Gareth Kitchen

I've had to register my digital id with .gov.uk due to my volunteer work. Why have have .gov.uk mandated that Google be part of this private relationship? Background: I use an Android Smartphone with GrapheneOS without Google Play Services etc.

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall many were championing the USA as a new global police force.  Bush and Clinton frequently talked of a "new world order" in which the US would lead and police an era of rules‑based international order.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

"Iran’s internet shutdown is chillingly precise and may last some time." How do we make ourselves resilient to this? My first thought is mesh networks, maybe but know little about what they are capable of. Like how would the mesh connect to the internet, more generally, if the ISPs and mobile providers have been shut down? Even Starlink has gone for them, which shocked me! It just seems that when push comes to shove decentralization and cryptography hasn't worked for the Iranian people. Because the Govt. says 'No!'.

the Guardian

Iran’s internet shutdown is chillingly precise and may last some time

Experts note the blackout is unprecedented in its extent but also selective, allowing some government communications

Europeans quietly shifting away from US tech services. A handy list:-

European Alternatives

European Alternatives

We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.

Switch-to.eu - EU alternatives to global services

A guide to help you switch from non-EU to EU-based digital services and products.

EuroAlternative

Discover European Alternatives to Big Tech Companies – EuroAlternative

Keep your data in Europe, support local innovation, and simplify business operations. Our directory connects you with European digital service prov...

One coworker -- who I'll call Xavier -- does everything through LLMs. He's the kind of developer that managers who have never been programmers adore: 3000 lines of code per day. I just realized that Xavier cannot read code, even code that he submits for review. He "understands" code by running it against test files and seeing whether results are reasonable. He can only say what the code does, not what causes it to behave in a way. But that has several problems. An obvious first issue is that if a problem doesn't show up in the test file, then it will never be fixed. A less obvious issue is that his code is brittle and it generalizes very poorly. Because Xavier doesn't read code, he has a very tough time imagining "What might go wrong?" And because he relies on the LLM, he misses very broad solutions, like using well-established libraries that solve dozens of problems at once. Programmers who dive deep are still very, very useful.

I'm in Space

Chip Unicorn (@Chip_Unicorn@im-in.space)

One coworker -- who I'll call Xavier -- does everything through LLMs. He's the kind of developer that managers who have never been programmers *ado...