Tag Archives: News

Brexit

As the Downing Street clock reaches zero, as Whitehall is lit in red, white and blue, as the Union Jacks blanket Parliament Square, I wanted to commemorate Brexit actually happening.

In fact, I’ve wanted to say something about Brexit since before the referendum, but what is there to say that’s new? But original or not, I needed to write something.

Far from a celebration, 11pm on 31st January 2020 marks the culmination of years of misdirected anger and politicians harnessing that for their own personal gain.

The reasons for the anger are real. Inequality. Stagnating, if not declining, living standards. But the causes are austerity and neglect, not immigration.

That was merely misdirection. There were also the lies. You know it’s gone too far when Johnson, in a room full of journalists and cameras, says that there is no press there. And he still won the election.

And that’s what makes me angry. The lies. The demonisation of anyone trying to scrutinise the changes or hold the government to account. Even if you want Brexit, you should surely want it done right. It’s gutter politics; you should be able to win without smearing your opponents and outright lying1 And I’m angry that “the public” have let them get away with it2.

I’d like to think that Gina Miller, Lady Hale, John Bercow3 and backbench MPs like Dominic Greave will come out of this well when we look back in a few years. The current batch of MPs waving through the Withdrawal Agreement in three days, not so much. Did those MPs forget, or not care about, the predicted consequences of Brexit?

There’s a lot more that I could say, of course, but this whole charade has been well documented elsewhere.

What I would say is that I genuinely worry for the future of the country. When I first wrote that sentence I stopped and wondered if I was being overly dramatic. But I’m keeping it.

The government has a large majority, unconstrained by details like truth or an effective opposition party or a press willing to hold them to account. The issues that brought about Brexit — austerity, income inequality — are still present and will likely be exacerbated by our separation from Europe. Yet the same government has little interest in the kinds of people that will be most affected by their own policies.

The main positive is that Johnson owns Brexit now. It’s his signature on the bill, it’s his party in power, it’s his team negotiating. He can’t blame parliament. The consequences are his.

If that sounds like I want Johnson to fail, you’d be right. But not at the expense of the country as a whole. If we have to leave, I want Brexit to be a success. I just have a hard time seeing how that could happen.


  1. I’m not naive, I’m not saying that Westminster has always been filled with selfless, upstanding campaigners but the ratio of good-to-bad these days seems badly skewed. ↩︎
  2. Of course most of the public are not the Union Jack wearing, Nazi saluting caricatures we see on the news or Twitter. Still, enough people thought that lies were preferable to Corbyn’s ineffectual leadership. ↩︎
  3. While you can’t ignore the bullying accusations, I think it’s fair to say that he fought for the sovereignty of parliament. This is the right thing to do whether leaver or remainer. ↩︎

Factfulness

I didn’t mean to immediately buy Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness“. I saw it in a “recommended reads” list (both Bill Gates and Barak Obama suggested it, if I remember correctly), thought it sounded interesting and went to Amazon to add it to my wish list. Fat fingers meant that I tapped the “buy” button instead.

Anyway. As an antidote to all the bad news around at the moment, I decided to read it right away. The narrative that the world is getting worse by many measures, this book argues, is false. I want to believe that we’re progressing but the pictures on TV of Trump and Brexit, famine and war make it hard to accept.

It starts with a questionnaire and, without wishing to steal the book’s thunder, most people will do incredibly badly at it. Worse, in fact, than merely picking answers at random, or “the chimps” as the book calls it.

I’d like to think that I’m better informed than many, if not than the general public than some chimps, but I still did badly!

The book continues with a list of errors that we all make, examples of them and how to spot and avoid them in the future. It sounds dry but it isn’t. Hans Rosling is humble, keen to draw attention both to where he made mistakes and where he made a difference. If anything, his modesty often sounds misplaced. I think it’s fair to say that he had more achievements than failures.

“I don’t tell you not to worry. I tell you to worry about the right things.”

The curse of this book, if there is one, is that we all think we’re well informed and that we don’t need to read it. The numbers show that we’re wrong. I hope that doesn’t make it the least read, most important book I’ve picked this year!

iOS 12

As I’ve done for the past few years, here are a few thoughts on the new version of iOS that will be heading to your phone in a few days. Usual caveats: my usage patterns are probably different to yours, I have a 6s and iPad mini, not whatever weird and wonderful hardware you have. I’ve been using the beta on my iPad since early August and on my iPhone since late August.

The good

  • Stable. I’ve had a couple of minor glitches but, honestly, there have been worse release versions. (They have been fixing new APIs and suchlike so I’m not saying they should have released earlier. But I am saying that the GM version should be pretty solid.)
  • Performance. As advertised, it works well on my far-from-new devices, probably better than iOS 11. I didn’t buy into the whole battery-gate scandal but if this is the result I’m happy with it.
  • Siri suggestions. I’ve not seen the full benefits yet, since I’ve not finished writing my own and haven’t been running anyone else’s beta software. But even just with Apple’s suggestions it’s nice. I go to the gym and it suggests my “gym” notes document. I think this is going to be big when more apps support it.
  • Do not disturb. I already used it a lot and now it’s better. DND until the current meeting and DND until I leave the current location are both super useful.

The bad

  • Nothing. Really. Sure, there are things that I would change or do differently, but there’s nothing that I would really look at and say “That’s worse than iOS 11.” If you’re okay with iOS 11 there’s no good reason not to update.

The ugly

  • What’s with the time and battery indicator being jammed in the very top left and right of the iPad screen? What a waste of space.

Final words

You’ll note that “Screentime,” Apple’s answer to the accusations that people are spending too much time on their devices, is not on the list. I don’t have anything bad to say about it, but I didn’t find it very useful. I have my smartphone addiction under control. I could stop any time I want to…

Taking Stock

Share price movements are kind-of-sort-of-rational but not always intuitive. For example, when Apple has a big keynote and announces some significant product, everyone expresses surprise that the share price goes down straight afterwards. Even many smart people get this wrong (“It isn’t based on logic and reason” – The Talk Show episode 53). I hope to explain why the price dropping actually does make sense in this post.

In doing so I’ll likely make some errors. Some of those will be deliberate simplifications. In other cases I’ll probably just be wrong. But either way, I think the gist, if not the details, should give you a good idea of what’s going on.

I’m going to keep things simple by only talking about the share price. There are other factors (such as dividends) that might reasonably be considered but I think we can get a decent enough explanation without complicating things.

If we only worry about the share price, the obvious way that you make money is by selling the share at a higher price than you bought it for. So, even when you first buy a share you’re making a punt on the future of the company.

For a keynote, where no actual financial information is shared, it’s a pretty simple case of “buy on the rumour, sell on the fact.” Traders heard some of the same rumours about the shiny new iUnicorn that you did. They speculated that people would like and buy this new product and bought some shares. By the time the product is announced, the theory is that the share price already factors in all the up side (profit) of it, so they sell.

It doesn’t matter whether the product is good or bad, better or worse than was predicted, the share price will likely still go down. The next bit of good news that will likely pump up the stock will be an earnings announcement, good launch weekend sales figures, etc., but no more good can come out of this announcement. So sell.

The process for an earnings call are similar though possibly are a little more technical. In addition to any sales figures, traders are also looking at things like the “earnings per share” (EPS). However, in common with a product announcement, at the point of the call, traders would generally consider all the good news to already be factored into the price. Even if the company beats expectations, there’s no more good news to be had so they may as well sell.

For the sake of completeness, let’s also consider a couple of other circumstances that can trigger significant variation in the price. These are typically financial in nature and if they happen at the same time as an earnings call or keynote can exacerbate any already significance price changes.

The most common are options, a derivative financial product that gives the owner the option to purchase a share at a price set in advance, pushing the real share price towards the option price. (A large number of people are going to have to buy the same stock at a set price, so that becomes the price.)

Something else that happens fairly frequently is a share price dropping by a certain amount causing algo trading systems to kick in a sell too. Combine this with the sell off after an earnings call or product announcement and the effects can be way out of proportion with what was announced.

The last one I’m going to mention is when a company is added to a well traded index, such as the S&P 500. This happens because many investors looking for relatively low risk (such as pensions) buy index funds, so as soon as you’re added to the index your shares suddenly become a lot more popular. (Sadly I worked for a company and had shares in it when the opposite happened.)

The short story here is that, unless you’re a professional investor, you probably shouldn’t buy shares to make a quick buck. Buy Apple stock because you like the company and expect to hold onto it for at least a few months. Don’t let the day-to-day peaks and troughs worry you.

Year in review: 2011 Edition

I’ve not been quite so active blogging this year due to a number of factors. A case in point: it wasn’t until December that I wrote about my holiday in July and a friends wedding in August!

This meant that the most popular articles were actually written in previous years:

  1. Sophia Smith
  2. Eight Best Computer Books
  3. Installing Oracle 10g on CentOS4
  4. Minolta Dual Scan II
  5. iPhone Dev: Saving State

While I appreciate people visiting, I am continually surprised by the appeal of some of these. Oracle 10g and CentOS 4 are, in software terms, ancient! And the Dual Scan II is more than a decade old — I bought it with my iBook G3 in 2001!

The most read articles that were written this year were:

  1. iOS Developer Program: from individual to company
  2. Do Apple take 40% in the EU?
  3. Programming is Hard
  4. Why you need a crash reporter

Kind of surprising that they were all about iOS development.

And here are a few blogs that I liked writing but, it turns out, people didn’t enjoy reading…

My delicious.com bookmarks for December 16th through December 21st

  • On this day in 1996, Apple acquired NeXT – Fifteen years ago today Apple effectively started its upward trajectory.
  • Why big companies can’t change – "At the polar opposite position from big industrial companies sit startups, nearly every one of which begins with an effortless expression of why? Big companies ask What? then How? but almost never Why?"
  • Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 – "I’m not going to say R.I.P. I don’t think Christopher Hitchens is at rest. I don’t think there is anything left of him to rest. I think he is dead. But tonight, I’ll be raising a glass of Scotch in his honor. The world is a better place because he was in it, and it is a sadder, less interesting place now that he’s not."