Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃
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I popped round to an NHS dentist a few months ago - and they stuck my head on one of these contraptions. The Kodak 8000C takes a panoramic X-ray, giving a superior view of your teeth. Nifty. The dentist showed me where my wisdom teeth were and I was impressed with how high resolution the image was. Afterwards, I asked…
The argument over the nano-SIM is a distraction. It's a sleight of hand designed to catch the industry off guard and fool it into doing something really stupid. The SIM is designed to do a number of things; encryption, address storage, hold SMS, etc. Most importantly, it's designed to be swappable. With GSM, you can…
In the battle between the Online Safety Act and GDPR, who will win? FIGHT! I'll start by saying that I'm moderately positive on Online Safety. If services don't want to provide moderation then they shouldn't let their younger users be exposed to harm. The social network BlueSky has taken a pragmatic approach to this…
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…
About a million years ago, I was discussing the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) ontology with its early proponents. It allowed you to define a machine-readable semantic relationship like "Alice is married to Bill" and "Bill is Carol's child" and "Carol works for David". That sort of thing. At the time, all the FOAF…
You're sat in a pub, chatting with your mates. You start to moan about how the cheap lager they serve gives you a headache. All of a sudden, a stranger runs up to you and says: "Oh no! Headaches? Have you tried the refreshing taste of Pepsi® Cola? It's the Flavour That Keeps Giving™!" I suspect you would complain to…
A few years ago, my work sent me on a training course. It involved the usual things, trust exercises, team bonding, and personality profiles. I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused…
In Britain - and many other countries - the police can legally force you to divulge your passwords. Whether it's to an encrypted file, a social network, or your email account, the state can legally rifle through your most intimate thoughts and (potentially) pose as you online. As we've recently seen, this can be done…
The all-knowing sage Douglas Adams had this to say about technology: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can…
This is part 3 of a series of blog posts looking at the security of the UK Government's web infrastructure. Britain's National Health Service is riddled with old and insecure WordPress-based websites. Many of these sites have severe flaws including being vulnerable to XSS attacks. There is absolutely no suggestion…
The UK faces an epidemic of telephone scams. Fraudsters are constantly calling people up pretending to be their bank. But how can you be sure the number displayed on your screen in genuine? You can't. The telecom system is hopelessly insecure and shouldn't be trusted for anything more complicated than dialling the…
If you've ever tried to write a computer program, you'll know the dread of a syntax error. An errant space and your code won't compile. Miss a semi-colon and the world collapses. Don't close your brackets and watch how the computer recoils in distress. The modern web isn't like that. You can make your HTML as…