(For more about the "Falsehoods" meme - read the big list of falsehoods programmers believe.) Do You Want To Phone A Friend? A popular website asked me to confirm my phone number. It "helpfully" pre-filled the country-code with +1. And proudly displayed the Stars and Stripes. Except, of course, the USA isn't the only country to use +1 - our friends in the Great White North also use +1. …
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I've just seen that I can now add sponsorship to my GitHub projects. Here's a quick guide to how it works: Repo settings There's now a new option in your repository settings. Tick the box and click the button. Easy! WTF is YAML? This is a bit of a weird one. To set up sponsorship, you have to hand-edit a YAML text file. I would have expected this to be a easy to use GUI. Or something to…
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Another day, another Gmail bug which won't get fixed. The original Android phone - HTC Dream - had 192MB of RAM. The latest Android phones tend to have 6GB. A 32 times increase in a decade. Laptops have also leapt forwards in speed and memory. Sadly, no one on the Gmail team has noticed. It's 2019, and Gmail app users are still seeing the dreaded "[Message Clipped] View entire message"…
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At the recent BarCampLondon Ⅺ I decided to run a little experiment. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentAnyone coming to @barcamplondon fancy doing a Tech Swap Table with me?Bring bits of (working) kit and old gadgets that you don't want in the hope they find a loving home.Let me know if you want to take part 😁#bclxi❤️ 7💬 3🔁 016:20 - Sat 04 May 2019 The idea is similar to Swishing - a popular way t…
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Here's a curious bug I just discovered in Firefox 67 for Linux. Can you see this unicorn: →🦄 ← What happens if you use CSS to change the opacity of an emoji? Here's a unicorn, with a pink font colour: 🦄 Unicorn Let's wrap that in this scrap of CSS to make it 50% opaque. color: rgba(255, 105, 180, 0.5); 🦄 Unicorn Hopefully, you see a semi-transparent philosophical argument. What if we set …
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It seems that Twitter has lost control of its advertising system. This blog post will show you why it is dangerous to click on any Twitter advertising. Twitter ads have always been a bit crap, but I've seen a recent influx in outright scams. Let me step you through a couple of examples. A typical click-bait headline. What has our favourite celeb done this time? In a moment of weakness,…
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In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? Having read Newitz's brilliant sci-fi novel "Autonomous", I thought I'd try her pop-sci book from a few years ago. The central thesis is that animals survive when they "scatter" (find new habitats) and …
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I watched this video from my colleagues in NHS England - it's the first time I've seen a Sign Language overlay on a Twitter video. NHS@NHSukNeed help fast, but not sure what to do? Go straight to 111.nhs.uk . To find out more about NHS 111 including how to use the NHS 111 BSL interpreter service visit nhs.uk/111 #NHS111 pic.x.com/tk18uvm2vy❤️ 16💬 1🔁 016:00 - Sat 18 May 2019 Is it possible to ha…
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The ridiculous proliferation of TLDs (Top Level Domains) continues unabated. I wondered how much you'd have to spend to secure your name on every TLD. tl;dr;tld Over $300,000! (Roughly €280.000 / £245,000.) But... This estimate is pretty rough. A few caveats: This only covers one version of your domain name - it doesn't cover misspellings. I've assumed a single year of registration. Some d…
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I don't like AMP. I think that Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages are a bad idea, poorly executed, and almost-certainly anti-competitive. So, I decided to join the AC (Advisory Committee) for AMP. I don't want them surrounded with sycophants and yes-men. A few weeks ago, a bunch of the AC met in London for our first physical meeting after several exploratory video calls. These are my…
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Theo Miller knows the value of human life to the very last penny. In the Criminal Audit Office, he assesses each crime that crosses his desk & makes sure the correct debt to society is paid. But when his ex-lover is killed, it's different. This is one death he can't let become merely an entry on a balance sheet. Because when the rich are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just…
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Even when I had a petrol car, I boycotted Shell - refusing to use their petrol stations. I thought that would continue once I got an electric car - no dino-juice for me! My car has more than enough range for me, but on a recent journey I decided it would be prudent to do a splash-and-dash - shove a few kWh in the battery just in case. I fired up Zap Map and was pleasantly surprised to see that…
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