The 3D printed gun is now a reality. I don't have access to a 3D printer - but I've downloaded the plans out of morbid curiosity. While downloading the blueprints may not be illegal, any UK citizen who made and owned such a handgun could face arrest, according to the UK's Metropolitan Police. BBC News It may not the best weapon in the world - it has reliability and accuracy issues - and it may not be the cheapest - around £5,000 for a 3D printer to fabricate the thing. But it's certainly the …
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A few weeks ago, I received what I thought was a particularly inept phishing attack. Subject: shkspr.mobi ***PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL YOU MAY RUN THE RISK OF THIS NAME BEING ERRONEOUSLY DELETED - PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE (VIA EMAIL) WITH REFERENCE TO THE ACCURACY OF THE WHOIS INFORMATION*** Hello; I'm writing to you from Tucows (Registrar for your domain). It has come to our attention that the WHOIS for this domain (see subject line) may not …
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While visiting the USA, I came across a delightfully bizarre TV show - Doomsday Preppers. For those who don't know, this pseudo-documentary follows the lives of certain... eccentric... families who believe that the end of civilization is coming and they better get busy preparing for that eventuality. Whereas you and I might keep a bit of spare cash hidden away, along with some out-of-date cans of food, these guys go the whole hog. Vast basements packed with food, gallons of oil to run…
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Do you ever sign up for something, forget about it, then get pleasantly surprised when a parcel turns up at your door? No? Just me? Last year, I noticed that the SamKnows website were looking for volunteers to take part in their European broadband survey. The product is the rather uninspiring named "Whitebox". The SamKnows Whitebox is an industry-approved measuring device, designed to measure performance of your broadband connection. It has been developed to enable you to accurately measure…
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In Terry Pratchett's book "Going Postal" he writes about the impact on the Discworld civilization of the semaphore tower. A new - but relatively basic - technology which revolutionises how people work, play, and interact. It changes the fortunes of the humble and the mighty. It is as useful for individuals as for nation states. In our universe, the modern semaphore tower was first conceived by Robert Hooke in 1684. Yet it the optical telegraph didn't really exist until 1792 - over a…
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I usually admire The Guardian's technology coverage (not least because they occasionally feature me!) but their latest article - The success of smartphones comes at a price - is ridiculously bad. It posits three arguments. More people are using smartphones to access the Internet than ever before. Smartphones are heavily locked down. Mobile Operators are "corporate control-freaks". The author concludes that this is radically different from the PC world and, therefore, a very bad …
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I recently took a survey which asked how many hours per week I spent "online". It struck me as a bizarre question. I am always online. Even when I am asleep, my phone is downloading email, my laptops are updating themselves, and my cameras are scanning for intruders. I realise that I am probably a statistical outlier - but I thought it would be interesting to see how many Internet connected devices I have in my flat. Here they are, in no particular order... My Android phone. …
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I remarked earlier about Helen Goodman MP and her total lack of technical knowledge. An MP being a bit behind the times isn't the greatest shock - but she's Labour's Shadow Minister for Culture, Media, and Sport - that's a big deal! This year, Claire Perry MP produced an "independent" report into online child protection. By "independent" I mean "produced by vested interests including religious groups". It makes for pretty tedious reading, however you may get a laugh from the antics of our…
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There's a cyclic nature to technology development. What starts small and personal, becomes big until - inevitably - it becomes small again. Then the cycle repeats. All this has happened before... We started with mainframes on which we had to time-slice. Then we got powerful personal computers. Now we're back to spooling up instances of cloud computers. ...and all this will happen again We used to have individual websites. Upon which we ran whatever services we wanted - mail, FTP,…
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As part of the Parliament and Internet Conference, there was a panel discussion about 4G networks. These are my notes on the session. I've applied the Chatham House Rule - mostly because I can't remember who said what, rather than any backroom skulduggery. Any errors are mine and mine alone. Neither Vodafone nor EE have signed up to the Network Neutrality pledge. O2 have. (Disclaimer, I work for Telefonica, these thoughts are my own.) The Open Internet Code of Practice is the Government’s n…
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This is a bit of a brain dump of how I got a 3G USB dongle working on the Raspberry Pi. Following on from getting the Raspberry Pi to send SMS. That's The Power Of Love The first thing to say is use a powered USB hub! I had lots of problems getting the modem working when it was plugged directly into the Pi. A 3G signal takes more power than the Pi's USB sockets can supply. In the above image, you can see that the Raspbery Pi is plugged into the mains - via a 1.8A plug. The USB cable has …
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As you may know, I'm a supporter of the Open Rights Group. They're the campaigning group dedicated to protecting our online civil liberties. I pay them £5 per month, I think you should join them too. I'm not just putting my money where my mouth is. I'm also standing for the Board of Directors. I was nominated by the wise and talented duo of Suw Charman-Anderson & Basheera Khan. As part of the election, I have to produce a 400 word statement. I want to make ORG more member lead - and …
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