We got one of those years ago. I had already written a Sudoku solver using Knuth's Dancing Links, so I modified it to find the Bedlam solutions. The program worked mostly but gave duplicates for some of the solutions. It was also fun to develop solution search criteria for placing the pieces, e.g. to get the reds all down one corner.

Haha that's funny, the person that introduced me to programming set me the bedlam cube as a challenge. I used dancing links and later on adapted it to sudoku!

Planning rules conflict with building regs in the UK. Planning means that most new houses are little boxes made of little more than ticky-tacky. So adding insulation to the walls makes them even smaller inside.

Unclear what this means - both of these sets of rules apply, so the planning system couldn't force people to not comply with building regs? The new approach appears to be prefab foil coated insulation board in the walls, under brick or breezeblock skin, given what I can see being built nearby.

Spot on. The letter is a prime example of a boilerplate process that Ofcom have developed to meet the requirements of the law as it currently stands. By now I expect they have no illusions about 4Chan's likelihood of complying. I wonder how long they will carry on sending similar letters and giving Preston Byrne an opportunity to have another laugh.

I think EncroChat scared them pas-de-merde, and this may be an overreaction by untutored civil servants.

In the end, wasn't EncroChat a larger problem for the criminals than the governments?

Once it became a big enough target it got taken down, and then quietly run by the police who collected everybody's messages for months before triggering a huge round of arrests, including quite a bit of major organized crime across Europe. The dangers of centralization. They'd love another EncroChat!

Doesn't apply so much to GrapheneOS of course since they're not in the messaging platform market, but it's definitely a cautionary tale.

I watched a fascinating documentary about EncroChat (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/operation-dark-phone-mur...). It was obvious the police absolutely loved having this real time feed into criminal communications, and thought "let's have more of that please". They don't realise the consequences are that criminals won't use such forms of communication once they know they're backdoored.

Of course they realise it, and they know it's irrelevant, because their job is to catch actual dissidents today, not hypothetical future dissidents.

> scared them pas-de-merde

Huh?

French for "shitless"

I think it may be a tongue in cheek semi-literal translation from English, I’ve not come across this as idiomatic French before.

No it's not

"without shit" translated...

"Scared them shitless" in faux franglais.

Probably something like this would be close to the same colloquial meaning (I'm not familiar with any pants-shitting slang in French): EncroChat leur a foutu les jetons de ouf.

(closer to "scared the hell out of them")

Ils en ont ch... dans leur culotte.

'the government playing by its own rules' generally means they change the rules, often arbitrarily, when some new crisis demands a 'solution'.