CrowdStricken
In case you weren’t anywhere near a computer yesterday, endpoint management software CrowdStrike botched an update and killed millions of Windows machines — some reports suggesting up to a billion [EDIT: now estimated to be 8.5 million] — around the world. Oops. Look, this was bad. We can talk about whether endpoint security software should embed itself so deeply in the Windows kernel. We can...
Electromagnetic Field 2024
As seems to be the tradition, I thought I would bash together a few of my thoughts following Electromagnetic Field 2024. EMF is a wonderful weekend in an internet-connected field, that welcomes miscellaneous nerds to come and camp and just sort of Do Cool Stuff for a weekend. Loads of people bring projects to hack on over the weekend, there are side quests to play...
You STILL can't get a new number and keep your old one?!
I’ve had my mobile phone number for 15 years. My number is a nice number. It’s pleasing to say out loud. There’s a repeating pattern of digits in it that is especially pleasant. (For obvious reasons, I’m not going to put it on this blog.) My mum was particularly proud of herself when she bought it on a pay-as-you-go SIM card in the high street...
Smart home user interfaces
Terry has written a blog post that’s given me an idea for one of my own. This is also sort of part 2 of my moaning about smart home stuff that I started on this blog last year. Smart homes are lovely. I love being able to hit one button to turn off all the lights and appliances when I go out, or go to...
Smart home stuff still sucks
My other half loves his new fart button. That’s one of the nice things about the Flic Hub — you can set up each button to perform multiple actions, including playing a range of sounds preinstalled on the hub. Some of which are farts, because fart humour knows no bounds of appropriateness. (We are yet to do it whilst the other is in a meeting,...