h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

Why some DVLA digital services don't work at night

https://dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/why-some-dvla-digital-services-dont-work-at-night/

Things I regret: Looking at github issues for the open-source self-driving car conversion kit.

Thousands of people use these things on public roads.

https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/34346

Insider war story on time-smearing and fooling NTP to get around a leap second: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/01/09/lag/

Fun stuff!

After @lapcatsoftware's "Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15", I took a deep dive into the tech that apparently makes it private.

I tried to write it in simple english, something apple apparently could not:

https://boehs.org/node/homomorphic-encryption

We originally had a different topic planned for this week's #geoweirdness thread, but the global discussion has turned to Greenland 🇬🇱, so let's go with it.

Join us as we consider the geographic oddities of the world's northernmost territory.

1/

Today I learned that you can search for a company on https://www.uktradeinfo.com and it shows you what categories of goods they imported/exported each month. Fairly coarse data, but still cool.

...it also shows the VAT "principal place of business" address which means my home address is on there several times. You're not allowed to use a registered office address for that, and nowhere does it say it gets published.

My thoughts on New York's (de)congestion pricing revolution, on its first big weekday: https://humantransit.org/2025/01/its-here-manhattans-congestion-relief-zone.html

"Managing load from abusive web bots" – Alun Jones

https://www.ty-penguin.org.uk/~auj/blog/2025/01/02/spigot/

Another of my fave photos this year were these taken of a train shooting out of the tunnel towards a Hamilton theatre poster. 

It looks like the man is having a stand-off with the London Underground train at Oxford Circus Station.

I can't decide which version I like best?

#photography #railway

A Puzzle about a Calculator https://aperiodical.com/2024/12/a-puzzle-about-a-calculator/

Fuck it, we can call them all out - please collect the worst UX nightmares you see this Christmas and send them over. Take photos, videos, describe it - jonty@jonty.co.uk

I'll shove them all on a website and try to embarrass companies into fixing them.

Press friends: I shall be in touch

If you're looking for something fun/silly to do over the intermediate time between Christmas and New Year, why not contribute to a global project to collectively make videos of humans saying all 41 million digits of the largest known prime number? It'll take you about 3.5 minutes to say your chunk! Details at https://saytheprime.com

"It is the responsibility of the vendor of the system, and the administrator of the system, to ensure that this value represents the number of seconds between the referenced time and the Epoch as closely as necessary for the application being run on that system."

https://aphyr.com/posts/378-seconds-since-the-epoch

I've got my Angel for the top of the Christmas tree.

#christmas

Enjoyed reading about the Parker Solar Probe as it prepares to skim the sun’s atmosphere - at a respectable (for humans) fraction of the speed of light - on Christmas Eve. Surviving that requires some amazing materials science!

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/were-about-to-fly-a-spacecraft-into-the-sun-for-the-first-time/

"It's devastating to just... turn it off... but this is what the Act forces a sole individual running so many social websites for a public good to do."

The London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed cycling forum, which is has been a cornerstone of UK cycling culture for many years is shutting down as a direct consequence of the Online Safety Act.

We're already seeing the chilling effect of the Act with small communities like this choosing to shut down rather than deal with the burden of complying with the Act. I can only imagine more will follow.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/

cc @openrightsgroup

#onlinesafetyact #ukpolitics #censorship