h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

The letter:

💂 Announces Veteran Cards will be eligible voter ID.

🏫 Confirms commitment to votes at 16.

📜 Commits to review current electoral law with an eye to reducing 'pain-points'.

The water layer has been updated and now shows reservoirs, water treatment and sewage plants, and pumping stations.

https://openinframap.org/#8.09/51.355/0.088/L,W

More improvements still to come from the recent re-import.

#OpenStreetMap

The GOV.UK “exit this page" button (for pages that might be visited by e.g. domestic abuse victims seeking support) doesn't take you to the Google homepage but instead BBC Weather, and the reason why is interesting and well-thought-out: https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-page-doesnt-use-escape/#bonus%3A-why-does-it-redirect-the-user-to-bbc-weather%3F

Updates from @brewsterkahle about the DDOS attacks on Internet Archive:

Today in TLD shenanigans: dot io is being killed off.

Wishing a very pleasant rebranding to all techbros who squatted their web site in an unrelated nation because it made a good pun. On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving...
https://jwz.org/b/ykab

The Technical Difficulties are back with the first of four new episodes of Reverse Trivia

https://youtu.be/-1B-1EYsLk4?si=MWkuDrlsaIGbLSxv

New podcast episode! Mathematical Objects: Low bridge sign with Adam Townsend https://aperiodical.com/2024/09/mathematical-objects-low-bridge-sign-with-adam-townsend/

https://16n-faderbank.github.io/16nx.html

for my 42nd birthday I released the new, overhauled version of the 16-fader musical controller I design. No more Teensy; on-board RP2040. Everything open source, as ever. Finally glad to have this out.

(Also I value every second of effort I put into the 90s Akaicore logo)

This week we published our report into e-Visas, revealing flaws in its rollout and implementation.

By the end of 2024, up to 4 million migrants will be unable to prove their right to be in the UK offline.

They'll find themselves at the mercy of real-time checks. A system that'll decide a person's status by guessing which records match across multiple databases.

The errors that'll come pave the way for a digital Windrush scandal.

#stopEvisas #migrants #ukpolitics

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/publications/e-visas-hostile-and-broken/

I sure we all did this on twitter years ago https://www.arealme.com/vocabulary-size-test/en/

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here.

A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for people fleeing domestic violence. The security guards on the door are cautiously indifferent to anyone walking in. The air is filled with tense conversations between partners - drowned out by the noise of screaming kids.

In the middle, a young woman sits on a hard plastic chair. She is surrounded by canvas-bags containing her worldly possessions. She doesn't look like she is in a great emotional place right now. Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush.

Or, at least, that's what I thought.

Walking behind her, I glance at her console and recognise the screen she's on. She's connected to the complementary WiFi and is browsing the GOV.UK pages on Housing Benefit. She's not slicing fruit; she's arming herself with knowledge.

The PSP's web browser is - charitably - pathetic. It is slow, frequently runs out of memory, and can only open 3 tabs at a time.

But the GOV.UK pages are written in simple HTML. They are designed to be lightweight and will work even on rubbish browsers. They have to. This is for everyone.

Not everyone has a big monitor, or a multi-core CPU burning through the teraflops, or a broadband connection.

The photographer Chase Jarvis coined the phrase "the best camera is the one that’s with you". He meant that having a crappy instamatic with you at an important moment is better than having the best camera in the world locked up in your car.

The same is true of web browsers. If you have a smart TV, it probably has a crappy browser.

My old car had a built-in crappy web browser.

Both are painful to use - but they work!

If your laptop and phone both got stolen - how easily could you conduct online life through the worst browser you have? If you have to file an insurance claim online - will you get sent a simple HTML form to fill in, or a DOCX which won't render?

What vital information or services are forbidden to you due to being trapped in PDFs or horrendously complicated web sites?

Are you developing public services? Or a system that people might access when they're in desperate need of help? Plain HTML works. A small bit of simple CSS will make look decent. JavaScript is probably unnecessary - but can be used to progressively enhance stuff. Add alt text to images so people paying per MB can understand what the images are for (and, you know, accessibility).

Go sit in an uncomfortable chair, in an uncomfortable location, and stare at an uncomfortably small screen with an uncomfortably outdated web browser. How easy is it to use the websites you've created?

I chatted briefly to the young woman afterwards. She'd been kicked out by her parents and her friends had given her the bus fare to the housing benefits office. She had nothing but praise for how helpful the staff had been. I asked about the PSP - a hand-me-down from an older brother - and the web browser. Her reply was "It's shit. But it worked."

I think that's all we can strive for.

Here are some stats on games consoles visiting GOV.UK

Matt Hobbs (@TheRealNooshu@hachyderm.io)

@TheRealNooshu

Replying to @TheRealNooshuInterestingly we have 3,574 users visiting GOV.UK on games consoles:
• Xbox - 2,062
• Playstation 4 - 1,457
• Playstation Vita - 25
• Nintendo WiiU - 14
• Nintendo 3DS - 16

20/22

❤️ 29💬 1♻️ 010:45 - Mon 01 February 2021

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

#HTML5 #web #WeekNotes #work