h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

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

It’s a long article on these insanely bright car headlights, but it contains this paragraph ⬇️ https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents?lid=dpe6tiyd81ev

This is why we don't do funding. @DoESLiverpool needs new heating. The heating in the main room has gone, so while other rooms are fine, this one gets cold in the winter. We've had a couple of quotes and it's going to cost £5k+.

Recently we got persuaded to apply for a fund to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint, through things like upgraded heating systems.

Pretty cool but also terrifying..

Voyager 1 is now about one light day from Earth! And that took about half a century

While the nearest star besides the sun is about 4 light years away from us

What I’m trying to say is.. space is terrifyingly big

"The current web pages and marketing for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud do not mention cultural or historical preservation at any point. ... At this precise moment all of these services mention AI (a lot) and how it’s going to change everything. ... Two years ago their marketing materials mentioned web3 and the metaverse (a lot) and how it was going to change everything, and how if your business did not adapt you were going to be left behind—yet those sentiments no longer appear."

2/