Mike Wooldridge

I say this as somebody who's day job is to understand and use AI.

Do not.

I repeat this again

Do. Not. EVER.

Give these agents the ability to behave and act as you on any site. I mean ANY site.

ChatGPT etc can be safe, but these agents are NOT secure in my view.

This is a great initiative! I know I found it daunting the first time I walked into a WordCamp (where my company wasn't also sponsoring so didn't have colleagues with me for support!) and would have really appreciated something like this...

I do sympathise a bit with Bluesky here - they've had to adapt to decidedly imperfect UK legislation in the form of the Online Safety Act, and are big enough that they probably do have to follow it to the letter, rather than just 'mostly, with some common sense applied'.

Passkeys are great if you've got a password manager that syncs across all your devices (I use 1Password for that purpose). Agree that without that they're more a hinderance than a help though!

It was great! Real festival atmosphere too, it pretty much takes over the host city for the week. Though now I’ve done a live show for the first time I think the evening previews (‘jury’ shows) are the best balance between cost and experience, plus you then get to see the live shows on TV!

They’re released usually in Dec/Jan but can vary - exact process depends on host broadcaster, for Basel it worked like Glastonbury: pre-registration then first come first served for each wave. There’s also usually resale nearer the time.

CLIVE MYRIE: your name please
CONTESTANT: john smith
CM: occupation?
CONTESTANT: office worker
CM: and your specialist subject?
CONTESTANT: the history of iceland
CM: your 90 seconds on the history of the nordic island country iceland start now
CONTESTANT: wait, the nordic what?

Yup. Technical safeguards (e.g. the recording being to a physical, secured, flash storage drive that is securely deleted at the start of the plane's following flight) can and should be put in place to ensure that the footage is only viewed after some sort of abnormal event, but needs to happen.

YouTube video by Blavatnik School of Government Lessons from billions of breached records: Everything you need to know

A great read! I had the pleasure of hearing Ciaran's inputs on various CS subjects in a conversation/joint Q&A with @troyhunt.com a couple of months back (well worth a watch - as is Troy's talk - if you've not seen it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfQb...) - very bright and an excellent educator to boot!

Is that in the post-border waiting area? I've only been through it once, a fair few years ago now, and the seats were in varying states of tape-disguised disrepair even then!

Lovely little custom message on the screens too advising on arrival info….

I'm sure the political situation will have changed (hopefully for the better) by then - but if it was introduced today you wonder whether German police would want to be involved in juxtaposed controls at St P should Eurostar services start serving Koln... not feasible to recheck a full 16 car train!

Particularly - they're all excellent but these stand out - great crews today on my #Eurostar to Amsterdam, both the London-Brussels and those now on the leg taking us up to the Netherlands. Friendly, helpful and proactive offering drinks in Plus. (cc @eurostarjustin.bsky.social)

Argh, always miss your events by a day haha... (and then events conspired against me in Brussels). Enjoy your weekend away from the project :)

Feels very apt spending some of my #Eurostar journey to Amsterdam catching up on @jonworth.eu's excellent #CrossBorderRail project; it's giving me wanderlust to go beyond my semi-regular research trips to NL/DK in recent months... Central Europe remains largely unexplored, must fix before too long!

Aachen is one of the more ‘sensible’ crossings IME. They pick up border police at Aachen, who check the train whilst moving and drop them at an unadvertised stop between there and Cologne. Saying that, I’ve not been checked once in recent months, though they always walk through.

Liverpool-Belfast? I had a mixed experience when I did that crossing (slept fine when actually onboard, just the 'ground' experience at both ends was less than ideal sadly, foot passengers feel much more of an afterthought than the Harwich-Hook of Holland route)

For sure - there's also bizarre cases that really need ironing out where Groupsave is priced by GTR for Bedford/Luton/Luton Airport to London so isn't valid on EMR, even though EMR run their own GroupSave scheme for the tickets they price (Wellingborough northward) on the same route.

I don't know about LNER (I'd normally look but my laptop battery is on 12% and I'm sat somewhere without a charger :D ) but the Groupsave scheme on my local TOC (GTR) is 33%.

Yup, exactly that! Plus it's productive time, so if you can work on the train there and back for example, it's more than covered the difference.

Oh yes - I mean it'd never realistically happen, we're working with an existing model and can't rip it down now politically apart from anything else, but that's what I'd do if we did ever get a chance to reset the fares system entirely (particularly if buses came back into public ownership too)

(cont'd) ... they split the country into zones, charge per zone travelled through, and influence demand by offering 'Orange' (advance) fares only on quieter services. No domestic ticket includes a seat except First, can guarantee one until they sell out for a nominal fee regardless of ticket type.

It's a good question - LNER says it's achieving in its aims, but a part of that is revenue generation, not entirely demand management. Personally I think the zonal system used here in Denmark does it better than the UK approach... (cont'd in next post)

For what it's worth, I think LNER *generally* get the dynamic pricing points about right at the lower tiers - but they then disproportionately increase (at too high a rate) as the allocations for those are taken.

(cont'd) ...so long as there's a time-of-day appropriate cap for those who need to travel at short notice/with flexibility, or have a discount not applicable to advance tickets - on the understanding a seat isn't guaranteed. My issue with LNER's approach is the complete removal of the off-peak cap.

To add my 2p - I have no problem with dynamic pricing for people who can plan where (as with LNER) trains are often at capacity and it's difficult to add more into the timetable due to (in this case) paths on the line concerned... (cont'd in next post)

Interrail tips and tricks - Jon Worth In the course of my #CrossBorderRail project I have learned a fair bit about how to use Interrail passes in a bunch of different countries. While this is far from a complete guide, here are a bunch of...

Summer is coming and it's peak #Interrail and #Eurail season

This means lots of headaches with reservations, timetables and disruptions

I have updated my Interrail Tips post: jonworth.eu/interrail-ti...

And if you're stuck, ASK! There are dozens of us here who'll happily help!

#CrossBorderRail

Techtown | Viva La Dirt League - YouTube A series about working in retail. Dealing with terrible customers and a horrible boss. I think you can relate!

Wonder how it got that mixed up! (Incidentally the real ‘Bored’ referred to here has some good skits in if you’ve not seen it! youtube.com/playlist?lis... )

Absolutely!

My reading list is already way too long sadly at the moment - but sure someone on #booksky can take you up on this?!