An excellent and very balanced article of about 10 minutes on BBC Countryfile on the Farming IHT issue.
More fact based in terms of the actual proposals, tax experts and viewpoints from Farmers for and against the proposals.
Steve Reed and Tom Bradshaw NFU also interviewed.
The Clarksons of this world will hate it but I'm sure the silent majority will be much better informed having seen it.
The same Steve Reed who opposed this tax on record before the election
The same Steve Teed who wasn't aware the Tories had spent the emergency find 3x over and made huge unfounded tax cuts 3 months before the GE
The same Steve Reed who persuaded the Chancellor to give real Farmers a £5, 000,000,000 increase in funding over the next 2 years.
Watch the article you might learn something.
It is clear you are a poor labour intern desperately trying to justify the dreadful Starmer Reeves government who is tanking in the polls and has just lost 13% in Wales and is behind Plaid and near level with Reform
That's a bit rude and personal BigG. Unlike you. Anyway good luck with a Reform Government in Wales.
Actually I would be happy for any combination of government for Wales that sees labour out of office
Plaid - conservative - reform - lib dem - independent
Wales could be the first major bastion to fall to reform. Which would be quite sensational
It has all the right ingredients
Wales was the last holdout of UKIP to anything significant.
I've just read a headline on the Sky News website that refers to a "train station".
I despair.
You catch trains from a train... station.
You catch trains from a railway station. A train station sounds like a section of a gymnasium.
A train is what you catch. You don't catch a railway.
But you don't catch crabs etc at a prophylactic station.
(Sorry. Currently reading Ellis 'The sharp end of war' on the rather miserable and sometimes short life of the Allied squaddie in ww2.)
Was there such a thing as an allied squaddie in the second world war? Surely American and British troops would have been armed and fed quite differently.
Sure, they did usually get different reatment in detail (which the book covers, actually). But I might plead in my defence that the Canadians, for instance, would get similar treatment to the British, and the French with one or the other according to the timing and circumstances (I believe).
Edit: and as for the basic facts of the short lives of infantry and tank crews ...
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
SKS hasn't met Zarah Sultana since she became a Labour MP. Hasn't spoke to Diane Abbott since 2029 both of them get racially abused and gets death threats by the bucket load
. But he'll cross the floor to have a cosy chat with far right MP Nigel Farage.
His treatment of them, fair or not, does not really make his talking to Farage mean anything.
You, me, or others, may or may not like him having a civil chat with Farage, but the fact of him doing so has no relation to whether he has been appropriately civil with Sultana and Abbott (and he definitely tried to get rid of the latter).
It's remarkable to me how ever some very smart people act like absolute children when politicians display civility - even on here some lost their minds over Mordaunt and Rayner being able to share a conversation, and suggesting it meant political arguments of theirs was fake.
Dennis Skinner mentality correct imo
I move to Bolsover next month unfortunately the Lab MP is awful she lost to Lee Anderson in the 2019 GE and is of the SKS red Tory mould.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
Better still HS3 on a viaduct over Horse's stable yard. Which exemplifies the issues.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
They just have, they're re-developing next door to build a new block of flats and the view to the right has now gone and the light into my flat has halved.
Doesn't bother me, glad people will have somewhere to live.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
Better still HS3 on a viaduct over Horse's stable yard. Which exemplifies the issues.
Fabulous, if they want to build one here go right ahead. I'll have a phone mast on my roof for good measure.
They’d have been better sticking 2p on income tax, telling us straight what a mess we are all in, and used that shedload of money to go achieve something worthwhile.
I make 2p on income tax as raising a little under £10bn per annum.
AFAICS that's a scratch on the surface of what is needed in extra revenue.
That would just about do an uptick in Defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, assuming we are starting from 2.1%.
Yes. In very rough figures it seems to me that to be reasonably relaxed about expenditure and contingencies (there will be some) we need to either increase government income by about £100bn or decrease government commitments by about £100bn. A 70% rise in VAT might do it, or about 18p on IT. Neither are cheering prospects.
The alternative is to carry on borrowing until UK plc belongs to Karloans and Wonga Ltd following a CCJ.
Pick any one. I don't think others exist.
Yes - roughly.
Back in the summer I was posting that I reckoned they needed £50bn pa extra on top, and that there may be a windfall from reduced interest costs on the national debt.
Looking at it now, changed circumstances, and how so much has gone to hell in a handcart over the last years, £100bn pa over time may be more like it.
I'm thinking that Mr Starmer is wasting far too much time pandering to the potential attack lines of the rump Conservative Party.
It's gonna be expensive. And I think they have one more year to get structural change in place leading in the direction needed.
Yes. It is a very central and touchy political question. FWIW my own view is that if something has to be done and provided for (and the state/civil order spends nearly half of all spending) then it has to be done comfortably, with a margin and allowing for stuff happening. Like sensible people do in ordinary life.
So, for example, the NHS as a whole should be provided for so that what it does is in general relaxed, spacious, ordered, comfortable and humane in every aspect. I don't think we approach it, or anything, that way. Too much is tacky and second rate. We have got used to it. Trivially I compare private dentistry (which I use, having no choice, but I would now anyway) with NHS services. Different planets in just these sorts of ways.
£100 billion should help towards it. Extra taxes of about £3k per household. Not easy.
We have seen a government with a majority of 80 fail to govern, and one with a majority of 160 get bogged down and have to relaunch after five months.
Are big majorities overrated?
That's a very interesting question. I was thinking about it the other day.
There are a number of aspects to Starmer's situation today, which make his majority of 166 today very different, from, say, Mrs Thatcher's of 144 in 1983.
Firstly, it's obvious that the electorate isn't in love with Starmer and his government, as even its supporters admit, and it's already behind in the polls. That means that his government is highly unlikely, unlike Mrs Thatcher's, to win another landslide, which in turn means that maybe 50-80 of its MPs will be out of a job in five years. So they've relatively little to lose by making trouble.
Secondly, Starmer can't bring his troops into line by claiming a mandate, because he avoided making many substantive statements at all during the election campaign, and the few that they did, they've already broken. That removes an important argument from the whips as they try to bully and blackmail MPs into line.
Thirdly, as Starmer doesn't seem to have much of an idea even now where his government is going, he can't really use his huge majority to get what he wants, because he doesn't seem to know what that is. Maybe he has some genius plan that he's been hiding from us all, but I think he's simply drifting, hoping some economic growth will turn up.
Finally, and I suspect most importantly, the rolling 24-hour news and social media mean that governments since Blair have been terrified even of short term unpopularity. So they have to relaunch themselves all the time, even though I can't think of a single case of one of them actually working.
So you get a toxic doom loop - a government comes in with a huge majority, but inevitably lots of its MPs won't be returned next time, given how volatile the electorate is. And so they get restive, which discredits the government, which is obsessed with its own popularity, which tries to relaunch itself, which just makes it look weak and is an obvious admission of its own incompetence, which reduces its popularity further, which means it's less and less likely that MPs will be returned next time, which makes them more restive etc. etc.
And in the meantime the country continues its depressing stagnation and relative decline.
SKS hasn't met Zarah Sultana since she became a Labour MP. Hasn't spoke to Diane Abbott since 2029 both of them get racially abused and gets death threats by the bucket load
. But he'll cross the floor to have a cosy chat with far right MP Nigel Farage.
His treatment of them, fair or not, does not really make his talking to Farage mean anything.
You, me, or others, may or may not like him having a civil chat with Farage, but the fact of him doing so has no relation to whether he has been appropriately civil with Sultana and Abbott (and he definitely tried to get rid of the latter).
It's remarkable to me how ever some very smart people act like absolute children when politicians display civility - even on here some lost their minds over Mordaunt and Rayner being able to share a conversation, and suggesting it meant political arguments of theirs was fake.
Dennis Skinner mentality correct imo
I'm sure he was a great local MP, but his pettiness around treating political opponents as to not even be engaged with on a human level (or at least that is how it is reported) was the attitude of an overgrown toddler, and not praiseworthy or to be emulated. In my opinion it is both misguided and deeply pathetic.
There are nice people who do not share our politics and bad people who do. Anyone who has taken 5 minutes to talk to a political ally opponent or ally will have experienced that. Some truly will be beyond our personal lines of acceptance to engage with, but those will be very rare.
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
"Russian air strikes have killed five people near Aleppo's University Hospital, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the death toll in the country.
Russian fighter jets carried out four strikes on the hospital, SOHR says."
This is one of the reasons @HYUFD is wrong; instead of striking valid military targets such as military convoys, the Russian strategy is to go after civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
What it doesn't do is note that this is the result of capitalism. Companies use modern techniques to maximise profits and, too often, care little about the consequences. The question is how do we balance the good parts of capitalism with these excesses. The programme does talk about possible government regulation around food, drawing inspiration from Latin American policies like clear labelling and taxes on ultraprocessed food. I'd like to see politicians make that case more widely.
The rules about corporations effectively guarantee that they act like sociopaths, caring only about their own interests rather than wider society. It's a fundamental flaw in the system.
That’s organisations.
Remember when an NHS trust reacted to reports of aged patients drinking water out of flower vases? They reacted by trying to scapegoat anyone who spoke out.
The Post Office is a quasi-governmental organisation.
The list of examples is endless.
It’s a relatively new development - I blame McKinsey and the obsession with “shareholder value”
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
Better still HS3 on a viaduct over Horse's stable yard. Which exemplifies the issues.
Fabulous, if they want to build one here go right ahead. I'll have a phone mast on my roof for good measure.
We all have some limits, and I might demur of someone was going to put HS3 on a viaduct over my garden. But some of the planning objections around here are ridiculous, and reflexive rather than substantive, and I make a point of always either supporting planning applications in the area if I like them or keeping my trap shut if I’m not a fan of the aesthetics, including when (as in two cases, and to the irritation of some neighbours) they are literally overlooking my “back yard”.
The trouble is NIMBYs are noisy and YIMBYs tend to be quiet.
It's taken longer than many (including me) predicted, but the prediction IS now coming true
When have I ever said "they would never happen"? Indeed, I hoped (and hope) they will happen, as it would be rather neat for me.
But these geofenced robotaxis are rather limited compared to what you were claiming.
Well over ten years have passed, and lorry drivers still exist. In fact, there's no indication they're going away.
You were wrong. Own it.
I wasn't wrong, but nor were you. We were both half right. Self driving came later than I predicted and earlier than you did.
However, where I was entirely right is in machine translation, which -IIRC - you said was basically impossible for machines to truly master. lol
We now have translators which are literal Babel fish except arguably better
IIRC, you stated that in ten years, there would be no lorry drivers. You compounded that by saying that it was pointless training to be a lorry driver, as the jobs would go. Those 'predictions' were well over ten years ago.
And again, show where I said translation was 'basically impossible for machines to truly master'. Go on. Because I'm pretty sure I did not.
Yeah you did you stupid twat
Welsh: "Ie, wnest ti, ti'n dwp twp." Armenian: "Այո, արեցիր, հիմար ապուշ." (Ayo, arecir, himar apush.) Georgian: "ჰო, გააკეთე, შენ სულელი დებილი." (Ho, gaakete, shen suleli debili.) Mandarin: "是的，你做了，你这个蠢蛋。" (Shì de, nǐ zuò le, nǐ zhège chǔn dàn.) Hebrew: "כן, עשית את זה, טיפש מטומטם." (Ken, asita et ze, tipesh metumtam.)
How do you know that those are accurate? Though Ydoethur can help with No. 1.
I just checked: the translations are good
How did you do that? Ask it?
Are you really this fucking dim?
I checked with other, different AI translation devices. eg Google and iTranslate and the like
Now, maybe they are all conspiring to give us fake translations, even tho they are rival companies with absolutely no cause to do this (quite the opposite), or the translations are good
Are you really this fucking dim Leon? You checked a translation by computer with another translation by computer?
The Welsh is meaningless word salad.
It says 'Affirmative generic, you did small child/sexual partner/intimate friend, stupid stupid.'
The *actual* translation would be 'siaradoch chi hynna, dyn twp.'
You will observe exactly one word overlaps.
The problem with translation features, especially for minority languages, is they translate the words but not the grammar. It's one way in which AI is still a bit rubbish.
It's taken longer than many (including me) predicted, but the prediction IS now coming true
When have I ever said "they would never happen"? Indeed, I hoped (and hope) they will happen, as it would be rather neat for me.
But these geofenced robotaxis are rather limited compared to what you were claiming.
Well over ten years have passed, and lorry drivers still exist. In fact, there's no indication they're going away.
You were wrong. Own it.
I wasn't wrong, but nor were you. We were both half right. Self driving came later than I predicted and earlier than you did.
However, where I was entirely right is in machine translation, which -IIRC - you said was basically impossible for machines to truly master. lol
We now have translators which are literal Babel fish except arguably better
IIRC, you stated that in ten years, there would be no lorry drivers. You compounded that by saying that it was pointless training to be a lorry driver, as the jobs would go. Those 'predictions' were well over ten years ago.
And again, show where I said translation was 'basically impossible for machines to truly master'. Go on. Because I'm pretty sure I did not.
Yeah you did you stupid twat
Welsh: "Ie, wnest ti, ti'n dwp twp." Armenian: "Այո, արեցիր, հիմար ապուշ." (Ayo, arecir, himar apush.) Georgian: "ჰო, გააკეთე, შენ სულელი დებილი." (Ho, gaakete, shen suleli debili.) Mandarin: "是的，你做了，你这个蠢蛋。" (Shì de, nǐ zuò le, nǐ zhège chǔn dàn.) Hebrew: "כן, עשית את זה, טיפש מטומטם." (Ken, asita et ze, tipesh metumtam.)
How do you know that those are accurate? Though Ydoethur can help with No. 1.
I just checked: the translations are good
How did you do that? Ask it?
Are you really this fucking dim?
I checked with other, different AI translation devices. eg Google and iTranslate and the like
Now, maybe they are all conspiring to give us fake translations, even tho they are rival companies with absolutely no cause to do this (quite the opposite), or the translations are good
Are you really this fucking dim Leon? You checked a translation by computer with another translation by computer?
The Welsh is meaningless word salad.
It says 'Affirmative generic, you did small child/sexual partner/intimate friend, stupid stupid.'
The *actual* translation would be 'siaradoch chi hynna, dyn twp.'
You will observe exactly one word overlaps.
The problem with translation features, especially for minority languages, is they translate the words but not the grammar. It's one way in which AI is still a bit rubbish.
"Low resource language", if anyone wants the Google term. I went to a conference on the topic in an earlier life. Very short intro vis-a-vis NLP:
Interest rates went up so future pension liabilities have gone down by £1.5 trillion.
It's extraordinary. If Murphy is correct then instead of having trillions of debt the government has got trillions of assets to spend on sweets and nice things, but they haven't noticed. Apparently the more you borrow the richer you are and the debt isn't a debt, it's just that nice people have lent it to the government instead of putting it in a sock and the plan is that you never have to pay it back.
Novo Nordisk's GLP-1 drugs Ozempic & Wegovy continue to power Denmark's economy—since late 2021, GDP growth has been 3.6%, but it would have been 0% were it not for pharmaceutical output more-than-doubling amidst booming exports to the US.. https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/1863259564558188886
It's taken longer than many (including me) predicted, but the prediction IS now coming true
When have I ever said "they would never happen"? Indeed, I hoped (and hope) they will happen, as it would be rather neat for me.
But these geofenced robotaxis are rather limited compared to what you were claiming.
Well over ten years have passed, and lorry drivers still exist. In fact, there's no indication they're going away.
You were wrong. Own it.
I wasn't wrong, but nor were you. We were both half right. Self driving came later than I predicted and earlier than you did.
However, where I was entirely right is in machine translation, which -IIRC - you said was basically impossible for machines to truly master. lol
We now have translators which are literal Babel fish except arguably better
IIRC, you stated that in ten years, there would be no lorry drivers. You compounded that by saying that it was pointless training to be a lorry driver, as the jobs would go. Those 'predictions' were well over ten years ago.
And again, show where I said translation was 'basically impossible for machines to truly master'. Go on. Because I'm pretty sure I did not.
Yeah you did you stupid twat
Welsh: "Ie, wnest ti, ti'n dwp twp." Armenian: "Այո, արեցիր, հիմար ապուշ." (Ayo, arecir, himar apush.) Georgian: "ჰო, გააკეთე, შენ სულელი დებილი." (Ho, gaakete, shen suleli debili.) Mandarin: "是的，你做了，你这个蠢蛋。" (Shì de, nǐ zuò le, nǐ zhège chǔn dàn.) Hebrew: "כן, עשית את זה, טיפש מטומטם." (Ken, asita et ze, tipesh metumtam.)
How do you know that those are accurate? Though Ydoethur can help with No. 1.
I just checked: the translations are good
How did you do that? Ask it?
Are you really this fucking dim?
I checked with other, different AI translation devices. eg Google and iTranslate and the like
Now, maybe they are all conspiring to give us fake translations, even tho they are rival companies with absolutely no cause to do this (quite the opposite), or the translations are good
Are you really this fucking dim Leon? You checked a translation by computer with another translation by computer?
The Welsh is meaningless word salad.
It says 'Affirmative generic, you did small child/sexual partner/intimate friend, stupid stupid.'
The *actual* translation would be 'siaradoch chi hynna, dyn twp.'
You will observe exactly one word overlaps.
The problem with translation features, especially for minority languages, is they translate the words but not the grammar. It's one way in which AI is still a bit rubbish.
I've been trying all day to remember what this discussion reminds me of. It's chapter 1 of P. K. Dick's 'Galactic Pot-Healer.'
Fucksake. Dark at HAHAHA WHO CARES I’M FLYING SOUTH
For the winter?
Sadly not. At least not yet. A very short break in the sun but back for most of December. Which is fine - I rather like December in Britain and the socialising and drinks and catching up with friends and fam etc
But god and death willing I shall be off again in early Jan for a long shift in the tropics
January and February are disgusting in the Uk
I have only a week in the UK between December and January…
X Andrew Neil@afneil Downing Street rowing back on Rachel Reeves’ comments last week to the annual CBI conference that the government is “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” The official line is now “no tax rises on the same scale will be needed.” Which is not, of course, anything like what Reeves said. But she was trying to repair post-Budget relations with business so it’s perhaps not surprising she over-egged it. Regardless, it was a stupid, juvenile hostage to fortune for a Chancellor to give to anybody. https://x.com/afneil/status/1863232985920618910
X Andrew Neil@afneil Downing Street rowing back on Rachel Reeves’ comments last week to the annual CBI conference that the government is “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” The official line is now “no tax rises on the same scale will be needed.” Which is not, of course, anything like what Reeves said. But she was trying to repair post-Budget relations with business so it’s perhaps not surprising she over-egged it. Regardless, it was a stupid, juvenile hostage to fortune for a Chancellor to give to anybody. https://x.com/afneil/status/1863232985920618910
The promise to make the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7 is also still technically part of the plan....
"Russian air strikes have killed five people near Aleppo's University Hospital, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the death toll in the country.
Russian fighter jets carried out four strikes on the hospital, SOHR says."
This is one of the reasons @HYUFD is wrong; instead of striking valid military targets such as military convoys, the Russian strategy is to go after civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
As insurgents were using them as hideouts
How do you know ?
The Russians have spent the last decade killing large numbers of civilians in various parts of the world - if you follow this stuff on Twitter, there's actually proud of it. And they deliberately bomb hospitals with alarming frequency.
They do so in Ukraine all the time, where it's very clear there is no such excuse.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
Better still HS3 on a viaduct over Horse's stable yard. Which exemplifies the issues.
Fabulous, if they want to build one here go right ahead. I'll have a phone mast on my roof for good measure.
We all have some limits, and I might demur of someone was going to put HS3 on a viaduct over my garden. But some of the planning objections around here are ridiculous, and reflexive rather than substantive, and I make a point of always either supporting planning applications in the area if I like them or keeping my trap shut if I’m not a fan of the aesthetics, including when (as in two cases, and to the irritation of some neighbours) they are literally overlooking my “back yard”.
The trouble is NIMBYs are noisy and YIMBYs tend to be quiet.
The obvious solution is Yimby Reservations. Slough, Merthyr Tydfil, Telford, Cumbernauld etc etc. You enjoy 50% tax rates in exchange for not being able to say no to anything at all, and you get all the revenues from Kevin McCloud's TV series where everyone else gets to laugh at how shit it all is.
What it doesn't do is note that this is the result of capitalism. Companies use modern techniques to maximise profits and, too often, care little about the consequences. The question is how do we balance the good parts of capitalism with these excesses. The programme does talk about possible government regulation around food, drawing inspiration from Latin American policies like clear labelling and taxes on ultraprocessed food. I'd like to see politicians make that case more widely.
The rules about corporations effectively guarantee that they act like sociopaths, caring only about their own interests rather than wider society. It's a fundamental flaw in the system.
That’s organisations.
Remember when an NHS trust reacted to reports of aged patients drinking water out of flower vases? They reacted by trying to scapegoat anyone who spoke out.
The Post Office is a quasi-governmental organisation.
The list of examples is endless.
It’s a relatively new development - I blame McKinsey and the obsession with “shareholder value”
No, it isn’t.
Organisations (and the people running them) have claimed to care, since forever.
Sir Thomas Moore illegally imprisoned and threatened a man who had the temerity to be found not guilty of heresy. “To save the Bishop's credit”.
In the early 19th century, people compared working conditions in factories with slavery. While the comparison was not a good one (and generally made in bad faith, by slavers) , it wasn’t a 100% farcical, either.
The same pertained to both public and private employment. Service in the Royal Navy was compared to jail…
Since then a river of blood and ink has been spent on creating employment rights. Which are such, that in the U.K., a sensible union can have first recourse to the law, rather than a strike. Because the law protects employees in many, many ways.
Organisations, by their nature, cannot be ethical. Only sentient beings (humans) can be so. Which is why substituting a book of rules for morality is such a disgusting action.
One can, by rules, create organisations where it is easier for individuals to express good moral values, in the context of the organisation*. And that is what we can try to do. See @Cyclefree's various headers.
*Think of the Mirror Universe version of the Post Office, essentially.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
Moronic comment
I sincerely believe we should abolish the planning system and all regulations. The ability for anyone to reject building things is ridiculous.
Still a ludicrous idea. Wait till someone builds something accross and pr over your flat that denies you light ..
Not the best example, but a complete free for all is not a great idea. But the needle is far too far in the other direction right now, and we are well overdue to a recalculation.
Better still HS3 on a viaduct over Horse's stable yard. Which exemplifies the issues.
Fabulous, if they want to build one here go right ahead. I'll have a phone mast on my roof for good measure.
We all have some limits, and I might demur of someone was going to put HS3 on a viaduct over my garden. But some of the planning objections around here are ridiculous, and reflexive rather than substantive, and I make a point of always either supporting planning applications in the area if I like them or keeping my trap shut if I’m not a fan of the aesthetics, including when (as in two cases, and to the irritation of some neighbours) they are literally overlooking my “back yard”.
The trouble is NIMBYs are noisy and YIMBYs tend to be quiet.
The obvious solution is Yimby Reservations. Slough, Merthyr Tydfil, Telford, Cumbernauld etc etc. You enjoy 50% tax rates in exchange for not being able to say no to anything at all, and you get all the revenues from Kevin McCloud's TV series where everyone else gets to laugh at how shit it all is.
It would be much simpler, for public infrastructure, to offer 2x the value of the property for instant sale. I'd throw in one of those posh moving services - they come in, photograph how your house is setup, pack your stuff and then try and reassemble it at the other end, just the same.
Fucksake. Dark at HAHAHA WHO CARES I’M FLYING SOUTH
For the winter?
Sadly not. At least not yet. A very short break in the sun but back for most of December. Which is fine - I rather like December in Britain and the socialising and drinks and catching up with friends and fam etc
But god and death willing I shall be off again in early Jan for a long shift in the tropics
January and February are disgusting in the Uk
I have only a week in the UK between December and January…
The worst is over - November. December at least has Christmas. January and February have longer days and the prospect of better weather to come. November only has winter to look forward to.
"How To Fix America's Struggling Industrial Policy | Marc Fasteau, Ian Fletcher SVIC #52"
(by some ex-Googlers)
Guys in manufacturing are concerned about the massive over reliance on China for three quarters of everything. Not an easy problem to solve quickly.
Nearly no problems of any importance are. That's why they are problems of importance.
So you make a plan that reduces dependence on China to 74.9%. Then to 74.8%.....
I sort of agree, but it needs a bigger kick than that, I think. It's not impossible - they did it before with the creation of the chip industry. But this is about rebuilding a whole manufacturing ecosystem.
"How To Fix America's Struggling Industrial Policy | Marc Fasteau, Ian Fletcher SVIC #52"
(by some ex-Googlers)
Guys in manufacturing are concerned about the massive over reliance on China for three quarters of everything. Not an easy problem to solve quickly.
Nearly no problems of any importance are. That's why they are problems of importance.
So you make a plan that reduces dependence on China to 74.9%. Then to 74.8%.....
I sort of agree, but it needs a bigger kick than that, I think. It's not impossible - they did it before with the creation of the chip industry. But this is about rebuilding a whole manufacturing ecosystem.
"How To Fix America's Struggling Industrial Policy | Marc Fasteau, Ian Fletcher SVIC #52"
(by some ex-Googlers)
Guys in manufacturing are concerned about the massive over reliance on China for three quarters of everything. Not an easy problem to solve quickly.
Nearly no problems of any importance are. That's why they are problems of importance.
So you make a plan that reduces dependence on China to 74.9%. Then to 74.8%.....
I sort of agree, but it needs a bigger kick than that, I think. It's not impossible - they did it before with the creation of the chip industry. But this is about rebuilding a whole manufacturing ecosystem.
Europe ought to be thinking along the same lines.
Oh yes. If it was me running things, then. I would be demanding 10 square miles of battery factories. Per year.
And telling Arianespace to do one. And start work on an FFSC Lox/Methane engine…
And factories to make hundred of square miles of solar panels per year.
And so much more.
Real investment. Doesn’t have to be government run - with the right incentives it will happen.
It's interesting, and as someone who uses CNC machining gear quite a bit, and spends quite a lot of money on contract machining, I agree with a lot of it.
The only area I strongly disagree is his suggestion of a "cash for clunkers" program to scrap older machine tools. That's just value destruction for no good reason. Industry is pretty good at getting rid of tools with no economic value left. I gave £3500 for a 30 year old Bridgeport 412 VMC early year. It was ideal for our business where we wanted some machining capability on hand, but haven't got either the work or the staff to run it all day every day. A new HAAS that size is at least £40k, and they are pretty cheap and nasty machines.
Interestingly, we've found having a small CNC on site (and thus available at zero notice) is so valuable, I've just gone out and bought us a much bigger one, with a 4th axis - 36 years old and £6k this time. New equivalent from a reputable manufacturer is about £130k.
His suggestion of government finance via machine tool manufactures is a good one. Manufacturers would still assume the loan default risk, so it doesn't all end up in fraud, but the government covering the "time value of money" cost of finance would make it much more affordable for people growing businesses.
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
Very poor behaviour, but federal employees location, job title, full name and salary are public information. Not doxxing.
That's quite a technical distinction, however my understanding is that doxxing now covers taking personally identifiable information on the internet, and publicising it more widely for the purposes of abuse or harrassment.
AI can not be trusted in its current state. Always check the output as most of the time it is wrong.
One advantage of my new (well, some years now) job is I get to check AI output and point out the mistakes, and you get major brownie points when you find one.
Yeah, I just tried that. It's bizarre that it would fail on that.
Can anyone solve the mystery of David Mayer?
Claude produces a sensible response, so the right to privacy / to be forgotten argument is out the window.
The claimant has to apply to each company separately, don't they?
If you are paying lawyers to get them to pressure OpenAI to scrub you, you will be doing the same for the likes of Claude as well. They aren't some tiny unknown company, they are to Amazon what OpenAI is to Microsoft.
Google Gemini also works with these names, in fact it returns pictures of them scrapped from the internet. So again, seems highly unlikely it is privacy related, as again if you are instructing lawyers to scrub you, you definitely aren't missing the LLM from the worlds #1 search engine.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Interest rates went up so future pension liabilities have gone down by £1.5 trillion.
It's extraordinary. If Murphy is correct then instead of having trillions of debt the government has got trillions of assets to spend on sweets and nice things, but they haven't noticed. Apparently the more you borrow the richer you are and the debt isn't a debt, it's just that nice people have lent it to the government instead of putting it in a sock and the plan is that you never have to pay it back.
Good luck.
It is the same reason Japan keeps running. If you buy a premium bond, you add to the national debt. Is the government in more trouble because of you? No. If the Bank of England and the Treasury owe each other money, will that collapse the economy? No. And that is without the headline issue of £1.5 trillion in debt vanishing because interest rates changed, and hence estimates of future pension liabilities.
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
Very poor behaviour, but federal employees location, job title, full name and salary are public information. Not doxxing.
That's quite a technical distinction, however my understanding is that doxxing now covers taking personally identifiable information on the internet, and publicising it more widely for the purposes of abuse or harrassment.
Interest rates went up so future pension liabilities have gone down by £1.5 trillion.
It's extraordinary. If Murphy is correct then instead of having trillions of debt the government has got trillions of assets to spend on sweets and nice things, but they haven't noticed. Apparently the more you borrow the richer you are and the debt isn't a debt, it's just that nice people have lent it to the government instead of putting it in a sock and the plan is that you never have to pay it back.
X Andrew Neil@afneil Downing Street rowing back on Rachel Reeves’ comments last week to the annual CBI conference that the government is “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” The official line is now “no tax rises on the same scale will be needed.” Which is not, of course, anything like what Reeves said. But she was trying to repair post-Budget relations with business so it’s perhaps not surprising she over-egged it. Regardless, it was a stupid, juvenile hostage to fortune for a Chancellor to give to anybody. https://x.com/afneil/status/1863232985920618910
Such a shame yo see a once great political journalist fall in to senility and utter irrelevance
Meanwhile the transformation of Dan Hodges from tawdry Client journalist to a heavyweight neutral thinker grows at incredible pace...
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
It's interesting, and as someone who uses CNC machining gear quite a bit, and spends quite a lot of money on contract machining, I agree with a lot of it.
The only area I strongly disagree is his suggestion of a "cash for clunkers" program to scrap older machine tools. That's just value destruction for no good reason. Industry is pretty good at getting rid of tools with no economic value left. I gave £3500 for a 30 year old Bridgeport 412 VMC early year. It was ideal for our business where we wanted some machining capability on hand, but haven't got either the work or the staff to run it all day every day. A new HAAS that size is at least £40k, and they are pretty cheap and nasty machines.
Interestingly, we've found having a small CNC on site (and thus available at zero notice) is so valuable, I've just gone out and bought us a much bigger one, with a 4th axis - 36 years old and £6k this time. New equivalent from a reputable manufacturer is about £130k.
His suggestion of government finance via machine tool manufactures is a good one. Manufacturers would still assume the loan default risk, so it doesn't all end up in fraud, but the government covering the "time value of money" cost of finance would make it much more affordable for people growing businesses.
Our
As we are discussing old television drama series, CNC machines were crucial to Nice Work, where a university academic shadowed an industrialist.
X Andrew Neil@afneil Downing Street rowing back on Rachel Reeves’ comments last week to the annual CBI conference that the government is “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” The official line is now “no tax rises on the same scale will be needed.” Which is not, of course, anything like what Reeves said. But she was trying to repair post-Budget relations with business so it’s perhaps not surprising she over-egged it. Regardless, it was a stupid, juvenile hostage to fortune for a Chancellor to give to anybody. https://x.com/afneil/status/1863232985920618910
The promise to make the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7 is also still technically part of the plan....
I keep having images of the opening credits of "Jamie and the Magic Torch" when I hear Labour talking about their plans.
The future king wants to build lots of homes? Good man
(I'm sure it's just a business decision, though the comments throughout the article from residents are your standard NIMBY tropes - wrong place, farmland, small towns etc - so it's impossible to discern whether there's anything particularly good or bad about the plans at a glance)
What it doesn't do is note that this is the result of capitalism. Companies use modern techniques to maximise profits and, too often, care little about the consequences. The question is how do we balance the good parts of capitalism with these excesses. The programme does talk about possible government regulation around food, drawing inspiration from Latin American policies like clear labelling and taxes on ultraprocessed food. I'd like to see politicians make that case more widely.
The rules about corporations effectively guarantee that they act like sociopaths, caring only about their own interests rather than wider society. It's a fundamental flaw in the system.
Wouldn't it only be a fundamental flaw were it not recognised, broadly, that you cannot have them be entirely unconstrained?
We argue over how much governments should intervene and regulate, but most people would accept corporations cannot be left entirely to their own devices, to ensure they do more good than harm. And that response is part of the system.
The bigger problem is state-run organisations that effectively are left to their own devices with no competition and accountability.
NHS, Post Office etc
There is an internal market within the NHS, while the Post Office faces competition from private companies.
More pertinently, the NHS is under a huge pressure of accountability. It is one of our most accounted-for organisations, a constant political football. The idea that there is no accountability for the NHS, something under the constant eye of the press, the public and the politicians, is one of the most ludicrous things said here in a while (and there’s been competition).
I think more problematic is something like the Post Office, that is partway between a public body and a private body. There, the politicians responsible (hello Kemi Badenoch) left the PO alone rather than holding it accountable.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
The thing people get wrong about a single LLM, is they aren't really about being the fountain of all knowledge. Yes it has been fed the whole of the internet, but that isn't for the task of fact retrieval. What they are a highly effective way of manipulating / working with text, and in the near future as an interface between us and computers for tasks. We can turn out human language effortlessly into a stream of tokens which computers are much better at dealing with.
A lot of the research focus now is on developing systems which your primary LLM queries and interacts with a whole range of our machine learning models.
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Would unlock the growth this country desperately needs. And the houses and infrastructure it does too.
And would help balance the Treasuries books.
There's no downside, except for pissing off some voters.
There could be some downsides (and that's a big one for a politician), but it would be a worthy experiment to take to determine if it really would be as bad as BANANA's insist, or if people would, in fact, get used to it.
I know some people still believe NIMBY's can have decent points, and it is theoretically possible, but if you've seen the utter nonsense of objections out there, the disingenuousness, then you start to have sympathy even with the scumbag developers who contribute to problems in their own ways.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I would say its more than a party trick, they are lots of genuinely useful things that they aid with e.g. coding, but it is a just another tool. What I wouldn't want to be doing is some sort of job that is text or coding heavily that is overwhelmingly a very repetitive task with little innovation, because tools can certainly be produced that will then only require 1 of you rather than current 5 or 10.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I'm a bit of a believer that we'll get there eventually (as a species, not the UK, obviously), or get to something which we cannot really distinguish from AI even if it is not really, but a surprising number of people have been a bit quick to believe the hype of the various companies desperate to rake in investment capital.
I get the investors doing so even with some doubts, if one of these companies hits gold it will be worth it, but a lot of people just believe the output of these LLMs uncritically despite the well known hallucination issues, never mind anything.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
I feel like you've just asked Excel to create a pop song. LLM's have (to OpenAI's shame) been marketed as rather 'magic' (hence the often-used 'sparkle' icon). But they really are very useful for language processing that would otherwise be next to impossible. If you want regular old factoids just use google or wikipedia, if you trust either.
To extend the Excel theme - if you just do a regular standard deviation, it'll probably get it wrong. If you tell it the column is Currency, it'll probably get the sums wrong. It's just not the tool for the job.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
"I don't know" would be clearer. AI seems to major in TLDR quite a lot of the time ?
Sir Keir Starmer has the ability to get rid of planning regulations altogether. He should do it.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Would unlock the growth this country desperately needs. And the houses and infrastructure it does too.
And would help balance the Treasuries books.
There's no downside, except for pissing off some voters.
There could be some downsides (and that's a big one for a politician), but it would be a worthy experiment to take to determine if it really would be as bad as BANANA's insist, or if people would, in fact, get used to it.
I know some people still believe NIMBY's can have decent points, and it is theoretically possible, but if you've seen the utter nonsense of objections out there, the disingenuousness, then you start to have sympathy even with the scumbag developers who contribute to problems in their own ways.
A mast was recently rejected from being placed in a railway yard in Wandsworth Common because it "spoils the view". They clearly forgot the railway that passes through it that's been there for over a hundred years.
This is the sort of lunacy we just need to say "too bad" and build it anyway.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
"I don't know" would be clearer. AI seems to major in TLDR quite a lot of the time ?
It is negative with the current Claude model, that it is very verbose. They have introduced "modes" which are obviously some extra tokens that are appended to direct for instance to be more concise, but I have found they can lead to the above guard rails breaking.
The thing people get wrong about a single LLM, is they aren't really about being the fountain of all knowledge. Yes it has been fed the whole of the internet, but that isn't for the task of fact retrieval. What they are a highly effective way of manipulating / working with text, and in the near future as an interface between us and computers for tasks. We can turn out human language effortlessly into a stream of tokens which computers are much better at dealing with.
A lot of the research focus now is on developing systems which your primary LLM queries and interacts with a whole range of our machine learning models.
Anthropic's MCP has been getting a lot of attention in that area :
Presented with a clip of a statement he issued in 2003 when serving as IDF chief of staff, in which he said that the IDF does not “harm innocent people,” Ya’alon says he stands by what he said at the time, to which the interviewer asks if “something has changed” since that 21-year-old clip.
“Do you not live in this country?” Ya’alon retorts. “Do you not hear Ben Gvir encouraging [people] to kill?”..
I was surprised to learn despite all the hype, OpenAI only has 10 million paying customers despite it currently being very cheap to subscribe. I presume Anthropic will be at an least order of magnitude less than that as nobody outside of particularly geeky people are aware of it as they don't do the PR hype thing.
On Greg Wallace, perhaps you could explain away the comments but does anyone want to have a go at saying being at work naked with a sock covering your penis is acceptable?
Unless you are in a niche job I assume it is better than being at work naked without even a sock covering your penis.
Gino D'Acampo did the same thing. Looks privilege bites again......
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I would say its more than a party trick, they are lots of genuinely useful things that they aid with e.g. coding, but it is a just another tool. What I wouldn't want to be doing is some sort of job that is text or coding heavily that is overwhelmingly a very repetitive task with little innovation, because tools can certainly be produced that will then only require 1 of you rather than current 5 or 10.
Even for coding - they can help you finish something off (but my word, you better check the output) - but they cannot innovate or problem solve.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I would say its more than a party trick, they are lots of genuinely useful things that they aid with e.g. coding, but it is a just another tool. What I wouldn't want to be doing is some sort of job that is text or coding heavily that is overwhelmingly a very repetitive task with little innovation, because tools can certainly be produced that will then only require 1 of you rather than current 5 or 10.
Even for coding - they can help you finish something off (but my word, you better check the output) - but they cannot innovate or problem solve.
For boilerplate type code I find Claude extremely good and for auto-complete SuperMaven, it often correctly predicts 4-5 lines ahead. What you don't do is the nonsense you see people trying on the internet of make new a whole app in one prompt.
When I was a kid I read an Asimov book that ended with the phrase "someday, someday, someday...". It's one of those things that keep me going. I just found a YouTube about a guy with a 32sqm flat in Paris, and he's buit it out with plywood: proper Grand Designs on a budget. I am so jealous...
I was surprised to learn despite all the hype, OpenAI only has 10 million paying customers despite it currently being very cheap to subscribe. I presume Anthropic will be at an least order of magnitude less than that as nobody outside of particularly geeky people are aware of it as they don't do the PR hype thing.
I feel like "only" is doing some quite hard work there. I suspect they are also playing a line between acquiring paid customers and fulfilling their non-profit "for the benefit of all" claims. At least until the current spat with Musk is played out.
We've also no insight into how much their API via their own service or MS Azure is being used.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if they are burning cash like firelighters. But it's quite opaque as to how their finances are going.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I'm a bit of a believer that we'll get there eventually (as a species, not the UK, obviously), or get to something which we cannot really distinguish from AI even if it is not really, but a surprising number of people have been a bit quick to believe the hype of the various companies desperate to rake in investment capital.
I get the investors doing so even with some doubts, if one of these companies hits gold it will be worth it, but a lot of people just believe the output of these LLMs uncritically despite the well known hallucination issues, never mind anything.
I have issues with even using the word “hallucinate”. I think it makes people imagine something is happening which is not.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
Its why Claude is far better...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
Yup. An LLM is an LLM: nothing more. It’s a good party trick but it’s not “artificial intelligence” in any meaningful sense.
I would say its more than a party trick, they are lots of genuinely useful things that they aid with e.g. coding, but it is a just another tool. What I wouldn't want to be doing is some sort of job that is text or coding heavily that is overwhelmingly a very repetitive task with little innovation, because tools can certainly be produced that will then only require 1 of you rather than current 5 or 10.
Even for coding - they can help you finish something off (but my word, you better check the output) - but they cannot innovate or problem solve.
For boilerplate type code I find Claude extremely good and for auto-complete SuperMaven, it often correctly predicts 4-5 lines ahead. What you don't do is the nonsense you see people trying on the internet of make new a whole app in one prompt.
Yes, exactly. Is excellent at what it’s excellent at. But too many see that and assume an intelligence that is not there. It helps if you’ve built computers and written code.
Trump has been telling friends he denied Robert Lighthizer — his pro-tariff, China-hawk U.S. trade representative in the first term — a Cabinet role because he's "too scared to go big." https://x.com/modestproposal1/status/1863228333695156334
Comments
Edit: and as for the basic facts of the short lives of infantry and tank crews ...
Interest rates went up so future pension liabilities have gone down by £1.5 trillion.
Rather puts the cork into those claiming that the SKS administration isn't aiming to deal with major issues. Though we have to see what comes of it.
It's not as if the Tories didn't bottle it under Mrs May (and despite her to be fair to her).
I move to Bolsover next month unfortunately the Lab MP is awful she lost to Lee Anderson in the 2019 GE and is of the SKS red Tory mould.
Doesn't bother me, glad people will have somewhere to live.
So, for example, the NHS as a whole should be provided for so that what it does is in general relaxed, spacious, ordered, comfortable and humane in every aspect. I don't think we approach it, or anything, that way. Too much is tacky and second rate. We have got used to it. Trivially I compare private dentistry (which I use, having no choice, but I would now anyway) with NHS services. Different planets in just these sorts of ways.
£100 billion should help towards it. Extra taxes of about £3k per household. Not easy.
There are a number of aspects to Starmer's situation today, which make his majority of 166 today very different, from, say, Mrs Thatcher's of 144 in 1983.
Firstly, it's obvious that the electorate isn't in love with Starmer and his government, as even its supporters admit, and it's already behind in the polls. That means that his government is highly unlikely, unlike Mrs Thatcher's, to win another landslide, which in turn means that maybe 50-80 of its MPs will be out of a job in five years. So they've relatively little to lose by making trouble.
Secondly, Starmer can't bring his troops into line by claiming a mandate, because he avoided making many substantive statements at all during the election campaign, and the few that they did, they've already broken. That removes an important argument from the whips as they try to bully and blackmail MPs into line.
Thirdly, as Starmer doesn't seem to have much of an idea even now where his government is going, he can't really use his huge majority to get what he wants, because he doesn't seem to know what that is. Maybe he has some genius plan that he's been hiding from us all, but I think he's simply drifting, hoping some economic growth will turn up.
Finally, and I suspect most importantly, the rolling 24-hour news and social media mean that governments since Blair have been terrified even of short term unpopularity. So they have to relaunch themselves all the time, even though I can't think of a single case of one of them actually working.
So you get a toxic doom loop - a government comes in with a huge majority, but inevitably lots of its MPs won't be returned next time, given how volatile the electorate is. And so they get restive, which discredits the government, which is obsessed with its own popularity, which tries to relaunch itself, which just makes it look weak and is an obvious admission of its own incompetence, which reduces its popularity further, which means it's less and less likely that MPs will be returned next time, which makes them more restive etc. etc.
And in the meantime the country continues its depressing stagnation and relative decline.
Hey, ho, 21st century Britain ...
There are nice people who do not share our politics and bad people who do. Anyone who has taken 5 minutes to talk to a political ally opponent or ally will have experienced that. Some truly will be beyond our personal lines of acceptance to engage with, but those will be very rare.
Musk has started doxxing individual named Federal Employees to his twitter account. Threats and SWATting followed.
That was a tactic Trumped used to abuse Court Staff and their families. He could have been put straight in prison under contempt etc, but they did not do so.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/27/business/elon-musk-government-employees-targets/index.html
The trouble is NIMBYs are noisy and YIMBYs tend to be quiet.
The Welsh is meaningless word salad.
It says 'Affirmative generic, you did small child/sexual partner/intimate friend, stupid stupid.'
The *actual* translation would be 'siaradoch chi hynna, dyn twp.'
You will observe exactly one word overlaps.
The problem with translation features, especially for minority languages, is they translate the words but not the grammar. It's one way in which AI is still a bit rubbish.
https://medium.com/neuralspace/low-resource-language-what-does-it-mean-d067ec85dea5
Good luck.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Galactic_Pot_Healer/uCws0H_2rN4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dick+pot-healer&printsec=frontcover
Edit: something for @Anabobazina too, come to think of it.
Not an easy problem to solve quickly.
*checks clock*
Andrew Neil@afneil
Downing Street rowing back on Rachel Reeves’ comments last week to the annual CBI conference that the government is “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.”
The official line is now “no tax rises on the same scale will be needed.”
Which is not, of course, anything like what Reeves said. But she was trying to repair post-Budget relations with business so it’s perhaps not surprising she over-egged it.
Regardless, it was a stupid, juvenile hostage to fortune for a Chancellor to give to anybody.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1863232985920618910
The Russians have spent the last decade killing large numbers of civilians in various parts of the world - if you follow this stuff on Twitter, there's actually proud of it.
And they deliberately bomb hospitals with alarming frequency.
They do so in Ukraine all the time, where it's very clear there is no such excuse.
I'm surprised at your spinning for them..
Organisations (and the people running them) have claimed to care, since forever.
Sir Thomas Moore illegally imprisoned and threatened a man who had the temerity to be found not guilty of heresy. “To save the Bishop's credit”.
In the early 19th century, people compared working conditions in factories with slavery. While the comparison was not a good one (and generally made in bad faith, by slavers) , it wasn’t a 100% farcical, either.
The same pertained to both public and private employment. Service in the Royal Navy was compared to jail…
Since then a river of blood and ink has been spent on creating employment rights. Which are such, that in the U.K., a sensible union can have first recourse to the law, rather than a strike. Because the law protects employees in many, many ways.
Organisations, by their nature, cannot be ethical. Only sentient beings (humans) can be so. Which is why substituting a book of rules for morality is such a disgusting action.
One can, by rules, create organisations where it is easier for individuals to express good moral values, in the context of the organisation*. And that is what we can try to do. See @Cyclefree's various headers.
*Think of the Mirror Universe version of the Post Office, essentially.
https://www.threads.net/@yannlecun/post/DDDSlncR6Hu?xmt=AQGzWCJx6cWW3dEDuq-q3CmTRQZyPy-Rziw2WNmAJR4fnA
So you make a plan that reduces dependence on China to 74.9%. Then to 74.8%.....
Looks no more than 19 years old.
It's not impossible - they did it before with the creation of the chip industry. But this is about rebuilding a whole manufacturing ecosystem.
Europe ought to be thinking along the same lines.
Bush's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq ended up having direct costs of over $4 trillion (plus heaven knows what in collateral damage).
Ukraine is, for now, a rounding error in comparison.
https://x.com/JayinKyiv/status/1863179392072953926
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/dec/01/pep-guardiola-says-he-expected-more-of-anfield-after-sack-chants
Must have the same PR rep as Gregg Wallace....
And telling Arianespace to do one. And start work on an FFSC Lox/Methane engine…
And factories to make hundred of square miles of solar panels per year.
And so much more.
Real investment. Doesn’t have to be government run - with the right incentives it will happen.
They were OK back then, but not especially special.
Perhaps like Spaghetti House in point on the quality scale, with - on historical data - a lower risk of being kidnapped by terrorists.
The only area I strongly disagree is his suggestion of a "cash for clunkers" program to scrap older machine tools. That's just value destruction for no good reason. Industry is pretty good at getting rid of tools with no economic value left. I gave £3500 for a 30 year old Bridgeport 412 VMC early year. It was ideal for our business where we wanted some machining capability on hand, but haven't got either the work or the staff to run it all day every day. A new HAAS that size is at least £40k, and they are pretty cheap and nasty machines.
Interestingly, we've found having a small CNC on site (and thus available at zero notice) is so valuable, I've just gone out and bought us a much bigger one, with a 4th axis - 36 years old and £6k this time. New equivalent from a reputable manufacturer is about £130k.
His suggestion of government finance via machine tool manufactures is a good one. Manufacturers would still assume the loan default risk, so it doesn't all end up in fraud, but the government covering the "time value of money" cost of finance would make it much more affordable for people growing businesses.
Our
https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-name-david-mayer-whats-going-on
Maybe easier for them to obey it worldwide.
https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-doxing
I know privacy laws tend to be strongest in Germany, and this is plausibly a name from there.
"Q: How many votes did John Major receive in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1987 general election?
A: In the 1987 general election, John Major, representing the Conservative Party, received 38,904 votes in the Huntingdon constituency."
Wrong, as usual. It's like someone who tries their best to estimate it and hopes no-one notices the mistake because the person they're answering to is too busy doing something else.
All economic statistics are rubbish.
Meanwhile the transformation of Dan Hodges from tawdry Client journalist to a heavyweight neutral thinker grows at incredible pace...
"While I aim to be precise with numbers, for this specific detail about John Major's exact vote count in the Huntingdon constituency during the 1987 general election, I should be transparent that I could hallucinate specific numbers. While I know Major represented Huntingdon and won the seat comfortably in 1987, I don't feel confident providing the exact vote count without being able to verify it."
"To get the exact verified count, I'd recommend checking official UK electoral records or parliamentary archives."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMMow_Itqw
Starts quite bleak, goes a bit 70s pub rock, no-one's really sure where they've landed up.
(I'm sure it's just a business decision, though the comments throughout the article from residents are your standard NIMBY tropes - wrong place, farmland, small towns etc - so it's impossible to discern whether there's anything particularly good or bad about the plans at a glance)
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/prince-william-wants-to-build-2-500-homes-next-door-to-us-it-has-divided-our-community/ar-AA1v41Ok?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=fcc19415a51444039bcb9064f1d644e0&ei=14
Would unlock the growth this country desperately needs. And the houses and infrastructure it does too.
And would help balance the Treasuries books.
There's no downside, except for pissing off some voters.
More pertinently, the NHS is under a huge pressure of accountability. It is one of our most accounted-for organisations, a constant political football. The idea that there is no accountability for the NHS, something under the constant eye of the press, the public and the politicians, is one of the most ludicrous things said here in a while (and there’s been competition).
I think more problematic is something like the Post Office, that is partway between a public body and a private body. There, the politicians responsible (hello Kemi Badenoch) left the PO alone rather than holding it accountable.
A lot of the research focus now is on developing systems which your primary LLM queries and interacts with a whole range of our machine learning models.
I know some people still believe NIMBY's can have decent points, and it is theoretically possible, but if you've seen the utter nonsense of objections out there, the disingenuousness, then you start to have sympathy even with the scumbag developers who contribute to problems in their own ways.
I get the investors doing so even with some doubts, if one of these companies hits gold it will be worth it, but a lot of people just believe the output of these LLMs uncritically despite the well known hallucination issues, never mind anything.
To extend the Excel theme - if you just do a regular standard deviation, it'll probably get it wrong. If you tell it the column is Currency, it'll probably get the sums wrong. It's just not the tool for the job.
AI seems to major in TLDR quite a lot of the time ?
This is the sort of lunacy we just need to say "too bad" and build it anyway.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol
I've played about with it - it's quite an interesting 'reinvention' of older ideas for LLM workflows.
Netanyahu’s ex-defense minister Ya’alon says IDF ‘not most moral army in the world,’ stands by accusation of ‘ethnic cleansing’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahus-ex-defense-minister-yaalon-says-idf-not-most-moral-army-stands-by-accusation-of-ethnic-cleansing/
...He suggests that the ICC has a list of other officials, both from the defense establishment and the political echelon, who will be investigated at a later date for war crimes, and says that if it were up to him, far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir would have been arrested “some time ago” already.
Presented with a clip of a statement he issued in 2003 when serving as IDF chief of staff, in which he said that the IDF does not “harm innocent people,” Ya’alon says he stands by what he said at the time, to which the interviewer asks if “something has changed” since that 21-year-old clip.
“Do you not live in this country?” Ya’alon retorts. “Do you not hear Ben Gvir encouraging [people] to kill?”..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM2KPVQZgiE
We've also no insight into how much their API via their own service or MS Azure is being used.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if they are burning cash like firelighters. But it's quite opaque as to how their finances are going.
Trump has been telling friends he denied Robert Lighthizer — his pro-tariff, China-hawk U.S. trade representative in the first term — a Cabinet role because he's "too scared to go big."
https://x.com/modestproposal1/status/1863228333695156334