Martin Brook https://bsky.app/profile/vgrade.de

Working @Codethink.

[Martin Brook https://bsky.app/profile/vgrade.de @vgrade]

https://t.co/YiyvLOOupr what a great service

[John Stepek @John_Stepek]

A wee stat ahead of Wednesday's budget, on a policy that almost certainly won't change:

In 2021, roughly 1 in 10 full-time nurses paid 40% income tax. In 2026, it's closer to 1 in 3.

That's the power of the "fiscal drag" tax. The term "high earner" has been quietly redefined.

[J Stewart @triffic_stuff_]

This is one of the most blatant examples of gaslighting you’ll ever see.

This clip sums up the Labour Party. It sums up Angela Rayner. And, frankly, it sums up too most politicians.

Laura Kuenssberg asks Rayner about Andy Burnham opening the door to a return to freedom of movement. He’s started the debate by talking about it.

Kuenssberg: “The Labour manifesto in 2024 said in black and white ‘there will be no return to freedom of movement’. You stood on that manifesto. Andy Burnham promised to stick to that manifesto. He’s breaking that promise, isn’t he?”

Then this from Rayner: “No he isn’t, because he’s been really clear that this Parliament, that manifesto, we are clear we are not reopening that debate.”

Unbelievable. Even by her standards.

Kuenssberg put her right immediately: “He’s literally just reopened this debate. It’s exactly what’s just happened.”

She denies the debate has been reopened in the same breath as it is being reopened. They will say anything, no matter how obviously contradictory.

We watch car crash after car crash from Labour ministers, yet they keep rising in the polls. No wonder the country is in such a mess.

[Austen Allred @Austen]

I remember sitting around a campfire shortly after the Ukraine war had just started with some Ukrainian friends.

They shared that after they learned that Russian forces were jamming all communications they called Elon begging for Starlink support.

Elon and the Starlink team instantly dropped everything they were working on, loaded a private jet with as many Starlink terminals as they could (terminals were in short supply at the time), and started flying the jet eastward while writing code to make terminals work over Ukraine.

There was no contract or promise of payment for doing so, and no time to solve for that.

My Ukrainian friends believed this saved the nation of Ukraine, and that without this effort Ukraine would have lost the war nearly instantly.

[Archive @ArchiveExplorer]

It is becoming f*cking dangerous: the NSA's own reverse-engineering tool now plugs straight into Claude Code - Ghidra has 94k stars, and GhidraMCP lets your agent read a compiled program instead of guessing what it does

Install Ghidra 12.1.4 from ghidra-sre,org (free, released by the NSA)

Download the GhidraMCP release and add it in File -> Install Extensions

Restart Ghidra and switch on GhidraMCPPlugin in File -> Configure -> Developer

Connect it: claude mcp add ghidra -- uvx --from git+https://t.co/D39VCoh0AF ghidra-mcp

Open a binary you're allowed to analyze and let Ghidra run its analysis

Ask Claude what a function does: it decompiles it, renames the variables and explains it in plain English
Ask for the map: every function, import, string and cross-reference, and where the interesting code lives
The decompiling runs in Ghidra on your machine, Claude just drives it

Malware samples, old firmware, your own builds: your agent reads the program itself, not the docs about it

Find the repo in the reply below

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Astounding Sunday Times investigation reveals new scandal in SNP’s Socialist Scotland:
800 NHS, central government, council and quango workers whose jobs no longer exist but remain on the public payroll because of the SNP’s ‘no public-sector redundancy’ policy.
Estimated cost of paying people to do nothing: £27m a year.
One NHS Highland worker has been receiving a full salary and benefits for 17 years despite not having a specific job.
The health board refused to say what the worker had been doing for almost two decades and how much they had been paid.
Likely cost to the taxpayer is expected to be far higher with several public bodies refusing to disclose salaries for hundreds of the workers awaiting redeployment.

[Martin Brook https://bsky.app/profile/vgrade.de @vgrade]

The PHP developer who became the unsung hero of the internet - BBC News https://t.co/0Dded0fqip working in his spare time. Insert worlds infrastructure depending on a guy in his spare time meme.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

The plumber and £5 pint story of how much the government is rinsing everyone in taxes. It’s not the cost of living crisis, It’s the cost of government taxation crisis.

[Kath Korevec @simpsoka]

Got a cheap embroidery machine off amazon for $300 where the biggest complaint is the mandatory $12/mo app that you’re forced to use. Had ChatGPT create its own app that communicates with the machine. Generative art patches incoming!

[Martin Brook https://bsky.app/profile/vgrade.de @vgrade]

Labour plans for the next manifesto are all good and well but we need government now.

[MURAT BEY ( BORSA ) @MuratBeyBorsaa]

Çin, her birinin imalatı 1 yıl süren, tanesi 300 milyon dolar olan ultraviyole litografi makinesini üretmeyi başardı.
3 nm çip üretimi için kullanılan bu makineyi dünyada yalnızca Avrupa’nın en değerli şirketi olan Hollandalı ASML üretiyordu.
ASML bu makinelerden yılda sadece 45-50 adet kadar üretebiliyor.
Bu şirkette de 1000’in üzerinde Türk mühendis çalışıyor.
45-50 adet olduğuna bakmayın.
Makine dediğimiz, torna makinesi gibi bir şey değil.
Her bir makine ayrı bir odada üretiliyor.
Bu makineler metrelerce boyunda. Üretim yapan mühendisler bile özel kıyafetlerle odaya giriyor.
Çok hassas bir ortamda üretim yapılıyor.
Hata payı sıfır olmak zorunda.
Tayvanlı TSMC de bu makinelerle gelişmiş çipler üretiyor.
Hem TSMC’yi hem de ASML’yi, daha çok mini ev aletleri ve tıraş makineleri üretmesiyle tanıdığımız Philips ortak olarak kuruyor.
Ama bu makineleri Çin’e satmıyorlar. Hatta Huawei telefon pazarında liderliği ele geçireceği sırada Amerika’nın baskısıyla çip satmayı da bırakıyorlar.
Böylece Apple zirveyi korumaya devam ediyor.
Çin ise baskılandıkça daha da güçlenen bir toplum olduğu için bu makineyi üretmeyi kafasına koyuyor.
Haberlere göre Çin, bir dönem ASML’de çalışıp emekli olan mühendisleri bir araya getiriyor. Bu ekip de gelişmiş çip üretiminde kullanılan EUV litografi makinesinin ilk prototipini yapıyor.
2030’a kadar da ticarileşmesi bekleniyor.
Ama perde arkasına baktığımızda iş o kadar da kolay değil.
Ekipler kendi içlerinde bile izole edilmiş. Yani toplamda 1.000 mühendis var diyelim; 10’ar kişilik gruplara ayrılmışlar. Bir grup, diğer grubun ne üzerinde çalıştığını bilmiyor. Proje tamamen gizlilik içinde yürütülüyor ve Çin için kritik öneme sahip.
Hatta çok kritik alanlarda çalışan bazı mühendislerin dış dünyayla bağlantıları da kesilmiş. Telefon kullanımları son derece sınırlıymış.

Bir de şöyle bir şey var.
Çin, farklı alanlarda kendi buluşu olan teknolojilerin mühendislerini muhtemelen yurt dışına göndermiyor, yurt dışına çıkmalarını yasaklıyor.
Çünkü paranın satın alamayacağı güç yok.
Kendileri çok sık kopyalama yaptıkları için bu konuda çok tedirgin olsalar gerek.

Diğer yandan muhtemelen 10 yıla kalmaz bu sektörü de ele geçirirler.
Çip üretiminin en kritik makinesi olan EUV litografi sistemlerinden, Avrupa’nın en değerli şirketi olan ASML bile yılda yaklaşık 50 adet üretebiliyor.
Çin yılda kaç tane üretir hesap edin.
Bu adamların zekası, azmi ve kopyalama yeteneği gerçekten bambaşka…

[Gali @galiofgalilee]

BREAKING:
Scientists confirm that an ADHD brain can hyperfocus for 4 hours straight on a complex hobby—but will physically freeze for 3 days over a chore that takes 90 seconds to finish.
Researchers baffled.
ADHD community: "Yeah, we know."

No clinical citation needed—every parent and kid staring at a pile of shoes by the door is the study. Here is why tiny tasks paralyze an ADHD brain, and how to trick yourself (or your kid) into starting.1/6

[Fermat's Library @fermatslibrary]

Today is a mathematical date we won't see again for 78 years.

10/24/26
10² + 24² = 26²

It's called a Pythagorean Triple Day. There are infinitely many Pythagorean triples, but only 12 dates this century satisfy the https://t.co/I0lvmau52v is the last.

Next one: March 4, 2105.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Correct.

Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.

Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.

Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.

SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.

That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.

End of story.

[James Hall @ItsJamesHall]

@AvonandsomerRob Get an aeropress and a decent grinder. Can’t go wrong

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

UK Treasury confirms extra £20bn over five years for the so-called National Wealth Fund (£15bn) and the state-owned British Business Bank (£5bn), which lends to business.
Treasury claims this will support around 100,000 jobs by 2035 in AI, defence and green energy — a figure it has pretty much plucked out of thin air and will never really be tested because by 2035 everyone will have forgotten such a modest announcement.
Two takeaways:
Yet more government borrowing. It’s an addiction.
Illustrates government philosophy: growth will come from a bigger, more activist state. Ho hum.

[Martin Brook https://bsky.app/profile/vgrade.de @vgrade]

@allenwalton Winter is coming

[classicalandpolitics @classicpolitic]

@discoplomacy The Botley Road bridge in Oxford cost £237m.
NHS spends £40m a year on DEI.
Major AI companies burn hundreds of millions of dollars a day and US and China have both invested billions of dollars.

[Programmer Humor @PR0GRAMMERHUM0R]

Every methodology eventually collapses into this one. The rest are just what we call it in the retro.

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

The only way out is through.

They're calling it the Bugpocalypse. LLMs are being used to find long-hidden cracks in the software infrastructure, and it's happening at a furious rate. 3% of all compromises in computing history happened in the last week, claims one source? I believe it.

There are people saying public access to the frontier models ought to be locked out, or heavily guardrailed, over this. The problem with that idea can be summed up in one sentence: when lockpicks are outlawed, only outlaws will have lockpicks.

The lockpicks will be Chinese open-weight models, if nothing else. There's no way to stop those from becoming ubiquitous.

There are two futures in front of us. One in which only the bad guys have lockpicks, and security holes go undiscovered until they're exploited. Another in which everybody has lockpicks and is aggressively red-teaming their own software so it gets fixed before the holes are exploited.

The corpus of human code is huge but finite. The number of defects in it has to be finite too. We can fix those defects now; we have a million friendly robots to do it with.

The only way out is through.