Here's an interesting thing to think about, particularly in light of the fact, that at my company, for example, I often get certain tasks because I know the code better, and can therefore accomplish the same task faster. Yet, we charge by the hour (well, actually by the ten-minute block). This essentially means that exactly because I've got more experience than some of my colleagues, clients pay less for my services. Yet the company has far more cash and training time invested in me. The obvious solution would be to charge more for my time than for some of my less experienced colleagues, but obviously, that's a hard sell to clients, not least because they lack the skills and knowledge to correctly evaluate whether it's better to get me, or someone else, on a given project. Especially when for some projects, I will work faster, and for others, I will be slower, because it's code I don't know so well, but one of my colleagues might know better.

Hmm. This sounds like the good business to me. At some point in the not *too* distant, I need to get to grips with iOS development, and I like that there's now a simple Cloud-based DB that I can use for storage/sync.

Naomi Wolf produces a far clearer, far more on the nose, summation of the point she was articulating when she got leapt on but the left wing blogosphere last week. It is not a defence of Assange, it is a condemnation of the current rate of international prosecution for crimes far worse than what Assange is accused of. It wasn't a defence of Assange when she wrote it last week, but plenty of people out there got distracted by about seven words in amongst a much wider point, and her real point got lost. So she's restated it, and you should read what she has to say.

This is interesting. I've been trying to find numbers/commentary on wikileaks from a feminist perspective that isn't focused on Assange and the allegations against him, and failing. I'd like to produce an article on the real-world effects of wikileaks as regards women and/or social justice, but it's proving very hard to find even vague commentary in that vein, never mind hard numbers. This is the closest to useful commentary (that isn't about the allegations) I've found thus far.

For very real and serious: if you have *ever* left a comment on a Gawker blog (or if you're not sure if you might have or not), you need to check whether any email address you might have used is in this spreadsheet – instructions on how to do it are there in the right hand column, I'm happy to explain more if people need me to – and if it is, and you've used the same password anywhere else (and if you can't remember, assume you have) then you need to change it right now, as that email address and password are now out in the public domain.

Your second stock-filler recommendation for the day! What are you waiting for? Go! Get shopping! Buy my friend's fine literary product and help make the world a better place!

I know Stross is one of my regular linkees, and I'm sure a lot of you glide over him at this point, but I thought this was a particularly interesting read, and I commend it to anyone who is feeling frustrated by the apparently lack of ability for members of the public to influence anything in the wake of stuff like Wikileaks and the student fees protests. It won't tell you how to change things, but it provides an interesting perspective on the whys of the current situation, that lead to some interesting thoughts on how one might affect change in the medium-term future.

Budgie's Fast Fiction Challenge, now in its second volume. I commend it to your attention as a perfect stocking filler.

Reverting to Type: exhibition. Must go see.

Interested mostly into the insights into conversational interface, rather than the actual product here. For consideration: pair a more general use version of this with some voice recognition software, and it won't be long before all those SF voice-activated computers become a reality.

This one's doing the rounds today – the story of an autistic child who has been removed from his father's care, for seemingly, no sensible reason other than bureaucratic procedure. It it is as presented (and I've seen a lot of people prefix retweeting it with that, I suspect because like me people simply don't want to believe that this *can* be true) than this is deeply saddening, and Something Ought To Be Done. I cannot fathom how this could be allowed to happen – it would seemingly require *far* too many people who are allegedly "carers" to be Orwellian bureaucratic jobsworths with a shred of human decency or willingness to stop and think. So: a link that deserves to do the rounds, in the hope of Something Getting Done.