David Heath
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davidheath.org
David Heath
@davidheath.org
Trying to make things work better
Reposted by David Heath
Bad news from Georgia where Georgian Dream is banning the opposition and charging its main leaders with plotting a coup.
Georgia is dousing the last embers of democracy
An oligarchic party outlaws the opposition and turns towards Russia
economist.com
November 9, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by David Heath
Incredible thread from Steve. Please read.
I decided to spend this remembrance day educating myself about the sacrifices we're supposed to be remembering.

I now live on the atlantic coast of France, so decided to learn something about of the second world war here.

As a result, I've been down the most amazing rabbit hole of discovery...
November 9, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by David Heath
I'll tell you something. I have a private theory that this kind of division (which is clear as day to ppl in tech and like, baffling to ppl outside of it) is a version of the "I will help you survive but not thrive" phenomenon but worked out re: tech belonging

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
November 6, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by David Heath
Blind (and much of mainstream media!): the AWS outage is the result of “mass layoffs, outsourced talent.”

Me: talks to the AWS engineers handling the incident. Turns out the creators of the systems impacted were in the call (not laid off!), no outsourcing etc

Will share more
November 5, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Oldest victim of Post Office scandal, 92, receives final compensation payout.

At last. But ruined lives can't be restored.

£1.2bn paid to 9,100 victims from public purse.

Not a penny from PO execs, Fujitsu, lawyers, accountants, advisers who benefited from persecution of the victims.
Oldest victim of Post Office scandal, 92, receives final payout
www.bbc.co.uk
November 5, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by David Heath
“Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic and made way for parks, people-streets and bike-lanes.”

Better for the climate, better for health, better for livability and quality of life.

Common sense.

Such a no-brainer, it’s remarkable that more cities HAVEN’T done the same.
Paris said au revoir to cars. Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change.
Air pollution fell substantially as the city restricted car traffic and made way for parks and bike lanes.
www.washingtonpost.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by David Heath
I keep being amused by some devs claiming that multi-region support for a service should be easy to add. Then turns out they're unaware of what active-active arch is.

Multi-region support is not all that complex from afar, but it gets complicated with the details.
October 28, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by David Heath
I was deadly nerdsniped:
Nick Kimber on LinkedIn: “Hello. Can anybody point me to a decent accessible history of relational practice/thinking/ leadership (ideally short form)?” stream.syscoi.com/2025/10/24/n...
Nick Kimber on LinkedIn: “Hello. Can anybody point me to a decent accessible history of relational practice/thinking/ leadership (ideally short form)?”
[On LinkedIn, Nick Kimber asked: Hello. Can anybody point me to a decent accessible history of relational practice/thinking/ leadership (ideally short form)? I’m writing something on test and learn…
stream.syscoi.com
October 25, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by David Heath
An OpenAI executive said GPT-5 found solutions to 10 "previously unsolved" math problems when in reality all it did was find online references to places where people had already solved them

techcrunch.com/2025/10/19/o...
OpenAI’s ‘embarrassing’ math | TechCrunch
No, GPT-5 did not solve a bunch of previously unsolved math problems.
techcrunch.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by David Heath
Come and join an open house meeting to further shape these and work out what to do next. We need a collective hopeful tech vision if we have any chance of putting out the current ridiculous bin fire fuelled by hype, power & billionaire egos. Booking links in this post buttondown.com/society-of-h...
#3: A Hopeful Charter and First Events
Our draft charter, the first SoHoT community events, and a Hopeful Tech Reading Group with Empire of AI author Karen Hao
buttondown.com
October 19, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Reposted by David Heath
NEW: The British politician, his Russian intelligence handler & a Kremlin plot against the US & Ukraine.

My new piece about Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage for @thenerve_news in which we ask:

Why, even now, is no-one asking questions?

t.co/BUTtpK9C4S
October 12, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Are there any live proposals to get DSIT (and/or CLG?) to create a Civic Tech Fund? An initiative to support the UK’s civic tech movement (pro-social platforms like Library of Things, Olio, Park Run, etc) and shared infrastructure for community organising. 1/n
October 11, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Some people are saying the potential overbuild because of AI might not be a bad thing because, like the dotcom era, it could leave behind infrastructure we’ll benefit from for a long time.

1/6
October 11, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Refactoring is a key skill for good software design and it's also something you can get better at through practice. Check out my newly-published video training course which has lots of examples and exercises you can try courses.cd.training/courses/refa...
Refactoring Made Simple: Improve Code Design Safely
Learn refactoring, clean code, and software testing with Emily Bache. Explore tutorials and full courses on refactoring legacy code, coding best practices, and software engineering training for develo...
courses.cd.training
October 1, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Some good news.

London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces.

The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.
September 30, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by David Heath
On Monday Oct 6:
Next in the #PapersInSystems Discussion Series:

Critically Engaging with Models, by @rebeccawb.bsky.social
and @mathiasverraes.bsky.social

When: October 6th, 2025, 1–2pm Eastern Time (US/Canada)

Paper: wirfs-brock.com/rebecca/blog...

More info/Sign-up: ti.to/bredemeyer/p...
Rebecca’s Web – Critically Engaging With Models
Rebecca Wirfs-Brock On the Web
wirfs-brock.com
September 29, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Reposted by David Heath
“[With WhatsApp] gold is in the ingredients, but Signal is the gold standard. Privacy is our sole focus. We do one thing and we do it very, very well, which is provide the world’s largest actually private communications platform”

Join Signal and persuade just one of your friends to do the same
Signal president Meredith Whittaker: ‘In technology, it’s way too easy for marketing to replace substance. That’s what’s happened with Telegram’
The app best known for respecting privacy looks to grow, despite anti-privacy efforts
english.elpais.com
September 26, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Reposted by David Heath
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again.

Ignore the haters, London is the 🐐
September 23, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by David Heath
Lots to love if this holds for CA crops:
-utility-scale solar that doesn't require wrecking desert habitat
-less water use, probably less dust
-more options for siting close to existing transmission
-on-site generation for switching diesel pumps to electric and cleaning up the air
Vertical rows are the agrivoltaic winner!

“The vertical panels produce slightly less electricity—but with higher value, as generation peaks coincide with morning and late afternoon demand…The crops don't seem to mind the presence of solar panels and they like the wind protection they provide.”
Double harvest: Vertical solar panels and crops thrive side by side
Imagine a field where solar panels and crops coexist—with no trade-off. It sounds like science fiction, but that's precisely what researchers from Aarhus University have now documented in a full-scale...
techxplore.com
September 23, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Names for the three-in-a-row game, around the world…

*Tic-tac-toe (US)
*Noughts and crosses (UK)
*Crosses and buns (Denmark)
*Butter, cheese and eggs (Netherlands)
*Sausages (Latvia)
*Cat (Mexico)
*Game of the old lady (Brazil)
*Tripp-trapp-tresko (Norway)
*Pubic louse (France)
*Hobo chess (Sweden)
September 22, 2025 at 3:16 PM
The Groyper Wars
September 13, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Delivering value incrementally— infrastructure edition
September 8, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Reposted by David Heath
Friday's premium newsletter: An 8k word analysis of how everybody is losing money on gen AI, with some startups spending 100%+ of their revenue on compute.

Even GPU providers are struggling.

Here's a 24 hour $10 discount off annual.
edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...
September 4, 2025 at 6:39 PM