Hello, it's me - the idiot who helped inspire the HTTP 451 status code. I graciously allowed Tim Bray to do the hard work of getting it through the IETF process, and now it is an official RFC. Recently, I've seen lots of people getting het up about its "misuse" - so I want to clarify a few things. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) gives people in the EU strong data protection…
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In 2005, Sony put malware on their music CDs and then illegally infected customers' machines. I've not purchased a Sony product since. Their new TVs look amazing, but I've decided I don't want to reward a company which behaved so despicably. Is that sensible? 13 years later and I'm still holding a grudge. Is that healthy? It it useful? I was reading a discussion on Microsoft aquiring GitHub -…
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In most civilised countries, there is a central authority which inspects restaurants for hygiene and safety. Their job is, broadly, to stop people getting poisoned, falling sick, or dying. That's a pretty good feature of civilisation, I'd say. We think that most restaurant owners are probably good people - but it seems sensible to have someone check that they're not dropping rat shit in our…
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Every time someone mentions BlockChain, I have to down my drink. Those are the rules. You see, most uses of Distributed Ledger are really just a way to get people interested in cryptographic signing. There's lots of money and attention flowing to projects which have no need to publish to an energy-inefficient global database. They would be better suited to public-key cryptography. Let me give…
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I'm going to tell you an anecdote which is a gross oversimplification of a complex topic. In the early half of the twentieth century, certain physicists made breakthroughs in relativity, quantum mechanics, and nuclear energy. Many of these scientists were Jewish. The Nazis called these heretical ideas "Jewish Science" and suppressed their teaching. Jewish physicists based in Germany fled the…
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Can a mouse ever be worth £100? Yes. Let's get that out of the way. If you spend all day working with your hands, you owe it to yourself to give them the best possible equipment to protect them. For me, that's a vertical mouse with re-mappable buttons to help prevent RSI. Over the last few years, I've purchased several Evoluent mice. They've kindly sent me their latest model so I can write a …
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In an unexpected fit of spring-cleaning, I went through my wardrobe getting rid of all my old conference t-shirts. Hundreds of 'em! They're all covered in logos for companies which long-ago went bust, or for events which are no-longer running, and most have... errr... "shrunk" in the wash. I know I'm a grumpy old sod. But I've a couple of serious points to make. T-shirts are wasteful,…
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This is a quick guide for setting up your new mouse with Ubuntu. I'm a big fan of the Evoluent Mouse range, and I've agreed to publish this Linux guide in return for a review sample. The Basics The only way to configure this mouse is via the command-line. This may look a bit daunting, but I promise you it's simple. Just copy and paste the highlighted code. Open up a Terminal. You'll usually…
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Optical Illusions trick your brain into seeing something that isn't there. Whether it is spirals which don't exist, movements which don't occur, or faces in curved lines - our optic centres are trivially easy to fool. Humans are not alone in this cognitive deficiency. Other animals are also conned into believing something which isn't true. This tomfoolery is not restricted to animals -…
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Synthetic meat is coming soon! Actually, it has been coming soon for a long long long long long time. There are many interesting social aspects to this future. Is lab-grown meat kosher or halal? Would eating human-meat be cannibalism? Is it vegetarian? But, most importantly, what do we call people with a dietary preference for in-vitro meat? Back in 2005, a blogger suggested "synthetarian". …
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Fake cash-machines are an increasing problem around the UK. Criminals attach all sorts of machinery - including fake fronts - to ATMs with the aim of stealing cash or card details. Wandering around Oxford yesterday, I noticed this sign attached to a bank's ATM: "This ATM is running slow and may take a while to return your card. Please be patient while we try to resolve this issue. Thanks.…
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This is one of my favourite anecdotes from wordsmith Neil Gaiman: Neil Gaiman@neilhimselfSomebody needed my signature on an e-document. So I did a google image search, found one, and dropped it in. Not sure what it proved.❤️ 136💬 96🔁 019:12 - Tue 11 October 2011 I'm not quite famous enough to have my autograph plastered all over the Internet - but I do have a JPG copy of my signature stored in a…
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