A floppy bureaucracy
The right to death, open source forks, and the cost of bureaucracy
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Bureaucracy costs Germany up to 146 billion euros per year ifo ,says
As a foreigner living in Germany for ten years, it’s often all too easy to pick on. It’s overloaded, slow, and frustrating bureaucracy. In reality, it functions fairly well most of the time, especially when you start to understand how to manipulate it. I often wonder if it’s any better than many other European countries. But apparently, it really is that wasteful, and when the German economy is in dire need of a kickstart, perhaps now is the time for a change. Once you fax the right form for change to a non-existent number, of course.
Bluesky says 1 million people signed up for the platform in last 24 hours
Cate and I will explore the “new” wave of social networks in our next podcast episode, but yet again (and I wonder why 🤔), users are fleeing the once great Twitter/x/twix, and this time, Bluesky is benefiting.
Thousands of People Are Cloning Their Dead Pets. This Is the Woman They Call First.
In this same newsletter, I talk about the rights of humans to control life (and death), which is still a fraught and controversial conversation. Un yet, apparently, it’s OK to do what you like with pets, including cloning them. Right…
Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Set Off a Race to the Bottom
This builds upon something Cate and I discussed in our last podcast episode. While previously, a lot of mainstream tech companies tended to align with the left-leaning agenda, this election, many remained unaligned or leaned more towards the right. Was this just good business? Have the companies changed, or were they secretly always this way aligned?
TN:82 Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes
I love the Tape Notes podcast. Hosted by veteran music broadcaster John Kennedy, musicians and producers discuss how they made an album in each episode. They are all great, but this episode, with a favourite band of mine, was interesting as it demonstrated how different musicians in the same band think and treat their craft differently.
We’re forking Flutter. This is why.
I am never sure if a fork of a major open-source project is a good idea or if it reflects bigger issues within a community. The justification for the Flutter fork seems reasonable, given that the core Flutter team at Google doesn’t have enough resources to match the community’s priorities. But will forking solve this issue? The new project notes that they tried contributing to the project in the past, but it was a slow and frustrating process. Perhaps in the long run, this new fork, called “Flock”, will become the dominant version.
Blur drummer says UK law on assisted dying is psychopathic
I am a supporter and believer in people choosing when they want to end their own life. And while some countries are making great strides to change the laws and processes around assisted dying, in my opinion, they are still too hard and restrictive. I’ll admit that as a Blur fan, I had no idea that Dave Rowntree had to face this in his life, and if I recall, he was involved in politics for a little while. The conversation around the subject grows, and I, for one, am glad.
Check Writing Tools using AIR
Howard Oakly is back with yet another in-depth look at new Apple technology. This time, digging deep into what happens when you use Apple Intelligence. tldr; is that it’s fairly easy to see what’s happening behind the scenes, which I guess is good.
San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks
One of two items in this issue about an ageing and creaking bureaucracy, and this one is in the (at least, previously) beating heart of tech. Perhaps it’s more of a damning indication of how underfunded public transport in America is. Let’s just hope it’s not reliant on the cloud eh 😁.