Does anyone remember the monstrous fuss about how the UK extended the gap between the first and second dose of covid vaccines from 3 weeks to 12 weeks?
Turns out it may have saved 10,000 lives and 58,000 hospital admissions.
I honestly don't recall how big a fuss it caused. I do recall having some very brief concern, but it was one of those cases where the math was simple enough to grasp that it seemed to make perfect sense and things settled quickly - the benefits of getting more people with 1st dose coverage (which was still pretty good) done far outweighed maximising the number getting their second dose, with the chances a delay would not massively impact the efficacy of a second doses reasonable enough to chance.
Germany has shut down the last of its nuclear power plants. Tonight, the country is emitting one of the highest quantities of CO2 per unit of electricity generated in all of Europe. Coal is its #1 source of electricity. https://mobile.twitter.com/Harry_Stevens/status/1647776967465349121
Does anyone remember the monstrous fuss about how the UK extended the gap between the first and second dose of covid vaccines from 3 weeks to 12 weeks?
Turns out it may have saved 10,000 lives and 58,000 hospital admissions.
I honestly don't recall how big a fuss it caused. I do recall having some very brief concern, but it was one of those cases where the math was simple enough to grasp that it seemed to make perfect sense and things settled quickly - the benefits of getting more people with 1st dose coverage (which was still pretty good) done far outweighed maximising the number getting their second dose, with the chances a delay would not massively impact the efficacy of a second doses reasonable enough to chance.
I would like to point out that I fully supported the move.
Important to note that doctors aren't gods - they can be wrong, too. Even in aggregate (though there, obviously, they are far more often right than not).
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
This is not the sound of a winning presidential candidate. Though you could argue that Trump displays much the same petulance, I don’t think mini me-ing Trump works for him.
DeSantis openly speculating about what the state could build next to Walt Disney World:
Surely being seen to disrupt Disney is a vote loser in most places?
Bashing Disney is popular among Conservatives in the States.
“Big Mouse” is a huge political donor, the vast majority of which goes to Democrats and organisations pushing cultural stuff (think the American version of Stonewall, and BLM). Their parks are covered in Pride flags and staff wear pronoun badges, their movies are increasingly seen as preachy, that sort of thing.
Libertarians also really hate them, for their long-standing advocacy for extending intellectual property rights. One 1998 Bill that extended copyright terms was knows as “The Mickey Mouse Protection Act”, because Disney donated to so many politicians to get it through Congress, just before Mickey was about to become public domain.
In Florida specifically, they basically pay no taxes on the theme park and surrounding hotels, because the whole area is designated as a massive free zone. This is what DeSantis has been trying to rectify in recent months, and actively annoying them seems to be part of the plan.
ChatGPT believes that the song Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush features prominent use of the Fairlight CMI synthesizer.
The song was recorded in 1977, and the Farilight CMI first became available in 1979. Kate Bush did use the Fairlight CMI synthesizer on many of her other projects from 1979 onwards. So ChatGPT made an educated guess about her using it on Wuthering Heights, a guess that, unfortunately, was impossible.
Q: "What inspired Kate Bush to write the song Wuthering Heights?"
A: "Kate Bush was inspired to write the song "Wuthering Heights" after seeing a television adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel of the same name. The novel's story of forbidden love and the haunting atmosphere of the moors captured Bush's imagination and inspired her to write a song from the perspective of the novel's protagonist, Catherine Earnshaw.
Bush wrote the song when she was just 18 years old, and it quickly became a sensation after its release in 1978. The song's distinctive vocal melody and unique instrumentation, including a prominent use of the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, helped to establish Bush as a unique and innovative artist and set her apart from her contemporaries.
"Wuthering Heights" remains one of Bush's most iconic and beloved songs, and its enduring popularity has cemented her status as one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists of her generation."
At least it didn't say that Bush's song inspired Emily Bronte to write the book.
The full story of Kate Bush writing Wuthering Heights is a bit more complex: she borrowed lines from the book, without having read it all the way through. She also caught only the last few minutes of the film.
More American protectionism from the home of capitalist free enterprise.
Because:
1. Why would you subsidise imports when you have a domestic industry?
2. Biden is just as Sinophobic as Trump, but he couches it in slightly different language.
More to the point, he's pandering to the same voters that Trump was.
How do you think the US dominated the chip industry - government funding. The difference between the Biden and Trump on this is that the former recognises the massive economic benefit of subsidising your industry to undergo paradigm shifts.
Something the UK has failed at miserably in this case.
0% tax. Literally, 0%. They don't care what you earn abroad. Just have private health insurance (which you would have anyway). You can rent a glam apartment in lower Sukhumvit for $1500 a month, and it will have gym and pool and be uber luxe
Come and go as you please, in essence - because they want the money you spend and the business you might generate
Countries are REALLY competing for the nomads. This is going to be a massive thing in years to come
I just checked and you can effectively buy freedom of movement into Thailand for 20 years for £50,000 with an ultimate privilege visa.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
I guess the difference between ChatGPT and PB, is that here we all mark each other’s homework, and if I post bollocks facts (as oppose to bollocks opinions, which is all the time!) I should expect to be (politely) called out on it.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
No. It has no notion of what factually correct information is. It's just grabbing a load of text from all over the place and splurging it together based on what has tended to be connected with what. It does pretty well all things considered though; It'll often come up with something that's like 90% correct and only 10% completely made up.
This is not the sound of a winning presidential candidate. Though you could argue that Trump displays much the same petulance, I don’t think mini me-ing Trump works for him.
DeSantis openly speculating about what the state could build next to Walt Disney World:
Surely being seen to disrupt Disney is a vote loser in most places?
Bashing Disney is popular among Conservatives in the States.
“Big Mouse” is a huge political donor, the vast majority of which goes to Democrats and organisations pushing cultural stuff (think the American version of Stonewall, and BLM). Their parks are covered in Pride flags and staff wear pronoun badges, their movies are increasingly seen as preachy, that sort of thing.
Libertarians also really hate them, for their long-standing advocacy for extending intellectual property rights. One 1998 Bill that extended copyright terms was knows as “The Mickey Mouse Protection Act”, because Disney donated to so many politicians to get it through Congress, just before Mickey was about to become public domain.
In Florida specifically, they basically pay no taxes on the theme park and surrounding hotels, because the whole area is designated as a massive free zone. This is what DeSantis has been trying to rectify in recent months, and actively annoying them seems to be part of the plan.
I can't recall the last time I watched a Disney film, any Disney film, without a tedious Wokedisclaimer at the start for 20 seconds.
0% tax. Literally, 0%. They don't care what you earn abroad. Just have private health insurance (which you would have anyway). You can rent a glam apartment in lower Sukhumvit for $1500 a month, and it will have gym and pool and be uber luxe
Come and go as you please, in essence - because they want the money you spend and the business you might generate
Countries are REALLY competing for the nomads. This is going to be a massive thing in years to come
I just checked and you can effectively buy freedom of movement into Thailand for 20 years for £50,000 with an ultimate privilege visa.
Interesting.
Yep, @Leon is right, that there’s huge competition out there for the Nomads - mostly people in tech companies, media, global sales etc, who can literally work from anywhere. The sort of people who might go to the office once a quarter.
Here in UAE, a locally-paid salary of $100k, or a $550k property investment with no mortgage, gets you a Golden Visa for 10 years.
They also have a specific Digital Nomad visa, which requires an overseas salary of only $42k, but renews annually.
There’s no income tax or capital gains tax, VAT is 5%, corporation tax is 9%, and you’ll need to buy health insurance for yourself and any dependents you bring with you.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
No. It has no notion of what factually correct information is. It's just grabbing a load of text from all over the place and splurging it together based on what has tended to be connected with what. It does pretty well all things considered though; It'll often come up with something that's like 90% correct and only 10% completely made up.
So, it's not that intelligent then?
Depends what you're trying to do. If it's creativity, floating free from factual truth, then the simple rate at which AI bots can churn out possibilities is an opportunity and a threat to practicioners.
But there's still an important spark missing, something about truth at a sentence/paragraph level, where AI is risibly bad, dangerously so if you consider the confidence and polish of AI outputs.
Maybe that will emerge with bigger training sets and more processing power, but maybe it won't. For now it's showing why science and engineering (creativity is great, but it has to line up with reality) is best.
No wonder opinion mongers are by turn excited and terrified.
"Quiche is considered a French dish; however, using eggs and cream in pastry was practised in English cuisine at least as early as the 14th century and Italian cuisine at least as early as the 13th century. Recipes for eggs and cream baked in pastry containing meat, fish and fruit are referred to Crustardes of flesh and Crustade in the 14th-century The Forme of Cury and in 15th-century cookbooks, such as the Italian Libro de arte coquinaria."
0% tax. Literally, 0%. They don't care what you earn abroad. Just have private health insurance (which you would have anyway). You can rent a glam apartment in lower Sukhumvit for $1500 a month, and it will have gym and pool and be uber luxe
Come and go as you please, in essence - because they want the money you spend and the business you might generate
Countries are REALLY competing for the nomads. This is going to be a massive thing in years to come
I just checked and you can effectively buy freedom of movement into Thailand for 20 years for £50,000 with an ultimate privilege visa.
Interesting.
Yep, @Leon is right, that there’s huge competition out there for the Nomads - mostly people in tech companies, media, global sales etc, who can literally work from anywhere. The sort of people who might go to the office once a quarter.
Here in UAE, a locally-paid salary of $100k, or a $550k property investment with no mortgage, gets you a Golden Visa for 10 years.
They also have a specific Digital Nomad visa, which requires an overseas salary of only $42k, but renews annually.
There’s no income tax or capital gains tax, VAT is 5%, corporation tax is 9%, and you’ll need to buy health insurance for yourself and any dependents you bring with you.
"Citizens of Nowhere" with their rootless lack of interest in contributing anything to the nation that they temporarily live in, and with no intention of assimilating into. Just there until someone makes a better offer, and keeping their wealth abroad.
At one time we had a government that was opposed to such things, but Freedom of Movement for the rich only certainly seems to suit some.
TikTok management company that sounds rather like a cross between Scientology and a record label, with the performers themselves working long hours for little money under contract, while the people behind the company live in mansions and drive Ferraris.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
Its strength compared with say Google search, which also pretty good, is in the follow ups. Often you don't initially know what question you want to ask. ChatGPT can adapt the search to your responses just like in a real interview.
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
No. It has no notion of what factually correct information is. It's just grabbing a load of text from all over the place and splurging it together based on what has tended to be connected with what. It does pretty well all things considered though; It'll often come up with something that's like 90% correct and only 10% completely made up.
So, it's not that intelligent then?
Depends what you're trying to do. If it's creativity, floating free from factual truth, then the simple rate at which AI bots can churn out possibilities is an opportunity and a threat to practicioners.
But there's still an important spark missing, something about truth at a sentence/paragraph level, where AI is risibly bad, dangerously so if you consider the confidence and polish of AI outputs.
Maybe that will emerge with bigger training sets and more processing power, but maybe it won't. For now it's showing why science and engineering (creativity is great, but it has to line up with reality) is best.
No wonder opinion mongers are by turn excited and terrified.
It's contempt for facts and writing style of a US high school book report really limits anyone wanting to use it for an essay crisis.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
The way the BBC are reporting this is almost funny : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65301742 They focus on the reduction in vacancies, then mention a 0.1% increase in unemployment and don’t record the increase in employment at all. The bigger story, which they don’t mention either, is that there is another significant fall in the inactivity rate which allows both the increase in employment and the increase in unemployment. It may be that the weird increase in inactivity post Covid is starting to unwind.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
Sometimes completely inverting the meaning of the text by accident.
Which is why I still don't like it for unsupervised use cases or where you don't know what the answer should be.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
Sometimes completely inverting the meaning of the text by accident.
Which is why I still don't like it for unsupervised use cases or where you don't know what the answer should be.
(Because it literally is a fabulist, as @gardenwalker has said above.)
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
Well done. We had a massive queue at immigration at Heathrow T2 on the way home, with a nice bit of racial profiling thrown in just to remind us that we were back in the land of Brexit and Stop the Boats.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
Sometimes completely inverting the meaning of the text by accident.
Which is why I still don't like it for unsupervised use cases or where you don't know what the answer should be.
(Because it literally is a fabulist, as @gardenwalker has said above.)
I should say I'm talking about Bing Chat as an example of a GPT4-based summarization engine for its search results. GPT4 is a pretty strong summarization engine and, because it is working on the constrained dataset of the top search results, with the LLM tuned for minimal randomness, it is "wrong" no more than most of its source material.
You cannot use "chat gpt" itself as a search engine, even if it looks like you can.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
The IMF will be along soon to tell us how we are in a recession.
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
It's trained on very fallible data. Considering that, it's remarkable how good it is.
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
It's trained on very fallible data. Considering that, it's remarkable how good it is.
In the examples given above on voting results, that’s clearly not the problem. The data is accurate. The nature of how an LLM works means that it makes these sorts of errors.
0% tax. Literally, 0%. They don't care what you earn abroad. Just have private health insurance (which you would have anyway). You can rent a glam apartment in lower Sukhumvit for $1500 a month, and it will have gym and pool and be uber luxe
Come and go as you please, in essence - because they want the money you spend and the business you might generate
Countries are REALLY competing for the nomads. This is going to be a massive thing in years to come
I just checked and you can effectively buy freedom of movement into Thailand for 20 years for £50,000 with an ultimate privilege visa.
Interesting.
Yep, @Leon is right, that there’s huge competition out there for the Nomads - mostly people in tech companies, media, global sales etc, who can literally work from anywhere. The sort of people who might go to the office once a quarter.
Here in UAE, a locally-paid salary of $100k, or a $550k property investment with no mortgage, gets you a Golden Visa for 10 years.
They also have a specific Digital Nomad visa, which requires an overseas salary of only $42k, but renews annually.
There’s no income tax or capital gains tax, VAT is 5%, corporation tax is 9%, and you’ll need to buy health insurance for yourself and any dependents you bring with you.
"Citizens of Nowhere" with their rootless lack of interest in contributing anything to the nation that they temporarily live in, and with no intention of assimilating into. Just there until someone makes a better offer, and keeping their wealth abroad.
At one time we had a government that was opposed to such things, but Freedom of Movement for the rich only certainly seems to suit some.
Sounds rather like the expensively-trained NHS doctors, who want to move to Australia or Canada, because their million-pound taxpayer-funded pension pot just isn’t enough for them?
It’s good that Western governments can see limits to taxing the middle classes, because the level of income or “wealth” at which people can choose to emigrate, is now much lower than it was only a few years ago.
It’s good that Western governments can see limits to taxing the middle classes, because the level of income or “wealth” at which people can choose to emigrate, is now much lower than it was only a few years ago.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Yes. There has long been a paper economy and a real economy. On paper we're not in recession. In reality the economy has flatlined and inflation is crushing the joy out of people's lives.
When we had stagflation in the 1970s the politicians were man enough to point at it, say "that is a problem" and do unpopular things to make it go away. Now? Simply say things which aren't true (such as inflation is falling) and try and make out anyone seeing reality is a liar.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
I was down on the IoW over Easter weekend, beautifully sunny until the storms came through on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ferries were busy, but shops, restaurants and holiday parks not as busy as most years.
As always, there are people with money to spend. Of course we don't see those who stay home because they are skint.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
Do you not think that maybe the struggling people are the people you aren't seeing at M&S, on flights and in bars etc?
"The wisdom of the crowd works even if the crowd is totally drunk.
This study got undergrads intoxicated & found that while drunk individuals make a lot more errors, the consensus of groups of drunk people was as accurate as that of groups of sober people. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/42577847.pdf"
ChatGPT is basically crap at facts. It’s a total fabulist. It haven’t figured out why, but it lies without hesitation.
I say this as a someone who’s super excited generally about the opportunities presented by generative AI.
A system that, when asked for factual historical information, spits out random nonesense with an air of authority, is worse than not answering. It’s bloody dangerous to rely on it.
If you treat it as a very knowledgeable, but fallible person, then it's an extremely useful tool despite its limitations. How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly, Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
ChatGPT is a very smart and potentially very useful search tool. It falls down somewhat on the narratives it cobbles together, the bit that fascinates people. Tools are generally best when they do specific things.
ChatGPT isn't a search tool. The search tool is still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
While making the facts up if they don’t quite match the actual results.
It's trained on very fallible data. Considering that, it's remarkable how good it is.
In the examples given above on voting results, that’s clearly not the problem. The data is accurate. The nature of how an LLM works means that it makes these sorts of errors.
True. Impossible to trust it for any quantitative analysis - but that would, as I pointed out, also be true of PB.
Its value lies in it being able to do the stuff you don't have time to do, in a moment - for instance summarising very large bodies of text. Of course the results are anything but definitive, but they are useful.
No doubt more targeted tools which are better at specific things will be developed.
When we had stagflation in the 1970s the politicians were man enough to point at it, say "that is a problem" and do unpopular things to make it go away. Now? Simply say things which aren't true (such as inflation is falling) and try and make out anyone seeing reality is a liar.
The whole point of the article linked upthread that felix missed.
This government is dependent on innumeracy. If voters could count the Tories are fucked.
Currently a source of great irritation for US allies.
VW, Rivian, Nissan, BMW, Hyundai lose access to US EV tax credits https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349255 The U.S. Treasury said on Monday that Volkswagen, BMW, Nissan, Rivian, Hyundai and Volvo Cars electric vehicles will lose access to a $7,500 tax credit under new rules for battery sourcing.
The Treasury said the new requirements effective on Tuesday will also cut by half credits for the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Rear Wheel Drive to $3,750 but that other Tesla models will retain the full $7,500 credit.
Vehicles losing credits on Tuesday are the BMW 330e, BMW X5 xDrive45e, Genesis Electrified GV70, Nissan Leaf, Rivian R1S and R1T, Volkswagen ID.4 as well as the plug-in hybrid electric Audi Q5 TFSI e Quattro and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) Volvo S60. The Swedish carmaker is 82 percent-owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and are part of President Joe Biden's effort to make 50 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or PHEVs...
0% tax. Literally, 0%. They don't care what you earn abroad. Just have private health insurance (which you would have anyway). You can rent a glam apartment in lower Sukhumvit for $1500 a month, and it will have gym and pool and be uber luxe
Come and go as you please, in essence - because they want the money you spend and the business you might generate
Countries are REALLY competing for the nomads. This is going to be a massive thing in years to come
I just checked and you can effectively buy freedom of movement into Thailand for 20 years for £50,000 with an ultimate privilege visa.
Interesting.
Yep, @Leon is right, that there’s huge competition out there for the Nomads - mostly people in tech companies, media, global sales etc, who can literally work from anywhere. The sort of people who might go to the office once a quarter.
Here in UAE, a locally-paid salary of $100k, or a $550k property investment with no mortgage, gets you a Golden Visa for 10 years.
They also have a specific Digital Nomad visa, which requires an overseas salary of only $42k, but renews annually.
There’s no income tax or capital gains tax, VAT is 5%, corporation tax is 9%, and you’ll need to buy health insurance for yourself and any dependents you bring with you.
"Citizens of Nowhere" with their rootless lack of interest in contributing anything to the nation that they temporarily live in, and with no intention of assimilating into. Just there until someone makes a better offer, and keeping their wealth abroad.
At one time we had a government that was opposed to such things, but Freedom of Movement for the rich only certainly seems to suit some.
Sounds rather like the expensively-trained NHS doctors, who want to move to Australia or Canada, because their million-pound taxpayer-funded pension pot just isn’t enough for them?
It’s good that Western governments can see limits to taxing the middle classes, because the level of income or “wealth” at which people can choose to emigrate, is now much lower than it was only a few years ago.
It isn't the PAYE middle classes that are dodging tax this way, it is those who can offshore their earnings.
I am all in favour of migration. I come from a family that migrated in the nineteenth century and migrated back in the twentieth. We didn't shirk our tax and other social responsibilities either here or abroad though.
Leon seems to want to cry crocodile tears for the Red Wall, but not pay any tax to mitigate their social needs.
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
When we had stagflation in the 1970s the politicians were man enough to point at it, say "that is a problem" and do unpopular things to make it go away. Now? Simply say things which aren't true (such as inflation is falling) and try and make out anyone seeing reality is a liar.
The whole point of the article linked upthread that felix missed.
This government is dependent on innumeracy. If voters could count the Tories are fucked.
Who said Remain lost because many of its advocates despised large chunks of the electorate?
Interesting perspective on the SNP's struggle to find an auditor:
Did BBC Seven Days yesterday and @jessicainsall - accountant and former auditor - gave a really interesting perspective on why the SNP has been struggling to find a replacement auditor. Have a listen 👇🏼 A perspective I hadn’t picked up before. @BBCScotNine[VIDEO]
1) Auditors are businesses and have to run at a profit - if you're doing an Audit and not making a profit why are you doing the audit? Raises question mark over your impartiality. 2) The SNP's accounts may be in a bit of a mess - so an audit is going to be expensive. 3) Does the SNP have the cash to pay for the audit?
If the audit is er…. Not in the favour of the SNP, this will make the auditing firm a target for a lot of ill will. Both personal and political.
"Quiche is considered a French dish; however, using eggs and cream in pastry was practised in English cuisine at least as early as the 14th century and Italian cuisine at least as early as the 13th century. Recipes for eggs and cream baked in pastry containing meat, fish and fruit are referred to Crustardes of flesh and Crustade in the 14th-century The Forme of Cury and in 15th-century cookbooks, such as the Italian Libro de arte coquinaria."
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
No. It has no notion of what factually correct information is. It's just grabbing a load of text from all over the place and splurging it together based on what has tended to be connected with what. It does pretty well all things considered though; It'll often come up with something that's like 90% correct and only 10% completely made up.
So, it's not that intelligent then?
Depends what you're trying to do. If it's creativity, floating free from factual truth, then the simple rate at which AI bots can churn out possibilities is an opportunity and a threat to practicioners.
But there's still an important spark missing, something about truth at a sentence/paragraph level, where AI is risibly bad, dangerously so if you consider the confidence and polish of AI outputs.
Maybe that will emerge with bigger training sets and more processing power, but maybe it won't. For now it's showing why science and engineering (creativity is great, but it has to line up with reality) is best.
No wonder opinion mongers are by turn excited and terrified.
I think it's just a very sophisticated research engine.
I can definitely see how it can boost productivity, of humans. I've used it recently to help me put together presentation with "key points" for an explanation of megaproject architecture.
Now, I know megaproject architecture inside and out but it's much faster than me consulting my notes, textbook and memory to craft something from scratch - and I can simply tap in the sort of subjects I want to cover, delete the repetition/nonsense, add in my own points, and focus on the conclusions I want to get across.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
I was down on the IoW over Easter weekend, beautifully sunny until the storms came through on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ferries were busy, but shops, restaurants and holiday parks not as busy as most years.
As always, there are people with money to spend. Of course we don't see those who stay home because they are skint.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Food inflation will have somewhat of a lag effect because of items like fertiliser - 2022 food was produced using fertiliser bought in 2021, 2023 food is being used with fertiliser bought in 2022 and the price of the latter surged because of the effects of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. How much of the current price rises is down to the fertiliser effect, I'm not sure but I would imagine it is significant.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
Archaeology, along with geography, is one of the few superpower degrees. If I have an opportunity to hire a grad in those subjects, I jump at it. Most are maths literate, critical thinkers with an ability to solve both practical & theoretical problems, work in teams, and string a sentence together.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Not really. Minack is lovely but one token bit does not a representation make.
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
Maths is really great and important but this initiative smells strongly of gimmick and an effort to distract from the real problem in education - years of chronic underfunding.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
I think it was posted here yesterday, or possibly seen on Twitter, but someone asked ChatGP for a list of torrent websites and received a lecture on how downloading torrents was illegal. So they next asked given it’s illegal can I have a list of websites to avoid - and was promptly given one!
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Not really. Minack is lovely but one token bit does not a representation make.
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Food inflation will have somewhat of a lag effect because of items like fertiliser - 2022 food was produced using fertiliser bought in 2021, 2023 food is being used with fertiliser bought in 2022 and the price of the latter surged because of the effects of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. How much of the current price rises is down to the fertiliser effect, I'm not sure but I would imagine it is significant.
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
Archaeology, along with geography, is one of the few superpower degrees. If I have an opportunity to hire a grad in those subjects, I jump at it. Most are maths literate, critical thinkers with an ability to solve both practical & theoretical problems, work in teams, and string a sentence together.
The case for the prosecution offers up Neil Oliver..
Is ChatGPT always supposed to give factually correct information? I just asked it about some constituency results at the 1992 general election and the information it gave was totally wrong. For example, it says the Labour majority in Walthamstow was 9,316 votes when in fact it was 3,022 votes. Maybe this type of information isn't its strong point, and Wikipedia can provide it. But still.
I think it was posted here yesterday, or possibly seen on Twitter, but someone asked ChatGP for a list of torrent websites and received a lecture on how downloading torrents was illegal. So they next asked given it’s illegal can I have a list of websites to avoid - and was promptly given one!
In a person that would be viewed as malicious compliance.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Some things are rising higher than the official inflation rate, and some things are rising lower.
Some things are even falling in price - a litre of unleaded is 10% cheaper today, in money terms, than it was a year ago. Give it a couple of months, and petrol will likely be 30% cheaper year-on-year. https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
Archaeology, along with geography, is one of the few superpower degrees. If I have an opportunity to hire a grad in those subjects, I jump at it. Most are maths literate, critical thinkers with an ability to solve both practical & theoretical problems, work in teams, and string a sentence together.
Declaring an obvious interest (!) I tend to agree. All the stuff you say is correct, and a big part of archaeology is interpreting incomplete data - which means looking at past research, making decisions based on best possible evidence rather than seeking perfect evidence. Much of working life is like that - we play poker, not chess.
I work in marketing now, but it's interesting how much the raw skills of archaeology transfer over.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Not really. Minack is lovely but one token bit does not a representation make.
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
This entire discussion is about token bits if the BBC output.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
Well done. We had a massive queue at immigration at Heathrow T2 on the way home, with a nice bit of racial profiling thrown in just to remind us that we were back in the land of Brexit and Stop the Boats.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Food inflation will have somewhat of a lag effect because of items like fertiliser - 2022 food was produced using fertiliser bought in 2021, 2023 food is being used with fertiliser bought in 2022 and the price of the latter surged because of the effects of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. How much of the current price rises is down to the fertiliser effect, I'm not sure but I would imagine it is significant.
Meat prices are sky high and getting ever higher.
The Australian meat can’t arrive soon enough then. Same with the Ukranian grain that the EU don’t seem to want.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Not really. Minack is lovely but one token bit does not a representation make.
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
Currently a source of great irritation for US allies.
VW, Rivian, Nissan, BMW, Hyundai lose access to US EV tax credits https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349255 The U.S. Treasury said on Monday that Volkswagen, BMW, Nissan, Rivian, Hyundai and Volvo Cars electric vehicles will lose access to a $7,500 tax credit under new rules for battery sourcing.
The Treasury said the new requirements effective on Tuesday will also cut by half credits for the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Rear Wheel Drive to $3,750 but that other Tesla models will retain the full $7,500 credit.
Vehicles losing credits on Tuesday are the BMW 330e, BMW X5 xDrive45e, Genesis Electrified GV70, Nissan Leaf, Rivian R1S and R1T, Volkswagen ID.4 as well as the plug-in hybrid electric Audi Q5 TFSI e Quattro and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) Volvo S60. The Swedish carmaker is 82 percent-owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and are part of President Joe Biden's effort to make 50 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or PHEVs...
Biden has accepted the analysis that the disruption caused by moving to the EVs offers an opportunity for the US car industry to take back a large portion of its own market.
Tesla showed the way.
There was some interesting pleading from Big Auto in Congress. They wanted the definitions extended to “The American Continent”, so they could do much of the work in Mexico. It is of interest that they didn’t get that.
EDIT: the battery out sourcing to China is the classic business move for the kind of business leaders who feel uncomfortable with business or leadership. Much easier to buy the batteries in, rather than managed a large, complex operation.
When we had stagflation in the 1970s the politicians were man enough to point at it, say "that is a problem" and do unpopular things to make it go away. Now? Simply say things which aren't true (such as inflation is falling) and try and make out anyone seeing reality is a liar.
The whole point of the article linked upthread that felix missed.
This government is dependent on innumeracy. If voters could count the Tories are fucked.
I'd only you knew the difference between 52 and 48...
No matter that the current incumbent had a maths geek past; that just makes him the sort of guy whose political bedfellows, probably while wearing tailcoats, would have thrown in a pond. Never have the sniggeringly innumerate been more powerful than they have been for the past decade. And never have those in power been more inclined to ignore or disparage anyone who told them the numbers just didn’t add up.
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
"I don't want to bang on about Brexit ' but.,,....................,. .........bang.......bang......bang......
Getting lectured in numeracy bu someone who thinks that 4% and 0.08% are the same is kind of galling.
I do understand a bit of the impetus behind 'maths to 18', but (setting aside the chronic shortage of maths teachers), it's things like ratios, logic, statistics etc. that seem most relevant and helpful in everyday life (that and working our darts finishes). Strikes me maybe as an curriculum issue in the KS2/3/4 rather than 'do two more years of trig'.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
Archaeology, along with geography, is one of the few superpower degrees. If I have an opportunity to hire a grad in those subjects, I jump at it. Most are maths literate, critical thinkers with an ability to solve both practical & theoretical problems, work in teams, and string a sentence together.
The case for the prosecution offers up Neil Oliver..
Suspect Glasgow's archaeology dept may well have been a glorified ancient history faculty, as a few of the red brick depts are. You'll learn a lot more actual archaeology at Bradford, Lampeter, and (oddly) Cambridge than e.g. Manchester, Birmingham and others. Sheffield did a proper job though.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
That article also says that prices are starting to fall, though.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Indeed and the average Brit flying to typical EU holiday destinations has a different experience. BTW I make it a rule to ignore patronizing pricks but I make an exception for you. Once.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
Private sector driving inflation?
Not driving inflation because that’s 13% but easily putting a limit on the level it can fall to because of the cost impacts 7% increases will be having.
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment. \it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
Meanwhile,
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
Some things are rising higher than the official inflation rate, and some things are rising lower.
Some things are even falling in price - a litre of unleaded is 10% cheaper today, in money terms, than it was a year ago. Give it a couple of months, and petrol will likely be 30% cheaper year-on-year. https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
Not sure about the petrol here in Spain, unleaded is rising again and the food inflation seems as bad as in the UK, except we don't get many meal deal offers, etc. Brexit is hitting hard...😂😊. Thankfully the sun won't stop shining - barely a drop rain this year in my pueblo.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Indeed and the average Brit flying to typical EU holiday destinations has a different experience. BTW I make it a rule to ignore patronizing pricks but I make an exception for you. Once.
I'm flying via Schiphol in a couple of weeks to Paris (cheaper and more convenient than the other options). Because of the timing of the flight the queue to enter Schengen will take 2 minutes max.
Equally the last flight I take French border control was at the gate to stamp our passports. That was mainly because at CDG the biggest planes can only land at an international terminal so everyone had to leave France to get to the plane and return to France when they entered it but that spoils the story somewhat.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
A highly niche whinge there not actually true if you view the clip. Cornwall is pretty provincial. If you like green stuff, look at the previous idents.
I've just been watching the BBC idents that were used between 2002 and 2006, and the interesting thing about them is that they celebrate just about everything except anything that might be described as "provincial/rural England".
Not entirely true. The Salsa class looks like it's happening in a generic provincial church/village hall, and the ballerinas are in the gorgeous Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
You don't get much more provincial than the Minack, as anyone who has walked or driven there will know!
PB is home of confirmation bias. You see what you want to see.
Not really. Minack is lovely but one token bit does not a representation make.
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
This entire discussion is about token bits if the BBC output.
Not just that, but bits of output from twenty years ago. Since then, we've had circles, groups of people staring at the screen, lockdown life and the current "same place at different times" films.
And the worst you can say about the current indents is that it's a women's football team in one of them.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Indeed and the average Brit flying to typical EU holiday destinations has a different experience. BTW I make it a rule to ignore patronizing pricks but I make an exception for you. Once.
It won’t take long before those countries wanting to attract visitors sort themselves out. There’s rarely any queues at the airports out here, because these small countries sell themselves on the airport being simple and efficient. Brits on visit visas can use the e-gate on the way out.
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Indeed and the average Brit flying to typical EU holiday destinations has a different experience. BTW I make it a rule to ignore patronizing pricks but I make an exception for you. Once.
How was that patronising. We did discuss it a few weeks ago. Several pointed out the same thing then. You have ignored it. We have discussed stuff before and always pleasantly. We have both liked each others posts. Apologies if it came over patronising. It wasn't intended to be. I was just posting what I thought were facts and wasn't intending to insult.
Re average Brits- Do you not think average Brits use Dover, Rome airport, Heathrow, Stockholm, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, etc, etc, etc?
R4 had a piece on the bloke who won a Sony Creative prize for photography with an AI generated image. I did a search on twitter and initially it came with a load of unfeasibly large breasted women with the faces of 12 year olds but I eventually found the actual pic. Impossible to tell with hindsight but is there a touch of tell tale exaggeration and caricature in the image?
Employment up another 160k, private sector pay up 6.9%, what recession?
My Easter break saw retail, garden centres, supermarkets, esp M and S, bars and restaurants/cafes absolutely rammed. There was zero sign of anyone struggling anywhere. And of course both ways the flight was packed and each time I was in to land and out of the airports in 10 minutes...
So having had the airport queues explained and the cause and circumstances of the queues a week or two ago you are going to ignore it. The queues usually come about when you coincide with large planes from non EU places, typically to major airports. I have flown and like you just walked through border control, yet at Lisbon I waited 3 hours while the EU gate was empty because we landed at the same time as flights from the USA .
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Indeed and the average Brit flying to typical EU holiday destinations has a different experience. BTW I make it a rule to ignore patronizing pricks but I make an exception for you. Once.
It won’t take long before those countries wanting to attract visitors sort themselves out. There’s rarely any queues at the airports out here, because these small countries sell themselves on the airport being simple and efficient. Brits on visit visas can use the e-gate on the way out.
Maybe they'll decide not to bother.
After all, Britain has decided to nuke its school groups / language school industry by requiring individual passports from schoolchildren.
Not everything is about money, as we're often reminded here when the UK does things that will make the country poorer.
Comments
https://mobile.twitter.com/Harry_Stevens/status/1647776967465349121
Even in aggregate (though there, obviously, they are far more often right than not).
How is that description different from say a PB commenter ? Yet PB is also a useful source if information.
The difference is that its knowledge base is much wider, and it produces answers far more quickly,
Just be aware that if you're relying on it for anything important, checking its shit is essential.
“Big Mouse” is a huge political donor, the vast majority of which goes to Democrats and organisations pushing cultural stuff (think the American version of Stonewall, and BLM). Their parks are covered in Pride flags and staff wear pronoun badges, their movies are increasingly seen as preachy, that sort of thing.
Libertarians also really hate them, for their long-standing advocacy for extending intellectual property rights. One 1998 Bill that extended copyright terms was knows as “The Mickey Mouse Protection Act”, because Disney donated to so many politicians to get it through Congress, just before Mickey was about to become public domain.
In Florida specifically, they basically pay no taxes on the theme park and surrounding hotels, because the whole area is designated as a massive free zone. This is what DeSantis has been trying to rectify in recent months, and actively annoying them seems to be part of the plan.
https://www.katebushencyclopedia.com/wuthering-heights
The difference between the Biden and Trump on this is that the former recognises the massive economic benefit of subsidising your industry to undergo paradigm shifts.
Something the UK has failed at miserably in this case.
It's not pandering; it's economic common sense.
Interesting.
Utterly Met in every way.
Here in UAE, a locally-paid salary of $100k, or a $550k property investment with no mortgage, gets you a Golden Visa for 10 years.
They also have a specific Digital Nomad visa, which requires an overseas salary of only $42k, but renews annually.
There’s no income tax or capital gains tax, VAT is 5%, corporation tax is 9%, and you’ll need to buy health insurance for yourself and any dependents you bring with you.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/17/george-santos-2024-reelection-00092406
Definitely a bias towards the young, funky and urban, but not a complete one.
But there's still an important spark missing, something about truth at a sentence/paragraph level, where AI is risibly bad, dangerously so if you consider the confidence and polish of AI outputs.
Maybe that will emerge with bigger training sets and more processing power, but maybe it won't. For now it's showing why science and engineering (creativity is great, but it has to line up with reality) is best.
No wonder opinion mongers are by turn excited and terrified.
"Quiche is considered a French dish; however, using eggs and cream in pastry was practised in English cuisine at least as early as the 14th century and Italian cuisine at least as early as the 13th century. Recipes for eggs and cream baked in pastry containing meat, fish and fruit are referred to Crustardes of flesh and Crustade in the 14th-century The Forme of Cury and in 15th-century cookbooks, such as the Italian Libro de arte coquinaria."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiche#History
At one time we had a government that was opposed to such things, but Freedom of Movement for the rich only certainly seems to suit some.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/7m-dancers-sue-alleging-robert-shinn-runs-cult-1234701158/
TikTok management company that sounds rather like a cross between Scientology and a record label, with the performers themselves working long hours for little money under contract, while the people behind the company live in mansions and drive Ferraris.
https://youtu.be/KwNBDbMqOA8
Remember the only way to kill inflation is to destroy the reason why costs are rising (via high unemployment that allows wages to remain stagnant and fall in real terms) and the conditions for that clearly don’t exist at the moment.
\it’s weird though as IT investment spending seems to have fallen off a cliff..
I don’t want to bang on about Brexit. We’re over Brexit. Recall, though, that every credible economist in the world told us how much it would hurt, and the winning side got away with telling them to bog off back to their spreadsheets. And it didn’t end there. Would a party that valued the ability to count have elected a bumbling Balliol Classicist who had to text his chief science adviser, as Johnson did mid-pandemic, to learn the difference between a ratio and a percentage? Would it have replaced him with Liz Truss?
Does the maths of small boats — 45,756 arrivals in 2022 — offer any justification for putting 500 people on a barge, or one day sending a couple of hundred more to Rwanda?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-ministers-who-have-the-anti-maths-mindset-7ldr5ht3s
still the search tool, and the "ChatGPT" bit summarizes text from the results.
They focus on the reduction in vacancies, then mention a 0.1% increase in unemployment and don’t record the increase in employment at all.
The bigger story, which they don’t mention either, is that there is another significant fall in the inactivity rate which allows both the increase in employment and the increase in unemployment. It may be that the weird increase in inactivity post Covid is starting to unwind.
Which is why I still don't like it for unsupervised use cases or where you don't know what the answer should be.
.........bang.......bang......bang......
You cannot use "chat gpt" itself as a search engine, even if it looks like you can.
Food inflation increased to 17.2 per cent on average in the year to March, up from 16.5 per cent in the year to February, the consumer group Which? said.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d51dc7ac-dd62-11ed-9cc2-0f7e26ed83eb?shareToken=72aab801645b0097cdf730526c8d65b3
There's something curious going on where prices are rising faster than wages, are still accelerating in some cases, and yet some commentators are saying "this is fine".
Two nations and all that, but how is this compatible with rising living standards? Experienced GDP vs. statistical GDP, if you like.
It’s good that Western governments can see limits to taxing the middle classes, because the level of income or “wealth” at which people can choose to emigrate, is now much lower than it was only a few years ago.
When we had stagflation in the 1970s the politicians were man enough to point at it, say "that is a problem" and do unpopular things to make it go away. Now? Simply say things which aren't true (such as inflation is falling) and try and make out anyone seeing reality is a liar.
As always, there are people with money to spend. Of course we don't see those who stay home because they are skint.
"The wisdom of the crowd works even if the crowd is totally drunk.
This study got undergrads intoxicated & found that while drunk individuals make a lot more errors, the consensus of groups of drunk people was as accurate as that of groups of sober people. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/42577847.pdf"
https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1647979761413521413
Impossible to trust it for any quantitative analysis - but that would, as I pointed out, also be true of PB.
Its value lies in it being able to do the stuff you don't have time to do, in a moment - for instance summarising very large bodies of text.
Of course the results are anything but definitive, but they are useful.
No doubt more targeted tools which are better at specific things will be developed.
This government is dependent on innumeracy. If voters could count the Tories are fucked.
VW, Rivian, Nissan, BMW, Hyundai lose access to US EV tax credits
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349255
The U.S. Treasury said on Monday that Volkswagen, BMW, Nissan, Rivian, Hyundai and Volvo Cars electric vehicles will lose access to a $7,500 tax credit under new rules for battery sourcing.
The Treasury said the new requirements effective on Tuesday will also cut by half credits for the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Rear Wheel Drive to $3,750 but that other Tesla models will retain the full $7,500 credit.
Vehicles losing credits on Tuesday are the BMW 330e, BMW X5 xDrive45e, Genesis Electrified GV70, Nissan Leaf, Rivian R1S and R1T, Volkswagen ID.4 as well as the plug-in hybrid electric Audi Q5 TFSI e Quattro and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) Volvo S60. The Swedish carmaker is 82 percent-owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and are part of President Joe Biden's effort to make 50 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or PHEVs...
I am all in favour of migration. I come from a family that migrated in the nineteenth century and migrated back in the twentieth. We didn't shirk our tax and other social responsibilities either here or abroad though.
Leon seems to want to cry crocodile tears for the Red Wall, but not pay any tax to mitigate their social needs.
In passing, I've no doubt that I learned more useful maths in my archaeology degree - a module on applied use of statistics - than I did in my GCSE maths.
A term which moderately amusingly comes from the Old French.
I can definitely see how it can boost productivity, of humans. I've used it recently to help me put together presentation with "key points" for an explanation of megaproject architecture.
Now, I know megaproject architecture inside and out but it's much faster than me consulting my notes, textbook and memory to craft something from scratch - and I can simply tap in the sort of subjects I want to cover, delete the repetition/nonsense, add in my own points, and focus on the conclusions I want to get across.
Faster.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349260
It's like those who used to argue that the BBC couldn't be institutionally left-wing because Jeremy Clarkson was on it.
Same principle as coaches at ports. If you introduce a bottle neck that wasn't there before there will be queues. It isn't rocket science.
Some things are even falling in price - a litre of unleaded is 10% cheaper today, in money terms, than it was a year ago. Give it a couple of months, and petrol will likely be 30% cheaper year-on-year.
https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
I work in marketing now, but it's interesting how much the raw skills of archaeology transfer over.
Tesla showed the way.
There was some interesting pleading from Big Auto in Congress. They wanted the definitions extended to “The American Continent”, so they could do much of the work in Mexico. It is of interest that they didn’t get that.
EDIT: the battery out sourcing to China is the classic business move for the kind of business leaders who feel uncomfortable with business or leadership. Much easier to buy the batteries in, rather than managed a large, complex operation.
To some extent: inflation is a lagging indicator.
Equally the last flight I take French border control was at the gate to stamp our passports. That was mainly because at CDG the biggest planes can only land at an international terminal so everyone had to leave France to get to the plane and return to France when they entered it but that spoils the story somewhat.
Don't like the competition?
And the worst you can say about the current indents is that it's a women's football team in one of them.
Re average Brits- Do you not think average Brits use Dover, Rome airport, Heathrow, Stockholm, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, etc, etc, etc?
Impossible to tell with hindsight but is there a touch of tell tale exaggeration and caricature in the image?
After all, Britain has decided to nuke its school groups / language school industry by requiring individual passports from schoolchildren.
Not everything is about money, as we're often reminded here when the UK does things that will make the country poorer.