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Nigel Small

@technige.bsky.social
206 followers 331 following 351 posts

Programmer with a small grey beard. I do #Python, #Java, #Rust, #JavaScript, #C, #PHP, or whatever else. Often found hanging around sockets, protocols, databases, and cups of tea. Threema ID: BH83A3XX

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Nigel Small
Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
2 in 3 of Nigel Farage’s current and former partners do not speak English as their first language.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
If you can't keep people safe without invading their privacy, you have no place in government.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
As it was inevitably always going to do, the #AI bubble is bursting. Not everyone may see it, recognise it, or care about it. But like a collapsing star, soon all that will be left will be a dense core of useful technology. And all the gaseous hype will dissipate. www.ft.com/content/23e5...
ft.com
OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates
A burning platform
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
It is not within Trump's remit to control the BBC, close the air space over Venezuela, or recognise Ukrainian territory as Russian. The overinflated tangerine despot needs to get back in his box and the media need to stop reporting this as "things that Trump has decided". They are not up to him.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Random opinion: Browsers should not default to HTTPS for .local domains.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
"Let's go super woke" and "let's sell this to the puritans over the Atlantic" was always going to be a hard square to circle. Might have worked better if the script quality had been more consistent, though. deadline.com/2025/10/why-... #DoctorWho #BBC #Tardis
deadline.com
Why Disney Ditched ‘Doctor Who’: Sources Say Ratings, Big-Ticket Budget & MAGA Politics Were Factors In BBC Deal Failing To Regenerate
The BBC confirmed on Tuesday that its 'Doctor Who' co-production deal with Disney had vaporized. What went wrong on the series starring Ncuti Gatwa?
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
I stopped reading at "how we want to operate like the world’s largest startup". Corporate midlife crisis red flag 🚩 Startup culture should never be an aspiration for a mature company any more than teenage behaviour should be for a grown adult. www.aboutamazon.com/news/company...
aboutamazon.com
Staying nimble and continuing to strengthen our organizations
The following message was shared with Amazon employees earlier today.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Just deleted my JustEat account. It's never been super-reliable as the drivers can often not find the house, but the past half-dozen orders have either never turned up, had missing items, or been cancelled. Literally unusable.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Tonight, I will be cooking the classic English dish "toad in the hole". For anyone not familiar with this traditional delight, you're not allowed to look it up, and must imagine it based only on its name.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
I don't give a fuck how much tourism the royal family brings in, anything that perpetuates the vile levels of entitlement this mob enjoy needs to be abolished absolutely. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...
bbc.co.uk
Prince Andrew gives up royal titles including Duke of York after 'discussion with King'
In a statement, the prince says:
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Feeling an urge to pivot my career to become the Gordon Ramsay of the tech industry, shouting and swearing imaginatively at stupidity, complacency and incompetence until they sort their shit out.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Of all the stupid things they’ve said, this is the stupidest. And the most dangerous.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Data Elixir @dataelixir.com · 08/10/2025
Your ggplot2 charts work fine, but are they memorable? Real color engineering: brightness first (strongest differentiator), then hue, finally saturation. Most people get this backwards and wonder why their viz falls flat. www.chartography.net/p/color-engi...
chartography.net
Color Engineering
The tool that snaps mercurial design into mechanical focus.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
joshmock @joshmock.com · 09/10/2025
[toots his own horn] I built the Elasticsearch Gemini CLI extension mentioned here. Google made it easy for me to roll something stable out very quickly, which is not always how LLM integrations go, so props to the Gemini CLI devs for that. blog.google/technology/d...
blog.google
Now open for building: Introducing Gemini CLI extensions
Make Gemini CLI uniquely yours by connecting it to your everyday workflows and the tools you use most.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
This is solid truth for software eng in general, and has been my life for three decades. Plus, it's a fundamental reason why every organisation should balance commercial and technical forces from the very top of the company. "Engineering as a subsidiary of Product" does not and never will work.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 11/10/2025
TIL Claude's new code interpreter mode has a /mnt/skills/public/ folder full of prompt instructions and Python utilities for creating and manipulating pdf, docx, pptx, xlsx files - and you can ask Claude for a copy and learn a TON about working with those formats simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/10/...
simonwillison.net
simonw/claude-skills
One of the tips I picked up from Jesse Vincent's Claude Code Superpowers post (previously) was this: Skills are what give your agents Superpowers. The first time they really popped …
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
While I'm certainly a long way from being proud of everything British, being part of a nation that is at the forefront of cutting-edge insults like "cockwomble" and "wankpuffin" really does warm my heart.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
"the Bad Faith Threshold" is a great coinage. The first wave of comments on a post, from those who do actually follow you, is usually interesting or fun or both. But the later waves are of scolds, humourless reply-guys, "sorry to be pedantics", "whatabouts", and "why are you insulting".
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
I wondered where Boris Johnson had gone. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Thames Water removes 100-tonne fatberg from west London sewer
Toxic mass chiselled out of Feltham pipes amid campaign to help stop people tipping harmful substances down drains
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
The US is no longer a political ally. open.spotify.com/episode/1U8E...
open.spotify.com
Is a secret US spy ring trying to take over Greenland?
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Someone needs to take away this government's computers. It's just bad idea after bad idea with this lot. www.gov.uk/government/n...
gov.uk
AI to help police catch criminals before they strike
Government launches AI crime prevention challenge to support safer streets.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Another day, another example of our government's depressingly tenuous grasp on technology. www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
tomshardware.com
UK government inexplicably tells citizens to delete old emails and pictures to save water during national drought — 'data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems'
"The current water shortfall situation in England now defined as a 'nationally significant incident.'"
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
While this doesn't quite yet mean the end of access to Wikipedia from the UK, it's certainly a step down that ridiculous road. This gov't are trying to long strong and in control but (in terms of tech at least) are rapidly making the UK an international joke. www.thenational.scot/news/2538029...
thenational.scot
Wikipedia loses Online Safety Act legal challenge
Wikipedia has lost a High Court challenge against the UK Government over verification requirements in the Online Safety Act.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Andy Diggle @andydiggle.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
If Trump is so keen to swap territory for peace, maybe he should give Putin Alaska, which also used to belong to Russia.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Dragonfly
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Reposted by Nigel Small
radams @radamssmash.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.
A shitty map created by ChatGPT5.  it purports to be US States with an R in their name, but it's wrong and dumb and worthless just like LLMs.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
We learned nothing from two world wars. We have all sat back procrastinating while Netanyahu and his gang literally turn an entire civilization into rubble. We must have no tolerance for intolerance. This crazed ideological madness must be stopped. The world's leaders have to step forward.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Sylvain Wallez @swallez.com · 04/08/2025
TIL: in JavaScript Arrays, "the default sort order is ascending, built upon converting the elements into strings". Meaning `[2, 10].sort()` returns `[10, 2]`. WAT? And suddenly I'm wondering how many bugs I left in the wild because of that 😱
developer.mozilla.org
Array.prototype.sort() - JavaScript | MDN
The sort() method of Array instances sorts the elements of an array in place and returns the reference to the same array, now sorted. The default sort order is ascending, built upon converting the ele...
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
I dislike the phrase "Keep[ing] The Lights On" (KTLO) to describe important areas of ongoing work to existing software projects. It heavily diminishes the amount of work required to keep software updated, safe, performant, and relevant. And as such, the work is routinely overlooked at higher levels.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
One million percent this. alexkondov.com/i-know-when-...
alexkondov.com
I Know When You're Vibe Coding
I shouldn’t have to care about this. I don’t want to care about how someone’s code gets into the IDE. Whether you wrote it by hand, copied it from a forum…
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
The only way forward now for governing the UK is for us to learn how to properly collaborate and do coalition. Increasing tribality will go nowhere.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
It says a lot about where we're going that the BBC is now running stories in which they ask lifeboat crews whether they will apologise for using their boats to save lives
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
I'm not really posting on Twitter/X any more, but some things just need a corrective response. x.com/technige/sta...
x.com
Nigel Small (moved to Bluesky and Mastodon) on X: "No, Mr Kyle. I wish to see the act overturned because I am an informed technical professional with a dislike for knee-jerk populist actions. Calling those who disagree with you "predators" only reinforces how shallow your position here is. This will eventually be reversed." / X
No, Mr Kyle. I wish to see the act overturned because I am an informed technical professional with a dislike for knee-jerk populist actions. Calling those who disagree with you "predators" only reinforces how shallow your position here is. This will eventually be reversed.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
We've run out of ideas now, haven't we?
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Banning VPNs would be akin to banning front door keys for your house.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Paul Donovan @pdonovan-econ.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
That @bloomberg.com can have a headline “EU agrees to pay 15% tariff on most exports to US” shows just how far economic illiteracy has gone. And the months of economists explaining how tariffs work makes this extraordinary level of ignorance even more inexcusable.
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Reposted by Nigel Small
Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Because not all people are stupid. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
VPNs top App Store charts as UK age verification kicks in
Experts say free versions of such apps or services may carry potential security and privacy risks.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Bravo youtu.be/vich2C-Tl7Q?...
youtu.be
Thank you for your interest in Astronomer
YouTube video by Astronomer
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Yes, I hate it for me, but I also recognise that it isn't sustainable in general. Search engines used to be links to pages around the internet. AI results keep the user on the "search engine" page and over time will, if left unchecked, lead to a less healthy and somewhat inbred internet ecosystem.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Our government are fools when it comes to technology. On one hand, they say they want us to be a technology leader, on the other, they act like the worst kind of ignorant technophobes. The so-called Online Safety Act is a nonsense piece of legislation. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...
telegraph.co.uk
Wikipedia threatens to limit UK access to website
Digital encyclopaedia may impose quota on number of users to comply with Online Safety Act
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
The only surprise here is how supposedly intelligent people can ever believe that an overhyped technology, so early in its infancy, and founded so strongly on indeterminism, is actually fit for purpose for anything serious. www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/r...
theregister.com
Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database
: AI ignored instruction to freeze code, forgot it could roll back errors, and generally made a terrible hash of things
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Some wonderfully uplifting statistics on how solar and wind power are now very much mainstream. www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...
newyorker.com
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment
In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Reblochon. That is all.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Brilliant news www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...
reuters.com
UK to lower voting age to 16 in landmark electoral reform
The British government said on Thursday it planned to give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all UK elections in a major overhaul of the country's democratic system.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Tad nippy out, up here at 3,842m.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
At this point, the BBC should just pay to air MasterChef Australia instead. It's miles better anyway. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
John Torode sacked as MasterChef presenter after racist language claim upheld
With the show in crisis, BBC director general Tim Davie said no decision has been made on the next series.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Having a great time here in France. And I'm curious to know what everyone in the US is doing to celebrate 14th July.
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Nigel Small @technige.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
That's not how you spell genocide. www.reuters.com/world/middle...
reuters.com
Israeli missile hits Gaza children collecting water, IDF blames malfunction
The Israeli military said it intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area, but that a malfunction had caused the missile to fall "dozens of metres from the target."
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