Under river, outside time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly

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Under river, outside time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly (Portals of London)

When the Woolwich foot tunnel closed for repairs in 2011, it should have been a routine job. The pathway had been providing pedestrians with a quick route beneath the Thames since 1912. A century o…

When the Woolwich foot tunnel closed for repairs in 2011, it should have been a routine job. The pathway had been providing pedestrians with a quick route beneath the Thames since 1912. A century on, a few minor improvements were necessary. Contractors were hired to plug holes, improve access and bring communications capabilities into the 21st Century: swapping leaky tiles for a leaky feeder.

But Woolwich residents will recall that the refurb of this much loved and much used walkway did not go according to plan. When it finally re-opened it was 8 months behind schedule, having been closed for more than a year and a half. What the average Woolwich dweller doesn’t know, however, are the unusual circumstances behind this delay.

Sarah Silverman’s powerful response to a sexist troll

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Sarah Silverman’s response to a sexist tweet is a much-needed ray of hope (Quartzy)

In the brutal, self-centered bash-fest that social media often becomes, a moment of simple kindness and connection stands out.

American comedian Sarah Silverman is unapologetically blunt in her fight against misogyny. But Silverman has also made a point of exploring the depths of her own empathy.

“I just keep asking myself, can you love someone who did bad things?” she said, after her dear friend and fellow comedian, Louis CK, was accused of sexual harassment. “I can mull that over later, certainly, because the only people that matter right now are the victims.”

Last week, Silverman demonstrated similar level-headed compassion when subjected to sexism and harassment herself. After tweeting about an article describing her honest attempts to understand Trump supporters, Silverman received a crude response from a Twitter follower:

I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here’s how.

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I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here’s how. (hackernoon.com)

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It’s been a frantic week of security scares — it seems like every day there’s a new vulnerability. It’s been a real struggle for me personally to pretend like I understand what’s going on when asked about it by family members.

Seeing people close to me get all flustered at the prospect of being “powned” has really put things in perspective for me.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I’ve decided to come clean and tell you all how I’ve been stealing usernames, passwords and credit card numbers from your sites for the past few years.

This Old Tech: Remembering WorldsAway’s avatars and virtual experiences

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This Old Tech: Remembering WorldsAway’s avatars and virtual experiences (PCWorld)

The year was 1995, and CompuServe’s online service cost $4.95 per hour. Yet thousands of people logged into this virtual world daily.

WorldsAway

WorldsAway was born 20 years ago, when Fujitsu Cultural Technologies, a subsidiary of Japanese electronics giant Fujitsu, released this online experiment in multiplayer communities. It debuted as part of the CompuServe online service in September, 1995. Users needed a special client to connect; once online, they could chat with others while represented onscreen as a graphical avatar.

I was already a veteran of BBSes (I even started my own), Prodigy, CompuServe, and the Internet when I saw an advertisement for WorldsAway in CompuServe magazine (one of my favorite magazines at the time). It promised a technicolor online world where you could be anything you wanted, and share a virtual city with people all over the globe. I signed up to receive the client software CD. Right after its launch in September, I was up and running in the new world. It blew my young mind.

Benj Edwards (PCWorld)

HBD Not Dogs Birmingham!

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Not Dogs: HBD Not Dogs Birmingham! (blog.notdogs.com)

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We cannot believe we’re a year old this week! It feels like only yesterday we were opening the doors and anxiously standing, hoping that someone would like the look of our new restaurant and come and visit us! Thankfully, you did… over 100,000 of you this year! We are beyond proud to know that customers enjoy…

@misterjta, 31 Dec 2017

John Trevor-Allen on Twitter (Twitter)

1997 was the year my family got torn up when my dad was killed. Which became the reason I joined @NightlineAssoc. And @samaritans. And @BritishRedCross, and @3RingsCIC. The reason, basically, I discovered how important it was to be there for people that can't go through it alone.

JTA tweets: <Seasonal Introspection> Thanks to some intensely stressful family stuff, 2017 was the worst year I've had since 1997. By such a long way even 20-Godamn-12 isn't even in the running. But, here we bloody well are, and here we bloody well stay... ...and maybe there's an upside. 1997 was the year my family got torn up when my dad was killed. Which became the reason I joined @NightlineAssoc. And @samaritans. And @BritishRedCross, and @3RingsCIC. The reason, basically, I discovered how important it was to be there for people that can't go through it alone. So, if I've learned one thing from all the grey hairs I got since May 31st 2017, it's that there's more people out there who desperately need some help. Come on, 2018. I hope it's amazing for all of you. And in the ever-excellent words of Granny Weatherwax: 'Let's do some good'

How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

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How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016 – Hacker Noon (hackernoon.com)

No JavaScript frameworks were created during the writing of this article.

The following is inspired by the article “It’s the future” from Circle CI. You can read the original here. This piece is just an opinion, and like any JavaScript framework, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Hey, I got this new web project, but to be honest I haven’t coded much web in a few years and I’ve heard the landscape changed a bit. You are the most up-to date web dev around here right?

-The actual term is Front End engineer, but yeah, I’m the right guy. I do web in 2016. Visualisations, music players, flying drones that play football, you name it. I just came back from JsConf and ReactConf, so I know the latest technologies to create web apps.

Cool. I need to create a page that displays the latest activity from the users, so I just need to get the data from the REST endpoint and display it in some sort of filterable table, and update it if anything changes in the server. I was thinking maybe using jQuery to fetch and display the data?

-Oh my god no, no one uses jQuery anymore. You should try learning React, it’s 2016.

Oh, OK. What’s React?

A year or two old, and I’d love to claim that things were better in Javascript-framework-land today… but they’re not.

Google Maps’s Moat

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Google Maps’s Moat (Justin O’Beirne)

How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?

Over the past year, we’ve been comparing Google Maps and Apple Maps in New York, San Francisco, and London—but some of the biggest differences are outside of large cities.

Take my childhood neighborhood in rural Illinois. Here the maps are strikingly different, and Apple’s looks empty compared to Google’s:

Similar to what we saw earlier this year at Patricia’s Green in San Francisco, Apple’s parks are missing their green shapes. But perhaps the biggest difference is the building footprints: Google seems to have them all, while Apple doesn’t have any.

The Nuclear Threat – The Shadow Peace, Part 1

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This series already looks awesome with its compelling visuals and strong message. The video’s interactive (!) if you view it via the official website, and I’m backing the creator on Patreon to help him make more content like this (and particularly a second part to The Shadow Peace).

“Polyamory” became a top relationship search topic in 2017

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We seem to be finally, actually doing it: making the whole world aware of the polyamorous possibility. That’s Elisabeth Sheff’s term for discovering that happy, ethical multi-loving relationships are even possible, that people are successfully doing them right now, and that maybe you can too.

Every December, Google announces the year’s top trending search terms compared to the year before. In the Relationships category, Google just announced that polyamory became one of the top four topics. CNN Money reported this morning,