You type in to your browser's address bar example.com and it automatically redirects you to the https:// version. How does your browser know that it needed to request the more secure version of a website? The answer is... A big list. The HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) list is a list of domain names which have told Google that they always want their website served over https. If the user …
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In "Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior" by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, the authors discuss the card game of poker. There are dozens of variations of poker, each with their own intricacies. But they all boil down to the same pattern - is my hand stronger than your hand? Here's how the authors frame it: Since a “square deal” amounts to assuming that all possible hands are dealt wit…
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The 2016 film "Passengers", with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, is a gruesome study in "because of the implication". JLaw's character wakes on a spaceship to discover that only Pratt's character is alive and has prematurely roused her from her slumber. She has, in effect, been murdered and the only way she can pacify this dangerous man is to sleep with him. It is a grim film. WHAT IF THAT…
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Only fools try to predict the future. You can read my predictions for 2023, or dig deep into my archives and rate me on how foolish I am. So here are my five predictions for 2024 AI Genocide It is obvious that Large Language Models are based on stolen material. I suspect that a lawsuit will determine that at least one of the major players has to delete all copies of their AI. They will refuse …
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OK. What the actual fuck? This starts off as a rather charming period piece - 1920s hotel will all the guests snowed in - and then gradually descends into horrifying madness. I'm used to the bizarre worlds created by Kate Mascarenhas - but this took the creepiness up to an extreme level. There's an almost fetish-like description of the scenery which helps with the world building. At first I…
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One of the things I love about having a database-backed blog like WordPress is that's it opens up a delightful range of possibilities for displaying content. I've read and reviewed around 300 books over the last few years. So I wrote a scrap of code which goes through all my book reviews, grabs their cover and rating, and displays them in a nice grid. You can visit it at shkspr.mobi/blog/library …
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The nice thing about short story collections is that you never waste too much time if one of them is a bit of a dud. This contains some lovely tales of madness and despair. Some are high fantasy and some innovative sci-fi. A particular stand-out is Anuja Mitra's "Plague Year" - it's an almost joyous what-if of a pandemic tale. Similarly, Melanie Harding-Shaw's "Data Migration" brilliantly…
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Girl Power! Women deserve the vote and the right to a life of crime! This is the potted history of a criminal gang operating out of London. It's full of villainesses, shoplifterixen, and thievettes. A disreputable bunch of complex characters on a crime-spree fuelled by women's lib and abject poverty. Each biography could be its own movie - forget Peaky Blinders, this is the true story of an…
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Food is transcendental. All cultures venerate it, a shared meal is the universal symbol of hospitality, the business of food shapes our entire planet. This book was originally written in the 1980s and updated in the 1990s - but it is a timeless classic. Visser talks us through how a simple meal came to be, its history, and its consequences. Much Depends on Dinner, the chronicle of a simple…
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Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter". Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by their decommissioning costs. Yes, politics and regulation conspire to increase the…
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Is it possible to write a time-travel story which makes sense? Probably not - but this comes close! It's a bit of a slow-burn; not revealing its secrets until it is good and ready. If you've read a lot of time-hopping sci-fi you won't find anything too surprising; nothing can escape the long shadow of La Jetée. It is a lushly plotted and surprisingly prosaic look at the reality of living on the …
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The best thing about Shakespeare is that you can endlessly redefine the stories. Romeo & Juliet works as well set in NYC to a musical score as it does set in fair Verona. The Tempest is just as good whether the action takes place on an island or an alien planet. Shakespeare can be set in any number of high-schools without dampening its power. And so, Hamlet is now HAM(let) - Humanoid…
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