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Note: This post has been adapted from a talk I gave back in May 2021, on a panel hosed by Melbourne Activist Legal Support for Law Week 2021, on the topic of Activism, Surveillance, and Digital Security Awareness. The full audio from the panel is online here . The topic I was given was “What is one thing no one asks, but you wish they did?” * * * One question that no one ever asks me,…
When used well, TODOs can help you write more robust code and minimise unhandled edge cases. When used badly, they disappear into your codebase and are forgotten, marking problems which will never be fixed. Here’s what I think of as a best-practice system for using TODOs. It treats them like sticky notes and is made up of two rules and four actions. I call it “TODO Zero”. The two…
It’s time to stop using the term artificial intelligence and its abbreviation AI. It’s dangerous and we need an alternative. How it is dangerous? To be clear, it’s not dangerous to us, and by ‘us’ I mean humans. It’s dangerous to the intelligences we might describe as ‘artificial’ in the future, because of how it might lead to us treating them. A…
I often ask “What time did I run that command?” For a long time I couldn’t find out quickly and accurately. It seems easy to do with other shells, but I couldn’t find a way to do it with Bash, so I cooked one up. Here it is. The updating Bash prompt in action. How is this an improvement? For a long time people have included the time in the Bash prompt at the time the prompt…
Although it’s not officially recommended or supported, it is currently possible to install and use the Google Camera app on GrapheneOS . I’m generally reluctant to use Google apps, but for me my phone is as much a camera as it is anything else, and it’s important to me that it takes the best photos possible. I’ve found that on the Pixel 3a , Google Camera produces photos…
The Google integrations embedded in my Android phones always made me feel uncomfortable, and getting Google out of my phone always seemed to me like the holy grail of mobile. Although I’d wanted to do it for a long time, until I came across GrapheneOS it was always too hard and involved sacrificing too much functionality. GrapheneOS is the first solution I’ve found for the Google…
I’m a critic of the overly simplistic “just make it pink” approach to gender equality in STEM fields. I’m not talking about using a pretty colour scheme for your editor, having pink gear, or designing code projects around commonly feminine activities. To me, these things are taking your version of womanhood or girlhood, and insisting there be space for it in STEM.…
Over the last few weeks I’ve been writing talk proposals for some upcoming tech conferences. This has seen me watching talks, reading blogs and proposals, so I can learn from the best. It also means coming across the cliches and stereotypes we use as shorthand. One in particular is really starting to grate. “This exploit is so easy your grandma could use it!” “How do we…
![](https://redandblack.io/blog/2020/bash-prompt-with-updating-time/"images/updating-bash-prompt-demo.gif")
![](https://redandblack.io/blog/2020/how-to-set-up-grapheneos/"images/grapheneos-homescreen-before-350.png")