Latest Posts (20 found)
neilzone Yesterday

Initial thoughts on the Social Media Platforms (Ofcom Licensing) Bill

There’s nothing like waking up to find people telling me about proposed new legislation which, if passed, would geoblock people in the UK from so many online services, end numerous services in the UK, and criminalise myriad people in the UK. Today’s proposal is the Social Media Platforms (Ofcom Licensing) Bill . The gist of the proposal is that anyone who “operate[s] a social media platform that is available to users in the United Kingdom” commits a criminal offence unless they obtain a licence from Ofcom, and comply with the terms of that licence. Is it a private members bill, and is unlikely to pass - more a declaration of intent than a serious attempt at legislating - so there is a risk that, in responding to it as a serious proposal, one gives it more credibility than it deserves. Nevertheless, here are three quick, pre-breakfast, thoughts, based on the text of the bill here . My starting point, in anything like this, is “what is the problem that the legislation is trying to solve?”. Here, I just do not know. I cannot get to the point of trying to assess whether it is the best way of trying to solve the problem (although this is incredibly unlikely), because I cannot tell what the problem is. The Online Safety Act 2023 already started down the very slippery slope of regulating people’s conversations, through the guise of requiring platforms to do things in respect of those conversation / interactions. Ostensibly it is not content regulation yet, in practice, that is really the outcome that is sought. The same is true here, and this bill is even more concerning. I cannot imagine someone attempting to pass a law telling pub landlords or cafe owners that they - on pain of criminal liability - : must take all reasonable and proportionate steps to ensure— (All I have done here is replace “content made available on its social media platform”, from clause 4 of the bill, with “conversation in the pub/cafe”, and “content” with “conversation” in (f).) I don’t know how someone might go about some of these things? How does the provider of, say, a running forum make a determination of whether a conversation contains misleading information? Is a campaign against facial recognition cameras in public places “harmful … to the public interest”? Who decides? How does a forum for vulnerable people who wish to share sensitive information comply with (e), to provide “transparent information concerning the identity and authenticity” of other users, without causing users harm and stifling their speech? How does this interplay with a user’s rights to freedom of expression, privacy, or data protection? The lack of a conjunction at the end of clause 3(a) renders the scope unclear. Does a platform have to meet both (a) and (b) to be in scope? Or either (a) or (b)? If it is an “or”, then the scope is very broad indeed. If it is an “and”, then it is slightly more narrow, but still incredibly broad. I do not know what “other than those with whom they communicate privately” is trying to get at. Does it include only direct messaging between a small number of participants? Is a large, but closed, group chat “private”? If I run a fedi service for my family, but everyone can see each others’ posts, is that private communication? There is no carve-out for small, low risk, services. Off the top of my head, I’d have to obtain a licence for several services that I run at home. This is an existing problem with the Online Safety Act 2023, but since the impact of this bill would be to criminalise me unless I obtained (and presumably paid for? since Ofcom could not run the infrastructure needed to staff etc. this for free) a licence. Right. Breakfast time. Oh my. that conversation in the pub/cafe complies with the laws of the United Kingdom; that conversation in the pub/cafe is not materially harmful to users or to the public interest; that conversation in the pub/cafe does not incite criminal conduct, violence, hatred or public disorder; that systems are in place to minimise the dissemination of materially false or misleading information; that users are provided with transparent information concerning the identity and authenticity of persons having conversations in the pub/cafe; that harmful conversation identified by Ofcom is removed, restricted or otherwise addressed within such period as Ofcom may specify.

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neilzone 1 weeks ago

My views on genAI and F-Droid

This is just a record of a fediverse post that I made today, and my subsequent (collective) response to the main points raised by various people who replied to me. There is a proposal for F-Droid to adopt an interim AI policy, along the lines of Debian’s pro-AI policy. [I am not in favour of this(https:// gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/work_items/699#note_3771382103). In particular, I don’t want to see genAI code in either F-Droid’s own software, or in apps in F-Droid’s repository. Mine is, of course, just one voice. But I will continue to push for human-written FOSS apps, for human users. (Yes, I am an F-Droid board member. Yes, I’m a volunteer, like everyone else. Yes, others seem to have different views. I do what I can.) I have had a lot of replies to this, and I am sorry that I will not be able to reply to each individually. But I can at least try to reply thematically. Again, my personal views. I like genAI / I use genAI genAI is really good Even if true, on its own, this does not carry enough weight in my eyes to justify overlooking the problems. It is the output that counts, not how it is made. Ethics matter to me. I support codes of conduct for projects. I can’t ignore the horrible views of an author to let me enjoy their writing. And so on. A community is about more than code, and I don’t buy a “make the code better at all costs”. It is too late to stop genAI Why? Is there actually an argument here? A ban would not stop people using genAI / people will not tell you that they are using genAI I agree. If someone is willing to lie about their use of genAI, and submit it anyway (assuming that it was prohibited), then the F-Droid volunteers may not be able to detect it. There is a limit to what any project can do about bad faith actors, willing to break the rules because it suits them. Importantly, a position sends a signal. It says “this is what we want our community to be”. Laws against murder do not stop murders. People still drive while intoxicated. etc. It is not for F-Droid to determine what F-Droid hosts F-Droid already has an inclusion policy (https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/). I can’t see this changing (nor would I want to default to “anything goes”). The repository system is open, in that developers can host their own repositories or use a third party repository, and users can choose what repositories to add. So F-Droid already determines the boundaries of what it is wiling to host. You can just choose not to use an app made by genAI? This is hard to reconcile with an argument that people will not disclose their use of genAI. Both cannot be true. In any case, developers who wish to use genAI could “just choose” not to submit to F-Droid’s own repositories, and run their own, and make whatever decisions they like about the governance of that repo. Again, my views. Not those of F-Droid. I am just one voice here. etc.

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neilzone 1 weeks ago

RSS feeds for individual authors of The Register using The Register's new API

Tech website The Register used to offer author-specific RSS feeds . It has recently changed how it does RSS feeds , to use the new api.theregister.com. Thanks to a kind fedizen for showing how one can still use this new API to get author-specific feeds: One can also use instead of , and this brings back a slightly different set of posts. I don’t know which is “right” or better for my use case. Annoyingly, whichever selector one uses, this results in one single massive block of text, without paragraphs or other formatting. Which is better than nothing, but not ideal. I have yet to find a way to deal with this.

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neilzone 2 weeks ago

Airsoft and the UK's consultation on changing the rules around fireworks and pyrotechnics

The UK government is consulting on changing the rules around fireworks and pyrotechnics in the UK . Like many people, I enjoy using P1 pyrotechnics safely and responsibly as part of playing Airsoft. I had fun this weekend with both flashes and smoke grenades at my local Airsoft site, Red Alert . Although the kind of pyro used in Airsoft is not the main focus of the consultation, some of the questions that the government is asking - particularly around P1 pyro, and noise levels - mean that changes to the rules could still have an (unintentional or otherwise) impact on Airsoft. If you enjoy using pyro for Airsoft or paintball, please do consider responding to the consultation, with simple, clear answers. You can respond to this consultation online , or by email to [email protected], using this response form . It takes just a couple of minutes to complete the online form, and you do not have to answer all the questions. Get your response in before 7 October 2026. For inspiration, here is what I said. (For all the other questions, I said “No answer”.) P1 pyrotechnics used in Airsoft and paintball games (e.g. smoke grenades, thunderflashes, and frag grenades) Numerous adult players of Airsoft and paintball enjoy using P1 pyrotechnics safely and responsibly as part of their games. This includes: These are often sold to players 18 or over at Airsoft and paintball sites and shops, providing a valuable source of revenue to UK businesses. They are used safely and responsibly, at dedicated sites. Airsoft and paintball sites include rules around use of these pyrotechnics as part of their pre-game safety briefings, and games are played with the supervision of trained marshals. There should be no change in the regulatory requirements relating to P1 pyrotechnics used for Airsoft and paintball purposes. I selected “No, the maximum noise limit for fireworks should remain at 120 dB (A,imp)”. In the context of Airsoft and paintball, the existing decibel level provides a degree of realism. This is a key part of the reason why players use noise-generating pyrotechnics while playing. Companies making pyrotechnics for the UK market will need time for research and development, initial manufacturing, safety and compliance testing, and then manufacturing and distribution of new pyrotechnics. Airsoft and paintball sites and shops which sell pyrotechnics will need time to sell off old stock, and to source and obtain new stock (dependent on manufacturers and wholesalers having stock of newly-compliant devices available), to avoid a gap in sales and associated drop in revenue. I would expect this to take several months. Are there any other specific F1 and P1 pyrotechnics that should have their regulatory requirements increased or decreased? Please state which products, what regulatory requirements you think they should have and give your reasons. smoke grenades (to provide cover, or to imitate different gases) pyrotechnic devices which cause either or both flashes and bangs (to distract, and to imitate grenades) frag grenades which explode while ejecting dried peas and the like (to imitate grenades) more specialist pyrotechnics such as mortars and launchable devices (to simulate rockets). Do you agree the decibel level of fireworks consumers use should be lowered? Choose one of the following options: What might be the negative impacts of reducing the maximum decibel level of fireworks available to the general public? Please explain your answer, providing evidence where possible. How much lead in time would businesses need to prepare for the changes proposed in this consultation and why? Please state a lead in time in months or years, and explain your answer, providing evidence where possible.

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neilzone 2 weeks ago

Automating local backups of UniFi OS Server on Linux with uos-backup

Earlier today, I migrated my self-hosted UniFi controller from Network Manager to UniFi OS Server . One of the annoyances of the new setup is that it does not allow automated local backups - just automated backups to Ubiquiti’s cloud. Fortunately, one can work around this. In the UniFi interface, I set up a new local user, , to use for this automated backup. I am using . is a simple Python scripts which someone has kindly written and shared. I did the following, on the machine I wanted to use to take and store the backups. Get the code: Change to the directory with the code: Edit the python script, for the correct URL, username for my new backup user, and password. Check that the requirements are met: Copy the script to : Make it executable: Create the directory to store the backups. This is the directory specified in the script; you can create a directory with a different path, and then just update the script according Test that the script works: Even though I had just set up a new user, I had managed to get the username and password wrong in the script, and this step helped me debug it. I checked in /var/lib/uos-server/ to check that I had backup files. Set up the systemd services: I then added the backup directory path to restic, so that it gets picked up with my automated restic backups too.

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neilzone 2 weeks ago

Migrating my self-hosted UniFi controller from Network Manager to UniFi OS Server

One of the jobs that has been on my list for a while is to migrate my UniFi controller installation from the self-hosted network manager tool to the new UniFi OS Server tool. The only reason that it was a job at all is because UniFi has decided to discontinue support for the UniFi network manager. Which is probably for the better, as it contained outdated packages anyway. Frankly, I’m not massively impressed with UniFi any more. If I were starting again, I am not sure that I would pick UniFi kit, but I don’t know what I would go for instead. I simply want to run my own controller, without external access or access by anyone else, to control the network infrastructure at home. I did the migration, and it mostly worked. Here’s what I did: I read the Unifi OS Server installation instructions . I also read the Backups and Migration in UniFi instructions. My UniFi controller is running in a virtual machine, so I took a snapshot of that first. If all else failed, I could roll back the snapshot. I backed up the configuration of my existing UniFi network manager configuration. I downloaded it to my local machine. I also backed up the ssh configuration information for my UniFi devices, in line with the instructions: It is also recommended to copy the SSH username and password from Devices > Device Updates & Settings > Device SSH Settings, in case any devices need help later when connecting to the new instance of UniFi Network. I stopped the UniFi network manager with . I followed the Unifi OS Server installation instructions . It will be interesting to see how updates work. The instructions say: Captive portals will be served on port 8444, changed from port 8843 on Network Server. It did not mention that there was also a change to the port to the controller. However, the final line of the set up information showed that it was port 11443. So I changed my nginx proxy config from 8443 to 11443, and reloaded nginx. I could now access the new UniFi OS Server interface. It went downhill from here. I was intending to restore from backup, so I clicked the option for this. It then prompted me to - forced me to - sign in with a ui.com account. I’ve no idea why. It is a local controller, and I don’t want any remote access facilities. Nevertheless, I could not find a way around it. So I did, but I can’t say that I am impressed by this. It then said: We’ve discovered that you already have a self‑hosted UniFi Network installation. Would you like to import your current network settings into UniFi OS Server? But the options were not “Yes” and “No”, but rather “Continue without importing” and “Next”. This was a surprise anyway, as the instructions say: On macOS and Windows, the installer will automatically detect and offer to migrate your existing Network Server setup (if installed in the default location). On Linux, or if auto-migration doesn’t occur, you can manually migrate by installing UniFi OS Server and using the Site Export tool I am running it on Linux, so I did not expect any migration. I guessed that “Next” means “yes”, so I selected “Next”. It took me to a url ending . This was a blank screen. Nothing at all. I waited a couple of minutes, then refreshed the page. It then showed me a page showing that it was “restoring backup”, but the progress bar remained blank for quite a while. It also said that it was restoring to settings from January 2026, not last night’s backup, which surprised me. After a couple of minutes, the progress bar flashed by, and it was done. The import/migration appears to have correctly imported all my devices, and is set up to talk to them. But other aspects of the migration were underwhelming. It did not restore the settings for my mailserver. It was preset to use the “UI Mail Server”. I set it up to use my own mailserver, and it failed, with a useless error message. When I logged in to my mailserver to see what was going on, I saw . It appears that I am not the only person with this issue , albeit with a slightly different setup. They seem to have resolved it by disabling TLS, which is not an option for me. I have not yet got this to work. Even though I had configured automatic backups on the previous Unifi Network Server, they were not enabled on the new UniFi OS Server. I tried to set it up, but I was prompted for my “Ubiquiti SSO account password”. I tried the password for my ui.com account, but I got an error message of “Something went wrong. Please try again later.” Which was no use at all. Having turned off Remote Access (below), I went back to the Backups dialogue. Now, there was an option to download, or upload & restore, but nothing about automation. The info box says that I can schedule backups here, but there is no user interface for that. I took a manual backup. I cannot see a way to do automated backups to my local file system. If this is correct, this is absurd. I may see if I can do something using the command line. *Edit: yes, I can, with python and systemd. See Automating local backups of UniFi OS Server on Linux with uos-backup . “Remote access” is enabled by default, even though I am confident that I did not have remote access enabled before. When I attempted to untick it, it showed a dialogue box: So I disabled it. https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/220066768-Updating-and-Installing-Self-Hosted-UniFi-Network-Servers-Linux It did not restore my preferred time format (24 hours). I had to turn off analytics, which was on by default. It worked better than I was expecting, but that’s mainly because my expectations were very low. Why the email server and automated backups do not work, I do not know. I will need to investigate these. But at least I am now running a supported controller again. Once I’ve done a scan of the new system with greenbone, I’ll be interested to see what it reports.

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neilzone 2 weeks ago

Time to drop .legal?

My wife and I run a small law firm in the UK. Originally, we called it decoded:Legal. It made sense at the time, even though quite a few places struggled with the idea that a company name might have a colon in it. We used , and I registered too (and, it seems, ) although I don’t think I’ve set up DNS for either of them. Then, when a friend pointed out that there is a tld, I thought “that looks nicer”, and we switched to , both as the company name and also our domain name. I wonder if - nice though it still is - I should think about using a different tld. (If I moved, I’d maintain decoded.legal indefinitely anyway, because people are used to sending email to @decoded.legal addresses.) The .legal tld appears to have a poor reputation. For instance, it is on this list of “The Top Most Abused Top Level Domains” . It would be a shame if people could not find our business, or access any of its online properties, because .legal is on that list. (And, yes, I could seek an exception, but that hardly seems the point.) As far as I know, this has not been a problem so far, but this could be survivorship bias: I don’t know about the people who have never seen me. The .legal tld is operated by Binky Moon, LLC , which is based in the USA. I wonder if it would be sensible to use a .tld subject to UK control instead. Obviously, it would be nice if I was not dependent on anyone other than me for my domain name, but that is unrealistic. I use a few .onion domains - for access within Tor - including for decoded.legal properties. For instance, our website and blog are available at http://dlegal66uj5u2dvcbrev7vv6fjtwnd4moqu7j6jnd42rmbypv3coigyd.onion . (And, yes, it is intentional that this no longer has https .) Realistically though, the vast majority of people are not going to visit us in onionspace.

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neilzone 2 weeks ago

On lawyers, ethics, and integrity

I have been reading some of Richard Moorhead’s new book, arising mainly from the UK’s Post Office scandal, “Frail Professionalism? Lawyers’ Ethics after the Post Office and Other Cases” . It is open access, and available as a PDF (linked above), with html available too; I have not found, nor made, an ePub. I focussed on chapter 8, “Routes Back to Proper Professionalism” , to see the author’s recommendations. Mainly, I was reading this through the lens of “what can I, personally, do better”. For anyone reading this who does not know me, it might be worth noting here that my work is predominantly Internet and telecoms law (with a side helping of data protection). My work is fundamentally commercial in nature, whether it is advisory (as a lot of it is) or transactional. Day to day, a lot of it is simply “solving problems”. I don’t litigate or go to court. I don’t prosecute people. I do not get involved in employment disputes. For me, a key part of my toolkit for solving problems entails building enduring, trusted relationships, through being honest, reasonable, practical, and diligent, to be able to collaborate in an open, genuine manner. As a consequence, I place considerable stock in my personal integrity. These things are important to me. So, of course , I like to think that I already act with integrity and with ethics - these traits are important to me - but I would be foolish to think that there nothing I could do to improve, or that I could not reflect usefully and meaningfully on my own approach. This is not a review, far less a critique, of the book and more me just noting parts which I found particularly resonant, and reflecting on my own working life. What we see in the PO scandal is information being processed based on what is arguable or helpful rather than what is true, fair, and balanced. A culture of ‘can we get away with it?’ is driven by wishful thinking and legitimised by lawyerly zeal. I think that this is particularly true when someone has determined the conclusion that they wish to reach, and is asking for legal advice to support that pre-determined outcome, irrespective of what a neutral, independent appraisal of the situation might conclude. Conversely, if someone has a goal in mind, but is genuinely open to hearing “there is no appropriate (that’s a tricky word; that needs unpacking) way of doing it, but here are some alternatives”, then that is rather different. [Lawyers] compete on being commercial, and more business partnerish. Yes, absolutely. For me, “being commercial” means giving my clients practical, sensible advice, consistent with the broader context of whatever the issue might be. It does not mean - to me - being willing to bend rules, or look away, or act unethically because that will maximise revenue, or increase shareholder value, or make a problem go away, and so on. For what it is worth, I think that “being commercial”, in the sense of my definition above, is a desirable trait in a solicitor. People want, and deserve, pragmatic problem solving, at a reasonable price. If “being commercially aware” is being used as a shield for impropriety, then that is indeed problematic. If a lawyer is asked for an opinion that will foreseeably assist illegality or mislead others they should decline or take reasonable steps to prevent or limit that risk. Yes. I am struggling to see how preparing advice with the intention of misleading someone could be consistent with a professional duty to act with integrity. Harm to a client’s opponents, for instance, cannot always be avoided, but being required to consider and, if proportionate, mitigate or alleviate harm might reduce some of the unnecessary excess that lawyers engage in. I am not entirely sure what the author is angling at here. It is a short section, almost standing on its own. Could it, for example, condemn the common and (to my mind) unsavoury practice of timing letters, and ensuring deadlines, over holiday periods, to cause maximum inconvenience and stress? Quite possibly, where that is a tactic in itself. Writing friendlier, or at least more neutral, less aggressive letters? Some lawyers trade on aggression. I don’t; that’s just not me. In terms of mitigating harm, if I act for Client A, negotiating a contract with Client B (who is also represented), how far would a duty to “alleviate harm” extend? Would my duty extend to helping Client B achieve the best deal for them, for instance (rather than focussing on my own client’s objectives)? How far would it go into trying to solve someone else’s problems? (Reaching a deal which is in the interests of both parties may well be desirable for all number of reasons, but that is separate to a professional duty.) It is curious that this is formulated adversarially, in terms of a “client’s opponents”. It presupposes litigation or conflict. I wonder to what extent it might apply to, say, advice in developing a computer system, where the system could adversely impact the rights and freedoms of third parties who are not “opponents”. Would it stretch to a professional duty to only advise in the context of designing the least harmful online services, for example. Perhaps not a bad thing, although placing that on the doorstep of solicitors, rather than on the companies developing those services, seems backwards. Ethical knowledge and practice should of course be a routine and proactive part of competence review for all lawyers I would be all for the regulator producing an annual ethics refresher course - perhaps an hour or so’s reading. That would seem very helpful. We need to more clearly challenge the claim that lawyers do law but not morality I agree that “this is arguably legal” is a very low standard. Similarly, that what is legal is not the same as what is right . I wonder how morality would be judged. Does it depend on a solicitor’s own sense of what is moral, or on some subjective notion of morality? What of the situation in which there are two, perhaps polarised, stances, with groups behind each stance claiming that morality is on their side? I don’t think that I object to the notion of solicitors needing to consider morality, but in terms of how that professional duty should be constructed, that seems to need quite careful thinking. Perhaps it has already been tackled in other jurisdictions.

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neilzone 1 months ago

Driving to London for the first time in years

Today, for the first time in years - probably 20 or so - I drove to London. I didn’t really want to drive to London, and it is daft that it was even a credible option. I’d much prefer to take public transport and, when I go to London for work, I do. Thankfully, there is a reasonable if not brilliant train service from Newbury to Paddington. Time-wise, there was not a massive difference between driving from Newbury to Westfield, and then taking the tube, and taking the train from Newbury and then taking the tube. Not much in it at all, assuming that everything is running correctly. No traffic jams, leaves on the line etc. The difference was in price. There were five of us travelling today - Sandra and me, and a friend with two children. The train fare alone, from the National Rail website, was going to be over £110, including a significant discount for travelling together (the “GroupSave” discount). There might have been a cheaper configuration of tickets, but this is what the National Rail website offered. I am not even sure if this covered the London Underground element or not. Instead, it cost about £10 in electricity for the car, £12 to park at Westfield, and then ~£30 on for the London Underground. So just over £50, plus some wear and tear to the car. And, of course, the initial outlay of buying and maintaining a car. Other than the last few miles to / from Westfield, the journey was easy. It was quiet (especially on the way back, when everyone else had a nap), comfortable, and cool. I still prefer the train, as I do enjoy being able to work or read my book, and when I normally travel for work I take my bike so I don’t need to deal with the underground either. I don’t really want to drive to London, but it certainly made financial sense today.

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neilzone 2 months ago

Stepping down as a school governor

Two and a half years ago, I found a piece of paper in our parcel box, asking if anyone would consider becoming a governor of a local primary school. I ummed and aahed about it, and decided to express an interest. Within a few minutes I had arranged a visit to the school, and within a few days, I was a governor. I did a lot of training, and spent the first 12 or so months trying to work out what on earth was going on. Being a school governor, and in particular understanding school accounting, was unlike anything that I had done before. Being a governor is a lot of responsibility, and it is - or, at least, was for me - a particularly challenging role, given how much a school has to do with so little money, particularly with an increase in the number of children with additional support needs. Frankly, a completely inadequate amount of money. In addition to general governor duties, I took on responsibility for data protection, chaired the policy committee, and helped improve numerous policies and processes, and stepped up whenever the school needed a lawyer-like person. Tonight, that came to an end. One of my many flaws is that I agree to do too much. I love helping people, and I have a pretty useful set of skills and experiences. The outcome is that I put my hand up too much, and thus stretch myself too thinly. Sure, I get to do some fascinating stuff, and work with some lovely people, but it comes at a cost. I’ve had too many days recently where I’ve done more pro bono / volunteering work than I have done paid work. When I found that I was turning down paid work that I actually wanted to do because of volunteering commitments, I decided that I had got the balance wrong. And, in stretching myself too thinly, I don’t always have the time to give a role the time and attention that it needs. Perhaps, sometimes, doing at least some of the job is better than doing none of the job, I was increasingly nervous about taking that approach to being a school governor. Whether I give up any of my other voluntary stuff, I’m not sure. At times, it is certainly tempting. But, if nothing else, giving up governorship should mean I have a little more time to spend on my other commitments, for as long as I have them. I enjoyed my time as a governor. I certainly learned a lot, and I was pleased to be able to make numerous, and in some cases quite significant, contributions to the life of that small primary school.

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neilzone 2 months ago

Holiday reading, mostly from Standard eBooks

Sandra and I have had this week off, and one of the things I wanted to do was to catch up on my reading. All bar one so far has been from Standard eBooks . From Kobo , I enjoyed this account of someone who claims to have worked for MI5 (I’ve no reason to doubt this, but, well, who knows) carrying out operational (i.e. on street / in car) human surveillance. How much is true, how much is hyperbole, I don’t know, but it made for an interesting, often challenging, read. I finished the book - perhaps as the author had intended - with a question mark as to his suitability for the role. A classic, which I last read many years ago, “The Call of the Wild” is a pretty brutal book about the life of (fictional?) dog in north America during the gold rush. I suspect that there are various parallels with humankind, in terms of the way in which different people treat the dog, and the dog’s move from bored domestic comfort to a wild animal, but frankly - animal abuse aside - it was just a good, fun, and short book. I have read “Jurassic Park” before (better than the film, IMHO, and I think that the film is superb), but for some reason, I had not read “The Lost World” before. The story is, in essence, about some privileged white men exploring a dinosaur-laden plateau. The frankly appalling treatment by white men of the indigenous population seems to be a theme of the books I’ve been reading this week, perhaps because of the prevalent attitudes of the time in which they were written. If you ever wanted to read “Jurassic Park” in somewhat older English - which, I must admit, I find a joy to read - this is worth a look. I jumped in at book two of the series - Allan Quatermain Stories - rather than with “King Solomon’s Mines” . I should probably rectify that. The book is, in essence, a series of stories reifying a hunter, Allan Quatermain, and his adventures in “unexplored” Africa. Basically, he shoots a lot of animals, supported by a cast of indigenous servants. My goodness, I found “The Last of the Mohicans” incredibly tedious and long-winded. I should probably stick with it, as I like the sound of the precis, but still, the 20 or so pages that I read were just hard work.

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neilzone 2 months ago

Being excited still about technology in 2026

I found myself wondering the other day whether I was still interested in, let alone excited by, technology. I think that this is partly down to “AI”, and the breathless hyperbole about how it is Going To Change Everything. In my spare time, I’m a lawyer, and there’s a non-stop feed of slop about how all lawyers need to “adopt AI or be left behind”, and I’m finding this kind of nonsense draining. The ongoing regulatory narratives, particularly around identity verification simply to go online, are as exhausting as they are unnecessary. So it is little surprise that I am feeling a bit glum. I suspect that many people are. But anyway. The positives. Yes , I am still excited by some technologies. I jumped up and down a bit when, for the first time, we were running our home from a battery charged by the sun. I’m not a solar nerd, but I am certainly optimistic about the potential for making better use of solar power. I do want to see more being done to ensure that everyone can get the benefit of solar power, not just people who can afford their own homes and to pay for panels to be installed, and I am hopeful that plug-in solar / balcony solar will have a role here. But as panels become more effective, and if we can find better, cheaper ways of storing the energy that we generate, happy days. I love it that I can charge my electric bike from the sun, for instance. That’s just cool . It still makes me smile that my entire online presence is thanks to a few small computers, running at home. I am sure that “the cloud” is great for some things, but for me, I get a kind of joy from hosting my websites - work and personal - on a tiny Raspberry Pi, sipping tiny amounts of power. I am - as I said at the beginning - concerned about the impact of various regulations around the world on people trying to host their own services, but for now, none is hitting me, personally, too hard. Sure, the fact that the price of all computers - including small computers - has increased because of unnecessary pressures on chip fabrication, and market forces, is unwelcome. But hopefully this too will pass. While I like self-hosting stuff, self-hosting is not for everyone . I am excited for the future - or resurgence, I am not sure - of “community hosting”: groups of people working together to host their infrastructure and services, for the benefit of small groups. Not everyone has the skills, time, or money to self-host - the privilege - to self-host, yet nor should everyone be driven towards commercial, privacy-intrusive, options for lack of a better choice. Community or cooperative hosting has a role to play here, I think, and I love it when I see a new co-op announcing itself in the fediverse. Of course, we need to ensure that people who are without that kind of friendship group are not left out. I don’t have particular thoughts about how to do that though. I’ve enjoyed experimenting with postmarketOS and Ubuntu Touch recently. Even using GrapheneOS, I am not sure that I see a future for Android for me, and I don’t want to use iOS. I also think that we need more than two operating systems for mobile devices. It would also be amazing if we could do something more to tackle the growing pile of ewaste, bringing life back (for various tasks; not everything will be suited as a primary computing device) to older, but still capable, mobile hardware. I’m not under any misapprehensions about large companies trying to persuade people that they must have the latest and greatest phone, sadly. But I do like the idea of using a device which has broken free of the more mainstream OS, running a Free operating system. postmarketOS looks like the most likely contender for me. I know that SailfishOS is appealing to some, but the inclusion of non-Free software in SailfishOS likely means that it is not for me. I am sure that, if I took the time to think about it, that this list would be even longer. But, for me, this has served its purpose: I have not stopped enjoying technology, I can needed to re-ground myself a bit, looking beyond the hype and nonsense of some of the current sales cycles.

culture Culture programming Programming ai AI
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neilzone 2 months ago

Chatting to a friend who has bought a pair of Meta AI glasses

I’ll be honest, I was a bit surprised that I knew anyone who would buy a pair of Meta AI glasses. Sure, they are readily available, and presumably heavily advertised, but most of the people with whom I spend time - online or offline - are not the kind of people who would buy them. I’ve got friends who use Facebook. I’ve got friends who use WhatsApp. But the glasses just - to me, anyway - feel rather different. Nevertheless, a friend did buy a pair, and was happy to chat about them. My friend - like me - is a married, middle-aged, white man. Unlike me, he saw the glasses in our local optician’s, and wanted them. We didn’t chat for long, and, to be clear, I was kind , not accusatory. And yes, he wore the glasses throughout our chat. It was an interesting conversation, because it was so unexpected. His choices would not have been mine, for sure. No, it did not worry him that using the glasses entailed sharing lots of data with Meta, or that this would entail sharing the personal data of other people Yes, he thought that they were rather cool, and that, it seems, was the main selling point. He didn’t need them for anything, he just fancied them No, he hadn’t really thought about whether other people might want to be filmed, or whether people might be worried about being filmed Yes, he had seen other people talking about them online, and they were talking positively about them. He hadn’t seen any negative commentary / criticism Yes, he uses “AI”, and rather likes it

ai AI
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neilzone 2 months ago

Restoring missing Address Book in Thunderbird 140 menu bar

For some reason, the Address Book tab/pane on Thunderbird’s menu bar had gone missing, and I struggled to find out how to get it back. So, for future me, what resolved it was:

open-source Open Source tutorial Tutorial
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neilzone 2 months ago

Pondering routing more of my traffic via nodes outside the UK because of the direction of UK online safety policy

Some of the UK government’s policy announcements around the Internet - and, in particular, social media and VPNs - are downright concerning me at the moment. In the name of “online safety”, the fundamental rights of both freedom of expression and privacy appear to be under imminent threat. I have concerns which go beyond our shores - mostly stemming from Google, frankly - but the UK legislative / policy issues are bothering me especially at the moment. I value my ability to read, learn, and communicate almost without borders. I don’t like signing up to websites or newsletters (I prefer RSS), I don’t like storing my data on other people’s computers, and I’ve certainly no wish to prove my age or identity outside core government services. The current proposal to ban people under 16 - who also have the rights to freedom of expression and privacy - from some (as yet not fully delineated) social media services is likely to result in wide-spread verification. While I am unlikely to be affected directly - although it would depend on the definition of “social media” - I anticipate that more websites will simply choose to block traffic from UK IP addresses, especially if UK-originated traffic does not matter a huge amount to them. I am already seeing this as a consequence of the Online Safety Act, and I expect any future UK laws in this area to exacerbate that. I also anticipate that we will soon see the first court-ordered blocking injunctions under the Online Safety Act, when the fines issued by Ofcom against some website providers (so far, most quite niche porn sites, as far as I can tell, plus a “suicide discussion forum”) go unpaid and the “compliance issues” which Ofcom has identified go unresolved. Some - many - UK ISPs have already implemented, and carry out, DNS blocking, both for mandatory and non-mandatory reasons. Mine - A&A - is probably one of the outliers, with no blocking save for the mandatory sanctions-related requirements. In any case, so far, since I run my own recursive DNS infrastructure, I have not been affected. I use Tor quite a lot, but I’ve seen an increase - sure, a small increase, but an increase nevertheless - of sites which are blocking Tor traffic. And so, for the first time, I am considering locating something (perhaps a WireGuard node, or a SOCKS proxy, or a recursive DNS server / DNS proxy, or perhaps all of them) somewhere on the Internet outside the UK, so that I can route some traffic through that, as needed, to maintain my access to the web. Honestly, it seems such a shame to me, that UK Internet censorship should reach such a place, but there we go. I have not decided exactly what I might do, or exactly how, or where, I might do it, but it is far more attractive to me now that it has been ever before, in all the 30ish years that I’ve been online. To me, the need to even contemplate this kind of thing is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi. And yet here I find myself.

security Security
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neilzone 3 months ago

Dark Division's CQB (close quarters battle) training

A while ago, I heard that a friend of a friend was running a close quarters battle training course, at an Airsoft site not far from me (Ironsight, in Andover). So I schedule a rare mid-week day off, and signed up. That day was today :) Honestly, I was a bit nervous going into the day. Would I know anyone? Would everyone be fitter than I am? Or just better at it? It turned out that I knew, or at least recognised, at least half of the attendees. That made it easier to chat to some of the others too - and they were all a friendly bunch. Everyone was very supportive, cheering each other on and - especially - offering reassurance and kindness when people screwed up. And we all screwed up at some point, given how much there was to think about at any one time. Since a lot of the day was about team work, and communicating effectively, that kind of camaraderie was great. It also turned out that my fitness, while obviously something that I could improve, was more than good enough, and that I am confident and accurate shot. So that was nice. The training itself was superb. We had two friendly, knowledgeable instructors, who were able to share their knowledge and experience effectively and with humour. If someone needed a bit of extra help, they got it, and it was all very positive. It was very practical / hands-on, to get as much time as possible to turn basic theory into practice. Having never done this before, I would certainly benefit from some more practice, to reinforce what I learned today. We covered a lot of stuff, focussing on how to clear rooms (which may or may not have hostile people in them) quickly and safely (well, safe-ish). Different techniques for different types of room, rooms with and without doors and doors opening in different directions, rooms with obstacles in them, and for corridors. We also did various shooting drills, focussing on arcs of fire (to avoid hitting other team members) and on ensuring that we put enough rounds into the targets to count them as “down”. We finished the day with explosives, and how to plant them to breach a closed door, and then follow up into the room. I am very glad that I had my ear protection with me for this, as they were incredibly loud at close range. Overall, it was a superb day, and I would happily sign up to do another of them soon. Whether I can count this training as part of my continuing professional development, I’m less convinced. “Conflict resolution”, perhaps.

gaming Gaming
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neilzone 3 months ago

Speeding up static site generation with BSSG

Three months ago, I moved from hugo to BSSG for this blog (and my work blog). You can get BSSG here . I’ve been really happy with BSSG, and a couple of recent changes by Stefano have made it even better. I have a minimalist blog. A list of posts on the front page, and generally text-only posts. I like it to load fast even though it is running on a Raspberry Pi 4, along with a couple of other bits. This means that there are some features of BSSG that I do not use, including descriptions of blogposts. I use the title for that, on the basis that this should be informative in itself. It suits me, anyway. There are also some other UI elements that I do not need, such as reading time. I bodged my way around these, using CSS rules to hide the unwanted content from display. I could have changed the code to neither generate nor display them, but I didn’t really want to run, and need to maintain, my own branch. With the recent changes, Stefano added some new config options: These are set to “true” by default - to preserve the experience for people who already use BSSG and expect these things, which makes sense to me - but now I can set them to “false”, and have an even slicker, faster experience. The second brilliant change is about the way the scripts handle incremental updates. The idea being that, rather than building every post, every time, it will just build the new posts. I struggled to get this to work initially, as it was building all posts, every time. This turned out to be entirely down to me: my build script, which I use to control building and deploying both the cleartext and .onion versions of the blogs, cleared the output directory each time. I removed that, and bingo, incremental updates! This combination of things meant that building each site went from ~10 minutes (which was a bit painful) to ~1 minute (which is fine!). Happy days.

css CSS Jamstack web-development Web Development performance Performance
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neilzone 3 months ago

Why are there no good tablets at the moment?

A friend was looking for a new tablet, and they asked me for a recommendation. And… I just don’t have one. The only good tablet, because Android can be replaced with GrapheneOS , was the Google Pixel Tablet, and that is no longer available. Secondhand prices are sky high. That was my go-to recommendation for a while. But it looks like Google has abandoned this project too. Amazon’s range of FireOS tablets are, IMHO, bloated with crapware which one cannot easily remove. Even the Fire-Tools scripts only get one so far. I can’t recommend one. There are some fun-looking “tablet computers”, but they are all expensive. A secondhand Surface Go, if one wants a Linux-based tablet, is readily available and pretty cheap, but honestly not what most people will want. And, while I like it as a cheap, touchscreen, Linux machine, it is not particularly powerful, which can be frustrating. And getting the camera working is a nuisance. I guess that there are some iPads, if one is accepting of Apple / iOS. Again, that wouldn’t be my choice, but I can see why some people like them. Why is there no good (non-Apple) tablet at the moment?

go Go open-source Open Source hardware Hardware android Android
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neilzone 4 months ago

Fixing a proxying problem with my HomeAssistantOS installation by replacing nginx proxy manager

tl;dr: I removed the “nginx proxy manager” add-on, and replaced it with the Let’s Encrypt add-on and (second) the nginx add-on. A couple of months ago, I moved my HomeAssistant installation to HAos . I think that it is fair to say that I was not overly pleased with this. Honestly, I preferred the “Core” python-venv approach, but I also wanted a “supported” installation, and so I switched to HAos. i got it up and running okay, and I thought that I had got proxying working too, using an add-on called “nginx proxy manager”. This is not something that I had used before; I’d rather just configure nginx myself. Well, either I got something wrong, or it just does not work very well, as I kept having problems using HomeAssistant, stuck on a “loading data” screen, or it simply not responding. This bugged me for quite a while. Annoyingly, the logs available to me within HAos were unhelpful. I couldn’t spot anything indicating a problem. Using the console in my web browser, I noted that some files were not loading correctly, but why that was the case, I wasn’t sure. I thought that I’d had a similar issue with my “Core” installation years ago, which I got down to the issue of the in the file, but that looked correct here (which I was able to check, using the SSH add-on. I tried various parameters in the nginx proxy manager add-on, but to no avail. In the end, I tried removing the nginx proxy manager add-on, and replacing it with the Let’s Encrypt add-on (which I installed, configured, and ran first), and then the nginx add-on. And it immediately started working correctly. So I don’t know exactly why my original set-up was not working, but at least it is working better now.

devops DevOps python Python
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neilzone 4 months ago

Please consider publishing a full-text RSS feed for your website or blog

I have used RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) as my default web browser (for some stuff) for ages now. Ages as in “20+ years”. It seems to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence, and I am delighted. RSS is a way of publishing web content in a machine-readable format. When you publish a blogpost, as well as the new blogpost showing on your site, it is also added to a file, often call index.xml or feed.xml or similar. I publish RSS feeds for my personal blog and the decoded.legal blog . Your loyal, eager readers “subscribe” to your RSS feed, but that just means add the link to that RSS file to their RSS reader or aggregator. I use FreshRSS as my RSS aggregator (the thing which collects all the RSS feeds), and then Readrops on Android and newsboat (I wrote about newsboat ) on Linux to read the feeds. You can see a list of blogs that I follow via RSS . A reader’s aggregator or reader periodically downloads the RSS .xml file from each of the sites, and, if there’s an update (because of a new blogpost, most commonly), shows the new blogpost(s) to the reader. They might even have set up a tool like Calibre - an ebook management tool - to download your feed and convert it into a file that they can enjoy on their ereader. It is a wonderful way for a reader to create their own personalised reading list of their favourite authors, making sure that they never miss a post. For authors, it is an easy, free way of making their works available, under their own control, without the hassle or cost of running an email subscription service. One can make available either (or both) an RSS feed containing snippets of posts (e.g. a headline, perhaps an initial paragraph or sentence, and a link to the website), or the full text of posts (as well as a link). Please, consider making a full-text feed available! This is probably as simple as adjusting a config setting in WordPress, or whatever else you use for your blog. By doing so, you give your readers an easy way of enjoying what you write, without you incurring any extra cost, and lessening the risk of them missing one of your posts. It is not the end of the world if you do not or cannot do it - I’ve written before about using CSS selectors in FreshRSS to get full-text content for a snippet-only feed - but, by giving them full text, they do not have to faff around with this. It is also advantageous from an accessibility point of view, as your reader can set up their RSS reader however best works for them, be that a different font, or large font sizing, or just a distraction-free environment, and they still get to enjoy what you write. If you care about analytics / readership (and I am not one of those people; I’ve no idea how many people read this), then offering an RSS feed might skew these. But if it is skewing it by a statistically significant amount, this just means that lots of people are enjoying what you write! (And I’d have thought that bots were already skewing your stats, but that’s another topic…) Your own writing, on your own server, just made available to your own readers in a convenient, free of charge way. What’s not to like!

web-development Web Development marketing Marketing css CSS Xml
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