The UK faces an epidemic of telephone scams. Fraudsters are constantly calling people up pretending to be their bank. But how can you be sure the number displayed on your screen in genuine? You can't. The telecom system is hopelessly insecure and shouldn't be trusted for anything more complicated than dialling the speaking clock. Barclays bank knows that customers are worried about this. So…
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Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and…
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Being from the United Kingdom is hard sometimes. When scrolling through a list of countries, we might be found down the bottom as "UK" or near the top as "Great Britain". Occasionally someone files us under "England" - thus ignoring Wales, Scotland, NI etc. Once in a while, it'll be "The UK". Truly, no one has suffered as we have suffered⸮ Here's a list of countries from the Curve Credit card (…
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Hundreds of years ago, the last humans left Earth. After centuries wandering empty space, humanity was welcomed – mostly – by the species that govern the Milky Way, and their generational journey came to an end. But this is old history. Today, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, a place many are from but few outsiders have seen. When a disaster rocks this already fragile community, those Exo…
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Beginning during the final events of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, this standalone sequel branches out to explore new characters and new corners of the galaxy. Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship’s artificial intelligence system, tasked with caring for the health and well-being of her crew, possessing a distinct personality and very human emotions. Now, r…
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AVIF is the hip new image format. It is born out of video compression technology. Modern video streaming services have a complicated relationship with multiple resolutions. A video is usually encoded several time - for high, medium, and low bandwidths. When you start streaming, your playback device usually picks the lowest quality stream to start with. If it downloads it quickly, then it jumps to …
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Do you like beer? Do you like cider? Would you like to brew your own? Would you like a frustrating experience? Well, gang, do I have a treat for you! This is the Pinter from the Greater Good Fresh Brewing Company. It promises to introduce you to the wonderful world of beer and cider brewing. It is only mildly annoying to use. First up, cost. £75. That's a chunk of change - but it comes with …
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ESPN FC@ESPNFC ESPNFlorentino Perez says we may need to make football matches shorter than 90 minutes 😳 pic.x.com/wvxbIFdp5c❤️ 10,647💬 2,580🔁 009:09 - Tue 20 April 2021 On the face of it, I sort of get it. Viral football clips of sporting prowess (or failures) do Big Numbers™ on social media. Casual fans love them, and even non-fans might watch them. A regular football match is a 2-3 hour commit…
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Maybe it's the weirdness of the weather. Maybe it's another way to pour scorn on politicians. Maybe the steady stream of headlines about fires, floods and droughts is finally starting to get to us. Whatever it is, for more and more of us, climate change is shifting from a shadowy fear in the backs of our minds to something we feel we need to get a handle on. Our exploration of the Earth's…
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From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing.…
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As part of my MSc, I'm reading MoneyBall. OK, I just watched the film! Cut me some slack! The basic thesis of the book is this: Our baseball team doesn't have much money to buy new players Which baseball players have the best Statistic X for the lowest price? Buy undervalued players which increase your Stat X The film book is well worth watching reading. What I like about it - and the…
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This is a two-part blog post about rewriting the rules. I hated playing sports as a teenager quelle surprise. In a vain attempt to get me to love the beautiful game, a PE teacher once made me team captain for a kickabout. My rival? Sporty Dave. Head boy, house captain, and conqueror of puberty. The PE teacher made us pick our teams. I went first and, naturally, chose the weakest of my…
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