What if the Discworld's Assassin's Guild existed in the real world? That's it. That's the plot. Go to a university where they'll teach you to be a better class of murderer. The first half is excellent. Chuckles all the way through. A heady mix of every boarding-school novel you've ever read, and funny little twists and turns. Lots of the dialogue is straight out of Terry Pratchett (and I can't…
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The good folks at SmartDisplayer Technology Co have sent me a six colour eInk badge to play about with. Here's a quick video and then a walk-through of its features. You can also view SmartDisplayer's official video. The Badge It is a single block of plastic. There are no seams, screws, or rough edges. The ePaper appear right on the surface of the badge, there's no recessing or anything…
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I'm delight to announce the first release of my opinionated HTML Pretty Printer for new versions of PHP. Grab the code from Packagist Contribute on GitLab There are several prettifiers on Packagist, but I think mine is the only one which works with the new Dom\HTMLDocument class. Table of ContentsWhatHowLimitationsWhyNext Steps What This takes hard-to-read HTML like: <!doctype…
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The gadget wizards at Benfei know that I'm a sucker for any sort of USB-C gadget. So when they offered to send me their micro-hub to review, how could I refuse? It is dinky! Here's what you get for your tenner USB-C PowerDelivery HDMI USB-A Frankly, I'm impressed that they managed to fit that much in! If you'll excuse my lacklustre photo-editing skills, here are the two output ports: …
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There's a disturbing article in The Guardian about a person who was on the receiving end of a successful cybersecurity attack. EE texted to say they had processed my sim activation request, and the new sim would be active in 24 hours. I was told to contact them if I hadn’t requested this. I hadn’t, so I did so immediately. Twenty-four hours later, my mobile stopped working and money was wit…
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The good folks at Benfei know that I'm always losing my USB Thumb Drives. They're just too damn small. I crave something bigger and harder to lose. Not as huge as a CD Drive, but not as small as a MiniDisc. Something chunky and satisfying, with a slim elegance. So they've sent me their SATA to USB-C drive enclosure. It's a cute little box, with a built-in USB-C cable. The cable has one of…
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Sure, WiFi is basically fine. But sometimes you need the raw power, high speed, and utter reliability of Ethernet. Billions of packets hurtling down twisted copper pair in order to deliver your data - that's what it is all about, right? But - alas! - laptops don't have Ethernet ports these days. And mobile phones tend to shun them as well. Who can save us from the tyranny of multi-GigaHertz…
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Apparently there's no need for IP laws any more, so here's a way to archive high-fidelity Twitter data without signing up for an expensive API key. This is perfect for academics wishing to preserve Tweets, journalists wanting to download evidence, or simply embedding content without leaking user data back to Twitter. Table of Contentstl;drBackgroundEmbed CodeAPI CallOptionsOutputTweet With…
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This is a lovely and twisted anthology of stories. Each presents a "historic" robot - be they an automaton, a puppet given life by the gods, or a resurrected villager. Some, like the Mechanical Turk, are historical fact but others are invented just for us to gawk at. The stories are mostly dark and brooding, with the macabre turn. They're fun - but the constant theme is "what if I, an…
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The good folks at Benfei have sent me a laptop stand to review. You know the drill, a few pieces of metal, some hinges, and rubber feet. But this stand holds a little more interest for the gadget lover - a built in USB-C hub! What do you get for your £35? USB-C power input - capable of taking 100W of PowerDelivery. A built-in USB-C cable to connect to your laptop. HDMI port which supports 4k …
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Some ideas are timeless. Back in 2004, an anonymous genius set up "FobCam". Tired of having to carry around an RSA SecurID token everywhere, our hero simply left the fob at home with an early webcam pointing at it. And then left the page open for all to see. Security expert Bruce Schneier approved of this trade-off between security and usability - saying what we're all thinking: Here’s a guy w…
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There's a fine line between genius and madness - and I'm not sure where this book lies. It dives right in with some splendid technobabble: The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered…
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