nickdothutton

Non-compete or any kind of limitation on who a zero hours contract person can work for, has been specifically and explicitly illegal since 2016 in the UK. In practice it has been unenforceable since more or less forever. [1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/zero-hours-contra... (last para.)

For largely unskilled service sector jobs, where one might consider the worker relatively interchangeable, it is particularly bad if your government also has an "infinite immigration" policy in practice.[1]

[1] Inward migration to the UK was 1.3M people in the year to June 2023. UK population was about 67/68M at the time.

Non-compete agreements (or any clause restricting working elsewhere) are generally not enforceable in UK zero-hours contracts. Explicitly since January 2016, and in practice before then.[1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/zero-hours-contra... (Bottom para.)

Unfortunately the UK now has an economy which is 83% services vs around 50% in 1970. Services are much more volatile with less certainty than say manufacturing or primary industry. So employment in services is going to be volatile and hard to predict, certainty has declined for all, employers and workers. A given employer only has the power if he is the only, or one of just a few in town. If not then the worker has the opportunity to seek hours somewhere else from someone else, at least if these jobs/gigs are relatively unskilled, which most are.

What I don't agree with, the underpayment of workers enabled by government "subsidies". A barista in London may be offered £21K per year to work all his shifts (I'm looking at a job ad), yet needs double that to live, so government "subsidises" the employer by providing the other "missing" £20K in universal credit, housing benefit, and so on. It's no wonder employers take advantage of this.

Meanwhile the customer thinks his coffee costs him £3, in fact the true cost is a multiple of that because of the ~£20K "subsidy". Meanwhile you can hear the faint sound of laughter, which is the employer, knowing that the taxpayer is picking up half his true wage bill.

One of the most interesting government charts (to me at least) is the "Net fiscal balance by geographic region" one from the ONS[1] (Figure 8). Spoiler: London and to a much lesser extent, the SE, are the only regions with positive net fiscal balance at all. A sorry state of affairs.

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxe... Figure 8.

The amount of regulation a company has to comply with to hire and retain a "real" (non-uberised) worker in the UK has been increased to a great degree since the mid 90s. Gig work allows these companies to offer work without commitment, while the worker may offers his labour without commitment. There is no limit to the number of platforms/firms he can sign on with. If company x provides too few hours or undesirable terms then he can add company y and company z. Uberization is a predictable outcome where hiring risk is increased and assigned solely to the employer.

1901 Oldsmobile curved dashboard was the first mass produced car. Lead was introduced to gasoline around 1920. You want the "Lost Generation", born 1883-1900.

Enjoyable article, thanks. I'd like to see a section on "layer 8" (or 9? whatever we are calling it). The regulatory layer. There seem to be so many uncertainties in Europe (and to a slightly lesser extent, the UK) now. I think if starting another company I'd have to give it some serious consideration.

I’ve been around long enough to see at least 1 previous false dawn, arguably 2. Vast sums of money and a whole value chain are required to bring a new media into being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Data_Storage_Syste... https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/archived/resources-ar...

"...including messages that carry confidentiality labels."

Trusted operating system Mandatory Access Control where art thou?

>79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms.

This sounded very high, and I was interested to know how they understood what the total (100%) figure was, given the presumed underground nature of the activity. Clicked on the link for the source. The statement is false. By all means hold these companies to account but sensationalism isn't going to help. Full disclosure: I have never had a Facebook account and couldn't care less whether Meta exists or not.

Reminds me of a back burner project I have. "The Technical In War".

RAVEN?

Although Brutalism is not my favourite architectural style, I still appreciate it done well. This particular building is <20 minutes from where I sit. "Decaying" as it is sometimes described, can be attributed to lack or complete absence of maintenance. This style was sold to government for their civic buildings partly because it was low maintenance, but low is not no.

It would look better with more maintenance, less graffiti, the absence of litter, and more uncluttered space around it.

It is now easier than ever to locate, contact, and spotlight for questioning individuals of any given movement, no matter how fringe. Yet the public still hears from the same journos, commentators, talking heads, and explainers, year after year, decade after decade. Really makes you think.

I wrote a little on this same topic, automating away compliance with evidence, back in 2018 [1]. Some might find it interesting.

[1] "A Universal Lemma For Compliance" https://blog.eutopian.io/a-universal-lemma-for-compliance/

I guessed Claude Code was used. I think there will be an explosion in this kind of whimsy, I say so because I've indulged in it myself lately. Can't wait for something of this kind to find its way into, say, Golden Dome[1], because another AI agent thought it would be a sensible inclusion and nobody checked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

Anyone other than me remember the Cisco Micro Web Server?[1].

[1] https://www.employees.org/univercd/Feb-1998/cc/td/doc/prod_c...

Greater chance of survival, greater chance of being a winner in any consolidation in the industry, generally revenue translates to higher share price which means ability to acquire useful and interesting companies, likely lower cost of capital for borrowing for build-outs. Attracts greater talent with better packages. Now as teeny tiny (personal) customer of these guys... I'm not really going to care about most of this stuff. But in my $70B company market cap day-job... I do.

I'm a happy customer of Hetzner, but AWS revenues are 440x theirs. Not much of a castle.

Let me know when someone spots a "Rival Castle" to GCP, AWS, Azure, Alibaba, Oracle. These are Hamlets.

Regulations. I have some small experience with this, although I'm not a professional developer. The regulations for residential properties, whether built for purpose or converted, make this very difficult (and therefore costly) in the UK and I presume other countries.

The British do have a difficult or perhaps just different relationship with heroes vs the US IMO. Some study has been made of this in the past. Even in comic books, where writers have traditionally been afforded more freedom (morally, philosophically, martially/violence, sexually even). Even in pure fantasy/sci-fi (take WH40K as an example). There are many fine US creators/studios, and excellent output, but I don't think the satirical and political elements could have come from there.

I have copper light switches and other fittings and was interested to learn they have the same useful property.

You know, over several decades I've come to the conclusion that you will never be able to explain radioactivity, radioactive contamination, background, isotopes, decay, and the relative probabilities, cumulative effects, etc to the general public and have them reach sane conclusions based on understanding. It's easier (I think) to explain time travel, or telepathy, or (insert whatever black-magic you prefer).

What a great post. There is an element of ascii rendering in a pet project of mine and I’m definitely going to try and integrate this work. From great constraints comes great creativity.

No LPARs (IBM) or LDoms (Oracle), although I appreciate someone might never have to encounter those things these days. They sit above bare metal and below hypervisor VMs.

Might want to read Bowling Alone[1] (or at least some commentary on it) and the "hunkering down" effect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

I would love to ask such a model to summarise the handful of theories or theoretical “roads” being eyed at the time and to make a prediction with reasons as to which looks most promising. We might learn something about blind spots in human reasoning, institutions, and organisations that are applicable today in the “future”.

What is the succinct definition of "harmful"?