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Also worth linking to his talk at FOSDEM, on which this is based: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SUVS7G-lets_end_open_...


So the entire business was happy to go offline for 2/3 weeks whenever their infra person fancied going off on their summer holiday?

By doing this, you're guaranteeing a bus factor of below 1. I can't think of any business that wouldn't see that as being a completely unacceptable risk.


I agree.

I never understand the drive to stay away from cloud services for small scale operations. It’s not your money that’s being spent on the cloud, but it is your free time being asked to be on call when you encourage your company to self-host!


Bus factor 1 is rarely enough for "entire business". But if the GPUs are for training models, and their users are the data scientists that are also on holiday around the same times - that might indeed be good enough policy.

> and their users are the data scientists that are also on holiday around the same times

I’ve seen this before. It turns into restrictions on when you can schedule vacation times.

Not fun when your family wants to go on a trip but you can’t get the time off because it’s not one of the allowed vacation times.


Ouch, that is indeed a risk one must be wary of. Can be a "works for the company but sucks for employees". Which can also drain the company of skilled people, a poor trade in most cases.

It's reasonably common to sort by a either a short form of the name or the ISO code or similar, with the full name being displayed by the list.

This sometimes causes problems for the UK, which can be sorted as U, G, B, or even E (presumably for "England", making it especially annoying for people in the other countries of the UK).


Yeah, and it's been like that for years - the past decade, at least.

I've had a couple of Nexuses, a few of the Pixels, with a Nokia in the mix too. Never any problem - just log in, wait a few mins for the apps to automatically install and the data to backup/restore (which, iirc, happens over local wifi rather than going through the cloud). The last upgrade included a separate work profile managed by MS Intune, and that was also smoothly handled by the upgrade process.

Yes, Whatsapp chat history has to be handled separately (as others have mentioned) because of the e2e encryption. The only other thing that needs doing is confirming that I want Firefox as my default browser when I first run it. Otherwise, it's all completely hands-off.


I see the headline's now been changed to "RAF base in Cyprus hit by drone strike"

The Telegraph is, of course, strongly anti-EU, so the original headline might well have been a form of shit-stirring - "look how weak the EU are being by not retaliating!", or something along those lines.


Nancy Astor already had access to more than enough money to keep herself in unimaginable luxury for the rest of her life. She was substantially more wealthy than Churchill (by a factor of many thousands).

The nuance you're looking for didn't exist.


I'd have been sympathetic to that argument up until a few hours ago.

But it turns out that they were actually negotiating in better faith than their counter-party, who have just launched a war whilst still claiming to be interested in a peaceful settlement.


> I'd have been sympathetic to that argument up until a few hours ago

These are somewhat independent variables. America was open about the fact that we were trying diplomacy before force. Either, one or no sides could have been negotiating in good faith and still wound up here with that setup.


No they weren’t. Trump cancelled the previous treaty and then wanted a new agreement more favorable to the US than JCPOA.

I don’t like the mullah’s in Iran anymore than the next person but no reasonable and sane person would take that to mean “negotiating in good faith.”


> no reasonable and sane person would take that to mean “negotiating in good faith.”

Taken as a whole, Trump has not been negotiating with Iran in good faith. That does not mean that Iran has been negotiating in good faith.


That’s not how life works.

If someone takes the first underhanded step, it’s not on the victim to make amends. Iran got burned on JCPOA. Whether we like them or not, you have to address that first before moving on to meaningful talks.


> ran got burned on JCPOA. Whether we like them or not, you have to address that first before moving on to meaningful talks

Sure. I think it was probably politically impossible for Iran to negotiate in good faith. That doesn't change that they were not negotiating in good faith.


You’re conflating good faith and acceding to the US’s new demands based on past behavior.

no it doesn't "turn out that". They have a long history of hiding their nuke tech and lying while also issuing death threats to israel. Trust but verify doesn't work with this country.

> Trust but verify doesn't work with this country

I mean, the JCPOA verify seemed pretty well thought out.


It's part of the dismal/pathetic form of American exceptionalism that's taken root in the last decade.

"We mustn't consider dealing with problem x because it wasn't considered important by our founding fathers"

"China are catching up, so we need to cower behind a tariff wall rather than risk losing an open competition"

"Other countries with similar legal systems have successfully reformed their supreme courts, but there's nothing we can learn from them"

"We shouldn't constrain rogue leaders because of, er, something to do with King George III"

...and now "we can't push back against the regime, because they'll shoot us if we do".

It's so weird - a huge shift in such a short period of time. As an outsider who wishes America well, it's really sad to see.


None of this is entirely new. Americans have always fetishised their constitution or founding fathers. While there has been an era of free trade, that is over, and I think the west in general is in a difficult position (ultimately as a result of believing the "end of history" BS).

As for getting shot, while the chance of getting shot in the US for opposing the government is much higher than in similar circumstances in somewhere like the UK (which is far from perfect - but rarely actually shoots people), its also much, much lower than in Iran or China or Saudi Arabia.

Pushing back against the US government is a lot safer than taking part in something like the 2022 protests that ousted the Sri Lankan government, and lots of normally apolitical people took part in that (which was why it succeeded).


I believe that the biggest problem in the US is the constitution. It's next to impossible to change so the only way to fix it is replacing it entirely with a new one. But good luck with that...

That sounds like the real problem was the lack of an employee handbook. They're not strictly required by law, but 30 employees is well above the level where you should really expect to have one in place.

The "just wing it and hope no-one takes the piss" approach is fine if you've only got a handful of employees, but is increasingly risky beyond that - it was probably only a matter of time before that organisation got into a difficult HR situation one way or another.

It's not even going to have been much of a time-saving, since all the legally-mandated bits (eg. equal opportunities, grievance procedures, anti-harassment, modern slavery, and consultation process) will still have been needed at that size, just without a central place to track and manage it all.


> That sounds like the real problem was the lack of an employee handbook.

That's my point - we didn't have one because we didn't need one. 30 people is still small enough that you can be on first name terms with every single person in the company and know what everyone is doing day-to-day. Anecdotally, I'd say one in every 30 people I've worked with in my career are like this - so that's probably the point you do need one.


Nuts (in the culinary sense) and cheese are good for that - a mini-cheeseboard with a couple of different bits of cheese (maybe 20-30g of each), a handful of cashews and walnuts, and maybe a dab of fig jam or membrillo on the side.

Tasty, nutrient-dense, surprisingly filling. Great as a mid-afternoon snack, or add some fruit and a bit of bread or some oatcakes to make it into a decent lunch.


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