2026 archive

humourless bureaucrats

My post of 23 March 2023 noted that the UK Passport Office website included the “X-Clacks-Overhead” header referencing Sir Terry Pratchett’s “Clacks”, a technology in the fictional Disc World much like the telegraph (or internet) of our world. I noticed today that the independent Passport Office website has now been swallowed by the all encompassing …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2026/01/25/humourless-bureaucrats/

understand your customer

image of email

In October last year I posted about my email phishing attack against a group of my friends (at least, I think they are still my friends). That post was an attempt to describe some of the problems inherent in the way people trust the systems they use on a daily basis. People are naturally trusting, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2026/01/25/understand-your-customer/