• Mark has been fiddling around with Kit and automation for emails for our newsletter.
• Chris is says you can only last a week without a dishwasher
• Michael calls people Rain Man. Hasn't even seen it.

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Chris has a very unusual story of how he eventually landed into his senior role. Buckle in!

Quickfire Questions:

• What’s one thing that’s certain to distract you, when you’re working?
• When are you at your most focused?
• Do deadlines help or stress you out?
• What’s something neurotypical people often get wrong about neurodivergence?
• One app or tool you couldn’t live without?
• You meet someone new at work, and although they haven’t come out and said “I’m Neurodivergent”, you can just tell. What sort of things are you noticing?
• What does time management look like for neurodivergent people?

Breaking Prod

Chris is breaking records in style, with an email whoopsie to all customers

Big Topic: Neurodiveristy

• What sort of stigma comes with being neurodivergent?
• Have you tried during your career did you pretend you weren't neurodivergent, by “masking”?
• Did you ever tell yourself, or have other people tell you, “you need to try harder”, even though you felt you were already giving it your all?
• When’s the right time to tell your boss/employer?
• From the corporate side, what does good support look like from your employer?
• In some ways, your Neurodivergence makes things more difficult – are there any ways in which it’s your superpower?
• What's your take on medication?
• What should parents know about neurodivergence? How do you support your daughter?

• TikTok Misinformation Is Warping Young People's Understanding of ADHD (sciencealert.com)

  “of the top 100 most-viewed TikTok videos tagged for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) content, fewer than half matched the professional diagnostic criteria for the condition.”
  “using the top 100's five most accurate and five least accurate videos, as judged by clinical psychologists. These 10 clips were then shown to 843 undergraduates taking an introductory psychology course, who were asked to rate them based on their perceived educational value. While the best five videos scored an average of 3.6 from psychologists for accuracy, they only got a score of 2.8 from the students. The worst five videos for accuracy scored 1.1 from psychologists, but 2.3 from students.”

• Wes Streeting: there is overdiagnosis of mental health conditions. Health secretary says too many people are being ‘written off’ and that is driving ministers’ changes to welfare (The Guardian)

  From Wes Streeting: “Here’s the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it’s a spectrum and I think definitely there’s an overdiagnosis, but there’s too many people being written off and, to your point about treatment, too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need. So if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or get back to work.”

  • Neurodiverse staff well suited to a changing world (The Times, paywalled) > "People with conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and dyslexia bring unique skills to the workplace"

Neurodivergence

• NHS Website
• ADHD Love, YouTube Channel
• How to ADHD, by Jessica McCabe

TV

• LOL: Last One Laughing, reality comedy on Amazon Prime
• Gangs of London Action Drama from Sky

Music

• Why? - The Well I Fell Into :: Alternative :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• HHY & the Kampala Unit :: Electronic Jazz :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• Wilkinson :: Electronic, Drum 'n' Bass :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube

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Special Guest: Chris Knight.

• Michael's office refurb continues, as he trades signed music memorabilia for music speakers
• The great rebrand is in the works
• Lenny steals a lunch
• Nikki shows off her BAFTA

Quickfire Questions

1. Mac or PC?
2. Greatest gaming console ever?
3. Greatest game ever?
4. Most addictive game on your phone?
5. Yorkshire or East Anglia?
6. Morris Ring, Morris Foundation, or Open Morris?
7. Spend a day doing Freelance work, or a day doing your permanent job?
8. Do you version control your code?
9. Is big tech fundamentally evil?
10. Death of Flash – sad or not sad?

Breaking prod?

Well that won't earn you a BAFTA! Nikki does her homework.

Big Topic: Tech for good, making games for kids

• Tech for good – conscious choice or something you walked in to?
• Do you worry about screen time?
• Would you / have you ever taken a role you feel morally ambiguous about?
• How close do you get to the end user of your product?
• What’s a kid’s first interaction like with the games your company makes?
• Does it show demonstrable results in treatment?
• Do you make any games in your spare time?

Research from Dylan Yamada-Rice on Exploring Children's attitides towards notions fo the digital good through hybrid arts

News

1. Are noise cancelling headphones causing health problems?
2. Children’s views on AI will form the manifesto for world leaders
3. AI to help us understand animal’s emotions
4. Sri Lankan grid taken out by monkeys

Recommendations

Music

This is Classic Club playlist, dance anthems (apple music)
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on our Side album, Alternative (apple music)
Saafi Brothers - Mystic Cigarettes album, electronic (apple music)

Podcasts

Cloud Dialogues podcast from our guest on episode 7, Georgia Smith

Books

The Power of Bad and How to Overcome it

TV

Am I being unreasonable? (BBC iPlayer)

If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend us to someone else who would like it, leave us a rating/review, or give us some feedback.

Give us your feedback about the podcast

Special Guest: Nikki Stearman.

• Michael is on the super stouts
• Marie is doing dry "couple-of-days"
• What's a plosion? Michael has over-researched micophones
• Is Feng-Shui a load of nonsense? Or Real?
• Marie rubbishes Mark's new years resolution

Who is Marie Wigmore?

• Independent contractor for over 3 decades, currently engaged at BT
• Jira-avoidance wizard
• Graduate of the Youth Training Scheme, proud achiever of 5 O-Levels
• Driving Licence holder
• There will be a quiz at the end!

Quickfire questions

1. Inside or Outside IR35?
2. Microsoft Project Planner or Jira?
3. AI - scared or not scared?
4. If you were in charge, what's your RTO policy?
5. Do you prefer to consult for public sector, or consult for private sector?
6. Sports Car or SUV?
7. Most Expensive Dress you've ever worn?
8. One fashion tip for Mark?
9. Cat person or dog person?

Breaking Production Leaderboard

Clean Sheet, or Big Bang?
Marie has a podcast exclusive for us, on the post office scandal. Bloody toffee-crisp eaters!

Big Topics

Contracting

• How has it changed?
• Are the good times behind us?
• How have the big 4 influenced government policy?
• Have you ever had any contracts go bad, mid-way through?
• In the past, you’ve got a contract coming to an end, it’s not getting renewed, you’ve got bills to pay. What’s the game plan for landing you next gig?

Starting a consultancy

• What’s the gameplan for launching a new company?
• What are you gonna sell?
• How will you get clients?

News for the week

1. Experts urge caution over use of Chinese AI Deepseek (The Guardian)
2. James Howells suing Newport council again, after partner binned bitcoin wallet, and they won't let him dig up landfill (BBC)
3. Microsoft to acquire tiktok? (The Guardian)
4. Google maps renaming, after Trump renaming (The Register)
5. Amazon prime air to launch in Darlington (Tech Crunch)
6. AWS & Microsoft CMA investigation (Computer Weekly)

Old news, but relevant:

• Chinese major hardware hack uncovered (The Guardian)

Recommendations

Music

• Justice – Cross, electro/dance
• Underworld - Second toughest in the infants, electro
• Sonny Federa, DJ, House

TV

• Mr McMahon, wrestling documentary
• Traitors: Uncloaked finale, with Claudia Winkleman
• Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, documentary
• Girl You Know It's True, music movie about Milli Vanilli, who had one of the biggest scandals in music history
• The White Lotus, drama, comedy
• Gangs of London, Crime Drama

Books

• Feng Shui Modern, by Cliff Tan (Guardian Bookshop)

Podcasts

• Designated Driver, the podcast for fans of Adam Driver (Podbean)

Jokes

1. What do you call a Hippo on One Leg?
2. Change your nickname on iOS (YT video)

Next Time:

Chris Hunter joins us talking about coding bootcamps

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Leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/Spotify etc..
Find the trailers wherever you are:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• BlueSky
• Our Website, where you'll find our breaking prod leaederboard and nationalities of guests and more.

Special Guest: Marie Wigmore.

• Ian gives us his tooling preferences and why.
• Cynic to advocate for public cloud
• The phones are ringing off the hooks, thanks to Ian Reeves!
• What do we think of DHH?
• Should you run your own stuff, or pay for SaaS?
• Kim Jung Un's inner SuperHero

Big Topics

Data Center Repatriation.
Why DHH moved 37signals from public cloud to on-prem, here's his blogs on How it started vs. How it's going.
Is this reverting back to on-premise becoming commonplace?
Has the sales pitch for public cloud shifted?

In the news

1. Broadcom is making some major changes to stop VMware exodus
2. Indonesia squeezes apple even harder for $1Bn
3. New openAI model is pen tested for reasoning, and subversion. Can it act in its own interests to deceive the user? This is absolutely fascinating
4. Landlords Are Using AI to Raise Rents—and Cities Are Starting to Push Back
5. OpenAI releases Sora
6. Is AI hitting a wall?
7. Are AI Leaders overly optimistic?

Recommendations

Music

• Everyday is Christmas, Sia
• A keen follower told us that the Mark Lanegan tribute gig is on YouTube
• It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land, Soulsavers
• Try out Teddy Swims for some soul/pop
• Synthwave Goose's Blade Runner 2049 single and Hacker music album fit for Mr. Robot

Books

• Nuclear War, A Scenario by Annie Jacobson
• Bill Bryson's A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

TV

True Detective on Sky/NowTV

Special Guest: Ian Reeves.

• Mitan tells us about his career break.
• We chat about AI tools.
• Mark reviews the last recommendations, badly.
• Michael has put some effort into the news.
• Mitan was gonna write his recommendations down but his ADHD got the better of him this time.

Big topics

• The Career Break. Why? Why now? What are you doing?
• Journalling and AI tooling
• Bolt.new and Cursor.com

Have I got tech news for you?

1. O2 unveils Daisy, the AI granny wasting scammers’ time
2. Cheating the GitHub activity graph
3. Musk $1M giveaway wasn’t random
4. "We're basically building Webkinz + Sims + Tamagotchi."
5. Robotic dog runs marathon (faster than I ever have)
6. Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework
7. Russia be cutting undersea cables
8. Northern Ireland cancels IT contract with Fujitsu for Schools worth £485M
9. Microsoft PC that is just a wrapper for Windows 365
10. Github giving away $1.25m, $10k at a time for open source peeps to stay secure
11. Christmas Scams cost over £11m

Recommendations:

Tools

• Bolt.new
• Cursor.com
• Obsidian
• Notion

Music

• Michael:
  • Father John Misty's album Pure Comedy
  • Worriedaboutsatan, tasty electro working music
• Mark:
  • Girlie and Frankie by Alexandra Saviour
  • The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
  • Cinema 3000
• Mitan
  • The Low End Theory by a Tribe Called Quest

Podcasts

• Jim Browning hates scammers, who contributed to O2's Daisy AI, is a guest on Darknet Diaries, fasinating listen on a really good podcast
• Apple Music 100 Best Albums radio

TV

• Monk
• Brian Cox' Wonders of the Solar System

Books

• Cujo by Stephen King

Beer

• Hepcat IPA
• Tippy Yoghurt's Fruity Sour
• Jubel peach beer
• Roadie IPA

Special Guest: Mitan Patel.