Bruno Nicoletti

Unabashedly “woke” professional software guy, a Sydneysider exiled to London who used to write special effects software for a living. I teach and study historical martial arts for fun https://www.armizare.uk. I paraglide and kayak when I can. I’ve also started to publish translations of historical martial arts manuscripts, https://www.armizarepress.com #HEMA #paragliding #kayaking

My open source code is at https://codeberg.org/bruno_nicoletti

Avatar : me flying a paraglider

codeberg: https://codeberg.org/bruno_nicoletti

Public Key

npub1sr99n3wxvh4mcjf4nmdrax6h5uuamlgmjutnt68n0xm3jvdzgrlsh4j2a4

NIP-05 Address

bjn_at_mstdn.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgpjjechrxt6aufy6eak37ndt6wwwal5dew9e4arehndcexx3yplcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsmnp2c3

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1sr99n3wxvh4mcjf4nmdrax6h5uuamlgmjutnt68n0xm3jvdzgrlsh4j2a4

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Last Notes

2026-07-26 15:04:01 UTC

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My closed source stuff is on gitlab, but only out of laziness. I really should move it all.

2026-07-26 14:47:53 UTC

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CodeBerg?

2026-05-09 10:08:02 UTC

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Unfortunately first past the post voting in the UK makes that a much harder thing to do.

2026-05-02 17:53:18 UTC

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How much does it matter if it goes over 100%? What amount of debt is actually critical? The Reinhart-Rogoff paper that warmed the heart of fiscal conservatives everywhere was proven to be bollocks, but folks still cling to it and use it a justification for austerity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt

2026-04-25 14:05:24 UTC

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done

2026-04-12 13:47:14 UTC

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Gravity is a very weak force, so 1 tonne lifted by 1000m only stores 2.7kWh, which is not a lot. You aren’t getting many MWh of storage in mine shafts that way unless you can turn them into pumped storage somehow. It’s also relatively complex and fragile machinery that needs to do it all. Dams get away with it because water is cheap and we can store a lot of it.

2026-04-12 08:07:13 UTC

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Along with storage alongside generation so you can buffer excess power when the grid is saturated. That can be built much faster than interconnects.

2026-04-01 16:05:52 UTC

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Done

2026-04-01 10:00:36 UTC

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Ember believes that China cut its fossil fuel use by 2% in 2025, mainly due to their massive expansion of renewables. So renewables growth is out pacing demand growth. This is hopefully a turning point given that they haven’t slowed down the pace of their renewables roll outs.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transition-review-2025/

2026-03-31 16:40:39 UTC

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It's a work in progress, but many mines in Australia are currently transitioning to electrification using renewable generation to power it all. For example Fortescue is going all in on eliminating all fossil fuels from their operations, including electrifying giant earth moving equipment. They, and many other miners, are powering their remote sites with wind and solar to cut down on millions of dollars worth of diesel they otherwise have to burn.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-lays-out-plans-for-biggest-wind-farm-in-australia-to-help-eliminate-fossil-fuels-at-giant-mines/

2026-03-23 12:41:13 UTC

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I’ve been snowed on in Iceland in the middle of July!

2026-03-18 21:47:46 UTC

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The dude didn’t flare just before landing! Bad form.

2026-03-15 13:05:42 UTC

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So cheques became a new form of money in their own right.

2026-03-15 12:55:56 UTC

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In a real sense, money _is_ debt, just a very liquid form of it. The Irish bank strikes last century illustrated it. Cheques were written once cash ran out due to hoarding, these literally represented a debt that was owed. Rather than write new cheques for goods and services, people began exchanging cheques they were given before. Pubs became exchanges to swap cheques. "Bad money" risk was even factored in for know deadbeats.

2026-03-10 10:44:11 UTC

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I know there were two strikes, I'm asking if the second one was an autonomous Tomahawk using genAI to make the decision. When attacking military targets it's a common to hit twice. While the war is profoundly wrong ethically and simultaneously being strategically utterly stupid, this really looks like a targeting error than a deliberate choice to blow up children. Possibly the target was selected by GenAI. Regardless, the guilt lies with the people who started it.

2026-03-10 09:53:12 UTC

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Do you have a source for any of that?

2026-03-10 07:51:20 UTC

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There isn’t enough oil and gas left in the North Sea for us to stop importing the stuff, and even if there were we’d still be exposed to global prices and we’ve never had enough to influence that. So reducing the “windfall tax” is just special pleading to not pay the UK for extracting our natural resources, it would have zero effect on any price we pay. Sod ‘em. Take the proceeds of the throw it at building renewables, storage and interconnects.

2026-03-09 09:35:34 UTC

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Have they run a similar analysis on whatever Reform happen to be spouting at the moment?

2026-03-09 09:34:03 UTC

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On top of that, from my understanding he was much prouder of his often overlooked The Theory of Moral Sentiments than The Wealth of Nations.

2026-03-04 07:28:06 UTC

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But the Ellisons still get to control what is said.

2026-03-01 14:54:31 UTC

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It’s a replay of what they did with Royal Mail, which is slowly dying because of the cherry picking of services that other mail providers can do to undercut RM which has the universal service obligation. Same will happen with the NHS.

2026-03-01 14:40:17 UTC

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What’s wrong with “distorting” the labour market anyway? Lack of regulation tends to benefit one capital over labour. And what about the regulations limiting the scope of union behaviour? Does that not “distort” labour markets? If capital can organise (which is what a company is, along with trade associations) why not labour?

2026-02-26 10:37:01 UTC

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The fancy new technologies are being worked on and are starting to deliver. eg: Fervo Energy is drilling wells down to 5000m and 250C and has working power plants. Those depths open up huge areas for exploitation with minimal surface foot prints. You can even use such wells to store excess renewable energy by shutting off the generator but driving the return pumps to pressurise the wells.
https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-pushes-envelope/

2026-02-16 16:29:59 UTC

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It means idiots at Microsoft not knowing what they are doing. They are all possibly called Tim.

2026-02-16 07:42:51 UTC

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On letter delivery deregulation all the new entrants could charge whatever they wanted and choose where they deliver letters to. Royal Mail has the universal service obligation, it has to deliver letters to anyone anywhere in the UK at the same price. So cheaper deliveries in dense London subsidise expensive delivery to the Hebridies. The new entrants ignore the Hebridies and undercut RM in the easier markets. Slow destruction of RM is the inevitable outcome.

2026-02-11 10:56:24 UTC

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There is this weird idea that the UK doesn’t have an industrial policy, it does and has had one for decades. It’s “Do whatever finance wants and forget about the rest of the country.”

2026-01-31 10:06:56 UTC

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Why didn’t they hit the ground running with this 18 months ago?

2026-01-25 10:48:51 UTC

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The problem he discusses predates the adoption of LLMs in software development. The same pressures existed under the dead hand of practically all “agile” methodologies. Bogus metrics of velocity go up but software quality suffers massively as a result. Both in terms of design and implementation.

2026-01-25 10:32:07 UTC

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Trials involving sexual assault are taking too long and do traumatise victims, but this doesn’t seem to be the most considered way to address that problem. I’m not sure what is, but this feels like a case of “Something must be done! This is something! Let’s do it!” as opposed to a reasoned approach.
FWIW I’ve sat on 5 juries, including a one for domestic violence. I think the system has quite a few problems, but removing trial by jury would be a case of baby with the bathwater.

2026-01-24 22:45:24 UTC

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More money can be made from you if you have to rent and can never own. We’ve been increasingly skewing to rentier capitalism over the last few decades, which is one of the many reasons things are turning to crap.

2026-01-23 20:09:36 UTC

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I run PiHole at home to filter all DNS requests on my home network. It black lists a huge range of ad servers. Works a charm on a cheap raspberry pi sitting next to my router.
https://pi-hole.net

2026-01-19 14:05:43 UTC

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Done.

2025-12-27 13:20:04 UTC

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Abigail Thorn, from philosophy tube, has an excellent video on this. She was part of a group of researchers who spoke to a range of folks who chose to not to get vaccinated. They aren’t arseholes, just wrong for often dumb reasons. https://youtu.be/Va0RCgbywGc?si=Icj8ySuwukXqzbqo

2025-12-26 18:11:12 UTC

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My websearch turned up nothing. Is this price for end users or cost to operate? (Either way I have my doubts). If the first, prices are currently completely artificial. If the second, it means that AI models will be stupidly cheap to run and all the money being spent on huge data centres will be thrown at soon to be stranded assets.

2025-12-26 11:35:54 UTC

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It’s just social darwinism in a new coat.

2025-12-24 12:50:46 UTC

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I always thought the private ownership of the means of production was a central part. With the implementation lying somewhere between “high regulated” to “totally unfettered”.

2025-12-12 12:08:36 UTC

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The poles and wires need upgrading as the places that generate wind power are in the north of the UK and most of the places that use that power are in the south. The current lines don’t have enough capacity to move the electricity at times of high generation or demand. There are other ways around that which doesn’t involve new wires, eg: regional pricing, which would encourage building energy intensive industries next to generation.

2025-12-12 11:52:31 UTC

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For some reason we have far to many people sick and unable to work in the UK and the government wants to cut back on benefits paid to sick people. Completely unrelated, our medical system is overloaded and people can’t get prompt treatment and the government wants to slow that down even more. I wonder if there might be a link?

2025-12-05 16:25:44 UTC

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Sadly they keep omitting to mention the racist leader’s deputy being sent to prison for 10 years for taking Russian bribes.

2025-11-08 08:24:17 UTC

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Corners are being turned. In H1 2025, solar and wind produced more electricity globally than coal for the first time. Solar and wind also generated more electricity than the rise in global demand, meeting 109% of it. This led to a reduction in both coal (0.6%) and gas generation (0.2%) of electricity. It’s a small start, but a significant one.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-met-all-electricity-demand-growth-in-h1-2025/

2025-07-21 12:06:55 UTC

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No one has ever been able to build nuclear plants before n series and been able to reduce costs, even the French, when they were building plants at a high cadence managed to nearly triple costs by the end of the program. I don’t see why “next time for sure” should ever be given credence.

2025-07-20 14:20:15 UTC

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The Korean nuclear industry was rife with corruption and fraud, I wouldn’t use them as a shining example of how to build nuclear.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/

2025-07-06 19:56:55 UTC

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Done. Thanks for running the service. Very much appreciated.

2025-06-15 17:44:24 UTC

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Professional visual effects software (eg: Nuke, Maya, Houdini) runs fine on Linux, and Linux is generally the platform of choice for the people doing VFX work. While the state of photo editing and graphic design is pretty sucky. The last I looked GIMP still had a terrible UX.

2025-06-11 17:34:39 UTC

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Done

2025-05-29 23:24:44 UTC

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Great way to destabilise your economy when the rug eventually gets pulled.

2025-04-15 20:50:58 UTC

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Charlie Stross @npub1dnd…hzjs has a great speech on that topic where he calls corporations “slow AIs”. The structure of the organisation and its associated rules and working practices are the AIs, but the hardware running it is people.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-the-future.html

2025-03-08 13:35:32 UTC

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Done

2025-02-03 14:30:21 UTC

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done

2025-01-05 18:40:42 UTC

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Having a look

2024-12-09 19:12:01 UTC

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done

2024-11-23 15:45:24 UTC

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Thnaks for doing it, regardless.

2024-09-15 15:40:57 UTC

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Done.