Incidentally, I really dislike the personal poster on poster abuse. I welcome other female voices on here. But if some posters are not too taste it is easy enough to scroll past rather than have fights. Endless name-calling is very tedious.
I would also say that when I have had personal troubles some posters have been exceedingly helpful and kind. Plus the chat on here has helped in the last few years when socialising in person has been difficult. I suspect that this has helped a lot of us.
It'd be nice to recognise this rather than call people bitter or old or lonely. They may well be but why would we not want to be kind to them when it costs us so little other than tapping a few words out?
@Cyclefree has been banned for violating the "must be a snowflake rule"
You want me to be hysterical? Me? An Italian-Irish woman?!
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
He would plot his revenge as much as Trump is
You are crazy.
He will go back to writing for money and on the speech circuit loop and that would be that. If he gets "revenge" it will be like John Major making snide remarks about Boris as PM, not trying to get back into Downing Street himself.
I'm curious what you're going to write after your software update once the Tories have a new PM and you become an uberloyalist to them.
I am not so sure about this. Boris Johnson's whole career has been on an upwards trajectory to this World King role he always yearned for, meeting some deep unfulfilled need for power and dominance stemming from his unhappy and unsettling childhood. The idea that he just retires graciously into the twilight world of corporate speaking gigs and boring ghostwritten books is for the birds I think. The Tory party may be about to discover that the outside pissing in iteration of Johnson is no less damaging than the inside pissing himself version.
"Dear Prime Minister... complete lack of confidence I have in your continuing leadership... poor judgment you have shown... impossible for me to square continued service with my conscience... country deserves better... WITH VERY BEST REGARDS, John".
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
And I'm assuming the massive increase in speed is based around not using truly random starting pixel patterns, but having a library of 20-30,000 which score well on many common metrics.
That's one the advantage of starting with say 100 million pictures - another is that the system learns shortcuts so that it's no longer a set of monkeys that randomly strike a keyboard, you are using a set of monkeys that start with an English dictionary and insert one word after another...
You also have feedback loops on successful paths so overtime approaches that rarely work are completely ignored.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
The problem is that we don't really tax and spend. We tax and bribe - so for example we destroy SureStart which benefited families with young children and threw the money at pensioners instead.
That will always be the way in a competitive democratic society.
Much better to have government as small as possible.
@williamglenn mentioned this yesterday. Insane. Can anyone summarise?
The green agenda, adopted by every government in the West after Trump's defeat, is a recipe for instability. The reason is that right now this agenda cannot deliver prosperity and progress. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Biden, Johnson, Netherlands, France, Germany et al. All these governments are in turmoil and facing mounting upheaval and defeat.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He has lost the confidence of his own mps and is holed below the waterline
Any other PM would by now have done the decent thing and resigned
If the '22 tell BoZo they will change the rules he will call an election before he resigns
You can get odds of 1/7 on Johnson going this year, but 9/1 on a General Election this year, so fill your boots if you think that is realistic.
Spoiler: It isn't.
That is probably true, but I do wonder how long a post Johnson Tory government can limp on. Rationally they would hold out as long as possible in the hope that their fortunes improve, but it's not hard to imagine them entering a death spiral in which rational thought disappears. It already feels like they are circling the plug-hole, even if as seems likely Johnson is jettisoned soon.
I think this is a good point. It's hard to see the party uniting around any of the current potential replacement figures, and in any case they don't really have any good answers to the many problems besetting us. In particular, the original lie which propelled Boris into No 10 - that Brexit could be done without any inconvenience or economic fallout, and without damage to the Union - is one which is still central to the party's view of itself. That lie, which they remain so wedded to, will continue to block off the policy avenues which could help solve those problems, so they will continue to scratch around for magic solutions.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
And I'm assuming the massive increase in speed is based around not using truly random starting pixel patterns, but having a library of 20-30,000 which score well on many common metrics.
That's one the advantage of starting with say 100 million pictures - another is that the system learns shortcuts so that it's no longer a set of monkeys that randomly strike a keyboard, you are using a set of monkeys that start with an English dictionary and insert one word after another...
You also have feedback loops on successful paths so overtime approaches that rarely work are completely ignored.
It seems to me to be little different to how Google works with finding search results. The subject is different, but a lot of the principles are similar aren't they?
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The Russians have managed to knock out some of the M777 howitzers, so they might eventually spot a HIMARS with a UAV and be able to drop an artillery shell on it. However they seem to be quite mobile, so if Ukraine are cautious they can pull them out of range during the day and then drive them up to firing positions during the night.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
One thing is utterly clear from this war - the days of lining up your artillery in a neat row, setting up a tea tent etc are gone. Shoot and scoot from individual positions (with high level coordination) is the only credible way forward.
A question is whether armouring artillery systems is worth it vs mobility.
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He has lost the confidence of his own mps and is holed below the waterline
Any other PM would by now have done the decent thing and resigned
Most Tory MPs voted for him just a month ago, he won't go, if they want him out they will have to vote him out
I am sure I will get an apology for all the people that said I was wrong. If we'd taken their advice Moon would still be in trouble.
And if she replied to her email from Rob she would be back posting. Give it a rest.
Didn't know you'd joined the moderation team Tubbs
No more than you, and I have no desire to. You seem to fighting a battle for someone who wasn't even trying to engage with the moderating team. I think sometimes you just want a fight.
That's not what Moon said to me, you've only heard it from the moderation team's POV.
I stand up for what I think is right - and I have done that here.
I don't like fighting anyone and would never look for one. If that's how you feel then I will end our relationship here.
And yet so many times you post in an adversarial manner. You have great insight into Labour and clearly have a source close to the top. Its great to get those snippets, and I respect your opinions, without agreeing on a lot of them. Its just a shame that sometimes you go on a crusade, usually on someone elses behalf.
@williamglenn mentioned this yesterday. Insane. Can anyone summarise?
The green agenda, adopted by every government in the West after Trump's defeat, is a recipe for instability. The reason is that right now this agenda cannot deliver prosperity and progress. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Biden, Johnson, Netherlands, France, Germany et al. All these governments are in turmoil and facing mounting upheaval and defeat.
Interesting, ta. I need to read up on it
I note that one reason poor Sri Lanka is now deep in the shit is insane Greenery
“In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong”
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
Yep, the Ukranians’ ability to hit, with precision, the Russian ammo dumps and rail heads, is making their logistics operation longer and much more stretched. The Russians use men rather than cranes and forklifts, to load and unload trucks, trucks which themselves are getting old and unreliable except on Tarmac roads.
A small number of strategic missile hits, can make life a lot more difficult for the Russian logistics operation.
How do you mean? Clearly, Starmer only becomes NEXT PM if Johnson fights the next General Election. The chances of that happening are now very low indeed. I'm surprised he's as short as 14-1, to be honest.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
And I'm assuming the massive increase in speed is based around not using truly random starting pixel patterns, but having a library of 20-30,000 which score well on many common metrics.
That's one the advantage of starting with say 100 million pictures - another is that the system learns shortcuts so that it's no longer a set of monkeys that randomly strike a keyboard, you are using a set of monkeys that start with an English dictionary and insert one word after another...
You also have feedback loops on successful paths so overtime approaches that rarely work are completely ignored.
It seems to me to be little different to how Google works with finding search results. The subject is different, but a lot of the principles are similar aren't they?
I wondered about that, but I tried putting some of the DALLE2 prompts into Google Image Search and I didn't receive much in the way of responses that were useful. So there's a bit more to it than that.
And by early evening, Boris gets to see how massively he has lost the Party.
And?
Nobody tells the Big Dog what to do...
His MPs do. He could be out as PM by 8pm.
And there is nothing he could do about it.
We need to be very clear about of which we are predicting. I assume that you mean Boris Johnson being out as Tory leader by 8pm. He would remain Prime Minister. Or do you mean him resigning as Prime Minister? In which case Raaaab becomes PM.
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He has lost the confidence of his own mps and is holed below the waterline
Any other PM would by now have done the decent thing and resigned
Most Tory MPs voted for him just a month ago, he won't go, if they want him out they will have to vote him out
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
My fear is starmer leading on the burning issue of cycle lanes in Stoke-on-Trent
If FPN'd, it won't be Starmer but more immediately, if Boris is ousted, the next Prime Minister will be a Conservative. That's why all the Labour candidates are out a bit.
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He has lost the confidence of his own mps and is holed below the waterline
Any other PM would by now have done the decent thing and resigned
@hyufd is right (bonkers as that might seem) because of what you say in your last sentence. He should have gone ages ago, so why would he go now. I think @hyufd might be right and the Tory MPs will have to remove him if he is to go. Difficult to believe that might be true.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
My fear is starmer leading on the burning issue of cycle lanes in Stoke-on-Trent
Corbyn would have, but SKS isn't as incompetent as him.
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He should resign for the same reason the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) resigned when she won a confidence vote after a decade as Britain's best ever peacetime prime minister.
I predicted yesterday morning that Boris would survive the summer. I was wrong. Even more than last night, the range of Tory MPs from all aisles of that broadish church publicly asking for him to go this morning means he's toast, imminently.
And as for our Epping friend's contention that it's largely remainers - well, the (far) right Brexiteers are pretty well represented. Lord Frost and Lee Anderson, anyone?
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The Russians have managed to knock out some of the M777 howitzers, so they might eventually spot a HIMARS with a UAV and be able to drop an artillery shell on it. However they seem to be quite mobile, so if Ukraine are cautious they can pull them out of range during the day and then drive them up to firing positions during the night.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
One thing is utterly clear from this war - the days of lining up your artillery in a neat row, setting up a tea tent etc are gone. Shoot and scoot from individual positions (with high level coordination) is the only credible way forward.
A question is whether armouring artillery systems is worth it vs mobility.
There's another aspect to this that surprised me (it should not have): to accurately fire artillery, you need not only to know where the target is; you need to know where you are, and that means your position has to be surveyed. Hence all the piccies of squaddies looking through theodolites (I think - I doubt they are levels).
A lot of positions can be pre-surveyed and marked. Does military-grade GPS signals give enough accuracy for this purpose?
I daresay it's entirely typical of the HoC that the MPs* are hogging all the limelight. Even though it's as a direct result of their sins. I know the Prodigal Son got a lot more attention than his goody twoshoes brother. But at least he repented and saw the light.
Edit: And, to some extent, the HoL and Peers.
I hate to have to spell stuff like this out but did you not spot the implicit compliment in my "Poop poop" comment ?
I daresay it's entirely typical of the HoC that the MPs* are hogging all the limelight. Even though it's as a direct result of their sins. I know the Prodigal Son got a lot more attention than his goody twoshoes brother. But at least he repented and saw the light.
Edit: And, to some extent, the HoL and Peers.
I hate to have to spell stuff like this out but did you not spot the implicit compliment in my "Poop poop" comment ?
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
Such systems are very complicated (electrically, hydraulically, mechanically, etc.) and are only sustainable in the field by NATO forces because of a) years of experience and b) OEM/contractor support. So I think the new Ukrainian systems are more likely to be attrited by faults than Russian weapons.
I predicted yesterday morning that Boris would survive the summer. I was wrong. Even more than last night, the range of Tory MPs from all aisles of that broadish church publicly asking for him to go this morning means he's toast, imminently.
(Snip)
I predict Boris Johnson will be PM in September.
Given my track record in predictions, this means he'll be out before the day's over.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
My fear is starmer leading on the burning issue of cycle lanes in Stoke-on-Trent
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He should resign for the same reason the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) resigned when she won a confidence vote after a decade as Britain's best ever peacetime prime minister.
Remainers. Frost deliberately negotiated a wrecking Brexit deal to derail the one true no-deal Brexit. Proof he is a remainer.
And neither of them are true Tories. Or something.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
My fear is starmer leading on the burning issue of cycle lanes in Stoke-on-Trent
"I've received a letter from Pauline in Stoke..."
"I have received a letter, but not as many as Sir Graham Brady"
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
I think the point is that some people (mentioning no names) want to ascribe the same value to the new tech as to the works of Shakespeare (or Van Gogh; whatever). Which is totally wrong: it looks similar, but in fact it's just mindless mimicry. Technologically impressive, and the implications on society are potentially vast, but it's not "thinking" in any real sense, because it isn't qualitatively different to "dumb" tech that already exists; just more powerful.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He should resign for the same reason the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) resigned when she won a confidence vote after a decade as Britain's best ever peacetime prime minister.
Thatcher lost most of the Cabinet then and faced a second ballot v Heseltine. Johnson won his VONC outright, faced no second ballot and most of the Cabinet are still behind him. He won't go
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Why should he resign? The British people elected him for a 5 year term in 2019, most Tory MPs voted they had confidence in him just a month ago. Most of the Cabinet are still behind him.
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
He should resign for the same reason the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) resigned when she won a confidence vote after a decade as Britain's best ever peacetime prime minister.
Thatcher lost most of the Cabinet then and faced a second ballot v Heseltine. Johnson won his VONC outright, faced no second ballot and most of the Cabinet are still behind him. He won't go
Will nobody think of maintaining the structural integrity of my sides, and dryness of my trousers?
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The modern artillery systems Ukraine are getting comprehensively outrange the Russian artillery - the only thing they need to fear if used cautiously and correctly is air power.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m We’re obviously not there yet. But it’s not inconceivable we’ll soon be at the point where the number of no confidence letters themselves exceed the number of votes required to remove Boris.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
Such systems are very complicated (electrically, hydraulically, mechanically, etc.) and are only sustainable in the field by NATO forces because of a) years of experience and b) OEM/contractor support. So I think the new Ukrainian systems are more likely to be attrited by faults than Russian weapons.
That's a good point, except many of the ex-Soviet systems the Russians use are also complex. Don't underestimate the Ukrainian's capabilities in this. Access to spares'll be the bigger issue. Hopefully (ha!) the OEMs will have made field maintenance easy (yes, I know...)
With traditional artillery, gun tubes wear out (I don't know if that's the same for preloaded MLRS tubes). It'll be interesting to see if the Russians and Ukrainians have enough of these in storage, or can cannibalise enough of older systems.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
My fear is starmer leading on the burning issue of cycle lanes in Stoke-on-Trent
"I've received a letter from Pauline in Stoke..."
"I've received a letter from Mark in Devon. He, a normally loyal Tory, says your days are numbered, Prime Minister. What would you like to say to Mark in Devon"?
One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
It’s unfortunate for Jordan P that he has quite an unimpressive, squeaky voice
Nonetheless his influence is significant. My much younger ex was massively into his books and vids. No idea why
Dr Peterson is talking to groups of people that no-one else is talking to, helping people make the most of their lives, rather than writing them off or referring to them as ‘deplorables’. His influence among those groups is massive, and in a very positive way. Western society’s problems would be much worse without people like him.
For what it's worth, and I emphasise that, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian is suggesting that Johnson is proposing to gain control of the House of Lords by creating 50 new Tory peers.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
I think the point is that some people (mentioning no names) want to ascribe the same value to the new tech as to the works of Shakespeare (or Van Gogh; whatever). Which is totally wrong: it looks similar, but in fact it's just mindless mimicry. Technologically impressive, and the implications on society are potentially vast, but it's not "thinking" in any real sense, because it isn't qualitatively different to "dumb" tech that already exists; just more powerful.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
You’re missing the point, too, with all due respect
What if “sentience” is just…. mimicry. What if intelligence is just autocomplete (like GPT3)? In this light, we are machines reacting to stimuli, Free Will is an illusion, so we are much closer to these computers than we realise
Put it differently: we like to believe we are unique talented beings, with some divine spark of Whatever, therefore we are insulted when a “dumb” machine appears to do what we, and only we, can do. Create, imagine, paint, write, dream, sing, and make others laugh
And yet what if it turns out the algorithms for this are really quite simple? And you just need a massive data set? Bit of a bummer for human self regard, but there we go
Day 6 and still have a bright LFT/LFD line. Work are dropping me a laptop off so I can work the rest of my isolation period.
Seems to be random how long people are positive for with each person's immune system being different and different variants out there with longer viral shedding.
I feel better, but still can tell I feel 'off' so to speak.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The Russians have managed to knock out some of the M777 howitzers, so they might eventually spot a HIMARS with a UAV and be able to drop an artillery shell on it. However they seem to be quite mobile, so if Ukraine are cautious they can pull them out of range during the day and then drive them up to firing positions during the night.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
One thing is utterly clear from this war - the days of lining up your artillery in a neat row, setting up a tea tent etc are gone. Shoot and scoot from individual positions (with high level coordination) is the only credible way forward.
A question is whether armouring artillery systems is worth it vs mobility.
There's another aspect to this that surprised me (it should not have): to accurately fire artillery, you need not only to know where the target is; you need to know where you are, and that means your position has to be surveyed. Hence all the piccies of squaddies looking through theodolites (I think - I doubt they are levels).
A lot of positions can be pre-surveyed and marked. Does military-grade GPS signals give enough accuracy for this purpose?
The US has the ability to degrade the L1C (consumer) GPS signal while maintaining accuracy by using the high gain antennae on the GPS Block III satellites to provide localised high precision GNSS via M-Code. This is the so-called Blue on Blue Electronic Attack which has been the holy grail of GPS ever since Clinton removed the 'wobble' from the civvie signal.
However, I don't know if they are doing the L1C degradation over Ukraine and they certainly won't be sharing any M-Code compatible. hardware with them in case it falls into Russian hands.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
I think the point is that some people (mentioning no names) want to ascribe the same value to the new tech as to the works of Shakespeare (or Van Gogh; whatever). Which is totally wrong: it looks similar, but in fact it's just mindless mimicry. Technologically impressive, and the implications on society are potentially vast, but it's not "thinking" in any real sense, because it isn't qualitatively different to "dumb" tech that already exists; just more powerful.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
You’re missing the point, too, with all due respect
What if “sentience” is just…. mimicry. What if intelligence is just autocomplete (like GPT3)? In this light, we are machines reacting to stimuli, Free Will is an illusion, so we are much closer to these computers than we realise
Put it differently: we like to believe we are unique talented beings, with some divine spark of Whatever, therefore we are insulted when a “dumb” machine appears to do what we, and only we, can do. Create, imagine, paint, write, dream, sing, and make others laugh
And yet what if it turns out the algorithms for this are really quite simple? And you just need a massive data set? Bit of a bummer for human self regard, but there we go
May we have your definition of intelligence? What is intelligence?
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
I think the point is that some people (mentioning no names) want to ascribe the same value to the new tech as to the works of Shakespeare (or Van Gogh; whatever). Which is totally wrong: it looks similar, but in fact it's just mindless mimicry. Technologically impressive, and the implications on society are potentially vast, but it's not "thinking" in any real sense, because it isn't qualitatively different to "dumb" tech that already exists; just more powerful.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
Complete missing of the point. You guys think you know something about computers but it has obviously never occurred to you that the nature of human consciousness is quite a difficult issue. Humans are qualitatively different from what they evolved from are they? They might be but the case needs making.
Look at the computers which beat world champions at chess and go. They evolved from dumb tech. They don't look very dumb to me.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. At each stage of evolution some nerd could have said, in a nasal voice, “So what, it’s only got three cells”, or “so what, it’s just a fish”, or “so what, it still shits in the woods, lol” right up to “so what, anyone can write a play in blank verse”
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
I think the point is that some people (mentioning no names) want to ascribe the same value to the new tech as to the works of Shakespeare (or Van Gogh; whatever). Which is totally wrong: it looks similar, but in fact it's just mindless mimicry. Technologically impressive, and the implications on society are potentially vast, but it's not "thinking" in any real sense, because it isn't qualitatively different to "dumb" tech that already exists; just more powerful.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
You’re missing the point, too, with all due respect
What if “sentience” is just…. mimicry. What if intelligence is just autocomplete (like GPT3)? In this light, we are machines reacting to stimuli, Free Will is an illusion, so we are much closer to these computers than we realise
Put it differently: we like to believe we are unique talented beings, with some divine spark of Whatever, therefore we are insulted when a “dumb” machine appears to do what we, and only we, can do. Create, imagine, paint, write, dream, sing, and make others laugh
And yet what if it turns out the algorithms for this are really quite simple? And you just need a massive data set? Bit of a bummer for human self regard, but there we go
May we have your definition of intelligence? What is intelligence?
Except that Corbyn could always fall back on the support of the party membership. If a majority of Conservative MPs really have, at long last, tired of Johnson then he's done.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m We’re obviously not there yet. But it’s not inconceivable we’ll soon be at the point where the number of no confidence letters themselves exceed the number of votes required to remove Boris.
Be remiss of Brady not to share that with the PM.
Although Boris would no doubt go full-on Downfall mode "Ah, but those numbers include many letters from my loyalist MPs, to again thwart the forces ranged against me...."
Gotta admit I thought Boris would be fine... but this really does feel like the end. Another bad call from me. I will be seriously quids in though if somehow Aaron Bell becomes next Prime Minister.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m We’re obviously not there yet. But it’s not inconceivable we’ll soon be at the point where the number of no confidence letters themselves exceed the number of votes required to remove Boris.
Be remiss of Brady not to share that with the PM.
Although Boris would no doubt go full-on Downfall mode "Ah, but those numbers include many letters from my loyalist MPs, to again thwart the forces ranged against me...."
What is our Penny up to?
I’d be pissed at not being promoted to the cabinet.
Except that Corbyn could always fall back on the support of the party membership. If a majority of Conservative MPs really have, at long last, tired of Johnson then he's done.
A key point. Labour MPs were acting against their members' wishes, the Tory ones aren't
Well, I'm managing to get fuck all done today - and unlikely to get much done this afternoon either, what with PMQs and resignation statements and resignation watch.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The Russians have managed to knock out some of the M777 howitzers, so they might eventually spot a HIMARS with a UAV and be able to drop an artillery shell on it. However they seem to be quite mobile, so if Ukraine are cautious they can pull them out of range during the day and then drive them up to firing positions during the night.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
One thing is utterly clear from this war - the days of lining up your artillery in a neat row, setting up a tea tent etc are gone. Shoot and scoot from individual positions (with high level coordination) is the only credible way forward.
A question is whether armouring artillery systems is worth it vs mobility.
There's another aspect to this that surprised me (it should not have): to accurately fire artillery, you need not only to know where the target is; you need to know where you are, and that means your position has to be surveyed. Hence all the piccies of squaddies looking through theodolites (I think - I doubt they are levels).
A lot of positions can be pre-surveyed and marked. Does military-grade GPS signals give enough accuracy for this purpose?
There was some brilliant footage last week of the Ukranians using a drone as a ‘spotter’ for long-range artillery, which was brilliantly innovative.
The MLRS really need to use each firing location once, and then move on quickly, keeping them well hidden during the day. The Russians will quickly work backwards to get the firing locations.
Comments
Are you sure??
He won't resign. If Tory MPs want him out they will have to vote him out
The Tory party may be about to discover that the outside pissing in iteration of Johnson is no less damaging than the inside pissing himself version.
You also have feedback loops on successful paths so overtime approaches that rarely work are completely ignored.
Much better to have government as small as possible.
https://twitter.com/michaelsavage/status/1544625865752969216
The green agenda, adopted by every government in the West after Trump's defeat, is a recipe for instability. The reason is that right now this agenda cannot deliver prosperity and progress. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Biden, Johnson, Netherlands, France, Germany et al. All these governments are in turmoil and facing mounting upheaval and defeat.
Yet you’ve gone from yeast to William Shakespeare
Any other PM would by now have done the decent thing and resigned
And there is nothing he could do about it.
A question is whether armouring artillery systems is worth it vs mobility.
I note that one reason poor Sri Lanka is now deep in the shit is insane Greenery
“In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/
Apt.
A small number of strategic missile hits, can make life a lot more difficult for the Russian logistics operation.
Only might....
POBWAS
I assume that you mean Boris Johnson being out as Tory leader by 8pm. He would remain Prime Minister.
Or do you mean him resigning as Prime Minister? In which case Raaaab becomes PM.
Get your money on now.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
27m
Wrong. He will resign.
And as for our Epping friend's contention that it's largely remainers - well, the (far) right Brexiteers are pretty well represented. Lord Frost and Lee Anderson, anyone?
A lot of positions can be pre-surveyed and marked. Does military-grade GPS signals give enough accuracy for this purpose?
https://m.facebook.com/scottishwildlifetrust/videos/wind-in-the-willows-official-trailer/2113323465433342/
Given my track record in predictions, this means he'll be out before the day's over.
And neither of them are true Tories. Or something.
So, it doesn't mean we're on the verge of creating a race of sentient beings. Which I think is the undercurrent of the commentary from those who seek to overstate the achievement.
@DPJHodges
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5m
We’re obviously not there yet. But it’s not inconceivable we’ll soon be at the point where the number of no confidence letters themselves exceed the number of votes required to remove Boris.
With traditional artillery, gun tubes wear out (I don't know if that's the same for preloaded MLRS tubes). It'll be interesting to see if the Russians and Ukrainians have enough of these in storage, or can cannibalise enough of older systems.
https://order-order.com/2022/07/06/wednesday-live-blog/
What if “sentience” is just…. mimicry. What if intelligence is just autocomplete (like GPT3)? In this light, we are machines reacting to stimuli, Free Will is an illusion, so we are much closer to these computers than we realise
Put it differently: we like to believe we are unique talented beings, with some divine spark of Whatever, therefore we are insulted when a “dumb” machine appears to do what we, and only we, can do. Create, imagine, paint, write, dream, sing, and make others laugh
And yet what if it turns out the algorithms for this are really quite simple? And you just need a massive data set? Bit of a bummer for human self regard, but there we go
Seems to be random how long people are positive for with each person's immune system being different and different variants out there with longer viral shedding.
I feel better, but still can tell I feel 'off' so to speak.
However, I don't know if they are doing the L1C degradation over Ukraine and they certainly won't be sharing any M-Code compatible. hardware with them in case it falls into Russian hands.
Although granted the only way Bozo will leave is by the 1922 committee changing their rulebook.
Big fan of Conte.
Look at the computers which beat world champions at chess and go. They evolved from dumb tech. They don't look very dumb to me.
Although Boris would no doubt go full-on Downfall mode "Ah, but those numbers include many letters from my loyalist MPs, to again thwart the forces ranged against me...."
I will be seriously quids in though if somehow Aaron Bell becomes next Prime Minister.
I’d be pissed at not being promoted to the cabinet.
Bloody politics!
They are the Everton of North London.
But Conte is great.
Bye Penny
https://twitter.com/holyroodmandy/status/1544632163722723328
The MLRS really need to use each firing location once, and then move on quickly, keeping them well hidden during the day. The Russians will quickly work backwards to get the firing locations.