Joshua Lock
@joshuagl.bsky.social
Software engineer and part-time PhD student (programming systems / human computer interaction / computing education)
The UK has pulled its order to put a backdoor into Apple's encrypted services. BUT "powers to attack encryption are still on the law books, and pose a serious risk to user security and protection against criminal abuse of our data." 🗣️ Jim Killock, ORG Exec Director. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
UK backs down in Apple privacy row, US says
UK authorities have demanded access to Apple users' protected files when required for investigations.
bbc.co.uk
I enabled full keyboard accessibility on macOS today so that I could touch the mouse less (due to a sore hand/wrist). It's really awkward. Especially with web apps like the Google Workspace Suite and Slack (electron app). Lots of keyboard presses and occasional focus stealing behaviour.
Pycon UK in September features a talk on our Strype project ( strype.org ) from my colleague Pierre, if you're interested and near Manchester. Lots of other interesting-looking talks and a keynote from @felienne.bsky.social - what more could you want?
PyCon UK@pyconuk.org · last yr.📣📣 Announcement: full PyCon UK 2025 programme is now LIVE! 📣📣 It’s here, folks! The full schedule is up, and it’s chock-full of talks, workshops & more! 🎉🐍🌟 Schedule is over here 👉 buff.ly/9UtKEOl Tickets this way 👉 buff.ly/83NpL2R #Python #TechEvents #development #manchester #PythonProgramming
ATTENTION: Free Computing Teachers Conference Our speakers are now confirmed for CKC 2025: @dsyme.bsky.social @megjlow.bsky.social @beckyfranks.bsky.social @tracygardner.bsky.social @lollypopstar.bsky.social @neilccbrown.bsky.social @suesentance.bsky.social Sign up here: tinyurl.com/CKC-Kings
We are in urgent need of several Associate Editors to join the ACM TOCE Editorial Board. If you're interested in serving, write Amy at ajko@uw.edu and share your reviewing experience and expertise. Without more volunteers to manage our rising submissions, we may have to pause submissions.
Tim Leunig here, with a warning to all those MPs who want to just allow universities to implode: in 100 constituencies the university is one of the top three exporters. Take Huddersfield: the uni there easily outstrips in turnover the biggest local company. timleunig.substack.com/p/internatio...
International university students
Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot again.
timleunig.substack.com
Save the date! On 5th July, we are hosting the CAS & King's Computing Conference for teachers. If you are a computing teacher and can come to London, have a look at this: a fantastic free event with great talks and workshops. Open for registration now. www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2025/...
I am once more seeking participants for a user study. We'll be evaluating a prototype code editor that completes your text with placeholders for missing tokens expected by the language. Here's a short video of me motivating the editor and study. Details in thread. Reskeets appreciated! 🙏
This is the greatest programming project of all time www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mCs...
TypeScript types can run DOOM
YouTube video by Michigan TypeScript
youtube.com
Come and do a PhD with us! Interested in programming languages, development tools, HCI and computing education? @neilccbrown.bsky.social and I are jointly supervising a fully funded PhD. Theme: "Debugging and runtime visualisation in a frame-based system". Details www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...
Industry-funded studentship in Computer Science
3.5yr Studentship funding for a specific PhD project on Debugging and runtime visualisation in a frame-based system.
kcl.ac.uk
“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath 50 reasons to want walkable streets.
50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets
From making you live longer to making cities more resilient: If you want a reason to make your city more walkable, it's in here.
fastcompany.com
Open source projects should include a user expectations document to go alongside the code of conduct and license. Describe what support and maintenance expectations will be provided. Absence of such document should imply “as is”.
@joshuahhh.com and I invite you to explore our experimental visual programming environment (which takes place in a dungeon) Features - dissolve the bounds of decision and explore all possibilities at once - use sigillic incantations, delve into recursive caverns vezwork.github.io/drostes-lair-post
An invitation into Droste's Lair
A swords-and-sorcery programming environment for building and counting mathematical structures
vezwork.github.io
It's really remarkable how well this product can make you look like a non-native speaker who doesn't know the jargon of the field.
The paper, The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health impact of AI, “finds that the generation of electricity for data centers hosting artificial intelligence applications could pollute the air so much that by 2030 an additional 1,300 people may die prematurely each year as a result.”
AI's $20 billion air pollution problem
Researchers find AI-related emissions will soon rival that of all the cars in California and cause asthma deaths to spike.
businessinsider.com
We’re so excited to share our #BrailleDice are launching December 6th! These will change #AccessibilityInTabletop in a big way, being the world’s first mass produced braille polyhedral dice. We have been working on them for over 5 years with our partners at @dieharddice.bsky.social 💜 🧵
In our article on ACM Queue, Chris Fleizach and I introduce the term "System-Class Accessibility" to describe the OS-level architectural support required to make a whole system usable by people with disabilities. It's a good primer on how accessibility is made: www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pub...
it's Randy Pausch Memorial Day at @scsatcmu.bsky.social -- if you haven't watched his Last Lecture, or haven't rewatched it recently, it's always a good watch, … advice on achieving your childhood dreams and enabling others to achieve their dreams! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_...
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
YouTube video by Carnegie Mellon University
youtube.com
It's the 10 year anniversary of one of the coolest things I've ever done on the Internet: My feminist remix of Mattel's absurdly sexist Computer Engineer Barbie book. A thing I did to procrastinate from writing my dissertation but then resulted in me consulting for Mattel. medium.com/csforall-sto...
Tech Barbie’s Backstory: How she went from “math is hard” to robotics engineer
Learning to code can be an exciting journey, but having to overcome stereotypes along the way makes it a more difficult one. Girls deal…
medium.com
I was curious how hard it would be to implement a basic feed-forward neural net in Scratch. Definitely doable but dealing with inability to represent anything more complex than a 1D list makes it a pain in the butt. If I didn’t get my loops right I’m not sure I can debug this nightmare.
Here is a v sharable and relatable poem that I wrote about how Thing Were Better In The Old Days
