Matthew Somerville
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dracos.co.uk
Matthew Somerville
@dracos.co.uk
2.3K followers 100 following 1.6K posts
I help people report broken street lights, find out their bin day, plan train travel, manage an orchestra, locate the nearest postbox, research old theatre productions, keep time in a choir, and occasionally play board games | https://dracos.co.uk
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dracos.co.uk
We recently added an ASN lookup to nginx so that we can then block entire ASNs at once.
And had to block certain things (can’t even say because it might get picked up) from all FixMyStreet RSS feeds because they clearly weren’t human. Gave me an idea on how to improve the RSS feed generation though?
sil.kryogenix.org Stuart Langridge @sil.kryogenix.org · 1d
“We built the web on optimistic assumptions. We assumed good faith. We assumed people would respect robots.txt because we all understood we were building something great together. The Web was supposed to be for everyone.”

This is a very true, very depressing read.
matthiasott.com Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 2d
✍️ New article: Webspace Invaders

👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾

matthiasott.com/articles/web...
February 9, 2026 at 10:22 PM
dracos.co.uk
Not much I in the AI
Landing page for “Amazon Quick” Log file showing amazon quick requesting the same loading SVG over and over and over.
February 4, 2026 at 3:31 PM
dracos.co.uk
On the 0821 train to London for a team meeting; people working on the new HS2 viaduct by Millennium Point in the mizzle; eating a mushroom omelette with feta roll; paying £100 instead of £200 for just-as-flexible tickets:
split.traintimes.org.uk/BHM/EUS/n/08...
split.traintimes.org.uk
February 4, 2026 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Matthew Somerville
jbakcoleman.bsky.social
The guy who vibe coded a crypto rug pull scientific error detection and got coverage in Nature is back with a vibe coded ai social media network, with similarly crypto intentions… getting coverage from major outlets.

www.404media.co/exposed-molt...
Exposed Moltbook Database Let Anyone Take Control of Any AI Agent on the Site
'It exploded before anyone thought to check whether the database was properly secured.'
www.404media.co
February 1, 2026 at 2:24 AM
dracos.co.uk
Been playing this on and off since Christmas – with plenty of walkthrough help at points! – finally finished it this evening: logic-masters.de/Raetselporta... Can’t really screenshot the end without spoiling it. Very impressive spin on the puzzles
Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair (v1.1.1) — Rätselportal — Logic Masters Deutschland
Die Webseite des Vereins Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.
logic-masters.de
January 31, 2026 at 11:07 PM
dracos.co.uk
“They’re going to make the decisions that you tell them to make, crappily. It’s not only up to you to make the decisions, it’s up to you to double check that the decisions you made were even implemented properly and with care.” – www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvW1... about... React in a terminal.
Thariq from Anthropic: Most people's mental model of Claude Code is that "it's just a TUI" but it should really be closer to "a small game engine". For each frame our pipeline constructs a scene graph with React then -> layouts elements -> rasterizes them to a 2d screen -> diffs that against the previous screen -> finally uses the diff to generate ANSI sequences to draw We have a ~16ms frame budget so we have roughly ~5ms to go from the React scene graph to ANSI written. Jonathan Blow: This is like some gaudy yet exquisitely-crafted Matryoshka doll of clown shows. The only thing missing is “eliminating flickering would require not just one, but multiple PhD theses”. Mathieu Ropert: This company is having a hard time making a 2d ANSI text terminal run at 60fps and they demand you take them seriously when they talk about revolutionizing programming. Screenshotted in a YouTube video with ThePrimeagen reading
January 31, 2026 at 9:59 PM
dracos.co.uk
The reference to Article 39 of the original Magna Carta still sits on the UK statute book, as section 29 of the Magna Carta (1297):
www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc19...
(the 25 in that URL being in the 25th year of the reign of Edward I).
January 31, 2026 at 9:24 PM
dracos.co.uk
It’s still happening, both on the DAB radio and on the Now Playing on the website. Did some timing with a stopwatch and it seems to be exactly 3 minutes ahead of the show itself
dracos.co.uk Matthew Somerville @dracos.co.uk · 13d
The Radio 3 Unwind now playing text has been one song ahead for half an hour now; feel like I’m in one of those quiz shows where you give the previous answer
January 31, 2026 at 8:53 PM
dracos.co.uk
I don’t think anyone cares that a bus three hours ago was cancelled, bus people, especially given another is about to arrive
A bus live departure board showing a 50 and a 35 both due plus a cancelled 35 from hours ago
January 31, 2026 at 2:41 PM
dracos.co.uk
Feels like the sort of research you might want to do in advance.

I remember their previous “80%” study was based on *asking Claude* how much time people saved, e.g. to compile a bibliography, not including, I dunno, having to check it – qv bsky.app/profile/pete...
jenitennison.com Jeni Tennison @jenitennison.com · 11d
As well as showing that (depending on how it's used) AI assistance reduces learning, the study also shows no significant effect on task completion time / productivity on a coding task depending on whether you have AI assistance or not.
nickstenning.bsky.social Nick Stenning @nickstenning.bsky.social · 11d
This lines up with my experience: those who use language models as unstructured conceptual search engines and intellectual foils do well and learn. Those who use them to do the work without judging their output produce rubbish and atrophy their own skills. www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
January 31, 2026 at 1:25 PM
dracos.co.uk
Just in places I have personal experience of, as mentioned in this bit, Oracle is awful:
www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/b...
www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/e...
Used to have to use it in previous job, it was one of the worst web interfaces I’ve ever used.

Small pieces, loosely joined.
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11d
Before we discuss the numbers, let’s explain what Oracle is.

In short, it’s a company that sells a bunch of database and business management programs that are really expensive, have insane pricing structures, and are really hard to decouple from.
www.wheresyoured.at/haters-guide...
You see, Oracle charges on a per-processor basis, and for the Enterprise version, you’re paying a one-off price of $47,000 per processor. And by “per-processor,” I mean “per core of your processor.” No, really, check out Oracle’s own pricing. Here’s where it gets complicated. The thing is, if you’ve got a multi-core processor, you pay more — and believe me, it’s 2026, you most certainly have a multi-core processor. So, Oracle the license fee for each core is 50% of the $47,000. If a server has one 32-core CPU, you’re essentially paying the $47,000 sixteen times (32 multiplied by 0.5). Intel revealed back in August that it had a Xeon processor with 288 cores, or around $6.78 million for an Oracle license for a single chip. This is the case even if you’re renting through a cloud platform like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. In general, Oracle counts two vCPUs as one processor license if multi-threading is enabled, and one vCPU as one processor license if it isn’t. Oh, and Oracle requires you to use “Authorized Cloud Instances.” For smaller organisations, or databases running on less powerful hardware, Oracle has a licensing scheme where companies are charged based on the number of named users. This is $950 for each named user — with a minimum 25 users per processor. If Oracle runs on an eight-core CPU, then you have effectively (by its math), four processors (because each core is equivalent to 50% of a processor). That means you need to buy 100 licenses, bringing the total annual cost to $95,000. In both cases, you have updates and support, which come to 25% of your total license fees. As Oracle grew, it added more products, with one of the most lucrative being its ERP system, which it launched in 2012. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. This is, essentially, the thing that ties the entire organisation together. It’s the single source of truth for the company, and depending on the modules you add, can handle things like accounting, HR, manufacturing, analytics and reporting, supply chain, and so on. And you always need more fucking modules. You’ve probably seen giant ads for it in airports or on the Wall Street Journal and had your eyes immediately glaze over, and that’s part of the plan. Oracle doesn’t want you to understand ERP, because the more you understand, the more it becomes obvious that the confusion created in this category is entirely by design. This is a big industry, too. SAP — a company that employs nearly 120,000 people — pretty much does this, and this alone. Microsoft has Dynamics, and while it’s fairly popular, I don’t think Redmond has made as much headroom in the space as it would like. And as with Oracle’s database systems,, this is expensive software — it’s Oracle, after all — so expensive, in fact, that it nearly bankrupted England’s second-largest city, and Europe’s largest council. No, really, Birmingham City Council said that the Oracle switch was partly responsible for it going bankrupt.
January 31, 2026 at 10:16 AM
dracos.co.uk
First I’ve heard about a retired bomber of Bexley (sounds like a goon show title); slow radicalising of many people, no one seems to have a clue what to do about
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
inside," Sam said. "They've got a little Smart car, which would qualify for Ulez, so I don't know why he did it."
January 31, 2026 at 9:57 AM
dracos.co.uk
This reminds me that my civil service pension documentation uses the domain civilservice-pensions.gov.uk - which no longer exists. I did try and get GOV.UK to make a redirect but they said no.

My favourite bit of the website is the code may take minutes to arrive, but will time out in minutes
It may take a few minutes to arrive. The code will expire after five minutes.
January 29, 2026 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Matthew Somerville
alexparsons.bsky.social
Here's a big thing we've been working on over the last six months: what we've learned from our TICTeC conferences, seminars and conversations about where pro-democratic tech is, and what can happen next www.mysociety.org/2026/01/29/n...
New report: Shifting landscapes
A practical guide to pro democratic tech.
www.mysociety.org
January 29, 2026 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Matthew Somerville
radiobeartime.com
mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski...

👀
The UK paid £4.1 million for a bookmarks site
Or, as they like to call it, the 'AI Skills Hub'. Which was built by PwC because of course it was
mahadk.com
January 29, 2026 at 7:15 AM
dracos.co.uk
The Radio 3 Unwind now playing text has been one song ahead for half an hour now; feel like I’m in one of those quiz shows where you give the previous answer
January 28, 2026 at 8:30 PM
dracos.co.uk
They haven’t even able to get the “(note)”s to link to the footnotes
rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 14d
OH FOR GOD'S SAKE www.gov.uk/government/n... *as little as 20 minutes*
Open to all UK adults online, taking as little as under 20 minutes, the courses will give people the skills needed to use simple Al tools effectively in the workplace and teach the use of Al for tasks like drafting text, creating content and completing administrative tasks, to free up time to focus on other work. This training will
January 28, 2026 at 7:36 AM
Reposted by Matthew Somerville
rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social
I would say this findings shows women are more AI literate than men, because the majority of non-magical beings have no innate ability to "judge truthfulness"
Skills levels vary considerably across demographics, with women less likely than men to feel confident using Al at work (16% vs 26%), [tootnote 7 and uptake of Al training differing by sector. For instance, among those who have heard of Al, 34% of men feel confident in their ability to judge the truthfulness of Al outputs compared to 21% of women, and women are less
January 28, 2026 at 6:24 AM
dracos.co.uk
35 may
17 expected
12 could
January 28, 2026 at 6:35 AM
dracos.co.uk
A 2x2 grid with four characters from Jurassic Park. Doesn’t know how AI works / Doesn't use AI - Alan Grant. Knows how AI works / Doesn't use AI - Ian Malcolm. Doesn’t know how AI works / Uses AI - Donald Gennaro. Knows how AI works / Uses AI - Dennis Nedry.
January 26, 2026 at 10:38 PM
dracos.co.uk
The miracle puddle has returned!
dracos.co.uk Matthew Somerville @dracos.co.uk · Apr 7
Cartland Road has three permanent puddles about a third of the way up the hill. One is clearly a pothole, but the other two, water just seems to well up through the concrete. Is that a thing? Do we have a Stirchley miracle, a new Chalice Well? Or is a massive sinkhole going to open up one day
January 26, 2026 at 7:05 PM
dracos.co.uk
I’ve put up the JPEG of that final result at dracos.co.uk/temp/2026-01... – poor thing got stuck in a loop
dracos.co.uk Matthew Somerville @dracos.co.uk · 16d
I tried out a cryptic crossword clue in Google:
“Endless, crap, odd cereal produce (5)”
It never gets it right, and the fifth time I made it *very* sad
The first time it thought the answer was scrap, its “logic” (I realise that’s not what it’s doing) made no sense Its second guess was crops. Because you get “cra” you see, and so Its fourth attempt was Scree (I skipped Scorn). Because there are some Es. Google ai getting a bit existential trying to solve the clue when I gave it the answer. It gets stuck in a loop and continually fails to find an answer
January 26, 2026 at 8:48 AM
dracos.co.uk
I tried out a cryptic crossword clue in Google:
“Endless, crap, odd cereal produce (5)”
It never gets it right, and the fifth time I made it *very* sad
The first time it thought the answer was scrap, its “logic” (I realise that’s not what it’s doing) made no sense Its second guess was crops. Because you get “cra” you see, and so Its fourth attempt was Scree (I skipped Scorn). Because there are some Es. Google ai getting a bit existential trying to solve the clue when I gave it the answer. It gets stuck in a loop and continually fails to find an answer
January 25, 2026 at 11:14 PM
dracos.co.uk
My morning has been spent dealing with the fallout from my parent’s Amazon account being broken into by someone in New York. Amazon do not come out of this very well.
January 25, 2026 at 12:03 PM
dracos.co.uk
I went to see “Mercy” yesterday. The film was good fun, if pretty stupid. What was also good fun, if pretty stupid, was someone coming up to me five minutes before the end of the film, saying I was in their seat.
Me: “For this film?”
“Is there a film on?”
Me, pointing at screen, “…Yes? This one?”
January 25, 2026 at 8:30 AM