Gentleman Technologist

Wandering technologist, building stuff while travelling. Interested in the business and social impacts of technology. Anarchist tendencies. Opposed to crypto, billionaires, plagiarist LLMs, christo-fascism, and runaway capitalism. Unusual opinions for someone with an MBA. Supports gender-neutral writing, people being able to do whatever they like as long as it's consensual, world peace.

Last Notes

2026-05-31 06:13:34 UTC

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or just don’t spend enormous amounts of money on submarines that we don’t need, and spend it on social housing that we desperately need instead.
The government cannot say there’s not enough money to solve homelessness whilst simultaneously spending vast amounts of money on completely useless weapons

2026-01-10 05:12:41 UTC

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why, if “all party leaders commented” did the BBC only quote the Prime Minister (fair enough) and Farage, rather than, say, the Conservative Party leader? Or anyone else?
Is the BBC biased to giving more exposure to Reform than it deserves? From here, it kinda looks like it. Why? Who is pushing the BBC to do this?

2025-10-26 18:17:32 UTC

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the thing that really grabs my goat about the British version of this debate is that we Brits spent a few hundred years going to all the places that the brown people live in and forcibly made them join our Commonwealth, recognise our monarch as the head of their state, help us fight our wars. We used to talk about how we were all one huge collective community.
And now, no, just the white people. Everyone else please fuck off back to where we forced you to come from.

2025-10-26 16:16:42 UTC

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those numbers are insane. A sphere of byproducts of a neutron star collision included enough heavy isotopes that our planet, *1000 light years away* and millions of years later, ended up with enough uranium to start natural fission reactions.
Astrophysics always blows my tiny mind.
Thanks for satisfying a random stranger’s curiosity. You get internet points :)

2025-10-26 11:48:12 UTC

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I’m a complete novice regarding this. Please excuse stupid questions.
how does this work with the half-lives involved?
Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, at most.
Assuming all Earth’s Uranium formed in a neutron star collision, and Uranium is relatively plentiful in Earth’s makeup (2ppm according to Wikipedia) now, 4billion years after Earth formed. That’s a *lot* of neutron stars. And they must have been nearby.

2025-07-23 00:06:20 UTC

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I’ve also noticed that if you say “no” to the modal it will pop up again and again. But if you say “yes” it disappears forever

2025-07-16 20:49:23 UTC

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this. The business is a speculative asset, not generating cashflow from customers but designed to be sold to a greater fool(s) for an inflated valuation.

2025-06-21 03:04:18 UTC

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as the opposition to those anti-terrorism laws stated years ago when they were introduced; the definition of “terrorism” will expand over time to eventually become “anything those in power don’t like”

2025-02-23 11:49:55 UTC

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that whole worldview that the USA is "funding Europe's defence" is such bollocks.
The only time the NATO mutual defence pact was triggered was by the USA asking for help after 9/11.
The only potential aggressor in Europe is Russia, and it has demonstrated how utterly shite its military is by completely failing every single objective in the Ukraine for four years.
The USA has stationed its troops in Europe because it allows them to project power into the middle east.

2025-01-17 16:31:35 UTC

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hey in Perth, Australia we basically have like perfect summer days every day in January.
Also literally exactly fucking nothing happens at all until Straya/Invasion Day on the 26th.
You could try to make something happen but it won't, promise
Just flies. And sun. And the surf washing against the beach. And the wowsers inevitably grinding away at anything fun. The slow swell of authoritarian shitfuckery. The inevitable rise in the price of beer.
Y'know: summer as usual

2025-01-03 11:33:41 UTC

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congrats :)

2024-12-28 01:58:11 UTC

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Nestle (too many bad things to list)
Mcdonalds (ever since the McLibel case)
Microsoft (Windows 11 is a surveillance tool)

2024-12-27 14:19:56 UTC

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feels exactly like the internet about 1994 :)
I told someone I was really enjoying Mastodon and his reply was "you and ten others" and I think that's why - it's only us geeks here now, same as Usenet back in '94.
I know we should all want Mastodon and the fediverse to become the default social media. But I also dread that.

2024-12-27 06:35:07 UTC

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the rich like having secrets that signal their wealth to each other.
Of course, those secrets become our "quality" brands over time. And rapidly degrade in quality, becoming a signal that the wearer is a clueless wannabe

2024-12-27 06:13:58 UTC

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I have the "Reverse Vimes" theory these days: everything is made so badly that you might as well buy cheap. If your $100 boots fall apart after 2 years not 20, then it's cheaper to buy $10 boots every year.
I formed this theory after buying a pair of Doc Martens recently. The pair I bought in 1985 lasted 20 years. The pair I bought in 2017 lasted 2 years. Never again.
I suspect that the rich have secret boot shops that they can still buy 20-year boots in, though.

2024-08-04 03:00:26 UTC

Finally switched my gaming desktop over to Linux this weekend. The whole Windows 11 "upgrade" thing was getting too bizarre, and my experience with the Steam Deck showed that everything I want to play will work with Proton.
And that's the last instance of Windows I have - all my work moved to Mac or Linux years ago. None of my last several roles have been using Microsoft tech.
Experience so far has been great. Ubuntu install was perfect, Proton works perfectly, Steam is happy. I'm happy :)