miscellanea

• shenanigans (positive) are occurring at the W3C, with the revival of the Social Web Working Group. I'm quite excited
• got nerd sniped by Terence Eden's post on Mastodon, asking about professional societies which give postnominals to their members. this serves as proof I am, once again, incapable of an original thought.
• London Underground has a farebox recovery ratio of over 100%! that means TfL covers all total direct operating costs through fare revenue. a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page shows this is quite rare outside of Japan
• learnt you can't easily start a pub in NI because of the surrender principle, where for every new alcohol licensed premises that opens one must close. Northern Ireland is stuck with just 1,113 pubs and 678 off-licenses.
• the UK Government has amended the Online Safety Act to make cyberflashing a priority offence under the Act. that amendment has recently come into force, providing use for the legal basis to compel companies to scan user messages on the client
• the NHS now supports passkeys for patients! my desire for a FIDO ring has been reinforced so hard. that reminds me, I need to look up the standards which allow for WebAuthn and BLE.
  • gah! that help page encourages users to change their passwords frequently. bad NHS! bad! there's a reason the National Cyber Security Centre advises against forced password expiry (and, in turn, changing passwords frequently).
• along the theme that the world runs on coffee chats and mailing lists, there's this piece from 2011 on just how bad Microsoft Exchange is. I've had to deal with Office 365 Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 Copilot when building for the UK Parliament, and I think a lot of the points there apply to many centralised mail providers. I'm not batshit enough to self-host my own email, but watch this space™️

musings

• I'm looking to hire. if you know anyone mid or senior who's looking for a Python role, please send them my way!
• you either die a startup, or live long enough to become a corporation. there are credible reports of OnePlus implementing hardware anti-rollback measures in the 13, 13T and 15 models. this hard bricking users' phones by blowing an e-fuse if they dare downgrade from the latest version of ColorOS. what happened to the company that openly encouraged modding of their devices?
• the homelab's become a little shaky recently, which is quite annoying. I need to make some time to look into it
• I’ve taken to saying "dope" a lot as of late. that’s pretty dope
• I need to update my personal sites and my personal user manual to document some things I've been told about how I work. I’ve come up with the principle of pairing criticism with alternative approaches, or some suggestions for improvement.
  • this came from a colleague mentioning how he's not used to someone telling him they dislike some aspect of his work his work, and giving him suggestions to make it better (which I have done rather frequently)
  • I think it’s useful to reflect on and articulate why you don’t like something, beyond a snarky or dismissive comment, as you're forced to sit down and think through the problem that other person is trying to solve. plus, it takes so much effort for people to do things and being kind is the least you can do
• I’ve somehow managed to complete the Monzo 1p Savings Challenge over the past year. they should have a feature to run it in reverse, given it hurts to have £3.59 leave my account on Christmas Day. someone reading this, make it happen
• I regained 170GB(!!) of disc space by clearing out unused Docker images and volumes. that's wild.
• personally finding it difficult to switch off from work most days, even though I’m really tired. I might do something a little social by myself next week, like watch a movie at the cinema

misadventures

• FOSDEM is happening this year! I've booked my Eurostar tickets, and I'll see some of you on the 29th.
  • I absolutely need to find some time to get a haircut before FOSDEM, so I don't look too shabby
  • I need to figure out what I'm going to do on the train to Brussels. I need to review my TPaD manuscript after soliciting feedback from a few people, and also keep working on this internal CLI tool
  • I have a ton of people I need to catch up with next week, and I’m excited for it. if you're going, please let me know. I also absolutely need to bump into some of the SocialWG folks!
  • dragging Iris along with me to FOSDEM
  • I cannot wait to bring back actually good beer with me
  • my body yearns for GREEN
• suffered through a mob review on Monday that took a few hours. I'm certainly not looking forward to another next week for a bunch of tests I've reworked
• went into work on Tuesday, and then the pub on Tuesday evening with Felix, Alex and others. my presence was a pleasant surprise, given this is the first time I've accepted this standing invitation for at least six months.
  • got convinced to put out a LinkedIn post for hiring. in hindsight, that feels like a bad decision, given almost nobody I actually want to hire is on there.
  • had spoons Korean fried sticky chicken bowl, with a pint of 1664 Bière 
• went into the office again on Wednesday, and had pub dinner with the COO on Wednesday and had chicken milanese with no fried egg and a pint of Lucky Saint. we mostly discussed product and hiring plans for the next quarter
• had two more blood tests this week and had to get an emergency doctor's appointment for Friday. that's consumed quite a bit of my time, so I've been falling behind on a few things. got a referral for this coming Monday, so hopefully I’ll figure out what’s wrong and start feeling better soon
• ran three interviews this week. excited, as I feel I’m assembling the software dream team slowly but surely
• started handwriting a letter to my aunt this weekend. I've ordered some photos from FreePrints to send to her
• got approached to provide invaluable life advice twice this week. if this software engineering thing doesn’t work I’ll become a self-help guru or a couple’s therapist
• Keegan’s flat warming on Saturday evening was lovely. it as good to see everyone again. we played Funemployed and won! that was followed by some Jackbox, where I only won one game. we ordered Indian food, and I had lamb masala with rice. 
• while travelling from place to place, I’ve made my way though the Foundation Licence Manual for Radio Amateurs. it's started off pretty slowly off with a recap of A level Physics electricity and signals. that reminds me, I need to read through that course on digital signals theory I’ve had on my backlog for a while.
• finished series 1 of Mr. & Mrs. Smith this week. it was a good watch all-around, and I felt pretty repped in it