Slightly ruin a book... Strangler in a Strange Land

🧵 Musician & human rights activist Peter Gabriel sent a congratulatory message to Brewster Kahle, founder & digital librarian of the Internet Archive, on being honored as a 2026 Computer History Museum Fellow on April 25th. Watch Gabriel’s message & more ⤵️ blog.archive.org/2026/05/20/b...

The Virtual OS Museum opens its doors

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you've seen live Kate Bush Pink Floyd Deep Purple Rush The Ramones Robert Plant The Damned All About Eve Human League Steps

A well detailed explanation of the BambuLab AGPLv3 violations by the Software Freedom Conservancy ➡️ sfconservancy.org/news/2026/ma... Thanks to Herr Brain on Discord for the link #3dprinting #opensource #agpl #bambu #bambulab

Sad News for the Infosec community: "Peter Neumann passed away in his sleep last night, at the hospital in Santa Clara, due to complications arising from his fall and subsequent surgery a few weeks ago."

New blog post: GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gds-weighs-in-on-the-nhss-decision-to-retreat-from-open-source/ Within the UK's Civil Service you occasionally hear the expression "being invited to a meeting without biscuits". It …

New blog post: UK Government Kicks Out Palantir https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/uk-government-kicks-out-palantir/ The UK Government, for all its faults, is pretty good at publishing contracts it has awarded. That's why I get depressed when I see rage-bait nonsense about how companies have been …

What we learn from LLMs having blown past the Turing Test without a backward glance...

I wonder what Ross Anderson would have had to say about this. I think his paper concluded that open- vs. closed-source security was roughly equivalent in the long run; not sure if it considered changing horses though. Looking forward to @k8em0.bsky.social @ciaranm.bsky.social seminar on Thursday!

On 4 May 1944, Bletchley Park codebreakers saw the German Abwehr testing a cipher machine they had not seen before. This turned out to be the SG-41, and today is a great day to try out the interactive 3D simulation of that machine: sg41.virtualcolossus.co.uk. Thanks @virtualcolossus.bsky.social !

Hygienist. Even though I type it into my calendar every three months, I still get it wrong (yes, this post was spell-corrected!)

65 years ago today, Robert Noyce received U.S. Patent 2,981,877. Noyce’s semiconductor design paved the way for mass production and the digital revolution. From Fairchild to Intel, his legacy is inside every piece of silicon. #OnThisDay #RobertNoyce #Engineering #Intel #History

This week's net.wars, "Intimacy capitalism", goes to the We Robot 2026 workshop day, and finds new things to worry about: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2026/04/24/i... #WeRobot #AI

Virtual SG-41 project brings Nazi cipher machine to life in the browser

I'm English, not American. But I can tell you the feeling with Armstrong on the Moon in 1969 was very similar, with Nixon and Vietnam. I remember my late mother saying to the black and white TV, "Look. They can do so much better."

Happy world backup day! You should take this day to reflect on what backup plans you have for your computer data. There are many options, but you should apply the 3-2-1 rule: • Three copies of your data (including the "live" copy), on • Two different media, with • One offsite. #WorldBackupDay

10 Years of Virtual Colossus: 2026 And we're up to date and therefore, today is the release of my latest project: Virtual Schlüsselgerät 41 After a year of work try it out for yourself using just your web browser. Hope you like my new website design too! sg41.virtualcolossus.co.uk

Team Mirai and Democracy Japan’s election last month and the rise of the country’s newest and most innovative political party, Team Mirai, illustrates the viability of a different way to do politics. In this model, technology is used to make democratic processes stronger, instead of undermining…

Can you believe that the Virtual Colossus project is now 10 years old! Today, I'm starting the countdown to the release of my latest simulation the incredible Schlüsselgerät 41. Each day, I'll show what I was working on from 2016 until we catch up to today!

Could you crack the code of a secret letter? ✉️👀

It's really good, and apparently still available!

"In the small hours, it is a window on a dark world, an alternative to doomscrolling and a pushback against parochialism."

Doctors told to give Palantir's NHS data platform the cold shoulder

This week's net.wars, "In search of the future Internet", goes to meetings building opposition to AI-withouth-public-consent: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2026/02/06/i...

This is a very interesting point: "Suddenly, Europeans and Canadians are getting a taste of something long familiar to other parts of the world".

Signed.

To make it worse, they now seem to have changed the headline from "world's most powerful quantum computer" to just "world's most powerful computer". Errrm, no.

This is a shockingly bad piece, doing very little to actually inform readers about the current state of quantum computers. Don't let your economics editor write about cutting-edge science and technology! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This year, for my mental health, I'm going to practice just letting people be wrong on the internet.

Make one of your New Year's Resolutions to visit The National Museum of Computing in 2026 :-)

Oh dear! covers.aesty.ai/heathcr/imag...

:-)

The Christmas Lectures, supported by CGI, are starting TONIGHT! We couldn't wait either, so here is a little sneak peek of what's to come... 🎁 Tune in at 7.00pm on BBC Four and iPlayer to follow Maggie Aderin-Pocock on a fantastic voyage through space, searching for evidence of alien life.

It’s almost time for a favourite annual tradition—and no, it’s not the Boxing Day walk. This one can be enjoyed from the sofa with a healthy helping of mince pies... the Christmas Lectures are coming soon! Set your reminders: 🗓️28, 29, 30 December ⏰ 7.00pm 📺 BBC Four and iPlayer

New blog post: Why do people leave comments on OpenBenches? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/12/why-do-people-leave-comments-on-openbenches/ I'm still a believer in the promise of Web 2.0. The idea that giving people a curated space to chat produces tiny sparks of magic. My wife Liz and I have …

Jump on a train and pop up to Bletchley Park - lots to see including @tnmoc.bsky.social RSGB radio stuff and the Bletchley Park Museum. Time it right and you’ll meet @peteronion.bsky.social and his amazing Elliott computer. It’s about an hour by train. If you do go, let people on hear know!

When I rule the world it will be mandatory for all parcel delivery notifications to tell you who the sender is and for all senders to tell you what delivery company they use.

This week's net.wars, "Sovereign immunity", learns from X's location tracking feature and ponders the future of international squabbles over Internet censorship: The incident reminded that fraud in general seems to be endemic in online advertising: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/11/28/s...

This is why mechanical computers like the fire control computers in submarines had “fuse gears” made of softer metal that would break first if something bound up and were located in easy-to-access locations for repair.

New blog post: OpenBenches 💖 OpenStreetMap https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/openbenches-%F0%9F%92%96-openstreetmap/ When Liz and I created the OpenBenches website, it was just designed to be a fun way for people to record memorial benches. Since then things have got out of hand and we now have …

“A vote for Labour is the only way to stop Reform” Or “Labour can actually do what Reform only claims it can do” The government needs to pick one strategy, not both. The government seems unaware that voters can actually hear it trying both messages at once.

"The BBC isn’t perfect – but it’s ours. If we don’t defend it now, we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy."

"... I usually submit an article and invoice on the same email. That way, there is no opportunity to use excuses like they didn’t get my invoice ..." Sound advice!

Leamington Spa W.H. Smith's. (It's a cassette, not a record, but I'm interpreting the request as first "album" :-))

Link works; recommended reading.

Annoyed by commuters playing their shitty music at full volume? You can buy USB-C headphones for £2. Grab a sack of them and hand them out to sodcasters everywhere. shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/10...

Virtual Schlüsselgerät 41 (SG-41). Another week and yet another mess of levers in the CT scans that do something .. but what? One of those cases where I'm just going to have to model & animate them in @blender.org & @threejs.org to find out. @tnmoc.bsky.social @cryptomuseum.bsky.social

I have a lot of questions about the Vertu Agent Q "AI phone" which is launching this week at Harrods...