You're in a restaurant with a group of friends. The waiter won't let you split the bill, so you offer to pay for it on your card and have your friends send you their share. How much would you charge them for that service?
That sounds absurd, right? OK, you might agree to split the bill evenly and maybe come out one drink in profit - but it's still a bit of a social faux pas to deliberately make money off your mates.
Recently, I was asked if I'd like to run a market stall at a geek event. There would be a bunch of traders there, and I could have a little pitch where I could sell the various gadgets, trinkets, and bits of art I've made over the years.
But the whole thing weirded me out and I'm trying to understand why.
Everything I could make and sell would involve me buying stuff at wholesale price and selling retail price. Like, I get that's the way commerce works, but it also feels kind of… I don't know how to explain. Rude?
If I buy 100 things at £10ea, assume I only sell 75% of them, plus VAT, plus credit card charges, then I have to sell for £16.50ea just to break even.
That doesn't account for my time spent buying them. Nor does it include dealing with returns, breakages, or any other expenses. I also need to pay corporation tax on my profits.
Speaking of which, that £16.50 above doesn't include any profit! If I wanted to make the enterprise worthwhile, I'd probably need to charge at least double the wholesale cost - which would probably reduce the number of people buying.
I've loved all the weird things I've purchased at hackspaces and conferences. And certainly I don't feel ripped off by the merchants. I can't wait to buy my friends' art, books, and gadgets. But it feels weird when it is me doing it.
I guess one issue is that this isn't my main source of income. I'm gainfully employed - so any extra income from selling stuff would really be in the category of fun money. Don't get me wrong, more money is always useful, but this would be a lot of effort for a relatively small amount of money, all of which I don't really need.
Also, and I realise this is my problem, I don't see my time and expertise as valuable in that way. I'd much rather show you how to build a thing, or blog the instructions, or help you understand how something works.
Finally, I think I feel this way because I see all the people I meet as friends. If we're at a weird hacker event, there's a good chance we have something in common and I'd be delighted to share a pint with you.
Does anyone else feel this way? Do you happily make fat stacks of cash from your peers? Am I just weird and neurotic? Let me know in the comment box. It's free.
Book cover for Understanding Privacy.Heather Burns has an absolutely deft way of turning the sometimes-dull world of digital privacy into entertaining, informative, and actionable prose.
Too many of these sorts of books end up being a list of woes and end with "someone should do something, I guess?". Understanding Privacy is different. All the way through the mantra is "You are someone! You do something! And here's how..."
Digital privacy is, I think it is fair to say, not a universally loved topic. Too often it is seen as shrill pedants lobbing fines at unsuspecting companies. The reality is somewhat more prosaic. This is a journey we all have to go on - wherever we work in the digital world.
It would be easy for this book to descend into just being a mega-long checklist. But, while there are a fair few lists, they are backed up with practical steps which can be taken by both people and companies. Some of them are wickedly witty:
Please use https://, because seeing http:// this late in the game is not the sort of ’90s flashback I enjoy.
I especially enjoyed the reframing of certain privacy mavens as "privacy ableists" - those who "criticise a person with a disability for owning an Alexa device, taking no regard for the benefit it has brought into the disabled person’s life."
I also got emotional whiplash after hearing some people described as "privacy shamers" - those who "harass anyone who is doing their best to change tech companies from the inside as being collaborators on par with the Vichy regime."
The book is full of interesting links out to further resources. Although, I should point out that links like https://smashed.by/cnilrights go via the short.io service. Which probably makes me a privacy pedant 😆.
This is an empowering read. It isn't designed to make you feel hopeless at the state of the world but, instead, it asks you to reflect on what you're doing and what you should be doing.
The final question should be the one which weighs on you heaviest: How am I going to feel about myself if I continue to work for this company and develop this product?
I have a mixed relationship with the FIRE movement. It basically boils down to "spend less, save more, then you can retire once you've save 25x your annual spend". That's it.
As Michael Taylor writes, some people fetishise the "spend less" part. If you deny yourself all pleasure, he argues, then life isn't worth living. That's probably broadly true.
But he makes a fundamental mistake in his calculations:
Let’s assume that you’re able to invest an extra £10,000 per year by living miserably now in hopes of a brighter future (bear in mind the average full-time salary in the UK is around £35,000 and that’s before tax).
The S&P 500 has historically averaged around 10pc per year, so if we assume a compound annual growth rate of 8pc across 20 years, you’d have £46,609.57.
Yes. £10,000 getting 8%, compounded over 20 years is "only" £46k. Not really enough to retire on. So don't bother saving! Spend! Spend! Spend! Feed the capitalist machine!
But, that's not the assumption being made. Read closer:
you’re able to invest an extra £10,000 per year
You add £10k, get 8%, you now have £10,800. Next year you add another £10k, meaning you get 8% on £20,800. A total of £22,464.
Repeat that for 20 years and what do you end up with?
£540,838.79
Yup! Over half a million quid. That rather changes things, doesn't it? If you started investing at age 30 and stopped at 50, you could retire early and live off the proceeds of £500k until your state pension kicked in2.
But how much is £10k per year really? It is a lot for most people but can be structured in a more manageable way.
Let's assume you're part of a couple3. People who live together spend less on housing, utilities, food, entertainment, etc.
If you're part of a couple, you only need to save £5k per year each. How much is that?
£96 per week. Or £14 per day.
Actually, it is even cheaper than that. If you open up a LISA4, you can deposit a maximum of £4k per year and the Government will give you a £1k bonus.
To invest £4,000 per year, you'd need to save... £11 per day.
I don't want to go all "Millennials just need less Starbucks and avocado toast!" but... yeah. If you're the sort of person who buys a meal-deal for lunch5 how much of that can you save per day by making your own sandwiches?
A pint less here, a cheaper bottle of wine there, going to the lower resolution Netflix, all the other boring budgeting tips you've heard of6.
£11 per day, each, for 20 years, gets you half a million quid.
That's what the FIRE movement is about. Getting people to realise that a small sacrifice now will pay off in the future.
Michael Taylor's article is correct. You probably shouldn't live on a diet of bread and water, never seeing friends, not going on a spontaneous trip to France; life is for living. Make the most of it!
But, also, life is for living, not working. If you take small actions now, you can free yourself from drudgery later.
OK, OK. This isn't a particularly severe security bug, but I found it interesting.
The Matrix messaging app "Element" lets you sign in to your account on multiple devices. In order to prove those devices are controlled by you, the app asks you to verify the other sessions. This is broadly sensible.
You sign in to the web-based messenger, then you sign in to the Android app. The web asks you if you just signed in, you say yes. The app then says "scan the code shown on the website". You do. And then both devices ask if the logo displayed is identical.
Are those two the same shield? They're both the same shape. They're both green. They both have a tick. But the tick is a different colour!
I suspect this is because the shield on the web has a transparent tick and expects the background colour to be white. But, when in Dark Mode, the background is grey.
Interestingly, my phone was also in Dark Mode - but the image has a solid white tick.
I'm not sure if it is specifically a bug in Matrix or Element (and, TBQH, I'm hazy about their relationshp) so I've raised it on Element's GitHub.
But, let this be a lesson to you. Test all of your interface with all of your different themes. And don't use transparency to convey important security information.
This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously, but published long after the events. At the time, I was a Civil Servant in Cabinet Office. Now I am not. But as we're heading for another General Election, I thought I'd share this post.
It's the evening of the 2019 General Election. I am plagued by two thoughts.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. You read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
And
The pre-election period (purdah) is the term used to describe the period between the time an election is announced and the date the election is held. Civil servants are given official guidance by the Cabinet Office on the rules they must follow in relation to Government business during this time.
People tweet wrong things all the time. But, during this election, I've seen people I admire and respect tweeting out things I know to be false.
I don't mean slightly wrong about an esoteric policy. I mean balls-to-the-wall, head-up-the-arse, foot-in-mouth, inexcusably wrong.
I get that part of politics is enraging people to gather them to your cause. But these were people who I eagerly followed so that I could understand what was going on in an increasingly complicated world.
In normal circumstances, I'd've argued with them online. Sure, it's neither healthy nor a good way to change people's minds - but it would be something.
Purdah - a somewhat politically-incorrect term - prevents Civil Servants from commenting on things during the election. It's a sensible policy - but a bit annoying when People Are Wrong On The Internet. In fairness, I probably shouldn't get involved in arguments - that's best left to the press team.
But I am conflicted. I have first-hand, expert knowledge about a subject. I can objectively prove my arguments. Why shouldn't I be able to correct people's mistakes?
Even worse - and the thing that mildly terrifies me - if my idols are wrong about that thing, what else are they wrong about?
OK, you can argue about whether Kirk and Uhura were forced to kiss in that episode. But how does anyone look at Star Trek - with its women on the command bridge, anti-colonial stance, and mixed-race crew - and not think it was a bastion of progressive causes? Star Trek is explicitly political. It isn't hidden in the subtext. You don't have to search for clues as to what the writers were trying to say.
Star Trek isn't complicated.
But some people only see the laser guns and exploding space ships. They're not looking at the text, they're barely even comprehending the narrative journey; they only see the flashing lights and gaudy costumes.
Kenny isn't wrong. But I am disturbed by the sheer number of people who don't have even a surface level of understanding of the media they're consuming. I know that lots of people don't get satire, but most TV isn't trying to bamboozle its audience.
I think there is a fundamental disconnect between people who consume and people who understand.
I saw a prominent AI proponent asking why people always focus on the things that AI gets wrong. AI works so well, he asserted, that it was churlish and childish to focus on a few minor mistakes?
Which reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago. I was in a rural pub and got chatting to one of the locals. We were getting on great, so I asked him what his name was. "You know," he said, "I've built houses for everyone in this village, but do they call me John the Builder? No! I repaired everyone's cars when they broke down, but do they call me John the Mechanic? No! I was the one who helped design the new school, but do they call me John the Architect? No!"
He took a sip of beer, looked rueful, and sighed. "But you shag one sheep..."
What else is there to say? The intern who files most things perfectly but has, more than once, tipped an entire cup of coffee into the filing cabinet is going to be remembered as "that klutzy intern we had to fire."
Should we forgive and rehabilitate people? Sure, some of them. But if someone has repeatedly failed - sometimes in catastrophic ways - it's OK to discard them.
In my experience with various LLMs, they're getting better at imitating human-writing, but show no signs of improving when it comes to being able to reason. Their accuracy is demonstrably just as poor as it has ever been. Even my Alexa gets things wrong as often as right.
Anyway, I asked ChatGPT what it thought of the joke:
The punchline relies on the juxtaposition between the man's numerous, significant positive contributions to his community and the singular negative action that tarnishes his reputation. It illustrates how a single indiscretion can disproportionately impact how a person is perceived, despite their otherwise commendable actions.
