Cartographers occasionally sneak deliberate mistakes into their maps. Known as trap streets they are a simple "copyright trap". If someone copies their map without permission, the fake street shows evidence of the source of plagiarism. Google do this sometimes. They once proclaimed that Argleton was a real place - despite its non-existence. While I was looking for something to do in London…
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There's no one dafter than the previous owner of your property. Over the years we've found dodgy wiring, horrificly bodged plaster, and things plumbed in backwards. We've started re-doing our garden recently. The hideous decking was quickly rotting away and needed removing. But what would we find under there? Google's StreetView for the web lets you take a short trip back in time - if you're…
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Many years ago, Google applied for the .zip Top Level Domain. ICANN, in its infinite wisdom, granted it. And now, I think, bad things are going to happen. You see computers try to be helpful. They see you wrote "visit example.com" and autolink the thing which looks like a domain name. That's handy - especially as most people don't have the time or skill to write HTML. So what happens when…
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As part of its continuing quest to alienate all its long-time users provide a better user experience to everyone, Reddit recently announced a slew of changes. Buried in amongst all the hullabaloo from whinging ungrateful brats thoughtful comments from people with justifiable concerns, was this snippet from a Reddit employee: An Improved Web Experience - Reddit Long time readers will remember …
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Knowledge graphs are tricky beasts to create. Trying to extract semantic metadata from documents is a gargantuan task. Mix them together and you have a recipe for disaster. While yak-shaving for my MSc, I found an interesting looking research paper authored by one JC Shakespeare. As you can probably tell from that snippet, there is something a bit hinkey going on here. Here's the page that…
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I try to write good bug reports, I really do. I fill out templates when asked. I try to include reproducible proof of the bug. I'll even give a screenshot or screen recording to prove I'm not making things up. If I'm familiar enough with the programming language, I'll also attempt to say roughly where the problem lies. Sadly, that's not always enough. Two years ago today, I wrote what I thought …
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In the glorious future, every website will be chock-full of semantic metadata. Restaurants won't have a 50MB PDF explaining the chef's vision for organic cuisine - instead, they'll have little scraps of data on the HTML page like: "hasMenuItem":{ "@type":"MenuItem", "name":"Dodo In A Bun", "description":"The legendary extinct bird cooked in tomato sauce, served in a gluten-free bun.", …
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Recently, I've been getting a lot of spam notifications from Google Drive. Here's a sample: The notifications come direct to my Android phone via the Drive app - they don't appear in my Gmail spam folder. There is no way to report the abuse. If I go to the list of notification in the Android apps, there's no option to report that the notification is spam. If I'm stupid enough to open the…
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I found this rather humorous Tweet in which a computer issued a cheque for £2,324,252,080,110: Gareth Hughes@gh230277Thank you for our compensation payment @Northpowergrid for the several days we were without power following #stormarwen Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this? #trillionpounds pic.x.com/z5MNc2Nxl1❤️ 48,014💬 2,051🔁 011:52 - Sat 12 February 2022 I…
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Google has decided to fuck over its early adopters. Way back in 2006, Google announced Google Apps for Your Domain. Basically it was Gmail - but you could use your own domain. No more example@gmail.com now you could be me@example.com. Hurrah! At the time, they said: organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google …
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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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There's been several long threads recently on Google's crappy info-box. Google doesn't want you to leave the Google page, so Google slurps information up and presents you an answer on the Google homepage. Here's what it typically looks like. OK, that's kinda useful. Search for a thing and get the info without clicking through. But there are times when it goes dreadfully wrong. Sometimes it…
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