The Curious Engineer

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Hi, I'm Heather Burns

heatherburns.tech

— yes, that one.

Society / politics / economyEssays / personal

’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
214 from 22 Dec 2015 to 7 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (31 in the last year)
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personal blog
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https://heatherburns.tech/feed/

2026 27

  1. The threads that bind us
  2. Shall we play a game?
  3. Back to first principles
  4. I’m in love with a German film star
  5. The age-gating of history
  6. I’m a what now?!
  7. Safe to call out this bullshit
  8. The kids (with phones) are alright
  9. Going bla bla bla about wtf
  10. The Nerve of this woman
  11. You can walk away.
  12. Grassware
  13. Rewilding the Web, Maria’s Version
  14. Aimee
  15. Born Crotchety
  16. Magical thinking about magical thinking
  17. The language is leaving me
  18. Got a thing
  19. Development is political
  20. I, Sisyphus
  21. The Prince, The Paedo, The Palace, and the “Safety Tech” app
  22. the other Turing test
  23. At last, a wonderful day in Parliament.
  24. Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, America
  25. The Darnella test of social media and smartphone regulation
  26. The worst fucking app idea ever
  27. Resistance honeypots

2025 42

  1. 2025’s best reads
  2. My top achievement for 2025
  3. Throwing the Flying Spaghetti Monster at the Wall
  4. Time to start de-Appling
  5. Footnote privacy? Footnote privacy!
  6. Democracy and the open internet die in daylight
  7. Surveil and segregate and suppress and snitch
  8. Speculative Legislation
  9. Banned Books Week 2025 / nothing new under the sun
  10. The dog that caught the car
  11. The littlest eye
  12. You have a stake in reading this
  13. Queen of the hill
  14. Make Your Basket
  15. Art break: Favourite Darkness
  16. Art break: secession resurrection
  17. Art break: “Archives”
  18. That would be me
  19. Emptying my Pocket
  20. Somehow, that Home Office campaign got even worse.
  21. Bona lavs
  22. Mephistopheles and the original sin
  23. A tale of two TCNs
  24. The best blog I’ve seen in ages
  25. The cognitive detachment of academia in its full glory
  26. The troublemakers of Gutenberg
  27. The privacy threat model sitting at your dinner table
  28. At last, a UK data broker removal service
  29. What You Should Do
  30. Don’t let anyone tell you that you didn’t see what you saw
  31. A story prompt
  32. Strategies for resistance, right now
  33. Talking about the IPA TCN Apple mess
  34. Don’t forget your lighter
  35. Your remedial homework
  36. Taking the Internet back for God
  37. The Haçienda Must Be Built
  38. Love, privacy, and the politics of intellectual shame
  39. Your dystopian reads for dystopian times
  40. Running up that hill, with no problems
  41. Another day of stochastic harassment for old time’s sake
  42. If an AI did cocaine, it would look like this

2024 23

  1. 2024’s best reads and listens
  2. Femmes de Paris
  3. Periods, full stop.
  4. Mná na hÉireann
  5. What will remain of us is books
  6. Say their names.
  7. LI + AI = GIGO
  8. The master’s tools will never advocate for digital rights
  9. One of these things is not like the other
  10. Your autumn 2024 privacy conference talk challenge
  11. On the marzipan dreadnought
  12. Cheers, Peter.
  13. Back to school
  14. How Labour already fixed the biggest policy problem in tech
  15. So you’ve got to read a 1200 page consultation
  16. I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record.
  17. Cheers, Ross.
  18. That time I got stalked by the real life TV stalker woman and what it taught me about data protection
  19. A half pint of IPAA
  20. IWD 2024: When you’re a workplace predator, it’s a hard habit to break.
  21. On the world-leading failure of the Conservative vision for internet regulation
  22. Those who choose not to heal
  23. 2023’s best reads and listens

2023 21

  1. A short post on why I will not be writing a long post about Ofcom’s Online Safety Act consultation
  2. Lawrence Jones proved it: in business, awards are for losers.
  3. How to sum up 1700 pages in four words
  4. Online Safety enforcement consultation, round one, yay
  5. Are we doing this again? Yes, we’re doing this again.
  6. The call was coming from inside the house
  7. The things I learned under the bluest sky
  8. That’s no moonshot.
  9. To fight bad law, talk to its targets, not about them.
  10. Is it me you’re looking for?
  11. Thank you Ray
  12. How it started
  13. Understanding Privacy is now on Amazon
  14. The cavalry have arrived. But not for long.
  15. Greatest hits, b-sides, and unfinished demo tracks: or, all my blogging on the Online Safety Bill
  16. On Snowballs, Napoleons, and sharks
  17. All data is health data.
  18. Freaking out about TikTok on your work phone? You should look closer to home.
  19. The age-appropriate rubber dinghies of the sunlit uplands
  20. The disinformation about the disinformation
  21. 2022’s best reads

2022 23

  1. To protect your users, protect yourself
  2. NQ, MCR, 11/22
  3. On unexpected unemployment
  4. Good editors and how to spot them
  5. Online harms are hard. Meet a woman who is harder.
  6. A little story about my book and a troublemaker who tried to derail it, as you do
  7. A thought experiment: what if we talked about the over-60s’ screen time the way we talk about young people’s screen time?
  8. Fixing the UK’s Online Safety Bill, part 1: we need answers.
  9. Fixing the UK’s Online Safety Bill, part 0: no, it’s not fixable.
  10. The week the open web won
  11. Here’s why your project is in scope of the Online Safety Bill
  12. Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill; or, welcome to hell
  13. Pop-ups are dead, long live pop-ups: or, the bait-and-switch hidden in today’s cookie announcement
  14. When it comes to your privacy, the UK has decided that you’re a bunch of c-words
  15. Podcast: Internet of Humans
  16. Russian plugin, go fuck yourself
  17. Yes, the UK is trying to Brexit the Internet
  18. A quick take on three pretty terrifying changes to the Online Safety Bill
  19. A peek behind a dark curtain
  20. Why the “Nick Clegg Law” is saying the quiet part out loud
  21. The #WildWestWeb fallacy isn’t about ending online harms. It’s about enabling populism.
  22. Yes, the Online Safety Bill is the most Conservative law yet. Here’s why.
  23. Content about a thing is not enticement to do it.

2021 18

  1. UK tech policy predictions for 2022: pennies dropping everywhere
  2. The UK’s Online Safety Bill is a “hostage-taking” law. That should terrify you.
  3. Internet regulation debates need rules of engagement. Here’s a start.
  4. Data is political. Ask a Glaswegian.
  5. The greatest lesson the Conservatives learned from tech
  6. Postcard from a Challenger Kid
  7. Behold! I have an opinion. An EXCLUSIVE opinion.
  8. World-leading internet diplomacy, or perhaps not
  9. Game over for digital rights?
  10. A wonk across the rooftops
  11. A natter on regulations, freedom of expression, and open source software
  12. Recent media quotes and talks
  13. On data rights, immigration, privilege, power, and the shit life throws at you
  14. A thought experiment on subjectively harmful content moderation
  15. The UNICEF Manifesto on better governance of children’s data
  16. Political Geography and the Internet: the view from 1999
  17. Your cut-and-keep guide to the “unregulated wild west internet”
  18. Techdirt Podcast: Intermediary liability law is not a social safety net

2020 19

  1. Tech prediction for 2021: it’s getting a bit “Children of Men” around here
  2. Facebook Derangement Syndrome
  3. Wired UK: MPs slam UK data regulator for failing to protect people’s rights
  4. An imagined tech policy conversation in an English farmyard
  5. How to create a world as age appropriate as apple pie
  6. The Recovery Roadmap
  7. UX Podcast: Privacy privilege
  8. What the Schrems II ruling means for Brexit
  9. Quoted in Digital Privacy News
  10. Check your privacy privilege.
  11. One perfect shot
  12. The three tests of internet regulation
  13. Table layout: or, how not to shape internet regulation in 2020
  14. Safeguarding children’s privacy – the right way
  15. The biggest threat to children’s privacy
  16. Press coverage: Google Brexits
  17. Conference talk: WordPress’s role in a changing web + my retirement from open source
  18. Euractiv: AdequacyLOL
  19. We’re out. What now?

2019 19

  1. The Startup Manifesto
  2. Interview on privacy and WordPress with WPBuilds
  3. Because I always look impressive in blockquotes
  4. About that WordPress autoupdates thing.
  5. The Online Harms framework just got a lot darker
  6. A Smashing talk and my big announcement
  7. What you need to know about a No Deal Brexit
  8. So You’re Acquiring a Privacy-Invasive Social Network!
  9. The missing pieces: teaching the legal side of web development
  10. Tech policy is no place for hero fantasies
  11. A Glaswegian and a Norwegian walk into a trolley problem
  12. Just how bad is the ICO’s draft age appropriate design code?
  13. Won’t somebody think of the democracy?
  14. What I learned in the Mozilla Open Leaders initiative
  15. Castles and unicorns: my legacy to the WordPress community
  16. Interview: on being a privacy advocate in OSS
  17. Announcement: Mozilla Open Leaders
  18. What I’ll be working on in 2019
  19. How to defend the open web: a policy primer for open source projects

2018 8

  1. Lessons from the road: raising awareness of data protection and privacy in open source projects
  2. Talking Brexit and a11y at Accessibility Scotland
  3. Money’s short, times are hard, here’s your Brexit Christmas card
  4. Facts are stubborn things
  5. Talking about the future of the open web and open source
  6. On speaker travel expenses, or, why enough is enough
  7. Pulling the plug on legal compliance plugins
  8. UX Podcast: GDPR and UX

2017 5

  1. Named Persons II: Scotland’s next mass civilian database
  2. A woman’s place is in the House (of Commons)
  3. HeroPress: Going back to my roots
  4. The Brexit white paper on digital: a very short post
  5. A fresh round of government evasions on digital, Brexit, and the Digital Single Market

2016 8

  1. It’s happening: the EU has announced #VATMOSS reforms
  2. Case closed: how we exposed a fake web industry regulator
  3. How to make a success of Brexit: the House of Lords talks digital and tech
  4. Labour’s questions on digital and tech for the government on #Brexit
  5. Seriously. Don’t join a fake web industry body to get a membership badge. Here’s why.
  6. Should screen readers be detectable in analytics?
  7. Video: VATMOSS and the future of web development
  8. Smashing Magazine: Legal guidelines for the use of location data

2015 1

  1. Banned article: The perfect storm in digital law