Duncan Brown
@duncanjbrown.com
đ€ 292
đ„ 391
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CTO for Digital Prevention Services, NHS England
https://mechanicalsurvival.com
âYou want your structural engineers to be drawing, not laying bricks, after all. I donât know if structural engineering works like this, but software engineering doesnât. In practice, architecture advice often has to be ignored by the people on the ground.â
www.seangoedecke.com/you-cant-des...
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You can't design software you don't work on
--
https://www.seangoedecke.com/you-cant-design-software-you-dont-work-on/
about 15 hours ago
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My 2025
#yearnote
asâsorry!âa listicle.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/2025/
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10 lessons from 2025
Technology & identity in GDS and the NHS
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/2025/
3 days ago
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I disagree with the conclusions of this excellent, reasonable article by
@zoescaman.bsky.social
zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-palant...
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The Palantir Model
Where Strategy Goes Next
https://zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-palantir-model
22 days ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Bozhidar Batsov (a.k.a. Bug)
about 1 month ago
One of the many joys of using AI for programming is the creation of huge PRs on complex topics that the authors barely understand, but still suggest "because they work". Here's a great example from
#OCaml
github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...
Kudos to OCaml's maintainers for handling this so gracefully.
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DWARF support for macOS and Linux by joelreymont · Pull Request #14369 · ocaml/ocaml
DWARF v5 Debugging Support for OCaml Native Compiler This PR adds DWARF v5 debug information to the OCaml native compiler, allowing proper source-level debugging in GDB and LLDB. What's Impleme...
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369
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This really resonates. Meetings are the synchronisation penalty public servants pay for an overwhelmingly synchronous, distributed system of management. The âmeeting cultureâ is not optionalâit expresses a cultural void where autonomy canât flourish.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Jeni Tennison
about 2 months ago
This fantastic paper "proposes a vision of AI that embraces local vernaculars, the multiplicity of objectives, the responsibilities that come with producing persons, and the potential of instigating rather than circumventing political contestation."
read.dukeupress.edu/public-cultu...
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From Thin to Thick | Public Culture | Duke University Press
https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/35/3%20(101)/417/383266/From-Thin-to-ThickToward-a-Politics-of-Human
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A few ideas on what "good software" (not "good code"!) is, touching ethics, interop, commercials and functionality đ§”
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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"[Open standards] can feel like a burden to the participants. They should! The alternative is each product imposes its incompatible opinions directly on the users rather than working through the trade-offs with competitors first." Yet as we outsource "the work" to suppliers, we outsource this too.
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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This morning's AWS outage prompted reflections in NHSE towers that "disaster recovery" and "inclusive services" directly overlap. For instance, the Record a vaccination service have designed a paper-only data capture process for when the internet is unavailable
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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ClichĂ©s take hold in political language, a vicious cycle that runs through campaign speeches, through citizensâ expectations, and down into the software we build or procure by clichĂ©, whose accordingly poor performance invites further calls for simplification.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/design-...
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Design by cliché
We reject cliché. We require true names
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/design-by-cliche/
2 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
olizilla
3 months ago
a wonderfully humane take on the real consequences of our choices around ai and teamwork and diversity and pretty sure i would have been ugly crying by the end.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Duncan Brown
Rob Bowley
3 months ago
Some reflections on
@duncanjbrown.com
's recent article "Team dynamics after AI", which is one of the best/most important pieces of writing I've read on AI in a long time
add a skeleton here at some point
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Why yes that IS a
@charity.wtf
sticker on my work notebook! đ
3 months ago
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Why I don't believe in "small giants":
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dy...
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Team dynamics after AI
Small giants and real giants
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dynamics-after-ai/
3 months ago
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If prompts are all we have left to record our intentions when we're programming, we should keep them. Automatically, if possible.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/prompts...
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Prompts are design documents
...and we should keep them
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/prompts-are-design-documents/
5 months ago
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In praise of AI applications that can finish.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/structu...
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Structuring unstructured data is a correct use of AI
Who wouldn't want to be desirable, verifiable and adoptable?
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/structuring-unstructured/
6 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Gavin Freeguard
10 months ago
A *massive* thank you to
@duncanjbrown.com
, Elliot from HFEA,
@ayymanduh.bsky.social
and
@mrdudders.bsky.social
for being brilliant at Data Bites last night - one of the best we've done Watch back as live:
app.sli.do/event/6buz4o...
#pddatabites
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
AndreasThinks
12 months ago
If you're interested in UK
#govtech
or
#opendata
, the Incubator for AI have just open-sourced this like of "Awesome UK Government Datasets" and are looking for contributors!
github.com/i-dot-ai/awe...
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GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets - GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
https://github.com/i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets
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đ§” Some standout quotes from this paper, which uses the Prison Service as an example of how centralised political control can impoverish us when it annihilates the autonomy of people directly responsible for delivering public services:
bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...
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https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/pp/aop/article-10.1332-03055736Y2024D000000053/article-10.1332-03055736Y2024D000000053.xml?tab_body=pdf
12 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Peter Thomas
12 months ago
Ministers and officials need to confront the two lies that dog spending reviews: effiencies are rarely that, instead they lead to blunt cuts with unconsidered consequences; the Treasury's self-identity as a strategic performance budgeter is shattered by their increased use of input controls
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It is time to confront the 2 great lies of UK spending reviews
As we head into an unusually significant âoutcome focusedâ spending review ministers and senior officials should reflect on two mistruths that have dogged public expenditure controls and the accompany...
https://www.civilservicereformuk.com/single-post/it-is-time-to-confront-the-2-great-lies-of-uk-spending-reviews
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This was an honour! â€ïž
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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Chris Cunningham eat your heart out
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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This is righteous. Imo gatekeeping is not only a plausible explanation, but *the best explanation* for all the gratuitous complexity in frontend development thatâs sprung up over the last decade.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Rachel Coldicutt
about 1 year ago
More detail in here. Test and learn sounds sensible but (a) we all know secondments will mean PwC, (b) planting people from small teams as heroes in big orgs is tough on everyone, (c) why not just give more money and power to people who know what they're doing?
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
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Government seeks Whitehall âstartupâ culture with tech worker secondments
Pat McFadden to urge departments to adopt âtest-and-learnâ approach as part of ÂŁ100m scheme for public sector reform
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/08/uk-government-whitehall-startup-tech-worker-secondments?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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At DfE âboardâ had got mixed up with âauthorityâ so people reached for the first when they wanted the second
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Vicki
about 1 year ago
Thinking about this post a lot this week
www.ftrain.com/wwic
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The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)
I look forward to your feedback.
https://www.ftrain.com/wwic
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New language today: the expression âcode pieceâ instead of âpiece of codeâ, for an LLM output. The speaker meant piece as in âartefactâ, not piece as in âfragmentâ, and the LLM had âbrokenâ the piece by making a bad edit.
about 1 year ago
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How do you refactor a country? Whilst top-down reform on a national scale is obviously the road to hell, I think we should take the
#Platformland
invitation to radicalism seriously.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/the-way...
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The way to Platformland
How do you refactor a country?
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/the-way-to-platformland/
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Terence Eden
about 1 year ago
My old team is recruiting. If you're interested in setting the UK Government right on AI, stop snarking online and put your career where your mouth is.
ai.gov.uk/join/
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