Phil Archer

@PhilA
216 Followers
103 Following
232 Posts
Making GS1 IDs part of the Web: every barcode can be a gateway to multiple sources of info. Formerly at W3C. Radios 3 & 4 and LBC listener, bibliophile.
Wo hoo! New W3C VC Working Group Charter just approved and we're ready for people to sign up https://www.w3.org/2026/03/vc-wg-charter.html. There is a *lot* of work to do over the next couple of years.
Verifiable Credentials Working Group Charter

In the image below, there are two QR Codes. Both contain the same URL. However, the one on the left has the scheme written in upper case (HTTPS) and the other has it in lower case (https).

Both should work in exactly the same way and redirect to the GS1 homepage. However, I hear that some phones, especially older Android phones, try to launch an app, rather than just open the URL in the browser. Can you check with your phone please?

AIUI, the folks behind JSON schema have resisted the idea of it becoming a formal standard anywhere. I'm not in the community so I don't know whether that's fully true or what the background might be, even so, it does seem that the first steps along the path to an RFC have been taken https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dusseault-json-schema
JSON Schema

JSON Schema defines the media type "application/schema+json", a JSON- based format for describing the structure of JSON data. JSON Schema asserts what a JSON document must look like, ways to extract information from it, and how to interact with it. The "application/ schema-instance+json" media type provides additional feature-rich integration with "application/schema+json" beyond what can be offered for "application/json" documents.

IETF Datatracker
Not a trial, not a pilot. This is a real product on sale at my local Tesco with a future-looking barcode (QR). 12 years from concept to real life. I have been part of tjis journey for the last 8.5 of those years. #GS1 #DigitalLink
I received an email yesterday, 25th Feb, that began: "Hi Phil, Happy New Year". 25th February!

Working through some old issues for the UN Transparency Protocol spec and saw a comment that made me think "yeah, that's right!" - and then saw that it was me who wrote it months ago...

I really don't like the idea of URLs that include the service and the "secure" data that service is meant to process. I want to choose the service I use to verify your credential if I'm going to trust it.

Now THAT's a headline.

"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"

#edtech #education

https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z-less-cognitively-capable-parents-first-time-cellphone-bans-standardized-test-scores/

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents

Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology.

Fortune
Why is this true: every time I have ever sent an email saying "I'm free any time today except 12:30" back comes a calendar invitation for 12:30 that I then have to decline? This experience is so common I think it must be some sort of definable mental pattern that all humans have. How do we get round this?
new tech warcrime

ppl always complain that the clock on my microwave never shows the right time bcs i cant be assed to set it manually

so now i have an unfuck-microwave.sh cronjob which briefly kills its power every day at midnight