For true fisking, I would like to have seen this with inline replies, like a classic newsgroup post, lost to the Google Groups graveyard. “it's always fucking "may" isn’t it?”

I recently discovered a database query that was taking 5 hours to run (overnight, so hadn’t been noticed). I got annoyed, sad, investigated, worked something out, and now it takes 2 minutes. I’ve just asked Claude how it would improve this query. It has given me three “Immediate Improvements”, ooh.

We recently added an ASN lookup to nginx so that we can then block entire ASNs at once. And had to block certain things (can’t even say because it might get picked up) from all FixMyStreet RSS feeds because they clearly weren’t human. Gave me an idea on how to improve the RSS feed generation though?

Not much I in the AI

On the 0821 train to London for a team meeting; people working on the new HS2 viaduct by Millennium Point in the mizzle; eating a mushroom omelette with feta roll; paying £100 instead of £200 for just-as-flexible tickets: split.traintimes.org.uk/BHM/EUS/n/08...

The guy who vibe coded a crypto rug pull scientific error detection and got coverage in Nature is back with a vibe coded ai social media network, with similarly crypto intentions… getting coverage from major outlets. www.404media.co/exposed-molt...

Been playing this on and off since Christmas – with plenty of walkthrough help at points! – finally finished it this evening: logic-masters.de/Raetselporta... Can’t really screenshot the end without spoiling it. Very impressive spin on the puzzles

“They’re going to make the decisions that you tell them to make, crappily. It’s not only up to you to make the decisions, it’s up to you to double check that the decisions you made were even implemented properly and with care.” – www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvW1... about... React in a terminal.

The reference to Article 39 of the original Magna Carta still sits on the UK statute book, as section 29 of the Magna Carta (1297): www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc19... (the 25 in that URL being in the 25th year of the reign of Edward I).

It’s still happening, both on the DAB radio and on the Now Playing on the website. Did some timing with a stopwatch and it seems to be exactly 3 minutes ahead of the show itself

I don’t think anyone cares that a bus three hours ago was cancelled, bus people, especially given another is about to arrive

Feels like the sort of research you might want to do in advance. I remember their previous “80%” study was based on *asking Claude* how much time people saved, e.g. to compile a bibliography, not including, I dunno, having to check it – qv bsky.app/profile/pete...

Just in places I have personal experience of, as mentioned in this bit, Oracle is awful: www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/b... www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/e... Used to have to use it in previous job, it was one of the worst web interfaces I’ve ever used. Small pieces, loosely joined.

First I’ve heard about a retired bomber of Bexley (sounds like a goon show title); slow radicalising of many people, no one seems to have a clue what to do about www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

This reminds me that my civil service pension documentation uses the domain civilservice-pensions.gov.uk - which no longer exists. I did try and get GOV.UK to make a redirect but they said no. My favourite bit of the website is the code may take minutes to arrive, but will time out in minutes

Here's a big thing we've been working on over the last six months: what we've learned from our TICTeC conferences, seminars and conversations about where pro-democratic tech is, and what can happen next www.mysociety.org/2026/01/29/n...

mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski... 👀

The Radio 3 Unwind now playing text has been one song ahead for half an hour now; feel like I’m in one of those quiz shows where you give the previous answer

They haven’t even able to get the “(note)”s to link to the footnotes

I would say this findings shows women are more AI literate than men, because the majority of non-magical beings have no innate ability to "judge truthfulness"

35 may 17 expected 12 could

The miracle puddle has returned!

I’ve put up the JPEG of that final result at dracos.co.uk/temp/2026-01... – poor thing got stuck in a loop

I tried out a cryptic crossword clue in Google: “Endless, crap, odd cereal produce (5)” It never gets it right, and the fifth time I made it *very* sad

My morning has been spent dealing with the fallout from my parent’s Amazon account being broken into by someone in New York. Amazon do not come out of this very well.

I went to see “Mercy” yesterday. The film was good fun, if pretty stupid. What was also good fun, if pretty stupid, was someone coming up to me five minutes before the end of the film, saying I was in their seat. Me: “For this film?” “Is there a film on?” Me, pointing at screen, “…Yes? This one?”

“What’s up” is having my face twice on a small screen (once is quite enough), a white rectangled click zone taking up valuable space in a location well out of reach, when there’s already a perfectly good post button in the bottom right corner

The insanity of UK public bodies threatening other UK public bodies with the apparent intention of limiting the reuse of UK address data. Meanwhile the rest of the world has long recognised that postal address data is critical digital public infrastructure in the 21st century.

Great new feature on FixMyStreet!

I know people have different relationships with backlogs, but for me, it was nice to close github.com/mysociety/fi... :)

Photo-first reporting has arrived across the FixMyStreet website and app, as well as all cobranded instances of FixMyStreet Pro. 🤳🎉 Read about it on our blog: www.societyworks.org/2026/01/22/f... www.societyworks.org/2026/01/22/f...

On iPhone, <input type="file"> shows you nice Photo Library / Take Photo options – but if you Take Photo, EXIF data is stripped, but isn’t with a photo from the Library 😕 On Android, the image picker strips EXIF data, but the file picker does not, and using the camera does keeps EXIF data

The Inquiry uploaded a *lot* of new documents over the past few months. I’ve finally gone through and added all 11,757 of them to postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk for all your searching needs

Off to London for the day 🚂 The fare is £197 return 😱 I’ll pay… £62.20 ✨ No Advance tickets 🎫 split.traintimes.org.uk/BHM/EUS/y/08... gives you £87, but if you can change at Milton Keynes and wait for 15 minutes 🕤 it’s then off-peak, halving that leg: BRV ↔ £15 ↔ RUG ↔ £21.40 ↔ MKC ↔ £25.80 ↔ EUS

Train got in to Milton Keynes 5ish minutes late, so even less time to wait to get into London 9 minutes later to save £25

Off to London for the day 🚂 The fare is £197 return 😱 I’ll pay… £62.20 ✨ No Advance tickets 🎫 split.traintimes.org.uk/BHM/EUS/y/08... gives you £87, but if you can change at Milton Keynes and wait for 15 minutes 🕤 it’s then off-peak, halving that leg: BRV ↔ £15 ↔ RUG ↔ £21.40 ↔ MKC ↔ £25.80 ↔ EUS

This Lords amendment would have required the Secretary of State to publish a statement setting out the total real terms cost of payments to be made to Mauritius under the Treaty, and the methodology used to calculate the total cost of the Treaty

The Lords amendment would have required the Secretary of State to seek to negotiate an amendment to the treaty to ensure that the UK would cease to make payments to the government of Mauritius in the event that the use of the Diego Garcia base for military purposes became impossible

I like sparks of joy, so FixMyStreet accepts a number of open formats in its search besides the expected, including * Grid Reference ("SP070866") * Driver location sign ("M27 2.8") * Latitude,Longitude ("52.478,-1.898") * Open Location Code ("F4H2+4C Birmingham") * Maidenhead Locator ("IO92BL24")

Just under a month away! Join @mysociety.org and others (in London and online) for FOI FEST 2026 Keynotes, discussions, lightning talks, skills tasters Thursday 19 February Sign up here: pretix.eu/mysociety/fo...

The Google Meet joining sound is a middle C. I guess if you could get a lot of people to join at a steady rate, you could hum along and make a slow, transposed, ending to Shostakovich 5 (we’re performing this in a few weeks, come along: southbirminghamsinfonia.com )

I do not understand how some people can live in Birmingham (Birmingham!), be “married to a bloody Asian”(!), and yet have this complete cognitive disconnect about the world (and not know the word palak). www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Just filled up my entire hard disc trying to update the evidence documents on my Post Office Inquiry transcripts/search site; guess I can no longer have it download all the PDFs first before processing!

In a session about data and documents (and records and structure and validity) with @cjforms.bsky.social and @johnlsheridan.bsky.social and @maltbyps.bsky.social and others #ukgc26

Cute little memorial / plea on the side of The Crown on my way to #ukgc26

London to Birmingham is one of the few journeys that has actual choice on the rail network - the three valid routes are (in general terms) Euston to New Street, Marylebone to Moor Street, and Paddington to New Street. Thankfully in incident times, they’re usually a bit more flexible

If you’re travelling from london to GovCamp this seems like the best option. Marylebone route has rail replacement bus. #ukgc26 #ukgovcamp #govcamp Next departures: 08:35 – 10:38 09:02 – 11:15

Oh no, Steam are having a “Detective Fest”

Genius how the boots.com website is so slow and bloated that in a 1-bar bit of this building they accuse you of being a robot or that you must be blocking their JavaScript instead, rather than they’re using far too much of it