DoubleGlazing

Back in the late 90s when digital TV was being rolled out, RTÉ in Ireland developed a technology called WiNDS. You won't find much technical information about it online because it never moved beyond the prototype phase. WiNDS provided a return path for ordering PPV events and other interactivity by embedding a GSM data modem in your set top box. It would transmit back to base using your regular TV antenna.

I think the biggest problem with smart TVs is that manufacturers abandon models after only a few years. You might only get updates for < 3 years and after that, well tough - your TV reached the end of its supported period. No more new functionality and crucially no more security updates.

Most people will still use the TV and keep it connected to their network without realising the security risks.

And the above is for mainstream TV brands, imagine how bad it is for weird off-brands and store own-brands where the original software is of unknown provenance and the chances of any updates is nill.

Ah FedEx and their weird accounts.

My wife, a US citizen living in Ireland, needed a US background check as she works with children. The police department in Texas did the work needed and said they could only ship the documents internationally via FedEx. So she asked how much? They said "Oh no, you need to arrange collection and pay FedEx directly"

So off to FedEx she goes thinking she could arrange this as a one off. Nope, you need an account and it has to be set up online. Their account opening forms are really complicated. To be fair, they are probably for people who know about shipping and not for someone who just wants a one-off collection. It took three attempts to get the correct account and to be fair the documents arrived in less than 24hrs which coming from Texas was very impressive.

What happened next is where it gets annoying. She needed to close the accounts as she wouldn't be using them. FedEx said that had to be done offline in writing and she needed to supply a company registration certificate, she had written "Personal account" in the company field on all the account set up forms as it could not be left blank. While she was trying to get this resolved, she got a letter from Revenue asking her to fill in a load of documents relating to customs matters.

Eventually she just went to FedEx's Irish HQ in person to get it all sorted.

I'm not sure who is more to blame, the Texas PD for refusing to arrange the delivery or FedEx for completely ignoring that individuals may be forced to use their service. Either way it was a pain.

I ageee that YouTube sucks for many reasons. They have a weird undocumented algorithm that defines what gets popular and as a result creators are constantly playing games to bait it. Their monetization/demonetization policies are just bonkers. Their copyright enforcement system is Kafkaesque. Plus, as a consumer they seem to be going down the facebook route of trying to curate my viewing choices in a way that suits them.

But they can do that as they are a private company. They don't owe anyone anything. If you rely on YouTube for a living without a backup plan then you are dumb.

YouTube is no longer the only player in online video. If you don't like what YouTube is doing then look at alternative platforms.

I'm amazed that all the interested parties haven't got together to flesh out a microtransaction standard. The whole ad-blocking debate would be moot if we could pay a few cents to read an article free of distracting ads. If you choose not to pay, you get the ads and don't get to complain about ad-blocker-blockers because you were offered an alternative.

I know it has been attempted in the past with little success, but all those attempts were just companies going it alone and hoping for the best. If the W3C, browser makers, banks and publishers all got together a standard could be developed. Something that would be core to web standards. It wouldn't be easy, but it would solve a lot of problems.

The railway exists to give all its patrons a fun day out. When people with tripods and massive lenses ruins it for the family who just want to take a quick smartphone family picture in front of the old train, then we have a problem. There have been multiple instance where the tripod guy has prevented a child a quick picture because they see their picture as more important.

Leave aside the safety issues. When people set up tripods so that they can get their picture, whilst denying others the same opportunity - it's not cool.

I used to volunteer at a heritage railway in Northern Ireland. We had several old restored trains and we went to great lengths to make the station areas look authentically old. Naturally photographers loved it.

Most photographers were Okay and respected the rules, but some some just refused and couldn't handle being called out. For example one rule was do not get in train cabs, unless by prior arrangement - which involved doing a safety briefing etc. Still some photographers just did their own thing. Some would jump on to the footplates of in service steam locomotives to get their shot, that was dangerous but they didn't care. I was driving a diesel railcar and had a passenger bang on the cab door so he could take shots from within the cab. He kept banging for about 10 minutes until we got back to the station and was then had a go at me for refusing him access.

Another strict rule was no tripods on the platforms. It was dangerous as they created a tripping hazard and just ruined the atmosphere for other visitors. But come a sunny day or special event the forest of tripods would be out in force.

And the worst of all was the ones who would walk off the end of platforms and setup alongside the railway line. Most wouldn't even bother to wear a hi-viz vest either. Completely dangerous, but they didn't care they just wanted their special shot.

These weren't just our rules, many were in place because of laws and insurance requirements. We didn't want accidents, nor did we want a few visitors to ruin the atmosphere for others. But when we called called out such people we often got abuse, which would then be followed up by long rants about how unaccommodating we were in various photography and railway forums.

The thing is we would allow photographers to access cabs, use tripods and go alongside the line - so long as they arranged it with us first. And during special events we would often have an hour set aside specifically for photographers to go to town. But for some that wasn't enough.

For a lot of heritage railways in the UK and Ireland the misbehavior of some photographers has got so bad they have a blanket ban on cameras with remediable lenses.

My previous job had an excessive amount of technical debt in it's core product. So much so that simple code changes that should have taken a few hours were now taking days, or in some extreme cases weeks. For example there were financial calculations that should have been confined to one class and treated like a black box, but over time bits of the calculation had spread out all over the application from the front end, the server layer and in to the DB. A simple change had a ripple effect on other parts of the application which made bug hunting and testing a slow and laborious process.

After much grumbling from the devs the CEO prepared a presentation where he told us technical debt was our friend. We had a choice to pay down the debt, or add new features. New feature would get us more customers, and more income, which would mean we could hire more developers to eventually pay down the debt. I felt it was a very wishfull thinking type of argument. We were having increasing numbers of outages due to the lack of a proper testing process in our CI pipeline and our DB was massively overloaded. Adding new feature was literally adding to our technical debt and increasing our risk of outages, something that wouldn't help get new customers.

My issue with the above argument is that the problem with debt isn't the amount or type, but the person holding the debt. A 30-something in a safe job (e.g. doctor) earning €100k a year can safely hold €300k of debt, so long as they are responsible and always strive to reduce the amount owed.

A 20 year old working in a fast food joint on minimum wage, but holding €50k of debt is in serious danger. They aren't in a stable job and they aren't being responsible.

Some companies are like the doctor. They have debt, but are responsible and actively work to reduce it. Some are like the 20 year old who thinks that they can deal with it later, oblivious to the rising interest and danger they are putting themselves in.

I think the thing a lot of people overlook when critiquing any kind of architecture is that for every architectural style there are good and bad examples. Sometimes, we focus too much on the bad to the detriment of the good.

I have often felt that a lot of the hate for 60s/modernist/brutalist architecture comes from the stand out bad examples. For example the works of John Poulson, an inept architect who landed loads of massive and lucrative contracts because he was really good at bribery. His practice churned out building designs at a ferocious rate and while some are considered decent (e.g. Leeds International Pool) the vast majority are just bland, soulless blocks designed and built to a price point. Many also had serious structural issues too.

There is a lot of modern architecture to love and appreciate if you can filter out the bad.

Being able to sell and do the whole business BS thing is vitally important. If you can't do it, hire someone or get a friend/relative to help.

Under promise, over deliver. (slightly)

Become an authority on your subject matter. Write blog posts, post often on twitter, write to journals/newspapers - set yourself up as someone who knows what they are doing.

Charge for spec work.

Don't be afraid to turn down work that may challenge you more than you can handle. You are taking an unnecessary risk. In those circumstance you can offer to help the client find the right consultant/solution provider.

ALWAYS get a deposit before work begins. And then insist on regular payments for longer projects - if payments stop, you stop work.

Don't do fixed fee work, unless you REALLY, REALLY trust the client.

Good relationships are vital. If a client likes you they will market you through word of mouth and that's the best kind of advertising.

Have a plan in place to deal with non-payments or difficult clients. Be consistent and don't let bad clients take advantage of you. Offer no credit terms longer than 28 days. Offer a 5% discount for quick payment.

If you are providing software before full payment is received, don't be afraid to use a licensing mechanism to shut it down if payment fails to materialise. A friend lost €20k in a similar situation.

Also, bear in mind you will work long hours. That's why I couldn't keep doing it. I was making decent money, but the hours, and travel, were killing me.

I bought a WeMo plug and was quite shocked to discover that there is no form of security or authentication. Anyone using the same network that your WeMo devices are using can control them using the WeMo mobile app and crucially keep controlling them once they have left your network via the Belkin cloud. They are effectively proving an open door to your network that requires you to trust Belkin to keep secure.

Edit: They do support UPnP, but still they are wide open to attack.

Transdiffusion, a small UK based group of TV presentation enthusiasts, have been recording and archiving material related to TV logos, idents and presentation since the 1950s.

https://www.transdiffusion.org/

At most I will do a one hour take home or online test. If I am requested to do anything more than that then I will politely decline.

My reasoning is that a potential employer can find out what they want abut me and my skills by looking at my employment history and by speaking to my referees. To invest several hours in a test that carries no guarantee of at least an interview is not an investment I want to make when I could be spending that time with my family, or working on other applications.

Another way of looking at it how I explained it to a recruiter who was annoyed that I wouldn't do his clients weekend coding test. I asked him if he would expect his client (off the shelf software house) to spend 5+ hours doing a coding exercises to prove their worth to a single potential customer - with no guarantee the potential customer would acknowledge their effort? After some hmmming and haaaaing he said no, he wouldn't. So I asked, why should I?

Wow, talk about gatekeeping.

I think podcasts are wonderful, a form of media that has very low barriers to entry and where the smaller players can compete with the big boys on a relatively level playing field.

So what if a lot of podcasts are crap? If the podcaster enjoys it and someone listens then good for them.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that.

Article 10 is a bit weak as fundamental rights go.

Part 1 implies that you can say what you want. Part 2 then cancels that out with the proviso that national law can override your part 1 rights.

That's not so much a right, more of a "defined allowance".

I experienced something very similar. I was living in the UK and was asked to help admin a local forum. It only had around 3000 users, but it was very active. There was one fellow who kept posting long rambling rants about all sorts, conspiracy theories, espousing racist views, taking pleasure in mocking members who lost a relative etc. After repeatedly banning him we got a plugin to make him invisible to everyone bar mods and admins.

He kept posting his long angry rants for a year before he realised what was going on. To say he was upset would be an understatement. I'm sure he tried to track down the site owners and admins, but we were very careful to maintain anonymity. So he went after regular members, he managed to figure out where some of them lived and worked by analysing their posting. One day he posted the names and address of a lot of the forums top posters.

Of course at that point the police were called in. The guy was tracked down via his IP address, he made no attempt to hide his activities. We did send occasional abuse reports to his ISP before this happened and they were always ignored.

He was charged with harassment and ended up with 100 hours of community service and a £150 fine. A pitifully small punishment given the fear he caused and that he did not show any remorse. If anything he seemed annoyed that he got caught. Apparently, in his first Police interview he argued that he was merely exercising his right to freedom of speech and was surprised when the police told him that such a right did not exist in the UK.

Some people have anger issues, some people have real mean streaks. Forums attract these kind and can encourage them to act their worst. If someone goes too far and starts to make people feel personally threatened or tries to ruin a business then I don't see the problem with them facing a severe penalty when caught.

"You don't pay me enough to care"

I used to work for a logistics firm and when one of the warehouse staff got called out for mishandling goods that was often the response.

The biggest issue there wasn't goods in transit, it was the actual packing process. Warehouse staff would pack mobile phones in to big plastic totes which would be taken to retail stores. They were on the clock so they would throw the phones in to the totes from wherever they were standing. Stores wouldn't accept phones in damaged boxes even if the contents were Okay.

The company fitted WiFi shock sensors to all the packing totes. All this did was increase the number of "fk you and fk your job" resignations.

Oh we did, and the owner of the building ended up in the press for a multitude of reasons a few weeks after we had our stay.

The problem is that's when you arrive to your rented property late on a Friday night with two tired and cranky children, you just want to make the best of a bad situation.

I know AirBnB have an emergency number, but they themselves state on their website that all they will do in a situation like the above is to try and book you in to another AirBnB property or offer you a refund.

I think a lot of AirBnB customers have lower expectations of the service compared to what they would expect when booking into a hotel and AirBnB benefits greatly from this.

After all the AirB part of their name stands for air bed, the whole business was founded on the concept of customers accepting lower standards for a lower price. Now that AirBnB has grown into a quality property rental service it really needs to up it's game in terms of vetting it's hosts and dealing with questionable situations.

Same here. A few years ago all our AirBnB experiences were good, but over time they have progressively got worse.

For example, one host housed us in what felt like a derelict hotel/doshouse with all sorts of weird people staying and no working locks or fire alarm. On another occasion we booked a cottage, but it had a blocked chimney and was spewing fumes and smoke in to the living area. And for our tenth wedding anniversary we booked another cottage where the host insisted on staying with us despite the listing saying we would have the property to ourselves. He also insisted on singing to us against our will, this was actually quite creepy.

We did of course raise concerns with AirBnB about the first two and left a negative review for the third. AirBnB did not care and crucially it did not seem to have an effect on the ratings of these properties. That just does not seem right.

I no longer trust AirBnB. I don't trust the listings, I don't trust the reviews and I certainly don't trust AirBnB itself to filter out bad hosts.

This could be because AirBnB has grown so fast and it has struggled to cope, or it could be a conscious business decision. Either way, we don't use them anymore.

Surely a company using the analysis of your behaviour to effectively manipulate and trick you in to making decisions that might not be in your best interests is in itself harmful?

These companies that do this do not care about your interests, they care only about their bottom line.

Adblock only helps a little. For example, unless you use a VPN, your ISP knows every site you visit. If you have a debit card your bank knows where you spend your money. Retailers can figure out a lot about you from your spending habits e.g. Target figuring out when someone was pregnant. Facial recognition is growing in use to track people in stores and malls.

We are still in the early days of commercial data analysis. Online retailers and ad brokers (e.g. Google) have been the trailblazers. But it will spread. Imagine a combination of facial recognition and data analysis being used in the real world to serve you custom billboard ads or to allow sales people to remind you that you probably need to buy new shoes.

Lets move beyond sales in to really creepy territory. Want to intimidate someone? Get hold as much of their marketing data as you can, it'll probably be on sale from some data broker. If its not on sale, bribing someone will probably get you what you want. Now let your target know that you know where they shop, what they buy, what websites they visit and maybe they have a drink problem they want to keep hidden. If you think that what legitimate businesses can do with your data is bad, imagine what criminals could do.

The depressing thing about all this is that it is getting harder to opt-out of being surveiled.

Even if you ditch your phone and computers, there are still way to track you.

Just look at some of the crazy stuff happening in retail where facial recognition is used in some stores and malls to track where you go and what you look at in order to manipulate you in to buying more. It may be niche right now, but as the tech develops and gets cheaper it's use will become more widespread.

I generally use cash for everything. The exceptions being large purchases or where I need a secondary proof of purchase.

I was once asked by my bank why I wasn't taking advantage of of the convenience my contactless debit card offered. I said because I didn't want them knowing what I spent my money on.

This led on to me being advised that I would struggle to get loan or mortgage facilities because the bank would be unable to see if I was spending my money responsibly.

I can live with that.

They were threatening to take their in-warranty service centre contract elsewhere because we offered to fix phones out of warranty. They weren't refusing to fix phones within the minimum warranty period, they were just trying to frustrate out of warranty repairs.

I was speaking from the manufacturers perspective.

As a consumer I can see the difference between a €200 smartphone and a €1,000 smartphone isn't as wide as it used to be.

Also worth noting that the wholesale company I worked for made its real money in accessories.

I used to work for a mobile phone wholesaler that also owned a phone repair business and they noticed this trend as far back as 2013. The age of phones coming in for repair was rising year on year. They were coming under pressure from manufacturers and retailers to disincentivise customers from repairing older phones. One manufacturer even threatened to stop paying for in-warranty repairs if the company offered an out-of-warranty repair service.

The problem is that smartphones are way too expensive. Back in the old days of dumb phones a top end SIM free phone would cost no more than €400. Most people would opt for a cheaper model that allowed for a 12 months subsidy with the phone being free and monthly fees being fairly low by todays standards. In the UK it was common to find deals where you got a cheap phone for free, plus a game console or TV on a 12 month contract.

Now it has flipped. Top end phones are now nudging €1000, this means higher monthly fees plus 24-36 month contracts. That's a hell of a commitment, especially considering smart phones aren't as durable as dumb phones were. Of course people are repairing phones when they cost that much.

Plus, there is less of a feature incentive to upgrade. All I use my phone for is web browsing, email, social stuff and photo/video - it's three years old and does all that with no lag. New models don't offer me enough of an incentive to upgrade.

If manufacturers want people to upgrade more often they need to work on curbing the price of top end models. The more expensive they are, the longer people are going to want them to last. Also, a bit more innovation would be nice - must every smartphone follow the exact same black rectangle design template?

Yep.

There have been three occasions where the IT contracting firm I was working for sent me to work on government IT projects as a contractor. None of them were for Revenue, but it is Revenue who do these checks for all other departments. On one occasion my employer managed to pull a few strings to get me on the project (DSP), on the other two I was told no government work for me (HSE and DoT).

On one of the three three occasions I was forwarded an email from Revenue that said "he expresses a desire for personal privacy that indicates he would be unwilling to fully embrace the governments data sharing strategy".

I did write to a few news outlets about this, none were interested. Even the ICCL wasn't interested, which really surprised me.

>Concerning the democratic aspect of participating in the online world I think GDPR actually helps, as before it was not possible to reliably get your own data deleted, rectified or transferred, which is not very democratic either IMHO

This is where the GDPR has really helped me. I posted a comment on a blog critical of a government data sharing initiative. Nothing illegal, or questionable - it was a simple two sentence opinion comment which I posted under my real name. I didn't stop to think for a minute that it would cause me any problems.

It did. I discovered that I couldn't get to work on any government projects because when a background check was carried out on me, the above comment was found and according to Revenue (the gov agency responsible for such checks) it indicated that I was hostile to the governments IT plans.

I asked the blog owner (same country as me) to please remove the comment, they refused. So I submitted a right to be forgotten request to Google to stop the blog post appearing in searches for my name.

The problem with urban transport systems is that no one sees them for what they really are... an expensive thing that drives the economy. There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself, but the reality is that a few billion invested in better public transport results in a lot more billions being made elsewhere.

We need to get away from this idea that public transport systems need to break even or turn a profit. They are there to help make money in other ways. An efficient reliable transport system should cost the taxpayer money, but they will get that back in profit elsewhere through a thriving local economy.