h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

Approximately 15 months after submittng FoI requests for the UK Railway's Barcoded Ticketing specifications, I've just managed to settle the appeal on the cases (on a Saturday of all days).

So, presenting for your reading enjoyment, some PDFs that the Government really didn't want me to get until the last minute: https://magicalcodewit.ch/rsp-specs/

I swear this is the most I've laughed out loud at a youtube chemistry video, those two have perfect comic timing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98qiQJ8maCU

Happy First Radian Day, to those who celebrate it!

https://milk.com/first-radian-day/

First Radian Day celebrates the 58th day of the year. 58 ≅ 365.256/2π. That is, it is the day during which the path traced by the Earth around the Sun, starting from the beginning of the year, is momentarily the same length as the distance between the Earth and Sun, to a first approximation. This is of course way more mathematically and geometrically interesting than Decimal Approximation Pi Day on 3/14.

ssh is an obscure but widely-deployed command. It stands for Secure Snake Home and was made in the 90s to securely play snake online

I made a massively multiplayer backend for it with support for thousands of concurrent snake players

ssh snakes.run to join!

I wrote about the late Jesse Jackson, spending his time with me, when I was a child. It's personal, adorable, and most of all, humane. emptywheel.net/morality-is-...

Morality is a Long Game - empt...

Prime time: now with annoying notifications! https://aperiodical.com/2026/02/prime-time-now-with-annoying-notifications/

*** New blog post ***

It has been a while, but now it's time for another slice of traffic signal pie where I delve into the double standards of design.

https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com/2026/02/traffic-signal-pie-double-standards.html

Amazon may be in fairly big legal trouble here: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/amazon-busted-for-widespread-price?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=11524&post_id=189053872&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=wabr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Today we join various other FOSS advocacy groups like @fsfe @fdroidorg @eff in addressing an open letter to Google about #keepandroidopen We need open ecosystems and the move to "sideload" software has set a bad paradigm for having control over our devices. You can read more about it here:

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/feb/24/keep-android-open/

I hacked car charging to work with my electric bike!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6IyukCIia8

Big news that OpenSAFELY is now available for non-COVID researchers:

https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02/opensafely-news-you-can-apply-to-do-non-covid-research-from-today/

OpenSAFELY allows researchers to run analysis against NHS healthcare records *without* shipping highly sensitive, barely-anonymised data around the place. Their documentation is public and very good:

https://docs.opensafely.org/

Museum of Plugs and Sockets

Some days, I am reminded that the internet is a wonderful place.
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/index.html

on my blog!

one page of async Rust

https://dotat.at/@/2026-02-16-async.html

what is the least boilerplate needed to make a minimal async runtime?

Day 52 of 2026. Just finished watching Small Prophets on BBC iPlayer. What a joy. I'm sad that it is over. I'll just have to watch it again. #2026Journal

here, i thought of a drawing to make for you.

i feel like dozens of people must have made this exact comic before but has anyone attempted to do it SO SLOPPILY

If you're on LinkedIn and are thinking about verifying your account with them, maybe read this first. It walks through LinkedIn's privacy disclosure to identify 17 companies that may receive and process the data you submit, including name, passport photo, selfie, facial geometry, NFC data chip, national ID #, DoB, email, phone number, address, IP address, device type, MAC address, language, geolocation etc. Unsurprisingly, it seems the biggest recipients are US-based AI companies.

https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

aTTEntiON pLEAse

If you are into #opensource and free culture then you should know about our unconference.

Coming to Manchester, UK on April 25-26.

Main track CfP is open, crew volunteering opportunities available, or just bring your projects and talks, and help make the weekend what it will be! Everyone welcome.

https://www.oggcamp.org/

Nice piece on energy in China — particularly the drones that help drop panels into place... and the Art Attack style opportunities... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-8d2b6944-4f7a-45b4-96fd-2d92499ff97d

Playing the Platform Piano

Portrait from my 'favourite stations' project. Here's Charlotte pretending to play the floor tiles which look a bit like piano keys.

It's amazing how many people have never noticed this feature at Waterloo tube station. The platform piano keys were added in 1986-1988 when the station was retiled based on artist Christopher Tipping's ‘theatrical themes’ design.