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I have worked with graduates joining remotely during the pandemic, like most graduates they also lacked the skill to work in a real environment, but we can teach them, it's easy. But during the AI boom, the people who could teach the graduates were let go, leaving only a handful of senior engineers that had to "increase their productivity" while also mentoring the juniors. Guess where people cut corners to keep their job longer?

Yeah, I've had (and seen) interns and new-hires do fantastically during COVID.

You get what you pay for / put the work in for. If you're just hiring them, saying "read these docs and ship some PRs", and ignoring them, it's not too hard to predict what'll happen.

Engage at least as much as you would in person (more likely more, because you don't have passive hints about struggles), and it works out fine.


Most of all websites will lose their traffic, some already did.

- People using the search console see the drop

- Product owners scratch their head

- Investors backing out because not having many visitors

- Small bloggers adding more ads because their revenue is dropping

- Sponsors backing out from their blogs because it's loosing more visitors

- Small web crumbling

- People google what is happening

- Google says 'The "small web"—independent blogs, personal forums, and niche websites—is disappearing due to corporate consolidation, aggressive AI-driven search indexing, and high maintenance costs. These factors have pushed independent creators onto walled-garden social media apps, leaving personal websites to suffer from "link rot".'


Don't worry about the small web. Most people running the small web don't do it for others but themselves. They don't care whether they have 5 visitors or 1 million. Visitors are just the cherry on top, my main reason for maintaining a small web page is to put down my thoughts, organize them, go back to them if I need to, and helping whichever stranger stumbles upon them along the way.

The small web and indie web audience doesn't use google. They use RSS readers:

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/rss-feeds-send-me-more-traf...

https://matduggan.com/you-can-absolutely-have-an-rss-depende...

Small web is there to stay, big tech can't do much about it:

https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/

The only threats to small web are:

* the lack of net neutrality

* lack of competition in the the PC component industry which is the backbone of cheap VPSes and hosting services

* browser monopoly, as any monopolistic browser could impose their small-web-unfriendly version of the web


The main threat to small web is the reachability, I serve Atom and JSON feed, support microformats, microsub, and micropub, syndicate my posts to other platforms all without ads or telemetry. But all that effort means nothing if it doesn't reach the intended user base, it's just shouting at the void.

We can have a small community somewhere, but people who search for niche things should find them -- which used to be search engines after the .com boom and the burst. Now we are back to the small forms again, which is lacking the reach because--- new people can't reach the forms as they can't find them in the first place.

If someone new to the internet find the website, then nothing else matters.


hello, smol webber here (wildlife photos), can confirm the drop off is happening. I dont care about my own site tho, its just a convenient place to put things. Id be doing exactly the same for 1 user or 1 million users.

https://dombarker.co.uk/


Amazing pictures, thanks for sharing!

The comments are annoying. No matter the niche, it is always good to write the abbreviation the first time it is used, in fact, W3C recommends it[0]. Anyone who does not follow this either are not informed well enough, or has ableism. Most replies in this thread shows the latter.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/abbreviations


This page has 5 abbreviations that are not spelled out before you even get to the body of the article.


You meant 5 acronyms, and each are links, which contains their abbreviations. So they do follow the guideline.

An acronym is an abbreviation, and they specifically do not spell out the very first acronym on the page the first time they use it.

An acronym is a specific type of abbreviation formed from the initial letters of a phrase and pronounced as a single word. I was being more specific. And the ones you are pointing out are from the header.

> An abbreviation whose expansion is provided the first time the abbreviation appears in the content

Content is the main body of the article (press tab ones you land the page, it will take you to the main content if you don't know what that is), which contains only one Acronym, “SC 3.1.4” → which is a link that take you to a place with its definition. I don't understand what you are fighting over. But I'm not going to reply more to someone who defends people who do not know how to write articles that are more friendly towards the reader.


The contract with NHS is about 300 mil, public don't want it, most GPs don't want it, so let's drop that next.


Developing a replacement system is still going to cost a hell of a lot. It's not like if you dropped palatir then we'd suddenly have a free drop-in replacement and everyone can have their fiver back


You pay money to Palantir that money essentially escapes the economy, you develop a sovereign solution yes you pay millions even more but that goes into corporations and people actually living in the country, paying taxes and spending their coins here.


It doesn't escape the economy. This is the kind of bizarre left-wing isolationism/nationalism that seems to be rife amongst people who don't understand free markets.

If you pay money to Palantir, they are providing a service in return. That service is investment in your own economy, you pay them and then you own the thing they produce. Money does not "escape", the same amount of money is there before and after. The reason the UK is doing bad is this kind of bizarre economic xenophobia combined with a complete hostility to any kind of innovation or change. The question is: why don't we have a company competing with Palantir? Should be very obvious.


Sure, but you can receive the service and also keep the money spent within the country.


I'm not sure you are arguing against the point that the above poster is making. They aren't saying "giving money to foreign companies is bad". It's "in order to have a healthy domestic service economy, we should be investing it it wherever possible" combined with "investment in on-shore development is largely recaptured in income tax" (thus it can be worthwhile for the public even when slightly more expensive).

A free market is not a means to an end. Part of the reason that the USA was (until recently) doing so well was that the winner-takes-all mentality of the free-market benefits Silicon Valley, but that doesn't mean that other nation states have to submit to that philosophy.


Yes, a replacement will cost money. But probably less than a year contract with Palantir.

Mistakes were made (I would argue intentionally because of local wallet minima with stakeholders), there is a sunk cost to using Palantir. The country can't even develop it further, because it's Palantir's. That's not an argument to keep using it.

The country needs to develop the ability, to develop critical national infrastructure (this includes software, obviously is not limited to it). I would also argue it already has the ability, we need to prevent it from withering away.

Palantir will do the same as local companies (building on top of open source) except it needs to make a large tech profit and with its monopolistic ability, It will capture the value for itself.

Procurement has a misaligned efficiency incentive. Procurement and governments want a single provider so it's less direct cost on them on managing projects. Sadly, they've actually unnaturally forced a monopoly, resulting in serious costs and inefficiencies in the long term. We need a way to encourage multiple providers for the same thing, and allow new companies to join in even when they're late. Just like B2B and B2C.

I wonder if anyone has some thoughts in this area


I would rather not hand mine or my neighbours' health data to a spy-tech firm, who will have unlimited access to their data[0].

Not having the system (it's not like it's already in use anyway) is always a good step in the right direction. And a replacement built-in UK will provide more jobs, more tax money, and digital sovereignty for UK.

https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/05/palantir-to-be-granted...


I don't know the specifics of that deal, but hospitals operated very well for hundreds of years without computers. I've often heard friends who work in hospitals complain about the software. It may be worth considering if there needs to be an IT solution at all, and if so, if simple scanning/archiving software would better fit the bill than any proposed "solution" that misses the mark.


When they first rolled out Universal Credit, they decided to do it using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

It didn't work very well, so GDS rebuilt it in-house.


My NHS region has rejected using Palantir as they claim that their own internal systems are better, those could be considered for the rest of the NHS.


Have you considered just not building this kind of thing at all?


The NHS does have a problem that it is built as a collection of individual trusts all using their own IT systems and after decades has an issue with transferring data between trusts.

So that's why an interconnected system is required in order to share data between the trusts while maintaining compatibility with their existing processes


This just sounds like 'We have too many systems, so lets build another one to solve the problem!"

https://xkcd.com/927/


No it doesn't, people are against it due to their ties, not because they don't like the service.


The solution here is quite obviously unifying the NHS IT under a single system, not cobble together another one to interface between all the old incompatible ones.

Good, now let's drop the Palantir's contract with NHS.


This is what I thought this post was about originally


The rimigo proxy works for me: https://rimgo.vern.cc/a/nFQN5tx


Not backing up the claims, but,

You don't need to know the account or account number, just need to know the transaction logic, which most backend developer will know of as long as they work in that area.

If the product managers keep boasting about their new strategy (which I have seen in almost all companies I have worked for), even the juniors will know what's going on.


Except this is complete bullshit. Money is anonymous. Why would they have some kind of pipeline account that goes directly from the fees to political spend? Why wouldn't the fees just go to a generic revenue account and the lobbying would come out of the same account?

This is like claiming someone set up a special account where all their paychecks on rainy days get spent directly on weed. It makes zero sense.


Erm… I don't understand what you are saying.

> Money is anonymous.

Unless you pay in cash (or some cryptocurrency that doesn't leave traces), money is not anonymous. Not sure what made you make that claim.

> Why would they have some kind of pipeline account that goes directly from the fees to political spend?

Is the pipeline account you mention here the delivery company's account?

> This is like claiming someone set up a special account where all their paychecks on rainy days get spent directly on weed. It makes zero sense.

Pretty sure that already happens, that's one of many ways to do tax evasion with offshore accounts.


Stick around any corporation (especially one that is heavily regulated and has a revolving door with the government) and you'll hear all kinds of stories.

I'd put this into that bucket of "someone I trust told me they heard the story from someone they trust". It means the story may not be true and they don't have any hard evidence, but they found it believable enough to repeat.


Unsure why this is a reply to the OP, the only thing common is RMS and nothing else.

But, RMS is known to be socially awkward, the same goes for many autistic individuals. It's just that he doesn't mask and comes out as “rude”. If send an e-mail, he will usually take his time to write down a succinct response.


I know a few autistic people including one of my nephews. They are different in some ways particularly when they are very young and are still struggling with expressing their emotions. But none of them are arrogant and disrespectful. I think you can be autistic and also a jerk, one doesn’t justify the other.


I'm going to be rude now, but I don't mean it to be taken that way.

"I know a guy with a leg missing, and he can still run, so clearly someone who has lost their legs is able".

I have had the discussion a bunch of times, I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people.

Yes, some autistic people can mask quite well, and, some are mild cases.

But the crucial issue that most autistic people have is: they don't even become aware that they're being rude unless they spend active effort in first identifying, then understanding, then trying to fix it.

I'll tell you something else too: most people are uncomfortable with criticism, it makes them defensive and clam up. If you make someone defensive, enough times, then the situation becomes infected and very emotionally charged.

Now, imagine you have an illness that prevents you from processing your emotions properly, and the whole world is unkind to you, and you can't really understand why, but people call you rude.

It takes a lot of bravery and integrity to really reflect on that soberly.

Please, I implore you all to stop pretending you understand autism because you know someone- or a bunch of self diagnosed people, I keep seeing it[0], autistic people have great difficulty controlling how they're perceived, that's the whole issue.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37200502


> I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people.

I'm going to say that your definition of "severely autistic" is actually mild to moderate at worst.

The definition of "severely autistic" I know of and have seen in personal experience (family) and in my career has nothing to do with "masking" and such.

It's being a late teenager who is effectively non-verbal, who wore diapers until age 12, who has an "anchoring dog", a 150lb Newfoundland that was trained from birth with audio recordings of him screaming or tantrums, that acts both as an emotional support, but as a literal anchor - tethered to him so that when, as many severely autistic people do, he starts to wander based on internal stimuli - the dog can just sit down and tense up and say "Not unless you plan on dragging a very large dog with you that is trained to stay still when it notices you walking away from your family".

Things along those lines.

> they don't even become aware that they're being rude unless they spend active effort in first identifying, then understanding, then trying to fix it.

This is demonstrably not RMS. He is quite aware of this, and quite openly states he has no intention of apologizing for it, let alone "fixing it".


The “severe” autism that I used to experience, at least the most severe that I experienced was non-verbal, sometimes with violent outbursts.

But of course there’s a whole range.

What concerns me though is that when I’m on the internet, people talk about autism like it’s a quirky character flaw that can be overridden with moderate effort.

Which feels criminally ignorant.


Hasn’t the definition of autism in the DSM changed to the point of requiring only a single characteristic to be “technically” on the spectrum, whereas it used to require many more criteria? I think it’s literally “not what it used to be”.

It seems like a diagnosis that would benefit from more distinguishing words so as not to conflate people at different ends of that spectrum.

It must be infuriating or Bewildering to see someone knowingly nodding along saying, “oh yeah. I’m autistic too,” when other autistic people you know literally aren’t capable of doing that.


> nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people.

Yes, most people have not met someone with more than mild autism.

I think the other issue is that people are confused as to _what_ autism is (it doesn't help that its a massive fucking spectrum) For most people, meeting a dutch grandmother for the first time would assume that they count as autistic.

I run a "uniformed organisation" for kids, and as we make sure that we take _all_ kids regardless of who they are, I bump into a large amount of interesting diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions. Currently I look after siblings, one who is mostly mute and diagnosed, and the other who is very much lightly on the spectrum.

There is another kid who is both ADD and autistic(Diagnosed). He is prone to RMS-like behaviour. If you talk to him in the right way, he can understand why certain behaviours are to be not repeated. However, he is and remains a teenager.


I am not diagnosed as autistic and also have trouble understanding why people can call my interactions rude as I just tend to try to be honest and precise.

It just happens that I don't like hypocrisy.

I am not an antisocial and consider myself a very polite person and will often say hello and wish a good day to strangers when I am riding my bicycle in the trails or walking in a village / small town.


This isn't even rude.


Calling a spade a spade is already considered rude in some cultures/contexts, so I think the most you could say is "this isn't even rude from my perspective".


Feels like most of the time most folk are mostly speaking from their perspective. Do we need that reminder every time?


Please consider that your nephews are growing up on a world with a lot more awareness and empathy towards autism.


I know somebody who smoked a lived to be 90 years old, therefore all that they speak about harms of smoking are lies.

You realize people are different, and your knowledge of tiny number of data points tells you very little about people who aren't those people you know?


> Surprised how many people don't seem to know about it.

There are a few reasons for that.

1. The link to APK cannot be found on the official site[0], so it needs to be looked up in a search engine.

2. Even when downloading from the site, they try to scare you away with a warning [1]. The reason for warning could be avoided by hosting their own F-droid repo, but they refused it, claiming you can download APK and not listening to reason[2].

Though for people using F-droid can still get Signal through the Guardian repository [3]

Thing about the signal APK and the Guardian one is that, it still have the so called "crap" in the final APK, it just runs a background service when required google services are not detected, causing battery drain for many[4].

The drain could also be avoided by supporting UnifiedPush (it can fall back to FCM when it's detected), but they don't want to do that either[5].

[0] https://signal.org/download/

[1] https://signal.org/android/apk/

[2] https://community.signalusers.org/t/how-to-get-signal-apks-o...

[3] https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/

[4] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9729

[5] https://community.signalusers.org/t/use-gcm-fcm-alternatives...


This, I set an alias for `adb` to use `"$XDG_DATA_HOME"/android` instead of `~/.android` because it stores the keys there for whatever reason. I would rather not see my home folder being cluttered with hidden files, it makes backing things up unnecessarily complex.

    export ANDROID_USER_HOME="$XDG_DATA_HOME"/android
    alias adb='HOME="$ANDROID_USER_HOME" adb'


Don't forget Gradle ("GRADLE_USER_HOME") and OpenJDK ("-Djava.util.prefs.userRoot"), those too litter.


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