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As a dedicated and professional computer scientician[^true], I believe that all indices *must* start at zero. Not one, not two, but zero[^five]. [^true]: I’ve even got certificates in it! [^five]: [Five is *right* out!](https://youtu.be/SNTzOBKs1bA?t=74) The zeroth[^zeroth] element is sacrosanct to our creed; for in the beginning there was *nothing*. [^zeroth]: Or is it “noughtst”? If you’re…

My name is Terence(/ˈtɛɹəns) Eden(ˈiːdən/). Modern HTML allows the user to use [``](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ruby) to annotate text. This is *usually* used for [furigana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana) – which allows pronunciation to be placed above words. For example: “シン・ゴジラ (Shin Godzilla)” shows you how to pronounce both words if you are unfamiliar…

I had never seen Pertwee’s final story. So I was overjoyed when an anonymous reader got it for me [from my wishlist](https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/13GFCFR2B2IX4?linkCode=sl2&tag=shksprblogwish-21). It is an utterly bonkers story which *nearly* makes sense. Let’s address the elephant in the room first. The “yellow face” isn’t acceptable now and shouldn’t have been acceptable back then.…

Did you know that Greg Davies’ BBC comedy series [The Cleaner](https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p09pm359/the-cleaner) is a remake of a *German* comedy series called Der Tatortreiniger? Last year I compared the English episodes to their German counterparts. Only one episode was unique to the UK version – the rest were more-or-less faithful remakes. What about [the new series…

Here’s a “fun” thought experiment. Imagine a website which let you sign in using only your username and TOTP code. No passwords. No magic links emailed to you. No FIDO tokens. No codes via SMS. *Just* a TOTP generated and displayed on your device. Is that useful? Sensible? Practical? It’s certainly technically *possible*. Store the username, store the TOTP seed, done. Your users can now log…

Suppose you have lots of links on a page. You want to highlight the ones which point to `example.com` – is that possible in CSS without using JavaScript? Yes! This scrap of code will turn all those links red: “`css a[href^=”https://example.com”%5D { color: red; } “` Now, there are a few gotchas with this code. * It matches the string *exactly*. So `https://example.com` will **not** match…

In the early part of the 20th Century, there was a fad for “Radium”. The magical, radioactive substance that glowed in the dark. The market had decided that Radium was The Next Big Thing and tried to shove it into every product. There were [radioactive toys](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/we-used-to-put-radium-in-coffee/263408/), [radioactive…

A decade ago, I appeared on the [361 Podcast to give my advice about mobile security](https://www.361podcast.com/s07e04). This was the era of the iPhone 5 and Android KitKat. BlackBerry was trying to have (yet another) resurgence and Nokia was desperately trying to keep Windows Phone alive. What advice did I give then, and is it still relevant? ## Stay Sceptical > In at number five is just stay…

This is a fucking audacious thriller! I literally stayed up way past my bedtime, tearing through the chapters, gasping out loud. The core of the story is simple – a woman steals her dead friend’s manuscript and passes it off as her own. Will she get caught? The hook (for want of a better term) is that the plagiarist is white and the original author is Asian-American. It’s often said that most…

This is an *excellent* pop-science book. It gently weaves a personal tale (nearly getting crushed by a whale) into the current cutting-edge research of animal communication. It takes in along the way philosophy, geopolitics, and the crushing inevitability of death. At its heart is this question – if modern AI is brilliant at extracting semantic meaning from unstructured data, can it do the same…

What does it mean to block someone on a social media site? Way back in the mists of time, we dealt with trolls on Usenet with the almighty PLONK – [PLaced On Newsgroup Killfile](https://members.newsdemon.com/what-is-plonk.php). It meant your newsreader never downloaded their posts. They could rant at you all day long, and you’d never hear from them. It’s what we would nowadays call “Mute”. But,…

This is a bit niche! A few months ago, I received a mysterious £25 from National Savings and Investments. A prize from the Premium Bonds! Not enough to make me rich, but enough for a takeaway. Oddly, after checking their app and website, I could find **no record** of the win. Curious. A few days later, this letter popped through my door. My bond was one of a tranche purchased in 2013. I sold it…

The Mirror has a rather wonderful image gallery of [behind the scenes photos from Doctor Who](https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/gallery/doctor-who-behind-the-scenes-1778024). Lots of lovely black-and-white photos of classic stories. And then, right at the end, this: Cor! Four classic Doctors each with a mobile! This photoshoot was, apparently, done at the Hammersmith Ark which was holding an…

I went for a spelunk[^spelunk] through an ancient codebase a few weeks ago which contained a curious regex that I just couldn’t grok[^grok]. [^spelunk]: v 1: explore natural caves [syn: {cave}, {spelunk}] [^grok]:(/grok/, /grohk/, vt. 1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. “` {

Big Finish have been pumping out Doctor Who audio dramas for quarter of a century. But this, apparently, is the first time they’ve recorded one live and in front of an audience. It was *glorious!* Big Finish could have cheaped out – even with a bare set and a cast of newbies, the fans would have flocked to it. Instead, we got this lushly decorated set: The console pulsed away during the…

It may be hard for you to understand this; reading is a skill. Unless you have recently started learning a new language with an unfamiliar writing system, you probably do not remember the tedious and agonising process of having to train your brain to recognise printed characters. Extracting meaning from the words you are reading is seamless. The occasional antediluvian aphorism notwithstanding,…

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series – Her Majesty’s Royal Coven. The basic premise is that there is a secretive cabal of witches which run a shadow government organisation. There’s skulduggery, slattern-ish behaviour, and sexy scandals. And lots of violence and death. And a big dollop of modern-misogyny to make it particularly zeitgeisty. It is delightful in its playfulness with…