Alan Buxton

42.69 story point basket goals for that one.

#SoftwareEngineering #Developers #Memes

When two similar Neo4j queries work very differently I've got a neo4j database which was loaded with data via NeoSemantics. It's got about 15 million nodes and 170 million relationships in - so I'm having to get to grips with how these queries perform at scale. Here's one head-scratching story. First some background. NeoSemantics is a way of loading RDF data into Neo4j. Each node is created with a…

When two similar Neo4j queries work very differently

I've got a neo4j database which was loaded with data via NeoSemantics. It's got about 15 million nodes and 170 million relationships in - so I'm having to get to grips with how these queries perform at scale. Here's one head-scratching story.…

It's one data point so I'm not going to read too much into it. Maybe it's just a one-off thing. But I will be interested to see how data sovereignty concerns evolve.

Wasn't JD Vance also the one who wanted Zelensky to express gratitude?

In the past I have had some customers want their data to be stored in their country.

Last week was my first experience of someone saying we could store it anywhere *except* USA.

Prompt voodoo

People who coax chatbots into sensible answers are basically opening and closing the fridge until it contains something you wanna eat, yes, eventually you get hungrier & eat the stuff in there. But what changed was your cognition. The fridge stayed the same. You changed your mind about the contents.

A very useful auto-generated alt text :D

So I spent a couple of hours trying to fix a bug that wasn't a bug. I was just looking in the wrong place. Ooph.

Fun with R&D tax credits One of my least favourite tech startup jobs is R&D tax credits. I've been doing them for 20-odd years now. From a business perspective it's a chance of free money so it's a no-brainer to try and see what you can get. But as a taxpayer I am horrified at how badly the system works. The taxpayer value for money from this scheme today must be dire.

Fun with R&D tax credits

One of my least favourite tech startup jobs is R&D tax credits. I've been doing them for 20-odd years now. From a business perspective it's a chance of free money so it's a no-brainer to try and see what you can get. But as a taxpayer I am horrified at how badly the system…

I mis-read the recent US news and thought that President Trump had sent troops to Poland, presumably to counter some Russian threat.

Not Portland.

To be fair, this *could* be an improvement on Grok's previous attempts :P

There's a shift in talk about AI. It used to be about super-intelligent machines taking over. Now it's more about an 80% tool

Like having an army of super-eager interns.
Or having someone to talk to about personal things.
Something, ultimately, fallible.

Something more "human", and less "sci-fi"

Sometimes I miss Haskell’s immutability part 3 So I recently had another "interesting" bug in some python code that was down to initializing an empty list in a method signature. It's essentially the same problem I wrote about last time. Here is simplified code for shits and giggles: import random class Foo: def bar(self, arr=[]): for x in range(5): arr.append(random.randrange(1,100)) print(arr) v1 = Foo().bar() # New instance of Foo v2 = Foo().bar() # Another new instance of Foo v3 = Foo().bar([]) # This time explicitly passing in empty array v4 = Foo().bar([101,102]) # This time passing in a new array v5 = Foo().bar() # Basic instance of Foo again…

Sometimes I miss Haskell’s immutability part 3

So I recently had another "interesting" bug in some python code that was down to initializing an empty list in a method signature. It's essentially the same problem I wrote about last time. Here is simplified code for shits and giggles: import random…

This was a very funny read.

I felt a bit sad that the author felt the need to explain it was in jest at the end.

In the pursuit of more, and higher quality, startups in the UK This is an update to an earlier post on levelling the playing field between investors and startup builders. It assumes a good understanding of current tax policy as it applies to startups. My starting point is that both startup builders and startup investors are important if we want to maximise the UK's chances of building more of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In the pursuit of more, and higher quality, startups in the UK

This is an update to an earlier post on levelling the playing field between investors and startup builders. It assumes a good understanding of current tax policy as it applies to startups. My starting point is that both startup…

It never ceases to amaze me how well consumer hardware works these days.

A disk-intensive task that takes 30-40 secs on my Macbook Pro takes 3+ minutes on my cloud server.

Can't wait for them to catch up to c2018 blockchain fever.

I'll never forget the first time I heard someone say "going forward" with a straight face. I was in my mid 20s. And now it feels like second nature for me to say it.

What happened to just using normal words to mean normal things?

We should touch base to align on utilization of simpler terminology going forwards.

Convincing neo4j to use an index As part of my syracuse.1145.am side project, today I learnt that I can put a pointless “where” clause in to convince neo4j to use an index. Compare these two cypher queries: profile MAT…

TIL that you can convince @neo4j.com to use an index by putting in a pointless where clause. I wanted to order by `internalDocId` which has an index. If I included `where internalDocId > 0` (which it always is) it worked much faster than without this clause.
alanbuxton.wordpress.com/2025/09/14/c...

Great to see n10s now available for @neo4j.com 5.26. I was just about to write a question about if there was going to be a version newer than 5.20

I'm using it here github.com/alanbuxton/s...

I outsourced my thinking to an LLM And ended up wasting a lot of time. I wanted to learn about MCP by setting up an MCP server for The end result is at “Auto” because all it needs is an OpenAPI spec and it generates the …

I outsourced my thinking to an LLM and wasted a lot of time:

- I hit a brick wall when you try something non-standard
- Vibing is not an excuse not to know what the code is doing
- Sometimes it's easier to write the code yourself

alanbuxton.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/i...

LLMs are not People and they do not think Here is an interesting study from Benjamin Paaßen doing the rounds on LinkedIn after Gary Marcus reposted it: Large Language models (LLMs) do not simulate human psychology.  My first reaction was "well, obviously". So it was fascinating/scary to see that some people think that LLMs can simulate human psychology, to the point that someone else had to investigate whether it's true or not.

LLMs are not People and they do not think

Here is an interesting study from Benjamin Paaßen doing the rounds on LinkedIn after Gary Marcus reposted it: Large Language models (LLMs) do not simulate human psychology.  My first reaction was "well, obviously". So it was fascinating/scary to see that…

Does feel a bit strange that you need to ask ChatGPT to use code interpreter to make sure the code it suggests works.

Age checks were meant to protect children – but they’ve s... Most Britons support the policy, even if it appears to be ineffective

10 years ago or colleagues in China all knew what a VPN was (used for "climbing the great firewall"). Equivalent demographic in UK or USA? No idea.

Since the UK age verification rules came in, that's changed. Now in the UK everyone knows what a VPN is. observer.co.uk/news/the-sen...

Nigel Farage 'to lead 100,000 people' to march to the Supreme Court for the Brexit hearing Organisers claim protest will make point that 'Brexit means Brexit'

Hasn't Farage been pushing for civil unrest for years now? He was predicting what seemed pretty violent stuff almost a decade ago in the Brexit days. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Wasp stopped off on my hand while it battles with its dinner.

The 80-90 Model for implementing AI In early 2024, Chamath Palihapitiya announced his 8090 incubator: using AI (and offshoring) to deliver 80% of the functionality of enterprise software at 90% less cost1. It's a disruptive approach that works well with the sorts of LLM-based AI that we are most familiar with today. Today's AI can get to a demo situation really easily. It can get to an 80% solution without too much prodding.

The 80-90 Model for implementing AI

In early 2024, Chamath Palihapitiya announced his 8090 incubator: using AI (and offshoring) to deliver 80% of the functionality of enterprise software at 90% less cost1. It's a disruptive approach that works well with the sorts of LLM-based AI that we are most…

Whatsapp notification saying that AI chats are not available on this platform

For some reason I'm enjoying whatsapp on my laptop more than on my phone. Makes me happy whenever I see this message.