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Dr. Doe’s latest Sexplanations vlog is on polyamorous language, and despite being – or, perhaps, because I’m – a bit of a long-toothed polyamorist these days, fully a quarter or more of the terms she introduced were new to me! Fascinating!
I’ve been doing a course provided through work to try to improve my ability to connect with an audience over video.
This is my fourth week in the course, and I opted to revisit a video I made during my second week and try to do it again with more engagement, more focus, more punch, and more emotion. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. Interestingly, it somewhat mirrors my Howdymattic video from when I first started at Automattic, but I pivoted my “origin story” a little bit and twisted it to fit one of my favourite parts of the Automattic Creed.
Shot during the same outing as the Devil’s Quoits one. Also available on YouTube.
I’ve been doing a course provided through work to try to improve my ability to connect with an audience over video. For one of my assignments in this, my fourth week, I picked a topic out from the “welcome” survey I filled out when I first started the course. The topic: the Devil’s Quoits. This stone circle – not far from my new house – has such a bizarre history of construction, demolition, and reconstruction… as well as a fun folk myth about its creation… that I’d thought it’d make a great follow-up to my previous “local history” piece, Oxford’s Long-Lost Zoo. I’d already hidden a “virtual” geocache at the henge, as I previously did for the zoo: a video seemed like the next logical step.
My brief required that the video be only about a minute long, which presented its own challenge in cutting down the story I’d like to tell to a bare minimum. Then on top of that, it took me at least eight takes until I was confident that I’d have one I was happy with, and there’s still things I’d do differently if I did it again (including a better windbreak on my lapel mic, and timing my takes for when geese weren’t honking their way past overhead!).
In any case: part of the ritual of this particular course encourages you to “make videos… as if people will see them”, and I’ve been taking that seriously! Firstly, I’ve been sharing many of my videos with others either at work or on my blog, like the one about how GPS works or the one about the secret of magic. Secondly, I’ve been doing “extra credit” by recording many of my daily-standup messages as videos, in addition to providing them through our usual Slack bot.
Anyway, the short of it is: you’re among the folks who get to see this one. Also available on YouTube.
Hi, ONS! I know we haven’t really spoken since you ghosted me in 2011, but I just wanted to clear something up for you –
This is not a mistake (except for the missing last names):
Back in 2011 you thought it was a mistake, and this prevented my partner, her husband and I from filling out the digital version of the census. I’m sure it’s not common for somebody to have multiple cohabiting romantic relationships (though it’s possibly more common than some other things you track…), but surely an “Are you sure?” would be better than a “No you don’t!”
We worked around it in 2011 by using the paper forms. Apparently this way you still end up “correcting” our relationship status for us (gee, thanks!) but at least – I gather – the originals are retained. So maybe in a more-enlightened time, future statisticians might be able ask about the demographics of domestic nonmonogamy and have at least some data to work with from the early 21st century.
I know you’re keen for as many people as possible to do the census digitally this year. But unless you’ve fixed your forms then my family and I – and thousands of others like us – will either have to use the paper copies you’re trying to phase out… or else knowingly lie on the digital versions. Which would you prefer?
For “School at Home” this lockdown, this 7 y/o’s PE teacher challenged her to “build an obstacle course”.
Jack and the Beanstalk, as told by the kids via paper puppets. With thanks to Robin for direction, camera operation, editing and – I’m guessing – creative consultancy.
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While I was traipsing off around the countryside to commemorate the anniversary of the death of my dad, one of his former colleagues uploaded to YouTube a video that he originally produced for the UK Bus Awards Presentation Ceremony 2012.
As his son, it felt a little weird for me to be marking the occasion on what: the ninth anniversary of his death? It’s not even a nice round number. But clearly I’m not the only one whose mind drifted to my father on 19 February.
Fun fact: this photo – extracted from the video – was originally taken by me:
Maybe I should be asking for royalties! Or at least, using the video as an excuse to springboard my career as a professional photographer.
Well, maybe not then.
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A slightly tongue-in-cheek (see the “serial monogamy” chain and some of the subtitles!) but moderately-complete diagram of popular varieties of relationship structure. Obviously there’s gaps – relationships are as diverse as their participants – and lots of room for refinement, but the joy of an infographic is making visible the breadth of a field, not in providing encyclopaedic comprehension of that field. I especially like the attention to detail in “connecting” often-related concepts.
This checkin to geohash 2012-02-19 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Field behind Hill Barn, near the Gom’s Hole public footpath, in the valley beneath the hamlet of Clapton-on-the-Hill. About 4km outside the village of Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire.
On the second anniversary of the death of my father, a man who loved to get out into the world and get lost, I undertook my first geohashing expedition. As this seemed to be a good way to remember him I decided to repeat the experience on this, the ninth anniversary of his death, but the actual hashpoints for the day didn’t look interesting… so I opted to make my way to what would have been my nearest hashpoint on the day he died.
The weather looked horrible and the COVID lockdown (and working from home in general in recent years) has put me out of practice at cycling, so I thought a 40-50 mile round trip through the rolling hills of the Cotswolds was just the thing. This may have been a mistake, as my aching legs were able to testify for several days.
Cycling through Witney, over the hills behind Burford, and then across the Windrush valley and into Gloucestershire was a long, arduous, and damp journey, but what really got me was the wind picking up in the afternoon and giving me a headwind to fight against all the way back home.
Near the hashpoint I was able to lock my bike up at the junction between Sherbourne Street and Bourton Hill – a place shown on my map as “Gom’s Hole” which sounds exactly like what a D&D dungeon master would have a goblin would name his bar. From there I followed the footpath towards Farringdon. As the hashpoint drew closer I began to suspect that it would be unreachable: tall walls, fences, and hedges stood on both sides of the (flooded) footpath, but at the last minute they gave way to wide meadows. I turned off the path and crossed a dyke to the hashpoint, where I had a great view of hares and deer in the valley below. Minutes later, the owner of Hill Barn came over with her dog and asked what I was doing around the back of her land and why I was taking pictures, so I explained that I’d strayed from the footpath (true) because my GPS had told me too (technically true) but I was heading back down to what I could see was the path, now (true, if misleading).
She continued to watch me all the way back to my bike, so I changed my plans (which had been to eat a sandwich lunch and drink a pint of Guinness: my dad’s beer of choice) near the hashpoint and instead I cycled away to a nearby layby to have my lunch.
After a 48.3 mile round trip I got back home aching and exhausted, but pleased to have made it to this damp hashpoint.
GPX tracklog: Track 2021-02-19 RETROHASH 2012.gpx
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Basilisk collection
The basilisk collection (also known as the basilisk file or basilisk.txt) is a collection of over 125 million partial hash inversions of the SHA-256 cryptographic hash function. Assuming state-of-the art methods were used to compute the inversions, the entries in the collection collectively represent a proof-of-work far exceeding the computational capacity of the human race.[1][2] The collection was released in parts through BitTorrent beginning in June 2018, although it was not widely reported or discussed until early 2019.[3] On August 4th, 2019 the complete collection of 125,552,089 known hash inversions was compiled and published by CryTor, the cybersecurity lab of the University of Toronto.[4]
The existence of the basilisk collection has had wide reaching consequences in the field of cryptography, and has been blamed for catalyzing the January 2019 Bitcoin crash.[2][5][6]
…
Electronic Frontier Foundation cryptographer Brian Landlaw has said that “whoever made the basilisk is 30 years ahead of the NSA, and the NSA are 30 years ahead of us, so who is there left to trust?”[35]
…
This is fucking amazing, on a par with e.g. First on the Moon.
Presented in the style of an alternate-reality Wikipedia article, this piece of what the author calls “unfiction” describes the narratively believable-but-spooky (if theoretically unlikely from a technical standpoint) 2018 disclosure of evidence for a new presumed mathematical weakness in the SHA-2 hash function set. (And if that doesn’t sound like a good premise for a story to you, I don’t know what’s wrong with you! 😂)
Cryptographic weaknesses that make feasible attacks on hashing algorithms are a demonstrably real thing. But even with the benefit of the known vulnerabilities in SHA-2 (meet-in-the-middle attacks that involve up-to-halving the search space by solving from “both ends”, plus deterministic weaknesses that make it easier to find two inputs that produce the same hash so long as you choose the inputs carefully) the “article” correctly states that to produce a long list of hash inversions of the kinds described, that follow a predictable sequence, might be expected to require more computer processing power than humans have ever applied to any problem, ever.
As a piece of alternate history science fiction, this piece not only provides a technically-accurate explanation of its premises… it also does a good job of speculating what the impact
on the world would have been of such an event. But my single favourite part of the piece is that it includes what superficially look like genuine examples of what a hypothetical
basilisk.txt would contain. To do this, the author wrote a brute force hash finder and ran it for over a year. That’s some serious dedication. For those that were fooled by this seemingly-convincing evidence
of the realism of the piece, here’s the actual results of the hash alongside the claimed ones (let this be a reminder to you that it’s not sufficient to skim-read your hash comparisons,
people!):
basilisk:0000000000:ds26ovbJzDwkVWia1tINLJZ2WXEHBvItMZRxHmYhlQd0spuvPXb6cYFJorDKkqlA claimed: 0000000000000000000000161b9f84a187cc21b172bf68b3cb3b78684d8e9f17 actual: 00000000000161b9f84a187cc21b1752bf678bdd4d643c17b3b786684d8e9f17 basilisk:0000000001:dMHUhnoEkmLv8TSE1lnJ7nVIYM8FLYBRtzTiJCM8ziijpTj95MPptu6psZZyLBVA claimed: 0000000000000000000000cee5fe5df2d3034fff435bb40e8651a18d69e81460 actual: 0000000000cee5fe5df2d3034fff435bb4232f21c2efce0e8651a18d69e81460 basilisk:0000000002:aSCZwTSmH9ZtqB5gQ27mcGuKIXrghtYIoMp6aKCLvxhlf1FC5D1sZSi2SjwU9EqK claimed: 000000000000000000000012aabd8d935757db173d5b3e7ae0f25ea4eb775402 actual: 000000000012aabd8d935757db173d5b3ec6d38330926f7ae0f25ea4eb775402 basilisk:0000000003:oeocInD9uFwIO2x5u9myS4MKQbFW8Vl1IyqmUXHV3jVen6XCoVtuMbuB1bSDyOvE claimed: 000000000000000000000039d50bb560770d051a3f5a2fe340c99f81e18129d1 actual: 000000000039d50bb560770d051a3f5a2ffa2281ac3287e340c99f81e18129d1 basilisk:0000000004:m0EyKprlUmDaW9xvPgYMz2pziEUJEzuy6vsSTlMZO7lVVOYlJgJTcEvh5QVJUVnh claimed: 00000000000000000000002ca8fc4b6396dd5b5bcf5fa80ea49967da55a8668b actual: 00000000002ca8fc4b6396dd5b5bcf5fa82a867d17ebc40ea49967da55a8668b
Anyway: the whole thing is amazing and you should go read it.
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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Does what it says on the tin! Short and sweet codebase that’s easy enough to verify personally, and doesn’t ask for any crazy permissions.
I probably needn’t care about this validation: when I wrote a Thunderbird plugin to enhance integration with ProtonMail, I wrote it principally for myself: scratching my own itch. It was nice to see that (at time of writing) a few hundred other people have made use of the extension too, but it wasn’t essential. I’d be maintaining it regardless because I use it every day.
But it still warmed my heart to see a five-star review come in alongside a clearly-expressed justification.
I’m currently doing a course, through work, delivered by BetterOn Video. The aim of the course is to improve my video presentation skills, in particular my engagement with the camera and the audience.
I made this video based on the week 2 prompt “make a video 60-90 seconds long about something you’re an expert on”. The idea came from a talk I used to give at the University of Oxford.
I’m currently doing a course, through work, delivered by BetterOn Video. The aim of the course is to improve my video presentation skills, in particular my engagement with the camera and the audience.
I made this video based on the week 2 prompt “make a video 60-90 seconds long about something you’re passionate about”. The idea came from a blog post I wrote back in 2014.
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Coca-Cola is to test a paper bottle as part of a longer-term bid to eliminate plastic from its packaging entirely.
The prototype is made by a Danish company from an extra-strong paper shell that still contains a thin plastic liner.
But the goal is to create a 100% recyclable, plastic-free bottle capable of preventing gas escaping from carbonated drinks.
The barrier must also ensure no fibres flake off into the liquid.
…
If only somebody could invent a bottle suitable for containing Coca-Cola but 100% recyclable, plastic-free, and food safe.
Oh wait… for the vast majority of its history, all Coca-Cola bottles have met this description! The original Coke bottles, back in 1899, were made of glass with a metal top. Glass is infinitely-recyclable (it’s also suitable for pressure-washing and reusing, saving even more energy, as those who receive doorstep milk deliveries already know) and we already have a recycling infrastructure for it in place. Even where new glass needs to be made from scratch, its raw ingredient is silica, one of the most abundant natural resources on the planet!
Bottle caps can be made of steel or aluminium and can be made in screw-off varieties in case you don’t have a bottle opener handy. Both steel and aluminium are highly-recyclable, and again with infrastructure already widespread. Many modern “metal” caps contain a plastic liner to ensure a good airtight fit (especially if it’s a screw cap, which are otherwise less-tight), but there are environmentally-friendly alternatives: bioplastics or cork, for example.
The worst things about glass are its fragility – which is a small price to pay – and its weight (making distribution more expensive and potentially more-polluting). But that latter can easily be overcome by distributing bottling: a network of bottling plants around the country (each bottling a variety of products, and probably locally-connected to reclamation and recycling schemes) would allow fluids to be transported in bulk – potentially even in concentrate form, further improving transport efficiency… and that’s if it isn’t just more ecologically-sound to produce Coke more-locally rather than transporting it over vast distances: it’s not like the recipe is particularly complicated.
In short: this is the stupidest environmental initiative I’ve seen yet this year.
Enfys published an article this week to their personal blog: How to use gender-inclusive language. It spun out from a post that they co-authored on an internal Automattic blog, and while the while thing is pretty awesome as a primer for anybody you need to show it to, it introduced a new word to my lexicon for which I’m really grateful.
I’ve long bemoaned the lack of a gender-neutral term encompassing “aunts and uncles” (and, indeed, anybody else in the same category: your parents’ siblings and their spouses). Words like sibling have been well-established for a century or more; nibling has gained a lot of ground over the last few decades and appears in many dictionaries… but we don’t have a good opposite to nibling!
Why do we need such a word?
I’m not the first to notice this gap in the English language, and others have tried to fill it.
I’ve heard pibling used, but I don’t like it. I can see what its proponents are trying to do: combine “parent” and “sibling” (although that in itself feels ambiguous: is this about my parents’ siblings or my siblings’ parents, which aren’t necessarily the same thing). Moreover, the -ling suffix feels like a diminutive, even if that’s not its etymological root in this particular case, and it feels backwards to use a diminutive to describe somebody typically in an older generation than yourself.
I’ve heard that some folks use nuncle, and I hate that word even more. Nuncle already has a meaning, albeit an archaic one: it means “uncle”. Read your Shakespeare! Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for resurrecting useful archaic words: I’m on a personal campaign to increase use eyeyesterday and, especially, overmorrow (German has übermorgen, Afrikaans has oormôre, Romanian has poimâine: I want a word for “the day after tomorrow” too)! If you bring back a word only to try to define it as almost-the-opposite of what you want it to mean, you’re in for trouble.
Auntle is another candidate – a simple fusion of “aunt” and “uncle”… but it still feels a bit connected to the gendered terms it comes from, plus if you look around enough you find it being used for everything from an affectionate mutation of “aunt” to a term to refer to your uncle’s husband. We can do better.
But Enfys’ post gave me a new word, and I love it:
…
Here are some gender-neutral options for gendered words we hear a lot. They’re especially handy if you’re not sure of the gender of the person you’re addressing:
Mx.: An honorific, alternative to Mr./Mrs./Ms.
Sibling: instead of brother/sister
Spouse: instead of husband/wife
Partner, datefriend, sweetheart, significant other: instead of boyfriend/girlfriend
Parent: instead of mother/father
Nibling: instead of niece/nephew
Pibling, Entle, Nuncle: instead of aunt/uncle…
Entle! Possibly invented here, this is the best gender-neutral term for “the sibling of your parents, or the spouse of the sibling of your parents, or another family member who fulfils a similar role” that I’ve ever seen. It brings “ent” from “parent” which, while etymologically the wrong part of the word for referring to blood relatives (that comes from a PIE root pere- meaning “to produce or bring forth”), feels similar to the contemporary slang root rent (clipped form of “parent”). It feels new and fresh enough to not be “auntle”, but it’s similar enough to the words “aunt” and “uncle” that it’s easy to pick up and start using without that “what’s that new word I need to use here?” moment.
I’m totally going to start using entle. I’m not sure I’ll find a use for it today or even tomorrow. But overmorrow? You never know.
