It’s not just Kemi Badenoch who has to worry about losing her staff. But while Tory MPs are defecting to reform, Keir Starmer has a slightly different issue.
He’s just lost a campaign manager on the HQ elections team after she became the most recent winner of the Omaze house prize draw.
Good news for her, not great timing for Keir.
Which reminds me of a bubbling scandal. Just to be clear absolutely not accusing Omaze of anything (waves at the lawyers), but in recent years there has been this upward trend of people on social media using the lightly / not regulated raffle space to push some very dodgy raffle type competitions of dubious legitimacy.
There is a big suspicion that there are two strands. The outright cons, where the draw is fixed and no punter can actually win. And money laundering.
I'm getting Youtube ads for "£3 million house raffles".
But the basic rule is NEVER buy ANY product advertised on Youtube, whether subscription cat food that I NEED to stop my cat getting depressed, or underpants "that I borrow from my boyfriend; they feel like butter" (who knew?).
Short possibly of sponsorships by trusted Youtubers which I need. I particularly enjoy the Meidastouch sponsors, who I don't trust. Expensive lawyers being OBSESSED with meat boxes from MOINK or ED treatments sent in brown envelopes is ... entirely possible.
Another one I'm getting is a plug-in (ie mounted on a plug) heater than can raise a huge room in temperature by 9 degrees in a couple of minutes. Allegedly.
It’s not just Kemi Badenoch who has to worry about losing her staff. But while Tory MPs are defecting to reform, Keir Starmer has a slightly different issue.
He’s just lost a campaign manager on the HQ elections team after she became the most recent winner of the Omaze house prize draw.
Good news for her, not great timing for Keir.
Which reminds me of a bubbling scandal. Just to be clear absolutely not accusing Omaze of anything (waves at the lawyers), but in recent years there has been this upward trend of people on social media using the lightly / not regulated raffle space to push some very dodgy raffle type competitions of dubious legitimacy.
There is a big suspicion that there are two strands. The outright cons, where the draw is fixed and no punter can actually win. And money laundering.
I'm getting Youtube ads for "£3 million house raffles".
But the basic rule is NEVER buy ANY product advertised on Youtube, whether subscription cat food that I NEED to stop my cat getting depressed, or underpants "that I borrow from my boyfriend; they feel like butter" (who knew?).
Short possibly of sponsorships by trusted Youtubers which I need. I particularly enjoy the Meidastouch sponsors, who I don't trust. Watching expensive lawyers telling me how OBSESSED they are with meat boxes from MOINK or ED treatments sent in brown envelopes is ... entirely possible.
Another one I'm getting is a plug-in (ie mounted on a plug) heater than can raise a huge room in temperature by 9 degrees in a couple of minutes.
God are they still doing that scam product...people must still be buying it. Physics people, physics.....
The giveaway on any influencer advertising a product is when its use my code and get 50% off. If they can offer such massive "discounts" plus the affiliate kick back, you need to stop and think what are their margins (especially for a physical product).
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
How does hosting data centres create local roles in the tech industry - the data / service is available world wide via this thing called the internet. The only jobs are initial build and maintenance - the upside is the initial request / final response is received 100ms earlier and the downside is power consumption and its impact on the national grid
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
How does hosting data centres create local roles in the tech industry - the data / service is available world wide via this thing called the internet. The only jobs are initial build and maintenance - the upside is the initial request / final response is received 100ms earlier and the downside is power consumption and its impact on the national grid
Jobs in energy generation, I guess. Those North Sea wind farms and Teesworks nuclear reactors working overtime.
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
How does hosting data centres create local roles in the tech industry - the data / service is available world wide via this thing called the internet. The only jobs are initial build and maintenance - the upside is the initial request / final response is received 100ms earlier and the downside is power consumption and its impact on the national grid
Jobs in energy generation, I guess. Those North Sea wind farms and Teesworks nuclear reactors working overtime.
Those Teesworks reactors have gone very, very quiet
Apple have sent out emails confirming my new watch and AirPods will be delivered tomorrow.
Please advise in due course on how much better the noise-cancelling on the AirPods Pro 3 is vs 2. I am trying to justify a purchase!
The Pro 2 are pretty damn good already, to the point where the Bose NC700 headphones stayed in the bag on a six hour flight last month, and I probably can’t be arsed to pack them any more unless it’s an ultra long haul.
I have various Sony Xm headphones and likewise just use my pro 2s - I suspect the upgrade is of the when the battery life is 10 minutes and you need to replace category
I was astonished that the Pro 2s (Christmas present last year, and used pretty much daily since then) ran for four hours with the noise of the plane. The Bose are a few years old now, bought when they first came out (2019?) but still claim 18-20 hours when fully charged.
Has anyone yet mentioned to Trump the new European economic sanctions on China?
Poland’s closure of the railway line from Belarus, the Russian and Belarusian part of which was funded by the CCP Belt & Road project, that transports around 90% of the €25bn/year land corridor logistics between China and the EU.
One scandal that has gone under the radar that I think the Guardian did a piece on. The UK biobank. This was actually a really good idea. Build this big database of medical data that research could access for a low fee and do world leading research. Something the UK has traditionally been good at.
The only problem the T&Cs were written by a moron and it enabled Chinese firms to apply and be granted access, and off has gone this unique datasets into China for bugger all. And in response, after the horse has bolted, they have locked down access much harder, so its a pain in the arse for UK researchers.
It’s not just Kemi Badenoch who has to worry about losing her staff. But while Tory MPs are defecting to reform, Keir Starmer has a slightly different issue.
He’s just lost a campaign manager on the HQ elections team after she became the most recent winner of the Omaze house prize draw.
Good news for her, not great timing for Keir.
Which reminds me of a bubbling scandal. Just to be clear absolutely not accusing Omaze of anything (waves at the lawyers), but in recent years there has been this upward trend of people on social using the lightly / not regulated raffle space to push some very dodgy raffle type competitions of dubious legitimacy.
There is a big suspicion that there are two strands. The outright cons, where the draw is fixed and no punter can actually win. And money laundering.
I am aware of those professionally.
There’s another one that says you can win a prize of lots of money but if you do win it is paid out over 30 years almost like an annuity but if you complain or tell the press you forfeit the prize.
That last clause sounds rather illegal, if not made clear before the entry was made.
Does it have to wait until an already old and rich person wins it and sues them?
People like that don’t play these games.
Imagine winning £100,000 but then you find out your payout is £300 a month for the next 30 years.
Publishers Clearing House in the US, which operated that model for decades, was bought recently by another company that are refusing to honour those payouts.
One scandal that has gone under the radar that I think the Guardian did a piece on. The UK biobank. This was actually a really good idea. Build this big database of medical data that research could access for a low fee and do world leading research. Something the UK has traditionally been good at.
The only problem the T&Cs were written by a moron and it enabled Chinese firms to apply and be granted access, and off has gone this unique datasets into China for bugger all. And in response, after the horse has bolted, they have locked down access much harder, so its a pain in the arse for UK researchers.
Wait five minutes and the Chinese will have a copy of the whole damn database, which they share among themselves (and the Russians, NorKs, etc) for free, or for a fee paid to Beijing.
I'm astonished that PB is barely mentioning the humiliation that Trump and the press meted out to Starmer during the press conference. Where on earth is Big G with his Sky reports? When is Starmer resigning?
In reality, it was a small victory for Starmer, as he wasn't humiliated, held his own rather well, and agreed to disagree with Trump on a few pretty important matters. And yes, I watched it in full so feel able to comment.
One scandal that has gone under the radar that I think the Guardian did a piece on. The UK biobank. This was actually a really good idea. Build this big database of medical data that research could access for a low fee and do world leading research. Something the UK has traditionally been good at.
The only problem the T&Cs were written by a moron and it enabled Chinese firms to apply and be granted access, and off has gone this unique datasets into China for bugger all. And in response, after the horse has bolted, they have locked down access much harder, so its a pain in the arse for UK researchers.
Wait five minutes and the Chinese will have a copy of the whole damn database, which they share among themselves (and the Russians, NorKs, etc) for free, or for a fee paid to Beijing.
They didn't even steal via hacking, they knocked on the front door and asked nicely....
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
How does hosting data centres create local roles in the tech industry - the data / service is available world wide via this thing called the internet. The only jobs are initial build and maintenance - the upside is the initial request / final response is received 100ms earlier and the downside is power consumption and its impact on the national grid
20% of Irish electricity consumption is by data centres and Irish electricity is the second-most expensive in the EU.
It’s not just Kemi Badenoch who has to worry about losing her staff. But while Tory MPs are defecting to reform, Keir Starmer has a slightly different issue.
He’s just lost a campaign manager on the HQ elections team after she became the most recent winner of the Omaze house prize draw.
Good news for her, not great timing for Keir.
Which reminds me of a bubbling scandal. Just to be clear absolutely not accusing Omaze of anything (waves at the lawyers), but in recent years there has been this upward trend of people on social using the lightly / not regulated raffle space to push some very dodgy raffle type competitions of dubious legitimacy.
There is a big suspicion that there are two strands. The outright cons, where the draw is fixed and no punter can actually win. And money laundering.
I am aware of those professionally.
There’s another one that says you can win a prize of lots of money but if you do win it is paid out over 30 years almost like an annuity but if you complain or tell the press you forfeit the prize.
That last clause sounds rather illegal, if not made clear before the entry was made.
Does it have to wait until an already old and rich person wins it and sues them?
People like that don’t play these games.
Imagine winning £100,000 but then you find out your payout is £300 a month for the next 30 years.
Publishers Clearing House in the US, which operated that model for decades, was bought recently by another company that are refusing to honour those payouts.
Is it possible JG Wentworth have bought any of the payouts ?
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
TBF they reinstated the Edinburgh thing - except it messed up the uni's plans and lost a whole year or so. I'm not familiar enough with the details to say if there are any other issues.
A small boat migrant, identified only by the initials SKG, is opposing his removal to France under the new deal.
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
A small boat migrant, identified only by the initials SKG, is opposing his removal to France under the new deal.
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
As I said earlier, this will be so that they can say that they have the scheme up and running by sending someone the courts are less likely to cause problems with.
We'll have to wait and see whether they manage to get it going in the numbers required to work.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
I'm reminded of a dreadful pub on Blackpool pier that had post-office style rope barriers set up to enforce a queueing system.
A small boat migrant, identified only by the initials SKG, is opposing his removal to France under the new deal.
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
To send him back to India we need to process his asylum claim, reject it and then wait for all court case options to be extinguished. To send him to France we just need to hope he doesn't find a lawyer in the hours between notification and deportation...
Another one I'm getting is a plug-in (ie mounted on a plug) heater than can raise a huge room in temperature by 9 degrees in a couple of minutes. Allegedly.
That might be feasible if the design is bad enough, but it will only work once.
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
TBF they reinstated the Edinburgh thing - except it messed up the uni's plans and lost a whole year or so. I'm not familiar enough with the details to say if there are any other issues.
So they have...quite a U-Turn...
Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said. The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence. Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
9 months later...
This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK's technological revolution. The £750 million investment in Edinburgh's new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
I am presuming the paper pushers didn't understand what the supercomputer would do, its not "AI"....As I said, I know people who have dealt with the Peter Kyle and they said clueless about AI / ML beyond producing buzz word salad.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
thinking about it there are pubs where I do both. To order drinks you stand at the bar, to order food you queue at the till that does food orders.
It's not difficult for bar staff to work out who arrived first.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
I'm reminded of a dreadful pub on Blackpool pier that had post-office style rope barriers set up to enforce a queueing system.
Thats why its going Reform. The people have had enough of woke ropes and queues. Best place to meet a foxy bird is in a bar scrum. Or it used to be when I wasn't 157 years old
Another one I'm getting is a plug-in (ie mounted on a plug) heater than can raise a huge room in temperature by 9 degrees in a couple of minutes. Allegedly.
That might be feasible if the design is bad enough, but it will only work once.
Quite. And it's a real risk with some of those heater thingies.
A small boat migrant, identified only by the initials SKG, is opposing his removal to France under the new deal.
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
The note folded between two fingers and catch the barmaids's eye, make sure she serves the outrageously pretty and nervous girl before you like a good gent then you're away. Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
A small boat migrant, identified only by the initials SKG, is opposing his removal to France under the new deal.
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
To send him back to India we need to process his asylum claim, reject it and then wait for all court case options to be extinguished. To send him to France we just need to hope he doesn't find a lawyer in the hours between notification and deportation...
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
TBF they reinstated the Edinburgh thing - except it messed up the uni's plans and lost a whole year or so. I'm not familiar enough with the details to say if there are any other issues.
So they have...quite a U-Turn...
Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said. The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence. Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
9 months later...
This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK's technological revolution. The £750 million investment in Edinburgh's new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
I am presuming the paper pushers didn't understand what the supercomputer would do, its not "AI"....As I said, I know people who have dealt with the Peter Kyle and they said clueless about AI / ML beyond producing buzz word salad.
It does seem to have been watered down but IANAscriptjockey. NB the uini had actually built the facility ...
Never mind - Mr Murray MP for Red Morningside (who must have been utterly horrified at the cancellation) did get to claim credit for the U-turn of the U-turn in the rows over his de-cabinetization by SKS recedntly.
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
TBF they reinstated the Edinburgh thing - except it messed up the uni's plans and lost a whole year or so. I'm not familiar enough with the details to say if there are any other issues.
So they have...quite a U-Turn...
Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said. The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence. Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
9 months later...
This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK's technological revolution. The £750 million investment in Edinburgh's new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
I am presuming the paper pushers didn't understand what the supercomputer would do, its not "AI"....As I said, I know people who have dealt with the Peter Kyle and they said clueless about AI / ML beyond producing buzz word salad.
It does seem to have been watered down but IANAscriptjockey. NB the uini had actually built the facility ...
Never mind - Mr Murray MP for Red Morningside (who must have been utterly horrified at the cancellation) did get to claim credit for the U-turn of the U-turn in the rows over his de-cabinetization by SKS recedntly.
The funding the building was part of the deal the previous government did with the uni. Build the special building and we will buy you the computer to put in it. It cost £30m and specifically designed for this use case.
----
One word conspicuous by its absence in the official announcement was "exascale." The previously announced supercomputer was expected to hit this performance level of a billion billion (1018) floating point calculations per second (FLOPS).
Professor Mark Parsons, director of EPCC (formerly the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) at the University of Edinburgh, told us: "We're no longer calling this the exascale system – that moment has passed."
-----
Brilliant so they nerfed it. Great work, cancel a project, waste a year, bring it back for the same cost but inferior power (and the exascale is what was required). Shakes head.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
That's plausible.
However, we're still 15 months from the midpoint of the Parliament. If Labour fall behind the Lib Dems, and/or the Greens, in the opinion polls, then much that is currently plausible about the next election might be upended.
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
Because a portion of it is dissatisfaction not commitment. And a large number of old folk who might well cuddle back up to what theyve always known once a vote looms. I mean politics hasnt suddenly become fixed and inevitable
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
Because a portion of it is dissatisfaction not commitment. And a large number of old folk who might well cuddle back up to what theyve always known once a vote looms. I mean politics hasnt suddenly become fixed and inevitable
Labour's best path back to re-election is a modest recovery in Tory fortunes, so that the right-wing vote is evenly split between Tory and Reform.
But I don't see it. Farage is exciting and the Tories are tainted.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
The Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court in Gyeonggi Province partly upheld a damages suit brought by the five performers behind the group’s avatars, ordering the defendant to pay 100,000 won to each member.
According to the ruling, the defendant posted a series of derogatory comments on social media in July 2024, saying the people behind the avatars “could be ugly in real life,” claiming they gave off a “typical Korean man vibe” and using profanity. The performers said the remarks caused them emotional distress and sought 6.5 million won each, totaling 32.5 million won...
Note to PB historians, you can also successfully be sued for libelling the dead.
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
Because a portion of it is dissatisfaction not commitment. And a large number of old folk who might well cuddle back up to what theyve always known once a vote looms. I mean politics hasnt suddenly become fixed and inevitable
Labour's best path back to re-election is a modest recovery in Tory fortunes, so that the right-wing vote is evenly split between Tory and Reform.
But I don't see it. Farage is exciting and the Tories are tainted.
Conversely the Tories best bet is a modest Labour recovery at Reforms expense so that the best bet to oppose question reopens. Mays elections should be much less clear cut than this year's adding to the confusion
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
Apple have sent out emails confirming my new watch and AirPods will be delivered tomorrow.
My phone's on the way 👌
My phone won’t be arriving until October.
I’ll be the only person in this house who won’t be getting a new iPhone tomorrow.
Look they are making that 2tb model especially for you, no wonder it's taking a while to be made, it's unique...
True, to show my love for Donald Trump I went for the cosmic orange colour.
You know the sole purpose of the 2tb one is to suggest to people that the 512gb version may be a better option than the 256gb version...
To be fair, getting some idiots to pay £400 for 1TB of storage is rather amusing.
And it's not like anyone else will know that that person has wasted £400. TSE's clothes scream I have money (and no taste) but that iphone is going to scream not even able to get it in the first month...
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
The best thing I can see about this new fangled app is that it appears to have made the average Twitter user closer to the average citizen than before....
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
When Disney got involved in Florida politics, we heard the same claims of worrying about boycotting etc.
As my twin A pointed out if theme park bookings look down Disney start to promote stays with meals included and the last few weeks if you've seen a Disney park advert it's got meals included..
Meanwhile Disney Europe is seeing record attendance figures...
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
Literally never heard of them.
They used to be called the Ecology Party, and their policies are similar to Reform. Only instead of taking humanity back to the 1950s, they'd prefer the 1550s.
I'm astonished that PB is barely mentioning the humiliation that Trump and the press meted out to Starmer during the press conference. Where on earth is Big G with his Sky reports? When is Starmer resigning?
In reality, it was a small victory for Starmer, as he wasn't humiliated, held his own rather well, and agreed to disagree with Trump on a few pretty important matters. And yes, I watched it in full so feel able to comment.
The Graun feed is expressing a broadly similar view at the moment, and making a comparison with Mrs May's presser last time round. One interesting comment (spelling not mine!):
"Starmer’s answers on most topics were predictable, but his declaration that the Church of England has been “my church … all my life” was not something I think he has said publicly before. He is an athiest, and his election last year even promoted a debate in religious circles about whether having an athiest PM was a problem. Half a day with a Maga president, and is Starmer finding his faith? Probably not. But it was interesting anwyay. I will post the full words shortly.
(If non-British readers find this confusing, it is worth pointing out that atheism and a loose allegiance to the Church of England are not at all incompatible.)"
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
When Disney got involved in Florida politics, we heard the same claims of worrying about boycotting etc.
As my twin A pointed out if theme park bookings look down Disney start to promote stays with meals included and the last few weeks if you've seen a Disney park advert it's got meals included..
Meanwhile Disney Europe is seeing record attendance figures...
Disney US bigger problem is its got insanely expensive to visit their parks.
On thread - I hadn't picked up that Your Party was basically Jez and the sectarians. Either way, they're making the launch ot Change UK 6 years ago look smooth and professional by comparison.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
Apple have sent out emails confirming my new watch and AirPods will be delivered tomorrow.
My phone's on the way 👌
My phone won’t be arriving until October.
I’ll be the only person in this house who won’t be getting a new iPhone tomorrow.
Look they are making that 2tb model especially for you, no wonder it's taking a while to be made, it's unique...
True, to show my love for Donald Trump I went for the cosmic orange colour.
You know the sole purpose of the 2tb one is to suggest to people that the 512gb version may be a better option than the 256gb version...
To be fair, getting some idiots to pay £400 for 1TB of storage is rather amusing.
And it's not like anyone else will know that that person has wasted £400. TSE's clothes scream I have money (and no taste) but that iphone is going to scream not even able to get it in the first month...
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
thinking about it there are pubs where I do both. To order drinks you stand at the bar, to order food you queue at the till that does food orders.
It's not difficult for bar staff to work out who arrived first.
And polite customers also know who arrived before them and point the bar staff in their direction.
Putting claims of a potential future where AI will take all our jobs, one thing is clear today, huge capital investments today don't necessarily lead to huge number of new jobs. This much touted US / UK deal for data centres, £150bn is by their own docs estimated will generate a total of 7500 new jobs. £20 million / job.
If anybody has seen Silicon valley, that is unfortunately the reality of massive data centres. They only need a few mole people to run them.
7,500 jobs directly for sure. Expanding our available processing power locally in the country will, hopefully, help our tech industry to keep growing ahead of the rest of Europe. For each of those direct roles we need to generate a further 10-20 roles indirectly. I'm not sure how that can be achieved but the industry and government need to figure it out.
I genuinely hope that will occur. UK universities are massively under powered when it comes to GPU compute and it hampering their ability to do SOTA research.
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
TBF they reinstated the Edinburgh thing - except it messed up the uni's plans and lost a whole year or so. I'm not familiar enough with the details to say if there are any other issues.
So they have...quite a U-Turn...
Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said. The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence. Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
9 months later...
This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK's technological revolution. The £750 million investment in Edinburgh's new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
I am presuming the paper pushers didn't understand what the supercomputer would do, its not "AI"....As I said, I know people who have dealt with the Peter Kyle and they said clueless about AI / ML beyond producing buzz word salad.
It does seem to have been watered down but IANAscriptjockey. NB the uini had actually built the facility ...
Never mind - Mr Murray MP for Red Morningside (who must have been utterly horrified at the cancellation) did get to claim credit for the U-turn of the U-turn in the rows over his de-cabinetization by SKS recedntly.
The funding the building was part of the deal the previous government did with the uni. Build the special building and we will buy you the computer to put in it. It cost £30m and specifically designed for this use case.
----
One word conspicuous by its absence in the official announcement was "exascale." The previously announced supercomputer was expected to hit this performance level of a billion billion (1018) floating point calculations per second (FLOPS).
Professor Mark Parsons, director of EPCC (formerly the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) at the University of Edinburgh, told us: "We're no longer calling this the exascale system – that moment has passed."
-----
Brilliant so they nerfed it. Great work, cancel a project, waste a year, bring it back for the same cost but inferior power (and the exascale is what was required). Shakes head.
And pissed off a great many local academics and IT folk, who will know that very well. I wonder how much of Mr Murray's vote will shift to the LDs and SNP. I'm not particularly expecting a change, as Mr M has a hefty majority and over half of the vote - and the LDs only 6% - but I suspect that is partly because of his chasing that very centre right Unionist vote. Now a centrist Unionist administration has crapped over him.
Starmer is doing just fine. He must have the patience of a saint. In his head he's screaming "shut the fuck up" at Trump's meanderings, but shows no external sign. And he's not agreeing with Trump on everything. No problem.
I do think Starmer's underrated. In this sort of context - he's positively statesmanlike in his dealings with the nutter Trump, and is dealing with the press pack with measured calm.
Yeah... in general I think he's utterly useless, but on his deaings with America he's been strangely adept. Well done Keir.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
The note folded between two fingers and catch the barmaids's eye, make sure she serves the outrageously pretty and nervous girl before you like a good gent then you're away. Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
I once waited for ages to be served in a Romford bar one Saturday night, must have been 15 mins, and when the barmaid came to me I let the pretty girl next to me go first... it was the start of a decades worth of aggro as the girl turned out to be both the love of my life and an alcoholic with possible borderline personality disorder.
Damn my natural chivalry (another Frasier paraphrase)
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
She left the Labour Party in 2020, and stood as an independent (for the Northern Independence Party) in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. So it's not a Labour to Green defection.
I'm astonished that PB is barely mentioning the humiliation that Trump and the press meted out to Starmer during the press conference. Where on earth is Big G with his Sky reports? When is Starmer resigning?
In reality, it was a small victory for Starmer, as he wasn't humiliated, held his own rather well, and agreed to disagree with Trump on a few pretty important matters. And yes, I watched it in full so feel able to comment.
The Graun feed is expressing a broadly similar view at the moment, and making a comparison with Mrs May's presser last time round. One interesting comment (spelling not mine!):
"Starmer’s answers on most topics were predictable, but his declaration that the Church of England has been “my church … all my life” was not something I think he has said publicly before. He is an athiest, and his election last year even promoted a debate in religious circles about whether having an athiest PM was a problem. Half a day with a Maga president, and is Starmer finding his faith? Probably not. But it was interesting anwyay. I will post the full words shortly.
(If non-British readers find this confusing, it is worth pointing out that atheism and a loose allegiance to the Church of England are not at all incompatible.)"
Quite impressive to get the spelling wrong not once, but twice - indicating conviction - but then spell it correctly on the third attempt. 'anwyay' too. You'd think they'd be able to run a spellchecker - most browsers will highlight the errors while typing if that's how they enter the text. I mean, I know they have a reputation to maintain...
On finding faith, I can believe that anyone spending half a day with Trump would have a newfound belief in hell
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
The Twitter left are now talking about boycotting Disney over Fallon’s canceling. All rather funny.
It's not funny; it's an appalling fracturing of society which means that people will be ever more esconsced in their bubbles.
Don’t disagree, but the left have bought this on themselves with their reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and their decade of supporting cancel culture they now think is abhorrent when it gets one of their own.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
The Twitter left are now talking about boycotting Disney over Fallon’s canceling. All rather funny.
It's not funny; it's an appalling fracturing of society which means that people will be ever more esconsced in their bubbles.
Don’t disagree, but the left have bought this on themselves with their reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and their decade of supporting cancel culture they now think is abhorrent when it gets one of their own.
LEFT THEN: That's outrageous! De-platform now! LEFT NOW: No, not our guy! FREE SPEECH!
RIGHT THEN: First amendment is sacrosanct! Suck it up, snowflakes! RIGHT NOW: That's outrageous! Cancel time!
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
The note folded between two fingers and catch the barmaids's eye, make sure she serves the outrageously pretty and nervous girl before you like a good gent then you're away. Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
I once waited for ages to be served in a Romford bar one Saturday night, must have been 15 mins, and when the barmaid came to me I let the pretty girl next to me go first... it was the start of a decades worth of aggro as the girl turned out to be both the love of my life and an alcoholic with possible borderline personality disorder.
Damn my natural chivalry (another Frasier paraphrase)
I have a similar story from back in the mists of time, lol
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
The note folded between two fingers and catch the barmaids's eye, make sure she serves the outrageously pretty and nervous girl before you like a good gent then you're away. Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
I once waited for ages to be served in a Romford bar one Saturday night, must have been 15 mins, and when the barmaid came to me I let the pretty girl next to me go first... it was the start of a decades worth of aggro as the girl turned out to be both the love of my life and an alcoholic with possible borderline personality disorder.
Damn my natural chivalry (another Frasier paraphrase)
I have a similar story from back in the mists of time, lol
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
She left the Labour Party in 2020, and stood as an independent (for the Northern Independence Party) in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. So it's not a Labour to Green defection.
Shes a Paul Young politician like Lee Anderson and a few others
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
Is this something that all right thinking people can agree is just completely wrong? Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
Ive walked out of a pub that was doing it Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
Absolutely. Maybe we can deport offenders to France on a one in one out basis. I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
The note folded between two fingers and catch the barmaids's eye, make sure she serves the outrageously pretty and nervous girl before you like a good gent then you're away. Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
I once waited for ages to be served in a Romford bar one Saturday night, must have been 15 mins, and when the barmaid came to me I let the pretty girl next to me go first... it was the start of a decades worth of aggro as the girl turned out to be both the love of my life and an alcoholic with possible borderline personality disorder.
Damn my natural chivalry (another Frasier paraphrase)
I have a similar story from back in the mists of time, lol
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
The Twitter left are now talking about boycotting Disney over Fallon’s canceling. All rather funny.
It's not funny; it's an appalling fracturing of society which means that people will be ever more esconsced in their bubbles.
Don’t disagree, but the left have bought this on themselves with their reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and their decade of supporting cancel culture they now think is abhorrent when it gets one of their own.
Whilst I oddly agree with you (in broad if not detail) I have to point out this is making things worse, not better.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
When Disney got involved in Florida politics, we heard the same claims of worrying about boycotting etc.
As my twin A pointed out if theme park bookings look down Disney start to promote stays with meals included and the last few weeks if you've seen a Disney park advert it's got meals included..
Meanwhile Disney Europe is seeing record attendance figures...
Disney US bigger problem is its got insanely expensive to visit their parks.
Going back to twin A, another problem is Disney lost all their ride designers to Universal (who were willing to pay them properly and give creative freedom) so Universal is a far better experience than it used to be to Disney’s detriment
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
She left the Labour Party in 2020, and stood as an independent (for the Northern Independence Party) in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. So it's not a Labour to Green defection.
Shes a Paul Young politician like Lee Anderson and a few others
"Wherever she lays (her) hat" or she's "toast".*
* Paul Young but recorded under the name of Streetband, I believe.
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
She left the Labour Party in 2020, and stood as an independent (for the Northern Independence Party) in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. So it's not a Labour to Green defection.
Shes a Paul Young politician like Lee Anderson and a few others
"Wherever she lays (her) hat" or she's "toast".*
* Paul Young but recorded under the name of Streetband, I believe.
I might be missing something, but the bloke that's been cancelled was spreading fake news was he not? Or, at the very least, speculating on the motive of the killer which I don't think has been confirmed one way or another.
Former Labour MP Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-2019) just joined the Green Party.
Literally never heard of them.
They used to be called the Ecology Party, and their policies are similar to Reform. Only instead of taking humanity back to the 1950s, they'd prefer the 1550s.
Thats the SNP, I think the Greens would probably prefer 50 BC
Comments
But the basic rule is NEVER buy ANY product advertised on Youtube, whether subscription cat food that I NEED to stop my cat getting depressed, or underpants "that I borrow from my boyfriend; they feel like butter" (who knew?).
Short possibly of sponsorships by trusted Youtubers which I need. I particularly enjoy the Meidastouch sponsors, who I don't trust. Expensive lawyers being OBSESSED with meat boxes from MOINK or ED treatments sent in brown envelopes is ... entirely possible.
Another one I'm getting is a plug-in (ie mounted on a plug) heater than can raise a huge room in temperature by 9 degrees in a couple of minutes. Allegedly.
The giveaway on any influencer advertising a product is when its use my code and get 50% off. If they can offer such massive "discounts" plus the affiliate kick back, you need to stop and think what are their margins (especially for a physical product).
I still can't work out why in gods name the government cancelled the super computer in Edinburgh. We were going to be only the 3rd country in the world to have this type of specialist compute for doing advanced science, and other 2 being US and China, who nobody wants to deal with at the moment. Not only drive local R&D, but so many other countries academics would want to have collaborated.
Obviously the worry is that they just become giant buckets that are the delivery mechanism for US Big Tech to serve up their LLMs / Foundation Models.
The only problem the T&Cs were written by a moron and it enabled Chinese firms to apply and be granted access, and off has gone this unique datasets into China for bugger all. And in response, after the horse has bolted, they have locked down access much harder, so its a pain in the arse for UK researchers.
In reality, it was a small victory for Starmer, as he wasn't humiliated, held his own rather well, and agreed to disagree with Trump on a few pretty important matters. And yes, I watched it in full so feel able to comment.
I’m an IT manager and use a five-year-old SE2. My next phone is an SE3 that I have already, the last iPhone to have TouchID.
Queue weirdos who no doubt want to shut the nightclubs and reimpose the rule of six
A warning for the UK?
It comes just two days after a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant succeeded in having his deportation postponed for 14 days after launching a similar challenge.
The latest legal action risks throwing the Government’s returns deal with France back into disarray, just hours after the first migrant was successfully removed.
The Indian man was flown from London to Paris this morning, it is understood.
As a result of the first deportation taking place, Britain will begin accepting other migrants from France as early as Saturday.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15111669/Home-Office-faces-legal-challenge-one-one-deal-just-hours-migrant-finally-sent-France.html
Hold on a second. Why are we deporting an Indian chap back to France to accept an asylum claim from France. Surely we shouldn't need to use this scheme for Indians, such a person can be sent back to India directly, no? It isn't the same as people form problematic countries like Syria or Iraq, where the courts have consistently ruled they are unsafe.
Not a problem at my local as they have lots of bar staff and you never have to wait more than a minute or two to get served.
We'll have to wait and see whether they manage to get it going in the numbers required to work.
Its the thin end of the apocalypse wedge and it must be eradicated forcefully by officials from the common sense police
https://x.com/kfile/status/1968671256300962051?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said. The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence. Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
9 months later...
This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK's technological revolution. The £750 million investment in Edinburgh's new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
I am presuming the paper pushers didn't understand what the supercomputer would do, its not "AI"....As I said, I know people who have dealt with the Peter Kyle and they said clueless about AI / ML beyond producing buzz word salad.
It's not difficult for bar staff to work out who arrived first.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/electric-heaters-temu-tiktok-shop-a6c744h4Olcl
I have spent over 30 years perfecting my bar presence skills and I don't want that all written off by this hideous woke nonsense.
Currently, Reform lead Labour by 31% to 21%, with the Greens on 10%.
I can see half that Green vote going over to Labour, on polling day, but I can't see any reason why the Reform vote will shift back to the Conservatives.
Why ruin it with clearly deviant behaviours?
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24853622.edinburgh-university-issues-statement-labours-supercomputer-u-turn/
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,funding-for-edinburghs-supercomputer-never-existed-says-technology-secretary
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/uk_national_supercomputer_edinburgh/
Never mind - Mr Murray MP for Red Morningside (who must have been utterly horrified at the cancellation) did get to claim credit for the U-turn of the U-turn in the rows over his de-cabinetization by SKS recedntly.
SCOTUS announced it will hear oral arguments on the legality of Trump's global tariffs on Nov 5.
Separately, the Trump administration asked the high court for an emergency order to allow Trump to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve.
Removing Lisa Cook is of course the warm up attempt for removing Jerome Powell
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One word conspicuous by its absence in the official announcement was "exascale." The previously announced supercomputer was expected to hit this performance level of a billion billion (1018) floating point calculations per second (FLOPS).
Professor Mark Parsons, director of EPCC (formerly the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) at the University of Edinburgh, told us: "We're no longer calling this the exascale system – that moment has passed."
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Brilliant so they nerfed it. Great work, cancel a project, waste a year, bring it back for the same cost but inferior power (and the exascale is what was required). Shakes head.
Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.
https://bsky.app/profile/rivertam.bsky.social/post/3lz4jniof7s26
However, we're still 15 months from the midpoint of the Parliament. If Labour fall behind the Lib Dems, and/or the Greens, in the opinion polls, then much that is currently plausible about the next election might be upended.
But I don't see it. Farage is exciting and the Tories are tainted.
Court holds defendant liable for online defamation of virtual K-pop idols
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/law-crime/20250918/court-holds-defendant-liable-for-online-defamation-of-virtual-k-pop-idols
A court has ruled that online insults directed at virtual idols constitute defamation, ordering an internet user to pay 500,000 won ($360) in damages to members of the virtual K-pop group PLAVE.
The Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court in Gyeonggi Province partly upheld a damages suit brought by the five performers behind the group’s avatars, ordering the defendant to pay 100,000 won to each member.
According to the ruling, the defendant posted a series of derogatory comments on social media in July 2024, saying the people behind the avatars “could be ugly in real life,” claiming they gave off a “typical Korean man vibe” and using profanity. The performers said the remarks caused them emotional distress and sought 6.5 million won each, totaling 32.5 million won...
Note to PB historians, you can also successfully be sued for libelling the dead.
https://theonion.com/trump-spends-entire-u-k-trip-trying-to-figure-out-where-he-knows-prince-andrew-from/
Queue weirdos need to be told to stand at the bar. End of.
Mays elections should be much less clear cut than this year's adding to the confusion
Meanwhile Disney Europe is seeing record attendance figures...
Quite a big swing from 2017 to 2019, and then again 2019-2024 elex
"Starmer’s answers on most topics were predictable, but his declaration that the Church of England has been “my church … all my life” was not something I think he has said publicly before. He is an athiest, and his election last year even promoted a debate in religious circles about whether having an athiest PM was a problem. Half a day with a Maga president, and is Starmer finding his faith? Probably not. But it was interesting anwyay. I will post the full words shortly.
(If non-British readers find this confusing, it is worth pointing out that atheism and a loose allegiance to the Church of England are not at all incompatible.)"
Either way, they're making the launch ot Change UK 6 years ago look smooth and professional by comparison.
It's just a little ... individual.
Whereas arseholes try to jump in ahead of you.
It's an absolute mystery why anybody drinks that stuff regardless of going full ratner.
Damn my natural chivalry (another Frasier paraphrase)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAmk_up3lcU
On finding faith, I can believe that anyone spending half a day with Trump would have a newfound belief in hell
I am sure it is just because he wants swinging tips.
LEFT NOW: No, not our guy! FREE SPEECH!
RIGHT THEN: First amendment is sacrosanct! Suck it up, snowflakes!
RIGHT NOW: That's outrageous! Cancel time!
* lots of nasty entitled leftie me have apparently been giving Ms Sultana the misogyny treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5vwAox7Y4c
The coup is couping
* Paul Young but recorded under the name of Streetband, I believe.
On a day where Starmer has had another absolute mare, Corbyn proves he couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.