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Book Review: You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] - Andrew Hankinson ★★★★☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-27T12:34:53.000Z

It is hard to write a book in the second person. It is even harder to make it this good. It would have been easier to write a salacious cash-in with a dozen shocking revelations in each chapter. Instead, Andrew Hankinson attempts to use Raoul Moat's own words to build up a picture of the man.

You have nine days and your whole life to prove you are more than a callous murderer.

Go.

It is written with sympathy, but without being sympathetic. A stream of consciousness interrupted only occasionally by the voice of god [it probably isn't god] to provide clarity to an unreliable narrator. The paranoia and delusion come streaming off the page, couched in a tone of voice that exudes reasonableness. It doesn't glorify the man, nor does it make excuses for him, instead it asks you to consider what you choices you could have made under similar circumstances.

Almost every sentence is set up as a challenge to the reader. Is this man telling the truth? If so, are his actions understandable or explainable? If not, where is the truth and how would you know? When someone has such a fundamental disconnect from reality, when their model of the world and human interactions is so broken, what can society do to help?

From Moat's point of view, he is the Biblical Job. A callous god tests and torments him. Beset by challenges he never loses faith even after the all the world can throw at him. The god [in parentheses] is also an unreliable narrator. The author has built upon all the official reports, the suicide notes, the rambling messages, and interviews with contemporaries. But, as is acknowledged, we can never truly know what goes on in someone's head; we can only judge their actions and their aftermath.

A constant drumbeat is the way Moat claims he was repeatedly victimised by the police. Given all his other delusions, the reader might easily conclude that this is yet another piece of self-pitying nonsense. And yet, when discussing how Moat actually died there does appear to be a conspiracy of silence. The police's behaviour and attitudes are exactly what you would expect from people perpetrating a cover-up.

Naturally, this is a depressing and often upsetting read. It reminds me of the autobiography Mini and Me about a child arsonist. In both that book and this, we witness people being offered help and refusing it. Much like the parable of the drowning man it seems people often overlook the helping hand.

Are you responsible for this? The start of the book describes Moat reaching out for psychiatric help. He is offered an appointment but never turns up. He's offered another one, but still doesn't attend. Whereupon the offer of help is withdrawn. Our society strongly favours individual responsibility. Autonomy is to be persevered for all but the most extreme cases. Should Moat have been forcibly removed from home and made to attend his appointments?

Do you want to live in a society where missing a few meetings with a social worker results in you being detained against your will? Are you happy to accept his attacks as a price worth paying for your freedom?

If a journalist took words you'd written in the heat of the moment, would it paint you in a terrible light? How confident are you that you know the truth of any situation? Are you lying to yourself right now?

This is an excellent and provocative book. I picked this up after seeing Rob Manuel post about it. I like the idea of an informal online book club! If someone wants to set one up, please do invite me.

Backporting security fixes to stable releases - Trail of Bits Blog

2026-10-27T11:00:00.000Z

The software you are running is almost certainly riddled with known, unfixed security bugs. These bugs can be trivially and quickly exploited by modern AI agents. This is not merely theoretical; I saw this during my sandbox escape research, and an old vulnerability in stable software was used as a part of the recently disclosed OpenAI hack:

From the official hack description

To say it simply: whatever you are running is almost certainly easily hackable by advanced AI. Luckily, there is a fix, and we (not just at Trail of Bits, but in the security industry more broadly) are working on it. But first, how did we get here?

Stability versus security

Software has bugs, and some are relevant to security. We try to fix them when we can, and the first place the fix happens is in the latest version of the software. Unfortunately, that’s often the only place where the fix happens. The process of getting a fix from the latest source code to older versions is called “backporting.”

Fixes for big-name, critical bugs are indeed often backported quickly. But for many other bugs, the backporting process never happens. It is easy to understand why: software packaging is often done by volunteers who are already overworked, and backporting is frustrating, thankless work that gets little credit or publicity. For open source projects staffed by teams of volunteers, backports are (understandably) a low priority.

The lack of backports is a problem because almost no one runs the latest and greatest version of software that’s been freshly built with today’s code changes. People overwhelmingly prefer slightly older, more tested software packaged in “long term stable” releases. For example, about 95% of Ubuntu Linux installations are of the Long Term Support (LTS) variety. When looking at installed Linux kernel packages from Debian’s popcon, the overwhelming majority are based on older stable trees:

This is a Codex-generated graph of recently installed kernel packages from Debian’s popcon. The overwhelming majority (about 96%) are older, stable releases, and not the latest kernel series.

This puts users in a bind: They can either stick with a stable, familiar version of software that has security flaws, or upgrade to a newer version that fixes those flaws but introduces other changes and new features they may not want.

We should not have to make this choice.

Seeing no evil

Even three years ago, we could stick our heads in the sand and pretend the problem didn’t exist: backporting all fixes was a genuinely difficult, time-consuming job and any attacks were extraordinarily unlikely.

Now, both of those assumptions are false. A swarm of cyber-capable AI agents can cut through a network of stable, known-vulnerable software like a hot knife through butter. On the positive side, AI has significantly lessened the burden for identifying and backporting security-relevant bugs.

Of course, we should assume all software has bugs (because it does), and use the lessons we learned in our computer security classes: mandatory access controls, code integrity checks, sandboxing, and privilege separation. This works. Mobile platforms are much safer because they enforce these standards. But desktop and server platforms don’t mandate this behavior, and few voluntarily enable protections. And yes, everyone should update to the latest software. But many people purposely do not update to releases. I think that this normal end-user behavior is entirely justified. Just recently, I updated my Mac to macOS 27 and couldn’t use a printer that had worked flawlessly for years (until Codex wrote a new, compatible printer driver, on the first try).

Regardless, it’s good practice to assume that something may have bugs and that they should be contained; leaving known, easily fixed bugs is negligent. So, let’s backport all the fixes!

Accounting for security liabilities

Let’s quantify the scale of the problem. To make counting simple, we can limit ourselves to known bugs (with assigned CVEs) that are patched in the latest release but missing from stable packages. For this example, we’ll look at the Linux kernel, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Debian 13 Stable. I’m not singling out those projects—they are all run very well! I’m using them because they have documentation and accounting for unfixed CVEs. Other projects lack this transparency. The first step towards a solution is knowing that there is a problem.

Let’s look at the number of outstanding CVEs in the Linux Kernel, by stable branch. The table below shows CVEs per supported stable branch that do not have a fix in that branch, but do have it in a newer branch. (Hence, older branches by definition have more unfixed CVEs.) The source is the kernel CVE team’s vulns.git as of September 18, 2026. This is not an exact bug count, as it both over- and under-counts due to several technicalities. It is also not a measure of exploitability. Rather, it’s a measuring stick showing that a substantial amount of known CVEs have not been fixed in stable kernel branches:

Branch	Unfixed CVEs	% CVEs with an NVD Score	High or Critical Severity
5.10.y	2,006	55.8%	213 (19.0%)
5.15.y	1,889	51.5%	195 (20.0%)
6.1.y	1,329	43.9%	99 (17.0%)
6.6.y	1,012	35.6%	65 (18.1%)
6.12.y	686	22.3%	21 (13.7%)
6.18.y	337	15.1%	3 (5.9%)

The package landscape is not any better. These are non-kernel CVEs reported as open or affected in Debian 13 and Ubuntu 26.04 (raw data via their respective bulk CVE data feeds, compiled by Codex). These are distro-metadata findings, not individually source-confirmed vulnerabilities. Again, this is not meant to be an exact bug count, but more of a measuring stick indicating how many unfixed vulnerabilities remain in stable software packages:

Distribution	Source Packages with Unfixed CVEs	Unique CVEs	High or Critical Severity
Debian 13	1,128	4,562	1,822 (39.9%)
Ubuntu 26.04	1,028	770	335 (43.5%)

Fixing the bugs

We realized this was an issue and have been fixing it proactively. First, we started with the equivalent of finding $20 on the sidewalk: there are bug fixes to known CVEs which apply cleanly to the stable kernel trees, but the fix was just never pulled into the kernel. We used Codex with GPT-5.6 to find these fixes, and asked the maintainers to apply the existing patches. They did, graciously, and 142 fixes representing 90 CVEs in stable trees are currently applied; the list on our backport tracker just keeps growing. We are now backporting patches, starting with the most trivial to validate and review, and are slowly moving towards more complex changes.

We’ve done the same for Linux distributions: we used Codex and GPT-5.6 to identify known vulnerabilities in shipping stable packages, and then backport and validate a fix. We have begun reaching out to Linux distributions with an initial batch of patches. If you run an open source project or a Linux distribution and would like help backporting security fixes, please apply at trailofbits.com/patch-the-planet and we’ll be glad to assist.

The big upside of stable software that does not add features is that we can, in theory, fix all the bugs before the bad guys do. So, let’s continue to patch the planet!

Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 25 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-27T00:00:00.000Z

The twenty-fifth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:

In Episode 25, the final episode of Wonders of Web Weaving (at least for now!), I chat with Emma, the author of emgoto.com about, among other things, blogging about coffee and hiking, the idea of a "hobby blog", projecting posts onto a map, and more.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.

Emma emgoto.com The twenty-fifth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed

Wonders of Web Weaving, Behind the Scenes - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-27T00:00:00.000Z

After twenty-five wonderful conversations, Wonders of Web Weaving is, at least for now, complete. To everyone who has been listening over the last few months: thank you! It has been the greatest pleasure to not have terrific conversations with thoughtful web weavers, and to bring those to you every week.

When I started the project, I had a goal in mind: I wanted a show that would be fun to listen to on a train ride. A few weeks ago, when listening to the edited version of the second-to-last episode on a train, I thought to myself I did it!

Behind the scenes

In terms of how the project came to be, I emailed a mixture of people who I knew and people I didn’t, aiming to invite guests that would, together, represent a wide range of subjects related to the web. It was, and still is, important to me that the project was not a “tech podcast.” The web is about more than technology.

Before each conversation, I spent time with the guest’s personal website, scanning pages, looking at blog posts, and deciding on an “anchor” that would be the theme of the episode around which my questions would be oriented. For instance, I spoke about accessibility with Nic, as Nic has experience with accessibility. I also asked a few standard questions. Over time, I realised all my questions fit an arc: history, present, and future.

Through the course of the show, I had discussions on everything from writing on the web to the “web revival” to mathematics to accessibility (ep. 16 and 20) to magazines to books and more. And, in so doing, I was conscious to ensure that the podcast was not all men talking about technology. There were and are more voices to be heard who have stories I wanted to hear. To that end, I hope I played a tiny part in introducing you to some voices you may not have encountered on the web before.

In terms of the actual discussions, in every conversation, I started with five or so minutes of chatting with the guest and introducing them to the recording process, then we recorded for ~40-50 minutes – sometimes for less time, sometimes for more – and, in the remaining time, did wrap up and I communicated the logistics of transcriptions and releases. While I invited guests with the email subject “Podcast interview?”, I was conscious to communicate upfront and early on that I liked the episodes to be “conversations” or “discussions”, not interviews. After all, this project is all about celebrating the web.

At the end of every episode, I asked two questions, one on the theme of the future, and the other a “fun question.” As a result of the question about the future – which was some variant on “where do you hope the indie web will be in five years?” – we have a collection of potential futures. Indeed, especially now, I think it is important to imagine what we want the web to be. At this point I will invite you to be a part of the show and ask you: where do you hope the indie web will be in five years?

The fun questions went through phases, but eventually coalesced on a roughly-standard question where I asked the guest to share a fun fact about where they are in the world. I thought this was a nice way to end the show: with a smile, with something interesting.

Concluding the show

At the beginning of the show, I promised myself I would do 10 episodes. Because I was so excited about the project, the number of episodes planned became 15, and then 20, and then at least 25. With that said, I always wanted the show to be limited in its number of episodes because I know that it is challenging to keep something going on for a long time. Having an end number of episodes made it easier to commit to the project.

This autumn, I had began a new run of recording, but it was starting to get a bit much in addition to the other priorities I had. There were other episodes lined up, but I thought it best to pause on a high note than try to rush.

There may be another season one day, but, at least for now, the project is complete.

Thank you

To all the people who agreed to spend an hour chatting with me about the web, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I want to extend a special thanks to Zachary from Lunaseeker Press for transcribing the episodes. I decided I wanted a transcript for every episode from day one, so that people who prefer to read, or for people who cannot listen to a podcast, had a transcript available to them.

To everyone listening, thank you for spending time with me and the guests. This project has been a real pleasure to work on. And, if you haven’t listened before, good news: you have 25 hours of all things indie web to which you can listen!

Lunaseeker Press 25 hours of all things indie web books mathematics 16 accessibility with Nic web revival magazines 20 writing on the web Zachary

Solar is "offensively cheap". To live up to its promise, it also needs to be equitable. - Werd I/O

2026-10-26T16:41:45.000Z

Link: 'It's offensively cheap': How solar power is quietly becoming bigger than nuclear, by Jocelyn Timperley for the BBC

This is something we should all be excited about:

“The world's solar power is crossing a threshold. A decade ago, it barely registered on a global scale, providing just 1% of the world's power. In 2026, it will almost certainly increase to 10% of power, and overtake nuclear, a mainstay of electricity since the late 1970s.”

Solar energy is abundant, and the cheaper and more efficient it gets, the more electricity there will be to power anything we want. On that level alone, we should be cheering for its success.

But the other property solar energy has is relative decentralization. While not anyone can build a solar panel, anyone can plug one in — and, obviously, the sun belongs to everyone. It represents real energy independence, not just internationally, but from large energy companies (at every level from fossil fuel multinationals to utilities) that have enjoyed enormous influence for over a century.

Or it should. Energy companies have sponsored laws, rules, and regulations in the US and elsewhere that have made it harder for people to plug solar in. Those should be defeated, and our electrical systems should be upgraded to take decentralized solar into account.

But the power dynamics don’t end at the influence of energy companies: a large share of the polysilicon in solar panels is produced in Xinjiang, where there have been well-documented allegations of forced labor of Uyghurs and other minority groups. Batteries often contain cobalt, which is dug from the Democratic Republic of Congo, often by hand and often by children and slaves. They also contain lithium, drawn from brine operations that drain water from Indigenous communities in the Andes.

The next frontier needs to be freeing these technologies from harm — and there’s a long way to go. There’s some promise from tech like nickel-and-cobalt-free LFP batteries, more ethical lithium extraction, and recycling, but these need further investment, and the underlying issues require sustained attention. There is an energy revolution, but everyone should see the benefits.

Theatre Review: Opera UnTouched's "The Telephone" ★★★★★ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-26T12:34:15.000Z

Why shouldn't an opera be set in an office? Not merely set there; performed there! On Saturday night, a couple of dozen audience members were ushered in to a genuine office in Tooting to watch a short comic opera by Opera UnTouched. It was a burst of sunshine in a rainy day.

We're at Ben's leaving party. A flustered woman is busy on the telephone. Will Ben ever get her attention?

Both Grace Watkins & Stephen Whitford are astonishingly good opera singers. They cover all the tropes, hit all the notes, and interact well with the audience.

I know that every production now claims it is immersive - but here, it genuinely is! The audience wanders through the set to get to the seats scattered around the office, there's a naff PowerPoint presentation projected on to the wall, a leaving card is waiting for us to sign, the singers prance among us.

Just intensely joyful.

My only real criticism it that it is too short! I suspect it is designed to be a pop-up experience, fringe show, or performed during a break in the corporate drudgery. I'd've gladly watched a full length production and traipsed through a series of office spaces to get the the next scene.

You can watch excerpts on Instagram.

Pre- and Post-Show

As I've written about before, theatrical shows need to do something special to warm up their audiences. Opera UnTouched had a tough job with an audience drenched in London's rain.

The "office manager" ushered us in to the space and told us that it was Ben's last day, so we were all welcome at his leaving drinks. It being a modern office, we were each given a lanyard to wear throughout the show (which also sneakily doubled as an audience feedback QR).

As it was a party, as we wandered round the office space, we were each handed a glass of Prosecco - what a lovely touch! There's a reason your Chinese takeaway comes with "free" prawn crackers; receiving a gift makes you feel cherished. For the cost of a few dozen reusable plastic flutes and all of about 73p worth of fizz each, the audience were positively beaming by the time the show started.

Why can't more shows do that? OK, it might eat in to the takings at the bar. But a welcome drink on arrival is such an easy way to win over the audience.

As for post-show, there was the obligatory plea to fill in the feedback form. Charmingly, after receiving rapturous applause, the cast and creatives came back and were happy to chat to the audience and discuss the show.

Finished reading A Darkness More Than Night - Molly White's activity feed

2026-10-25T16:42:14.000Z

Finished reading:

Harry Bosch series, book 7.

A Darkness More Than Night

by Michael Connelly.

Published 2000. 470 pages.

Started October 16, 2026; completed October 24, 2026.

Remove Valance Endcaps from Primrose Awning - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-10-25T14:41:00.000Z

Warning: boring homeowner awning post.

The valance on my awning had come off the runner and was hanging out the end of the awning casing so I need to get the endcaps off. The instructions that came with it don’t mention the valance or end caps at all, and everything I saw online suggested there should be screws holding them in but there wasn’t.

I extended the awning slightly and shoved my phone camera in there to see what was going on and it turns out on full cassette awnings, the endcaps are held on with a 10mm bolt from the inside. Once I loosened the bolt, I was able to get the end cap off and rethread the valance.

Gadget Review: LiberNovo Omni - the USB-C powered office chair ★★★★⯪ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-25T12:34:01.000Z

Whenever a company asks me to review their gadgets, I always ask if it is USB-C powered. If not, I'm not interested. So, welcome to the future where your chair is USC-C rechargeable!

WHAT?!

The LiberNovo Omni looks like a standard office chair - but has two secret features.

First, is that it is exceedingly comfortable. Full foam cushions, lovely headrest, and a recline which almost gets you horizontal.

Second, it is USB-C powered. There's a small battery pack which plugs in to the chair. Why? Read on!

OK, let's start at the beginning.

Assembly

Flat-pack chairs like this are normally notoriously hard to assemble. The LiberNovo bucks that trend - not only does it include a how-to video, it prints the instructions on a MASSIVE piece of cardboard.

I'm used to peering at tiny black-and-white diagrams in a flimsy paper booklet. IKEA could learn a thing or two from this.

The screws are all labelled and a hex-driver is included. What's an even nicer touch, however, is some safety gloves:

That's the sort of thing which doesn't cost much to the manufacturer, but is such a thoughtful gesture. There's nothing too sharp as you assemble, but who wants to cover their new chair in blood, eh?

The parts come in two large boxes, but there aren't that many separate bits.

Building it took about half an hour. It's easier with a friend to help - as are most things in life - but doesn't require much skill.

Go Back To The USB-C Part Again Please?

The battery pack is a 2200mAh unit with a USB-C port to recharge. It connects in to the chair with this slightly unusual connector:

The internals of the chair have a USB-C cable to connect everything up.

LOL!

YES BUT WHY DOES A CHAIR NEED A BATTERY PACK??!?!

On the side of the left arm-rest are three buttons.

Two of them move the lumbar-support up and down. Depending on how your back is feeling and how far you are reclined, you can adjust the the back-support position.

And the 3rd button?

That's the build-in back massager, silly!

Is that useful?

Yes. Being able to instantly adjust the back support without having to twist around is fantastic, especially for those of us reaching a certain age.

The "massage" feature essentially just moves the support up and down for five minutes before returning to its previous location. When sat upright, it feels great. But the real benefit is when you're laying down.

How flat does this thing go?

160° - not quite flat, but good enough when you're taking a break from Typing Real Hard. You don't want a photo of me sprawled out, so LiberNovo have helpfully provided some stock photos of much better looking folk.

It is incredibly stable. At no point did it tip over or feel like it was going to deposit me on the floor. What really helps is the included foot stall.

No Feets On Seats

Unsurprisingly, this is not USB-C powered. A sturdy plastic footrest with a deeply padded leg rest on top.

Again, assembly was a cinch - follow the large printed instructions and clip it together. It's rated for 40㎏, so you shouldn't stand on it but it is more than enough to rest your weary legs.

Price

I hope you're sitting down for this.

Direct from LiberNovo, you can expect to pay around £700 - although there are bundles with extra batteries, the footrest, and even an eye mask which will shoot that price up. You can get the full bundle on Amazon for around £1,000.

There's two ways to look at that price. Firstly, youch. But, alternatively, that's still cheaper than a Herman Miller Aeron. And Herm's doesn't come with a built-in lumbar massage.

(There is also an upgraded version which has a built in fan under the seat. Personally, I suggest eating a healthier diet.)

I can't deny that's a chunk of change. If you're anything like me, you probably spend most of your day sat down. You might as well sit on something comfortable.

Final Thoughts

Having the back-rest adjustable via arm-rest buttons is a genius touch. I just wish it went further. I'd love a control panel (or, dare I say it, app) which let me adjust the seat height, recline, headrest position etc. Who can be bothered with fiddly manual levers when electricity can do the work for us?

Building this chair was a breeze - and it was delightful to get a pair of safety gloves with it.

The chair is extraordinarily comfortable and the back massage, while not on the level of a "shiatsu" style heated massage pillow, is delightfully pleasant. Would I lie all the way back and sleep in it? Yeah! Certainly more comfortable than an economy airline seat.

If you spend a lot of time sitting at your computer, your arse deserves something supportive. Your back deserves some love too. Yes, the USB-C power-pack is a little bit of a gimmick - but it is a hell of a good one.

In my opinion, this is worth splashing out on.

Weeknotes W2 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-25T00:00:00.000Z

Storm Boelo has been passing through Scotland for the last many hours, and high winds are expected to remain for the rest of the day. This weekend has thus been one of staying inside and staying cosy: of drinking tea (and the remainder of the coffee I had in a bag in the cupboard), making zines, and watching some television.

The winds as I write feel slightly less intense than they were in the morning, but suffice to say I am much happier – and safer – staying indoors than I would be bracing the wind.

The highlights

The theme of this week has been to try new things. I have been listening to new music, getting back into anime, and writing more zines.

In terms of anime, I started watching Catch Me at the Ballpark, a show about the life of vendors and patrons that work at a Japanese baseball stadium, as well as the players. I love the silent mascot, Sun-Shiro. I love wholesome anime and manga. The question I have on my mind right now is How does Murata feel about Ruriko?

With regard to zines, this week I followed through on one of the ideas that has been in the back of my mind for months: to make a mini zine with my typewriter. The way I did it was to fold the mini zine first, and then put the folded zine through the typewriter roller. I am not sure if this was the most effective method (the keyboard seemed to jump and skip a letter more often) but it was fun and had me finding joy in embracing the imperfections; the typos, the winding words (literally) and more.

I also got to use the scanning function in my printer for the first time (either in a long while, or ever). What magic! I put a piece of paper into the machine, scan it, and then I have a copy that I can view on my computer and print again. I might need to play around with the settings a bit as some of the text in the copied document is a bit fainter than I would like, but suffice to say such experiments will be done with great joy.

Making zines by hand and with my typewriter and folding zines by hand has been a refreshing break from the computer. While the computer remains part of my workflow – for looking up words, for scanning, and more – I can get really focused while using my typewriter, just as I do when I am typing a blog post on my computer. With regard to looking up words, I actually dusted off a few of the reference books on my shelf. I brought out the “pocket” thesaurus (there is no way it would fit in one’s pocket) and used it to come up with words. My interactions with this book even inspired a poem.

Part of me wonders whether I should do some writing that is exclusively printed in zines and shared either with friends or by trading. And I am also thinking about new topics about which I could write a zine. How to write HTML? A HTML element reference guide? A series of haikus? A photo zine?

Speaking of creative work in the physical world, last night I had an idea. Maybe I should make a “Keep imagining :)” sign in the vein of the “Believe” sign in Ted Lasso. It might be nice to have a little motivational message somewhere close. In tandem, I have stowed away in the back of my mind the intention to purchase a print of an artwork when I go to a museum so that I can bring a bit more colour to the walls around.

In terms of studying, I finished all the textbook reading I needed to do this week, went through our materials on evaluating information, worked on my first assignment, and looked ahead to the next one to help me prepare. The first assignment is due next week. I have almost finished, but have a few things to edit before I am ready to submit the work. I will also get my final grade for my first year next week, to which I am looking forward.

Music corner

This week I listened to a mix of jazz, hip-hop, pop, and electric music. Here are a few songs I really enjoyed:

Sleeper (We Like It Here) by Snarky Puppy (h/t Thomas for the recommendation)
This cover of Taylor Swift’s Cowboy Like Me by Alice Kristiansen
Calgary by Bon Iver, specifically the recording of the now decade-old performance of the song at the Sydney Opera House, and this recording of Bon Iver performing Skinny Love in 2008.
Collective Imagination by Baldower (this is the artist who makes music at the Beyond Tellerrand conferences that I love)
True Colours by Cyndi Lauper
tanagers in paradise by ioflow
Decksandrumsandrockandroll by The Propellerheads
The Joy of Living by Amamelia
And so much more…

I also started using Bandcamp this week. There is so much great music on there! If you use Bandcamp, I would love tips on how to make the most of the website.

Thoughts, wandering

I need to fix the search feature on my website. I think I tried to add too many features at one time when I built it a few weeks ago and, as a result, the feature isn’t working especially well. The words start small echo in my mind.
I have been thinking about re-building a DVD collection over time. I purchased The West Wing on Amazon before I deleted my account there, and so now I am having to re-purchase episodes I want to watch on Apple TV. If I had kept my DVD boxset, I would have saved a lot…
I am interested in how songs are written. I tried to write one this week, sort of. I wouldn’t say what I wrote was any good, but I did try, using a cadence from a line of a Bon Iver song to help give me a rhythm along which I could write words. I am not good at singing, but it was nice to try something new.
Even though I bookmarked a lot of links to include in my weeknotes this week, I still feel like I read so much more.
I am slowly working my way through The Story of Art. It is a fascinating read.
I have closed down rainfall [dot] scot, my website that reported how much rain fell in different areas in Scotland with comparisons across the same month in different years (e.g. see all rainfall for all March months in the last five years). I used this website, but two factors came at the same time that would mean a complete rewrite. First, the site was my only site using PHP. I turned off PHP after the announcement of the vulnerabilities this week. I upgraded PHP, but then I realised it might be better if I rewrite the software to Python, a language with which I am more familiar. I started doing the rewrite, only to realise the government open data API I was using, from SEPA, has updated, and the government’s website itself has updated. It still doesn’t slice the data the way I was, but the update looks good. Alas, however, I was already not too excited about a ground-up rewrite, and having to navigate a new API added to the friction of moving, so I decided to retire the project. Maybe I will bring it back one day.
I like slowly tending to the HTML of my website, making tiny changes when I see places that I want to improve.
I keep my personal email inbox in an open tab at all times. This week I realised that it might be adding unnecessary stress to my days. I end up spending so much time getting into the headspace to really consider and provide a thoughtful response to an email that emails stack up for a few days, or weeks. I think I am going to try to keep the tab closed and check in less regularly. Any thoughts on how to think about this are most welcome.
My process for writing weeknotes, which, this week, involved going through many bookmarks, feels like it requires a different working mode from my other writing; here, fragmentary thoughts formed as bullet points are part of the form, and the work on the "Miscellanea" section involves a degree of curation. I don't have any further comments, but suffice to say I am happy I am embarking on this experiment.

Miscellanea

!complexity’s article “disconnecting from feeling hopeless” met me at the right time. I still believe small changes can make all the difference.
Via The Guardian: “‘It’s magic’: scientists rediscover how to make ancient Roman colour-changing glass”. All I can say is Wow.
This week I was thinking about how Artemis could better support multi-lingual reading. In that post I linked to a fascinating talk about languages on the internet. The talk is 19 years old, but is still full of insights.
I loved reading V.H.’s contribution to the IndieWeb Carnival this month: “Flyleaves, foldouts and frontispieces: Celebrating overlooked pages”. As of writing, there is still time to participate in this month’s Carnival.
Veronique’s collection of images and web pages related to zines, curated in the Zines > Screens are.na channel, is so inspiring.
More zine links:
- How to Look Up
- 51 Ideas for Your Next Zine
Today is crisp sandwich day (“crisp” in the British sense of the word). To all of those partaking in an appropriate celebration, may your sandwiches be most tasty. (Alas, I don’t really buy crisps, so I am missing out this year, but I will never miss a moment to appreciate a sandwich.)
- My site’s seasonal emoji code is why I remember things like this. It is always a joy to go to my website and be reminded of an event like this. It is also the 16th anniversary of the release of Taylor Swift’s Speak Now album, commemorated by the 💜 emoji.

Thank you for reading! My inbox is open if you have any recommendations or ideas that follow from this weeknote.

The Joy of Living Collective Imagination The Story of Art I still believe small changes can make all the difference. how Artemis could better support multi-lingual reading My inbox is open there is still time to participate in this month’s Carnival SEPA disconnecting from feeling hopeless 51 Ideas for Your Next Zine Thomas Flyleaves, foldouts and frontispieces: Celebrating overlooked pages tanagers in paradise Zines > Screens are.na channel, Catch Me at the Ballpark ‘It’s magic’: scientists rediscover how to make ancient Roman colour-changing glass this recording of Bon Iver performing Skinny Love Calgary by Bon Iver This cover of Taylor Swift’s Cowboy Like Me True Colours Sleeper (We Like It Here) languages on the internet How to Look Up

The physical book experience - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-24T19:45:00.000Z

Since I am done with The Left Hand of Darkness and with The House on the Borderland—both with a pending review coming soon—I decided I would give Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah a shot at last.

Even though I have a digital copy, I owned this one in paperback format, and decided to go with the analog experience!

My edition is pocket sized (it fits on the back pocket of my jeans at least) and the first thing I did before I started reading it was make a papercover for it, which helps with preservation and privacy.

I have to say, the experience has been very enjoyable so far. I have read 55% of the book by now during my work commute and I’m completely gripped to it.

On my previous two reads I would often get sleepy mid-paragraph. Maybe I’m simply very invested on this story, but I think that there are a couple things I have to do with a paperback that keep my mind’s subconscious occupied a bit.

Grip the book itself without covering the text.
Keep the book open with both hands or with a specific hold.
Make sure the sunlight hits the page I’m reading at a good angle.
Make sure there is any light at all to be able to read.
Keep the bookmark out of the way, and place it once I’m done.
Write down the page count since there are no stats.
Look up words I don’t understand by other means.

One thing that happened unexpectedly was creasing the spine of the book. I hadn’t really considered the difference in quality between pocket-sized and slightly bigger paperbacks. My copy of Dune (the first book) stays open and won’t crease the spine, meanwhile the pocket edition of Messiah won’t stay open by itself. The low quality binding is annoying, and the crease was painful, but then again, such is life sometimes. Besides, a book is made to be used!

In the end, reading physically has some caveats, but there’s a lot to appreciate about it. Despite the issues of cheaply made books nowadays, most of the ones I own are bigger and better made. I’m looking forward to checking those out, since we can only go up from there!

This is day 58 of #100DaysToOffload

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2026-10-24 19:47: Hooman. I believe it is dinner time. - Kev Quirk

2026-10-24T18:47:00.000Z

Hooman. I believe it is dinner time.

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Book Review: Get Ahead of Being Dead by Evie King ★★★★☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-24T11:34:25.000Z

After reading Evie King's previous book Ashes To Admin - Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer I was eager to read her not-quite-a-sequel.

We know what happens after death; paperwork. Gas bills need to be cancelled, funeral wishes need to be carried out, money needs to be apportioned between warring family members. When you die, you won't be there to experience the annoyance and distress - but other people will. So do you help them or not?

This book is a chatty and informal guide to how to set out your wishes - including that you have no wishes.

Much like her previous book, it cheerfully mixes anecdotes about death with a powerful political message about how we treat the dead (and, I suppose, nearly dead).

It is one of those rare eBooks which is probably better as a paper book because the end of every chapter has a few dozen questions to fill in. Some are seemingly banal (library card number) and other potentially a little distressing (who do you not want invited to your funeral). The aim is to keep the answers somewhere prominent so that, come the inevitable, there's a one-stop-shop for all your deadmin.

Evie does an excellent job of making the slightly terrifying first steps accessible and approachable. It's fully trans, non-binary, and poly inclusive. It doesn't shy away from some of the more uncomfortable aspects of death, but it really does feel like the author is having a coffee & natter with you.

The style won't be for everyone. I think I'd rather have this as just a plain list of questions. But, then again, I did find it compelling to read the stories about what happens when things go wrong. So maybe I don't know myself as well as I think. Say, what song do I want playing at my funeral?

There's no doubt this is a slightly challenging and provocative read - but you should absolutely buy a copy for yourself and fill it in. Whether you buy it for your friends and relatives…

Pure Comments and the Fediverse - Kev Quirk

2026-10-24T09:51:00.000Z

I recently wrote about Privacy and Webmentions to make the case — mostly to myself — for adding Fediverse integration to Pure Comments.

A few people pushed back in the comments, but my position could generally be summarised with "if it's a public post, it's fair game."

Then this morning I read this post by Manu and it's completely changed my opinion.

Having now read the Webmention spec it never presents Webmentions as being "comments". At all times they're referred to as "notifications". More specifically:

A Webmention is a notification that one URL links to another. For example, Alice writes an interesting post on her blog. Bob then writes a response to her post on his own site, linking back to Alice's original post. Bob's publishing software sends a Webmention to Alice notifying that her article was replied to, and Alice's software can show that reply as a comment on the original post.

The Webmention spec

That's not what I implemented in Pure Comments.

So what's the plan?

My plan is to completely remove all Fediverse functionality from Pure Comments in the next release. The existing Webmention endpoint will remain so that Pure Comments can still send/receive Webmention notifications to/from other blogs.

Pure Comments will no longer integrate with the Fediverse at all.

This will also be a massive simplification of the Pure Comments code, so I'm looking forward to that as the Fediverse integration is very difficult to manage, and honestly I've already implemented a couple of "hacks" to fix small issues. So I won't be too sad to see it go from a development perspective.

Some people are going to be pissed off at this - many like the Fedi integration, and I like it too. But having read Manu's perspective, I agree with him.

If you're using the Pure Comments Fedi integration and want to keep using it after the next release, my advice would be to either fork Pure Comments, or stay on the current version.

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Morning coffee - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z

For the last month I have had a bag of coffee in the cupboard with enough beans to make one or two cups. I usually drink tea on weekdays, and prefer to have coffee while I am out and about, but because there is a storm forecast, and we had a storm yesterday evening too, I thought I would stay cosy this morning and take a slower day. This coffee will come in handy.

When I went to make my coffee this morning, I had to prepare all my equipment that had been stowed away in my cupboards behind and next to the tea tins and other things I use daily. In my head I had the list of all I would need. Coffee beans, a conical coffee brewer that makes delicious coffee, my gooseneck kettle, filter papers. It felt like past James had done future James a favour by not drinking the coffee on any passing day, rather waiting for the right moment.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Outside the trees are still and the sky is pink, following a night of heavier winds and many hours of rain. I am admiring how the pink clouds complement the yellow leaves on the tall trees who hold onto their colour despite the winds of yesterday.

I cusp my warm cup of coffee between my two hands, feeling the warmth of a new day.

Published on Citation Needed: "On Meidas Defense: cryptocurrency, sanctions, and Trump quid pro quo" - Molly White's activity feed

2026-10-23T20:10:04.000Z

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

On Meidas Defense: cryptocurrency, sanctions, and Trump quid pro quo

Last week I joined Joe Plenzler on the Meidas Defense podcast to talk about crypto. Meidas Defense is the MeidasTouch Network’s national security show, so we spent more time than I usually do on crypto as a geopolitical problem, in addition to a consumer protection one. The full episode and transcript are up on the Meidas newsletter, and there’s a shorter cut on YouTube: The use of crypto for sanctions evasion isn’t something I’ve covered in depth yet, and so this was a great opportunity to d

Final Fantasy IV - I finally beat one! - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-23T14:40:00.000Z

I have known of Final Fantasy for ages now. It was one of the first franchises I discovered by myself, outside the usual Nintendo games, FIFA or Halo. I remember learning about RPGs and figuring out what turn based combat was, I thought that such a granular level of control over character actions would be kinda neat, although I ended up focusing a bit more on Pokemon.

Downloading a ROM of Final Fantasy I & II for Game Boy Advance, to play on my HTC ChaChaCha and mapping its physical keys to control the game is quite the memory! But I died and died and died and I gave up on that first game. I was still too green, unfamiliar with what old games were like. Pokemon let me continue after dying, going back to a Pokecenter, but here? I could die and lose everything. I could only save from the world map, and I never bothered to learn how.

Later I also realized that the first games on the franchises were rather punishing, and that FFIV is where they start to actually focus on a story too. I did choose to focus on FFVI and FFVII though, since they were the best ones, so I played them for a while and made decent progress on them, so I took my time to get to IV. It’s funny how it ended up as the first Final Fantasy I beat!

At some point early in 2022, my family and I went on a trip, and I brought my PSP with me! Back then I didn’t write blogposts as often as I do now, and I didn’t keep track of my gaming either.

But looking at my save data, that’s when I finally decided to give Final Fantasy IV: The Compete Collection a spin at last. I had heard it was the best way to enjoy the classic, so the time finally came.

Enough backstory, how’s the actual game?

Story

This game has an actual story! Though the main focus is on Cecil, a Dark Knight that leads the Red Wings, a group of Flying Ships serving the kingdom of Baron, alongside Kain, his childhood friend who also commands the Dragoons. The story begins when Cecil questions the actions he’s ordered to do, which result on destruction and despair wherever the Red Wings go.

We meet multiple characters along the way, which will join the party as the game continues, all of them will have defined classes and traits. So each one has equipment and unique characteristics. Some of the characters will be affected by the actions you did before, some will not trust you, and others you’ll have to meet and help out with their journeys. With a dozen playable characters, not all of them get to shine as much as the main cast, some are straight up kinda useless, but there’s some great designs and strategies to many of them too.

The story itself is a bit of a classic hero’s journey, with Cecil facing his own actions and trying to make ammends while traveling all over the world to fix some of the mayhem he has caused, and doing everything they can to stop the big bad guy from bringing catastrophe on the planet.

It is not the most incredible story every, but it’s a classic one with plenty of fun tropes, romance moments, funny dialogue and the like. I really had fun going through all of it, and it even turns into a bit of a Sci-Fi by the end.

Gameplay

This is the first game in the series that featured the ATB combat system. Instead of the back and forth of waiting for your turn, there’s a bar that needs to fill up before you can perform an action. The party and the enemies have these ATB meters. This means that you can end up hit multiple times if you take too long to attack of use some spell. There is a “Wait” mode that let’s you choose at your own leisure, which I quickly turned on.

Other than combat however, you will also explore around the map where you can move freely, although some areas require certain vehicles to get past. The usual gist.

Of course, there’s also random encounters, in the world and during dungeons.

Dungeons vary in theme, but they all amount to the same classic tropes. Secret passages, lots of chests, lots of monsters-in-a-box, and some story sequence or cool item by the end. We’ll explore caves, mountains, castles, sewers, and all the typical stuff.

It’s a turn based JRPG, and this one doesn’t have anything new or unique by modern standards. What it has is a classic formula that mostly holds up to this day.

If I were to complain about something. I wish they had done diagonal movement as an option. The grid style movement was really annoying at times.

Inside one of the dungeons of the game! Ain't my PSP pretty though?

Music

The soundtrack of Final Fantasy is instantly recognizable. Nobuo Uematsu composed an absolute masterpiece, not surprising at all, to be honest.

The PSP remake of this game turned the classic SNES score and brought it to modern times. This entry even let’s you choose between the original and the modern soundtrack, so there’s no reason to complain. I played with the enhanced score, and had a wonderful time.

My favorite piece has to be Theme of Love, call me a romantic, I just can’t help it. There’s people out there who walked down the aisle with this one!

Anyway, all of it is pretty fantastic. I think there were a couple sections with weird themes though, that last dungeon feels a little goofy to me because of the music, but nothing major!

Art

Once again, the PSP remake features very detailed sprites that are a far cry from the original spritework back in the SNES days. People seem to have mixed opinions about it, but given how bare bones the Pixel Remasters are. I think public opinion has started to change towards updates with higher resolution sprites. I think the style used by the Dragon Quest I, II and II HD-2D remakes made people see that high-res pixel art really does have a place!

I really enjoy the look of pretty much everything, and the character designs are awesome. Playing on an original PSP, with the original screen resolution and everything, I couldn’t find any flaws. I have to say, the monster designs here look absolutely stunning, especially the bosses which already made for excellent pixel art on the original game, look better than ever here.

I scrolled through the Bestiary multiple times during breaks here because of how cool the designs were.

The game does feature high definition cutscenes with 3D animation at times. I think they are really cool additions to the game.

During combat, some spells and attack will include 3D animation too, on top of the spritework, and they don’t feel out of place at all, I really enjoyed how smooth they were, adding to the cool factor of it all.

The combat screen, look at that gorgeous sprite artwork, and how cool my PSP is!

Overall

It feels to have so little to say about each aspect of this title. There’s rarely anything new to it compared to Chrono Trigger and later Final Fantasy entries. This is pretty much a game that ticks all the boxes, and does everything you would expect when you think “Turn Based SNES JRPG.”

This is the first Final Fantasy I’ve ever completed, despite 40+ hours on FFVI and almost 20 hours on FFVII. It is kind of fitting that the first one had to be the classic. The one where everything else builts on top of. The first one in the series that was released for an american audience.

While the original trilogy can feel kind of aimless. From here on, there are characters and plots and reasons. Even though some of it doesn’t make sense, and some things just happens, it still works out, because it’s an old game and you can imagine and fill in the blanks for yourself.

I actually think I may revisit this one. It is a masterpiece, especially at nailing the fundamentals, it just has that nice sense of progression and familiarity to it. It’s also less than 30 hours long, on the short side for the genre, which helps a bunch to go through it all fast—even if it took me four years to do that.

Anyway, definitely check this out. I think the PSP version is genuinely the best one, featuring auto battle mode, excellent artwork, a nice script—though some say it’s tampered compared to the original—and all the extra dungeons and cutscenes that are lacking in the Pixel Remaster. It was very nice to have a few extra rounds using previous characters and getting new weapons and equipment for them there. Although I did the finale with the original party, of course!

I played this on my PSP and ended up with a playtime of about 33 hours, 12 of which were played in the span of a month! This game really managed to grip me all over again, and it kept me hooked until I rolled credits. Now there’s an extra dungeon waiting for me with new bosses and all that. There’s also Interlude and The After Years, which are whole new stories inside of FFIV’s universe. I may get to them one day, but I’m plenty happy with the base game as it is!

This is day 57 of #100DaysToOffload

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Notable links: September 23, 2026 - Werd I/O

2026-10-23T13:09:44.000Z

Most Fridays, I share a handful of pieces that caught my eye at the intersection of technology, media, and society.

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I sat down with New_ Public to talk about building in the open, local news, the open social web, and more. I enjoyed the conversation very much; here it is.

The News + AI Field Report

The News + AI Field Report for 2022-2025, produced by Djordje Padejski in conjunction with ASU’s Knight Center for the Future of News, is a landmark analysis of how newsrooms are experimenting with AI. The interactive app is also a really useful way to explore the 160 projects covered by this research.

I’ve been mulling over one of the findings described in the summary:

“Newsrooms are most worried about the business threat from AI and have built the least for it. Interviews reveal widespread anxiety about the effects of AI on site traffic, audience behavior and news business models. Yet relatively few projects focus on revenue, subscriptions or fundraising.”

20% of projects were business-related, but every fundraising project and over half of the business projects were grantees in the American Journalism Project’s AI programs. If those newsrooms are stripped out, the numbers drop significantly.

I think there’s a subtext worth talking about: I suspect the innovation projects listed here (that weren’t a part of a specific cohort) are a temperature check on how newsrooms are building technology / product experiments in general. If that’s the case, it implies that news is sticking to its comfort zone and spending much more time innovating on editorial concerns, and much less time experimenting with solutions for its existential business threats.

Reader-facing chatbots are a different angle on this: I’d call them a way for newsrooms to say they’re experimenting with AI without actually addressing a core user need. Newsroom websites are absolutely not where the chat layer should live (except, perhaps, for the use cases that provide deeper archive search for subscribers): AI users already have their own chatbots, which are the interfaces for all their AI-powered information. There are deeper ways AI could address user needs; the trick is that they would involve experimenting with the fundamental ways newsrooms do business. In turn, that requires both a willingness to do so, and much deeper collaboration between teams to make it happen.

So then the question becomes: how do we not just beef up journalism’s experiments in its business models, but the excitement and appetite to do so? Often the product teams that might be the owners of these kinds of experiments don’t (quite reasonably) own business models; how can those teams collaborate effectively? Funding from AJP clearly made a difference — is outside scaffolding required for this work to take place? How might product teams empower every team in the newsroom to run experiments?

These are much bigger questions than AI – and they’re questions newsrooms probably should be grappling with. In the meantime, I’m very grateful this analysis exists, and I hope it’s renewed to capture the year that follows.

The Three-Layer Cake: Public-Interest Information in an AI-Intermediated Age

Gina Chua and Adiel Kaplan at the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures have put together a report summarizing a year of convenings and conversations about how journalism might react to its intermediation by AI. I was privileged to take part and to read a draft version of this report.

I love the framing here: the three-layer cake is digestible (so to speak), and I think the conclusions are sound. The worrisome thing for journalism is that most newsrooms live in the creation layer — the creators who supply the information which informs answers and summaries — which is also the part of the stack where participants have the least leverage.

So we need open, shared, common infrastructure. I think we also need strong portability standards. I’d argue that another word for the consumption layer as described here is profiling; tools at the consumption layer need to know a lot about their users so they can provide the most relevant information.

As the report says:

“This is the layer that holds the relationship with the end user, where their data resides and the understanding of their information needs and desires accumulates and deepens over time. Owning that relationship will be one of the prizes of the AI age; not only will it unlock deep knowledge of individuals, it could lock them into particular providers.”

And any solution needs to keep this in mind:

“At the consumption layer, [points of leverage] involve working to ensure that the knowledge of people’s wants and needs is not the monopoly of organizations that may not have the public’s interest at heart.”

Profile data is accumulated, private, and usually non-portable. The consumption layer also represents the greatest risk to creators from platform business decisions, both in terms of the business models of those platforms and which creators they choose to feature. Open portability standards and protocols — combined with full user control of their data — can scale, create useful competition, and empower users in the process.

Team Dynamics Weaken When Employees Turn to AI Instead of Colleagues

Relationships take time, effort, and practice to keep alive. So in a sense, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see this finding from a survey of more than a thousand desk workers across 20 industries:

“The more they turned to AI instead of a teammate, the more their trust in each other and their ability to coordinate seemed to erode.”

It turns out that if you start asking an AI system instead of your colleague, coordination and trust drop by at least 20%. These technologies are still relatively new; I imagine that over time this will continue to drop. People who feel isolated in their work today will feel more so as this trend solidifies. Similarly, people who feel untrusted today will only feel more so as their teams continue to ask AI systems instead of them.

That doesn’t mean AI is always inherently bad. Like all work processes, it demands that we think hard about culture: what kinds of behaviors and feelings do we want to promote? What’s important to the organization? And do we care more about an individual’s productivity than creating a high-performing team? (We shouldn’t.)

This also rings true:

“People consistently underestimate how enjoyable a human conversation turns out to be. Whether the motivation is fear of judgment or a desire not to impose, avoiding a colleague is hardly a new workplace behavior. AI now provides an alluring alternative that forgoes the social and emotional costs of getting support.”

One way we can counteract this is by making asking for help (and giving it) an explicit norm in our team cultures, and leading by example by doing it ourselves. In remote or hybrid teams that rely on tools like Slack, that also means doing it in a non-private channel, so that other team members can see it and it can become normalized.

Although a bit of a cliché and genuinely heinous if they’re done poorly, I think standups can also be really helpful here, if you can do them live. Here, everyone goes round a circle and talks briefly about what they’re working on, with explicit needs for help made as part of the update. Implicit requests for help can be answered once everyone has gone around the circle.

Can AI help? Totally. As the authors discuss in this piece, you can use technology to help conversations to happen asynchronously, particularly on teams that spread across multiple timezones, and it can actively facilitate connections between people.

Let’s do that, instead of displacing our people and our relationships. AI can be a facilitator between people, but it should never be an intermediator: our relationships, our communities, and our companies will suffer.

Some final words on Foursquare

I freaking loved Foursquare. It was a wonderful way to explore cities with the help of my friends: in the same way that Upcoming was my best way of figuring out which events I should be going to, Foursquare let me know which restaurants, bars, parks, etc, were worth checking out. If Chris ranked a cocktail bar, you know it was amazing. Aaron always found the best coffee spots. And so on: my friends were better recommenders than any other source I had.

My own map lists every state and country I’ve been to over the last few decades. If I’m back in Amsterdam, I can figure out which Indonesian food place I really loved, because there it is on my map. (It’s Paon Bali, by the way. You’re welcome.)

So this was sad to see as an outcome. I think there are a bunch of important lessons here – not least the dangers of raising too much too soon without tethering the business to revenue. But at the same time, Foursquare launched during a startup explosion, and this kind of fundraising was the norm; I don’t fault Dennis for his decisions. The bigger problem seems to have been the private equity leadership more recently. I can’t think of a time when private equity hasn’t led to toxic leadership and a strip-mined company with an inequitable deal for employees.

Which leads me to an obvious problem. That check-in data is intimate stuff. It probably shouldn’t be something private equity can just inherit and do whatever with. Journalists and activists should hopefully not have been using Foursquare to check in; if they did, that data can almost certainly have been bought for analysis. And then a future-facing question: how might we have these kinds of social effects without sacrificing privacy?

Regardless, I’m pouring one out for Foursquare. I loved it. Thanks to everyone involved for building something that I found genuinely meaningful.

More phishing messages via Booking.com and Novotel - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-23T11:34:15.000Z

A few days ago I booked a Novotel hotel on Booking.com - two days later I received these phishing messages via WhatsApp. Both knew my exact name, phone number, location of stay, and date of stay.

Luckily, both were fairly inept. Let's take a quick look at them.

The first came from a Portuguese business account.

Obviously the name doesn't match that of the large chain hotel I booked with. The domain name doesn't look anything like what I'd expect from either Booking.com or Novotel. They note this isn't an emergency - presumably to bypass the warnings that you shouldn't act on any message trying to convey a sense of urgency. The "Cancel" button on the bottom makes this look more genuine though.

The second one is slightly different.

This is from a much more generic business account, albeit a UK-based one. The date is formatted differently. There's no cancel button. But the wording is identical.

So are these both from the same scammer?

The domains were both registered on the same day - the 21st of October - within hours of each other. They're both protected by CloudFlare, but were registered at two different registrars - one Chinese and one Japanese. Lots of scammers use CloudFlare (who seem to relish in being the protectors of all sorts of unsavoury characters). A smart scammer would register their domains on multiple registrars to avoid all of them getting banned at once. So that's a bit inconclusive.

Looking at the source code for the pages, they appear to be identical.

That means one of two things:

There is one incompetent scammer who doesn't keep a record of which messages they've sent to which victims.
There are multiple scammers who are all using the same "off the shelf" phishing kit.

But how did my data leak in the first place?

The first place to look, as always, is within. My Booking.com account uses a strong and unique password. It has a unique email address tied to it. I have MFA via an authenticator app. I regularly use the "Sign out of other sessions" options in the Booking.com app.

My email is similarly secure. And, frankly, if scammers were in there then they could do a lot more damage than sending me a phishing link!

That leaves either Booking.com, Novotel, or one of their systems.

It's fair to say this is a persistent problem with Booking.com - they were breached in 2023 and these sorts of phishing attacks happen regularly.

Although I couldn't find any record of Accor (the owners of Novotel) being breached, it's fair to say other hotels suffer from this problem. It seems depressingly easy to con or bribe a worker into allowing scammers access into a booking system.

This sort of "reservation hijacking" is now depressingly common.

There's a slight twist in the tale. A few moments after I made the original reservation, I received this message directly from the hotel via the Booking.com messaging system:

I can only assume that Novotel are aware of the persistent problem they're facing and this is their attempt to deflect blame.

So I called the hotel (using the number on their website) and they confirmed my reservation. When I mentioned the phishing messages the hotel were very quick to tell me they were a scam, that I shouldn't click any links, and to delete them right away. I did ask if they'd suffered a data breach but, understandably, they don't tell receptionists that.

I've reported the problem to both Accor and Booking.com - we'll see who comes up with the most convincing explanation.

Stay safe out there!

Weeknote #2023 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-10-23T10:56:15.000Z

I've started work on a card game and I have no idea what I'm doing so if anyone has any good articles to check out, send them my way.

I was personally attacked at the weekend while driving through Basingstoke and saw a sign for a museum exhibit entitled "I Grew Up 90s". Given the 90s were only 10 years ago^[1], this seems premature.

DNS Museum is a reference for the odd, inventive, and always impractical things people have done with DNS. Maths over DNS anyone?.

Speaking of DNS, Record Relay is an experiment to see how long a chain can be made with TXT records. I'm number two. And a few others.

Sophie wrote a great post about storing recipes including this incredible line "originally storing them in Evernote, which is what we did in the 2010s". Remember Evernote? I'm trying out Mealie at the moment and I like that it costs me nothing but I could make my life easier with a more advanced app like Paprika.

I tooted at Dan because we were both listening to Ms Rachel's album and he posted back this eldritch horror of an image featuring me, him, and Ry.

Keenan wrote a great post^[2] about their adventures moving to Poland and buying lemons, among other things.

I really like this analog defaults post.

XKCD was on point on Wednesday morning.

This is my favourite Inktober I've done so far.

Everhand is a handwriting font that has three versions of every letter so no two letters are the same next to each other. Incredible stuff.

Shut up. ⤾
All their posts are great, talented git ⤾