Russ Garrett

Infrastructure data nerd at Open Infrastructure Map (npub1qfg…k773) and https://infrageomatics.com
Festival ops at Electromagnetic Field (npub1fak…rg6c) (and sometimes elsewhere)
Board member at Limehouse Labs (npub157v…tcs9)

Lapsed sound engineer, occasional laserist, anarchist, hyperactive generalist, antihistamine sommelier. I like maps.

🏴🏳️‍🌈

Website: https://russ.garrett.co.uk
Location: London, UK
Pronouns: he/they
Keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:ENYRRFGY4CQDPUPYAL6DTIS6BQ

Public Key

npub1hg9xaza0p8y5s4dcj7pn5npg3kq3s7uma0fjxq6j23u2szwp9eqqs9wwtk

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst5znw3whsnj2g2kuf0qe6fs5gmqgc0wd7h5erqdf9g79gp8qjusqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wdejhgt3lt8t

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

relay.nostr.net

relay.snort.social

Author Public Key

npub1hg9xaza0p8y5s4dcj7pn5npg3kq3s7uma0fjxq6j23u2szwp9eqqs9wwtk

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-06-25 23:43:42 CEST

In a move which will make a lot of recording engineers quite angry, Jim Lill on YouTube comprehensively tests high-end mic preamps and concludes that they do absolutely nothing to the sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-vIeA7yy6Q

2026-05-02 14:49:54 CEST

- reply

the Food Hacking Base usually does a bunch of this, and it's usually very popular! But I don't think they're coming this year: https://foodhackingbase.org

2026-04-23 14:14:02 CEST

Solar generation in Great Britain just hit a new record of 15.0 GW (~43% of national demand)
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/

2026-04-10 23:49:48 CEST

- reply

Congratulations to the person who stood for election in two neighbouring wards for two different parties (!), and even briefly made it onto the list of candidates before the returning officer realised.

2026-04-10 19:57:47 CEST

Today is one of those days where a group of volunteers has to semi-manually digitize the list of people standing in 3,074 local elections in May, because the UK is very weird and the only official data is published as PDFs.
https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/

2026-03-25 13:52:30 CET

Less than 1GW of fossil fuels on the GB grid klaxon!
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/289/906/234/956/917/original/9e88360234572457.png

2026-03-20 13:22:20 CET

- reply

cc @npub12tr…tlud (!!)

2026-03-20 10:34:03 CET

Final report on last year's Iberian blackout has been released, including this very interesting diagram showing the contributing factors
https://eepublicdownloads.blob.core.windows.net/public-cdn-container/clean-documents/Publications/2025/iberian-blackout/Final%20Report%20on%20the%20Grid%20Incident%20in%20Spain%20and%20Portugal%20on%2028%20April%202025.pdf
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/260/814/321/448/249/original/6821832da2f6c265.png

2026-03-05 21:21:02 CET

- reply

you could move that phone number to AAISP for £1.80/month and they'll forward the SMS to email (and the calls to VoIP or wherever you want)

2025-12-05 13:13:39 CET

There is currently a scanning electron microscope on eBay UK for the incredible bargain price of £470. I do not have space for this.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/267500902096

2025-11-04 21:47:48 CET

Smarter Every Day somehow managed to get permission to film inside an active nuclear power plant during refueling, and it's absolutely fascinating
https://youtu.be/v0afQ6w3Bjw

2025-10-14 23:10:00 CEST

- reply

they mean equivalent fluency to an A-level in Spanish or German, not the English A-levels that native speakers take. None of the news articles mention this, though.
You can't even get an A-level in English as a second language, it's just based on CEFR equivalence.

2025-09-03 15:55:54 CEST

Periodic reminder that Airbus open-sourced their cockpit UI font and it looks great on little OLED screens
https://github.com/polarsys/b612

2025-08-20 13:32:54 CEST

- reply

they cancelled the prize https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/19/polari-literary-prize-cancelled-over-the-boy-in-striped-pyjamas-author-john-boyne

2025-08-09 19:45:52 CEST

WiFi clients heatmap at #why2025. I spent way too long wrestling with grafana for this.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/115/000/053/002/941/575/original/126b659bd1dae88d.png

2025-07-31 23:30:35 CEST

Ah Germany, where you can pay in cash and the 90s-looking till will somehow spit out a ECDSA/SHA384 signature. Love some base64 on my receipts.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/949/975/832/654/861/original/227a36d59626ba43.jpg

2025-07-20 22:33:42 CEST

- reply

I will allow that if @npub12tr…tlud does it and it's well-executed

2025-07-20 17:49:42 CEST

Also the orphan source jokes are almost as stale as EMF-the-band jokes at this stage, get some new material.
https://social.emfcamp.org/@emf/statuses/01K0M687FG89BJN0EWGG45XWBE

2025-07-10 01:24:00 CEST

An update on how well the International Energy Agency is doing at predicting solar generation growth.
(source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032125000449)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/825/850/966/576/848/original/45101620cd7a6892.png

2025-07-02 09:53:50 CEST

Very nice report on the fire at North Hyde substation which took down Heathrow in March.
tl;dr:
* Fire was caused by moisture ingress in a high voltage bushing which was detected in 2018 but got lost in the system.
* North Hyde is an ageing substation which didn't have adequate protection against spread of fire
* Heathrow didn't think that a loss of grid feed was a plausible risk, so they assumed 10-12 hours was a reasonable recovery time from that.
https://www.neso.energy/document/363891/download

2025-06-14 22:01:20 CEST

- reply

yeah I think they're the best of the worst

2025-06-14 19:04:15 CEST

- reply

they have a lot of faults but I think the BBC is probably still the most neutral Western news source

2025-05-05 18:36:46 CEST

If you're the type of person who maps power infrastructure in OpenStreetMap, you may be interested in my new PowerNetworkTools plugin:
https://github.com/openinframap/josm-power-network-tools/
The first tool allows you to estimate the voltage of a substation busbar from aerial imagery. Full details in the git README. Hopefully more tools available soon!
Available wherever you usually get your JOSM plugins (i.e. the settings dialog).
#OpenStreetMap #JOSM

2025-04-28 20:36:25 CEST

- reply

According to ENTSO-E data, Spain's transmission network is now handling 57% of forecast demand (from a low of 41%), and Portugal's is serving 14% (from a low of 11%).

2025-04-28 20:34:03 CEST

- reply

The Portuguese network operator has denied they ever said anything about "induced atmospheric vibration".
For some reason I suspect AI was responsible for that nonsense.
https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2025-04-28-e-falso-que-fenomeno-atmosferico-raro-tenha-estado-na-origem-do-apagao-1a078544

2025-04-28 16:32:59 CEST

- reply

"due to extreme temperature variations in the interior or Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 KV), a phenomenon known as 'induced atmospheric vibration'"
...what?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t?post=asset%3Addda9592-0346-4fe8-a17a-2261efc1ba5b#post

2025-04-28 14:10:05 CEST

- reply

Proximate cause *maybe* the loss of 1310 MW at Golfech unit 1 nuclear plant in France? Time is a few minutes off but that might be a reporting thing.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/415/514/717/401/285/original/ad0e0b8ebd0243de.png

2025-04-28 13:37:46 CEST

My best guess is that Spain and Portugal are currently experiencing a replay of July 2021:
https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2022/03/28/final-report-on-the-power-system-separation-of-iberia-from-continental-europe-on-24-july-2021/

2025-04-19 23:12:37 CEST

The UK now has the world's first ETCS-enabled steam locomotive, because we're a very silly country.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/19/nobody-has-done-this-before-britains-beloved-steam-trains-trial-pioneering-technology
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/366/687/171/070/524/original/9597e49fe5bb7378.png

2025-04-11 15:59:38 CEST

Someone nerdsniped me into making this so please enjoy this visualisation of the distance to every public transport station in London.
(Data from #openstreetmap, MapTiler)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/319/686/191/369/042/original/98b71f0a6a0fc623.png

2025-03-29 13:47:09 CET

Wind farm!
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/245/790/965/756/473/original/79d69d38869af323.jpg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/245/791/126/206/105/original/e41b0d07416a12db.jpg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/245/791/030/445/435/original/1299a5f1103e8f63.jpg

2025-03-17 21:57:10 CET

ECMWF is making all their (excellent) weather forecasts open data from October this year!
https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2025/ecmwf-achieve-fully-open-data-status-2025

2025-02-27 23:46:41 CET

The Command and Conquer source code they just released is really well commented. Surprisingly readable. https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert

2025-02-27 00:38:18 CET

This is not a narrowly-construed piece of legal text. This is some boilerplate that a lawyer hammered out with very little oversight and nobody thought to question it.
And that makes me more nervous about Mozilla than anything else they've done in the last few years.
How is Mozilla "operating Firefox" on my machine??
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/072/819/943/354/943/original/eb9332b2074193cb.png

2025-02-11 12:19:13 CET

Spent 50 minutes on the phone with Thames Water yesterday trying to tell them that my water bill was too low because they had my water meter swapped with another property. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered.

2025-02-09 22:52:29 CET

Fairly sure they could have isolated that line at the local breaker first, but they kept it energised so they could get a more exciting video of the disconnection.
https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/113972984053584494

2025-02-09 16:20:00 CET

The Baltic states have successfully synchronised with the European grid
https://elering.ee/estonian-latvian-and-lithuanian-power-systems-successfully-synchronised-continental-europe

2025-01-20 13:08:57 CET

- reply

the SP series of connectors are decent and very cheap:
https://www.weipuconnector.com/products/sp13/
(This is one manufacturer but they seem to be kind of a de-facto standard and you can find lots of sellers on Aliexpress, and also some western distributors sell them)

2025-01-18 18:32:49 CET

To every American who's complaining about having to enforce UK laws, I'd like to introduce you to FATCA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act

2025-01-06 11:22:10 CET

Due to budget cuts we regret that we could only provide 24 hours of False Spring. We now return you to your regularly scheduled winter weather.
#ukweather
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/780/911/581/475/536/original/da84e67a6e299c15.png

2025-01-03 23:32:30 CET

- reply

We should definitely try and reverse the bias against technicians! But also I think the spectrum is more continuous than a lot of people (in many technical fields) are willing to admit.
And also language evolves whether we like it or not. So it might be a losing battle.

2025-01-03 16:02:22 CET

- reply

this series of posts is great, and pretty thoroughly debunks that Atlantic article:
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/

2024-12-29 12:10:09 CET

Another great talk from Congress:
Germany has a system for remotely controlling loads (streetlights, storage heating) over radio.
It's also used for controlling generation. Including 100MW+ solar plants.
It's completely unencrypted.
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-blinkencity-radio-controlling-street-lamps-and-power-plants (talk currently starts ~16mins into the video)
#energy #38c3

2024-12-28 10:22:56 CET

FYI: the VW Volksdaten exploit wasn't quite an open S3 bucket - they managed to remotely extract AWS keys from a JVM heap dump using this (terrible) default configuration issue in older versions of "Spring Boot Actuator": https://www.wiz.io/blog/spring-boot-actuator-misconfigurations#1-exposed-heapdump-file-16
But also VW claimed they were truncating the precision of stored coordinates, but for a load of car models they weren't...
Hopefully there will be a full writeup somewhere soon, it was quite a good talk.

2024-12-21 16:38:41 CET

Turns out the UK government ran a second impact assessment on the Online Safety Act in October, which I didn't know about. They seemed quite surprised to learn that individuals might be running in-scope services.
(I did respond to the original consultation and I definitely told them this then...)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6716222b9242eecc6c849b09/Online_Safety_act_enactment_impact_assessment.pdf#page=91
cc @npub1huw…c5x7
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/691/559/219/303/443/original/5af7881d62411c31.png

2024-12-19 18:10:07 CET

- reply

Synthetic aperture radar, East China Sea
(Sentinel-1/Copernicus)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/680/594/128/086/100/original/5a6fdc5e9f0f3684.jpg

2024-12-17 18:41:36 CET

If you run a small online community in the UK (or with significant UK users), I spent most of yesterday reading hundreds of pages of Online Safety Act guidance and summarised it:
https://russ.garrett.co.uk/2024/12/17/online-safety-act-guide/
There's definitely stuff you have to do if you want to comply with this law...

2024-12-17 10:34:01 CET

- reply

we use it for IRCCloud, so they're fine with small-ish users, but I'm not sure if they'd accept tiny unincorporated websites.

2024-12-17 10:30:49 CET

- reply

PhotoDNA is free (a genuinely good Microsoft service) but I'm not sure what the criteria are to sign up.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

2024-12-17 03:10:16 CET

I've been struggling to focus for weeks and the thing I suddenly decide to hyperfocus on is this stupid fucking legislation.
So anyway here you go, first draft of my Online Safety Act guide:
https://gist.github.com/russss/ca3fc44e8bd1c7278b81adcaa9073c3e
Comments welcome. There may be errors.

2024-12-07 12:27:45 CET

- reply

yeah I can probably arrange that - let me know the account name and email address for it, and I'll message you a password.

2024-12-03 21:48:39 CET

And [@dsn_status](https://bot.country/@dsn_status ) is back!
(There may be a few glitches while I debug some problems...)
https://bot.country/@dsn_status/statuses/01JE7412T34CHSD7QDGTKGG3B7

2024-11-29 22:15:26 CET

- reply

Thousands of square kilometres of near-perfect geometric grid.
I suspect this is the result of the world's most boring job driving around collecting geophysics for oil exploration.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/568/312/475/749/840/original/013c9fae20ec5f9c.png

2024-11-29 02:45:22 CET

New version of my visualisation of world power networks mapped on OpenStreetMap, with data from today.
I've added power plants to this iteration - although these are covered by power lines in denser areas, I think they give a bit more detail in darker areas.
Rendered from 38.1 million power lines and 85,000 power plants in 86 seconds using datashader.
#energy #gis #openstreetmap
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/563/711/621/020/768/original/e9f9520f53608b64.png

2024-11-27 23:33:55 CET

- reply

yes - [@emf](https://social.emfcamp.org/@emf )'s posts are on https://social.emfcamp.org

2024-11-26 19:21:30 CET

- reply

Horse (courtesy @npub19rk…873l)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/550/641/634/525/253/original/27e55c0e7dc94ef8.png

2024-11-26 18:42:54 CET

- reply

Answers on a postcard for this one
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/550/489/903/081/784/original/dc9e736aa6b7a9d1.png

2024-11-26 18:39:38 CET

- reply

It's apparently a pomegranate? Here's another one
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/550/477/072/338/721/original/6749aacd0d44b9ee.png

2024-11-26 18:29:19 CET

- reply

Photovoltaic bird!!
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/550/436/492/151/433/original/0d0caa3b8dafaac9.png

2024-11-24 21:23:13 CET

- reply

Photovoltaic camel
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/539/795/613/006/621/original/7605a1c6c70dd148.png

2024-10-27 00:07:56 CEST

Maybe I'll start a thread of cool satellite images I stumbled across while mapping for OpenStreetMap. This one is good.
(Kebbi, Nigeria. Sentinel-2 Cloudless by https://eox.at)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/376/000/386/488/298/original/d1053ab9338ffcc1.png

2024-10-14 12:57:48 CEST

- reply

this did get fixed in Mailman 3 which was released...9.5 years ago, but the upgrade path is sufficiently annoying that almost nobody bothered upgrading.

2024-09-26 18:40:44 CEST

Good to see that the PyPSA energy system simulation toolkit has switched over to using OpenStreetMap as their source for the electricity grid layout in Europe!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.17178
https://pypsa.org/
I should really get round to having a play with PyPSA at some point...
#openstreetmap #energy
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/204/844/502/913/682/original/285c18c777a3b066.png

2024-08-01 01:43:54 CEST

Dogshit reporting on a poor meta-analysis. Our media is not capable of reporting on scientific studies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c84jdxd4x1ro
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/883/756/789/861/714/original/a20ea4d65b123321.webp