h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

New legislative articles, introduced in recent closed-door meetings and not yet public, envision that all web browsers distributed in Europe will be required to trust the certificate authorities and cryptographic keys selected by EU governments

https://last-chance-for-eidas.org/

#EIDAS #eidas2

Middle-of-the-night silly idea:

If Unicode had dedicated code points for hexadecimal digits, separate from the ASCII digits and letters, you could make a font in which the hex digits had width greater than the decimal ones by a factor of log(16)/log(10).

Then you could write the hex and decimal versions of a number side by side and they'd take up about the same amount of space. You could judge by eye how many digits of one base it took to match the precision of a number specified in another!

Like Microsoft, Google really needs to get a handle on criminals paying them to spread malware disguised as legit software. These paid results are so dangerous because they show up before any organic search results. e.g., woe to those who recently searched for KeePass.

Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/google-hosted-malvertising-leads-to-fake-keepass-site-that-looks-genuine/

It's gonna be wild when discord finally runs out of VC money and 10 years of conversation history and random file uploads are lost forever.

Some more recent #retronetworking and #retrocomputing book acquisitions

Want to lose an hour of your time?
Can you name all the TFL (Tube, Overground, Elizabeth Line) stations in London?

I've got 65% after an hour, though there are a handful of stations I know but cant think of their names.

https://london.metro-memory.com/

Technically

Hydrogen boiler push to continue despite verdict of UK watchdog | Energy | The Guardian
-
Hydrogen for home heating was never going to happen, yet the government and gas companies continue to push it. It requires 5-5 times as much energy as using a heat pump and massive infra upgrades to make even remotely safe. It's time to call time on the gas grid.

#ClimateChange #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/21/hydrogen-boiler-home-heating-uk

I did my first ride home from the gym in the dark tonight. The fairy lights made a group of runners laugh and I noticed pedestrians pointing.
It's so silly, but I really like that it makes people smile. Hopefully it spreads a bit of positivity 😁
#BikeTooter #Cycling #ActiveTravel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knXWMjIA59c - If you like computing history and revere Alan Turing but don't know the names of people like Tommy Flowers, maybe give this video a quick watch. It's roughly 8mins long. #Collossus #History #Codebreaking

New rules for people making, importing, or distributing Internet-connected or connectable products (Part 1)

This blogpost is an introduction to the UK's Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022, and the associated regulations.

The focus here is on the "product security" aspect and, in particular, what products fall in scope.

This post is particularly for people who make #IoT and other "connectable" stuff.

#lawfedi

🆕 blog! “Book Review: The Cuckoo's Egg - Clifford Stoll”
★★★★★

This book is outstanding. It's the mid 1980s, you're administrating a nascent fleet of UNIX boxen, and you are tasked with accounting for a 75¢ billing discrepancy. Naturally that eventually leads into an international conspiracy involving the FBI, NSA, and an excellent recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It is…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/book-review-the-cuckoos-egg-clifford-stoll/
⸻
#BookReview #hacking