with a group of friends. The waiter won't let you split the bill, so you offer to pay for it on your card and have your friends send you their share. How much would you charge them for that service? That sounds absurd, right? OK, you might agree to split the bill evenly and maybe come out one drink in profit - but it's still a bit of a social faux pas to deliberately make money off your mates. Recently, I was asked if I'd like to run a market stall at a geek event.…
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Heather Burns has an absolutely deft way of turning the sometimes-dull world of digital privacy into entertaining, informative, and actionable prose. Too many of these sorts of books end up being a list of woes and end with "someone should do something, I guess?". Understanding Privacy is different. All the way through the mantra is "You are someone! You do something! And here's how..." Digital privacy is, I think it is fair to say, not a universally loved topic. Too often it is seen as…
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Everyone's favourite tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, contains an article decrying the Financial Independence Retire Early philosophy I have a mixed relationship with the FIRE movement. It basically boils down to "spend less, save more, then you can retire once you've save 25x your annual spend". That's it. As Michael Taylor writes, some people fetishise the "spend less" part. If you deny yourself all pleasure, he argues, then life isn't worth living. That's probably broadly true. But he makes …
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Everyone loves Dark Mode. It is kinder on the eyes, less energy intensive, and looks hecking cool. *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you that Dark Mode causes security bugs. (With apologies to Ben Ward) OK, OK. This isn't a particularly severe security bug, but I found it interesting. The Matrix messaging app "Element" lets you sign in to your account on multiple devices. In order to prove those devices are controlled by you, the app asks you to verify the other sessions. This is…
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This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously, but published long after the events. At the time, I was a Civil Servant in Cabinet Office. Now I am not. But as we're heading for another General Election, I thought I'd share this post. It's the evening of the 2019 General Election. I am plagued by two thoughts. Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has…
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Once in a while, you'll see some blowhard railing about the modern world. I recently saw someone decrying the fact that Star Trek had "gone woke". This Star Trek? OK, you can argue about whether Kirk and Uhura were forced to kiss in that episode. But how does anyone look at Star Trek - with its women on the command bridge, anti-colonial stance, and mixed-race crew - and not think it was a bastion of progressive causes? Star Trek is explicitly political. It isn't hidden in the subtext. You…
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I saw a prominent AI proponent asking why people always focus on the things that AI gets wrong. AI works so well, he asserted, that it was churlish and childish to focus on a few minor mistakes? Which reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago. I was in a rural pub and got chatting to one of the locals. We were getting on great, so I asked him what his name was. "You know," he said, "I've built houses for everyone in this village, but do they call me John the Builder? No! I repaired…
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I'm terrible at networking. I forget people's names minutes after meeting them, I never have business cards and lose the ones I'm given, and I can't go five minutes without burbling some nonsense. But I recognise that networking is a skill and, like any skill, it takes practice to succeed. I've always been told that success isn't always about what you know, but more about who you know. So how does someone who is introverted, bad at small talk, and terrible at sending follow-up emails get to…
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