Posts by happyuk 27 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Nov 2015
These are genuine issues because they lower the barrier for people with limited technical skill to engage in harmful activities.
ChatGPT can be used by dunces for evil, just like any other technology.
However lets never lose sight of its massive upside. It enables most users - that's you and I - to work smarter, and be more productive.
The tool itself is neutral—its impact depends on how people use it
Labeling people who prefer modern tools and pragmatism as 'keyboard monkeys' is a great way to make yourself look like a pompous ass. Exactly the kind of outdated elitism that holds teams back.
To return to a serious software engineering discussion. I’ve always found UML to be more ceremony than substance in most projects I’ve worked on.
AI makes me faster, more consistent, more effective and allow me to focus on solving actual problems.
Drawing diagrams that no one maintains and date the moment you write them doesn't and never will.
Unpalatable fact, (in anticipation of a deluge of downvotes): companies who cling to stuffy, theoretical processes as a measure of competence are going to be left behind. Period.
The industry is moving on whether you like it or not.
Those who can’t adapt are welcome to keep perfecting their diagrams while the rest of us ship working software.
Yeah money is always a factor, but a crucial question for me would be:
How isolated/shielded would a person be from bureaucracy and the extent to which they would be actively encouraged creative problem-solving?
Even in small, innovative, agile organisations, innovation and enthusiasm can be stifled by stick-in-the-mud management & colleagues, risk aversion, and compliance-heavy structures - especially in this field Ditto military-style need-to-know chains of command. I would say to an extent it's unavaoidable, working in a high-security environment will limit your ability to experiment freely or use modern open-source tools/libraries.
Though “Innovation” is talked about rhetorically, actual power often lies with middle managers focused legacy processes or "who you know".
I would be interested in finding out anecdotally how a highly intelligent, unconventional, fast-thinking person might fare in such an environment - would he be told to “slow down,” “follow the process,” “let others catch up”. Or sidelined with make-work? This would be like death for a creative mind.
Your statement is historically accurate and has some truth, but the situation has evolved significantly over the last decade. Linux can be low-maintenance if you don’t stray far from official packages.
Ironically, Windows is now learning from Linux by offering CLI and open-source style tooling. Alas Dev environments on Windows can also be tricky.
A major and often overlooked shift is that you're no longer at the mercy of the forums, cryptic man pages or other forms of "documentation". Smug, dismissive, and often unhelpful types have fallen by the wayside. Users especially non-experts like me have a powerful equalizer in tools like ChatGPT. I think this also changes the Windows vs Linux dynamic fundamentally. Much of the historic “Linux is too hard” stigma came from having to rely on niche, gatekept, tribal knowledge.
Your reply is full of confident justifications and historical references. All well and good but relies heavily on trust and a vague sense of inevitability.
Comparing black rooms steaming open letters to undermining end-to-end encryption across the digital world is like comparing a magnifying glass to a satellite-mounted death laser. The potential scale for abuse is wildly different now.
Your “trust the government” angle works if that trust is earned and held to account (spoiler alert: it rarely is).
Even if today’s leaders were saints (they’re not), tomorrow’s might not be. The infrastructure you build today doesn’t care who’s in power tomorrow.
EncroChat was a targeted operation. Great. That’s what good intelligence looks like—cold, clinical, targetted, evidence-based, proportionate. Turning that into a rationale for weakening encryption at large is like saying, “This scalpel worked well, so now let’s use a chainsaw for every diagnosis.” That “Great Game” stuffis fine in spy thrillers, but is not a basis for dismantling citizens’ rights. You don’t win cyberwars by making your own systems more vulnerable.
What you're advocating for is not public safety, it’s predictive authoritarianism.
Slippery slope arguments aren’t about predicting doom tomorrow—they’re about recognizing patterns. The UK is ticking a lot of boxes: erosion of privacy rights, attempts to undermine encryption, expanding surveillance powers without meaningful oversight... It’s not full-blown authoritarianism, but don't kid yourself the trajectory doesn’t exist.
Waiting until it’s irreversible is a great way to ensure it’s irreversible.
"TPTB really aren't interested in our comms, unless they have evidence that we're up to no good. "
That’s a comforting thought, but honestly, it feels a bit naïve. The idea that governments always act with perfect restraint and never misuse their powers just doesn’t hold up.
I guess we’re not a full-on dictatorship (though some would debate that after the last few legislative rounds), and we don’t like to think of the UK as a banana republic - yet - weakening end-to-end encryption puts us on that slippery slope.
The point isn’t whether the government is currently snooping on our everyday chats—it's about allowing them to. Once that door is open, it stays open. Not just for “the right people” either, but for anyone who can get through. That includes hostile states, criminals, and YES, potentially even a future UK government that decides to be even less respectful of personal sovereignty and due process.
EncroChat is always wheeled out as an example, but that was a specific, targeted operation, not a justification for breaking encryption across the board. We don't zap everyone's privacy just to catch a few bad actors. That’s not how a democracy should work.
We shouldn’t trade away fundamental rights and secure infrastructure just because “someone might be doing something wrong.” To paraquote Ben Franklin, anyone that does deserves neither and will lose both.
I completely agree with the article. The UK government—any government—has no right to intercept private, end-to-end encrypted communications. Allowing backdoors sets a dangerous precedent that weakens everyone’s privacy and data security.
The “but it's for the children” argument sounds good, but it's just a distraction. Emotionally powerful but technically hollow. I’m glad Apple pushed back. It’s a rare reminder that companies still understand that security without privacy is just surveillance in disguise.
I also agree with Vice President Vance here, though he may not be the most popular figure here—he’s right to call out the UK government’s attempts to stifle freedom of speech. Somebody has to - it’s a fundamental, as-yet-unresolved problem.
Absolutely correct.
As a grim reflection, it's worth knowing that the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded 1824) was founded a full 60 years before the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).
The people in power then resisted interference in the private sphere. Not because children didn’t matter, but because people in power resisted interference in the private sphere—especially the home. Back then no one wanted to intrude on what happened behind closed doors.
Fast forward to today: those same powers are saying we must strip away privacy, for supposedly the exact opposite reason: to protect the private sphere!
Appealing to emotion, especially with children involved, is a convenient political ruse.
I get what you're saying about 15-minute cities being about convenience rather than control but I disagree that concerns over centralization and sovereignty are just "conspiracy nut" talk.
There are globalist (I prefer to call them collectivist) policymakers and organizations that prioritize broad societal goals over individual or national autonomy.
Impressive and all but where is the benefit to hard-pressed society for these low-earth orbit rockets? (That's all they are)
In what way does this benefit the excessively taxed ordinary man in the street?
Kind of reminds of Concorde during the seventies - everyone had to contribute via taxation to the development of a supersonic aircraft intended to launch a bunch of
over-moneyed fools into the stratosphere - whether they liked it or not.
And most ordinary folk would never be able to afford it, not unless they came into money or blew their life savings.
But nanny government wants your tax money to fund these things and nanny government knows best.
You mean "living the good life" as in having a civilized work-life balance, with no presenteeism and no costly and unnecessary commutes? If anything, those that actually do the work are thriving. It is only those you often wondered what the hell they did all day that are struggling.
Regardless, there is no going back.
It's not at all fair to say GameStop would have died a slow death anyway.
There are such as thing as turnarounds.
Many companies, seemingly in the doldrums, teetering on bankruptcies for many years have done just that.
Some might change their business models, management, applied cost cutting, restructuring etc and went on to become success stories.
In the world of investing nothing is ever black and white.
Contrast that with the likes of Enron and WorldCom with their impressive glass palaces and stratospheric earnings / share prices are no longer with us.
The trouble with trusting Hillary Clinton, is that she is a pathological liar, like most politicians, that hold ordinary people in contempt.
That Hillary Clinton and those around her set up a private server is now known. That Barak Obama lied to the American people about it when he said "whenever everyone else learned about it..." is also now known. What is missed is that these people had a need to lie, and, more importantly, they knew such a private server would necessary in concealing information from the citizens of the United States. Donna Brazille attempted to say that the emails were forgeries. She was found to be deceptive. The home server was not set up to be "convenient", but for the purpose of concealing information. This was approved, de facto by the White House, the State Department, and the Justice Department. The information within this private server was not intended for Congress, watchdogs, or the American people to see.
Ha! Since moving jobs 18 months and having to re-train in the .NET world I have to agree that I am not missing C++ at all. There little or nothing in that godforsaken language that you cannot do a lot simpler and cleaner in C# / WPF / XAML...
That's not all I don't miss. The attitudes and mentalities of some of the C/C++ brigade who think it's clever to write highly obfuscated unreadable code.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
