There's a pernicious myth - often spread by tabloids - that the poor and hungry don't deserve the meagre possessions which make life worth living. You see this in headlines like "Benefit Scum Have Flat Screen TV!" It ignores the fact that a) they may have bought the TV when they had disposable income, b) that a TV can provide nearly limitless free entertainment, and c) Flat Screen TVs are…
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This is a quick tutorial on how to encrypt your Twitter messages using PGP with the help of Keybase.io. I read an article yesterday which seemed to imply that Twitter was mangling PGP encrypted messages (albeit unintentionally). There is a minor bug in Twitter's web interface - but PGP seems to work perfectly in apps. So, I want to demonstrate how it can be done successfully. I've written this …
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The other day I fished my old nook out of deep storage - only to discover that the battery wasn't holding charge. More seriously, the back had swollen out and looked like it was about to burst. Uh-oh! Inflating batteries are dangerous batteries. Taking apart the nook is incredibly simple, pop off the power button, use a Torx 5 screwdriver to undo the single screw, and then spludger your way…
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Last year, I wrote about how to extract Location History from Google. Once again, Google have changed their URLs to make it even harder to get one's current location out of their data-greedy hands. It used to be the case that Latitude gave that information - but they killed it. Then they promised it in Google+ - but never delivered. Now they offer you a data-dump which they will email to you. …
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Train companies in the UK are uniformly awful. Because they are privately run but endure no meaningful form of competition, we get to see just how hostile corporations are to customers when left to their own devices. I am a long-suffering passenger on First Great Western. The line between Oxford and London regularly suffers from delays. According to their own statistics, journeys on that line …
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Twitter, as part of its never-ending quest to alienate users and appease the rich and powerful, have shut down Politwoops accounts. Politwoops monitored politicians' Twitter accounts and noted when they deleted a tweet. Most of the time deletions were done for the same reason we all deleted content - mispellings, broken links, etc - but occaisionally they caught politicians attempting to flush…
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As I get older, I begin to lose neuroplaciticy. I get angry and confused when I don't understand things. I get frustrated when I have to change my behaviour. It happens to all of us, to some extent, and it's one of the major reasons you should design your apps in a clear and consistent manner. I've been using Android - Google's mobile OS - it since before it was launched. I now love and…
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Virgin Media, the UK's semi-national cable broadband provider, is rolling out a WiFi sharing service - although it's not quite as altruistic as it may seem. Here's the email being sent to subscribers - followed by some commentary on what this means and whether it's a good idea for you to opt-out. Let's ignore them mispelling my name - and concentrate on the technical details. From September, …
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My solar panels deliver pure Direct Current electricity into my house. All my house has Alternating Current circuits. Therefore, I need an inverter to change the DC to AC. This is inefficient. Most of the electronic devices I own are powered by DC. So I plug little wall-warts into the AC sockets to convert back to DC. This is also inefficient. One of the DC devices I'll be getting soon is…
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Google have just announced their brand new WiFi router - OnHub. It promises to make WiFi connectivity a breeze, increase speeds, reduce buffering, and clean your carpets. Nestled at the bottom of the annoucement is this curious specification. That seems... low. Doesn't it? I did a quick tally of all the devices my wife and I have which use WiFi. My phone Wife's phone My ebook …
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My good friend Dan Appelquist recent wrote a fascinating blog post on solipsism as a design decision. He has a set of Lifx Internet Controlled Lightbulbs. They're great fun, but have some seriously screwy ideas about how people live. One key design of the app is to allow you to automatically switch off all your lights when you exit your house. That's pretty nifty, right? I am still…
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Journalist Dave Lee pointed out a disturbing new spear-phishing attack on Twitter. The phony account looks for people who are Tweeting their dissatisfaction with Lloyds Bank - one of the largest and oldest banks in the UK - and sends them messages urging them to log in to a fraudulent site. The tweets have some realistic touches - such as ending with "^LY" to signal the initials of who is…
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