I do a lot of talks and presentations - sometimes in boring conference centres, sometimes in pubs, and occasionally in the middle of a field. One of the things that I've learned is the audio-visual equipment is unreliable. The colours can be off, the projection can be blocked by detritus on stage, or the screen can be defective. It's never a fun experience to flip to your first slide and…
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The new Firefox is out! Powered by the ludicrous-speed quantum engine - it really is a marvel to behold. Unfortunately, there's a rather annoying bug in the way it renders placeholder text. Consider the following HTML: <textarea placeholder="In loving memory of Buffy Anne Summers She saved the world A lot..."></textarea> This should render a textarea (a multi-line input box) pre-filled with…
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tldr; URL http://[IP]/adm/file.cgi?todo=inject_telnetd Telnet username root Telnet password Aq0+0009 History Four years ago to the day, I wrote an exposé of the hideous security failings of Sercomm IP Cameras. The blog has since attracted 200 comments - as people try to unlock their cameras, and find out what flaws they have. Despite my best efforts at contacting Sercomm - the OEM who …
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When I'm bored, I like to search websites for the "Lorem Ipsum" placeholder text. It's a quick way to find discarded pages and test content. I was particularly confused that the UK's Post Office had a dozen pages containing that little Latin phrase. A quick dive into one of the pages, found this enlightening snippet of code: This is a monumentally inconsiderate thing to do. I can guess…
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Last year I reverse engineered Renault's Electric Car API. One of the curious omissions was mileage - it just doesn't appear there. However! All is not lost. If you log in to your Renault Account - https://www.renault.co.uk/my-account/my-car.html - you'll get details back about your car including its make, model, date of next service, and mileage! Why isn't this in the regular API? Who knows. …
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Just a quick note on a mistake I see people making. Webcam covers are a cheap and easy way to prevent your laptop's camera from spying on you. But too many of the covers obscure the LED which indicates that the camera is on. If you cover your activation LED then you won't be able to tell if a malicious entity has surreptitiously switched it on the camera. Keep it uncovered and you'll…
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Digital technology allows us to seamlessly share media with no degradation. Well, that's the theory - the reality is more complicated. This low quality gif is doing the rounds again. The HD version is easily available - but there appears to be something more "real" about low quality. It keeps being shared on social media - one Tweet currently has around 45 thousand likes. Here's the…
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A few weeks ago, I had a delightful chat with the BBC about our solar battery storage. You can watch it on iPlayer starting about 7m 30s in. Community battery technology is here. It is feasible. And it just works. The solar panels on our roof generate more power than we can use - so we store it and share the rest. Yes, even in rainy England, solar panels work! Storage is expensive now -…
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A bit of future-gazing which I can't be bothered spinning into a 15,000 word Gartner report. In the UK we have a competitive electricity market. Only one set of wires comes to your house, but you can buy your electricity from a number of providers. Some only offer organic, corn-fed, Wind Farm power - others promise price stability - another gives you a discount at their electric car chargers -…
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I spent 15 years in the mobile phone industry - working variously for big mobile operators, with phone manufacturers, and consulting with industry groups. I say this not to brag, but to let you know that I have experience with these matters. Web browsers are often called a User Agent. They are a software agent acting on behalf of their user. So what happens when the browser acts against the…
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A little mathematical / spatial / design problem I've been having. I have an icon which, depending on the user's preference, can be inside a square or a circle. Is it possible for it to be centred in both? Here's a visual example. On the left is the AirBnB logo centred in a square. When the background is turned into a circle, the logo appears to "drop" - the bottom of the logo is closer to the …
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As ever, mostly notes to myself. I have a bunch of old images which don't have any timestamp associated with them. This quick Python script will add a DateTime EXIF metadata tag to an image. This uses piexif which can be installed using pip install piexif This simple script reads a photo, adds a timestamp, then saves a copy of the new photo. from PIL import Image from PIL.ExifTags import…
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