Working around an old and buggy HTML Tidy in PHP


The PHP logo.

Dan Q very kindly shared his script to make WordPress do good HTML. But I couldn't get it working. Looking at the HTML it was spitting out, the meta generator said it was HTML Tidy version 5.6.0. That's quite old! I confirmed this by running: echo tidy_get_release(); Which spat out 2017/11/25. Aha! There are a […]

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Can you trust ProtonApps.com?


Screenshot of the ProtonApps page.

I've recently signed up to the privacy-preserving service Proton. All the email, calendar, drive, VPN, and other services seem to hang off the proton.me domain. I wanted to download the Android apps to my phone - without using the Google Play Store. The VPN app is on F-Droid but none of the others are. So, […]

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The Seven Levels of Open Source


Unix is user-friendly — it's just choosy about who its friends are.

This isn't an original idea, but I needed to get it out of my brain. There are many different definitions of what "Open Source". We can have a lovely argument over a pint as to whether GPLv3 is too open or if a licence which hasn't been validated by the OSI counts. But, more fundamentally, […]

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The (theoretical) risks of open sourcing (imaginary) Government LLMs


A t-shirt with the slogan "Make things open it makes things better."

Last week I attended an unofficial discussion group about the future of AI in Government. As well as the crypto-bores who have suddenly pivoted their "expertise" into AI, there were lots of thoughtful suggestions about what AI could do well at a state level. Some of it is trivial - spell check is AI. Some […]

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Keeping a side project alive with t-shirts and cash


A selection of hats, t-shirts, mugs, and waterbottles with our logo.

My wife and I run a side project called OpenBenches.org - it is a fun little crowd-sourced memorial bench site. It's mostly fun, except when the bills come due! Most hobby sites and side projects don't cost a lot to run. Lots of services have generous free tiers to (ab)use, and they can pay well […]

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Discord is not Documentation


Some colourful blobby people constructing an FAQ. Photo by @alexasfotos on Pixabay.

I'm going to be slightly contrarian and say that I like Discord. It's great to be able to get real-time help on a problem. And it is fun to see, again in real-time, what other people are working on and struggling with. In truth, Discord is no harder to sign up to than Slack, Matrix, […]

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Review: AntiSpam Bee WordPress Plugin


Comment with Japanese text. The email address is for an emergency locksmith, the link goes to a sex-doll emporium.

Someone recently complained that using JetPack's Akismet anti-spam plugin wasn't very privacy friendly. So, because I take every minor complaint as a personal rebuke, I decided to switch to AntiSpam Bee - an open source and local antispam solution. And... it's pretty good! There is the occasional false negative - but not significantly worse than […]

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Do open source licences cover the Ship of Theseus?


Binary code displayed on a screen.

I recently downloaded a single-page HTML template for a project I was working on. I wanted a good-looking scaffold to help me getting running quickly. The code had an attribution licence which I was happy to comply with. I ended up removing about a whole bunch of the HTML that I didn't need. That also […]

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Can you follow your own getting started guide?


Binary code displayed on a screen.

I was trying to install a new open source project and was having a hell of a time. Nothing seemed to be working despite me following the tutorial to the letter. I was getting the most bizarre error messages and was on the verge of quitting to become a goat farmer, when I threw one […]

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So, farewell then COVID-19 App


Pop up notification saying the NHS covid app is shutting down.

Today is a day of mixed emotions for me. The UK's COVID tracing app is finally closing. The app was, by any reasonable measure, a success. A team of experts at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford and Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick estimate the NHS COVID-19 app prevented […]

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