Save us from the office that follows you home

There is a certain kind of person for whom the phrase “work-life balance” is meaningless, because work is life, and life is work. The body may be home with the dog and the Great British Bake Off, but the mind is still a whirr of stock options and invoices and client meetings; the clock may…

The threat to Britain from terrorism is about the same as the threat from social insects. I demand a War on Wasps

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has written a piece for The Sunday Telegraph about how Britain should respond to the “Islamic State” which has taken control of parts of Iraq and Syria. It’s perfectly sensible, in the main, and most people probably agree that it’s in our national interests to take steps to overcome the…

The day the internet broke

This week a technical hitch caused websites to wobble worldwide. Tom Chivers discovers the net is held together with chewing gum and string On Tuesday, at 8.48am British Summer Time, Verizon, a major US internet service provider (ISP), did something relatively mundane and technical: it took some big groups of IP addresses, which we can…

Fifteen things I love about Scotland, in a hopefully non-patronising way

A disclaimer: I know there’s nothing worse than English people patronisingly telling Scotland how much they love whisky and haggis, so let’s stay together guys. I know English lists of what they love about Scotland are always “oh they’re so friendly” and “I love the seafood” and “aww, Highland cows look like teddy bears”. But…

A robot that’s smarter than us? There’s one big problem with that…

[ooyala id=”Y1cmhjMjogL5tMsqt4VkddB7rgzUu_fa” ] The day I realised that machines were going to take over the world was March 29 2011, when I saw a YouTube video of two quadcopter drones playing ping-pong. Yes, I know, ping-pong is an unlikely choice of combat technique. But it was creepy. They were obviously tracking the movement of the…