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A new dawn has broken has it not? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,814

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    Its absolutely propaganda to try and pretend all deaths are equal.

    An army fighting proportionately, trying to minimise civilian figures as the IDF rightly are, is not the same as a terrorist group killing as many civilians as they can.

    If Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their weapons, the war is over.

    If Israel lays down their weapons, Hamas would kill every last Israeli.
    Of course they would:


  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    edited April 10
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    I think they had a character in the Iain M Banks novel Look to Windward who was a musical composer in a culture (er, the Culture) where AI could create perfect art, so there was a small niche for essentially mortal designed music and art as its primary selling point, but not much chance of general success.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/24245194.new-scottish-independence-poll-gives-yes-two-point-lead/?ref=ebbn&nid=1457&u=f140ec39d500193051a33e140c12bd95&date=100424

    R&W polling, to compare with Yougov, also VI at Westminster and Holyrood. I did notice this:

    "In Scotland, the UK Government has a net competency rating of -47, compared to -7 for the Scottish Government."

    Admirably loyal of the people of Scotland. I'd be interested if Wales had similar numbers, given people I suspect do not generally rate their governments very well.

    (Of course each may well actually be more competent as well, I wouldn't know, but I would have doubts it is so much better it is worth 40%).
    This is Redfield Wiltons Welsh polling

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-18-february-2024/
    Old poll.

    Of the government Vaughan Gething now leads, a plurality (35%, -6) say the current Welsh Government is incompetent, compared to 26% (+3) who say it is competent.


    Asked their view on the UK Government, a majority of Welsh voters (58%, -3) say the current UK Government is incompetent. Only 16% (+2) view the UK Government as competent.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-23-24-march-2024/
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,401
    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    And what. Hamas have picked a fight they knew they would lose and are using the local population as their leverage.

    All Hamas have to do to stop this is hand in their weapons and release the hostages. But they wont.
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,911
    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    I'm sure lots of un-neutral organisations support Hamas's made up numbers
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,913

    I saw in the Telegraph that Farage was offering to be Starmer's trade envoy to the US. I guess he won't be running for Reform then .... that is how bad it is for the right.

    But, would Farage be welcomed by the continuing Biden administration?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098
    Cookie said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    I was half-listening to Radio 6 yesterday and some band were playing a live set - in between which they announced that they 'stood with the people of Ukraine and Palestine'. Granted this was some obscure band, and not explicit BBC opinion - but it passed entirely without comment, as in of course people would be on that side. I find it really weird how casually that sector of the media assume that Israel are the baddies and Palestine are the goodies a la Russia/Ukraine.
    I think it's because both 'peoples' are being subject to a murderous assault by a larger, ruthless, well-armed outside power in which many innocents are being killed, injured, displaced and otherwise suffering. That said, I do kind of see your point. Israel's aggression was provoked, Russia's was not. This is a meaningful difference.
  • I saw in the Telegraph that Farage was offering to be Starmer's trade envoy to the US. I guess he won't be running for Reform then .... that is how bad it is for the right.

    Sky were interviewing Tice today and got so impatient with him they cut him off and moved to another story
    Theyre hardly fans as he works for a competitor news channel.
    His answer to the boats is to intercept them and take them back to France

    Seems Reform want to take us out of the ECHR thereby making us an international pariah like Russia and Belarus, and also to prejudice the WF and GFA and ensure France will refuse permission for them to land in France

    You mean an international pariah like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA or Japan?

    There's absolutely no reason why we need to be in the ECHR. Human rights are universal not continent based, there's nothing special or magical about being in Europe which makes us any more required to be in the ECHR than any other democracy on the planet which is not in Europe.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,814

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    Your lack of regard for civilian life suggests to me that, contrary to the propaganda that you are a humble postie from Hampshire, you are actually Paula Venells in disguise :lol:
  • nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    Its absolutely propaganda to try and pretend all deaths are equal.

    An army fighting proportionately, trying to minimise civilian figures as the IDF rightly are, is not the same as a terrorist group killing as many civilians as they can.

    If Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their weapons, the war is over.

    If Israel lays down their weapons, Hamas would kill every last Israeli.
    Of course they would:


    So what?

    Do you think a military shouldn't be successful in using its superior weaponry? That's their bloody job.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859

    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    Who said his name into a mirror five times? WHO DID IT?
    I promise I will be off again soon. I only came on here to gloat about my fab AI predictions - and apologise for being a bit of a spammer

    But that music making machine is INTENSE

    I've got a good music journalist/poet friend who has been fiercely dismissive of all this, all AI stuff and AI art - he is quite angrily contemptuous. Today - because of that Udio folk song - he crumbled. "Jesus that does sound human. Shit" were his exact words

    Mark the day
    Taking that Udio folk song as an example, it is clever but it's not actually very good is it?

    Sure it will do away with many hotel lift musak composers but if that's representative it won't be making the top composers redundant. (I appreciate that folk song might be unrepresentative.)
    Exactly. Writers of pap music might be under threat, just as are writers of pap books, such as Leon. But the type of AI being developed, which uses highly advanced retrieval and patterning systems to create stuff without ‘understanding’, in any meaningful sense, what it is doing is as yet not going to be able produce world class art and culture in any field.
  • Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    Your lack of regard for civilian life suggests to me that, contrary to the propaganda that you are a humble postie from Hampshire, you are actually Paula Venells in disguise :lol:
    Its Hamas that have a disregard for civilian life.

    They chose this fight. They can end it whenever the like by surrendering.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,653
    edited April 10
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring

    You were absolutely right to raise it as a topic but you're bang on with your 'banging on being really really boring'. Really mind-sappingly, annoyingly, tediously boring.

    If only you'd just stick to the insights and quit labouring the point ad nauseam.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620
    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239

    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    Who said his name into a mirror five times? WHO DID IT?
    I promise I will be off again soon. I only came on here to gloat about my fab AI predictions - and apologise for being a bit of a spammer

    But that music making machine is INTENSE

    I've got a good music journalist/poet friend who has been fiercely dismissive of all this, all AI stuff and AI art - he is quite angrily contemptuous. Today - because of that Udio folk song - he crumbled. "Jesus that does sound human. Shit" were his exact words

    Mark the day
    Taking that Udio folk song as an example, it is clever but it's not actually very good is it?

    Sure it will do away with many hotel lift musak composers but if that's representative it won't be making the top composers redundant. (I appreciate that folk song might be unrepresentative.)
    Well my friend is a professional music journalist and he absolutely despises AI art and says it is all shit, but today, because of that tune, he surrendered

    But try some more:

    Country pop

    https://www.udio.com/songs/coixNX1gnJ1oWT8z2LQddk

    Baroque

    https://www.udio.com/songs/xtju1X31YfVbKWTCGd4yw7

    Hip Hop

    https://www.udio.com/songs/roHWim9hgT53Nb72gPJznH

    But maybe it will be limited in scope - after all each user can only create 1200 songs a month
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,653
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    Who said his name into a mirror five times? WHO DID IT?
    I promise I will be off again soon. I only came on here to gloat about my fab AI predictions - and apologise for being a bit of a spammer

    But that music making machine is INTENSE

    I've got a good music journalist/poet friend who has been fiercely dismissive of all this, all AI stuff and AI art - he is quite angrily contemptuous. Today - because of that Udio folk song - he crumbled. "Jesus that does sound human. Shit" were his exact words

    Mark the day
    Taking that Udio folk song as an example, it is clever but it's not actually very good is it?

    Sure it will do away with many hotel lift musak composers but if that's representative it won't be making the top composers redundant. (I appreciate that folk song might be unrepresentative.)
    Well my friend is a professional music journalist and he absolutely despises AI art and says it is all shit, but today, because of that tune, he surrendered

    But try some more:

    Country pop

    https://www.udio.com/songs/coixNX1gnJ1oWT8z2LQddk

    Baroque

    https://www.udio.com/songs/xtju1X31YfVbKWTCGd4yw7

    Hip Hop

    https://www.udio.com/songs/roHWim9hgT53Nb72gPJznH

    But maybe it will be limited in scope - after all each user can only create 1200 songs a month
    Though presumably premium users will have more options, rights etc.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    you dont live near stafford do you ?
    Im looking for an accountant
    Stafford? No - we'd have to zoom that.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,574

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    This is one kind of severance from Europe that Labour actually would reverse.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    Maybe Hamas should lay down their weapons then?

    That's the price of war. A war Hamas chose.
    Events don’t happen in a vacuum .

    There will be no peace whilst Israel continue to illegally build settlements and steal Palestinian land.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    edited April 10

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    I understand why he'd go for it as an option. They are failing on their pledges on this issue, and the hope would be if they can convince people they are trying hard, that will be enough. At the moment it is not working, so doing something, anything, more makes a degree of sense from that perspective.

    I'm not persuaded it would. I think those most energised by this issue are sufficiently angry that at best their reaction would be 'About time, but you're still not getting my vote'. But not doing it risks upsetting the base.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/24245194.new-scottish-independence-poll-gives-yes-two-point-lead/?ref=ebbn&nid=1457&u=f140ec39d500193051a33e140c12bd95&date=100424

    R&W polling, to compare with Yougov, also VI at Westminster and Holyrood. I did notice this:

    "In Scotland, the UK Government has a net competency rating of -47, compared to -7 for the Scottish Government."

    Admirably loyal of the people of Scotland. I'd be interested if Wales had similar numbers, given people I suspect do not generally rate their governments very well.

    (Of course each may well actually be more competent as well, I wouldn't know, but I would have doubts it is so much better it is worth 40%).
    This is Redfield Wiltons Welsh polling

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-18-february-2024/
    Old poll.

    Of the government Vaughan Gething now leads, a plurality (35%, -6) say the current Welsh Government is incompetent, compared to 26% (+3) who say it is competent.


    Asked their view on the UK Government, a majority of Welsh voters (58%, -3) say the current UK Government is incompetent. Only 16% (+2) view the UK Government as competent.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-23-24-march-2024/
    It is hardly old on the 18th February this year but what has happened is that Gething is receiving a honeymoon period after his succession from the unpopular Drakeford at the end of his term

    Indeed I wish Gething well as he does seem to be a refreshing change
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,968
    edited April 10
    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    Maybe Hamas should lay down their weapons then?

    That's the price of war. A war Hamas chose.
    Events don’t happen in a vacuum .

    There will be no peace whilst Israel continue to illegally build settlements and steal Palestinian land.

    And Israel quite reasonable and quite rightly will continue to build settlements on disputed land until there is peace. As they should.

    If Hamas surrender, then peace might be an option. As Israel has repeatedly sought peace, and Israelis have voted for peace seeking parties when the other side looks like they might want peace too, it is Hamas rejecting it just as Arafat rejected it.

    Not that there is a single settlement in Gaza, though there might be after this war, nor is the West Bank "Palestinian land".
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,652
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,653

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The cabinet should know by now that in the face of opposition Sunak will stand firm and force his decision through crumple like a cold souffle and u-turn ignominiously.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    Maybe Hamas should lay down their weapons then?

    That's the price of war. A war Hamas chose.
    Events don’t happen in a vacuum .

    There will be no peace whilst Israel continue to illegally build settlements and steal Palestinian land.

    That has long been an issue, and long been criticised, and it will also probably now get even worse. It was not looking positive before October 7th, and since then it is not surprising if a moderate stance will not find favour in Israel, even as compared to before.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,814

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    Your lack of regard for civilian life suggests to me that, contrary to the propaganda that you are a humble postie from Hampshire, you are actually Paula Venells in disguise :lol:
    Its Hamas that have a disregard for civilian life.

    They chose this fight. They can end it whenever the like by surrendering.
    No, the IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times more people than Hamas have on and since 7/10.

    And between January 2008 and 6/10/2023, a similar ratio. Hamas killed only 310 Israelis, whilst the IDF killed 6,337 Palestinians. TWENTY times as many.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239
    edited April 10

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    People will still do creativity for the same reason they do it now.

    Creating stuff makes people happy.

    Same reason people bake cakes when Waitrose can provide better, cheaper, more reliable cakes.

    Same reason I grow a risibly small number of tomatoes.

    Same reason my daughters play the trumpet. (You get exactly one payday a year from that.)

    There is a small, fortunate niche of people who have been able to turn creativity into a career. That fortunate few is becoming fewer, but that's been happening since at least the invention of recorded music. And it sucks bigtime for those affected by the cull.

    But the act of human creation will still be there. And if everything is cheap, everyone will be rich. In the grand scheme of things, we already are.

    Gentleman scholar-artists. It's the way forward.
    I disagree, I think this is part of the Singularity, we are staring at the Event Horizon - and therefore we cannot see beyond

    Creativity is one of THE things that makes humans human. If an AI can do it all better - write better songs, better novels, better poetry, better shows, better dramas, better guitar lines - it is going to be overwhelmingly demotivating for many if not all. I do not know how we will react when our unique creativity is taken from us

    I believe there is a significant chance of a Butlerian Jihad, that we will rise and smash the spooky looms
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    People will still do creativity for the same reason they do it now.

    Creating stuff makes people happy.

    Same reason people bake cakes when Waitrose can provide better, cheaper, more reliable cakes.

    Same reason I grow a risibly small number of tomatoes.

    Same reason my daughters play the trumpet. (You get exactly one payday a year from that.)

    There is a small, fortunate niche of people who have been able to turn creativity into a career. That fortunate few is becoming fewer, but that's been happening since at least the invention of recorded music. And it sucks bigtime for those affected by the cull.

    But the act of human creation will still be there. And if everything is cheap, everyone will be rich. In the grand scheme of things, we already are.

    Gentleman scholar-artists. It's the way forward.
    i disagree, I think is part of the Singularity, we are staring at the Event Horizon - and therefore we cannot see beyond

    Creativity is one of THE things that makes humans human. If an AI can do it all better - write better songs, better novels, better poetry, better shows, better dramas, better guitar lines - it is going to be overwhelmingly demotivating for many if not all. I do not know how we will react when our unique creativity is taken from us

    I believe there is a significant chance of a Butlerian Jihad, that we will rise and smash the spooky looms
    Welcome back - if that is the case !
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,968
    edited April 10

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    Your lack of regard for civilian life suggests to me that, contrary to the propaganda that you are a humble postie from Hampshire, you are actually Paula Venells in disguise :lol:
    Its Hamas that have a disregard for civilian life.

    They chose this fight. They can end it whenever the like by surrendering.
    No, the IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times more people than Hamas have on and since 7/10.

    And between January 2008 and 6/10/2023, a similar ratio. Hamas killed only 310 Israelis, whilst the IDF killed 6,337 Palestinians. TWENTY times as many.
    So what!?

    So they should have!
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027
    carnforth said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    This is one kind of severance from Europe that Labour actually would reverse.
    The Sunak government will not be in power long enough to complete the severance

    It is good to see there are still some sane conservatives in the cabinet
  • nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,814

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    Maybe Hamas should lay down their weapons then?

    That's the price of war. A war Hamas chose.
    Events don’t happen in a vacuum .

    There will be no peace whilst Israel continue to illegally build settlements and steal Palestinian land.

    And Israel quite reasonable and quite rightly will continue to build settlements on disputed land until there is peace. As they should.

    If Hamas surrender, then peace might be an option. As Israel has repeatedly sought peace, and Israelis have voted for peace seeking parties when the other side looks like they might want peace too, it is Hamas rejecting it just as Arafat rejected it.

    Not that there is a single settlement in Gaza, though there might be after this war, nor is the West Bank "Palestinian land".
    "Peace" that you mentioned would have been an unviable Palestinian "state" wholly surrounded by Israeli territory, with no free access to Jordan or Egypt.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    Technology has been used in the arts for ages. I don't know why you're being so doomy about it.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/24245194.new-scottish-independence-poll-gives-yes-two-point-lead/?ref=ebbn&nid=1457&u=f140ec39d500193051a33e140c12bd95&date=100424

    R&W polling, to compare with Yougov, also VI at Westminster and Holyrood. I did notice this:

    "In Scotland, the UK Government has a net competency rating of -47, compared to -7 for the Scottish Government."

    Admirably loyal of the people of Scotland. I'd be interested if Wales had similar numbers, given people I suspect do not generally rate their governments very well.

    (Of course each may well actually be more competent as well, I wouldn't know, but I would have doubts it is so much better it is worth 40%).
    This is Redfield Wiltons Welsh polling

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-18-february-2024/
    Old poll.

    Of the government Vaughan Gething now leads, a plurality (35%, -6) say the current Welsh Government is incompetent, compared to 26% (+3) who say it is competent.


    Asked their view on the UK Government, a majority of Welsh voters (58%, -3) say the current UK Government is incompetent. Only 16% (+2) view the UK Government as competent.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-23-24-march-2024/
    It is hardly old on the 18th February this year but what has happened is that Gething is receiving a honeymoon period after his succession from the unpopular Drakeford at the end of his term

    Indeed I wish Gething well as he does seem to be a refreshing change
    It is bad form on this website to post old polls.

    People bet on such things.
  • nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    The numbers are made up by Hamas

    And let's all hope that Hamas makes up most of the real number
    Those figures are supported by organizations on the ground . And looking at the devastation hardly look like being inflated . That doesn’t include those who are buried in the rubble . Over half of the buildings in Gaza are either destroyed or uninhabitable.
    Maybe Hamas should lay down their weapons then?

    That's the price of war. A war Hamas chose.
    Events don’t happen in a vacuum .

    There will be no peace whilst Israel continue to illegally build settlements and steal Palestinian land.

    And Israel quite reasonable and quite rightly will continue to build settlements on disputed land until there is peace. As they should.

    If Hamas surrender, then peace might be an option. As Israel has repeatedly sought peace, and Israelis have voted for peace seeking parties when the other side looks like they might want peace too, it is Hamas rejecting it just as Arafat rejected it.

    Not that there is a single settlement in Gaza, though there might be after this war, nor is the West Bank "Palestinian land".
    "Peace" that you mentioned would have been an unviable Palestinian "state" wholly surrounded by Israeli territory, with no free access to Jordan or Egypt.
    The proposal Arafat rejected was an entirely viable state, as supported by Clinton and others not just Israel, which would have been bordering Jordan and Egypt.

    Its not Israel's fault, or Clinton's fault, that no Palestinian state exists.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    I'm sure there will be a premium for some stuff at the top end, and I am sure many people will do it for pleasure.

    But I am different to you in terms of perceiving inherent value in what we would we would call authentic artworks. Simply because people already cannot tell the difference much of the time from AI generated work, including in more creative offerings, and certainly won't in future, so any additional value we ascribe to it will by definition not be inherent, it will be extrinsic and based on our perceptions only once we are informed of the provenance.

    It's not really different to works by famous creators going for masses more money than someone unknown, even if on a technical level one is superior or one is made by a monkey.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027
    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    I did make the point earlier that leaving the ECHR would have a serious effect on the WF and GFA

    Those conservatives seeking this action should join Reform pro Farage Trump party
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    Eh, that'll be ROI's problem soon enough.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    Who said his name into a mirror five times? WHO DID IT?
    Noel, Noel, Noel
    Noel sing we clear
    God today hath poor folk raised
    And buggered up PB by reviving Leon.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,653
    edited April 10
    @Leon: I take it all back. Please give us a few more posts about AI.

    Anything to distract from Barty endlessly banging on about how Israel can do no wrong.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
    The GFA is predicated on the UK remaining within the ECHR . Leaving the ECHR breaches the GFA . It also puts at risk security co-operation with the EU . Your comparison with Canada is irrelevant. This is used by those trying to justify leaving.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    Yes, some forms of human art will survive: live music is one. Memoir and reportage in literature. Dance of course

    But so much art is consumed at a distance, you don't REALLY care who wrote the novel or that hit song or the play you like or the script of that fab movie, you don't care who directed the movie, you don't care who designed that graphic, you don't care about the music on the radio you just want it to sound good

    AI will take all of that and automate it. Entire industries are about to implode
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,773

    nico679 said:

    Hamas is now described as a "movement" by the BBC

    Well, at least they haven't killed as many people as the IDF...
    Hamas have killed all of the innocent Palestinians they hid behind since their barbaric raid on Israel

    Sunal Jazeera's spreadsheets might not agree
    The gallant, moral IDF have killed TWENTY-TWO times as many people as evil Hamas.


    According to Hamas
    I find his propagandising for an Islamist terror group quite unseemly
    It’s not propaganda. Showing the reality re deaths .
    Its absolutely propaganda to try and pretend all deaths are equal.

    An army fighting proportionately, trying to minimise civilian figures as the IDF rightly are, is not the same as a terrorist group killing as many civilians as they can.

    If Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their weapons, the war is over.

    If Israel lays down their weapons, Hamas would kill every last Israeli.
    Of course they would:


    That doesn't show that Hamas aren't genocidal fanatics. It just shows they haven't been allowed to effect their aims.
    Hamas - and indeed many Palestinians and much of the Middle Eastern world - want to see the destruction of Israel as a concept just as surely as Russia wants to aee the destruction of Ukraine. The onoy difference between Hamas and Russia is that Hamas have so far been less successful.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    More particularly on the ECHR issue, I can see how it is argued to help on this specific issue, from that political perspective, but it never seems to be very deeply argued, it is presented more as a fit of pique kind of decision, and that would make me very very wary of unintended, unforeseen, consequences which are being glossed over in some drive to achieve one specific policy goal.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    People will still do creativity for the same reason they do it now.

    Creating stuff makes people happy.

    Same reason people bake cakes when Waitrose can provide better, cheaper, more reliable cakes.

    Same reason I grow a risibly small number of tomatoes.

    Same reason my daughters play the trumpet. (You get exactly one payday a year from that.)

    There is a small, fortunate niche of people who have been able to turn creativity into a career. That fortunate few is becoming fewer, but that's been happening since at least the invention of recorded music. And it sucks bigtime for those affected by the cull.

    But the act of human creation will still be there. And if everything is cheap, everyone will be rich. In the grand scheme of things, we already are.

    Gentleman scholar-artists. It's the way forward.
    I disagree, I think this is part of the Singularity, we are staring at the Event Horizon - and therefore we cannot see beyond

    Creativity is one of THE things that makes humans human. If an AI can do it all better - write better songs, better novels, better poetry, better shows, better dramas, better guitar lines - it is going to be overwhelmingly demotivating for many if not all. I do not know how we will react when our unique creativity is taken from us

    I believe there is a significant chance of a Butlerian Jihad, that we will rise and smash the spooky looms
    I hope the AI goth band calls itself The Spooky Looms.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    Technology has been used in the arts for ages. I don't know why you're being so doomy about it.
    Because I am able to extrapolate
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/24245194.new-scottish-independence-poll-gives-yes-two-point-lead/?ref=ebbn&nid=1457&u=f140ec39d500193051a33e140c12bd95&date=100424

    R&W polling, to compare with Yougov, also VI at Westminster and Holyrood. I did notice this:

    "In Scotland, the UK Government has a net competency rating of -47, compared to -7 for the Scottish Government."

    Admirably loyal of the people of Scotland. I'd be interested if Wales had similar numbers, given people I suspect do not generally rate their governments very well.

    (Of course each may well actually be more competent as well, I wouldn't know, but I would have doubts it is so much better it is worth 40%).
    This is Redfield Wiltons Welsh polling

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-18-february-2024/
    Old poll.

    Of the government Vaughan Gething now leads, a plurality (35%, -6) say the current Welsh Government is incompetent, compared to 26% (+3) who say it is competent.


    Asked their view on the UK Government, a majority of Welsh voters (58%, -3) say the current UK Government is incompetent. Only 16% (+2) view the UK Government as competent.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-23-24-march-2024/
    It is hardly old on the 18th February this year but what has happened is that Gething is receiving a honeymoon period after his succession from the unpopular Drakeford at the end of his term

    Indeed I wish Gething well as he does seem to be a refreshing change
    It is bad form on this website to post old polls.

    People bet on such things.
    You do seem to like having a go at me, and I would never intentionally post an old poll and indeed I was not aware of the later one

    I have seen many older polls published by others without your intervention

    I do try wherever possible to post accurate references and I will never intentionally mislead
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited April 10
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    I am not dismissive of AI, but people will still surely create, write, play and draw for the same reason that I still play football aged 49 - because I enjoy it. Most people don’t learn to do those things because it might be a career. Doesn’t matter that other people can do it better, and it wouldn’t matter if machines could (FIFA on PlayStation probably can already)

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620
    @Leon

    Stop talking about AI.

    You know the rules.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    you don't REALLY care who wrote the novel
    Heck, some of the buggers even use different pen names for different types of story, so without being aware of that people would have no idea who wrote the things.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,652
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    I'm sure there will be a premium for some stuff at the top end, and I am sure many people will do it for pleasure.

    But I am different to you in terms of perceiving inherent value in what we would we would call authentic artworks. Simply because people already cannot tell the difference much of the time from AI generated work, including in more creative offerings, and certainly won't in future, so any additional value we ascribe to it will by definition not be inherent, it will be extrinsic and based on our perceptions only once we are informed of the provenance.

    It's not really different to works by famous creators going for masses more money than someone unknown, even if on a technical level one is superior or one is made by a monkey.

    Yep, provenance will be key for monetisation purposes. That's why it will be a high end thing.

    But there is also going to be a lot of skill in AI instruction. Some will turn out to be better than others in doing this. I am on the advisory board of a company that uses AI to create inventions. There is a real skill in the selection of terms and how you put these together. Different people get very different results.

  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    edited April 10

    Seattle Times - State GOP chair files 3 new initiatives to WA voters

    OLYMPIA — The chair of the state’s Republican Party is attempting to get three more initiatives on Washington’s November ballot, with the latest round taking on controversial issues heading into the 2024 campaign season.

    State GOP Chair Jim Walsh, also a state representative from Aberdeen, says the issues driving the new petitions have been the three most common topics — immigration, “squatters” on residential property and efforts to phase out natural gas — raised at recent GOP town hall meetings across the state.

    “They’re real,” he said, denying they are efforts to stoke outrage to drive voter turnout.

    The new measures, filed in late March, are among dozens of initiatives filed this year so far, and filing is merely an initial step in the process that takes significant work and money to qualify for the election. But if backers do succeed in getting enough valid signatures, they would join an already crowded ballot.

    Not only is it a year with a presidential election, an open governor’s seat and a host of other races, but Washington voters will also be weighing in on three other initiatives backed by the state GOP. One would repeal the state’s capital gains tax, another would repeal its carbon market, and a third would effectively kill a long-term care insurance program by making the payroll tax that funds it optional. . . .

    That could be cruising for a humiliation, since aiui he needs 8% of the votes in the previous Gubernatorial Election just to get it on the ballot, never mind passed. In practice that will be ~10%.

    Is that doable, I wonder?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,549
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    Really? Do you really think this? Still?

    Listen to that song I linked, or try this one

    https://www.udio.com/songs/eY7xtug1dV6hbfCDhyHJua

    Made in seconds. So that's the end of humans writing for Hollywood and the West End
    Yes. Because you unfailingly see everything to do with AI as AMAZING and BRILLIANT! and WORLD-CHANGING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    You do not have the wits - or, dare I say it, intelligence - to query it, or the effects it will have on the world. In fact, I dare say it. Intelligence. You lack intelligence. You're stupid. Thick. An ignoramus. A fool. Whose only slightly redeeming quality is that you can write the English language. It's just a shame you do not use that skill for positive purpose.

    As I keep on mentioning, your prediction for no-lorry-drivers-in-ten-years was hilariously wrong. Why are you correct now?

    You have this problem because you promote and believe hype, and any critical faculties you have were probably lost in a drug-and-prostitute ridden binge three decades ago.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239
    I just hope, for the sake of @Heathener, that bestselling novelists/farmers/postmen/opera critics/warm water hoarders get a few more years to enjoy their craft
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,401
    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
    The GFA is predicated on the UK remaining within the ECHR . Leaving the ECHR breaches the GFA . It also puts at risk security co-operation with the EU . Your comparison with Canada is irrelevant. This is used by those trying to justify leaving.
    Last time I looked the RoI has no effective army, navy or airforce. The Garda cant even keep a lid on their drug dealers.
    So wheres this security cooperation ?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    I'm sure there will be a premium for some stuff at the top end, and I am sure many people will do it for pleasure.

    But I am different to you in terms of perceiving inherent value in what we would we would call authentic artworks. Simply because people already cannot tell the difference much of the time from AI generated work, including in more creative offerings, and certainly won't in future, so any additional value we ascribe to it will by definition not be inherent, it will be extrinsic and based on our perceptions only once we are informed of the provenance.

    It's not really different to works by famous creators going for masses more money than someone unknown, even if on a technical level one is superior or one is made by a monkey.

    Yep, provenance will be key for monetisation purposes. That's why it will be a high end thing.

    But there is also going to be a lot of skill in AI instruction. Some will turn out to be better than others in doing this. I am on the advisory board of a company that uses AI to create inventions. There is a real skill in the selection of terms and how you put these together. Different people get very different results.

    That'll be the transitionary step until we create some AIs to instruct the other AIs.

    We should be able to hold off the Quiet War until at least after we lot are dead at least.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    If Sunak was crazy enough to quit the ECHR there would be a blood bath in the Tory party . If he tried to put that in a manifesto there would be big problems aswell. The right of the Tory party are a cancer on the country .
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239

    @Leon

    Stop talking about AI.

    You know the rules.

    Fair enough. There is anyway a vastly superior level of debate, on this one subject, on Reddit; I just came here to generously keep you all up to speed

    But do please note that I was responding to a comment about AI that actually mentioned me by name!

    See you all some other time, perhaps
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    nico679 said:

    If Sunak was crazy enough to quit the ECHR there would be a blood bath in the Tory party . If he tried to put that in a manifesto there would be big problems aswell. The right of the Tory party are a cancer on the country .

    If it is not in the manifesto this time, I guarantee it will be in the next one, as the party lurches rightwards after a loss.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    People already pay a premium for ‘hand made’ suits, shoes etc, so there is a precedent. Rich people still have real musicians at their weddings, whilst poorer people just play recordings etc
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,576

    rcs1000 said:

    Top Tech Tip:

    Many of you will connect your laptops or iPads to the Internet via tethering. Have you ever noticed that that the Internet is slow this way?

    That's because basically all mobile networks deliberately throttle tethering speeds. It means that while your phone might well have a 200 or 300 mb/s 5G connection, you are pulling 0.5mb/s or less through your laptop.

    Which is absolutely infuriating and is done so Vodafone and EE can sell additional data connections.

    If you are on Android, you can circumvent this, and get the full speed of your cellular connection for your iPad/laptop. Download an app called Every Proxy (and turn HTTP proxying on). You then need to toggle proxying on in Network Settings. And - tada - you now get 300mb/s on your laptop/tablet.

    Sadly, I don't think this works on iPhones. (Although it works with my Macbook connected to my Android phone, obviously.)

    Have not noticed an issue with iPhone to Macbook. Just done a sanity test:
    Phone 4G 62.8 down
    Macbook tethered 58.1 down
    Yes that’s not usually a problem. I don’t download movies on a tethered laptop, but do work-related RDP and SSH over VPN, which always works fine.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    isam said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    People already pay a premium for ‘hand made’ suits, shoes etc, so there is a precedent. Rich people still have real musicians at their weddings, whilst poorer people just play recordings etc
    True enough, and we can go further.

    We are paying a premium for hand made politicians when AI ones could probably do just as a good a job.

    Or so I imagine a techbro is arguing right now in California.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,773
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    People will still do creativity for the same reason they do it now.

    Creating stuff makes people happy.

    Same reason people bake cakes when Waitrose can provide better, cheaper, more reliable cakes.

    Same reason I grow a risibly small number of tomatoes.

    Same reason my daughters play the trumpet. (You get exactly one payday a year from that.)

    There is a small, fortunate niche of people who have been able to turn creativity into a career. That fortunate few is becoming fewer, but that's been happening since at least the invention of recorded music. And it sucks bigtime for those affected by the cull.

    But the act of human creation will still be there. And if everything is cheap, everyone will be rich. In the grand scheme of things, we already are.

    Gentleman scholar-artists. It's the way forward.
    I disagree, I think this is part of the Singularity, we are staring at the Event Horizon - and therefore we cannot see beyond

    Creativity is one of THE things that makes humans human. If an AI can do it all better - write better songs, better novels, better poetry, better shows, better dramas, better guitar lines - it is going to be overwhelmingly demotivating for many if not all. I do not know how we will react when our unique creativity is taken from us

    I believe there is a significant chance of a Butlerian Jihad, that we will rise and smash the spooky looms
    My wife read a novel about this a few years ago. Set some time in the future, but a future which looked quite like the 16th century - the reason being, it turned out, that people had realised just in time the threat of a malign AI and responded by switching off everything. All records, all history, all communications were lost.

    Personally I think this is optimistic. I doubt the ability of 8 billion humans to cooperate for the collective good if by not doing so some get to hold sole access to
    the megabrain. Humanity is pretty much doomed.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,362
    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
    The GFA is predicated on the UK remaining within the ECHR . Leaving the ECHR breaches the GFA . It also puts at risk security co-operation with the EU . Your comparison with Canada is irrelevant. This is used by those trying to justify leaving.
    Last time I looked the RoI has no effective army, navy or airforce. The Garda cant even keep a lid on their drug dealers.
    So wheres this security cooperation ?
    Security co-operation with the whole EU. Read the relevant sections of the UK EU deal and the GFA . As I said in my previous post the standout name in that list of cabinet members is CHH . Ask yourself why an ardent Leaver balks at leaving the ECHR .
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?
    Very interesting. I shall wait and see. Meanwhile if it means that everyone who learns to play a musical instrument does so for intrinsic reasons and not extrinsic ones, that would be a gain in human flourishing.

    Take journalism. I can well imagine AI taking over the journalistic boilerplate opinion industry. This would be little loss. But could it take over the painstaking accurate and significant fact finding of proper journalism?

    Let us know when AI produces 'The Marriage of Figaro', Lear', or 'Emma'. Or even 'At Castle Boterel'.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620
    Never heard the markets described as the global left.

    Liz Truss, the former prime minister, has written a memoir about her 49 days as prime minister.

    The book, Ten Years to Save the West, will argue the primary cause of her downfall was a lack of “support for Conservative ideas” and too much support for the “global left”.

    Peppered with anecdotes from her time in public life, it is being touted as warning against authoritarianism and the threat from “fashionable ideas propagated by the global left” — the same movement she blames for derailing her premiership.

    Before its launch next week, here’s everything you need to know about Truss’s book.

    Queen told Truss to ‘pace yourself’, but she didn’t listen

    Documenting her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral in Scotland just days before she died in September 2022, Truss wrote that the monarch warned her to “pace yourself”. It was sage advice, Truss suggested, adding: “Maybe I should have listened.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-book-memoir-ten-years-save-west-g2thx8cxx
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    This longish article in The Hill is -- IMHO - a good summary of the current situation on Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4577493-ukraine-strikes-russian-oil-refineries/

    The article was published April 7th, and begins with this paragraph:
    "Ukraine is ramping up attacks on Russian oil refineries in a campaign that has damaged Moscow’s most important source of revenue. "
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,911
    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,362
    What is this AI of which people speak ?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,549
    Taz said:

    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

    They're probably not pro-Palestinian protestors and they'll support whatever cause is trendy is at the moment. I would not be surprised if some of them were previously on the fringes of Extinction Rebellion.

    A cynic, me?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    Taz said:

    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

    Wouldn't chaining themselves to the fencing with Palestinian flags make the same point and get more attention as it would last longer? Not that spraying red paint on things is not good fun, but its so quick and done.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,549
    Taz said:

    What is this AI of which people speak ?

    Artificial Insemination. For some reason Leon is fascinated by the subject...
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071

    Taz said:

    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

    They're probably not pro-Palestinian protestors and they'll support whatever cause is trendy is at the moment. I would not be surprised if some of them were previously on the fringes of Extinction Rebellion.

    A cynic, me?
    If they were on the fringes of XR or similar groups I'd think it highly likely they are indeed genuinely pro-Palestinian. That doesn't argue against the trendiness of choosing it as the protest point of the moment, but I'd expect that is their direction.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027
    Taz said:

    What is this AI of which people speak ?

    In my youth it was the main road between Berwick and Newcastle/Edinburgh !!!!!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354
    Taz said:

    What is this AI of which people speak ?

    Say, don't you remember
    You called me Al?
    It was Al all the time.
    Say don't you remember
    I'm your pal?
    Buddy won't you spare a dime?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620

    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel

    So by your logic the Israelis that do not want a two state solution don't count as Israelis who want peace.

    Considering that includes a lot of people in the Israeli government....
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071

    Never heard the markets described as the global left.

    Liz Truss, the former prime minister, has written a memoir about her 49 days as prime minister.

    The book, Ten Years to Save the West, will argue the primary cause of her downfall was a lack of “support for Conservative ideas” and too much support for the “global left”.

    Peppered with anecdotes from her time in public life, it is being touted as warning against authoritarianism and the threat from “fashionable ideas propagated by the global left” — the same movement she blames for derailing her premiership.

    Before its launch next week, here’s everything you need to know about Truss’s book.

    Queen told Truss to ‘pace yourself’, but she didn’t listen

    Documenting her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral in Scotland just days before she died in September 2022, Truss wrote that the monarch warned her to “pace yourself”. It was sage advice, Truss suggested, adding: “Maybe I should have listened.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-book-memoir-ten-years-save-west-g2thx8cxx

    Well, she's learned at least one lesson, even if her conclusion seems more to mollify herself than anything else.
  • nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
    The GFA is predicated on the UK remaining within the ECHR . Leaving the ECHR breaches the GFA . It also puts at risk security co-operation with the EU . Your comparison with Canada is irrelevant. This is used by those trying to justify leaving.
    Its used to justify it, because it is a justification.

    If ROI were to vote to leave the ECHR, then we would need to adjust accordingly, we couldn't and should stop them.
    Ditto the other way around.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128

    I saw in the Telegraph that Farage was offering to be Starmer's trade envoy to the US. I guess he won't be running for Reform then .... that is how bad it is for the right.

    Sky were interviewing Tice today and got so impatient with him they cut him off and moved to another story
    Theyre hardly fans as he works for a competitor news channel.
    His answer to the boats is to intercept them and take them back to France

    Seems Reform want to take us out of the ECHR thereby making us an international pariah like Russia and Belarus, and also to prejudice the WF and GFA and ensure France will refuse permission for them to land in France

    You mean an international pariah like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA or Japan?

    There's absolutely no reason why we need to be in the ECHR. Human rights are universal not continent based, there's nothing special or magical about being in Europe which makes us any more required to be in the ECHR than any other democracy on the planet which is not in Europe.
    I think that's quite seriously mistaken TBH.

    It's not about Human Rights being universal, it's also about them being recognised and enforceable. And if the infrastructure that supports those processes is taken away, then we have a new situation where ignoring and not respecting human rights becomes acceptable.

    We can already point to some examples of what happens - at one end the US Govt indulging in illegal torture, waterboarding by various mechanisms (eg 'Rights under USA law does not apply where it is technically not the USA, so we can do what we want') etc, and at the other end much of the world where Governments can ignore human rights at will.

    Europe, and most advanced societies, are arguably one exception where the infrastructure is at least partially effective, and officially supported.

    That's one reason why the Ukrainian War has to be won with a clear defeat for Russia; if that does not happen it is an admission by Western countries that we will permit destruction of human rights in Europe.

    The Telegraph podcast had a good conversation on this earlier this week.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354

    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel

    So by your logic the Israelis that do not want a two state solution don't count as Israelis who want peace.

    Considering that includes a lot of people in the Israeli government....
    That seems eminently sound logic to me actually.

    I mean, if Bibi wanted peace he wouldn't have made sure Qatar shovelled all that dirty cash to Hamas.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    edited April 10
    MattW said:

    Seattle Times - State GOP chair files 3 new initiatives to WA voters

    OLYMPIA — The chair of the state’s Republican Party is attempting to get three more initiatives on Washington’s November ballot, with the latest round taking on controversial issues heading into the 2024 campaign season.

    State GOP Chair Jim Walsh, also a state representative from Aberdeen, says the issues driving the new petitions have been the three most common topics — immigration, “squatters” on residential property and efforts to phase out natural gas — raised at recent GOP town hall meetings across the state.

    “They’re real,” he said, denying they are efforts to stoke outrage to drive voter turnout.

    The new measures, filed in late March, are among dozens of initiatives filed this year so far, and filing is merely an initial step in the process that takes significant work and money to qualify for the election. But if backers do succeed in getting enough valid signatures, they would join an already crowded ballot.

    Not only is it a year with a presidential election, an open governor’s seat and a host of other races, but Washington voters will also be weighing in on three other initiatives backed by the state GOP. One would repeal the state’s capital gains tax, another would repeal its carbon market, and a third would effectively kill a long-term care insurance program by making the payroll tax that funds it optional. . . .

    That could be cruising for a humiliation, since aiui he needs 8% of the votes in the previous Gubernatorial Election just to get it on the ballot, never mind passed. In practice that will be ~10%.

    Is that doable, I wonder?
    Very doable. Especially as the fatcat businessman who finance successful campaign to obtain signatures for the initiative already qualified for the November ballot, is no doubt gonna fund these as well.

    In WA and other states where citizens can propose initiatives & referendums, what virtually all serious campaigns do, is raise money to hire paid signature gatherers, almost always via vendors who actually do the hiring and managing.

    So real question is, can they raise the money? In this case, answer is Yes with about 99.46% confidence level.

    ADDENDUM - Caveat is IF Mr Moneybags is actually on board. My guess is, Hell Yes.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620
    ydoethur said:

    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel

    So by your logic the Israelis that do not want a two state solution don't count as Israelis who want peace.

    Considering that includes a lot of people in the Israeli government....
    That seems eminently sound logic to me actually.

    I mean, if Bibi wanted peace he wouldn't have made sure Qatar shovelled all that dirty cash to Hamas.
    Indeed something Blanche and others do not like to discuss.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,549

    This longish article in The Hill is -- IMHO - a good summary of the current situation on Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4577493-ukraine-strikes-russian-oil-refineries/

    The article was published April 7th, and begins with this paragraph:
    "Ukraine is ramping up attacks on Russian oil refineries in a campaign that has damaged Moscow’s most important source of revenue. "

    I fail to see the enemy's oil refineries as being anything other than legitimate targets in war. The USA has certainly seen them as such in the past.

    It's better than the hospitals and schools the Russians seem to have repeatedly targeted.

    That article is reasonably good, but I would make one point: wars are rarely won by one act, but by a combination of pressures on an enemy. The refinery attacks may not directly lead to a Ukrainian victory or Russian loss, but they'll help.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,968
    edited April 10
    MattW said:

    I saw in the Telegraph that Farage was offering to be Starmer's trade envoy to the US. I guess he won't be running for Reform then .... that is how bad it is for the right.

    Sky were interviewing Tice today and got so impatient with him they cut him off and moved to another story
    Theyre hardly fans as he works for a competitor news channel.
    His answer to the boats is to intercept them and take them back to France

    Seems Reform want to take us out of the ECHR thereby making us an international pariah like Russia and Belarus, and also to prejudice the WF and GFA and ensure France will refuse permission for them to land in France

    You mean an international pariah like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA or Japan?

    There's absolutely no reason why we need to be in the ECHR. Human rights are universal not continent based, there's nothing special or magical about being in Europe which makes us any more required to be in the ECHR than any other democracy on the planet which is not in Europe.
    I think that's quite seriously mistaken TBH.

    It's not about Human Rights being universal, it's also about them being recognised and enforceable. And if the infrastructure that supports those processes is taken away, then we have a new situation where ignoring and not respecting human rights becomes acceptable.

    We can already point to some examples of what happens - at one end the US Govt indulging in illegal torture, waterboarding by various mechanisms (eg 'Rights under USA law does not apply where it is technically not the USA, so we can do what we want') etc, and at the other end much of the world where Governments can ignore human rights at will.

    Europe, and most advanced societies, are arguably one exception where the infrastructure is at least partially effective, and officially supported.

    That's one reason why the Ukrainian War has to be won with a clear defeat for Russia; if that does not happen it is an admission by Western countries that we will permit destruction of human rights in Europe.

    The Telegraph podcast had a good conversation on this earlier this week.
    The democratic, western world is more than just Europe.

    The ECHR does bugger all to prevent human rights abuses, it had Putin's Russia as a full member state until 2021.

    There is no fundamental reason why our human rights can't be treated the same as other common law nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Geography is irrelevant.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,362

    Taz said:

    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

    They're probably not pro-Palestinian protestors and they'll support whatever cause is trendy is at the moment. I would not be surprised if some of them were previously on the fringes of Extinction Rebellion.

    A cynic, me?
    Yes, and Just Stop Oil.

    They are certainly anti capitalist too but Greta in her latest book is moving towards anti capitalism rather than just saving the planet.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,362

    Taz said:

    What is this AI of which people speak ?

    In my youth it was the main road between Berwick and Newcastle/Edinburgh !!!!!
    It will still be single carriageway in 100 years time.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,362

    Never heard the markets described as the global left.

    Liz Truss, the former prime minister, has written a memoir about her 49 days as prime minister.

    The book, Ten Years to Save the West, will argue the primary cause of her downfall was a lack of “support for Conservative ideas” and too much support for the “global left”.

    Peppered with anecdotes from her time in public life, it is being touted as warning against authoritarianism and the threat from “fashionable ideas propagated by the global left” — the same movement she blames for derailing her premiership.

    Before its launch next week, here’s everything you need to know about Truss’s book.

    Queen told Truss to ‘pace yourself’, but she didn’t listen

    Documenting her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral in Scotland just days before she died in September 2022, Truss wrote that the monarch warned her to “pace yourself”. It was sage advice, Truss suggested, adding: “Maybe I should have listened.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-book-memoir-ten-years-save-west-g2thx8cxx

    She’s totally deluded.

    The only thing she’s right about is she should have listened to the Queen.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    With respect to qualifying ballot measures in WA State, by law requirement is valid voter signatures equivalent to 8% of 2020 general election total vote for Governor.

    As rule of thumb, campaigns need to submit MORE that the minimum, in order to account for signatures that are NOT counted as valid because:
    > no voter registered under name given
    > signature on petition does NOT match sig on file with WA Secretary of State
    > signature is duplicate of one already found on petition and validated (only one counts per voter).
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,870
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Very off-topic, and at the risk of summoning Leon, but this new music generator is really quite impressive :

    https://www.udio.com/songs/3S2x3pu4VpuuZVJQv4oGCP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/8XhqYphEvDuYLbSbsAiksP

    https://www.udio.com/songs/uUjAaApMbjmMqBoj6Z6dsd

    You called? I answered

    Check this one, it is even better. This is pretty much the end of human music as we know it. Live music will survive, but much of the rest will now be automated by AI. And this tech is only in Beta mode - you can only "make" 1200 songs a month


    https://www.udio.com/songs/gajKkTvivm1nJx6oNQjFk1

    Listen to the singing, and the flute trill at the end. Incredible. Made by AI in seconds

    And this tech will only improve

    The Singularity is coming


    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S LEON!!!
    lol, thanks

    But only briefly, I'll be off again soon. I have been enjoying a significant boost in productivity since flouncing off and I want to continue with that. I also accept that I was indeed boring the tits off everyone with AI talk - apologies to the site (tho AI is the most interesting thing in the world right now, by miles). I've found my tribe on AI Reddit, there I can talk about it endlessly...

    But look at the new music site. It is.... mind blowing. Imagine you are in the music industry, and then you see that. This is going to happen to all the arts, and indeed most professions. I was absolutely right to bang on, even if I was really really boring
    Some sort of AI type breakthrough to do with 'reasoning' was mentioned on R4 this morning. Can't quite recall the details.
    The 'details' are that someone wants to make a lot of money, and journalists don't ask hard questions.
    My sense as a 63 year old retired Chartered Accountant is if you park the babble about the coming of a "new and superior lifeform" what you're left with is a leap in technology that will (eventually) make the world a better place.
    It is going to destroy the creative sector. Imagine an infinite variety of excellent iif not perfect music, novels, poetry, show tunes, dramas, movies, operas, everything. All available at the touch of a button, and for pennies (if anything), and in billions of varieties

    How can they have an Oscar category for Best Music Score when we now know that machines can create superb soundtracks? What if AI MAKES the best soundtrack?

    Why will kids learn to play musical instruments if AI means their chances of making it pay are reduced to near zero? Ditto novels, composing, designing, almost anything creative

    How are you so unable to extrapolate this?

    For me - and obviously this is very personal and others may feel totally differently - there is something more inherently valuable and authentic in, say, a landscape evoked in music, painted or described by someone who has been there and breathed it in, smelled it, had the wind, the rain or the sun on their face, and so on. There is genius in being able to turn experience into art. My guess is that, at least at the top end of the market, real humans will always pay a premium for what other real humans have produced. And, even if this is not the case, humans will still want to carry on doing it. There is pleasure in creation and interpretation, after all.

    Yes, some forms of human art will survive: live music is one. Memoir and reportage in literature. Dance of course

    But so much art is consumed at a distance, you don't REALLY care who wrote the novel or that hit song or the play you like or the script of that fab movie, you don't care who directed the movie, you don't care who designed that graphic, you don't care about the music on the radio you just want it to sound good

    AI will take all of that and automate it. Entire industries are about to implode
    even live music the mechanicals are here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7nMZvueKNQ
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,911

    ydoethur said:

    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel

    So by your logic the Israelis that do not want a two state solution don't count as Israelis who want peace.

    Considering that includes a lot of people in the Israeli government....
    That seems eminently sound logic to me actually.

    I mean, if Bibi wanted peace he wouldn't have made sure Qatar shovelled all that dirty cash to Hamas.
    Indeed something Blanche and others do not like to discuss.
    Are you talking about the NYT story that Netanyahu allowed payments from Qatar to Hamas, or even encouraged them?

    Or do you think Sinwar is Mossad?
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    nico679 said:

    nico679 said:

    Rishi Sunak faces cabinet revolt over leaving ECHR

    Chancellor, home secretary and justice secretary are among a dozen ministers against leaving the European Convention on Human Rights


    Rishi Sunak will face opposition from at least 12 cabinet ministers if he opts to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, The Times can disclose.

    Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, are among the senior ministers who are understood to be opposed to leaving the convention. They outnumber those in the cabinet who support leaving the ECHR by two to one.

    There are growing calls among Conservative MPs to quit the ECHR following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-faces-cabinet-revolt-over-leaving-echr-k8tfndfxq

    The key name there is Chris Heaton-Harris . Hardly a leftie tree hugger . He obviously realizes the devastating impact leaving the ECHR would have on NI .
    What would be "devastating" about being the same as Canada for how we deal with human rights?
    The GFA is predicated on the UK remaining within the ECHR . Leaving the ECHR breaches the GFA . It also puts at risk security co-operation with the EU . Your comparison with Canada is irrelevant. This is used by those trying to justify leaving.
    Its used to justify it, because it is a justification.

    If ROI were to vote to leave the ECHR, then we would need to adjust accordingly, we couldn't and should stop them.
    Ditto the other way around.
    If ROI did that they would be breaching the GFA . The GFA is predicated on both sides having their rights protected. Sunak needs to stop threatening to quit the ECHR and get on with the day job .
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,620

    ydoethur said:

    How many Palestinians want peace with Israel?

    Palestinians that want peace but don't want Israel to exist don't count as Palestinians that want peace with Israel

    So by your logic the Israelis that do not want a two state solution don't count as Israelis who want peace.

    Considering that includes a lot of people in the Israeli government....
    That seems eminently sound logic to me actually.

    I mean, if Bibi wanted peace he wouldn't have made sure Qatar shovelled all that dirty cash to Hamas.
    Indeed something Blanche and others do not like to discuss.
    Are you talking about the NYT story that Netanyahu allowed payments from Qatar to Hamas, or even encouraged them?

    Or do you think Sinwar is Mossad?
    No, I am talking about my original point which you have conveniently ignored.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027

    MattW said:

    I saw in the Telegraph that Farage was offering to be Starmer's trade envoy to the US. I guess he won't be running for Reform then .... that is how bad it is for the right.

    Sky were interviewing Tice today and got so impatient with him they cut him off and moved to another story
    Theyre hardly fans as he works for a competitor news channel.
    His answer to the boats is to intercept them and take them back to France

    Seems Reform want to take us out of the ECHR thereby making us an international pariah like Russia and Belarus, and also to prejudice the WF and GFA and ensure France will refuse permission for them to land in France

    You mean an international pariah like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA or Japan?

    There's absolutely no reason why we need to be in the ECHR. Human rights are universal not continent based, there's nothing special or magical about being in Europe which makes us any more required to be in the ECHR than any other democracy on the planet which is not in Europe.
    I think that's quite seriously mistaken TBH.

    It's not about Human Rights being universal, it's also about them being recognised and enforceable. And if the infrastructure that supports those processes is taken away, then we have a new situation where ignoring and not respecting human rights becomes acceptable.

    We can already point to some examples of what happens - at one end the US Govt indulging in illegal torture, waterboarding by various mechanisms (eg 'Rights under USA law does not apply where it is technically not the USA, so we can do what we want') etc, and at the other end much of the world where Governments can ignore human rights at will.

    Europe, and most advanced societies, are arguably one exception where the infrastructure is at least partially effective, and officially supported.

    That's one reason why the Ukrainian War has to be won with a clear defeat for Russia; if that does not happen it is an admission by Western countries that we will permit destruction of human rights in Europe.

    The Telegraph podcast had a good conversation on this earlier this week.
    The democratic, western world is more than just Europe.

    The ECHR does bugger all to prevent human rights abuses, it had Putin's Russia as a full member state until 2021.

    There is no fundamental reason why our human rights can't be treated the same as other common law nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Geography is irrelevant.
    The fundamental reason why it will not happen is public opinion supports the ECHR and even more so the WF and GFA
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    The MOD attacked/spray painted by the same cranks who targetted the home of SKS.

    https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1778087971872268463?s=61

    They're probably not pro-Palestinian protestors and they'll support whatever cause is trendy is at the moment. I would not be surprised if some of them were previously on the fringes of Extinction Rebellion.

    A cynic, me?
    Yes, and Just Stop Oil.

    They are certainly anti capitalist too but Greta in her latest book is moving towards anti capitalism rather than just saving the planet.
    Moving toward? Isn't she already there?

    Have to look to the long term - people are doing better at trying to save the planet (if with much else still to do), but anti-capitalism will always have a market, funnily enough.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128

    MattW said:

    Seattle Times - State GOP chair files 3 new initiatives to WA voters

    OLYMPIA — The chair of the state’s Republican Party is attempting to get three more initiatives on Washington’s November ballot, with the latest round taking on controversial issues heading into the 2024 campaign season.

    State GOP Chair Jim Walsh, also a state representative from Aberdeen, says the issues driving the new petitions have been the three most common topics — immigration, “squatters” on residential property and efforts to phase out natural gas — raised at recent GOP town hall meetings across the state.

    “They’re real,” he said, denying they are efforts to stoke outrage to drive voter turnout.

    The new measures, filed in late March, are among dozens of initiatives filed this year so far, and filing is merely an initial step in the process that takes significant work and money to qualify for the election. But if backers do succeed in getting enough valid signatures, they would join an already crowded ballot.

    Not only is it a year with a presidential election, an open governor’s seat and a host of other races, but Washington voters will also be weighing in on three other initiatives backed by the state GOP. One would repeal the state’s capital gains tax, another would repeal its carbon market, and a third would effectively kill a long-term care insurance program by making the payroll tax that funds it optional. . . .

    That could be cruising for a humiliation, since aiui he needs 8% of the votes in the previous Gubernatorial Election just to get it on the ballot, never mind passed. In practice that will be ~10%.

    Is that doable, I wonder?
    Very doable. Especially as the fatcat businessman who finance successful campaign to obtain signatures for the initiative already qualified for the November ballot, is no doubt gonna fund these as well.

    In WA and other states where citizens can propose initiatives & referendums, what virtually all serious campaigns do, is raise money to hire paid signature gatherers, almost always via vendors who actually do the hiring and managing.

    So real question is, can they raise the money? In this case, answer is Yes with about 99.46% confidence level.

    ADDENDUM - Caveat is IF Mr Moneybags is actually on board. My guess is, Hell Yes.
    How much would such a campaign cost to run?
This discussion has been closed.