cs02rm0

I thought development for it was not in a good place?

I think there's an implicit assumption here that because Americans pay the costs of tariffs it means there isn't a knock on impact (where for instance goods from other countries aren't bought, in preference of US local goods), in turn affecting the other economy. And that therefore Trump's tariff plays are without impact, whereas I'm not convinced that is the case.

I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.

  Location: UK
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Java, React, Javascript, Shell, Python, SQL and NoSQL, AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Lambda, Terraform - it becomes too much to list, my background is principally as a Java dev who's turned their hand to most things to get the job done over the last 20 years.
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmidwinter/
  Email: richard.midwinter@gmail.com

I've architected and developed software systems professionally across healthcare, media and secure government. Startups to multinational defence consultancies. Project CTO / technical lead roles, lots of experience leading dozens of projects, through the entire SDLC in highly technical environments with significant legal requirements. Greenfield and legacy systems. Often been the person brought in to fix the difficult projects.

Particularly interested in roles where people are passionate that they have real world value to deliver. Any technical obstacles that follow that, we can fix.

I love Linux, it was all I ran for years. But, unfortunately, I needed the better hardware more and haven't been able to find a viable way back.

It's not a conspiracy that the elections did not happen and have not happened.

It only becomes false to say they've been cancelled if they happen. They're planning on postponing them again, and if that continues to happen indefinitely, they've been cancelled.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdd5p5gyvveo

Starmer doesn't just have negative approval ratings. His are through the floor. The last voting intention poll from YouGov (which has been relatively favourable for Labour) would have given them just 69 seats - fewer than the Lib Dems currently have.

> He’s a proper democrat.

The same Starmer who's cancelled local elections? Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me? The same Starmer who said no rise in NI in the manifesto, only to increase NI? The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?

He's no proper democrat. People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.

I thought it was unobfuscated perl code. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.

Not sure that works though for flogging, say, client IP to affluency data to advertisers, unless they can already reliably pinpoint the client IP to an address (which for all I know, maybe they can).

> The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table?

I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.

Neat.

Amazes me that the Russians always seem to have the capacity for this sort of, I can't think of a clean word, let's inadequately say gamesmanship. When I'd have thought they have enough on their plate in Ukraine.

They don't have your capabilities.

With apologies to our American friends, Jeremy Clarkson had a take on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kXUbwngB4

Somewhere in there, I think he does have a point.

A lot I expect. There were stories about VPNs being top of the App Store, etc. when the law kicked in.

Lots of people using Brave's Tor or Opera's VPN in their browsers, and free VPNs like Proton (which seems like a negative security outcome for the country to me).

I'd have thought the intel agencies would be pissed at all that data going dark, but haven't heard a peep in the media.

I am! No one's interested in any of it though...

> the other engineers have lost all ambition for anything else

Worse, they've lost all funding for anything else.

I changed jobs in '08, '10 and was contracting by '11. Didn't notice any downturn from 2008 at all.

I'd only once in 20 years been turned down for a job I'd applied for. Every other job I applied for I was offered. I've applied for over 600 roles in the past year and barely had a handful of interviews. That certainly feels different.

Seems like groundhog day, although I'm not sure I remember anyone telling me that software engineers were on borrowed time until relatively recently and I'd largely ignored it.

Yet one thing does seem different for anyone who just missed the dotcom crash, is that the roles available have fallen off a cliff while the numbers looking for roles seem to be up, at least in the UK. The UAE is even worse. I've spent 20 years hiding from recruiters and now they're all leaving me on read. Karma, maybe.

In the FAQs:

Is the software open source?

Yes. Our control application, Korova, will be fully open source and maintained long term. It’s a native, lightweight application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

It's quite punchy in price for a niche market. I'm struggling to see much of a USP for me.

20 people given a take home test for one role?

I get icky feelings about these. Clearly, 18 out of 20 submitted something so I guess most people go along with it and perhaps I'm an outlier.

There's so much duplication, or overlap at least.

Despite being a software dev and more invested than the average person, I don't feel like there are that many websites or applications I use really. But there are the best part of a thousand webapps being developed there. I was mulling over starting a language learning platform, but there seem to be 133 being worked on just by people who've posted to HN to say they're working on one.

No wonder most of us seem to struggle with getting traction.

I interviewed for a cybersecurity position with BA a little while back, it was a bit odd in general. I mentioned a few issues I thought were serious holes on their website, equivalent to the breach they ended up being fined for.

They said a pentest would find them if they were important.

I think we parted with both parties unimpressed with the other.

Can someone make the totalitarian fountain of this government stop?

There's been a significant backlash against this and yet they're just extending it at every turn.

I don't think these laws are being made with the will of the people.

There's been no groundswell of opinion, no technically minded authority pushing expert opinion.

The same people lobbying for the online safety act were pushing age verification tools. The government is exceptionally unpopular, even by the standards of already deeply unpopular governments in recent years.

I despair of the situation in the UK. How have we ended up here?

I built what I guess is a LinkedIn alternative: https://sifted3.com/blog/building-sifted3

It's less focused on the social, more on the jobs. With a limit on the number of job applications a user can make; sort of like Twitter, for job application count. And mechanisms to provide feedback to users. Basically trying to address a few shortcomings of LinkedIn as I see them (with other mechanisms in the pipeline).

But it has neither any jobs, nor candidates.

I'm not sure what the strategy should be to resolve that. I've tried a few things that haven't worked out yet.

> You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.

Pretty similar in the UK.

I think the picture of how the UK came to be what is today is a bit more complicated than just that take.

Are you ok with living in a country where the state has turned a blind eye to widespread grooming gangs?

Nowhere is perfect, to say the least. And my presence or absence has little affect on that. Labourers in the UAE are paid less than they would be in the UK, but more than they would be in their country of origin. And let's face it, the UK isn't giving them jobs. Is it better to give them low paid work as the UAE does, or better not to give them any work at all as the UK does? I don't think these ethical issues are simple, neither do I think there's one right answer.

Arguably not. They both have pros, they both have cons and I can't predict the future.

But my intuition is, that on balance I can give my kids a substantially better life in Dubai. Safer, more sports, more languages, better school facilities. With parents less stressed but more motivated to work.