cs02rm0

6. It turns out they do all look the same, to me.

The minister who set this up claims this is a cover up:

https://x.com/CPhilpOfficial/status/2021295301017923762

https://xcancel.com/CPhilpOfficial/status/202129530101792376...

Presumably they're also looking to increase production capacity as fast as possible - within the year?

I'd have thought HDDs aren't at the top of the list for AI requirements, are other component manufacturers struggling even more to meet demand?

It's all beginning to feel a bit like an arms race where you have to go at a breakneck pace or someone else is going to beat you, and winner takes all.

I'm 43. Took a year or so off from contracting after being flat out for years without taking any breaks, just poked around with some personal projects, did some stuff for my wife's company, petitioned the NHS to fix some stuff. Used Claude Code for much of it. Travelled a bit too.

I feel like I turned around and there seem to be no jobs now (500+ applications deep is a lot when you've always been given the first role you'd applied to) unless you have 2+ years commercial AI experience, which I don't, or perhaps want to sit in a SOC, which I don't. It's like a whole industry just disappeared while I had my back turned.

I looked at Java in Google Trends the other day, it doesn't feel like it was that long ago that people were bemoaning how abstracted that was, but it was everywhere. It doesn't seem to be anymore. I've tried telling myself that maybe it's because people are using LLMs to code, so it's not being searched for, but I think the game's probably up, we're in a different era now.

Not sure what I'm going to do for the next 20 years. I'm looking at getting a motorbike licence just to keep busy, but that won't pay the bills.

It's Apple, not the users, that need to make that switch in the first instance. I'd love to use Linux again but I'm not leaving Apple hardware for it, or accepting poor software support for recent hardware.

HS2 is more sprawl than tall.

Now I just have to contrive the circumstances where this is useful to me. :)

"...while £4 million is admittedly chump change for the UK government..."

I know this is just the author deflecting the clichéd argument, but I hate that argument. The pennies do matter, otherwise the argument is made ad infinitum and you end up with a financially inept government running up a £200bn deficit.

These small websites should never be awarded to the mega-consultancies. Even if you paid the full £4m to a small webdev shop who'd feel like they'd hit the lottery I bet we'd get a better result and do more for the economy.

So it's not just me.

I cancelled my subscription.

Not quite as bad, but I do think the ShowHN posts suffer a form of the same issue where most posts seem to get very little attention and the little there is, probably comes from other people who post to it, rather than receiving the attention of the wider community (which, at least HN has).

I don't think it's wildly unfair, it's a genuine problem.

Not that I have the answer unfortunately.

I thought development for it was not in a good place?

I think there's an implicit assumption here that because Americans pay the costs of tariffs it means there isn't a knock on impact (where for instance goods from other countries aren't bought, in preference of US local goods), in turn affecting the other economy. And that therefore Trump's tariff plays are without impact, whereas I'm not convinced that is the case.

I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.

  Location: UK
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Java, React, Javascript, Shell, Python, SQL and NoSQL, AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Lambda, Terraform - it becomes too much to list, my background is principally as a Java dev who's turned their hand to most things to get the job done over the last 20 years.
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmidwinter/
  Email: richard.midwinter@gmail.com

I've architected and developed software systems professionally across healthcare, media and secure government. Startups to multinational defence consultancies. Project CTO / technical lead roles, lots of experience leading dozens of projects, through the entire SDLC in highly technical environments with significant legal requirements. Greenfield and legacy systems. Often been the person brought in to fix the difficult projects.

Particularly interested in roles where people are passionate that they have real world value to deliver. Any technical obstacles that follow that, we can fix.

I love Linux, it was all I ran for years. But, unfortunately, I needed the better hardware more and haven't been able to find a viable way back.

It's not a conspiracy that the elections did not happen and have not happened.

It only becomes false to say they've been cancelled if they happen. They're planning on postponing them again, and if that continues to happen indefinitely, they've been cancelled.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdd5p5gyvveo

Starmer doesn't just have negative approval ratings. His are through the floor. The last voting intention poll from YouGov (which has been relatively favourable for Labour) would have given them just 69 seats - fewer than the Lib Dems currently have.

> He’s a proper democrat.

The same Starmer who's cancelled local elections? Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me? The same Starmer who said no rise in NI in the manifesto, only to increase NI? The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?

He's no proper democrat. People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.

I thought it was unobfuscated perl code. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.

Not sure that works though for flogging, say, client IP to affluency data to advertisers, unless they can already reliably pinpoint the client IP to an address (which for all I know, maybe they can).

> The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table?

I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.

Neat.

Amazes me that the Russians always seem to have the capacity for this sort of, I can't think of a clean word, let's inadequately say gamesmanship. When I'd have thought they have enough on their plate in Ukraine.

They don't have your capabilities.

With apologies to our American friends, Jeremy Clarkson had a take on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kXUbwngB4

Somewhere in there, I think he does have a point.

A lot I expect. There were stories about VPNs being top of the App Store, etc. when the law kicked in.

Lots of people using Brave's Tor or Opera's VPN in their browsers, and free VPNs like Proton (which seems like a negative security outcome for the country to me).

I'd have thought the intel agencies would be pissed at all that data going dark, but haven't heard a peep in the media.

I am! No one's interested in any of it though...

> the other engineers have lost all ambition for anything else

Worse, they've lost all funding for anything else.

I changed jobs in '08, '10 and was contracting by '11. Didn't notice any downturn from 2008 at all.

I'd only once in 20 years been turned down for a job I'd applied for. Every other job I applied for I was offered. I've applied for over 600 roles in the past year and barely had a handful of interviews. That certainly feels different.