- Housing on the minimum wage: how many hours would you have to work? | News | guardian.co.uk
Well, this is a bleak and depressing picture if you want to live in London, as all right thinking people do, obviously.
Tag: money
Bookmarks for June 14, 2010
- FOI reveals how costs of Crown Prosecution Service website ballooned past budget | Technology | guardian.co.uk
This makes me angry on many many levels. Yes, this looks like total waste, and yes, they got a shitty, shoddy website that was massively over-budge. One the other hand, though, the outrage about serious undervalues my profession. £122,000 is *not* an unreasonable amount to spend on a major website in one year, and headlines that suggest it is are fucking annoying to me. What's unreasonable is what they got for their money, not the amount they spent. (FWIW: their initial budget of £45,000, while it would not get them laughed out of the office around here, would definitely put them on the low end of business that we like to pitch for. Since they're a major department, I'd expect a higher budget.)
- U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com
Oh bollocks. Looks like Afghanistan is going to fucked for a very, very long time to come, because it turns out we're not just blowing them up as a point of principle any more. Now they've got useful resources, too.
Bookmarks for February 12, 2010
- Light Blue Touchpaper » Blog Archive » Chip and PIN is broken
The tech details will be lost on most of you, but in brief: if an attacker can get your card cloned, then they can also pretend to know your PIN – fraudulent transactions they make will be reported to the bank as "Verified by PIN". This is bad, because if a transaction is reported as "Verfiied by PIN" then as far as the bank is concerned it's legit, and not disputable. Chip and PIN is, and always was, design to protect the banks, and not the consumers. Just y'know, saying. You might want to write angry letters to your banks, and suchlike.
- Liberal Conspiracy » Astonishing transcript of Boris evading questions
Well, what did you expect when you all voted for the fuck? Someone who might be good for public services in London? I know Ken was a weasel too, but he was at least London's weasel, with the interests in London in his weaselly little heart (possibly some distance behind his own interests, but they were *there*), and every time I read a story about Boris, my blood pressure spikes something dreadful.
- Liberal Conspiracy » Glenn Beck comes to UK; advertisers run away!
This, I feel rather neatly sums up some key differences between the UK and the US. Just occasionally, I'm happy to live in the country I do.
- Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus
And this is why google buzz is poorly implemented, badly designed, and generally a massive fuck you to all google's users. I'm still trying to work out how to switch it off completely.
- Introduction to Square
Not sure if this is available to people in the UK yet, but if and when it is, this is could make life a lot easier.
- Cope » Caillois completeness
Interesting set of metrics for judging the game-ness of something.
Bookmarks for April 29, 2009
- Kickstarter » Projects
A commercial scale ransomware/fundraising site that'll work for any creative endeavour. Now to think of something people will want to give me money for…
- Daily Scans – Alan Moore's Glory proposal
Hadn't seen this before, and I can see approaches in this that clearly got recycled into Promethea, and Tom Strong and the other ABC stuff, which makes it all rather more interesting than just a document about an old Supreme character.
- Noisy Decent Graphics: "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end."
God, I hate it when I discover that Margaret Thatcher said something I agree with.
- Noisy Decent Graphics: 7 ways to be a Graphic Design student online
Never mind "Graphic Design Student" – 7 ways to be a thinking human being. If you're not using a decent number of these services, well, OK, it hardly makes you a bad person, but still: most of these are basic tools for information management and digital note taking, and if you like to think of yourself as engaged with the world, and aren't using them, then you're probably doing something wrong. (Saying that: I keep trying to get some cognitive traction with tumblr, and have never really managed it. Might take another go soon. And it did take me rather longer than many of my friends to get twitter.)
Bookmarks for April 8, 2009
- scribbles and lies – Signpost Says: "Welcome to the 21st Century"
Here's an interesting read: the currency of Iceland is basically worthless. The artificial currency of a computer game created in Iceland, however, still has value. In fact, it has more value then the "real" currency.
- A Whole Lotta Nothing: This is how Social Media really works
I propose holding anyone that describes themselves as an "e-marketer" (or anything remotely similar) down and beating them with sticks until they agree to tell all future prospective clients this simple truth from th above article: "instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products"
- 20×200 : Get Excited And Make Things
You! Yes, you! Visit this link, and buy a copy of Matt Jones' "Get Excited And Make Things" poster. Then hang it some place where you will see it often. It will be morally uplifting for you, and the proceeds from the sale will benefit Creative Commons, which is a tremendously excellent thing to do.
Bookmarks for May 14, 2008
- Deliverance – Culinary Salvation
It looks like these people now deliver to my place, which rather expands my options in a takeaway. Result!
- NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed | Wired Science from Wired.com
I can’t decide if this would be hell or something I could cope with quite well.
Bookmarks for May 6, 2008
- Atomic Tragedy — Photos
Previously unreleased photos taken in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. Hugely moving photos that convey the human cost of the atomic bomb. Should be in every history textbook, under the heading “there can be no excuse”.
- Boris Johnson Facts
“Not even twelve pygmies have the strength of a single Boris Johnson.”
- random($foo): Web 2.0 Expo Presentation Rundown
Well, that’s half my evenings this week gone. Some of these sound fascinating. (The other half, like total waffle-shop bilge, but let’s focus on the positive, shall we?)
- Alan Moore’s Outbreak of Violets
Given away at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1995, the postcards with text by Moore, and art by a number of utterly splendid illustrators now change hands for absurd sums. Or you could just read them on-line.
- The New Yorker profile of Grant Achatz
A really compelling account of the effect that his battle with mouth cancer, the experimental treatment he got, and the effect it has had on his life, and his cooking.
- CR Blog » Blog Archive » Designs on Your Money
Interview with the guy that came up with the designs for the UKs new coins. Insteresting insight into the design process, and how some of the initial ideas were refined and improved (or even just unworkable).