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The NHS's actual current annual budget is £195.6B in 2025/2026 [1]. The contract value declared at the link given above is £182M over 5 years. So:

100 × ((182/5)/196000) = 0.019%

Which, to me, still seems too high a number for a data management function: I make it about 1000 persons-worth of per-capita GDP.

[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/financial-performance-u...


I think you would need a lot more context to say if 0.019% is too high. If this platform is driving real operational improvements and is the core software backbone, then it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable.

> Access is not conditioned on approval.

The Zen Koan of T&C's.


Speaking as a UK citizen: you're exactly right. If the UK wants to prevent 4chan from being imported into the UK then it needs to block it at the border as it would for physical goods.

The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.


And we shall call it "the Great Firewall of the UK".

It is amazing that these guys don't see the irony of monkeying totaliterian states policies, in term of surveillance and censorship.


The UK, like Australia and many of its other offshoots has always had a bit of a totalitarian streak.


[dead]


Oddly that's Zuck doing that. And weirdly, the law would only apply to app stores. I think that's a separate movement from what the UK is doing though. That US law is designed to hamstring Meta's competition not restrict political speech but it can be abused the same way I think.


There is no "US law" there are 45+ pending or passed pieces of state legislation, along with the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that's yet to be passed.

The PACs that push the one specific law you're talking about also push laws in other states, and federally, that are very, very different and draconian.


The Debian apt repository is a "covered app store" under the law, as is any place that makes software available for download.


They’re going to keep ignoring these issues because the wrong people are pointing them out. The enemy must always be wrong.

Tribalism is awful for societies. There’s a reason Russia put so much effort into amplifying it in the west.


So, the Great FUK for short?


If only it were isolated to the UK. I know a website that does not hold content itself but rather links to other sites. Basically exactly what google does.

And yet, me sitting in Germany suddenly saw a nice banned notice when trying to access the site claiming this is because of "a high court verdict yadayadaya".

Why on earth do I now find ways around a UK court order to unblock a website when I am nowhere near their country? They should at least try and keep things within their jurisdiction.


It's very much a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. "It's an import", so they have to respond to it like they'd respond to imports...

But unlike physical imports, there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.


> there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.

It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.


UK ISPs do block some domains though.


Which does nothing to block 4chan, because everyone knows what a VPN is and how to get one.


The same UK politicians are now pushing to block VPNs. Hence the great firewall talk which they are trying to skirt by fining US companies.


Right, but it shows their mindset. They're not letting China comparisons stop them from doing anything. It's not about the technology. In their mind, it's about the purpose and the legitimacy of any censorship.


Unlike other websites though, VPNs are generally banned from posting on 4chan, which would definitely hurt traffic.


Yes but the number of 4chan passes would skyrocket to be able to post with a VPN.


I hope they do block it.


For anyone else wondering why the article ends in a non-sequitur: it looks like the author wrote about decompiling the Claude Code binaries and (presumably) discovering A/B testing paths in the code.

HN user 'onion2k pointed out that doing this breaks Anthropic's T&Cs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375787


Presumably the idea is that you put the relevant parts of the list in your thesis. You need to convince your examiner that you understand the background to the original research you did, and a solid reference list (with supporting text in the introductory/background section of your thesis) is part of doing that.

Personally I did the references at the end and didn't feel like I suffered from that decision, but the key references in my particular area were a relatively small and well-known set.


Hmm, yeah. I mean you often see huge reference lists which always just makes me feel like the person can't possible be actually well acquainted with the stuff that's being referenced. So who are you really fooling? Seems all very performative, though I guess I understand the motivation


What are the factors influencing the US Navy's position here? Not enough small/cheap ships for this work? Too hard to defend against guerilla speedboat attacks?


Let's see

No minetrawlers, the four US had were scheduled to be scrapped earlier this year. So if there's even a single mine you're playing russian roulette with hundreds of people on board

Probably heaps of various anti ship missiles that have been squirreled away with ranges reaching from few nautical miles to few hundred, just for this exact scenario, please keep in mind that you only need one missile to get through to cause dozens if not hundreds of fatalities.

Unmanned naval drones of various kind, not exactly ultra-high tech in this day and age.

And then there's the guerrilla speedboat attacks which means more missiles

Did I mention that one ship has possibly hundreds of people on board? The political system of the US probably cannot tolerate a military mass casualty event of that scale and spectacle. It's therefore just too risky to get anywhere nearby with a ship so all US navy can do is just lob missiles from as far away as possible, while hoping that this whole mess ends before US runs out of standoff weapons. And between Ukraine, Yemen and now this, the armament stocks aren't probably looking too good considering the meager production numbers.


This isn't a military decision but more a public opinion one. Should an American ship take a hit, have casualties, become disabled, etc it would put immense pressure on the administration to settle/end the war, even though on a military objective level it makes a lot of sense. This is a reality of the instant informational world we live in.


I read the tone of this comment to be as if that's a bad thing, even though it's a good thing?


Like a lot of things, little about this war is purely bad or purely good.

If the Iranian regime were over thrown, that would be good for basically the whole world except the people actually operating the regime. So, if the war ends without that happening, then that's at least partly a bad thing mixed in with the good of, y'know, not having a war anymore.


You can't really gauge 'tone' via text, I was just referring to the mission success reality on the President's side.


Imagine the optics of a single destroyer/cruiser being on fire. It would shatter the myth of American naval power (some are arguing that this war already did that, which I tend to agree with).


Armchair here:

Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.


While Iran still has fire control, these ships can be hit by shore-launched anti-shipping missiles, one way drones of even old fashioned shelling. Their "navy" was never even a factor.


Too risky, and doesn't make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. Iran uses cheap and disposable weapons that are also effective. If you think about how much a single US ship costs, and the political price of US service members dying, I think the picture becomes clear.


I agree with you.

The decision of the US Navy to not provide escort services makes perfect sense and it is no surprise.

The only thing that is newsworthy about it is that this has exposed yet another lie of Trump, who at some point has promised that the traffic will not be affected, because USA will provide such escort services.


It would take far more ships (ideally destroyers and frigates ) than we can muster to the gulf.

Also, it exposes the ships to easy attack in a constrained body of water

Also, the ships would need to exit the gulf and travel a long distance to re-arm their defensive weapons, requiring even more ships.


Not wanting to lose USN ships as a de facto mercenary force is reason enough.


Protecting the economic interests of the US and allies by defending commercial shipping is well within the remit of the US Navy. This is a risk management decision with a side of optics, not one of scope.


You could hit anything going through the straight with artillery and rockets from the shore. Escort won't do much.


> Shaming individuals doesn't seem to be productive or helpful.

I don't see how much support from history for that viewpoint. Some examples of positive societal change driven in part by shaming individuals: drink-driving, civil rights, sexual harassment, automobile safety, the slave trade, McCarthyism.


All those cases also have huge penalties or effective costs associated with them. Is there an accurate "shame first, then penalties came later" stand point?

Automobile safety in my life has only changed after fines. Sexual harrassment still happens and doesn't seem to be helped by shaming someone as much as firing them. Though we often don't have the guts or legal backing to publically shame someone.


> drink-driving, civil rights, sexual harassment, automobile safety, the slave trade, McCarthyism.

This hasn’t been a good few years for your examples.


Eh, other people throw litter on the floor and rob elderly folks in their homes. Those people hardly ever get caught, but neither you nor I are are going to start copying their actions.


I wasn't thinking about assaulting the elderly, but flying more often to see family and friends.


On the scale of unacceptability, you're firmly in failing to wipe down the hand basin after using it territory. You get a pass.


On the other side of the coin, a wide-scale introduction of 20mph speed limits in Wales has been generally unpopular.

This is despite a relatively small (but real) reduction in casualty figures that came with the change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93jvpjwdezo


Amsterdam also reduced many roads from 50 to 30 kmph. Accidents have reduced by 11% and travel time has only increased 1-5%. That is less than one minute on a 20 minute trip.

https://openresearch.amsterdam/nl/page/124453/onderzoeksrapp...


A 40% reduction in speed only causes a 5% increase in travel time? Are the majority of car trips spent sitting at stop lights??


I haven’t looked into this specific case, but most of the time the limiting factor is other traffic. You’re not traveling at full speed the whole time. If a lower speed adds 10 minutes to the average trip, but it reduces 9 minutes’ worth of traffic, you’ve only lost net one minute. A lower speed limit will often reduce traffic because the speed-up-slow-down behavior is reduced.

Personally, I have driven around the Netherlands a fair bit and this sort of thing does seem to be roughly true for the median case. It can definitely be annoying when the streets are empty, though. For those journeys you’re obviously losing a fair bit of time.


It's never that easy to calculate.

I have a long stretch of road near me that used to be 50 km/h and is now 30 km/h.

If you take that road during rush hour, yes - there's no meaningful difference in time spent. You'd be going traffic light to traffic light slightly faster.

The problem is that I personally use that road (in a car) more to pick up/drive my wife from and to early and late shifts at work than during rush hour, and this makes it take a significantly longer time. Like, I am not complaining at all, but it takes something like 20 minutes instead of 15, so like a 33% increase. And then again on the way back. But in the end being lucky with the traffic lights is still the main point.


That’s because within cities, junctions are the bottleneck and not the max speed.


Maybe people got so frustrated by having to drive at a snails pace that it became preferable and/or faster to just use other modes of transportation which cut down on traffic improving travel times?


It's how most of us are actually going to end up using AI agents for the foreseeable future, perhaps with increasing degrees of abstraction as we move to a teams-of-agents model.

The industry hasn't come up with a simple meme-format term to explain this workflow pattern yet, so people aren't excited about it. But don't worry, we'll surely have a bullshit term for it soon, and managers everywhere will be excited. In the meantime, we can just continue doing work with these new tools.


This is an opportunity to select some stupid words that you would like to hear repeated a million times. The process is like patiently nurturing a well-contained thing, so how about "egg coding"?


How about “engineering”?


I havent quite dealt with "teams of agents" yet outside of Claude Code itself spawning subagents, but I have some ideas as to how to achieve it in a meaningful way without giving a developer 10 claude code licenses, I think the real approach that makes more sense to me is to still have humans in the loop, but have their respective agents sync together and divide work towards one goal, but being able to determine which tasks are left to be worked one and tested. I do think for the foreseeable future you will need human validation for AI.


I thought the term was "agentic engineering"


I like "spec driven development" but I honestly don't care what you call it, just let me build things and leave me alone. :)


SDD is more like a subset. There are different ways to manage context in agentic engineering


I guess, I just know I force my agent to use a ticketing system like Beads (I made my own).


> SDD

Don’t do that! On a two-day-old term?!

No wonder we’re called gatekeepers.


Ok jeez, calm down. I am not shouldering all of the AI discourse lol.


^_^


Yeah that's the top contender at the moment. I think it's pretty good.



This does not spark joy.


I'm not sure there's going to be a term, because there's no difference from normal, good quality engineering. You iterate on design, validate results, prioritise execution. It's just that you hand over the writing code part. It's as boring as it gets.


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