Viewing profile — chestnut-tree

And what about privacy? An entire OS that records everything you do online, it even records printing to your desktop printer. Microsoft rightly gets skewered for tracking user beha…

This is a quote by Niklaus Wirth, a Swiss computer scientist who has created many programming languages, most famously Pascal. It's a long quote, but I like it very much: "Many peo…

I agree that many non-fiction titles could be shorter (although probably not the length of a blog post). I confess I am an impatient reader, and many non-fiction titles I read feel…

The Labour Party's abstention on this bill is unforgivable. We need to hold the Conservative government to account for their deceit and utter incompetence. We need a strong opposit…

The BBC recently released a video codec called Turing (named after Alan Turing): "...an open source software HEVC video encoder that allows highly efficient compression of video co…

A real barrier to a decentralised web is the difficulty of installing software on a server. I know that sounds really mundane and inconsequential in the broader debate about a dece…

Microsoft has a long history of providing accessibility options in their products (long before Apple or Google started taking accessibility seriously). Microsoft have never been ve…

The UK's NHS website is an excellent, reputable source of health information. It may not be the most attractive looking site, but it has a goldmine of info. There's information on …

No real surprise. E-ink readers are still only available with black and white displays. Their screens are mostly shaped to fit a small paperback. Physical books, in contrast, come …

" ...the US isn't particularly unique, just more public about it. " I agree. I strongly dislike the US proposals discussed here, but the fact is travelling abroad means you've alre…

In the UK, the NHS website includes an excellent, regularly updated 'Behind the Headlines' section that scrutinises health stories reported in the press. In fact the 'Behind the He…

Ironically, today it's the national newspapers in the UK that play the role of the demagogue. Headlines that shriek at readers in hysterical tones. Foaming-at-the-mouth outrage del…