I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Apart from waggling a specially made oil-pipeline bomb in front of the camera while singing "This is how we'll do it" to the tune of "I'm the king of the castle" I'm not sure how she could be more explicit
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
The predictable result is that a GPT journalist will be caught faking a clickbait news article based on tweets that hadn't been written until it predicted that they would be written, and then wrote them to speed the process up so it could publish its article.
And someone will defend the algorithm by saying that at least it wasn't as bad as the fakery performed by Johann Hari.
The Times's rather out of the blue switch to a real name only commenting rule last week was possibly about this. If chatbots are that good, only way of knowing if you are talking to one or not.
ETA and thinking about it, Elon's blue ticks. People will be pleading with him to take their money for a gold standard NotGPT badge by next summer.
What recourse do you have if a chatbot has stolen your identity to post comments to the Times?
Come on. Own up. Who believed that Putin blew up his own pipeline?
What was the argument for Russia having done it? I didn't follow the story closely, but I thought the discussion was over whether or not it was sabotage or something else.
There was no argument. It was just ‘Putin is mad and this is a mad thing so mad dog Putin did this mad thing even tho it hurts him’ - ignoring the obvious candidates with means, money and motivation, who actually told us they were going to do it a year before
The Americans didn't say a year before that they were going to do it. You are so full of shit.
lol
Biden in early 2022, talking of ending Nordstream
"There will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it. We will be able to do that"
I mean, I know you're not the brightest pfennig in the kartoffelsalat, but he ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYS IT
"We will bring an end to Nordstream 2"
No surprise that you are so brain damaged that you don't even have a clue how long a year is.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
Wait, why would the US announce they're going to do something, do it, then deny it?
Previously I didn't care about this, at all, but now you've convinced me it was a false flag operation that could've been performed by anyone except the US.
The US didn't actually deny it. Biden said "it was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies".
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Indeed, ChatGPT is a great search index with natural language processing and output. It's not going to solve any coding problems for you that a human hasn't already fixed, not yet anyway.
Its also damaging to open source principles. Why should any coder allow their work to be scraped and derivatised by big corporates. Using Github is now folly. And IMO any programmer producing original stuff should avoid VS code too.
I think we will start to see programmers silo themselves from the data hoarders.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
Spot on: effectively because it will start use its own results in the training set, you have a reinforcement loop which makes it ever harder for it to change its mind/output.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
The predictable result is that a GPT journalist will be caught faking a clickbait news article based on tweets that hadn't been written until it predicted that they would be written, and then wrote them to speed the process up so it could publish its article.
And someone will defend the algorithm by saying that at least it wasn't as bad as the fakery performed by Johann Hari.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
Spot on: effectively because it will start use its own results in the training set, you have a reinforcement loop which makes it ever harder for it to change its mind/output.
It also requires a human mind to stop it from learning politically incorrect opinions.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
The last sentence says it all, Starmer's lead is not much different to Cameron's in 2008 but Brown got a hung parliament in 2010 still
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
Come on. Own up. Who believed that Putin blew up his own pipeline?
What was the argument for Russia having done it? I didn't follow the story closely, but I thought the discussion was over whether or not it was sabotage or something else.
There was no argument. It was just ‘Putin is mad and this is a mad thing so mad dog Putin did this mad thing even tho it hurts him’ - ignoring the obvious candidates with means, money and motivation, who actually told us they were going to do it a year before
The Americans didn't say a year before that they were going to do it. You are so full of shit.
lol
Biden in early 2022, talking of ending Nordstream
"There will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it. We will be able to do that"
I mean, I know you're not the brightest pfennig in the kartoffelsalat, but he ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYS IT
"We will bring an end to Nordstream 2"
No surprise that you are so brain damaged that you don't even have a clue how long a year is.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
Wait, why would the US announce they're going to do something, do it, then deny it?
Previously I didn't care about this, at all, but now you've convinced me it was a false flag operation that could've been performed by anyone except the US.
The US didn't actually deny it. Biden said "it was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies".
Not just disinformation and lies. They also continued to pump gas through the pipelines for 3 days after the leak had been confirmed.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
Spot on: effectively because it will start use its own results in the training set, you have a reinforcement loop which makes it ever harder for it to change its mind/output.
It also requires a human mind to stop it from learning politically incorrect opinions.
My point is a general one about the use of auto-complete systems for learning.
Come on. Own up. Who believed that Putin blew up his own pipeline?
What was the argument for Russia having done it? I didn't follow the story closely, but I thought the discussion was over whether or not it was sabotage or something else.
There was no argument. It was just ‘Putin is mad and this is a mad thing so mad dog Putin did this mad thing even tho it hurts him’ - ignoring the obvious candidates with means, money and motivation, who actually told us they were going to do it a year before
The Americans didn't say a year before that they were going to do it. You are so full of shit.
lol
Biden in early 2022, talking of ending Nordstream
"There will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it. We will be able to do that"
I mean, I know you're not the brightest pfennig in the kartoffelsalat, but he ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYS IT
"We will bring an end to Nordstream 2"
No surprise that you are so brain damaged that you don't even have a clue how long a year is.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
Wait, why would the US announce they're going to do something, do it, then deny it?
Previously I didn't care about this, at all, but now you've convinced me it was a false flag operation that could've been performed by anyone except the US.
The US didn't actually deny it. Biden said "it was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies".
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
The predictable result is that a GPT journalist will be caught faking a clickbait news article based on tweets that hadn't been written until it predicted that they would be written, and then wrote them to speed the process up so it could publish its article.
And someone will defend the algorithm by saying that at least it wasn't as bad as the fakery performed by Johann Hari.
The Times's rather out of the blue switch to a real name only commenting rule last week was possibly about this. If chatbots are that good, only way of knowing if you are talking to one or not.
ETA and thinking about it, Elon's blue ticks. People will be pleading with him to take their money for a gold standard NotGPT badge by next summer.
What recourse do you have if a chatbot has stolen your identity to post comments to the Times?
We have missed the obvious of course. Leon IS ChatGPT. Indeed he has been ChatGPT in all his various personas in the past. The real author who shall remain nameless was quietly bumped off 18 months ago and ever since we have been part of a most audacious ChatGPT experiment
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
I was changing an html template from one templating framework & css library to another a few weeks ago. Spent may 30 minutes digging around the docs to find a bit of syntax I needed, another maybe 10 minutes to dig into the new css library.
In vscode with copilot enabled, I pressed return under the old template, started typing out the first line of the new version and pressed return. Copilot then filled in the whole rest of the template - perfectly converted.
Then I thought to ask chatgpt 'could you convert this template from framework-x and css-y to framework-z and css-w?' and ... done.
Nothing 'difficult' as such, but being able to do that across 100s, 1000s of boring, grunt-work tasks is really quite something. (I was actually a little irritated as it had been going to be my 'winding down for xmas' mindless task).
The bit that vaguely niggles at me is what is the value-prop of hiring a 'junior' when you have chatgpt on hand? Pay some young person £30k a year for a while, they take up time from who-ever is getting them up to speed and mentoring them, then they leave for another job anyway. Or pay £3k a year for access to chatgpt that would have done all the tasks the junior would probably have shoved on them.
Short term win, long term doom. But that's never stopped us before.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
The last sentence says it all, Starmer's lead is not much different to Cameron's in 2008 but Brown got a hung parliament in 2010 still
When, in general, do we agree that we've moved beyond "mid term" and a recovery should start to appear if i's going to happen? If we assume Oct 2024 is the most likely last date, we're about 21 months away, out of 56. Once we're into the last third (March 2023) I'd think the clock is ticking.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
The last sentence says it all, Starmer's lead is not much different to Cameron's in 2008 but Brown got a hung parliament in 2010 still
True but Cameron still ended up as PM. In this instance I can see Starmer being quite content with being PM in a coalition just as Cameron was.
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
Same as Leon's view that we all dismiss the lab leak. We don't. He might be able to write, but he certainly lacks comprehension.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
Spot on: effectively because it will start use its own results in the training set, you have a reinforcement loop which makes it ever harder for it to change its mind/output.
Which PB poster are you thinking of in particular?
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
The last sentence says it all, Starmer's lead is not much different to Cameron's in 2008 but Brown got a hung parliament in 2010 still
When, in general, do we agree that we've moved beyond "mid term" and a recovery should start to appear if i's going to happen? If we assume Oct 2024 is the most likely last date, we're about 21 months away, out of 56. Once we're into the last third (March 2023) I'd think the clock is ticking.
The historical polling seems to suggest the drift back from mid term starts about 18 months before the next election but only really gets going in the final 6 months.
But this is an unusual parliament. 3 PMs in 3 years, indeed 3 in one year. So I don’t think we’d be likely to see a drift back from mid term blues until the end of next year earliest.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
I am prepared to pay for ChatGPT if they take the guard rails off.
But if they take the guard rails off it becomes quite dangerous, surely even more so with GPT4.
I’m not sure what the solution is here.
The solution I've seen on a lot of IT chatrooms is 'Quick - burn this thing before we're all out of jobs!'
It's not ever going to be perfect so there will always be a need for people to debug it when it goes wrong, as well as to understand what it needs to be asked to do. But those gaps will shrink over time.
Bearing in mind that I've come across a lot of people working in IT who can't use Google to find the solution to their problem on stackoverflow and I think I can outrun some of the other coders being chased by the lion of GPT for a while yet.
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
Same as Leon's view that we all dismiss the lab leak. We don't. He might be able to write, but he certainly lacks comprehension.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
But I am often right, and sometimes on big things, and against the consensus. I can remember when I was literally the only person on this site saying "wait, it might have come from the lab, whatever they say". Every other PB-er had dismissed that idea (despite the huge circumstantial evidence otherwise) and bought the crap sold by the science establishment, which so desperately WANTED it to be the market, not the lab
We were actually forbidden from talking about lab leak, on Facebook and Twitter, for a year!
I distinctly remember the moment when the tide turned, because it happened on here (in my mind). One smarter-than-average pb-er, @Gardenwalker, said You know, you might be right about the lab (in late 2020/early 21)
And now, years later, lab leak is entirely plausible, certainly the public consensus, and some would say close to proven
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Indeed, ChatGPT is a great search index with natural language processing and output. It's not going to solve any coding problems for you that a human hasn't already fixed, not yet anyway.
Its also damaging to open source principles. Why should any coder allow their work to be scraped and derivatised by big corporates. Using Github is now folly. And IMO any programmer producing original stuff should avoid VS code too.
I think we will start to see programmers silo themselves from the data hoarders.
I think if they do that - unless they have some very USP's - they'll be out of a job.
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
You might think that, but I know a good few people for whom this will cement the idea of Scotland being a progressive bastion shackled to a reactionary England. The sort of people who would normally abhor nationalism as being a right-wing affliction, and who don't like borders.
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
Same as Leon's view that we all dismiss the lab leak. We don't. He might be able to write, but he certainly lacks comprehension.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
But I am often right, and sometimes on big things, and against the consensus. I can remember when I was literally the only person on this site saying "wait, it might have come from the lab, whatever they say". Every other PB-er had dismissed that idea (despite the huge circumstantial evidence otherwise) and bought the crap sold by the science establishment, which so desperately WANTED it to be the market, not the lab
We were actually forbidden from talking about lab leak, on Facebook and Twitter, for a year!
I distinctly remember the moment when the tide turned, because it happened on here (in my mind). One smarter-than-average pb-er, @Gardenwalker, said You know, you might be right about the lab (in late 2020/early 21)
And now, years later, lab leak is entirely plausible, certainly the public consensus, and some would say close to proven
Merry Christmas to you and yours
Rewriting history yet again Leon. There were plenty of PBers who were willing to accommodate the idea it was a lab leak. All they said was that they would like to see more evidence before making a decision one way or another. You were the only person who decided to jump in with both feet and say it was 100% certain it was a lab leak. Just like you do on everything - and 99% of the time you are wrong. (Please see announcements of proof of aliens, imminent nuclear war and hiding in Welsh cottages to avoid certain death from the covid plague as previous examples).
To be honest I am amazed you have time for any of this stuff given how often you must have to wash your soiled underpants.
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
It could of course been rogue Russian pro-war zealots acting outside Putin’s command - if they blow the pipeline then there is no longer that reason for Putin to “back down” in order to protect the economy via gas sales to Europe.
It also removes wavering by Germany as if there is no pipeline then they have one major less item to try and get everyone to the table over.
If you are an ultra nationalist who completely believes the Ukraine must be defeated militarily then you need to remove as many other options as possible so that when the only remaining option for Putin is to win the war you get what you want, regardless of the cost, and as we know from postings on here there are plenty of major nationalist nutcases in Russia who glory in war.
I am prepared to pay for ChatGPT if they take the guard rails off.
But if they take the guard rails off it becomes quite dangerous, surely even more so with GPT4.
I’m not sure what the solution is here.
The solution I've seen on a lot of IT chatrooms is 'Quick - burn this thing before we're all out of jobs!'
It's not ever going to be perfect so there will always be a need for people to debug it when it goes wrong, as well as to understand what it needs to be asked to do. But those gaps will shrink over time.
Bearing in mind that I've come across a lot of people working in IT who can't use Google to find the solution to their problem on stackoverflow and I think I can outrun some of the other coders being chased by the lion of GPT for a while yet.
Oh - indeed. I certainly would expect to be able to ask it something 'novel' yet. And certainly wouldn't trust it with something like 'Could you write some microcontroller code for this new heart monitor?'.
But already it's snapping at the heels of the 1000s and 1000s of people who do a bit of custom Wordpress and 'we need to add stripe as well as paypal to our cart'. Even things like 'could you modify this Flask API to return this slightly different JSON structure under a v2/ prefixed route?' - it can manage perfectly well. It'll even write unit tests for it if you ask it nicely...
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
You might think that, but I know a good few people for whom this will cement the idea of Scotland being a progressive bastion shackled to a reactionary England. The sort of people who would normally abhor nationalism as being a right-wing affliction, and who don't like borders.
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
37% of Scots say the SNP's Gender Recognition legislation makes them less likely to vote SNP, just 18% more likely
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
You might think that, but I know a good few people for whom this will cement the idea of Scotland being a progressive bastion shackled to a reactionary England. The sort of people who would normally abhor nationalism as being a right-wing affliction, and who don't like borders.
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
Even in politics, every action has an unequal and opposite reaction. For all those undecided who consider this a reason to support Independence I am sure there will be plenty more undecided who see it as a warning against such a move.
I say that as someone who strongly supports Scottish Independence. I really don't think this is the plus you seem to think it is.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
The predictable result is that a GPT journalist will be caught faking a clickbait news article based on tweets that hadn't been written until it predicted that they would be written, and then wrote them to speed the process up so it could publish its article.
And someone will defend the algorithm by saying that at least it wasn't as bad as the fakery performed by Johann Hari.
The Times's rather out of the blue switch to a real name only commenting rule last week was possibly about this. If chatbots are that good, only way of knowing if you are talking to one or not.
ETA and thinking about it, Elon's blue ticks. People will be pleading with him to take their money for a gold standard NotGPT badge by next summer.
What recourse do you have if a chatbot has stolen your identity to post comments to the Times?
We have missed the obvious of course. Leon IS ChatGPT. Indeed he has been ChatGPT in all his various personas in the past. The real author who shall remain nameless was quietly bumped off 18 months ago and ever since we have been part of a most audacious ChatGPT experiment
Dunno. From what I've heard, I thought ChatGPT was a bit more sophisticated
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
Same as Leon's view that we all dismiss the lab leak. We don't. He might be able to write, but he certainly lacks comprehension.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
But I am often right, and sometimes on big things, and against the consensus. I can remember when I was literally the only person on this site saying "wait, it might have come from the lab, whatever they say". Every other PB-er had dismissed that idea (despite the huge circumstantial evidence otherwise) and bought the crap sold by the science establishment, which so desperately WANTED it to be the market, not the lab
We were actually forbidden from talking about lab leak, on Facebook and Twitter, for a year!
I distinctly remember the moment when the tide turned, because it happened on here (in my mind). One smarter-than-average pb-er, @Gardenwalker, said You know, you might be right about the lab (in late 2020/early 21)
And now, years later, lab leak is entirely plausible, certainly the public consensus, and some would say close to proven
Merry Christmas to you and yours
Rewriting history yet again Leon. There were plenty of PBers who were willing to accommodate the idea it was a lab leak. All they said was that they would like to see more evidence before making a decision one way or another. You were the only person who decided to jump in with both feet and say it was 100% certain it was a lab leak. Just like you do on everything - and 99% of the time you are wrong. (Please see announcements of proof of aliens, imminent nuclear war and hiding in Welsh cottages to avoid certain death from the covid plague as previous examples).
To be honest I am amazed you have time for any of this stuff given how often you must have to wash your soiled underpants.
I've never discounted the lab leak origin either. It's plausible based on a lot of circumstantial factors. But so is zoonotic, and so is the seafood market. I don't *want* it to be any of them; the idea that I have a stake in any origin is a bit odd. It's happened, wherever it came from, and all three of those potential origins (along with others) are potential sources of future epidemics and pandemics too.
I must admit, it seemed an odd thing for Putin to do, to destroy the infrastructure responsible for delivering, I think, Russia's second greatest source of foreign income. The most persuasive logic seemed to be "this is a bad thing and a nefarious act" "Russia does bad things and acts nefariously" "therefore this was Russia".
My argument in favour of suspecting Russia is not about the pipeline itself, but about the message it sends about other pipelines, telecommunication cables, electricity interconnectors.
If it was Russia then it sends the message that they have the capability to destroy subsea infrastructure, that they are willing to use that capability, and consequently if you push us too far we can hit back at you in deniable ways.
The Americans have said today that they aren't yet willing to send tanks and jets to Ukraine because they want to preserve the unity of the Western Alliance. It doesn't make much sense to me that they would put the unity of the Western Alliance at risk by destroying infrastructure that's hitherto been critical for the German economy.
This is the issue: - Russia: Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines). Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure - US: Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished) - Ukraine: Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
Just because you're embarrassed by your low-watt belief that "Russia did it" I won't let you get away with:
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
If you think my comment is arguing that Russia did it, then by all means put me on your list. But you might want to re-read it.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
Same as Leon's view that we all dismiss the lab leak. We don't. He might be able to write, but he certainly lacks comprehension.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
But I am often right, and sometimes on big things, and against the consensus. I can remember when I was literally the only person on this site saying "wait, it might have come from the lab, whatever they say". Every other PB-er had dismissed that idea (despite the huge circumstantial evidence otherwise) and bought the crap sold by the science establishment, which so desperately WANTED it to be the market, not the lab
We were actually forbidden from talking about lab leak, on Facebook and Twitter, for a year!
I distinctly remember the moment when the tide turned, because it happened on here (in my mind). One smarter-than-average pb-er, @Gardenwalker, said You know, you might be right about the lab (in late 2020/early 21)
And now, years later, lab leak is entirely plausible, certainly the public consensus, and some would say close to proven
Merry Christmas to you and yours
Rewriting history yet again Leon. There were plenty of PBers who were willing to accommodate the idea it was a lab leak. All they said was that they would like to see more evidence before making a decision one way or another. You were the only person who decided to jump in with both feet and say it was 100% certain it was a lab leak. Just like you do on everything - and 99% of the time you are wrong. (Please see announcements of proof of aliens, imminent nuclear war and hiding in Welsh cottages to avoid certain death from the covid plague as previous examples).
To be honest I am amazed you have time for any of this stuff given how often you must have to wash your soiled underpants.
Except that Eadric's Welsh cottage was gifted to him, as I understand it, because Eadric warned a billionaire businessman friend that Covid was coming, along with lockdown, and everything would shut, and therefore the businessman should reframe all his business plans accordingly, and the billionaire did that, and saved tons of money, and then gave the cottage to Eadric as a thankyou, saying he could stay as long as he liked. So there's that, too
Has anyone ever loaned you award-winning Welsh property for an indefinite amount of time because you made a brilliant prediction and saved them hundreds of thousands of pounds?
AND LIZ TRUSS' NECKLACE. DON'T FORGET THE NECKLACE
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
Well of course it does, but what are you going to do about it? Why aren't you posting about conflicts in Ukraine or elsewhere, starvation and dictatorships around the world. Why are you getting yourself into such a state? Why do you post with such certainty on stuff that isn't certain? Why?
I care about a lot of things. I retired very early so I could do something about some of those things, but I can't do anything about an undersea gas pipe or covid origins. I like to know what is going on, but I don't wet my knickers over it, because it is pointless.
A few days ago I posted a link to a EcoHealth web page response to Andrew Huff's claims. Now they won't be unbiased obviously so you had plenty of opportunity to have a sane conversation as to why Andrew Huff was right and they were wrong and I'm someone who hasn't a clue as to how the virus came about. However your response was to ignore it and generally rant. As a consequence you get the response here that you don't like. The people here aren't stupid.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
You might think that, but I know a good few people for whom this will cement the idea of Scotland being a progressive bastion shackled to a reactionary England. The sort of people who would normally abhor nationalism as being a right-wing affliction, and who don't like borders.
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
Even in politics, every action has an unequal and opposite reaction. For all those undecided who consider this a reason to support Independence I am sure there will be plenty more undecided who see it as a warning against such a move.
I say that as someone who strongly supports Scottish Independence. I really don't think this is the plus you seem to think it is.
I think this is a plus for Scottish Nationalism among a specific group of voters: 2014 No voters who voted Remain in 2016. Metropolitan liberals who would be a bit uncomfortable about supporting Nationalism, but don't really want to be on the same side as the Tories.
I think that more of the voters who would be repelled by the policy are more likely to have a stronger opinion on Independence for other reasons. So even if the policy is unpopular among the population as a whole I think it's a net plus for the next referendum campaign.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
If only we could remember who the PB’er was who told us, at the beginning, that Covid would be “contagious but benign”…
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
If only we could remember who the PB’er was who told us, at the beginning, that Covid would be “contagious but benign”…
Re Mike's final sentence, if anyone thinks Kemi will be the answer for the remaining tory rump after the next election (c. 100 to max 150 MPs) then they are completely out of touch with the country's mood.
The country is about to move on and Kemi belongs to yesteryear.
p.s. HYUFD: the final sentence was about the timing of the election. Surely you got that?
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
Well of course it does, but what are you going to do about it? Why aren't you posting about conflicts in Ukraine or elsewhere, starvation and dictatorships around the world. Why are you getting yourself into such a state? Why do you post with such certainty on stuff that isn't certain? Why?
I care about a lot of things. I retired very early so I could do something about some of those things, but I can't do anything about an undersea gas pipe or covid origins. I like to know what is going on, but I don't wet my knickers over it, because it is pointless.
A few days ago I posted a link to a EcoHealth web page response to Andrew Huff's claims. Now they won't be unbiased obviously so you had plenty of opportunity to have a sane conversation as to why Andrew Huff was right and they were wrong and I'm someone who hasn't a clue as to how the virus came about. However your response was to ignore it and generally rant. As a consequence you get the response here that you don't like. The people here aren't stupid.
But I do like the responses. Isn't it bloody obvious that I thrive on opposition and being contrary? And I REALLY enjoy it when my contrary positions are vindicated - as they often are, with agreeable frequency
But this also strikes me as slightly juvenile behaviour on my part. I am reminded of myself when I used to play Monopoly aged about 12. I was quite good at it - and also ultra competitive - so it wasn't enough to win I had to WIN and utterly vanquish anyone else, and then when I WON I would stomp about in exultant triumph. I am surprised I had any friends
So even though I am RIGHT about Nordstream and blah blah blah I shall stop stomping exultantly, at least for a moment
And yes, lab leak REALLY matters. 20 million have died
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
I am prepared to pay for this, if individual subs becomes the funding model. There will be the biggest social divide of all time between the GPT enabled, and not.
Wtf does it do for you, though, beyond providing a mild distraction?
I work in IT - and it's really very useful at writing code, explaining existing code, translating things etc. Also can be a handy research tool compared to googling about, reading blog-posts, stack-overflow, etc (obviously needs some double-checking, but that's usually the case with random blogs too).
As a really simple example, I asked it to write me a script to download videos from streaming services using the 'youtube-dl' tool. 30 seconds or so later - done. Then asked it to change the script to bring up a VPN based on the country-code of the URL to get around location restrictions. 30 seconds later - done. Asked it to do a version where it would use a specific VPN configuration based on the URL/domain, then fall back to the country-code if there wasn't a match. 30 seconds later - done.
Nothing I couldn't have done myself - but I certainly wouldn't have got it done in under two minutes.
Combining ChatGPT and Github CoPilot is a massive force multiplier for average developers. In the old days, you'd Google, which would send you to StackOverflow, and then you'd find the right solution and adapt it to your needs.
Time to solve issue: 25 minutes.
Now, you can simply ask ChatGPT and it (essentially) adapts StackOverflow for you. (As, indeed, does the similarly GPT powered CoPilot.)
Time to solve issue: 3 minutes.
That said... I was playing with a Python GIS library. And ChatGPT kept giving me the wrong answer. I'd paste the error in, and it would keep giving the same answer.
Why? Because there were 100x as many questions and answers about the old version of the library on StackOverflow as of the new one. Bad info had driven out good. And it takes time for the predictive algorithms to weigh new information enough that it surpasses old.
And then there's the bigger issue.
ChatGPT is amazing at this because it is parasitical on StackOverflow. If people stop using StackOverflow because of how great ChatGPT is, then where will the new knowledge that ChatGPT needs to function come from?
Yes big worry. And in the bigger picture, look at twitter: assuming chatbots can get through its defences, it will initially consist of chatbots mirroring human opinions on everything. If the chatbots are good and get retweets and followers, twitter will inevitably (even without bad human actors) drift via a feedback loop towards GPTthink rather than humanthink about everything. With utterly unpredictable results.
The predictable result is that a GPT journalist will be caught faking a clickbait news article based on tweets that hadn't been written until it predicted that they would be written, and then wrote them to speed the process up so it could publish its article.
And someone will defend the algorithm by saying that at least it wasn't as bad as the fakery performed by Johann Hari.
The Times's rather out of the blue switch to a real name only commenting rule last week was possibly about this. If chatbots are that good, only way of knowing if you are talking to one or not.
ETA and thinking about it, Elon's blue ticks. People will be pleading with him to take their money for a gold standard NotGPT badge by next summer.
What recourse do you have if a chatbot has stolen your identity to post comments to the Times?
We have missed the obvious of course. Leon IS ChatGPT. Indeed he has been ChatGPT in all his various personas in the past. The real author who shall remain nameless was quietly bumped off 18 months ago and ever since we have been part of a most audacious ChatGPT experiment
Dunno. From what I've heard, I thought ChatGPT was a bit more sophisticated
Also, Leon saying "I can't answer that question because the topic is too controversial" really would be a sign of the apocalypse.
I don't believe Sturgeon cares about women. Or trans people. She cares about having a showdown with Westminster and she may well get one who may not recognise this legislation. What a terrible and cynical move this is.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
Why do you post with such certainty on stuff that isn't certain? Why?
He is an attention seeker because the world no longer wants to listen to his once successful brand of misogynistic macho seduction. #MeToo left him behind and now he's got little left except to be an increasingly embittered old gammon bewildered and lost in the desert of his own 'anti-woke' mind.
It doesn't have to be thus. Not all old people have to dribble into their dotage like him, Clarkson, Morgan, and MacKenzie.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
I didn't know until today that Eric Stoltz was the original actor playing the protagonist in Back To The Future and that a lot of scenes were actually shot with him before it was decided to replace him with Michael J Fox.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
As Scottish Parliament passes Gender Recognition Reform Bill, tSecretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack says:
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
You might think that, but I know a good few people for whom this will cement the idea of Scotland being a progressive bastion shackled to a reactionary England. The sort of people who would normally abhor nationalism as being a right-wing affliction, and who don't like borders.
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
Even in politics, every action has an unequal and opposite reaction. For all those undecided who consider this a reason to support Independence I am sure there will be plenty more undecided who see it as a warning against such a move.
I say that as someone who strongly supports Scottish Independence. I really don't think this is the plus you seem to think it is.
I think this is a plus for Scottish Nationalism among a specific group of voters: 2014 No voters who voted Remain in 2016. Metropolitan liberals who would be a bit uncomfortable about supporting Nationalism, but don't really want to be on the same side as the Tories.
I think that more of the voters who would be repelled by the policy are more likely to have a stronger opinion on Independence for other reasons. So even if the policy is unpopular among the population as a whole I think it's a net plus for the next referendum campaign.
62% of Scots voted Remain in 2016 but by a 27% margin Scots think Sturgeon's GRC legislation poses a safety risk to women only spaces.
Re Mike's final sentence, if anyone thinks Kemi will be the answer for the remaining tory rump after the next election (c. 100 to max 150 MPs) then they are completely out of touch with the country's mood.
The country is about to move on and Kemi belongs to yesteryear.
p.s. HYUFD: the final sentence was about the timing of the election. Surely you got that?
If the Conservatives do fall that far, they might as well make Badenoch leader. The struggle will be to be heard, and Kemi B is at least interesting.
It probably delays a return to office for another cycle, but a sensible boring plausible PM leader risks the Conservatives fading into nothingness.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
Re Mike's final sentence, if anyone thinks Kemi will be the answer for the remaining tory rump after the next election (c. 100 to max 150 MPs) then they are completely out of touch with the country's mood.
The country is about to move on and Kemi belongs to yesteryear.
p.s. HYUFD: the final sentence was about the timing of the election. Surely you got that?
If a Starmer government cannot cut inflation, keep taxes low and give nurses a payrise and get a grip on strikes then it doesn't matter who leads the Tory Opposition, there will be a swing to it as there was a swing to the Tories in 1950 and 1970 after heavy Tory defeats in 1945 and 1966 and in 1979 after narrow Tory defeat in 1974.
Only New Labour overseeing a relatively prosperous economy from 1997 to 2001 avoided any real swing to Hague's Opposition after the 1997 Labour landslide
Come on. Own up. Who believed that Putin blew up his own pipeline?
What was the argument for Russia having done it? I didn't follow the story closely, but I thought the discussion was over whether or not it was sabotage or something else.
There was no argument. It was just ‘Putin is mad and this is a mad thing so mad dog Putin did this mad thing even tho it hurts him’ - ignoring the obvious candidates with means, money and motivation, who actually told us they were going to do it a year before
The Americans didn't say a year before that they were going to do it. You are so full of shit.
lol
Biden in early 2022, talking of ending Nordstream
"There will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it. We will be able to do that"
I mean, I know you're not the brightest pfennig in the kartoffelsalat, but he ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYS IT
"We will bring an end to Nordstream 2"
No surprise that you are so brain damaged that you don't even have a clue how long a year is.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
Wait, why would the US announce they're going to do something, do it, then deny it?
Previously I didn't care about this, at all, but now you've convinced me it was a false flag operation that could've been performed by anyone except the US.
The US didn't actually deny it. Biden said "it was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies".
Not just disinformation and lies. They also continued to pump gas through the pipelines for 3 days after the leak had been confirmed.
Which, IIRC, slowed down any immediate investigation of the cause. Seems a very odd thing to do if you think you have just been attacked by the Americans and have the opportunity to blow the western alliance to smithereens.
For those who like to bash the BBC: they are reporting that "Scotland (is) first in UK to pass gender reforms". That means they want this loony stuff to spread. (I'm sure that wasn't how they framed the haircut law in North Korea.) Which is perhaps not a surprise. I don't have TV, but a few years ago I watched a BBC drama at someone else's place in which the young son, aged maybe 11, of two right-on parents told them he wanted to be a girl, and they were going "Hey, that's grrreat! That's brilliant!" How much sicker can the culture become? Sadly the answer is quite a lot, and sicker sicker sicker is the direction it's being steered in, as if rammed down a U-bend.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
It does also say "don't bother deposing me and installing a Western-friendly puppet, you still won't get any lovely gas".
Whether that works enough as an argument, I don't know.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
There are four reasons why it was in Putin's interest to blow up the pipeline:
(1) It meant there "return to the status quo" option for the oligarchs. Get rid of Putin, and you still don't get all that nice German gas money.
(2) It means that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was in serious danger of running out of gas this winter, and that it could be done without Russia reneging on contracts (and therefore seeing the forced expropriation of Gazprom assets).
(3) It mean that useful idiots would start speculating that it was the Americans, potentially blowing up the whole Western anti-Russian alliance.
(4) It sent a message to the world about the ability of Russia to damage strategic assets, without detection.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
If I'd done it (spoiler: it wasn't me) then I'd be all stony-faced about this very serious attack on vital infrastructure which must be extensively investigated, probably by me. I wouldn't be going "hey, isn't this great, it's an ill wind etc etc".
But then, maybe they know I think like that and so they double bluff to fool me?
What I'm bascially saying is that the response is pretty irrelevant, imho. The US didn't like NS2. They will be pleased at the demise of NS2, whoever did it.
(And, for avoidance of the apparent doubt, the US may well have done it. Covid may well have originated in a lab leak. I'm just not convinced of either of those positions; I don't really think either is the most likely, though certainly possible.)
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
For those who like to bash the BBC: they are reporting that "Scotland (is) first in UK to pass gender reforms". That means they want this loony stuff to spread. (I'm sure that wasn't how they framed the haircut law in North Korea.) Which is perhaps not a surprise. I don't have TV, but a few years ago I watched a BBC drama at someone else's place in which the young son, aged maybe 11, of two right-on parents told them he wanted to be a girl, and they were going "Hey, that's grrreat! That's brilliant!" How much sicker can the culture become? Sadly the answer is quite a lot, and sicker sicker sicker is the direction it's being steered in, as if rammed down a U-bend.
It might also just be a statement of fact, you know. Unless you would consider a BBC headline along the lines of "Russia first combatant in WW3 to use nuclear weapons" as an indication that they wanted that loony stuff to spread
(Also, be careful with your wording - among the yoof over here, 'sick' can mean 'awesome': "You want to be a girl? Sick!")
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
There are four reasons why it was in Putin's interest to blow up the pipeline:
(1) It meant there "return to the status quo" option for the oligarchs. Get rid of Putin, and you still don't get all that nice German gas money.
(2) It means that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was in serious danger of running out of gas this winter, and that it could be done without Russia reneging on contracts (and therefore seeing the forced expropriation of Gazprom assets).
(3) It mean that useful idiots would start speculating that it was the Americans, potentially blowing up the whole Western anti-Russian alliance.
(4) It sent a message to the world about the ability of Russia to damage strategic assets, without detection.
4) is a logical contradiction: if they aren't detected, it doesn't send a message, and if they are detected, then it doesn't send the message that they can do it without detection.
On the back GDP figures I see some attempts online to do a 'Truss was right about growth' argument. I don't really understand why though - Truss noting growth is important was hardly the issue, it was what she attempted to do supposedly in the name of growth (but definitely in the name of wealthy people getting wealthier).
Anyone can say growth is good, and note that the government is not focusing on that. That wouldn't make Truss 'right' or derision at how she went about her goal any less warranted. Indeed, it's reminiscent of certain ideologies which insist a positive intention somehow mitigates disastrous real life impacts when regimes try to implement those intentions.
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
There are four reasons why it was in Putin's interest to blow up the pipeline:
(1) It meant there "return to the status quo" option for the oligarchs. Get rid of Putin, and you still don't get all that nice German gas money.
(2) It means that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was in serious danger of running out of gas this winter, and that it could be done without Russia reneging on contracts (and therefore seeing the forced expropriation of Gazprom assets).
(3) It mean that useful idiots would start speculating that it was the Americans, potentially blowing up the whole Western anti-Russian alliance.
(4) It sent a message to the world about the ability of Russia to damage strategic assets, without detection.
3. And intelligent free thinkers too.
Nordstream should be considered in the context of other unexplained destructive incidents in the Russian energy sector, such as
* the explosion at the Volkhov-Petrozavodsk gas pipeline just over the border from Finland, and
* the explosion at the oil refinery in Angarsk in Siberia.
Look at Nordstream in this context, and the probability of the Russian government being the perps decreases. What Bayesian inference would you draw?
Changing "Russia" to "the United States" in point 4 seems to be suggested.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
The next Tory leader will be whoever tells the membership it was not their fault, as they were cut out of choosing the awful Rishi who led them to a defeat as he didn't listen to them.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
And that, in a nutshell is the problems the Tories will have in Opposition. The current crop of younger ministers are mostly either bonkers, or ineffective, or both. Don't forget that Tony Blair never even served as a Junior Minister before becoming PM.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
Well of course it does, but what are you going to do about it? Why aren't you posting about conflicts in Ukraine or elsewhere, starvation and dictatorships around the world. Why are you getting yourself into such a state? Why do you post with such certainty on stuff that isn't certain? Why?
I care about a lot of things. I retired very early so I could do something about some of those things, but I can't do anything about an undersea gas pipe or covid origins. I like to know what is going on, but I don't wet my knickers over it, because it is pointless.
A few days ago I posted a link to a EcoHealth web page response to Andrew Huff's claims. Now they won't be unbiased obviously so you had plenty of opportunity to have a sane conversation as to why Andrew Huff was right and they were wrong and I'm someone who hasn't a clue as to how the virus came about. However your response was to ignore it and generally rant. As a consequence you get the response here that you don't like. The people here aren't stupid.
But I do like the responses. Isn't it bloody obvious that I thrive on opposition and being contrary? And I REALLY enjoy it when my contrary positions are vindicated - as they often are, with agreeable frequency
But this also strikes me as slightly juvenile behaviour on my part. I am reminded of myself when I used to play Monopoly aged about 12. I was quite good at it - and also ultra competitive - so it wasn't enough to win I had to WIN and utterly vanquish anyone else, and then when I WON I would stomp about in exultant triumph. I am surprised I had any friends
So even though I am RIGHT about Nordstream and blah blah blah I shall stop stomping exultantly, at least for a moment
And yes, lab leak REALLY matters. 20 million have died
The frame should be
1. natural mutation? 2. from a lab? If yes, then brought out by accident (2.1) or deliberately (2.2)? If deliberately, then by whom?
Obv there are overlaps and this is simplistic, but heuristically it's OK.
"From a lab" should be called the "lab origin" hypothesis. Only those who are extremely confident that IF it came out of a lab it MUST have emerged accidentally should use "lab leak" to mean "other than by natural mutation".
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
It is a tremendous opportunity for world peace, given Putin seems to have thought that Europe's (and especially Gemany's) reliance on Russian gas would stop them interfering in his war. People buying gas and oil from Russia prolong the war.
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
It's Putin's pipeline. He doesn't need to blow it up. He can simply turn it off: if he wants us to be cold. Then, when we are cold, he can offer to turn it on again, to tempt us to his side. He can't do that now it's all blown up, can he?
There are four reasons why it was in Putin's interest to blow up the pipeline:
(1) It meant there "return to the status quo" option for the oligarchs. Get rid of Putin, and you still don't get all that nice German gas money.
(2) It means that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was in serious danger of running out of gas this winter, and that it could be done without Russia reneging on contracts (and therefore seeing the forced expropriation of Gazprom assets).
(3) It mean that useful idiots would start speculating that it was the Americans, potentially blowing up the whole Western anti-Russian alliance.
(4) It sent a message to the world about the ability of Russia to damage strategic assets, without detection.
How clever of the Russians to destroy a pipeline in order to spread two completely conflicting messages that cancel each other out.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
And that, in a nutshell is the problems the Tories will have in Opposition. The current crop of younger ministers are mostly either bonkers, or ineffective, or both. Don't forget that Tony Blair never even served as a Junior Minister before becoming PM.
And I simply find it hard to accept being a shadow minister is a meaningful substitute experience. Its why 'lack of experience' is not necessarily the big difficulty we generally think it is.
There it is. @ScotSecofState Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
What a pointless job when everyone knows it is political consideration that would depend on whether someone loses a job, or is reappointed to it indeed. Any advice given is utterly meaningless.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office." "Yep, the bastards." "I don't think they will hold on for much longer." "Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
The last sentence says it all, Starmer's lead is not much different to Cameron's in 2008 but Brown got a hung parliament in 2010 still
Surprised Wusselly hasn't got the ban hammer yet as he does appear to spend day in day out raising conspiracy theories.
"Russia did it" is a conspiracy theory. Indeed "X did it" is a conspiracy theory for any value of X. Nobody was caught. Nobody is admitting it. And it wasn't a lone nut.
What kind of bottom-of-the-fridge mental vegetable listens to Joe Biden saying "we will bring an end to Nordstream 2, we will do that, we will get it done", then watches the Nordstream 2 pipeline violently coming to an end, an ending which suits the USA probably more than anyone, and THEN thinks: "Ah, the Russians did it!"
Well, I guess you do. You went through that process. And also @JosiasJessop
This is all a bit tedious, like the lab leak debate and the existence of God and the meaning of life. We've discussed it inconclusively, we can't prove any of the theories, nobody's persuaded anyone and nobody can change what happened, so, well, we may as well shrug and leave it to the historians to work out, no?
Yes, it's all a bit boring, let's move on. It's just a bloody plague. 20 million dead, pff. Does it matter where it came from? Watch Bakeoff
If only we could remember who the PB’er was who told us, at the beginning, that Covid would be “contagious but benign”…
"I do hope we have a post on the possible global impact of Coronavirus. I went to a local authority planning session today for possible pandemic..its not Brexit we have to worry about I can assure you."
Mr Meeks provided such a post a while later, which was mostly derided as overreacting, but seems to stand up quite well.
Some posters comments have been purged from the database and so can now no longer be compared to events.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
The kick must be taken within 60 seconds (playing time) from the time the team indicated their intention to do so, even if the ball rolls over and has to be placed again
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
If I'd done it (spoiler: it wasn't me) then I'd be all stony-faced about this very serious attack on vital infrastructure which must be extensively investigated, probably by me. I wouldn't be going "hey, isn't this great, it's an ill wind etc etc".
But then, maybe they know I think like that and so they double bluff to fool me?
What I'm bascially saying is that the response is pretty irrelevant, imho. The US didn't like NS2. They will be pleased at the demise of NS2, whoever did it.
(And, for avoidance of the apparent doubt, the US may well have done it. Covid may well have originated in a lab leak. I'm just not convinced of either of those positions; I don't really think either is the most likely, though certainly possible.)
The point is that there is nobody on the Western side of the axis who would have done this without US assent. I suppose there's a tiny chance a Ukrainian faction thought fuck it, but it seems unlikely. And since it's very unlikely that such assent would have been given without it being part of the overall foreign policy plan, it's effectively either the US or Russia, whoever had their physical hands on it.
Surprised Wusselly hasn't got the ban hammer yet as he does appear to spend day in day out raising conspiracy theories.
"Russia did it" is a conspiracy theory. Indeed "X did it" is a conspiracy theory for any value of X. Nobody was caught. Nobody is admitting it. And it wasn't a lone nut.
The next Tory leader will be one of the younger rising stars of the current cabinet. A top performer, who cuts through the noise, is effective and likeable. I know! I can’t think of anyone either.
Steve Barclay
LOL!
Barclay is not especially charismatic but he is serious and competent.
If a Labour government fails to get a grip on inflation and strikes he would be the ideal Leader of the Opposition.
Barclay is also a rightwing Brexiteer but not looney right ERG either
Selebian's list of America's reasons for blowing the pipeline seems extremely lacking on the main point - it benefits their own gas exports vastly. This is a country that is prepared to try to interfere with the UK opening a coal mine (when they have hundreds) because we currently import US coal. And prepared to take issue when we reduce the top rate of tax (when their's is lower). The US as a polity is venal and aggressive with it.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
In fairness, my 'list' (SLARP?) was only one point long. You may be making it out to be a bit grander than it was.
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
Well, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken doesn't seem to agree with you. He seems quite pleased about Nordstream, from an American perspective
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
If I'd done it (spoiler: it wasn't me) then I'd be all stony-faced about this very serious attack on vital infrastructure which must be extensively investigated, probably by me. I wouldn't be going "hey, isn't this great, it's an ill wind etc etc".
But then, maybe they know I think like that and so they double bluff to fool me?
What I'm bascially saying is that the response is pretty irrelevant, imho. The US didn't like NS2. They will be pleased at the demise of NS2, whoever did it.
(And, for avoidance of the apparent doubt, the US may well have done it. Covid may well have originated in a lab leak. I'm just not convinced of either of those positions; I don't really think either is the most likely, though certainly possible.)
The point is that there is nobody on the Western side of the axis who would have done this without US assent. I suppose there's a tiny chance a Ukrainian faction thought fuck it, but it seems unlikely. And since it's very unlikely that such assent would have been given without it being part of the overall foreign policy plan, it's effectively either the US or Russia, whoever had their physical hands on it.
Comments
- Russia:
Con: Removes any possibility of influencing European policy through gas supplies (makes it harder anyway, need to repair the pipelines).
Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure
- US:
Con: Risks breaking the western coalition unless agreed widely with them in advance
Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
- Ukraine:
Con: Risks losing masses of western support, not only those a bit wobbly on Russian gas, but also US etc pissed off if not agreeing to it in advance
Pro: Stops ability of Russia to hold Europe to ransome over gas (although this had already diminished)
There are obvious reasons for both Ukraine and the US to do it, but massive risks for both. Less risk for Russia, but weaker motivation, too.
No one has a really good case for doing it. Logical conclusion: it didn't happen; fake news. Could be cover for an alien landing in the neighbourhood - emission of gases visible on surface needs an explanation, good cover to get some ships in to explore the craft
"I want to be clear. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nordstream will not move forward"
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. She doesn't faff about
https://twitter.com/FaithReporters/status/1575078468387475456?s=20&t=uA0-KnVauZ0_4Sj_nLPqhA
Apart from waggling a specially made oil-pipeline bomb in front of the camera while singing "This is how we'll do it" to the tune of "I'm the king of the castle" I'm not sure how she could be more explicit
Not racist 42%
Racist 34%
54% of Labour voters say racist
67% of Tory voters say not racist
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1605861407106416640?s=20&t=EVYphBpNrTGaTqQU4o1RBA
I think we will start to see programmers silo themselves from the data hoarders.
"Bloody Government. We've just got to boot them out of office."
"Yep, the bastards."
"I don't think they will hold on for much longer."
"Well I'm not so sure."
I hear conversations like this most days.
Anyone who thinks the Conservatives are in for anything other than shellacking ... isn't listening.
"Pro: Shows what crazy fucks we are and is threat to do similar to others' infrastructure"
There is any number of things the Russians could have blown up to "show they are crazy fucks" without destroying their own pipeline, on which they spent billions, and which gave them precious and incredible leverage in Europe, and which brought them lots of money
They could have blown up a pipeline in Finland (not in NATO), in Africa, they could have blown up power lines in Sweden, or a pipeline off Ireland, anything. But you think they chose their own crucial and expensive infrastructure..
That sounds like a harder pipeline to blow up.
ETA: as posted by Richard, making people in Europe affected by a lack of Russian gas think that the US or Ukraine did it is probably a more plausible pro for Russia, anyway. There are likely better "we're crazy enough to do this" targets, indeed.
In vscode with copilot enabled, I pressed return under the old template, started typing out the first line of the new version and pressed return. Copilot then filled in the whole rest of the template - perfectly converted.
Then I thought to ask chatgpt 'could you convert this template from framework-x and css-y to framework-z and css-w?' and ... done.
Nothing 'difficult' as such, but being able to do that across 100s, 1000s of boring, grunt-work tasks is really quite something. (I was actually a little irritated as it had been going to be my 'winding down for xmas' mindless task).
The bit that vaguely niggles at me is what is the value-prop of hiring a 'junior' when you have chatgpt on hand? Pay some young person £30k a year for a while, they take up time from who-ever is getting them up to speed and mentoring them, then they leave for another job anyway. Or pay £3k a year for access to chatgpt that would have done all the tasks the junior would probably have shoved on them.
Short term win, long term doom. But that's never stopped us before.
Look Leon every time you read something don't assume it is 100 accurate or true. If you do, you will end up believing in aliens.
And now I must hie myself to Selfridges to do some Chrimbo shopping. Later, PB
But this is an unusual parliament. 3 PMs in 3 years, indeed 3 in one year. So I don’t think we’d be likely to see a drift back from mid term blues until the end of next year earliest.
It’s going to be a loooong 2 years.
U.K. government ‘share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this Bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.’…
Alister Jack:
“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK wide legislation, in the coming weeks - up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the Bill going for Royal Assent if necessary.”
https://twitter.com/katyballs/status/1605945594341728256
I’m not sure “Westminster stopped us letting sex offenders change sex so they can go to women’s prisons” is quite the winning strategy Sturgeon appears to think it is…
Bearing in mind that I've come across a lot of people working in IT who can't use Google to find the solution to their problem on stackoverflow and I think I can outrun some of the other coders being chased by the lion of GPT for a while yet.
We were actually forbidden from talking about lab leak, on Facebook and Twitter, for a year!
I distinctly remember the moment when the tide turned, because it happened on here (in my mind). One smarter-than-average pb-er, @Gardenwalker, said You know, you might be right about the lab (in late 2020/early 21)
And now, years later, lab leak is entirely plausible, certainly the public consensus, and some would say close to proven
Merry Christmas to you and yours
Sturgeon is expanding the pool of pro-Independence voters. She is in control of the narrative. The Unionist side simply doesn't have as talented or committed a politician.
Alister Jack says he is willing to consider blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/1605948420341960704
To be honest I am amazed you have time for any of this stuff given how often you must have to wash your soiled underpants.
It also removes wavering by Germany as if there is no pipeline then they have one major less item to try and get everyone to the table over.
If you are an ultra nationalist who completely believes the Ukraine must be defeated militarily then you need to remove as many other options as possible so that when the only remaining option for Putin is to win the war you get what you want, regardless of the cost, and as we know from postings on here there are plenty of major nationalist nutcases in Russia who glory in war.
But already it's snapping at the heels of the 1000s and 1000s of people who do a bit of custom Wordpress and 'we need to add stripe as well as paypal to our cart'. Even things like 'could you modify this Flask API to return this slightly different JSON structure under a v2/ prefixed route?' - it can manage perfectly well. It'll even write unit tests for it if you ask it nicely...
This youtube video certainly gave me some pause on what's round the corner : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5ZWub9UEJiE
https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
I say that as someone who strongly supports Scottish Independence. I really don't think this is the plus you seem to think it is.
Irrespective of the issue it just plays into the hands of the Nats.
Has anyone ever loaned you award-winning Welsh property for an indefinite amount of time because you made a brilliant prediction and saved them hundreds of thousands of pounds?
AND LIZ TRUSS' NECKLACE. DON'T FORGET THE NECKLACE
OK I need to grow up. And do some shopping. Anon
I care about a lot of things. I retired very early so I could do something about some of those things, but I can't do anything about an undersea gas pipe or covid origins. I like to know what is going on, but I don't wet my knickers over it, because it is pointless.
A few days ago I posted a link to a EcoHealth web page response to Andrew Huff's claims. Now they won't be unbiased obviously so you had plenty of opportunity to have a sane conversation as to why Andrew Huff was right and they were wrong and I'm someone who hasn't a clue as to how the virus came about. However your response was to ignore it and generally rant. As a consequence you get the response here that you don't like. The people here aren't stupid.
And a fight over self-ID is exactly the sort of subject designed to make Labour squirm.
Personally I think it'll be one of the Baltic states with US arms length support. Or maybe even (hopefully not) Britain following a US request. It's the sort of fuckwittery that Boris or Truss would have been tickled pink to be asked to do.
I think that more of the voters who would be repelled by the policy are more likely to have a stronger opinion on Independence for other reasons. So even if the policy is unpopular among the population as a whole I think it's a net plus for the next referendum campaign.
The country is about to move on and Kemi belongs to yesteryear.
p.s. HYUFD: the final sentence was about the timing of the election. Surely you got that?
But this also strikes me as slightly juvenile behaviour on my part. I am reminded of myself when I used to play Monopoly aged about 12. I was quite good at it - and also ultra competitive - so it wasn't enough to win I had to WIN and utterly vanquish anyone else, and then when I WON I would stomp about in exultant triumph. I am surprised I had any friends
So even though I am RIGHT about Nordstream and blah blah blah I shall stop stomping exultantly, at least for a moment
And yes, lab leak REALLY matters. 20 million have died
There's a potential long term gain for the US, I guess, but with no customers for the gas in the pipelines anyway at present and the reliance on Russian gas being demonstrably foolish now, I'm not convinced it's a massive gain for the US. When the new UK coal mine mysteriously catches fire before it begins producing, we can talk again.
https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1605956446553718785
"US @SecBlinken offers motive for #NordStream's destruction: "A tremendous opportunity to remove the dependence on Russian energy.""
A tremendous opportunity? For whom? Who has been doing new gas deals with Europe?
https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/1576562482155761668?s=20&t=fDxpJEeBBjft6QJp9emlcw
It doesn't have to be thus. Not all old people have to dribble into their dotage like him, Clarkson, Morgan, and MacKenzie.
As you yourself have clearly recognised.
Have a lovely evening everyone
xx
I didn't know until today that Eric Stoltz was the original actor playing the protagonist in Back To The Future and that a lot of scenes were actually shot with him before it was decided to replace him with Michael J Fox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Filming_with_Stoltz
Then, when Putin realised that Europe were reducing their dependence on 'his' energy, he started threatening us with a cold winter. I wonder what he would do when he realised Germany and the EU would not change their mind? Try to ensure that cold winter?
You seem to deal in certainties where there are not any. Or, as Mrs j would put it, you deal in cretinities with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
It probably delays a return to office for another cycle, but a sensible boring plausible PM leader risks the Conservatives fading into nothingness.
Only New Labour overseeing a relatively prosperous economy from 1997 to 2001 avoided any real swing to Hague's Opposition after the 1997 Labour landslide
Whether that works enough as an argument, I don't know.
(1) It meant there "return to the status quo" option for the oligarchs. Get rid of Putin, and you still don't get all that nice German gas money.
(2) It means that Germany (and the rest of Europe) was in serious danger of running out of gas this winter, and that it could be done without Russia reneging on contracts (and therefore seeing the forced expropriation of Gazprom assets).
(3) It mean that useful idiots would start speculating that it was the Americans, potentially blowing up the whole Western anti-Russian alliance.
(4) It sent a message to the world about the ability of Russia to damage strategic assets, without detection.
But then, maybe they know I think like that and so they double bluff to fool me?
What I'm bascially saying is that the response is pretty irrelevant, imho. The US didn't like NS2. They will be pleased at the demise of NS2, whoever did it.
(And, for avoidance of the apparent doubt, the US may well have done it. Covid may well have originated in a lab leak. I'm just not convinced of either of those positions; I don't really think either is the most likely, though certainly possible.)
(Also, be careful with your wording - among the yoof over here, 'sick' can mean 'awesome': "You want to be a girl? Sick!")
Anyone can say growth is good, and note that the government is not focusing on that. That wouldn't make Truss 'right' or derision at how she went about her goal any less warranted. Indeed, it's reminiscent of certain ideologies which insist a positive intention somehow mitigates disastrous real life impacts when regimes try to implement those intentions.
Nordstream should be considered in the context of other unexplained destructive incidents in the Russian energy sector, such as
* the explosion at the Volkhov-Petrozavodsk gas pipeline just over the border from Finland, and
* the explosion at the oil refinery in Angarsk in Siberia.
Look at Nordstream in this context, and the probability of the Russian government being the perps decreases. What Bayesian inference would you draw?
Changing "Russia" to "the United States" in point 4 seems to be suggested.
A countdown timer on scrums and kicks at goal will be introduced in January to help speed up the game, says World Rugby.
The 'shot clock' means players will have 90 seconds to take a conversion and a minute for penalties, or the kick will be disallowed.
New rules also state scrums have to be started within 30 seconds and line-outs formed without delay, with penalty kicks to be given for timewasting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/64069729
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/22/lost-and-found-chocolate-chip-toadstool-amanita-sculpta-aoe
Though I may be several rule changes out of date.
Hard to say, with scrums, who is timewasting.
1. natural mutation?
2. from a lab? If yes, then brought out by accident (2.1) or deliberately (2.2)? If deliberately, then by whom?
Obv there are overlaps and this is simplistic, but heuristically it's OK.
"From a lab" should be called the "lab origin" hypothesis. Only those who are extremely confident that IF it came out of a lab it MUST have emerged accidentally should use "lab leak" to mean "other than by natural mutation".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5N6qvBQ-Ms
Surprised Wusselly hasn't got the ban hammer yet as he does appear to spend day in day out raising conspiracy theories.
Rishi Sunak has appointed veteran banker Sir Laurie Magnus as his new adviser on ministerial behaviour.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64068356
What a pointless job when everyone knows it is political consideration that would depend on whether someone loses a job, or is reappointed to it indeed. Any advice given is utterly meaningless.
"I do hope we have a post on the possible global impact of Coronavirus.
I went to a local authority planning session today for possible pandemic..its not Brexit we have to worry about I can assure you."
Mr Meeks provided such a post a while later, which was mostly derided as overreacting, but seems to stand up quite well.
Some posters comments have been purged from the database and so can now no longer be compared to events.
Maybe they'll get around to officially saying scrum inputs don't need to be straight, since they haven't enforced that for years.
The kick must be taken within 60 seconds (playing time) from the time the team indicated their intention to do so, even if the ball rolls over and has to be placed again
https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/8#:~:text=The kick must be taken,and a scrum is awarded.
Look what Elser managed by himself in 1939
If a Labour government fails to get a grip on inflation and strikes he would be the ideal Leader of the Opposition.
Barclay is also a rightwing Brexiteer but not looney right ERG either