.ss TLD opening for direct registrations


National Communication Authority (NCA) ssNIC Registry Sunrise Registration Policy July 2024 1. Duration: The Registry will run the registration process according to the below timetable: Sunrise Period: 45 Days (1st August – 15th September 2024) Landrush Period: 30 Days (20th September – 10th October 2024) Early Access Period: 10 Days (15th October – 25th October 2024) General Availability: 1st November 2024

It looks like South Sudan's Top Level Domain is going to start allowing direct registrations! Long-time readers of this blog will know that it's possible to register .me.ss domain names - there are various other 3rd level domains you can buy. But, from the 1st of August 2024, you'll be able to apply for a […]

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One Year With A Solar Battery


Chart. Battery 102kWh, Grid 27kWh, Solar 147kWh. Total 277kWh.

To recap, we have 5,040W of solar panels, with a 3.6kW inverter, and a 4.8kWh battery. That's a lot of (expensive) gear! What does it mean in terms of energy savings? Over the last 12 months we have: 4,000 kWh generated by the solar panels. 1,200 kWh purchased from the grid. 1,200 kWh sold to […]

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QR Code Hijacking Attempts Are Pretty Inept


A poster behind some glass. A paper QR code is stuck on top of the glass. It is easy to see it is a replacement code.

I've been writing about QR codes since 2007 - long before they were fashionable. Because QR Codes are so cheap to produce, there has always been a concern that attackers might print out their own codes and stick them over legitimate ones. When I first wrote about QR Hijacking in 2011, I said that such […]

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Corporate Blogging is Hard; Open a GitHub Issue Instead


The Prisoner from the 1960s TV show giving the "be seeing you" sign.

(Inspired by this conversation between Jukesie and Himal) Lots of companies encourage their staff to blog. It's free PR! It makes them look like they're on the cutting edge of technology! It helps with recruitment! It can also be a corporate nightmare. What if the developer says something stupid? What if it accidentally reveals something […]

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Remove unnecessary closing slash on get_the_post_thumbnail() in WordPress


The HTML validator showing lots of info messages.

I am a pedant. I like it when validators say "nothing to report". No errors, no warnings, no information messages. My blog is plagued with messages on the HTML validator saying Info: Trailing slash on void elements has no effect and interacts badly with unquoted attribute values. By default, the WordPress function get_the_post_thumbnail() spits out […]

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Walkie Talkie Review (ZX-808)


Small blue radio in hand.

I am easily influenced. At EMF Camp, I saw my friends Skylar and Cameron using some nifty walkie-talkies out in the field. Skye (patiently) explained to me the joys of PMR446 and - because I was quite drunk I hastily bought some radios on Amazon. Hey, they were on special - £30 for a pair! […]

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Book Review: Ithaca - Claire North


Book cover. The Greek queen Penelope weaves.

I'm an absolute sucker for Claire North's books. She has an almost supernatural ability to weave an intricate yet satisfying tale, all while leaving the reader hungry for more. Ithaca presents a God's-eye-view of the story of Penelope. It's a fast, furious, and feminist story which plunges us straight into the middle of the Greek […]

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Cybersecurity and Shakespeare - a brief look at how technology can prevent tragedy


A pixelated Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, famously, shunned computers. Like some sort of retro hipster, he didn't write his plays on a laptop, refused to use spellcheck, and didn't register his copyright on the blockchain. Lord, what fools these mortals be! What would Shakespeare's plays have been like if their characters understood basic cybersecurity? Now, it is true that very […]

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Named Alternates for WordPress


Screenshot of Lynx, the text browser, showing named alternates.

HTML documents have the concept of an alternate representation of the document. For example, a page's header might say: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/feed"> That tells you there's an alternative representation of the page, what sort of content it is, and where it is located. That's nice. But it's hard for a browser to tell the […]

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Why is it so hard to chat to people nearby?


Pile of Lego minifig heads each with a different expression. Image by Andrzej Rembowski from Pixabay.

I recently went up to a conference in a city I'd never visited before. As I was sat on the train up, I wondered if any of the other passengers were also going to the conference. It's a bit socially awkward and creepy to go up to a bunch of strangers and interrogate them about […]

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