Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
Ben Taylor
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Heads up UK citizens overseas! The disgraceful ‘15 year rule’ which disenfranchised you is being binned TODAY! From 16 January you can now at long last register to vote, which you should do ASAP in view of in the upcoming general election, because *gestures at everything*
https://mailchi.mp/a6cd97a73d7e/3mn-brits-abroad-regain-right-to-vote-in-uk-elections?e=897c54e3ba
Ben Taylor
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"Heat pumps don't work in the cold"
Context: This is data from my mom and dad's new cold climate heat pump. While the system has been calling for heat continuously during this time, it has only needed to kick on the backup resistive heating in the deepest of cold, and even then only for a couple of hours overnight.
Ben Taylor
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@marcel @pluralistic Nice article. This quote hits the mark too:
"while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"
Ben Taylor
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I'm severely colourblind - my eyes can hardly detect red light at all.
So, working in web development, picking colour schemes is hard.
There are tools around to help you pick accessible colour schemes, but they assume that you can tell by looking that a colour is the one you want, and the only information you need the computer to calculate is the contrast ratio.
I realised I need a tool that will take the name of a colour and find a shade that gives a target contrast ratio.
Here it is: https://colourblind-palette-maker.glitch.me/
It uses the new APCA perceptual contrast algorithm and the Oklab colour space to help me find colours that people with better colour vision will interpret correctly, while ensuring there's good contrast for as many people as possible.
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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Someone on LinkedIn pointed out that #OpenAI doesn’t use an LLM for their support chat, but has instead opted to use some extremely limited decision tree. Which is both understandable, telling, and fucking hilarious.
Ben Taylor
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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
There is an increase of account takeovers due to insiders at telco firms simply giving control to people paying them. Do a check on systems where this single factor would permit an account compromise. And change the configuration. These are opportunistic trawling attacks. This is becoming more common as attackers replicate the success.
The attacker uses other channels (like people search websites) to enumerate and guess the phone number attached to an online account and then checks against the telco they have control over.
The insider only briefly temporarily forwards the victim number to a 3rd party then switches it back to normal once they’re in. This is how they stay quiet since most victims will not have leverage or telemetry to understand how they got hacked.
It was their cell phone provider.
Make it so account recovery systems require multiple factors and remove telephony-based recovery for VIP accounts entirely.
Go check your systems now. Go try to access all your stuff like you forgot your password.
I am very serious.
Ben Taylor
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Just wow. Our treatment of refugees is so inhumane that Medecins Sans Frontieres (better known for providing medical care in refugee camps near war zones) has felt compelled to spend resources to set up shop in Essex. What a shameful indictment of the UK's inhumanity towards people in need.
#refugees #migration #ukpolitics #uk #msf #MedecinsSansFrontieres
Ben Taylor
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The polish train hacking saga is truly the gift that keeps on giving, now with full receipts PLUS an actual incident of a train compressor failing on the exact date that security researchers found hardcoded into the train's software, as a condition for triggering a compressor failure.
https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/
#trains
#infosec
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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I have enjoyed this last year of photographing Glastonbury Tor in all weathers. I think to sum it up for me, it is a passion and I truly feel a connection with this magical place like I know many others do. These are a few of my favourites. Have a fab New Years Eve.
Ben Taylor
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Snowy Owl fully prepared for her close up on this Montreal traffic cam ♥️🤗
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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Something I forgot to post at the time. In case you were wondering if this is a thing…
Ben Taylor
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New from 404 Media: you may have seen that a group of Polish hackers repaired trains the manufacturers had bricked (hackers were successful and helped). Now the train company is threatening to sue them. We spoke to the hackers.
With my Trade Union hat on I supported someone a little while back who was accused of something particularly unpleasant. He strenuously and emotionally denied everything. I chose to believe him, because it felt like someone had to and my job as his TU rep was to support him, which was much easier if I decided he was telling the truth. And he was at a similar or slightly earlier stage to me in life with similar problems to what I'd gone through (otherwise similar, anyway), I saw some of myself in him.
For different reasons both he and I left the company before his case came to trial, I didn't find out what the outcome was until just now. He wasn't telling the truth. That will be his victim re-traumatised, his wife betrayed, his family presumably broken, his child growing up with that stigma on his father, and that's leaving aside the toll on him, personally.
I feel incredibly sad. There are no winners here. There were never going to be as soon as he did what he did.
Ben Taylor
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Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
