Pete's Blog

Christian, husband, father, motion designer from South Wales, UK. Just thoughts, things I like, and other bits from my personal life. My intended audience is me; if he's happy then so am I.

[likepete]

Service station Taco Bell 🔔

There is something I find so cosy about travelling at night, music/podcast on, stopping somewhere late for dinner.

In 2022, I put my son to bed in London where he and my wife were staying, then drove home to South Wales. I got home at midnight.

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Record numbers of UK renters crowdfunding to cover bills

Rent donations on GoFundMe up 60% since 2022, with 100,000 donors helping people keep a roof over their heads

The UK housing market is our version of the US healthcare market.

High rents and house prices could be controlled in the short term with rent controls, and stopping people owning multiple properties.

But by far the biggest issue, which is uncomfortable to talk about, is supply and demand.

UK population per square mile is 749

France population per square mile is 330

Ireland population per square mile 203

In areas with low population density, UK houses are still affordable on a single income.

For example, houses in South Wales go for about £100k. Minimum wage is the same across the country. You'd need to earn something like £50/hour in London to have the house buying power of someone in South Wales on minimum wage.

We need to have a serious, non partisan, discussion about:

Regulation: Make it easier to build new houses and tilt the market in favour of owner-occupiers.

House building: Actually fund the damn things

Population density: Low net migration for key skills only (I get the NHS needs doctors. But in 2023 net migration was 700,000, there are only 125,000 vacancies in the NHS).

Ensuring everyone in the UK is better off: The easiest way to do this is to bring down the cost of the most expensive thing pay for - aka housing. (Forcing professionals who earn good money into pokey little flats that cost more than their parents house, is no one's definition of better off.)

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Ninja Warrior

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Vending machine in the backrooms

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How much early criticism of Tim Cook as CEO came from lack of Jobs' legendary product unveiling ability?

Compare the introduction of Apple Watch with the introduction of FaceTime:

A: "Were bringing video calling to the world," - Jobs B: It's like Skype, but on your iPhone (it only works on WiFi).

The narrative in the press converges around A.

A: "You can make calls on your watch," - Cook B: It's just a wrist-speaker that requires an iPhone.

The narrative in the press converges around B.

People would reminisce over Steve Jobs keynotes like the iPad 2 introduction, while criticising Tim Cook with comments like "thinner and faster is not innovation" and "a new colour is not a new feature".

It felt like Apple Watch lacked a "wow" factor in 2014.

At the time I naively hoped they would leapfrog competitors by launching a wrist-worn device which would be as fun as the iPod touch, ship loaded with health sensors and somehow get 5 days of battery life.

Is Apple missing substance, post-Jobs? Would Steve Jobs have demanded the Watch team make the product "more magical"? 

Or was the missing "wow" factor just the lack of a Steve Jobs keynote?

How much of Tim Cook's patience is a virtue, and how much is it a vice - such as the lack of urgency around fixing the problems with Vision Pro? (...or even Siri?)

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Saturday morning, outside the kitchen.

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Doing a run to the Chinese takeaway for my wife. (Pregnancy craving.)

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My dining room 21/03/26

The sunlight reminded me of how my childhood feels.

Reassuring to know that world still exists - it was right in front of me. It's only my perspective that has changed.

The photo doesn't do it justice.

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While out and about on Saturday

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Is Professor Matthew Goodwin correct that “middle-class leftists are so angry at Brexit because it is the first time they have lost a major thing and it infuriates them to see the working-classes get one over on them”?

Anecdotally, this is what I see from speaking to real people I know, not just parroting what others say online:

They seem so convinced that EU membership is a net positive that they assume anyone who doesn’t has extreme views - eg calling Brexit voters “fascist”. (Compared to a discussion about correct tax levels where friends might disagree slightly.)

To them, checks at the border are such a huge issue, gumming up the entire economy, that if you want to cause border checks to gain control of immigration, it’s likely you are a racist.

Regulatory independence to them means “lowering standards” and because no one wants to do that, they write it off.

All agree Canada should be independent from America and can find other countries in the world to trade with if America are being unfriendly. All agree that Greenland can be a safe NATO member without being part of America. But none see how these are relevant to Brexit. (I don’t know if it’s cognitive dissonance or simply a lack of understanding of how the EU works. I suspect the latter.)

Brexit is actually extremely popular, just don’t mention “Brexit”, “EU” or any right-of-centre politicians.

Angry that the working class has got one over on them? No, they view Brexit as a right-wing project.

Bewildered that Brexit voters haven’t “woken up to the truth” yet? Yes.

Angry that Farage et al convinced the working class to vote Brexit? Yes. “That’s like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

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Friday night coffee shop

[ashenmind]

“monsters in the backrooms” is still such a funny concept to me

“here’s a space that’s odd and makes you feel uniquely alone, like no one has ever been here before, but don’t worry, we put a critter in here because we thought that was boring”

[blizzic]

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with preferring the liminal horror interpretation of the backrooms, but like, the original backrooms post very heavily implies that there’s something in there with you. Which is why it confuses me when people act like creatures being in the backrooms is some kind of betrayal of the concept that people added in after the fact and not something that was there from the beginning

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I always assumed this photo was AI, but nope.

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Painfully Fixing Britain

I was looking into how asset prices continue to rise even though wages stalled, post 2008.

Great example was: £800 per month gave you a £130k house when interest rates were high, today it might give you a £280k house.

Everyone cites Liz Truss as being a "disaster" because interest rates went up.

But what if this was the first sign of things actually... correcting?

Like businesses moaning about lower migration post-Brexit, when it was actually a job surplus, and the ordinary worker getting some negotiating power back. (Wages for retail & hospitality rose post-Brexit, above inflation, even when inflation was circa 10%.)

I've thought for a while: the solution to fixing Britain must be with unpopular policies (at least unpopular in some circles) because the popular things have been tried:

Brexit is one - it hurt businesses in some sense.

Lower migration is another - it has exposed that GDP is barely growing at all.

Now future growth is good, honest, REAL growth. Is allowing interest rates to rise again, though it will hurt me/us actually what we need?

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Supermarket near home in Swansea.

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Fixing Apple

It's fun for any armchair fan / critic of Apple to weigh in and think about what we might do to change Apple for the better. Here's mine.

Firstly, I don't think Apple have too much wrong. I'm not about to suggest they do radical iPhone redesigns every year, like some critics. "If it aint broke, don't fix it."

01 Fix UI Design:

Ensure a focus at every level of the company for great UI design.

Go back to the drawing board on Liquid Glass if you have to.

UI design is more about how it works than what it looks like.

Redesign the icons, loosing the focus on minimalism at the expense of clarity and quality. (“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.")

02 Update App Store policies:

Reduce commission to 15% (5% for small businesses)

Remove anti-steering rules (let Spotify and Netflix guide people to the web for payments if they want to)

Re-design app review to be transparent with a focus on consistency (and, yep, that means banning X until they have removed all CSAM)

Remove copycat apps

03 Vision Pro:

I'll write another post on Vision Pro, there's too much to cover.

But it's worth rehashing some other questions:

Does Apple have a plan to release an "affordable" (eg. £1,300) Vision headset?

Is Apple able to make a significantly lighter Vision headset?

If Apple is able to release a Vision Pro-like experience in Meta Ray-Bans-like form factor, why did it ship Vision Pro?

Is Apple able to turn Vision into a hit product that "everyone" uses, like they have with Mac, iPhone, iPad and Watch?

Has Apple realised it is "in trouble" with Apple Vision Pro, akin to the trouble it found itself in with thermal constraints of the Mac Pro, issues with AirPower, or internal disfunction that lead to the long delayed AI-powered Siri?

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To "be like Norway", ChatGPT told me to vote for Reform UK

A family member who describes themselves as “very left wing” has repeatedly told me they are not in favour of lower taxes, and that the UK should be like Norway.

I looked up Norway’s immigration numbers, benefits rules, healthcare system and relationship with the EU. I opened ChatGPT, listed these as desirable policies, said I was from the UK, and asked who I should vote for.

It said there was no perfect match but the closest?

Reform UK.

The second closest was the Conservatives.

That’s how far off the mark the UK is on some issues: By European standards, our most right-wing party is actually moderate. On those issues, we don’t have a real right wing viewpoint. The government itself is so far off the left on those issues that they are bordering on anarchy.

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Evening foraging for biscuits