Nigel Small
@technige.bsky.social
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
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
Random opinion:
Browsers should not default to HTTPS for .local domains.
Browsers should not default to HTTPS for .local domains.
November 5, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Random opinion:
Browsers should not default to HTTPS for .local domains.
Browsers should not default to HTTPS for .local domains.
"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/2025/10/why-...
#DoctorWho #BBC #Tardis
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?
deadline.com
November 2, 2025 at 8:55 AM
"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/2025/10/why-...
#DoctorWho #BBC #Tardis
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...
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...
Staying nimble and continuing to strengthen our organizations
The following message was shared with Amazon employees earlier today.
www.aboutamazon.com
October 29, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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...
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...
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.
October 25, 2025 at 8:24 AM
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.
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.
October 18, 2025 at 4:29 PM
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.
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...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...
Prince Andrew gives up royal titles including Duke of York after 'discussion with King'
In a statement, the prince says:
www.bbc.co.uk
October 18, 2025 at 8:57 AM
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...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...
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.
October 17, 2025 at 7:43 PM
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.
Reposted by Nigel Small
Of all the stupid things they’ve said, this is the stupidest. And the most dangerous.
RFK Jr: We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.
October 16, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Of all the stupid things they’ve said, this is the stupidest. And the most dangerous.
Reposted by Nigel Small
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...
Color Engineering
The tool that snaps mercurial design into mechanical focus.
www.chartography.net
October 8, 2025 at 5:49 PM
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...
Reposted by Nigel Small
[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...
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...
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.
blog.google
October 9, 2025 at 8:11 PM
[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...
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...
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.
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.
General maintenance is one of the most fundamental jobs in an open source project, but is one of the hardest to get paid for. Adding new features gets you promoted; keeping the lights on does not.
But everything depends on it. Code needs reviews, cleanups, docs. New contributors need mentors, etc.
But everything depends on it. Code needs reviews, cleanups, docs. New contributors need mentors, etc.
October 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
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.
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.
Reposted by Nigel Small
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/2025/Oct/10/...
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 …
simonwillison.net
October 11, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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/2025/Oct/10/...
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.
October 11, 2025 at 7:20 AM
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.
Reposted by Nigel Small
"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".
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".
Ah, I see this post has crossed the Bad Faith Threshold: that indefinable moment on social media when people stop behaving as if you’re a normal human person who, say, loves your child and is making a mildly humorous observation, and start responding with wild criticisms and imagined slights.
Yesterday my eleven-year-old daughter claimed that Taylor Swift had embraced a range of genres which included punk. The retribution was swift and included considerable mockery and a lesson on punk which probably took longer than she would have liked.
October 6, 2025 at 6:43 AM
"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".
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".
I wondered where Boris Johnson had gone.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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
www.theguardian.com
October 6, 2025 at 5:11 PM
I wondered where Boris Johnson had gone.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
The US is no longer a political ally.
open.spotify.com/episode/1U8E...
open.spotify.com/episode/1U8E...
Is a secret US spy ring trying to take over Greenland?
open.spotify.com
August 28, 2025 at 12:28 PM
The US is no longer a political ally.
open.spotify.com/episode/1U8E...
open.spotify.com/episode/1U8E...
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...
www.gov.uk/government/n...
AI to help police catch criminals before they strike
Government launches AI crime prevention challenge to support safer streets.
www.gov.uk
August 18, 2025 at 7:18 AM
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...
www.gov.uk/government/n...
Another day, another example of our government's depressingly tenuous grasp on technology.
www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
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.'"
www.tomshardware.com
August 13, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Another day, another example of our government's depressingly tenuous grasp on technology.
www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
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...
www.thenational.scot/news/2538029...
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.
www.thenational.scot
August 12, 2025 at 8:54 AM
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...
www.thenational.scot/news/2538029...
Reposted by Nigel Small
If Trump is so keen to swap territory for peace, maybe he should give Putin Alaska, which also used to belong to Russia.
August 9, 2025 at 10:37 AM
If Trump is so keen to swap territory for peace, maybe he should give Putin Alaska, which also used to belong to Russia.
Reposted by Nigel Small
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.
August 8, 2025 at 12:40 AM
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.
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.
August 8, 2025 at 12:25 PM
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.