This won’t be the last. The below is only the beginning.

HE words we heard are turning out to be true.

IBM is basically collapsing. Some broadcasters learn early about the impending mass layoffs.

welve years ago we travelled around the same time SCOTUS delivered Alice and with 35 U.S.C. § 101 it became easier to squash software patents in the US. Now in Europe we see the opposite trend. This means I’d need to get back to writing a lot more about patents.

Facing Old Trafford (MUFC)

he other day we visited MediaCityUK, where some building projects appear to be a failure (probably not enough apartment units sold).

It was a bright, sunny day and we stayed there to feed birds, eat snacks, and soak in some sunlight. Not much has changed in the place since 10 years ago.

Sometimes I still get spammed by estate companies trying to sell “properties” in MediaCityUK. The place has not developed much (further) in recent years and the Therme Manchester water resort is built near the Trafford Centre, not Old Trafford. Many shops in the Lowry are ‘boarded up’ and shut. It looks like a failed mall.

12 years ago we looked around at homes (advertised around MediaCityUK). We’re glad we chose not to go ahead with that.

Some place in Manchester develop and thrive, whereas others lose momentum.

ne week ago I wrote about Evri going really rogue, run by bots, and getting very basic things very wrong.

I tried hard to find contact details, I then opened a ticket about it, confirmed to be opened (by receipt).

Now, after a week, not a single person has acted on it.

They have just sent another automated nag to my wife on her birthday.

Yes, their bots bother her on her birthday and nobody there even deals with the ticket!

This is an insensitive and dysfunctional company with no person to speak to.

Avoid.

T seems like Apple is the latest in GAFAM to openly admit a round of mass layoffs. It went too far, lost billion on a misguided project, and now people will have to go.

“Bring back the corporate death penalty”, an article published 3 days ago by Salon.com, said: “I’m a huge fan of the corporate death penalty, a legal process in which a corporation is forced to dissolve or stop existing…”

If you want to do good, then start a trophy hunt for corruption-filled corporations. Expose their bad deeds, receive recognition for it.

Companies are not people. Killing them is not murder. If those companies kill people, then killing those companies will save people.

If you think Apple is an innocent company, start looking into its sweatshops and the conditions there. Apple pays about 1% of the revenue of an iPhone to the people who actually make the darn thing.

have just caught a new article from Daniel Pocock, following that up with two of my own:

• 2026-08-05 ^14:04 The Establishment, Cambridge, Steve McIntyre & Debian suicide cluster
• 2026-08-05 ^14:27 Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Starts Spending Big Money in an Effort to Resist Lawsuit From Daniel Pocock
• 2026-08-05 ^14:45 How to Dehumanise a Triple National

Maybe one day we’ll know who’s spending like a million pounds on lawfare against my wife and I.

N 2022 I quit my job for ethical reasons, as explained at the time. This plan was foretold earlier in this blog (about half a year earlier). I was planning to leave as some of our clients were distasteful, notably one company that was selling payday loans to people. Keeping their systems running felt like an affront and offence against society.

“I think I might have found an offer,” someone told me today about job-seeking. “But it involves pitching credit cards to people.”

It is a “common dilemma,” I told him. Sometimes people do evil things and then pretend to themselves they are detached from the evil because they’re desperate to make an income. More principled people will quit, irrespective of the financial fallout.