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The Saturday open thread – politicalbetting.com

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  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    RobD said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    What's going to happen to the steel produced by the new process then, isn't that going to substitute the stuff currently produced?
    Yes that is a good thing but the idea it comes close to replacing 2 blast furnaces is ridiculous.

    In Scotland we have the tragedy of Grangemouth. In Wales we have Port Talbot. Another disaster.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    AI is terrifyingly good in so many ways

    FUCK

    If you haven't already, get a copy of LM Studio or GPT4All and start downloading custom (uncensored) LLMs from huggingface.co/thebloke

    (Assuming your computer can handle it - you'll need a decent graphics card or an M1/M2/M3 mac).
    I very much doubt my computer can handle it, and I am annoyingly illiterate at complex coding. Is it hard to do?
    If you don't have the above hardware (e.g. you have a bog standard pc laptop), you won't be able to run the models.

    It used to be hard to do because you had to install software at the command line, but now it's relatively easy with LM studio or GPT4All which are one click installs. Then you download a single file containing your LLM (TheBloke is reliable), load it into LM Studio, and chat like it's chatgpt.

    But you'll need a PC with an up to date non-integrated graphics card (e.g. an Nvidia 3090 or later) or an M1/M2/M3 mac to do it.

    If you don't have the hardware, there are instructions here on how to run your own models in the cloud (up to 120 billion parameters, I can only run 13b models at home), but that gets a bit more complex - https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/18sqf84/what_is_the_most_cost_effective_way_to_run/

    Edit: even if you can't run this stuff yourself, I strongly suggest you check out the open source community just to see how fast things are moving. It's getting like being able to 3d print a nuclear bomb at home with a 9gb download... the idea that OpenAI or whoever can keep a lid on it is for the birds.
    Yes, I agree it is going open source and soon we will get un-nerfed versions, as well. Mind-blowing potential

    OpenAI should cash in their chips, now

    I still can't get over that Milei video. Done in REAL TIME? That means you can go anywhere in the world and get people to talk into your phone and you will see, on your screen, them talking in English with their lips moving in sync and all entirely convincing

    So you then just connect that to special glasses you wear abroad, which will translate everyone and everything in real time, like you are a native speaker at home, chatting away

    Actors, comedians, polticians, TV personae, anyone who wants an international audience can now do it, flawlessly. Tom Hanks can be a star in Albania talking in perfect and convincing Albanian

    What does it mean for human language??? It's so immense it's hard to extrapolate
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930

    RobD said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    What's going to happen to the steel produced by the new process then, isn't that going to substitute the stuff currently produced?

    "Where is the analysis that a country the size of the UK, with an ambition to rewire its electricity grid and reboot its entire energy sector, can do it without virgin steel?"

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2024/jan/19/tata-port-talbot-decision-goes-beyond-wales-steel-energy-sector
    It would certainly be interesting to read what products can and cannot use the recycled stuff. They wouldn't be building the thing here if there wouldn't be at least some local demand.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,523
    edited January 20
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023
    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,612

    RobD said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    What's going to happen to the steel produced by the new process then, isn't that going to substitute the stuff currently produced?

    "Where is the analysis that a country the size of the UK, with an ambition to rewire its electricity grid and reboot its entire energy sector, can do it without virgin steel?"

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2024/jan/19/tata-port-talbot-decision-goes-beyond-wales-steel-energy-sector
    Nils Pratley is always a worthwhile read on business matters.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,883

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,280
    Leon said:

    AI is terrifyingly good in so many ways

    FUCK

    Spin the bottle time

    AI
    woke
    UFOs
    Putin
    Aren’t I wonderful
    All of the above
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,947
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    AI is terrifyingly good in so many ways

    FUCK

    If you haven't already, get a copy of LM Studio or GPT4All and start downloading custom (uncensored) LLMs from huggingface.co/thebloke

    (Assuming your computer can handle it - you'll need a decent graphics card or an M1/M2/M3 mac).
    I very much doubt my computer can handle it, and I am annoyingly illiterate at complex coding. Is it hard to do?
    If you don't have the above hardware (e.g. you have a bog standard pc laptop), you won't be able to run the models.

    It used to be hard to do because you had to install software at the command line, but now it's relatively easy with LM studio or GPT4All which are one click installs. Then you download a single file containing your LLM (TheBloke is reliable), load it into LM Studio, and chat like it's chatgpt.

    But you'll need a PC with an up to date non-integrated graphics card (e.g. an Nvidia 3090 or later) or an M1/M2/M3 mac to do it.

    If you don't have the hardware, there are instructions here on how to run your own models in the cloud (up to 120 billion parameters, I can only run 13b models at home), but that gets a bit more complex - https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/18sqf84/what_is_the_most_cost_effective_way_to_run/

    Edit: even if you can't run this stuff yourself, I strongly suggest you check out the open source community just to see how fast things are moving. It's getting like being able to 3d print a nuclear bomb at home with a 9gb download... the idea that OpenAI or whoever can keep a lid on it is for the birds.
    Yes, I agree it is going open source and soon we will get un-nerfed versions, as well. Mind-blowing potential

    OpenAI should cash in their chips, now

    I still can't get over that Milei video. Done in REAL TIME? That means you can go anywhere in the world and get people to talk into your phone and you will see, on your screen, them talking in English with their lips moving in sync and all entirely convincing

    So you then just connect that to special glasses you wear abroad, which will translate everyone and everything in real time, like you are a native speaker at home, chatting away

    Actors, comedians, polticians, TV personae, anyone who wants an international audience can now do it, flawlessly. Tom Hanks can be a star in Albania talking in perfect and convincing Albanian

    What does it mean for human language??? It's so immense it's hard to extrapolate
    Amazingly the good guy in the open source story is... Mark Zuckerberg.

    Most open source models are based on meta's llama model, which they continue to upgrade and release for free.

    The obvious aim is to break the openai/google duopoly, but for now Zuck is our best hope for free, uncensored, open source ai. Whoda thunk it?
  • PJHPJH Posts: 645
    Dura_Ace said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    You would need the fences because the bennies would shoot them on sight.
    It would be a very long boggy walk just to get to the nearest sheep ranch if you put it in the right place
  • PJHPJH Posts: 645
    Leon said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    That's actually quite a good idea, expensive, but it would probably work

    The Falklanders would complain but then we would say "Er, do you want to be defended from Argentina, or not"?

    End of argument
    Would it really be more expensive than any alternative? Stopping at source seems to be near impossible, ditto breaking up the gangs, and stopping the boats is impossible short of a border guard with a rifle every hundred metres from Littlehampton to Whitstable.

    It's got to be cheaper per head than Rwanda.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,230

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,935
    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Not even the Scottish Campervan Enthusiasts WhatsApp group?
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,280
    Leon said:

    Jesus fucking Christ. That Milei AI translation was done in REAL TIME


    https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/ai-translates-argentinian-presidents-address-at-world-economic-forum-in-real-time-article-106976390


    I am seldom hyperbolic on this site, I leave that to the likes of @kle4, but this is a massive moment in human history. This is Babelfish, but better - because the lips move very convincingly

    This is potentially the end of languages dividing us, as a species

    Genesis 11:6-7

    And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    This time next year we'll be watching an inauguration (or a civil war). Let's all hope for the outcome of maximum comedic potential. DJT 270 - JRB 268
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
  • PJHPJH Posts: 645
    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    And that's one of the problem the Tories have - there's nobody in that list who is obviously better than Sunak. Sunak is a bit rubbish, but he is an improvement on his two predecessors.

    Hunt and Gove would probably be much better PMs in practice, but would never be elected either by the party (Hunt) or country (Gove). The others to me are all either meh or repellent, even if they appeal to various sections of right-wing opinion.

    The other problem they face if they change leaders is that come the GE, all Labour has to do is to ask "how long do you think you will be Prime Minister?" And laugh.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    Yes.

    Boundary Dam 1 million tpa CO2
    Petra Nova 1.5 million tpa CO2

    Plants springing up across Europe. Final Investment Decisions on the UK's "Track 1" projects due in the coming months, with the Track 1 Expansion and Track 2 processes underway.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,935
    DavidL said:

    RobD said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    What's going to happen to the steel produced by the new process then, isn't that going to substitute the stuff currently produced?
    Yes that is a good thing but the idea it comes close to replacing 2 blast furnaces is ridiculous.

    In Scotland we have the tragedy of Grangemouth. In Wales we have Port Talbot. Another disaster.
    I agree with the national security importance of continuing to produce our own steel, as well as our own oil and gas. If we really want security of steel production, we need to reopen iron ore mines. Otherwise, producing our own virgin steel could be stopped by a shipping blockade.

    I believe that a party whose manifesto included financially supporting our core industries would be broadly popular, apart from the Greens and economic libertarians, both groups being just noisy minorities.

    However, since Thatcher, such ideas have not been considered, by any party.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,280
    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,996
    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,814

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    I’m just amazed she can remember, given how patchy her memory tends to be when questioned.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,935
    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    That's actually quite a good idea, expensive, but it would probably work

    The Falklanders would complain but then we would say "Er, do you want to be defended from Argentina, or not"?

    End of argument
    Would it really be more expensive than any alternative? Stopping at source seems to be near impossible, ditto breaking up the gangs, and stopping the boats is impossible short of a border guard with a rifle every hundred metres from Littlehampton to Whitstable.

    It's got to be cheaper per head than Rwanda.
    What about using the Channel Islands? They’re not in the EU. Close to France, so not too far for the small boats to travel.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,912
    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    That's actually quite a good idea, expensive, but it would probably work

    The Falklanders would complain but then we would say "Er, do you want to be defended from Argentina, or not"?

    End of argument
    Would it really be more expensive than any alternative? Stopping at source seems to be near impossible, ditto breaking up the gangs, and stopping the boats is impossible short of a border guard with a rifle every hundred metres from Littlehampton to Whitstable.

    It's got to be cheaper per head than Rwanda.
    There was a report the other day that Rishi has stopped the boats so well (with a little help from the weather gods) that the traffickers are taking another look at lorries.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,996

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    The zoomers' pitch earlier was "it doesn't matter if there are no whatsapp messages cos the Government didn't run on whatsapp", neglecting the fact that Nippy also kept no diary (aye, right) and there are no minutes of any meetings
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Leon said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    boulay said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    Furthermore, if we want to strut across the world stage, that's an expensive thing to do. We- literally- have to earn the right to do it. And we haven't really been doing that for quite some time.
    There is absolutely no point in the UK having a military role on the world stage. There is so little practically we can do v China, India, Iran with the size of our military apart from being a mascot alongside the US if anything happens.

    The UK military should be purely geared for defending the UK and defending Europe if attacked. Sell the aircraft carriers and spend the money on kit that will work against relevant direct threats - anti missile tech and anti submarine tech. Build strong air defences and buy the correct off the shelf combat vehicles and drones (buy manufacturing rights and build in UK if possible). Keep a very good level of soldiers and marines (Schapps is a dick) who can integrate with other NATO and European forces in areas of potential threat.

    There is no need to be involved anywhere else anymore as we don’t carry even a medium stick and are not particularly keen to use the stick we have properly as we won’t accept military losses.

    There is no point people asking for a large army and navy if no kids want to join anymore because it’s hard, uncomfortable, badly laid and shit living conditions so just focus on what we actually need to do rather than dreams of adventures around the world.
    Except that the Houthi crisis shows that our interests can absolutely be threatened by hostile actors doing hostile shit, a long way away

    If the Houthis manage to close the Red Sea, that means a global recession, especially in energy and import dependant Europe. So we need to be able handle stuff like that

    What is your alternative? Rely on the Americans? I have two answers for you:

    1. President Donald Trump

    2. America is energy self sufficient: it actually has less need for safe Red Sea shiplanes than us

    So, yeah, we actually do need armed forces. We need a big enough army that can make a difference if dropped into a war, we definitely need a navy and airforce and drones. And we need AI to make it all harder and better

    @Casino_Royale is right. The era of the peace dividend is over
    I used to believe in a global British military presence/capability but find it completely undeliverable now.

    You are right that the Houthi situation needs dealing with but why is it the US and us doing it? Why is the UK firing a number of nurse’s salaries (and the US firing a number of hospital new builds) to keep trade flowing whilst the likes of Italy do fuck all and say “cheers guys, we can keep selling Gucci loafers to China”. Why isn’t China being called out to help - they need to be shamed for being more interested in political games than keeping trade, which they rely on, smooth.

    So if we are going to be Robin to the US Batman then we need to get other countries who benefit from our risk and cost to pony up towards it. I can understand why Trump has issues with NATO because there are free riders. If Europe shows it’s making a serious effort then the Us even under Trump are more likely to step up in a real emergency rather than say “you did fuck all and relaxed on our dime so tough.”

    What we can do best is ensure Europe is so well defended that if it’s in Europe’s interests (as a continent not the EU) to help out or intervene outside Europe then we can do so better with better integrated forces and kit to share the burden.

    As it stands being able to send an aircraft carrier to the pacific without a Royal naval escort fleet is just pointless.

    So I agree entirely we need a big and skilled and well equipped army, navy and airforce ready to be dropped into a war and be very effective but that should be focussed on Europe and should be matched by all those countries who benefit from that security such as Ireland.
    I completely agree, but you seem to have done a total volte face in half an hour, which is impressive even for a bipolar ex alcoholic like me

    You've gone from saying we only need three guys with a shotgun to agreeing we need a capable military, in all forms, able to project power, as well - as we depend on global trade for our prosperity (that has always been the justification for British power, never land wars and invasions)

    I wholly concur we need to put much more pressure on European partners to step up. Let's start with the fucking free riding Irish, get them to actually pay for their own defence out of all those taxes they skimmed off everyone else

    I mean, look at it. Look at what they spend. Wankers


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_Europe_by_military_expenditures

    Likewise Austria, Belgium,Germany, all of them. Time to cough up, chaps
    Where did I say we need three guys with a shotgun? I was arguing that we need a strong military with money spent where it actually is useful on good kit, relevant kit and strong defensive capabilities as well as quality troops.

    “ The UK military should be purely geared for defending the UK and defending Europe if attacked. Sell the aircraft carriers and spend the money on kit that will work against relevant direct threats - anti missile tech and anti submarine tech. Build strong air defences and buy the correct off the shelf combat vehicles and drones (buy maInufacturing rights and build in UK if possible). Keep a very good level of soldiers and marines (Schapps is a dick) who can integrate with other NATO and European forces in areas of potential threat.”

    I don’t however think we have a role in projecting power into the pacific for example until we can actually sort out defending our own back yard and if there comes a time we do start projecting globally it needs to be done in a coordinated and fair burden of countries who benefit from that projection.
    i was kinda teasing. I am in a mellow mood. It is 6pm and tiffin time in Phnom Penh, I can hear a trainee monk plaiyng the oboe in Wat Bovey Temple, just below my balcony, in the same rooms where Pol Pot was a novice

    Swallows wheel in the dulcet air, the sun retires over the Mekong - in quiet flames of dusty orange, the beautiful Khmer girls - like apsaras from Ankor - gracefully walk along dusklit Sisowath Quay, as the squid sellers and the mango sellers call out their wares in the cooling warmth...

    It's better than Deptford

    Deptford is utterly gridlocked today
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,914
    Dura_Ace said:

    This time next year we'll be watching an inauguration (or a civil war). Let's all hope for the outcome of maximum comedic potential. DJT 270 - JRB 268

    Dark sense of humour.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    Its a little depressing how little focus people give to news like the Port Talbot closure. Having long since sold off heavy industry for a fat commission and a quick profit, we are here with the latest foreign owner not needing to invest in British capabilities because it isn't strategically important to them.

    It is to us. We really need to take back control of these things and invest in them. Being able to produce steel is a Good Investment. Cheaper than the alternative in the long run. And a lot more secure.

    It's a little depressing that, back in New Labour times, people did not focus on the closure of a specialtity steel manufacturer such as Butterley. But it went unmentioned.

    It's not just about steelmaking at the raw end; it's about end-products as well.
    This is not specialist steel, this is virgin steel. Top quality steel for the automotive, military
    hardware and consumer electronics. This is our final plant for such a crucial product, it is a big deal. This is why Cameron intervened when the plant was threatened a decade ago.

    If you want to apportion blame on previous Governments, Mrs Thatcher shouldn't have allowed key UK industry to be sold off to foreign asset strippers at fire-sale prices.
    Yes, I'm well aware of the difference between them, which is why I mentioned it on my last line.

    But as I said: there was zero noise from Labour when a speciality steelworks, more than two centuries old, which had built iconic structures such as St Pancras trainshed, the Spinaker Tower, and the Falkirk Wheel, closed. And one that was firmly in a Labour area as well. We need a steel industry that does something with the steel, as well as producing it at the source end.
    British Steel was privatised by your lot. You should be arguing that Corus and now Tata had every right to make commercial decisions. I cleared out Ebbw Vale on Major's watch and Llanwern on New Labour's watch. That's what happens in a free market.

    This is different, virgin steel is strategic. One instance where perhaps national security should take precedence over zero emissions. Cameron understood this, Sunak doesn't.

    Did you know that the plant shuts down every night at teatime so the residents of Neath and Port Talbot can cook an evening meal.
    Why on Earth are you saying 'my lot' ? You continually do this.
    If you didn't tacitly defend the current Government by bellyaching that New Labour didn't get the criticism they deserved I could stop.

    I liked Rishi, but his behaviour yesterday confirmed I was wrong and he is hopeless. His reaction to Port Talbot and the ex NHS lady by defending his greatness was pathetic.
    Hang on. I've mentioned Butterley on here before; I had minor connections in the area. And the point I make is valid.

    I'd like the Port Talbot operation to continue; in fact, I'd like it to be thoroughly modernised and invested in. But perhaps try addressing my point: making steel is rather pointless if we don't have sinks for it to be used in. And the one thing we should be good at is high-tech, rather than volume, uses.

    And I repeat there was *zero* noise from Labour when Butterley closed during their watch.
    I was not aware of Butterley. Thank you for the history lesson.

    I was furious at New Labour for the collapse of MG Rover.

    This in terms of scale and strategy is wholly different.
    Butterley was a fantastic company, with a world-changing history, including its relationship to the first ever rail tunnel (*). Its works live on, although it is sad that there will not be any new ones added. I'm still gently seething about that, fifteen years on - especially given some of the rumoured shenanigans that went on to do with the receivership.

    As you can imagine from my username, it's a period and location I'm quite invested in. (William Jessop, Josias Jessop's father, was one of the co-founders of Butterley, along with Outram and others.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritchley_Tunnel

    (*) Depending on how you define 'rail' and 'tunnel'...
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,935
    Scott_xP said:

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    The zoomers' pitch earlier was "it doesn't matter if there are no whatsapp messages cos the Government didn't run on whatsapp", neglecting the fact that Nippy also kept no diary (aye, right) and there are no minutes of any meetings
    If there was a change in the law so that Sturgeon, and all the others, were told they had to prove their innocence, I wonder how many WhatsApp messages, emails and texts would mysteriously reappear?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325

    DavidL said:

    RobD said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    What's going to happen to the steel produced by the new process then, isn't that going to substitute the stuff currently produced?
    Yes that is a good thing but the idea it comes close to replacing 2 blast furnaces is ridiculous.

    In Scotland we have the tragedy of Grangemouth. In Wales we have Port Talbot. Another disaster.
    I agree with the national security importance of continuing to produce our own steel, as well as our own oil and gas. If we really want security of steel production, we need to reopen iron ore mines. Otherwise, producing our own virgin steel could be stopped by a shipping blockade.

    I believe that a party whose manifesto included financially supporting our core industries would be broadly popular, apart from the Greens and economic libertarians, both groups being just noisy minorities.

    However, since Thatcher, such ideas have not been considered, by any party.
    There isn’t enough iron ore to meet the U.K. needs, or anything like, in the U.K.

    If you wanted strategic protection, establish a National Steel mountain. Billets of raw steel are compact (7.8 tons per cubic meter) and, even if you leave them outside to get a nice coating of rust, have a lifespan measured in geological time.

    We use something like 16 million tons of steel per year (including steel in imported goods)
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    I agree, and said so at the time. Bridenstine was a great NASA administrator, and perhaps the orange one's only good pick. The orange one seems to have realised this, and wanted to get rid of Bridenstine... I really doubt Bridenstine is coming back if Nellie wins.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,996
    @CameronGarrett_

    📢
    @IpsosUK
    tested two old Conservative slogans to see how they're currently doing...

    💥71% doubt they can provide "strong and stable leadership" - same as Truss' last days

    💥 69% doubt they have a good "long term economic plan" - same as week after Kwasi mini-budget

    https://x.com/CameronGarrett_/status/1748358059422847363?s=20
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,100
    .

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    Also, it’s not a group if you’re just messaging one person.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    Scott_xP said:

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    The zoomers' pitch earlier was "it doesn't matter if there are no whatsapp messages cos the Government didn't run on whatsapp", neglecting the fact that Nippy also kept no diary (aye, right) and there are no minutes of any meetings
    This is of course absolutely disgraceful behaviour but, after the farce of the Covid Inquiry, I suspect the SNP were just a bit ahead of the curve here. All governments will do this in future. The only upside I can see is that the inevitable inquiries might be shorter.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,996


    c.f. Brexit...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
    There must surely be a delay given the different sentence structure in the two languages.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645
    It's been said before, but why the heck is our government(s) conducting official business over a third-party app?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845

    Leon said:

    Jesus fucking Christ. That Milei AI translation was done in REAL TIME


    https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/ai-translates-argentinian-presidents-address-at-world-economic-forum-in-real-time-article-106976390


    I am seldom hyperbolic on this site, I leave that to the likes of @kle4, but this is a massive moment in human history. This is Babelfish, but better - because the lips move very convincingly

    This is potentially the end of languages dividing us, as a species

    Genesis 11:6-7

    And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
    Yep, God had better watch out. We're coming for him and he has more to account for than a Horizon software engineer.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,855

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    That's actually quite a good idea, expensive, but it would probably work

    The Falklanders would complain but then we would say "Er, do you want to be defended from Argentina, or not"?

    End of argument
    Would it really be more expensive than any alternative? Stopping at source seems to be near impossible, ditto breaking up the gangs, and stopping the boats is impossible short of a border guard with a rifle every hundred metres from Littlehampton to Whitstable.

    It's got to be cheaper per head than Rwanda.
    What about using the Channel Islands? They’re not in the EU. Close to France, so not too far for the small boats to travel.
    Isle of Man. Would channel the sub-Churchillian urges of the Tory Party. "Collar them all."
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    Scott_xP said:



    c.f. Brexit...

    Don't be so harsh on yourself Scott. We forgive you.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    edited January 20
    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
    There must surely be a delay given the different sentence structure in the two languages.
    Yes. My best guess is it is "near real time", and as the software improves, that delay will get shorter

    Tho here is another claim that it is "real time"

    https://x.com/AshleyDudarenok/status/1717212823997333987?s=20
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,280

    .

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    Also, it’s not a group if you’re just messaging one person.
    Indeed. It was a very narrow, specific denial designed to appear to the unwary to be much broader
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,398
    Another example of shit service from a shit bit of government outsourcing where a shit procedure is tolerated because it's a computer doing it and so no-one cares.

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/jan/20/retired-teachers-pension-stopped-as-provider-refuses-to-believe-she-is-not-dead

    The widespread use of so-called AI will only make this worse because so many people will believe that AI is different, and more reliable.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    Samsung have just announced real time AI phone call translation

    https://x.com/mirthdot/status/1747688857049457138?s=20

    The video shows a slight delay, but still, another Wow
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906
    kyf_100 said:

    Amazingly the good guy in the open source story is... Mark Zuckerberg.

    Most open source models are based on meta's llama model, which they continue to upgrade and release for free.

    The obvious aim is to break the openai/google duopoly, but for now Zuck is our best hope for free, uncensored, open source ai. Whoda thunk it?

    There must be some angle to this though. Meta are going to buy 350k H100 GPUs, at the list price that's somewhere around £10 billion. Even with heavy discounting the BOM of an H100 means that you would still be talking about several billion, and there is little incentive for Nvidia to heavily discount their hardware when the demand is so high.

    The amount of money it takes to train a state-of-the-art model is huge, and growing rapidly. The capital being invested in AI is massive. A lot of companies are going to lose a lot of money, and I doubt that anyone is doing this for free or for the public good.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,310
    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,230
    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    That highlights the first mistake that defeated governments can make when choosing a new leader- "we're on temporary leave, nothing has changed". So they pick a plausible departmental minister as their new leader, like Hague or EdM. And then they wonder why this doesn't really work- LotO is a very different (and very very difficult) job.

    The tricky bit is that, in the early days anyway, it helps to have someone who can hold the fort and keep chins up. Maybe Mordaunt is that someone, if she's still around next time. (She's got a chunky majority to act as a cushion, but the "Red Wall In The South" aspect of Portsmouth North means that might not be enough.) Catch is that it's often not the same skill set to look like the next PM. Someone like Starmer needs to be celebrated, not because he's done it well, but because he's managed it at all. (Though he has been massively helped by the government all but collapsing.)
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,420

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    That highlights the first mistake that defeated governments can make when choosing a new leader- "we're on temporary leave, nothing has changed". So they pick a plausible departmental minister as their new leader, like Hague or EdM. And then they wonder why this doesn't really work- LotO is a very different (and very very difficult) job.

    The tricky bit is that, in the early days anyway, it helps to have someone who can hold the fort and keep chins up. Maybe Mordaunt is that someone, if she's still around next time. (She's got a chunky majority to act as a cushion, but the "Red Wall In The South" aspect of Portsmouth North means that might not be enough.) Catch is that it's often not the same skill set to look like the next PM. Someone like Starmer needs to be celebrated, not because he's done it well, but because he's managed it at all. (Though he has been massively helped by the government all but collapsing.)
    If they had been 'picking plausible departmental ministers' in 2010, 1997 or indeed 1980, we would have had David Miliband, Ken Clarke and Denis Healey instead.

    They tend rather to pick people who blame the defeat on factors outside their control and say that there's no need to make meaningful changes to policy to compromise with the electorate.
  • Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
    Come on, Cycleclips, stop pussyfooting around and tell us what you really think.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065
    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
    There must surely be a delay given the different sentence structure in the two languages.
    If you try to translate German to English before you've reached the end of the sentence, you might use the verb 'to bring' when the correct verb turns out to be 'to kill'
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 5,005
    eristdoof said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
    There must surely be a delay given the different sentence structure in the two languages.
    If you try to translate German to English before you've reached the end of the sentence, you might use the verb 'to bring' when the correct verb turns out to be 'to kill'
    Indeed.
    But I suspect "real time" will have its definition stretched to "a sentence or so behind actual real time." And that's okay.
    We've already shown we're okay with "live sport" being "a few seconds behind because of streaming and processing delays." We just mutter about hearing roars and cheers from the nearby pub a few seconds before a crucial goal, but that's as far as it goes.
    People are fine with waiting a few seconds. One-sentence-behind-delayed translations will do almost as well as magical-absolute-instant ones in terms of what they do.

    For once, Leon's excitement could well be spot on.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,724

    isam said:

    Sturgeon says she wasn’t in any WhatsApp groups during covid

    https://x.com/brianspanner1/status/1748477576312398193?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    No she didn’t

    She said she was not a “member” of any WhatsApp groups

    Would the administrator of the group be considered a “member”?

    I don’t use WhatsApp myself so don’t know the terminology. I’m just smelling a misdirect by Sturgeon
    I can smell it here in East Surrey Hospital.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396

    eristdoof said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Can anyone tell me if that Heygen AI translation of Milei is actually in real time?

    Twix generally says Yes but some say No. It is so incredible I am skeptical and tending to No, but maybe some boffin on here can set me straight

    You need an accurate definition of "real time"

    Simultaneous translation, done by a human, is delayed slightly even as it happens, because the word order in each language is different. You need to parse the whole sentence before you can translate it. The computational delay might be very small, but the translated speech will always trail to some degree
    Good point

    But the video has synced Milei's lips to match the "English" words, I wonder how long the delay was, for the computer to translate the words AND also sync the lips. TwiX is implying it is basically instantaneous, can this be true?

    The Heygen site does seem to claim real time video translation



    https://www.heygen.com/real-time
    There must surely be a delay given the different sentence structure in the two languages.
    If you try to translate German to English before you've reached the end of the sentence, you might use the verb 'to bring' when the correct verb turns out to be 'to kill'
    Indeed.
    But I suspect "real time" will have its definition stretched to "a sentence or so behind actual real time." And that's okay.
    We've already shown we're okay with "live sport" being "a few seconds behind because of streaming and processing delays." We just mutter about hearing roars and cheers from the nearby pub a few seconds before a crucial goal, but that's as far as it goes.
    People are fine with waiting a few seconds. One-sentence-behind-delayed translations will do almost as well as magical-absolute-instant ones in terms of what they do.

    For once, Leon's excitement could well be spot on.
    "For once"?

    Pff!

  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
    1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.

    The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,523
    edited January 20
    Policing today:

    An emergency call was made from a man in a house in Costessey, near Norwich, at 06:00 GMT on Friday. Police resources were not deployed.

    Officers later forced entry to the property at 07:15 and found the bodies of a man, woman and two young girls.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-68040506
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023
    algarkirk said:

    Policing today:

    An emergency call was made from a man in a house in Costessey, near Norwich, at 06:00 GMT on Friday. Police resources were not deployed.

    Officers later forced entry to the property at 07:15 and found the bodies of a man, woman and two young girls.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-68040506

    Lessons will be learnt.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    Leon said:

    Samsung have just announced real time AI phone call translation

    https://x.com/mirthdot/status/1747688857049457138?s=20

    The video shows a slight delay, but still, another Wow

    Can it get sense and comprehensibility out of Starmer? That will surely be the real test.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,230
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
    And that's where the "hardly anyone under the age of about fifty thinks of themselves as conservative, let alone Conservative" factor is a massive problem. (And yes, the Conservatives usually lose with the young. But not to this degree.)

    Couple that with the "graduates end up stupid and woke" (for which read "unacceptably left-wing") thing. It's not necessary to posess a degree to do the necessary hard thinking, but statistically it helps.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Yes, they do.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
    1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.

    The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
    It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,930
    edited January 20

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    How else would we have known there was a climate emergency on Mars?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,230
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Samsung have just announced real time AI phone call translation

    https://x.com/mirthdot/status/1747688857049457138?s=20

    The video shows a slight delay, but still, another Wow

    Can it get sense and comprehensibility out of Starmer? That will surely be the real test.
    Are you suggesting that Johnson would be an impossible test for any AI?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Yes, they do.
    Humankind has done, and continues to do, all sorts of stupid and unethical shit cloaked in the justification of "science".

    Not in my name.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325
    RobD said:

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    How else would we have known there was a climate emergency on Mars?
    You jest - but as the science of climate on Mars and Venus grew, people began to apply the same models to Earth.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023
    kle4 said:

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
    It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    The computer you post from has a bigger footprint in material terms than the Mars helicopter. What’s your justification for that?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,645

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Yes, they do.
    Humankind has done, and continues to do, all sorts of stupid and unethical shit cloaked in the justification of "science".

    Not in my name.
    And it has also done many wonderful and marvelous stuff in the justification of 'science'.

    Knowledge is wonderful; it is also very human. We have always looked up at the stars and wondered what is out there; we are just starting to be able to answer those questions.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
    1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.

    The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
    It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
    We've reached a degree of common ground regarding CCS being part of the solution. Let's leave it there and keep an eye on developments.

    The government has allocated £20 billion of our money to CCS, after all.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
    There is a fundamental problem with our politics in this and it is not just a Tory problem. A government gets elected with some decent leadership, say Blair and Brown or Cameron and Osborne. They are inexperienced and their team even more so so they inevitably make a lot of mistakes.

    They remain in government for an extended period. Original thinkers burn out or get caught up with their ideas not being as clever as they think. Boring but competent managerial types climb the greasy poll. In extended periods, such as our last 3 governments who have all had more than a decade in power, they eventually reach the top. But they have nothing to say and no ideas of what to do.

    So they lose to the opposition who by that time have lost all the vaguely competent or at least experienced types that were in the previous government and start the cycle again.

    If government is to improve what do we do about this? In the late 60s and 70s we tried switching governments much more frequently. This meant they had some idea of how to govern but it also meant that we had policy chaos. British Steel switching back and forward between private and public ownership comes to mind.

    I can set out the problem but I am frankly struggling for an answer.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,855

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    The computer you post from has a bigger footprint in material terms than the Mars helicopter. What’s your justification for that?
    It hasn't been lofted out of Earth orbit, mind, and over to the Martian gravity well complete with its transporter ...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,325

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
    1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.

    The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
    It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
    We've reached a degree of common ground regarding CCS being part of the solution. Let's leave it there and keep an eye on developments.

    The government has allocated £20 billion of our money to CCS, after all.
    That could just be a sunk cost fallacy at work.

    Do you know how many billions were thrown at fuel cells for cars?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,100
    Trump senility watch, part 437: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4419124-trump-appears-to-mix-up-pelosi-haley-jan-6/

    “Former President Trump appeared to mix up former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Friday during a rally in New Hampshire, while discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,481
    I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.

    Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.

    This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but
    look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.

    But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.

    Select very good candidates.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Samsung have just announced real time AI phone call translation

    https://x.com/mirthdot/status/1747688857049457138?s=20

    The video shows a slight delay, but still, another Wow

    Can it get sense and comprehensibility out of Starmer? That will surely be the real test.
    Are you suggesting that Johnson would be an impossible test for any AI?
    Its not really a suggestion.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857

    kle4 said:

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
    It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
    Nope. He's the God of WAR!
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,914

    I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.

    Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.

    This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but
    look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.

    But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.

    Select very good candidates.

    Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties.
    The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,523
    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    PJH said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Good morning

    I cannot comment on Port Talbot as I do not know the details but I assume this is an example of insufficient time to transition to net zero, much like the banning of oil and gas licences in the North Sea

    However on the subject of immigration I note the report this morning that 16,000 asylum seekers have been given jobs whilst their applications are considered

    What an utterly sensible idea but predictably the right in the guise of Isabel Oakeshott and Reform have had a fit of the vapours

    Reform and the right of the conservative party are a group of people who need to lose, and at least that seems inevitable sometime this year and for me, the sooner the better

    I just don't understand the "no immigration" mentality. OK so they have some misremembered memory of what England was like which they want to restore. But idealism doesn't fill care homes and factories with staff.

    The detail always ends this. I remember entertaining discussions with Bart's predecessor about why its impractical for the unemployed of Widnes to fill the vacancies in Wisbech. Perhaps the No Immigration brigade think they can simply order the work-shy into these jobs. Great! Where will they live? Who will look after their kids? How do they get to work? Who will pay their bills?

    STOP THE BOATS truly is the Tory ruination project. We can't physically stop the boats, we don't want to stop the boats, we're letting in much larger numbers legally whilst labelling the legals as illegal alien invaders.

    They cannot ever satisfy the people they have gaslit with this idiocy. The only prospect is defeat. And yet they shriek ever louder about how they must overcome the latest battle.
    It is quite mad, and I am someone who would really like to see the boas stopped, and I approve of the Rwanda policy, only I want it to be much tougher and universal, for several years

    But the fact is the Tories haven't the brains or the bollocks to see it through, in that way, yet they are spending half a billion quid SHOWING us that they can't do it, like this will impress people: an expensive failure

    There are no votes in catastrophic if well-meaning ineptitude, perhaps they don't understand that

    They seem fixated on the idea that they will be able to blame the failure of the Rwanda policy (and thus not stopping the boats) on lefty lawyers and thus skewer Starmer.

    But the failure of the policy is that it can't work. At all. At any level. And people (you included) have fitted themselves with blinkers to ignore all of the massive issues which will stop it working.

    Worst of all is the disconnect between the slogan and the political need. STOP THE BOATS is - they think - about stopping the boats. But to their voters it is about stopping migration. Completely....
    It can work, but this version of Rwanda will never work

    But the basic principle - take all illegals and process them somewhere quite unpleasant, but safe, a long way offshore - is sound. Australia did it

    Australia did it when the numbers were a lot lot lower, never more than a thousand a year;

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/

    Maths defeats the project, because Rwanda don't have the capacity to deal with enough people for the deterrent factor to kick in.
    The EU tacitly uses Libya, which is much bigger and nearer, and suitably nasty

    We need something like that. Greenland? Some uninhabited island in the Faroes or Svalbard?
    Falklands. An added advantage is that it is actually ours so nobody could complain. And I think if I was a genuine asylum seeker I would tolerate a year in the cold and damp while my claim was processed.

    And we could build a high quality camp with good facilities in the middle of West Falkland and wouldn't have to worry about fences as there would be nowhere else to go or any way to leave. Even more so than from Rwanda.

    If I wanted to slip into the UK to enter the black market this would be a total deterrent.
    That's actually quite a good idea, expensive, but it would probably work

    The Falklanders would complain but then we would say "Er, do you want to be defended from Argentina, or not"?

    End of argument
    Would it really be more expensive than any alternative? Stopping at source seems to be near impossible, ditto breaking up the gangs, and stopping the boats is impossible short of a border guard with a rifle every hundred metres from Littlehampton to Whitstable.

    It's got to be cheaper per head than Rwanda.
    A brutal but sort of just way of dealing with all refugees/asylum seekers anywhere is simply to have a world wide policy of identical treatment anywhere in the free world, based on the minimum provision given by the combination of A Very Poor Country (Chad for example) and the various UN/IRC Style agencies supporting them.

    This amounts SFAICS to a tent in or on the edge of the desert and three meals a day and primary education (if lucky) for children.

    Wherever you claim asylum your provision is the same. Any country could of course offer more either to individuals (perhaps with special skills) or to particular groups they have a connection with (UK and Hong Kong/Poland and Ukraine etc).

    It is a hateful thought, but that is precisely the lot of most refugees in the world today. It is not clear why a special advantage should be given to those who can make it to the rich world.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845

    I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.

    Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.

    This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but
    look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.

    But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.

    Select very good candidates.

    Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties.
    The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
    And IDS. Never forget that one.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,670
    edited January 20
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    AI is terrifyingly good in so many ways

    FUCK

    If you haven't already, get a copy of LM Studio or GPT4All and start downloading custom (uncensored) LLMs from huggingface.co/thebloke

    (Assuming your computer can handle it - you'll need a decent graphics card or an M1/M2/M3 mac).
    I very much doubt my computer can handle it, and I am annoyingly illiterate at complex coding. Is it hard to do?
    If you don't have the above hardware (e.g. you have a bog standard pc laptop), you won't be able to run the models.

    It used to be hard to do because you had to install software at the command line, but now it's relatively easy with LM studio or GPT4All which are one click installs. Then you download a single file containing your LLM (TheBloke is reliable), load it into LM Studio, and chat like it's chatgpt.

    But you'll need a PC with an up to date non-integrated graphics card (e.g. an Nvidia 3090 or later) or an M1/M2/M3 mac to do it.

    If you don't have the hardware, there are instructions here on how to run your own models in the cloud (up to 120 billion parameters, I can only run 13b models at home), but that gets a bit more complex - https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/18sqf84/what_is_the_most_cost_effective_way_to_run/

    Edit: even if you can't run this stuff yourself, I strongly suggest you check out the open source community just to see how fast things are moving. It's getting like being able to 3d print a nuclear bomb at home with a 9gb download... the idea that OpenAI or whoever can keep a lid on it is for the birds.
    Based on this post (thanks!) I decided to give it a go.

    I downloaded both LM Studio and GPT4All and a model in each.

    LM Studio seems to work better for me on linux and I'm now running 'TheBloke'. Total time: 15 minutes, plus the background model downloads.

    This isn't going away, is it?

    [I have a 16GB GPU and a 16 core processor and get about 3 or 4 words/sec out of it]
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396
    If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified

    AI comin for ya
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845

    kle4 said:

    Looks like something may have happened to the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, whilst landing during its 72nd flight. :(

    That little project has been a massive achievement for NASA. The project would have been a success if it had just taken off; whilst the extended mission planned for five flights. Instead it has lasted years, and has been used for science and to reconnoitre the rover's route.

    I hope they regain contact.

    Bridenstine may have been the best NASA administrator in a long, long time.

    He personally pushed the helicopter through to raise the TRL for future missions. Essentially you have a tension between the science guys who want more mass and power for experiments and the technology development guys who want it for proving new tech.

    Bridenstine intervened in favour of the helicopter - despite getting serious push back from the science people. Good call.
    What they need is an enlightened person to realise that we have no business sending our shit to Mars.
    I presume you are ignorant of the fact that climate science started with a study of the climates of Mars and Venus - based on the data from various landers and orbiters?
    The ends do not justify the means.
    Wariness about mucking up the entire solar system is fair enough, but worrying over a few launchers on a bloody large planetary body strikes me as disproportionate and hyperbolic, which as Leon has noted is more my area.
    It is a point of principle. Mars has the right to be left in peace.
    So did the people of Horsell Common. Salt for the goose etc. This helicopter didn't even have a death ray.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857
    Leon said:

    If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified

    AI comin for ya

    Writers at the Gazette?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,023

    algarkirk said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Have you fucking pussies been at Leon's hysteria inducing tonic?

    You regular reminder that RF forces can't take Kharkov which is a short bus ride from their border. They are zero conventional threat to the UK.

    Some of the autodidact military experten on here even think Ukraine can beat Russia so why does the UK need to gun up to defend against them?

    Absolutely right, as I said yesterday. The Defence establishment want some new toys and plenty of money. This is the most self interested nonsense since the junior doctors strike.

    Russia will take decades to recover from this war if they ever do. The huge legacy of kit they inherited from the Soviet Union has been depleted and is largely gone. They can't even make new gun barrels for themselves as they don't have the right steel thanks to sanctions. (If we genuinely want to boost our own defence capability then spending on keeping the blast furnaces at Port Talbot open might be a better idea). They are having to cannibalise their existing stock.

    The fundamental fact is that Europe is now a backwater of little interest to the world at large. We are less likely to become involved in a major war now than at almost any time in our history. If we still want to strut across the world stage we need to get our carriers working and staffed and some navy support vessels so they can operate far from base. That way we can play a small part where the action is should we want to.

    But we are not at risk from conventional warfare.
    I utterly disagree, when we talk about a decade of two. As I mentioned below, Germany rearmed in the two decades between 1918 and 1938 to the extent that they could conquer nearly all of Europe. And that was despite supposed hefty restrictions on what they could do (which led them to do stuff like train with the Russians...).

    I'd strongly argue that Russia is in a much better position than Germany was in the 1920s; both in terms of resources, industry and people.
    Yes, people forget the Russian arms industry is still intact, and Uncle Vlad has not just announced the closure of his last blast furnace.
    Daniel Hannan will tell us that we don't need steel we can 'trade for it'.
    I'm sure China will sell us as much high quality steel as we need for infrastructure and defence purposes, although just in case, we should probably keep the receipt.
    and even the US and other allies will make sure their supply is met long before our requirement.
    I said yesterday that the forthcoming closure of our blast furnace (contributed to by Government Net Zero policies) was a simple case of treason. It's a bigger blow to our ability to fight any kind of prolonged war than a hundred Kim Philby's could have ever hoped to acheive. Obviously some knobend then got sniffy about it and accused me of behaving a US republican.
    Headlines like this just drive me mad (even madder).
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68017180

    The idea that we are doing anything for the planet by reducing “our” carbon footprint and then importing that same steel from elsewhere is just so parochially stupid and ridiculous that it beggars belief.
    IIRC Labour have a small problem here. Right now they are supporting making CO2 intensive steel in the UK on exactly this ground, but opposing new domestic oil and gas, which the government defends on exactly the same grounds.

    The Green Party wallah on Any Questions last night supported the continuation of CO2 intensive production at Port Talbot too. Contortious stuff.
    You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon.

    Importing it from India or China is not.
    Is Carbon capture technology real yet?
    National Grid say yes- and capturing from factories where lots of carbon dioxide is produced in one place is the most plausible application.

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work

    I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't leave the electric arc (recycling) process as better, as long as the resulting steel has the right qualities.

    So- anyone know when we either absolutely need, or probably want, virgin steel? And how many Port Talbots of steel is that?

    And, if the answer is "more than zero, but less than one", what do we do? Because I'm not sure we're going to like an answer constructed by free market players.
    I'm very bearish on CCS. It works on (relatively) small scales, in ideal places, particularly where the source and sink are relatively close.

    A statement like: "You retrofit carbon capture and it becomes low carbon." is a bit like 'steal underpants'.
    1.5 million tpa ain't small scale.
    Yes, it is. ;)

    "Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. "

    https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture
    1.5 million tpa from a single plant. That is a large scale plant.

    The technology is proven. At large commercial scale. TRL9. It just needs to be rolled out. That's the stage we have reached.
    It can work where the source and sink are close together. I'm not denying it has its place as *part* of the solution. But it's not *the* solution, or even a major part of it.
    We've reached a degree of common ground regarding CCS being part of the solution. Let's leave it there and keep an eye on developments.

    The government has allocated £20 billion of our money to CCS, after all.
    That could just be a sunk cost fallacy at work.

    Do you know how many billions were thrown at fuel cells for cars?
    It isn't sunk cost. The government has not made Final Investment Decision on any of the projects yet.

    The sunk cost was the money wasted on the two previous abortive attempts to implement CCS in the UK.
  • MJWMJW Posts: 1,728

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
    And that's where the "hardly anyone under the age of about fifty thinks of themselves as conservative, let alone Conservative" factor is a massive problem. (And yes, the Conservatives usually lose with the young. But not to this degree.)

    Couple that with the "graduates end up stupid and woke" (for which read "unacceptably left-wing") thing. It's not necessary to posess a degree to do the necessary hard thinking, but statistically it helps.
    Indeed. A big fear for the Tories if they do get an absolute rodgering should be where do the next generation come from? It could wipe out much of the 2010-2017 generation of MPs. 2019ers have already exhibited a worrying tendency to be edgelord oddballs.

    That's not getting any better soon when you consider only 10 per cent of those under 50 are saying they'd vote Conservative. You'll just end up with chancers seeing parliament as a step to a GB News gig.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857
    DavidL said:

    I think the start of the Conservative recovery is simple: select excellent talented candidates.

    Don't do it on loyalty, arse scratching or ideology. Just pick very good candidates.

    This can easily be done badly - see "A-list" - and it can be entirely cosmetic but
    look/ sound like what you want and you end up picking people who aren't committed to politics or who aren't actually Conservatives.

    But start with the basics: Advertise. CV. Why are you a Conservative? Vision. What do you want to change? Evidence / appetite for public service - what have you done in the past? - and ask lots of competency-based questions about values and ethics, and look for references.

    Select very good candidates.

    Trouble is it's done by Conservative Constituency Parties.
    The ones that thought Truss was a good idea.
    And IDS. Never forget that one.
    IDS never lost a GE as leader!
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,396

    Leon said:

    If I was in my early 20s, beginning a career dependant in anyway on my skill at foreign languages - a teacher, translator, interpreter - I would right now be fairly terrified

    AI comin for ya

    Writers at the Gazette?
    Yep, them too

    I give them about 5-10 more years
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,814

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Muesli said:

    Muesli said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    “We keep coming up against the fatal tension between the obvious political collapse of this government and the obvious unwillingness of Conservative MPs to put it out of its misery,” one rebel said. “That tension can’t hold for very long. It can only be resolved by removing the PM.”

    The Conservatives face two by-elections in February, both of which they are expected to lose, followed by what Tory MPs fear will be a hugely damaging set of local election results. Time, the rebel argues, is running out. “The local elections are the hard stop — realistically we can’t really change after the end of May,” they said. “The party does need to come to this ­conclusion organically, but may also need a steer.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-tories-mps-rwanda-bill-vote-c73nv5c28

    I'm not sure what this anonymous rebel is saying. If they go past May then they can't bin Sunak before the GE? I'm pretty sure they can and probably should.
    It’s a dice roll, but it’s hard to see anything getting better for them under Sunak. Of course, they could come out of it looking even more ludicrous and making it even worse.

    They really made some terrible unforced errors by elevating Truss and Sunak. That said, who is the alternative who is going to be able to ride in and save the day?
    Morning all! One benefit of the Tories endlessly swapping PM is that is has disarmed the notion that you vote for a PM. Presidential politics is unhelpful in our system. Perhaps the reason why recent Tory smears against Starmer and Davey haven’t worked is that people are voting for change, not the person.

    If they bin off Sunak then the replacement won’t be Braverman. Too many people are prejudiced against people who aren’t as white and male as themselves.

    The problem is the leader the right wants isn’t a Tory MP. They could install the ghosts of Powell or Moseley into an empty vessel (Jonathan Gillis perhaps) and the Nigel would still be the one they want.

    Have to laugh. As the Tories head towards the abyss, the person they believe can win them victory won just under 4m votes at the height of his powers. Though if the Tory members would like to be down to 4m votes I think we shouldn’t stand in their way.
    Strong point this. I deeply doubt that the current Tory membership would ever choose a non-white leader over a white one.
    Not convinced with that. It is hard to see someone for instance like Barclay, Dowden or Gove winning a member vote against Badenoch or Braverman.
    The whole discussion about whether the Tories would do better with or without a new leader is for the birds.

    The party is toxic and riven between the ascendant GB News faction that feels the party isn’t toxic enough and the neutered One Nation faction that seems resigned to declaring the water to be wet as the ship goes down.

    In the absence of a dynamic, charismatic figure that could unite the party, drag it back to its senses and persuade the public to give it a second look, the leadership is practically irrelevant.

    Seriously, which of these prospects would make any difference at all (in the absence of a serious failure on the part of Labour)?

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Dowden: too forgettable
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    You missed off the star of the show:

    #Priti4Leader
    Haha! Gosh, what an embarrassment of riches a richness of embarrassments they have to choose from! Here’s the updated list, with additions asterisked:

    Anderson: too provocative
    Badenoch: too wild
    Barclay: too bland
    Braverman: too fired
    Cameron: too previous
    Cleverly: too gaffe-prone
    Farage: too outside
    Frost: too unelected
    Gove: too weird
    Hunt: too unpopular
    ***Jenrick: too cruel
    Johnson: too Johnson
    Mordaunt: too woke
    ***Patel: too sinister
    ***Rees-Mogg: too Victorian
    Shapps: too schizophrenic
    Truss: to the pub
    ***Tugendhat: Tugendhat

    If I was a Tory (and thank Richard Dawkins I’m not), I’d want Tugendhat as the next leader out of that lot or even Mordaunt or Cleverly. I suspect they’ll actually go for Badenoch.
    You mean the Minister Pretending Not To Be In Charge Of The Post Office?

    She'd be great. She could pretend not to be in charge of the country.
    In fairness she won't be. She will be LOTO. Any leadership change will come after the election, not before it.

    This requires a rather different skill set. From what I have seen Mordaunt has a distinct lead on those skills, whether she can run a department or not. After all, there is little prospect of her ever running a department again.
    There is no-one on the Tory side fit to run a car boot sale, frankly. Let alone the country. The current lot are tainted and/or useless.

    Time for a new generation - assuming that they can find anyone and that those they do find are capable of and willing to do the hard thinking about what conservatism in the 21st century means. And speak some hard truths to the membership.
    And that's where the "hardly anyone under the age of about fifty thinks of themselves as conservative, let alone Conservative" factor is a massive problem. (And yes, the Conservatives usually lose with the young. But not to this degree.)

    Couple that with the "graduates end up stupid and woke" (for which read "unacceptably left-wing") thing. It's not necessary to posess a degree to do the necessary hard thinking, but statistically it helps.
    Another factor why I wonder if the Tory Party as we know it might be done. I don’t predict the demise of parties often, because we have seen that incorrectly prophesied many times in British politics (most recently to Labour in 2019, remember that?). However, right wing politics has gone through a revolution in recent years, and pragmatic conservatism has gone somewhat out of fashion.

    The Tory brand may indeed have now run its course. That doesn’t mean that the ‘right’ in Britain will be in permanent retreat - it just means that we may find a rebadging exercise has taken place before a right wing party takes power in Britain again.
This discussion has been closed.