FT comments never miss. I don’t think I’ve read such a rational analysis of the situation we’re in for a long time.

🚨 NEWS: The British Government is urging every household to prepare for at least three days of disruption amid growing concerns over cyberattacks, hostile states, extreme weather and potential shortages of essential supplies. Under a new three-year national campaign called 'Be Ready', households are being advised to stockpile bottled water, tinned food, cash, essential medication, batteries and emergency equipment. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that cyberattacks could disrupt banking, electricity and other critical services. Government research found that just 13% of people in Britain feel prepared for an emergency that could cut them off from essential services. The guidance is intended to help households remain self-sufficient for 72 hours during a major incident.

Incorporate your company directly in your AI agent or terminal. Atlas is now available in Stripe’s MCP and CLI.

I think many of us working in tech tend to forget that the reason software engineering vs other engineering fields pays (a lot!) more, is a lot more flexible (WFH/remote), and has better perks: Because this field changes much faster than other engineering fields. The premium is because fewer people are able/willing to pick up new technologies, methodologies so quickly. But the field had ~10-20 years of stability, and so lots of folks forgot this is why a premium exists. And that AI is just another tech wave: software engineers who pick it up and master it will generally fare better; those not will struggle a lot more.

A friend of mine had to do a 15 minute interview about his job, income, previous rental history, etc, in order to *view* a flat. Luckily for him, he has a well-paid job, has lived in England all his life, and an impeccable rental history. I feel bad for people who don't.

Somewhere, a CTO just found out their servers still run PHP 5.6 💀

🇮🇪 The Irish state has published an advert discouraging grandparents from hugging their grandchildren, as part of a campaign designed to promote "consent".

this California wealth tax thing is just incredible. so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time). polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it). there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate. supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right? well as it turns out, they did. a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative. proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave. just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues. but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion. so when you add it all up you get: + $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated) - $69b in present value of lost future income taxes = - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time. and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes. [1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…

The PHP project has released fixes for 2 critical vulnerabilities affecting servers that host PHP applications. Site owners and technical teams should confirm their hosting provider’s update plan and update PHP immediately. Versions before PHP 8.2 no longer receive security updates. These issues are not specific to WordPress, and no WordPress update is required. wp.me/pZhYe-5Gb

My gym in London refused to cancel my subscription so I cancelled the direct debit and now three months later I get an email saying they sold my £65 debt to a credit recovery agency

🚨 BREAKING: The Government has officially approved the Jackdaw gas field for North Sea drilling It's the UK’s largest known untapped gas reserve and will start to supply gas to British homes and businesses from the end of this month

🇫🇷 Chers visiteurs, en raison d’un mouvement social étudiant, le musée est fermé pour le moment. Nous vous prions de nous excuser de la gêne occasionnée. 🌍Dear visitors, due to student strikes the museum is currently closed. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Mindestens 550.​000 Demonstranten, 1200 Festnahmen, 150 verletzte Polizisten: Die Proteste in Frankreich sind eskaliert. Laut dem Premierminister wurden in Paris gezielt die Machtzentren ins Visier genommen. Auch in anderen Städten herrscht Chaos. Link in X-Bio.

🇫🇷 URGENT - IMAGES SPECTACULAIRES ! LE CLOCHER DE LA MAIRIE DE LIMOGES S’EST EFFONDRÉ. (témoins) xitter.cf/Xirthe_v1/status/21115…

If you see a flying car and your first thought isn't "we could have solved homelessness" with the money it took to make this. You are an evil person.

to be fair if my father owned an emerald mine I could do this too

Real life, baby