Exactly a year ago, I asked "What's the point of Gigabit broadband?" Well… I'm about to find out! Despite my well-publicised annoyance with Virgin Media, they are the only fibre provider in my area. They've also recently merged with O2 - my old employer - and are offering a free speed boost to any joint customers. I had an old pre-pay O2 SIM, so spoke to Virgin and cheekily asked for a free s…
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It's hard to know what to make of Dune. It is visually and sonically impressive. It's a great ride from start to finish. But - and it's a big but - you've seen it all before. Partly that's because Dune was published in 1965 and every sci-fi film made after that date used it as a template. Star Wars' Tatooine is the obvious example. But you've seen the sword-training montage in Game of Thrones,…
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This is a rambly rant because I can't be bothered responding to every troll on the #DoctorWho hashtag. I've loved Flux - the latest season - and it fits in perfectly with the ethos of Doctor Who. So, let's knock down some common complaints, eh? iT's To POLIticALly CorREct wItH alL ThE GENdeR EqUAliTy The very first episode of Doctor Who had two men and two women in the lead roles. It has…
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I love ergonomic layout keyboards. I've been lusting after the Ergodox models since they were originally on Kickstarter. So when a pal was selling theirs cheap, I leapt at the chance to play with one. I've tried to love it - I really have - but it makes too many compromises, in my opinion. Make no mistake, it is a technological marvel. A brilliant open source project, with excellent support,…
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Hello gang! I've identified all of the mobile phones used in every single episode of Doctor Who! This blog post goes through Flux - which is one of the best series of Doctor Who. Ever. Let's dive in… War of the Sontarans Dan saves the day by videoing the Sontaran dockyards. We only get a few blurry shots of his phone: Camera top left with what looks like a flash underneath it. Probably a bit …
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When Arjuna of the Blue Aria Family encounters three signs of cataclysm, he leaves his home in the Arctic Ocean to seek out the Idiot Gods and ask us why we are destroying the world. But the whales’ ancient Song of Life is beyond our understanding, and we know nothing of the Great Covenant between our kinds. Arjuna is captured, starved, tortured and made to do tricks in a tiny pool at Sea C…
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Chrome for Android had a flaw which let one tab draw over another - even if the tabs were on completely different domains. A determined attacker might have been able to abuse this to convince a user to download and installed a spoofed app. See Chrome Bug #1242315 for details. Demo Here's a video of me on one site (Twistory.ml) opening a link to Twitter in a new tab. Twitter's mobile site…
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As I blogged about a few weeks ago, I've been playing with the Seek Thermal Compact Infrared Camera. I've been using it for such incredibly interesting things as seeing how cold my nose is and whether my radiators are balanced. Fun! But what I really wanted it for is to see how well - or poorly - insulated our new house is. So I waited until it was freezing outside, then turned the heating on…
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Cruella is a soundtrack with a movie attached. Every time the film thinks you might be getting a little bored, or feels like you might be glancing at your phone, the DJ thumps on another banger to make you say "CHOOOOON"! That works brilliantly in old movies where you're nostalgic for feeling like you did as a kid. But here it is a cheap way to inject a sort of faux-nostalgia. You liked The…
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About a dozen years ago, I first started seeing kids skating through malls on their shoes. I was incredibly envious. They looked so cool and fun. Surely they sold them in adult sizes? Nope! Terence Eden is on Mastodon @edent I desperately want a pair of…
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There are two problems with this Peter Jackson documentary. The first is that it is far too long - are casual fans really going to sit through 9 hours of a band bickering? The second problem is that it is far too short! Beatles obsessives (like me) could happily drink in a hundred hours of this stuff. Bits of it are just sublimely beautiful. Listening to George Harrison's first performance of I, …
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Published to extraordinary praise, this provocative international bestseller details the story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. IBM and the Holocaust provides a chilling investigation into corporate complicity, and the atrocities witnessed raise startling questions that throw IBM's wartime ethics into serious doubt. Edwin Black's monumental research exposes how IBM and its…
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