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Alan Buxton

@alanbuxton

Serial CTO etc in tech startups. Based in London. Also sometime classical guitar player. Working on an open(ish) data side project https://syracuse.1145.am

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Latest posts by Alan Buxton @alanbuxton

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What does “AI” even mean in 2026? Remember in the "BC" times (Before ChatGPT) when AI meant something different to what it does now? It's what we saw in science fiction films. It was something that either felt human-like or felt super-human. It was more likely to be logical than creative, but it could still be wise. It was very hard to define it precisely. My favourite definition was…

What does “AI” even mean in 2026?

Remember in the "BC" times (Before ChatGPT) when AI meant something different to what it does now? It's what we saw in science fiction films. It was something that either felt human-like or felt super-human. It was more likely to be logical than creative, but it…

27.02.2026 06:37 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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UK Govt Entrepreneurs Call For Evidence is missing a critical question. Good news: The UK govt is looking for input into its strategy for encouraging more entrepeneurship. Link here in case any of my network have not yet submitted their views: It ends on 28th Feb so please do go ahead if you haven't already. Bad news: The questions highlight a blind spot at the heart of the UK establishment's view of entrepeneurship…

UK Govt Entrepreneurs Call For Evidence is missing a critical question.

Good news: The UK govt is looking for input into its strategy for encouraging more entrepeneurship. Link here in case any of my network have not yet submitted their views: It ends on 28th Feb so please do go ahead if you…

25.02.2026 12:22 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

All this AI agent stuff going on and the real AI feature I would love is an AI that can tell me where my phone is.

21.02.2026 20:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Why the AI disruption feels different. Gen AI is changing everything. Gen AI is a bubble. Gen AI is coming for your job. The current AI disruption is getting more coverage than previous ones I've seen. It's because of the sorts of jobs that it is disrupting. It's affecting programmers. When social media started killing journalism there was a dark joke going round: "learn to code". Well, now the coders are among the ones being disrupted.

Why the AI disruption feels different.

Gen AI is changing everything. Gen AI is a bubble. Gen AI is coming for your job. The current AI disruption is getting more coverage than previous ones I've seen. It's because of the sorts of jobs that it is disrupting. It's affecting programmers. When social…

18.02.2026 13:31 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Looks like the lady in the middle is on her phone.

18.02.2026 00:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Claude Code "you've hit your limit" message

Claude Code "you've hit your limit" message

Aaargh the pain is real

#claudecode

15.02.2026 10:35 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Ok I give up. I'll read the New Yorker article about if Claude is conscious, given that you lot are all quoting it.

11.02.2026 18:11 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I loved Dungeon Crawler Carl and was v tempted by Alchemised, if only for the gorgeous cover art. Would love to hear how good it is

10.02.2026 23:42 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

After hours struggling with getting Microsoft Copilot to help convert some Loop pages to Loop components I gave up and asked ChatGPT. It helped me straight away.

Go figure.

TBH this isn't a "ChatGPT good, Copilot bad" post.

It's "if one AI tool isn't doing it for you, try another one" post.

09.02.2026 16:18 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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foreign [Music] Klangphonics recently turned up on my YouTube recommendations. Great musicianship, great sounds. Like the best bits of 1990's Trance. Love them. Here are some screenshots from one of their YouTube recordings with YouTube's auto-subtitles. At first, I found it entertaining how YouTube struggled to subtitle this music. After all, this sort of music isn't really about the lyrics. I've no idea why YouTube says "foreign".

foreign [Music]

Klangphonics recently turned up on my YouTube recommendations. Great musicianship, great sounds. Like the best bits of 1990's Trance. Love them. Here are some screenshots from one of their YouTube recordings with YouTube's auto-subtitles. At first, I found it entertaining how…

07.02.2026 18:59 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

Nice subtle touch on this week's Private Eye cover.

07.02.2026 11:19 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Wow! Syracuse beats Perplexity! My side project made almost a clean sweep of the AI analysis of the latest head-to-head between Syracuse, LinkUp and Perplexity. Grok, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all favoured Syracuse. CoPilot preferred LinkUp. Feeling quite proud because middle of last year there wasn't much difference between one of these tools and another. To be fair, it was a very specific use case.

Wow! Syracuse beats Perplexity!

My side project made almost a clean sweep of the AI analysis of the latest head-to-head between Syracuse, LinkUp and Perplexity. Grok, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all favoured Syracuse. CoPilot preferred LinkUp. Feeling quite proud because middle of last year there…

03.02.2026 20:36 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Watching my kids get obsessed by the likes of Timberborn or Alchemy Factory or those Roblox Tycoon games and wondering about the appeal.

Then I remember how much Civ and Civ II took over my life in the 90's.

Everything that happens has already happened and all that.

01.02.2026 11:38 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

nuclear take

a new quality of "good code" is

components are straightforward to modify or enhance without side effects via LLM

22.01.2026 19:37 👍 86 🔁 10 💬 8 📌 5
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The AIs love my side project Or are they just telling me what they think I want to hear? I compared my side project, with Perplexity and LinkUp. Results are in this repo: news-comparison. Since the previous test run I've made a few updates, notably: Implement Typesense for all search Re-created Industry Clusters now there is much more data in When looking for what happened in a particular region, only look for events in that region, not events that happened to companies with a presence in that region…

The AI's loved my side project.

But were they just telling me what I wanted to hear?

I asked someone else to do the same comparison. His AI's gave him some different results.

19.01.2026 08:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Small Large Language Models, Claude and Typesense Some notes from putting together this little demo around Typesense. Claude did most of the heavy lifting, I only had to fix the following: it used typesense 26, not 29 Claude used a GET which didn't allow for a long enough query so I had to change the endpoint to one that used POST It picked a basic "getting started" language model rather than a multilingual one.

Small Large Language Models, Claude and Typesense

Some notes from putting together this little demo around Typesense. Claude did most of the heavy lifting, I only had to fix the following: it used typesense 26, not 29 Claude used a GET which didn't allow for a long enough query so I had to change…

04.01.2026 12:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

About a million years ago I made 2 PR's to an open source library. One was to update an error in the docs. One was to fix a bug. Guess which one languished around forever and which one got dealt with?

Docs won't get updated unless the updates are happening in the flow.

03.01.2026 15:13 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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The Next Nik? Lot's of talk about Nik Storonsky of Revolut leaving the UK for tax-friendlier climes. But what about people like: Sophie Tharnton Priya Nakamura Gabriel Hortley Dmitri Castellanos What about them? What about the people in the UK working on something today that will turn into as much of a success as Revolut has done in 10 years time? We can choose a replay of what we saw with Nik prioritising his tax planning.

The Next Nik?

Lot's of talk about Nik Storonsky of Revolut leaving the UK for tax-friendlier climes. But what about people like: Sophie Tharnton Priya Nakamura Gabriel Hortley Dmitri Castellanos What about them? What about the people in the UK working on something today that will turn into as much…

01.01.2026 12:27 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is the definitive text on counting underground floors, when you go down the stairs from ground level you are on the 1st level (below ground).

By analogy, the 1st floor above ground level must be the first floor up the stairs.

I rest my case.

25.12.2025 02:05 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

thanks to claude code i might actually ship the thing i wanted to make back in 2021 but didn't have the patience for. incredible time for people with vision and skill but low execution velocity

22.12.2025 15:02 👍 218 🔁 9 💬 7 📌 2

the best productivity system ever:

1. open a blank note/page
2. list all tasks for today
3. mark 3-5 most important with a star
4. complete those tasks
5. repeat steps 3 and 4 until you're tired

stop wasting time overthinking your "perfect" system

19.12.2025 10:50 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

You read this stuff and wonder how people can be so dewy-eyed about "the good old days"

19.12.2025 08:09 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

"Real Brexit hasn't been tried yet"

19.12.2025 07:37 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Might not be consistent but it is sane.

14.12.2025 06:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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AI by the kilo One of my least favourite jobs is answering this RFP question: "How are you using AI in your product?" I understand the intent behind the question. As a buyer of software, you want some confidence that your vendor is up to speed on the latest technology. You want some confidence that what you buy now will improve with the times, or at least won't end up obsolete.

AI by the kilo

One of my least favourite jobs is answering this RFP question: "How are you using AI in your product?" I understand the intent behind the question. As a buyer of software, you want some confidence that your vendor is up to speed on the latest technology. You want some confidence…

12.12.2025 09:39 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I did jury service 3 times Lucky me. Jury service is high up the UK agenda thanks to I'm just a normal punter who has been on a jury three times, so I definitely don't have the big picture, but I have a view and this is my blog so I'm going to share it 😀 Things I thought were good: On each occasion there was one person on the jury who had some useful real-world experience to bring to the conversation and which affected the decision.

I did jury service 3 times

Lucky me. Jury service is high up the UK agenda thanks to I'm just a normal punter who has been on a jury three times, so I definitely don't have the big picture, but I have a view and this is my blog so I'm going to share it 😀 Things I thought were good: On each…

07.12.2025 14:09 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It is fair to say that everyone on the jury brings a different perspective.

One thing I don't understand is why there is such a veil of secrecy over what happens in the jury room. It would surely be helpful to be a bit more transparent about that.

25.11.2025 22:25 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

For what it's worth, I've done jury service 3 times and I think it's a lot of pot luck

25.11.2025 20:29 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Alas Smith & Jones - 1986 - Episode 4 - PART TWO
Alas Smith & Jones - 1986 - Episode 4 - PART TWO YouTube video by pikachuonetwo

Reminds me of the punchline to this old Alas Smith and Jones sketch: youtu.be/Xk-9oSAFyl8?...

25.11.2025 20:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What's frustrating about LLM text is it almost short circuits your brain. It's optimized to convince a tired rater and so it is maximally convincing when scanning

25.11.2025 05:12 👍 47 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0