h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

Blogged: “Musings on link shorteners, UUIDv7, Base58, …”
https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2024/04/28/musings-on-link-shorteners-uuidv7-base58/

The Millennial CAPTCHA.

This is really well done:
https://jwz.org/b/ykPi

Good morning to you and a very fuck the Tories.

In order to to be able to fuck the Tories you now need ID. If you don’t have ID, go here ASAP to be able to vote against them next week.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/voter-id

I should not have stayed up so late reverse engineering the barcodes on stamps

Blogged: “For file integrity testing, you’re wasting your time with md5”
https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2024/04/20/for-file-integrity-testing-youre-wasting-your-time-with-md5/

#Linux

📚 We've collected together all mayoral booklets, election broadcasts, and as many local political party manifestos as we could find for the 2 May English local elections.

Find out what the candidates are promising in our latest blog.

https://democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2024/04/19/party-and-candidate-material-for-the-2024-local-elections/

🆕 blog! “Where you can (and can't) use Emoji in PHP”

I was noodling around in PHP the other day and discovered that this works: <?php $🍞 = "bread"; echo "Some delicious " . $🍞; I mean, there's no reason why it shouldn't work. An emoji is just a Unicode character (OK, not just a character - but we'll get on to that), so it should […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/where-you-can-and-cant-use-emoji-in-php/
⸻
#emoji #php #unicode

So what do you need to talk to a $100 billion space station? As it turns out, about $60 worth of stuff will do. https://hackaday.com/2023/06/10/listening-to-the-iss-on-the-cheap/

I haven't seen Dickie for ages, but we played 5-a-side together 10, 15 years ago.

His memories of being at Hillsborough.

https://dickiefelton.com/2024/04/15/we-were-the-child-survivors-of-britains-worst-sporting-disaster-yet-quickly-became-the-accused/

I didn't go to it, but remember one of my schoolmates was there, in the upper stands luckily for him.

#JFT97 #DontBuyTheSun #Hillsborough

I don't often talk about where I work (it's nice to use social media for non-work things), but I actually work with some lovely people doing some really cool and meaningful things. And, we're currently hiring.

If you're a UK-based software engineer (Python/JavaScript) or researcher and looking for something remote/hybrid, please take a look.

https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2024/04/opensafely-software-engineering-vacancies/

https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2024/04/research-vacancies/

Here's a bit about how the tech teams work too: https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2024/04/the-opensafely-tech-teams-work-pipeline/

#GetFediHired

🎉 Exciting news! After 5 years away, OggCamp, the ultimate unconference for open source and free culture enthusiasts is back for a triumphant return in 2024! 🌟

🗓️ Join us at The Manchester Conference Centre on October 12th and 13th.

🚀 Get ready for a weekend filled with innovation, collaboration, and community spirit!

🔗 Stay tuned for the Call for Papers (CfP) and ticket announcements – watch this space! 🎟️

#OggCamp2024 #OpenSource #TechConference #Manchester

Our robot agility work is featured on the cover of the new issue of Science Robotics on legged robots.

🗼 With the publication of the candidates for Blackpool South, we have now compiled a full set of candidates for the English and Welsh elections on 2 May.

🧮 That's 10,662 candidates across 2,015 ballots: councillors, mayors, PCCs, London AMs, and one MP.

🗳️Find out who's on your ballot at http://WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk!

✨Enormous thanks to our amazing volunteers who worked through the day and night to get the data into our system.

👨‍💻 The data is available to download here: https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/api/docs/csv/

With local elections upon us, and a general election coming sometime soon, a reminder that https://electionleaflets.org/ is a really useful #UKPolitics resource for seeing what candidates are parties are saying across the country. It relies on people uploading leaflets they get, so if you do get some, please pause to take a snap of them before they go into the recycling!

Curious about using 'public domain' British Library Flickr images? We've answered some common questions https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2024/04/curious-about-using-public-domain-british-library-flickr-images.html

#Flickr #PublicDomain #FreeImages #illustrations #Commons

🗓️ This Friday is SOPN DAY!

4pm on 5 April is the deadline for people to stand as candidates in the English & Welsh local, Mayoral and PCC elections.

Between 5 and 8 April, councils will publish the official candidate lists, Statements of Persons Nominated (SoPN).

Each year our amazing volunteers lend a hand extracting this information from PDFs and into our system, allowing voters to find their ballot via a postcode search.

It's a big task, and anyone can take part: https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/volunteer/