unitedkingdom

I was going to post this ages ago and then I lost the article and forgot what it was. I’ve just discovered I still had the tab open, so here we are.

Enfield based duo Oliver Paterson and Phoenix Ross have landed a place in the Guinness World Records after creating the biggest scotch egg known to man.

The north Londoners created the massive 7.81kg snack by using an ostrich egg from Scotland (which took 90 minutes to boil), alongside 22lbs of sausage meat, before being dredged in semolina and panko breadcrumbs. In order for the record to be completed, the scotch egg had to be successfully cut open with the yolk still intact.

The digestive biscuits were originally intended to be eaten with the chocolate side facing down.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/28713031

Paywall? archive.is/NicVP

The new owner will rebrand the High Street chain as TGJones, but said it would keep the Post Office outlets that operate in many branches.

I think they’ve missed a trick here. My uncle used to call it Smudgers. Much better name!

cross-posted from: metawire.eu/post/5637

The UK government sought to keep details of its row with Apple over requested access to its encrypted cloud storage tool private.

Publish Date: 07.04.2025, 15:22

On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving up sovereignty over a small tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa.

The story did not make the tech press, but perhaps it should have. The decision to transfer the islands to their new owner will result in the loss of one of the tech and gaming industry’s preferred top-level domains: .io.

Whether it’s Github.io, gaming site itch.io, or even Google I/O (which arguably kicked off the trend in 2008), .io has been a constant presence in the tech lexicon. Its popularity is sometimes explained by how it represents the abbreviation for “input/output,” or the data received and processed by any system. What’s not often acknowledged is that it’s more than a quippy domain. It’s a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) related to a nation—meaning it involves politics far beyond the digital world

…

Once this treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist. Various international bodies will update their records. In particular, the International Standard for Organization (ISO) will remove country code “IO” from its specification. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which creates and delegates top-level domains, uses this specification to determine which top-level country domains should exist. Once IO is removed, the IANA will refuse to allow any new registrations with a .io domain. It will also automatically begin the process of retiring existing ones. (There is no official count of the number of extant .io domains.)

Social media platform Bluesky says it has seen a surge in signups in the United Kingdom in recent days.

Since X owner Elon Musk made controversial comments about the riots in the UK, a number of influential figures said they would leave the platform or scale back their use, including home office minister Jess Philips.

Now, Bluesky says it has seen a 60% jump in general activity from accounts in the UK, with several MPs also joining the platform recently.

…

“For 5 out of the last 7 days, the UK had the most Bluesky signups of any country,” said Bluesky in a statement on Monday.

The BBC Weather website and app are suffering a data issue, meteorologists have said, after forecasts showed hurricane force winds hitting the UK.

Graphics show estimated wind speeds of 13,508 mph in London and overnight temperatures of 404C in Nottingham.

Presenter Matt Taylor said in a post on X: “Don’t be alarmed folks - Hurricane Milton hasn’t made it to us here in the UK! There’s been a data glitch between our suppliers and the app/online. Folk are working to solve the issue”…

Seems like the guy in the article was a bit stupid and did the exact things that banks tell you not to like giving personal info and 2FA codes to a cold-caller, but also that Revolut’s claims of biometric security didn’t stop the scammers nicking all his money.

I’ve not had much experience with the “challenger banks” but apparently Revolut gets the most complaints by a long way. Anyone got any similar stories?

The most popular form of surveillance was monitoring active work hours, with 54 percent saying this was going on, and employees’ emails and chat logs were also examined by employers (36 percent and 28 percent, respectively).

One in five confirmed they track the locations from which employees are working – bad news for the digital nomads

Archive

Apple is stepping up its fight with the British government over a demand to create a “back door” in its most secure cloud storage systems, by filing a legal complaint that it hopes will overturn the order.

The iPhone maker has made its appeal to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent judicial body that examines complaints against the UK security services, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Silicon Valley company’s legal challenge is believed to be the first time that provisions in the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act allowing UK authorities to break encryption have been tested before the court. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal will consider whether the UK’s notice to Apple was lawful and, if not, could order it to be quashed.

The case could be heard as soon as this month, although it is unclear whether there will be any public disclosure of the hearing. The government is likely to argue the case should be restricted on national security grounds.