nickdothutton

Many of the worlds solvable problems are "information problems", and therefore have a good chance of being solvable by software. Sometimes you'll even encounter a problem that looks like something else, but is in-fact an information problem in-disguise as something else. However I do not think the UK housing crisis is an information problem, either plainly or in-disguise.

I started out on Z80 when HLL compilers were expensive for me and the shareware alternatives weren’t so accessible as open source is today. Everyone should do at least a little assembler to gain an appreciation of what they are asking the machine to do, and the Z80 was simple enough to reason about.

The 2 remaining blast furnaces need about 500m to 750m GBP spending on them within the next 2-5 years or they are just scrap themselves. UK Gov has ditched plans to fully fund the armed forces (would have meant a lot of new warships etc), which would have provided orders for virgin steel from such furnaces. It's hard to see how this has a happy and sustainable ending.

I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.

Seek out his various interviews on YouTube.

Worked with some of his team when I was at MCI/Worldcom. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

The "real banned books" are (in my opinion) generally those which have not been translated.

Reminder: In the UK we do not know where the trains are. We know what section of track they are on, but not where within the section. A section could be miles long. To know more precisely, we telephone the (manned) signal boxes to ask if they can see the train or how recently it passed them, and occasionally phone the driver on his mobile to ask them directly.

I don't think the Canadian government is dropping a big contract on a company that is 24 months old vs one 24 years old, more or less.

They are planted in graveyards in the UK, it prevents grazing animals from entering and soiling up the place. The animals seem to know to keep away. They cant nibble the grass without getting a mouthful of the needles.

"I want to do the thing that gets me the most votes and carries the least political risk". Note this is not necessarily the wisest thing, or even the thing that objectively solves or mitigates the problem the most. Many such cases...

This sort of shenanigan is why it’s important to have a competitive market for CPUs.

We all live in Ballard's future now. I encourage you to check out some of his interviews on YT.

AMD's inability to make good software has been a recurring problem for decades. Many years ago I had some success with their optimising compiler, but everything else I've touched was bad. A real pity.

If I were a (potentially) hostile foreign power, I'd use a game to enlist people in the target country to record sensitive locations.

The UK student loan book regularly changes hands on the secondaries market at half of face value. Make of that what you will. Draw whatever conclusions you might about the market value of some of the education provided.

I support anyone's wish to gain an education, including the study of esoteric subjects if that is what interests them. However many young people have been mis-sold an education in the belief that it would result in a well paying job. Of course the young are the easiest people of all upon which to perpetrate such a scam. There are very few with a film studies degree, who manage to secure a job as film director. About 500 people every year study golf course management. We have about 2500 golf courses.

Supercalc2, Maxam2, dBASE II. You could do a lot with CP/M software, especially if you had access to a hard drive which would eliminate the "insert floppy disk X into drive Y" tedium.

I'm the downvoted poster above, and I used to run a BBS. Mostly hosting info files and CP/M software (Thanks U.S. Robotics, couldn't have done it without HST). I am genuinely interested in know where (and if) such a network of people could ever exist again. For those who may be too young to get the joke... Reddit is certainly not it.

It is quite common to find device manufacturers, even those of many years standing, who _appear to_ begin with the device and add the software as an afterthought. Paying little attention to security or even the software lifecycle (patches, updates, the changing landscape/ecosystem). I have even known it happen that the device brand subs out the software to a random small developer, who then closes up shop/dies/gets out of that business, and the device company doesnt even have the source code, let alone any ability to further improve/fix the software that drives their device. This leads to layers upon layers of subsequent middleware, UIs, shims etc.

I too remember. Where is the "FidoNet" of today?

Torture testing required before acceptance of vibed/AI submissions?

Does anyone know what that characteristic smell is DEC equipment has? It's different from the characteristic smell of (for example) Sun equipment. Rainbow's smell like VAXen.

You are going to love Digital VAT, closely followed by Real-Time VAT.

"The system is working as intended". I once attended an official seminar given by the government procurement department, to an audience of (mostly) government department people with purchase authority. The subject of which was how to construct your invitations to tender such that only the largest 3-4 suppliers could possibly respond. "Solves the problem of having to consider 20-30 suppliers and review their submissions". I'm so glad that was early on in my career (as a vendor).

May I introduce you to local LLMs?

The most interesting thing about this article is that it leaves out all the interesting stuff. I recommend googling one Dr David Kelly, and a young fellow called David Cameron who would become better known later. When the US and UK learned RSA had the bomb, and the ANC were about to inherit it, they were suddenly a lot less enthusiastic about the incoming administration they had previously endorsed.

Out of all day to day government spending on services (health, schools, police, courts, etc), the NHS consumes about 40% of departmental expenditure limits [1]. Although it is pre-covid and the picture has worsened significantly since then, this BBC article is quite good too at examining the different figures [2].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-spending-sta... (Diagram in section 2.2) [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42572110

Brits more or less completely abandoned space in any meaningful way. Successive governments didn't value it at all in comparison to other areas of policy. Even after we developed our own independent orbital launch capability. The story is much the same today, a couple of satellite companies, very little real primary capability. Our "spaceports" are mostly artist impressions or computer generated imagery. Meanwhile we will spend £250b annually on the health service by 2028, up from £45b in 2000.

Google really should publish a flow diagram for how they decide to turn off someone's business.

China is much more interested in waging a campaign against companies that represent the material of the future growth in productivity, exports, and prosperity of the US and her people, than learning about you as an individual. Unless of course you are a Chinese dissident living in the US.