Matthew Somerville

Putting ASN 8075 “Microsoft Corporation” in the bin

My BBC News front page archive was using PHP to display its day/year index pages. And it’s still using PHP, but now generating static index.html files at the right time instead. And has its own subdomain now. bbcnewsarchive.dracos.co.uk

“Be a little bit wiser, baby Put it on, put it on 'Cause tonight is the night, when two become one” Wise words about tonight’s clock change

Thanks big tech, brilliant how you use all your money and resources to show the wrong opening times and the wrong bus routes

Based on the information I have available to me, and the breathless non-working slop PoCs I have seen, and the fact that the actual bug reports all say “on the same worker”, I’d say eliastaylor.com/noexploit/ feels more likely than not

This year’s FFConf is shaping up to be genuinely unmissable. So …um, you know …don’t miss it: https://2026.ffconf.org/ I’ll see you there! 🔗 https://adactio.com/notes/22807

I’m speaking about 25 years of traintimes.org.uk at @ffconf.org in a few weeks, and they asked me some warm up questions: ffconf.org/articles/202... Shout out to @mattround.com for his DOCTYPE magazine :-) Perhaps see you there!

Alternatively, 25 years ago this week turns out I was in “Men At Arms” at The Old Fire Station in Oxford: theatricalia.com/play/a4z/men...

A bot to show what commit I was making 20 years ago, how scary would that be... FixMyStreet was getting its first photo upload box! github.com/mysociety/fixmystreet/commit/26e0dcd2c0

As a Mancunian, I’m sure this is how Factory Records would like to be remembered, as meeting rooms in the Manchester Holiday Inn

Blog *post*, @societyofauthors.bsky.social, blog *post*. And if you understood it, you’d have explained more at the time, so clearly you… didn’t?

Two very exciting messages for you around Digital Democracy Edinburgh! First: registration is open, so please do book your tickets: tictec.mysociety.org/event/digita... Second, we're also calling for speakers - full details at www.mysociety.org/2026/10/14/d...

Newsletter's late this week. Please open the email and click on the link, we care deeply about engagement metrics. ftav.substack.com/p/ai-is-pooc...

Will “The Lean proof that OpenAI provided isn’t the same as their printed proof, so who knows if any of it is actually right” get as much publicity as the original PR, I wonder. The final 20% is 80% of the work. Whether it’s a website, a Photoshop knock-off, or a Millennium prize problem

“[...] These include OpenAI’s announced Navier-Stokes proof. In particular, we show that the formalised Lean proof does not correspond to the NL proof of blow-up of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations” 😂 – arxiv.org/pdf/2610.08144 via @struan.exo.org.uk

FOMO over recent conferences? Or even from last year? Join us next month in Brighton for 2026.ffconf.org - join your peers, join the conversations you can't have with your chatbot, join us for 8 amazing talks and one superb day. Get your ticket today, don't FOMO-FFCONF.

Games Workshop has never, ever been mentioned in parliament. www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?q=%2...

False attribution is illegal in UK law: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/4... (should anyone know of a UK person this happens to). This is also present only for visual artists in US law: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/... though might (IANAL) be subject to the much wider fair use over there

For tax free childcare I had to confirm I earned less than this amount every three months through an online portal (see eg bsky.app/profile/drac... ) - not means testing this will save c. 1 hour per year per applying parent

They’ve somehow linked the train with one going the other way on the same line

I got a text. “Hi [kid’s name], This is a reminder of your telephone appointment which is booked for Wed 7 Oct between 2:24pm to 4:24pm. Please ensure you will be able to receive your call” If only the NHS could possibly somehow know a reason why they might not be available at this time. Ah well!

Very excited to announce that I will be speaking at @ffconf.org in mid November, on 25 years (!) of the traintimes.org.uk concept. URLs, performance, millions of PWAs; why and how you can do a lot with not a lot. Perhaps see some of you there :) 2026.ffconf.org

Very excited to announce that I will be speaking at @ffconf.org in mid November, on 25 years (!) of the traintimes.org.uk concept. URLs, performance, millions of PWAs; why and how you can do a lot with not a lot. Perhaps see some of you there :) 2026.ffconf.org

My orchestra has an annualized run rate of £547,500¹ ¹ On concert day, we took about £1,500 in ticket sales

Lovely boring dumb 37" LG TV, purchased from @richersounds.com in 2011 (and carried all the way down Broad Street, that was fun) giving up the ghost. What is this world I now find myself in? There’s no TV between 32" and 40", and TVs all monitor everything you do and sell it for ads/data?

In that 2003 concert with the flash flood, we also played Carwithen’s One Damn Thing After Another, so a nice link that they’ve played her piece “Bishop Rock” about the lighthouse @petroc.bsky.social also visited today

Also took the opportunity to fix my now/recently played page intunemixtapefanclub.dracos.co.uk/on-now/ Which I regularly find handy

register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/sector-da... Do you know, I think Second Chance Headway Centre probably doesn’t have 484,577 employees

This is lovely – send a piece of text or a small file from one device to another, via the medium of sound waves: vrugtehagel.nl/transmit/

Looking forward to this on Saturday — the kind of thing that makes Radio 3 very special: www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Having a very rare triple cinema day. Have seen Transformers (1986) 40th anniversary rerelease (dont think I saw it at the time; what an 80s soundtrack!), next up Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, and then Pressure

This is going around as essential reading and for very good reason. Honestly the most incisive and full summary of the longtermism/x-risk pathology I have seen. Every stanza is a gem, and the closing is genius, but my personal favorite, because I have had this exact conversation almost verbatim:

Fixed it for you

@paulclarke.com Here you go, was passing on my way to Mahler 2. Lovely to see you

I was early enough coming home that the Milton Keynes to London part turned out to be £43.20 total. £108.40, a 57% saving overall. Sadly no ice cream stop

When I saw the grey background didn’t get down to the bottom of the container, and you couldn’t scroll to the bottom (only in Safari) my first thought was – is this a float bug? Surely it can’t be a float bug! And lo, it is a float bug! In 2026!

You will be pleased to know this is (hopefully) the last message I shall send about the awful Tax-free Childcare system. Mine has now aged out, so I closed the account on 3rd August. They sent me a few notifications. And yet, this morning, I received the quarterly “confirm your details” email!

Dates have been saved as this will be a wonderful event from @mysociety.org

From the current @privateeyenews.bsky.social

Ticket machine does not let you buy the £33.50 super off peak to London because of how it works. Trebles all round. Thankfully the ticket office is very nice, and also can help you when all trains to London are then cancelled due to a fatality

Justin Fletcher is the voice of Shaun the Sheep?!

Listen you sound nuts if you try to explain that a bunch of silicon valley luminaries are involved in a weird cult that started with a harry potter fanfic and that their weird bboard flame war has spilled over into the real world That's absurd is what that is But also... It's true