Craig J. Bass

a bald man is sitting in a chair with his finger in his mouth and the words `` one billion '' above him . ALT: a bald man is sitting in a chair with his finger in his mouth and the words `` one billion '' above him .

Getting these vibes, really

It is okay to fund and build a thing that is designed entirely for other software development teams to use/integrate with… so that the end user facing systems in the overall “whole system” context are simpler/easier to deliver faster/reliable/secure/etc.

BUT product management of these are tricky!

When government services turn users into enterprise service busses, ferrying data between disjointed steps on a complex journey… this is what drives administrative burden up.

I’d hypothesise that your population only has so much bandwidth to deal with admin burden, before impacting productivity

Factorio is really good at teaching theory of constraints

Factorio Space Age is really good at teaching you that you are smart enough to manage that much complexity at the same time on your own 😂

How did I miss WHSmiths changing its name to TG Jones. 🫨

I’m not endorsing or criticising the recent announcement by the government; but the announced approach is interesting:

- it is not mandatory, except to prove right to work
- it’s not physical, making it theoretically cheaper to administer
- it can be theoretically used online and in person

The Netherlands - mandatory to always carry identity documents from age 14

Estonia - mandatory electronic identity card from age 15

Germany - card or passport age 16

Spain - card from age 14

Belgium - card from age 12

Portugal - ID card from 20 days old

The UK has multiple methods that appear to solve “identity”;

- driving license
- passport
- national insurance number
- birth certificate
- government gateway
- GOV.UK OneLogin

None of them solve the whole problem. For various Reasons ™️.

We do need to tackle that.

What do other countries do?

“Vibe Coding Cleanup Specialist”… what an absolutely amazing opportunity for TDD loving, approval test wielding, extreme programmers everywhere.

At this point there is so many case studies that this is “normal”, that it is easy to justify the pain and the cost in an OBC. Why would the consultancies or vendors change anything when more effort = more billable hours??

What’s wild is that once you finish migrating to a new ERP you’re already starting your next. Endless cycle of pain.

Delegation is ideal because then if IP changes occur (common in cloud native solutions) we aren’t jumping on a CAB… and we can use DNS01 challenge for SSL certificate renewal automatically in the background.

I led the technical work to get the Made Tech SaaS products work on government subdomains. It wasn’t trivial, and actually the least brittle approach involves delegating the subdomain..this is often questioned by security teams. It creates quite a bit of additional overhead to manage without

There is a way to do both!

Supply chain attacks are a real threat

Cyber security investment is urgent

It isn’t more important than treating people with dignity and respect

Hmm..

pup-e.com/goodbye-ruby...

Can confirm that the fix my street issue was closed in less than 24 hours. Update was someone attended and observed a car with no license plates, it doesn’t meet the local policy definition of abandoned which is within their right to define — so basically in this LA nobody needs plates

With caveat

Please note if the first two conditions are not met, the vehicle will not be classed as abandoned and therefore, we will be unable to remove it.

And the definition of “abandoned” is really narrow:

- Stationary for a significant amount of time (at least two months)
- Significantly damaged, run down or unroadworthy
- Burned out
- Lacking one or more of its registration plates
- Build-up of dirt around vehicle

…

Turns out nobody wants to deal with this issue.

The service design around “abandoned vehicles” is really poor.

> car with no number plates is not considered abandoned
> DVLA are like its LA problem
> LA use fix my street which routes to highways team
> highways team are like “not my problem” it’s a parking enforcement issue (diff team)

YouTube video by Low Level sharepoint hacking situation is completely insane

This latest Sharepoint vulnerability shows how important multiple trust boundaries are necessary in system design.

Also why deserialisation of arbitrary data from any user is bad.

This video has the best description I’ve found for anyone looking to avoid the same mistakes! youtu.be/HL8YZwjZHFE

I wish that I could, in building digital services, just tell users to stop using the service so much.

Like water companies do.

This is surely predictable and could have been avoided with appropriate infrastructure investment.

UK government launches new wave of private financing for public services Ministers insist infrastructure projects will avoid pitfalls of earlier PFI deals

Private finance for public service is back. How do we learn the lessons of past issues here? We produced an @nao.org.uk report drawing together lessons from 140 NAO reports
on.ft.com/446gixl

Hmm, I found some articles about SWR apologising for delays in rolling out the Arterio stock, so maybe this is their way of demonstrating look here are the ARTERIO TRAINS

The platform side announcer this morning I noticed it didn’t say “the blah blah blah southwestern railway service to… etc”

It said “Arterio Service”

Arterio isn’t a company it’s the train stock. I wonder if it’s intentional or the result of a code change now these trains are under public control

This prediction (whatever you imagine it to be) should be factored into strategies now.

Just imagine about 5-10 years of enshittification. Unsure the long term benefits are going to remain the same

GenAI is still in its cheap massively capex funded phase. Couple dozen £ per month. ChatGPT wants to sell me a £200 per month subscription. So this is probably still at a loss for them but they think cheap….

I reckon the prices are going to be WILD in a few years. Properly wild.

Denmark, Ministry of Digital Affairs publishes it will ditch Microsoft for Linux and Libreoffice.