Oh good, all the old tricks work on it, thanks AI doctor / secret free coding agent

overly in-depth (i love it) explanation of why usb-c audio dongles/headsets hit USB-FS bandwidth limits https://epenguin.imalone.co.uk/2025/06/audio-dongles-and-ghost-of-usb-1.html

Our workshop from RSECon is now available on YouTube; an introduction to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and accessibility testing with the WAVE browser extension. https://youtube.com/watch?v=M-5KPeUtTys

Apparently the entire UNIX tape was read successfully, what's going to need to happen next is to decode the signal from it, decipher the file formats, etc., I'll post updates as I get them

This years RSECon25 Emerging voices talk - by Ana Cavalcante, Piper Fowler-Wright https://youtu.be/65rd7VUYhe0

Um, you might want to check that BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly08y25688o (I've reported to them by email). #gellmannamnesia

For the last few years I've been running a proxy of the BBC News RSS feeds (https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev) that strips out duplicate content, non-news content, and (optionally) sports news. This weekend, for the first time, somebody asked if it could produce an edition that included only the […]

Nice session of sustainable computing talks at CIUK. Storing heat in old coal mines under Durham, immersion cooling and methods monitoring energy use on clusters. #ciuk2025 #sustainablecomputing

EcoHome Lab: Battery optimisation strategies, Dec 11, 18:00, online. https://www.meetup.com/eco-home-lab-manchester/events/311853741/ These are always interesting discussions on making homes more sustainable with open source tech. #solarpunk #homeassistant #carboncoop

The layout of this paper is expert level trolling! https://journals.uc.edu/index.php/vl/article/view/5765/4629

@katiefenn You are not the only one. There was an open hardware project that made something similar https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara . Looks like they have sold out of the first batch but are planning a next version.

What do Youth Hacking 4 Freedom participants do about an hour before the award ceremony for the winners? They sit in the hotel's lobby and try to get the #FreeSoftware operating system @postmarketOS running on a @Fairphone#freesoftwareversion 2. 🤗 #YH4F

UPDATE: still looking! Since May, we have: - Bid on some land (unsuccessful) - Contacted landowners & managers about making direct offers - Started a MSc in Ecological Restoration Full update: wild-ling.org.uk/october-2025... Know someone who might sell land in the Peak District? Let us know!🌰

It's good to see that GMCA has adopted a retrofit framework agreement that includes calculating embodied carbon. As we showed in relation to GMCA's own Joint Development Plan, Places for Everyone, it's embodied carbon that's the big problem in building new homes etc. So at least try to make […]

BTW if you're looking for an open hardware, repairable laptop made by a small team in berlin with no venture capital, maybe MNT Reform Next could be interesting for you: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

#tfw you have a glass of wine on the train and things get surreal. #kevlinhenney #avantiwestcoast #timetravel

From a slide at the Durham NetDRIVE Workshop. The Manifest Destiny of AI Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN https://betterimagesofai.org/images?artist=HannaBarakat&title=FrontierModels3 #betterimagesofai #sustainablecomputing

Quarter of UK university physics departments at risk of closing, survey finds https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/20/quarter-of-uk-university-physics-departments-at-risk-of-closing-survey-finds Four out of five making staff cuts as physicists say findings are ‘great concern’ for UK’s […]

@neiman @ligasser Chatting with a friend, I got this expressed better in graph terminology. Each person is a vertex, each coffee break is an edge, edges are labelled with the week. We are looking for a complete graph (there is an edge between every pair of nodes) of N vertices, with labelled […]

i'm looking for a KiCAD EE freelancer who is skilled and well organized (meaning: can finish pcb projects so they are orderable without much nagging from my side (not necessarily with BOM fully picked though)) to offload some of my projects (sometimes partial or redoing something i did, but […]

I spoke at the HPC RSE training and community session at #rsecon25 today. Introduced the Reasonable Performance Computing SIG and our “Python Profiling & Optimization” course first, then had good discussions on the panel afterwards!

Maria from the Manchester Library of Things https://mcrlot.com/ is a finalist for BBC Radio Manchester Make a Difference awards: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0lzr9d0 #mcrlot #libraryofthings #manchester

What would it take for our home to be Solar Self-Sufficient? Work in progress, but I think I have the answer. 🏠 I live in an ordinary house in suburban London. ☀️ Our solar panels generate 3,800kWh per year. 🔌 We use the same amount of electricity per year […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

This feels like a very @SwiftOnSecurity story but I’m going to tell it. Chat bots (not just LLM driven) are surprisingly old. In the mid 90s, a mark up language for string-driven bots called AIML was released. A small community of early hackers and devs got really into it. I was part as a teen.

I did it http://alifeee.co.uk/tpe-soundboard/ (source: https://github.com/alifeee/tpe-soundboard)

opportunity for a hardware/mech/process engineer to join a #climatetech startup, in Falmouth UK. The team are excellent folk, working on a neglected problem (capturing SF6 emissions from substations) to make a properly net zero grid. Might suit a #maker type who likes living by the sea? […]

#manchester's filthy air. A long way to go. "All in all, the measures will get Greater Manchester’s air to 40.3 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide in one cubic metre of air. "The UK legal limit is officially 40, but results under 40.4 are rounded down, making TfGM’s plan compliant. "But the World […]

Manchester to Copenhagen by train for INCS025. Great journey for tunnels and bridges. #academicchatter #academictravel #FlightFree #staygrounded #Climate #gianlucagrimalda #neutrons #ICNS

We do not need new roads; we need better transport options. Think of what could be done with £9.2bn, which is to be spent on just 14 miles of road! It could transform bus services and/or cycling and pedestrian infrastructure across Britain. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

In a windless week Sizewell C (or Hinkley C) would produce over 500 GWh of low/no carbon electricity (3.2GW * 24 * 7). Just to store that amount of surplus renewable energy we'd need 2500 battery facilities (based on 200 MWh for Lakeside Energy Park […]

' “How do we afford public ownership?” You squeeze the water companies hard. If they’re no longer making a profit, their so-called “market value” (based on ripping you off) will fall. As they collapse, like Thames Water, they can be taken into public ownership for a song, and their debt can be […]

Playing with rendering a Mandelbrot with Braille characters ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡀⠀⣀⣀⣼⣿⣿⣅⣀⣀⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣟⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣀⣀⣄⣀⠀⠀⢀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣏⡀⠀ ⠀⠀⢀⣀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠏⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠈⠉⠹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣆⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠐⠉⠉⠋⠉⠀⠀⠈⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣏⠁⠀ […]

12/ A much better explanation in the shape of a blogpost. https://patricia.no/2025/05/30/why_lean_software_dev_is_wrong.html

holy fucking shit https://mastdatabase.co.uk/blog/2025/05/o2-expose-customer-location-call-4g/

We made it! Day 13: Sleights to Robin Hood's Bay - Our final day. It dawned grey and chilly, and we left early, back out onto windswept moors. ... www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/wild-ling-... 🌰

For weeks I have been telling reporters that #trump could have the power to switch off our tech in #europe. It felt a bit alarmist until I just read the #microsoft, on the behest of the #US gov has suspended the email account of Karim Khan, #ICC chief prosecutor. One of the most important […]

UK gov announced changes to immigration policy. Not sure what the implications are for scientists/ postdocs moving to the UK. UK science is greatly enriched by having good talent move here. Details are scarce in their white paper but increasing number of years to settlement from 5 to 10 will be […]

1. This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a story of breathtaking perversity, told in this thread. (There’s a one-page version at the bottom). 🧵

So, everyone worrying about the Venus probe reentry: yes, it's not designed to burn up in the atmosphere, and that's bad. But, remember Starlink? There's something like one Starlink per day reentering now, and they weigh more than the Venus probe! They say they will burn up completely, but now […]

Off we go, complete with stickers! Important questions need to be asked about how many pants will we need, when will we eat our packet noodles, and why is this all so heavy. Discuss. Our Crowdfunder is still running: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/wild-ling-... Website: wild-ling.org.uk

Got the first air quality alert of the year. Maybe due to the wildfire near Buxton. Or maybe just the sun on the traffic fumes. You can sign up for Manchester alerts at https://cleanairgm.com/data-hub/forecast-and-alerts

Obligatory work post... We're hiring again for some senior software engineers and a product manager. We're all remote, but with an option to go into the office in Oxford. UK-based only. It's a great opportunity for anyone wanting to make a difference and use their code to help researchers in […]

ONE WEEK until we start our Coast to Coast trek to raise money for Wild•Ling! Two hundred miles in thirteen days! We'll continue fundraising throughout, so please check out and share: Our Crowdfunder: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/wild-ling-... Our website: wild-ling.org.uk And please repost. Thanks! 🌰

What a brilliant advert for open source software. Today, the lead article on the BBC News website: “Not owning crucial code has meant it has been unable to replace the system that led to a scandal.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgm8lmz1xk1o #opensource #publicit

It's hard to get your head around the scale of the environmental vandalism the Labour government is hoping to unleash. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is up there with Trump's executive orders. And the reason is the same: corporate power. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

@vashtig.bsky.social and I are starting a rewilding project. She is doing a sponsored coast to coast walk to raise funds for it. Read more at https://wild-ling.org.uk #rewilding #earthday

Wild•Ling now has a video! Found out about our project: what we're doing, why, and how we'll do it. Please please REPOST! youtu.be/bMos348ibo0 #Rewilding @crowdfunder.bsky.social

Excited to launch our fundraiser for Wild•Ling: a conservation project led by conservation professionals, buying and rewilding land in the Peak District. Sponsor me to walk the challenging Coast to Coast www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/wild-ling-... and find out about our project here: wild-ling.org.uk

🆕 blog! “Gadget Review: Windfall Energy Saving Plug (Beta)” ★★★★☆ The good folks at Windfall Energy have sent me one of their interesting new plugs to beta test. OK, an Internet connected smart plug. What's so interesting about that? Our Windfall Plug turns on at the optimal times in the […]