I have elderly family who have to wear bags exactly like this. The thought that anyone could consider it acceptable to humiliate someone in a manner like this makes me furious – I just keep imagining what it would feel like if it happened to my family. I reckon I would expect them to have legal recourse, and the assurance that someone had lost their job over this, because I don't care about security half so much as I care about basic human dignity and respect.

Stop what you are doing, and go and look at this link. I promise you: it will make your day 100% better. This is amazing and wonderful stuff.

I'm reminded of reading someone's new definition of cool "If I'm hanging out with you, I never see your mobile phone". I know I'm, ah, less than faultless with this, but then, I've never claimed to be coo (althought I've tried to do better since reading that particular article). Still, getting one of these might be a good start. Although, reflecting on it a bit, there's a fine line between signalling to someone that they're important to you, and acting like you want brownie points for simple politeness…

No idea what I'll use this stuff for, mind. But I bet I will at some point.

I imagine that I'll find a use for this information at some point.

Good, harsh, honest, smart. Worth reading.

The BBC are squaring up to fight ISPs who indulge in traffic shaping/two-tier internet type behaviour that affects them, by making it clear when ISPs do so, and refusing to pay for faster deliverry. Which is good news, I guess. Here's hoping other big internet firms do the same.

I'm getting kind of tired to linking to idiocy perpetrated by our governement. I can only assume that Ed Vaizey is either evil or a moron, because it is simple not reasonable that I should pay my ISP for a service, and them for them to tell me that I cannot have the level of service I want because *a third party* has not also paid them. *I* am paying for the fucking service. And while I appreciate that the counter argument is "well, then go elsewhere for your service", but what happens if there *is* no elsewhere to go, or when I'm locked in by a fixed term contract, the terms of which my ISP can vary, but I can't. Argle argle rant!

This is bound to be extremely useful.

The waggle-dance that bees use to communicate appears to be a function of 6 dimensional topography. Further, it may also imply that they can in some fashion sense quantum particles in a manner that violates some of the common held ideas about quantum physics. I for one welcome out new apian overlords.

Horrifyingly, I may have a use for this. I don't want to complete with the record, and I won't died of misery of if I fail to get the lot, but it, er, may come in handy as a chart of a way to get a job done a lot quicker than I might otherwise have thought.

Lots of things to think re: the future of literary publishing here.

Joel Johnson treats people who write the comments on gizmodo like they deserve to be treated.

Between this, and the whole "the universe is actually only two dimensional" thing from a few weeks back, I'm becoming concerned about the informational underpinnings of reality. Of course, it's statistically more likely that we're all participants in some vast simulated reality than it is that we're actually really here, so y'know, whatever. I'd just like it if we were in a high resolution universe without the memory leaks.

Amusing conceit, slightly flawed movie. Has anyone written the Facebook equivalent of an epistolary novel yet, I wonder?

The London bloggers directory updates. Nice! I've just been through most of the Tooting Broadway ones, though, and most of them are dead or no longer updated, and I can spot a couple of people in there who I know don't live in Tooting any more. It's just me left hanging around, making the place look untidy…

I imagine you'll see this link a lot over the next day or two – Penny Red on yesterday's riots at Millbank Tower. Superb writing, in support of an important cause.

You could apply these set of rules to any form of critique/review not just design, and you'd probably come out doing pretty well.

Lots in here, but here's the key thing: "This re-engineering suggests that paywalls don’t and can’t rescue current organizational forms. They offer instead yet another transformed alternative to it."

Not blogging this as an anti-Facebook thing, just as some interesting information about non-standard ways people use social networking software in a privacy intensive manner.

It's one way of looking at MMOs (and related industries), I guess. I'm aware that Warcrack has a GPD higher than some countries, and that there was a point (I haven't checked, it may still be true) where the virtual currency in Eve online was worth more that the currency of Iceland, where the game is based, but they're both entirely virtual, and I'm not 100% convinced that we're going to get the ability to rapid deploy and re-use these things in a full physical-world context (that a full EaaS would need) any time in the next five years.

Lined via Eliis and BERG both, this is an idea I'm having trouble putting down. It may not actually be that useful for me, in as much as while I do use notebooks (I took delivery of my own back of lovely new Fieldnotes books myself the other day), my use tends to be sporadic, but the flipside of that is that if I could train myself to use them more, or at least better, I might find them more useful.

I think I may want this at home in the near future.

There's something really interesting about the sound of this remix by Pogo – the era the samples are from really shines through, creating something that's weirdly timeless, while still being being modern-sounding.

The 7th Guest is coming to iOS! If you do not understand why that is exciting, then I pity you…

Strongly considering doing this – I loathe the way I'm often forced to restart my browser because some flash ad or another has choked it.

Absolutely brilliant excerpt from a new book on the history of ghosts in England. Will have to order a copy.

One hopes this link will do through rounds as far and wide, and with as much prominence as previous links on the matter of Stephen Fry and human sexuality. It won't, of course. "Man says something sensible" is not news. If only we could stop "Man says something silly" being treated like it's news, too.

Jess Nevins, known to this parish as the author of The Encyclopaedia of Fantastic Victoriana (a reference tome no serious library is complete without), has started a series on the history of the pulps at io9. I will be reading with great interest.

Strongly suspect this is Foundation X from the other day. The other likely candidate for a secretive organisation with a lot of cash that is known to be looking to make a one large, highly-targeted acquisition is, of course, Apple.