The Internet of Things is now a phrase you see on product boxes, in boardroom slide decks, and across thesis titles in engineering departments everywhere. But it has a surprisingly precise origin. The term was coined in 1999 by a British technologist named Kevin Ashton, and it was not born in a research lab or an academic paper. It started its life as the title of a corporate sales…
One of the most powerful upgrades you can give any AI developer
AI coding assistants are dazzling on a single file and surprisingly lost on a large one. Point a capable agent at a mature, multi-package codebase and you watch the same pattern every session: it greps for a symbol, opens a dozen files to work out how they fit together, and burns a large slice of its context…
Posts about product resilience abound – writing resilient code, designing resilient interfaces (there’s even a book!), and architecting resilient server infrastructures – all covered from a multitude of angles and perspectives. We need more perspectives on building and maintaining professional resilience, an area I’d argue is just as important as resilience of the work itself.
This post shares…
The first text message ever sent was not a love note, a meeting reminder, or a meme. It was a Christmas greeting. On December 3, 1992, a 22-year-old engineer named Neil Papworth sat at a desktop computer, typed two words, and sent the world's first SMS to a mobile phone: "Merry Christmas." More than thirty years later, that humble two-word message has grown into one of the most quietly important…
I've just got back from 2026's Big Bang Fair at the NEC in Birmingham, having last attended in 2024. On both occasions my attendance was as a volunteer for an organisation whose name I won't mention here because I want it to be clear that these are my thoughts rather than theirs. This year, I left feeling thoughtful. In contrast, my experience in 2024 left me frustrated enough to decline an…
**From November 2024, we conceived and coordinated Extract – an AI product that turns decades of trapped planning documents into structured data – then led it through an alpha phase, testing and shaping it with local planning authorities. In June 2025, the Prime Minister launched Extract at London Tech Week and named it one of his AI Exemplars. Early results suggest a task that takes planning…
Regardless of what conclusions we might individually arrive at, Singaporeans deserve transparency, accountability, and open, good-faith, informed conversations on the death penalty.
Today's Matrix Live:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CPZVK_qWS_Y
The Governing Board is an advisory board to the Matrix.org Foundation and with elected representatives from all across the Matrix ecosystem.
Gwmngilfen announces
Hello folks, it's time for another board report!…
Also, Genius Games takes over Elf Creek Games and makes like Santa
Since its creation in 2021, WikiAfrica Hour (WAH) has grown into a vibrant, community-driven space amplifying African voices within the global Wikimedia movement. Produced by Wiki In Africa, the monthly vodcast brought together contributors, organisers, leaders, and partners from Africa and beyond to reflect, exchange knowledge, and collectively shape the future of open knowledge.
During…
After ten years of creative cooperation, we’re announcing that We Are Open Co-op (WAO) will close its doors on our 10th birthday: 1st May 2026. This has been a carefully considered, collaborative decision — the kind we’ve always tried to model as a co-op.
And when your confidence is gone, it's hard to feel good about your work
Two years ago, I pitched a piece to The Atlantic called "AI Is Blurring the Boundaries Between Booms and Busts." The argument was that the familiar cycle — growth leads to hiring, hiring fills offices, offices fund cities — was breaking down. Not temporarily. Structurally.
San Francisco was my case study. The city was supposedly staging a comeback. AI companies were flooding in, investors were…