In the last 10 years, the licence fee has only gone up by £34.50/year. In the same time, for the same deal (HD, no ads), Netflix has gone up by almost double that, £67.08/year. And that’s just for Netflix, not the ENTIRE BBC.

Some unfinished thoughts while I wait for the roast chicken to cook. UK govt / depts lack a joined up digital strategy for providing digital services alongside market offerings. 1/5

It is absolutely incredible that HMRC thought (and still thinks) that it is acceptable to tell every sole trader in the country that they have to file digitally, but that HMRC isn't providing any means to do, that you probably need to get some software from somewhere, and that it sucks to be you.

"The Scottish island of Summerisle, home of the best fruit in Britain. The first thing you notice? No churches. The farmers here practice a fascinating form of pre-Christian worship…and I just learned I'll be playing the lead role in their annual May Day festival. First stop: my costume fitting."

1/9 We often talk about design systems in the context of big tech or global brands, but some of the most meaningful ones are built quietly inside public institutions. #DesignSystems #PublicSector #GovTech #CivicTech #UX #DesignOps #ServiceDesign #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #DigitalGov

the girl guides in the UK just kicked out all their trans members specifically bc they were threatened with a lawsuit from a rowling-funded group

Wondering what sort of bad station planning ending up with platforms numbered 0, 1a, 2b and 2… 🤔

Have you ever wondered what the average age of Oscar winners is? Fret no more: oscar-winners.netlify.app

I was wondered about the ages of Best Actor and Best Actress winners at the Oscars and if they was a trend. I asked Claude to fetch the data and put it in a table and it made a webpage, so I asked it add a chart and I've published it here: oscar-winners.netlify.app

Thought this was King Charles mixed with Richard Briers

My son wanted me to help him build his Gunpla so obviously I ended up doing the whole thing. PS: I absolute hate stickers, I have shaky hands and need to invest in some of those crocodile clamps on armatures.

My wife and I are using AI chatbots to plan the planting scheme for a raised border in our garden. She's using ChatGPT and I'm using Claude, and pasting her suggestions into Claude which is giving some really condescending feedback — it said "she's clearly done her homework after the feedback"

It’s pancake day, yes it’s pancake day, yes it’s p-p-p-p-pancake day! youtu.be/lS9J4vJ5K78?...

As I’ve been saying, by the end of the year, you can expect that ChatGPT will be selling a product that lets people generate child sexual abuse material on demand. They will then say “oops” about it violating their TOS, and repeat until everyone caves. Because their leadership is largely ex-Meta.

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

One for my sci-fi peeps *thought you'd particularly appreciate it @jonmarkhicks.bsky.social

It's quite worrying the SoS is equating learning how to prompt in 20 mins or under with diagnostic uses of AI in healthcare. I also still can't really believe govt is investing in universal training in proprietary tools. That Microsoft koolaid must be pretty intoxicating

Public digital services need to be *so much better* than anything the market offers. You can't switch. You can't get fed up and choose to pay a bit more at Ocado than Sainsbury's because the UX is better. You can't opt out of public services because you're digitally excluded.

wind power by country

“You never see windmills in China” From Wikipedia: China is the world leader in wind power generation, with the largest installed capacity of any nationand continued rapid growth in new wind facilities. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_po...

Look what they took from us

I really cannot stress what a precise "oh this isn't serious" signal launching things at what3words is

It would take around $37B annually to solve world hunger by 2030 according to Oxfam. www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stor...

🎧 Today's genre: experimental horror folk 🎧 Top tracks: • Goblin - Suspiria • Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal • LE SSERAFIM - SPAGHETTI • Sufjan Stevens - Fourth of July • FKA twigs - Striptease Generate yours: https://www.musicgenre.site/experimental-horror-folk

Grok, generate a nude Tayne. youtu.be/a8K6QUPmv8Q?...

Message in a bottle. www.designswarm.com/blog/2026/01...

📊 Music Genre Stats 📊 Total genres generated: 55.9K What's your next genre? https://musicgenre.site

👩‍🎤 I was into crust trip hop before it was cool 👩‍🎤 Top tracks: • Pharsighted - Science over Money • Nubiyan Twist - Figure Numatic • Crystal Fighters - Xtatic Truth • Tragedy - Conflicting Ideas • Nausea - Cybergod Generate yours: https://www.musicgenre.site/crust-trip-hop

I've been updating my random music genre web toy using Claude Code to help. - searches last.fm api to find tracks matching tracks - creates playlist with 30s previews of tracks using deezer api - removed twitter & facebook links + post directly to bsky www.musicgenre.site

I've been updating my random music genre web toy using Claude Code to help. - searches last.fm api to find tracks matching tracks - creates playlist with 30s previews of tracks using deezer api - removed twitter & facebook links + post directly to bsky www.musicgenre.site

If a new app was produced which had, as its core features, the generation of sexual deep fake images of children and calls for a violent global far-right revolution, then not only would it be swiftly banned, but you wouldn't have a single mainstream politician willing to associate themselves with it

The GLC’s roads programme of the 60s & early 70s certainly kept the Graphic Design Division of the Council’s Supplies Department busy. Here are some covers of related brochures: the Eurostile typeface for the East Cross Route & italicised Helvetica (or similar) for Westway are particularly appealing

Government should run its own mastodon server for official accounts, and parliament should run one for MPs. They could then be reposted on other platforms with links to the official source.

Do games still have Christmas Easter eggs (Christmas eggs?) in them? I remember in Rise of the Triad the characters would have Santa hats on the select screen 🎄🎅🏻

Just read the sad news about Antony Price. He was the fashion designer who styled Roxy Music and their iconic album covers. I designed a website for him in 2008, he sent me some amazing sketches to scan, it was really special to see his work first hand. RIP. www.showstudio.com/contributors...

A reminder that when Kemi Badenoch hacked Harriet Harman's website it was an offence carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison

I didn’t realise that GOV.UK used to have a subdomain for independent ALBs

I agree, the publishing tools and systems GDS have created should be available for other public sector bodies — similar to how GOV.UK Pay and Notify are, and hopefully how GDS Local will enable local government.

I think public bodies should be using better publishing platforms than Wordpress, especially if they are handling sensitive information like the OBR. I think GDS should create a set of standards for publishing outside of the GOV.UK proposition. www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu...

I think public bodies should be using better publishing platforms than Wordpress, especially if they are handling sensitive information like the OBR. I think GDS should create a set of standards for publishing outside of the GOV.UK proposition. www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu...

Was there some guidance posted about age verifcation/OSA for small business and hobbyist apps and websites? Maybe @v21.bsky.social @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social or @jonty.bsky.social shared it? My searches are turning up nothing.

I find it a bit weird when people put their degree qualifications on their email signature. Maybe I’ll put my GCSEs on mine.

Are the hashtags his categorisation sections?

Happy 24th Birthday Wayback Machine! On October 24, 2001, The Internet Archive organization launched a free digital archive of websites for the general public called the Wayback Machine. The oldest pages stored in the archive date back to 1996.

Front page of Scottish newspaper The National today.

This video about the history of synthesisers and how they work by Chris Miller (aka Gunnar Haslam) is really fascinating. Has a great retro look reminiscent of Look Around You and Carl Sagan. Recommended if you are interested in synths, physics or just learning things. youtu.be/waN4owHeyaQ?...

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Mission patches ↖Aliens (1986): Dropship crew ↗Mission to Mars (2000): Mars Recovery ↙The Martian (2015): Ares III ↘Deliver Us the Moon (2019): Fortuna I