Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
The employment bill isn't going to instantly create first day rights - the problem is no-one has a clear where the compromise will be placed..
Interesting. So although the government are using the word day one rights, they don't actually mean that. And it wont happen til 2027, if at all. Typical UK politics.
"Unfair dismissal day one right It's expected that protection from unfair dismissal will become a right from the first day of employment. Currently, someone must have worked for their employer for 2 years before they can claim unfair dismissal. Expected in 2027."
"The government wants to make the right to raise a claim for unfair dismissal a ‘day one’ right. Under its plans, the unfair dismissal right will be subject to the ability to dismiss during a probationary period if a “lighter-touch” process is followed by the employer. This is an area for consultation, including the length of that initial statutory probation period. The government has stated its preference in this regard is nine months.
In contrast, the position taken by the Lords is that the right to claim unfair dismissal should only take effect after employees have completed at least six months’ service."
You should read the ACAS guidance on this. There are methods of challenging dismissal if under two years so (some) day 1 rights already exist. It seems that the line will be moved but how far is open to debate.
"Up to" are potent weasel words. But it is a significant deal.
The United Kingdom and Turkey have signed a deal worth up to £8 billion for 20 Typhoon fighter jets, securing around 20,000 British jobs and the largest UK fighter export in nearly two decades. https://x.com/UKDefJournal/status/1982843713274466800
It takes 20,000 British jobs to build a 20 Typhoons over a four year period?
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
One to drive small landlords out of business and consolidate housing in the hands of foreign conglomerates, the other to drive small businesses into the ground and leave only the big boys standing. Labour have become the party of corporate interests.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
We had a small funeral for Theo today which at least gave us some closure. He came in to Song for Athene and went out to One Sweet Day by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men
My thoughts are with you, HYUFD. I'm sure that's true for most of us here.
Thanks Bondegezou and to everyone on here for your thoughts, prayers and condolences and messages during what was a difficult few weeks for us, they were much appreciated
You're amongst friends HY. Whatever our political differences, these are trivial when life events mean that any of us needs the support of the group.
That you felt able to share such a personal event with us is testament to the community we are part of.
Thanks Sandy, yes one of the strengths of this site is the support we provide to those going through bereavements, illness etc a well as celebrating more joyful times.
Something we want to keep whatever our political differences
Friendship and empathy with opponents is a cornerstone of democracy. When we start thinking of the "enemy" opposite as not quite human, we lose something very important.
I have some good news and bad news. Only, without the good news.
Tomorrow I've decided to splash out and spend £22.50 on it, just to celebrate the fleeting existence of the £450 per month Breakfast Club
Do we need to pay someone to look after you?
I'd divert the money to the feeble minded who decided that £450 per month was fair beans when the childcare was included
It's not about whether it's fair beans or not, it's about how much existing providers charge.
It's the little spoken-of twin of housing costs for the young. Older relatives say "HOW MUCH?" in a shocked voice, young families say "that much'.
(£5.50 per child per day seems to be the going rate in Romford. Three kids at just over £7 a day hits the magic number. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. There's a reason young working families are narked right now.)
So why is it now £450 a year in parents' pockets?
The Labour Party tweeter made the defenders of the erroneous tweet look bloody ridiculous in fairly short order
And yet they double down..
Right. This conversation is annoying me for some reason.
School breakfast clubs typically range from about £2.50 - £5.50. There are 190 school days in the year. At the lower end that gives £475 per year per child. I suspect that is where the government get their £450 number per year in the official release. At the upper end in it would be £1,045 per child.
The £450 on twatter is imo "probably" used monthly when it should be annually.
However, the wider saving including the ability to work extra hours and other new extra childcare could easily be more than £450 per month for a family with 3 school age kids.
Take it up with the Labour Party
This is not difficult!! The saving to parents is the difference between privately provided childcare and school breakfast clubs, private childcare in the morning so that you can get to work on time is significantly more expensive than school provision, as is afterschool childcare. We easily saved the daily amount that £450 per month would be equivalent to when we were able to switch to school provision, that was 6 years ago and the private child care was basic.
"Up to" are potent weasel words. But it is a significant deal.
The United Kingdom and Turkey have signed a deal worth up to £8 billion for 20 Typhoon fighter jets, securing around 20,000 British jobs and the largest UK fighter export in nearly two decades. https://x.com/UKDefJournal/status/1982843713274466800
It takes 20,000 British jobs to build a 20 Typhoons over a four year period?
Maybe. Supply chain for components etc. Who knows.
Tomorrow I've decided to splash out and spend £22.50 on it, just to celebrate the fleeting existence of the £450 per month Breakfast Club
Do we need to pay someone to look after you?
I'd divert the money to the feeble minded who decided that £450 per month was fair beans when the childcare was included
It's not about whether it's fair beans or not, it's about how much existing providers charge.
It's the little spoken-of twin of housing costs for the young. Older relatives say "HOW MUCH?" in a shocked voice, young families say "that much'.
(£5.50 per child per day seems to be the going rate in Romford. Three kids at just over £7 a day hits the magic number. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. There's a reason young working families are narked right now.)
So why is it now £450 a year in parents' pockets?
The Labour Party tweeter made the defenders of the erroneous tweet look bloody ridiculous in fairly short order
And yet they double down..
Right. This conversation is annoying me for some reason.
School breakfast clubs typically range from about £2.50 - £5.50. There are 190 school days in the year. At the lower end that gives £475 per year per child. I suspect that is where the government get their £450 number per year in the official release. At the upper end in it would be £1,045 per child.
The £450 on twatter is imo "probably" used monthly when it should be annually.
However, the wider saving including the ability to work extra hours and other new extra childcare could easily be more than £450 per month for a family with 3 school age kids.
Take it up with the Labour Party
This is not difficult!! The saving to parents is the difference between privately provided childcare and school breakfast clubs, private childcare in the morning so that you can get to work on time is significantly more expensive than school provision, as is afterschool childcare. We easily saved the daily amount that £450 per month would be equivalent to when we were able to switch to school provision, that was 6 years ago and the private child care was basic.
Doubling down on the dumb and corrected mistake, again
We had a small funeral for Theo today which at least gave us some closure. He came in to Song for Athene and went out to One Sweet Day by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men
My thoughts are with you, HYUFD. I'm sure that's true for most of us here.
Thanks Bondegezou and to everyone on here for your thoughts, prayers and condolences and messages during what was a difficult few weeks for us, they were much appreciated
You're amongst friends HY. Whatever our political differences, these are trivial when life events mean that any of us needs the support of the group.
That you felt able to share such a personal event with us is testament to the community we are part of.
Thanks Sandy, yes one of the strengths of this site is the support we provide to those going through bereavements, illness etc a well as celebrating more joyful times.
Something we want to keep whatever our political differences
Friendship and empathy with opponents is a cornerstone of democracy. When we start thinking of the "enemy" opposite as not quite human, we lose something very important.
It's one reason I'm pessimistic about global democracy. The US has lost its political empathy and plenty here and elsewhere might do the same - see the kind of petty outrage from some otherwise sensible people if politicians of different parties share a private joke, or don't oppose for opposition's sake. It's portrayed as mainstream politicians only pretending to disagree, the omni state or other such rubbish.
When you lose such empathy and shared experience you lose a lot more than prople think.
We had a small funeral for Theo today which at least gave us some closure. He came in to Song for Athene and went out to One Sweet Day by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men
My thoughts are with you, HYUFD. I'm sure that's true for most of us here.
Thanks Bondegezou and to everyone on here for your thoughts, prayers and condolences and messages during what was a difficult few weeks for us, they were much appreciated
You're amongst friends HY. Whatever our political differences, these are trivial when life events mean that any of us needs the support of the group.
That you felt able to share such a personal event with us is testament to the community we are part of.
Thanks Sandy, yes one of the strengths of this site is the support we provide to those going through bereavements, illness etc a well as celebrating more joyful times.
Something we want to keep whatever our political differences
Friendship and empathy with opponents is a cornerstone of democracy. When we start thinking of the "enemy" opposite as not quite human, we lose something very important.
I have some good news and bad news. Only, without the good news.
So I guess where I stand on AdvertGate is that I don't think it's controversial to note that representation on adverts is out of whack with society at large (for reasons we can debate).
This leads on to two questions:
1) Should it be? and 2) If it shouldn't, how do you enforce it?
Surely it is unenforceable, or at least the options for enforcing it are highly undesirable.
My last thought on this is that we so clearly have much more important issues facing the country right now than who appears on our TV adverts. Is there a vague underlying identity-politics-wokeist influence in all this? Plausibly. Do I think this should be a high priority as a political debate when the country is facing serious headwinds? No.
10 years ago minority groups complained that they were underrepresented in adverts and its led to a big shift. What would happen if this was addressed differently and instead of moaning about the race of the current actors, instead the plea was for more WWC actors to be given a chance and to portray themselves as working class rather than middle class.
I think it would get a lot more sympathy from the decision makers, although might not work as middle class households spend more on tat being advertised than working class ones.
The clue to what goes on is the nature of the big outfits who fund the advertising industry. In many ways advertising needs to seem edgy, forward looking, slightly woke (if woke is still around) and all that, but in truth it has to be staggeringly bland, conformist and fitting in. Completely trashing a brand is only one random hostile movement with impetus and momentum away.
This makes them, despite the appearance of edge, incredibly risk averse. If they use or represent disproportionate numbers of any group, this will be why. They will be wanting to conform to the needs and wishes of those who have most power to trash the brand.
Perhaps one should feel sorry for the advertising industry in the USA, where working out what might trash the brand is probably quite hard.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
If the OBR assumed that to be the case they might get a closer figure on their estimates.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
"Up to" are potent weasel words. But it is a significant deal.
The United Kingdom and Turkey have signed a deal worth up to £8 billion for 20 Typhoon fighter jets, securing around 20,000 British jobs and the largest UK fighter export in nearly two decades. https://x.com/UKDefJournal/status/1982843713274466800
It takes 20,000 British jobs to build a 20 Typhoons over a four year period?
Maybe. Supply chain for components etc. Who knows.
Well, let's not forget that only a portion of the Typhoon comes from the UK. So, I suspect 20,000 British jobs is a bit of a stretch. (Albeit, I know it says 'securing' which presumably means that the Typhoon project as a whole, including all new planes, whoever they are for, and support of existing customers... which means 20,000 jobs is presumably the whole number involved across everything.)
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
At the risk of generating a swirling rabbit hole of argument, the Church of England is AD597 officially.
All we did was chuck out the tyrannical foreign management - in Tony Benn's words, we nationalised it.
But the Celtic church was earlier, no? I recall a Council of Whitby but forget what was discussed!
As I recal it was over Irish or Roman rites.
Also over tonsures. The romans liked their monks bald, while the Irish wanted them furry
Not great but readable and fun are the detective stories of the 7th century (Synod of Whitby period) by Peter Tremayne, who is a respectable historian as well; the tec being an Irish nun, Sister Fidelma. IIRC one is set around the Synod of Whitby itself. Most set in Ireland. Much easier reading than the Irish historians, who are not for the faint hearted.
I misread that as "Peter Tremayne, who is a respectable historian as well as an Irish nun", and I thought... odd name for an Irish nun, but I guess it takes all sorts.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
Well thats the new silicon valley work week, forget 9/9/6, its all about 22/7.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
Slacker - the standard in Silicon Valley is now 170 hours a week. Plus unpaid overtime.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
Well thats the new silicon valley work week, forget 9/9/6, its all about 22/7.
Who wants to employ someone who wastes 14 hours a week on sleep?
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
New Labour reduced it to a year which is quite workable for employers. Day one rights just underlines that none of the Labour front bench have ever run a business.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Exactly. It's why Amazon announcing a new warehouse that employs 1,000 people is not as good news as Amazon announcing a fully automated warehouse, opening up 1,000 workers to do something that adds a bit more value than moving boxes around.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours).
Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week. Its like there is a war on. There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
New Labour reduced it to a year which is quite workable for employers. Day one rights just underlines that none of the Labour front bench have ever run a business.
While I agree that it's not great for the kind of business that is likely to want to support people over many years or even decades, that doesn't the reflect the nature of the labour market for many workers. It's pretty grim out there and sticking a pin in the gig economy is a good thing overall, IMO.
A better policy might be something around a limit on staff turnover rates or something? Or a refundable NICs fee for each new member of staff?
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
New Labour reduced it to a year which is quite workable for employers. Day one rights just underlines that none of the Labour front bench have ever run a business.
While I agree that it's not great for the kind of business that is likely to want to support people over many years or even decades, that doesn't the reflect the nature of the economy for many workers. It's pretty grim out there and sticking a pin in the gig economy is a good thing overall, IMO.
The problem you get is in regard to hiring, for long term business.
In France and Spain, such protections have resulted in companies being very loathe to hire anyone. Easier to hire in a subsidiary abroad.
As a French friend put it - "Start a company in France and hire people? Are you insane?!"
It got so bad in Spain that you now have a two tier system - the full employment rights system. And a gig economy one (only with less rights than in the UK). So the factories take people on in the latter.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
Think you've misspelt "bullshitter" there.
Geninely I am not. I work roughly 12 - 7pm. 3hrs off, 10pm to 6-7am, every day. I have suffered insominia my whole life, really never sleep more than 5-6hrs. so I just put it to good use to run multiple businesses.
If you don't believe me, check my commenting history for 10+ years....you will probably find it is light in the afternoon as that is when I do meetings etc.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
Think you've misspelt "bullshitter" there.
Geninely I am not. I work roughly 12 - 7pm. 3hrs off, 10pm to 6-7am, every day. I have suffered insominia my whole life, really never sleep more than 5-6hrs. so I just put it to good use.
And you've averaged a post an hour on here consistently over the past 12 years. Truly the hallmark of the busy, efficient person.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
Think you've misspelt "bullshitter" there.
Geninely I am not. I work roughly 12 - 7pm. 3hrs off, 10pm to 6-7am, every day. I have suffered insominia my whole life, really never sleep more than 5-6hrs. so I just put it to good use to run multiple businesses.
If you don't believe me, check my commenting history for 10+ years....you will probably find it is light in the afternoon as that is when I do meetings etc.
Same here sleep-wise, except I'm no longer working but punting badly on the horses. Working at a dot-com startup during the boom once involved 72 hours straight. Then we had a stand-up meeting when I toppled onto the CEO who sent me home in a taxi.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
Yes, 2 years is too long - 3 to 6 months is plenty to find out whether someone is a time waster or not. You need some kind of probationary period to insulate the employer from the “this person is convincing at interview but is in fact completely useless” risk, but 2 years is silly.
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
Yes, 2 years is too long - 3 to 6 months is plenty to find out whether someone is a time waster or not. You need some kind of probationary period to insulate the employer from the “this person is convincing at interview but is in fact completely useless” risk, but 2 years is silly.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
Some political news. One of Labour's major bills, Renters’ Rights Act, has received its Royal Assent. Only taken 18 months and leans heavily on the previous work done in the last Parliament. Slow and steady seems to be the mantra despite all the buffeting that goes on day to day.
Next up will be the Employment Rights Bill.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
Yes, 2 years is too long - 3 to 6 months is plenty to find out whether someone is a time waster or not. You need some kind of probationary period to insulate the employer from the “this person is convincing at interview but is in fact completely useless” risk, but 2 years is silly.
The unions demanded from day one and got it.
No they haven’t - but let’s wait and see what the end result is
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
I don't understand how some of these Tories, who seem so enthusiastic about Reform as the successor to the Conservative Party, don't realise or understand Reform aren't conservatives at all.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
Completely agree. I have one colleague who is forever moaning about how busy he is, usually during endless corridor chats. That he used to include his teaching of martial arts in the evening as part of his academic teaching commitment, plus doing the admin for said martial arts club during working hours perhaps didn’t help…
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
I used to regularly take calls or answer emails when at home and work over and above my contracted hours. I then got, as we all did, a 4% rise when inflation was around 11%. After that I did what I was contracted to do. Quiet quitting I believe the term is.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.
Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.
Well thats the new silicon valley work week, forget 9/9/6, its all about 22/7.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
I used to regularly take calls or answer emails when at home and work over and above my contracted hours. I then got, as we all did, a 4% rise when inflation was around 11%. After that I did what I was contracted to do. Quiet quitting I believe the term is.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours). Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week.
There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Still, at least you've got time to argue the toss with some prick on the bottom half of the internet, 100 hour weeks notwithstanding. Sir - I salute your courage, your strength, and your indefatigability!
As I say I'm a slacker. Just fuelling up for a zwift ride, before back to work in a couple of hours.....
Think you've misspelt "bullshitter" there.
Geninely I am not. I work roughly 12 - 7pm. 3hrs off, 10pm to 6-7am, every day. I have suffered insominia my whole life, really never sleep more than 5-6hrs. so I just put it to good use to run multiple businesses.
If you don't believe me, check my commenting history for 10+ years....you will probably find it is light in the afternoon as that is when I do meetings etc.
Same here sleep-wise, except I'm no longer working but punting badly on the horses. Working at a dot-com startup during the boom once involved 72 hours straight. Then we had a stand-up meeting when I toppled onto the CEO who sent me home in a taxi.
I remember going to a coding party (yes) in the late 80s - somewhere down by Canterbury. Probably 3-4 days with no sleep and a lot of pills. Then in the back of a car to Sweden (I think) - again no sleep and a lot of pills. Eventually, somehow, ended up back at Kings Cross and got the overnight bus back home to Glasgow.
With a bus-full of Glaswegians singing loudly to keep themselves awake on the way.
I still remember being so tired and watching bits of discarded fag-packet silver paper 'float up' off the bus floor and dance around in the air. Quite mesmerising. And also unlikely.
Still. Learned a lot. Like... not doing that again.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
Well you should stop.
It isn't big. It isn't clever.
It isn't healthy.
Depends on what your job is and whether you love doing it, at least to some extent. But in general it’s good to have down time too. A lot of the most successful academics seem to have no interests outside of their science. Essentially it’s their job and hobby. Which is great until reluctantly they retire, or are made to retire.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
Well you should stop.
It isn't big. It isn't clever.
It isn't healthy.
I enjoy what I do and passed my health assessment this morning with flying colours…
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time.
You're not the only one here with a PhD, and perhaps you're the exception that proves the rule. I'm just saying that, generally, for individuals in similar lines of work, those posting huge hours tend to be less efficient rather than better than their peers.
There are PhDs and PhDs. And I am very much still involved in the ML / AI rearch community. I am not sure people quite understand the insanity that has been going on and is going on.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours).
Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week. Its like there is a war on. There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
Somewhat related as I try and keep ontop of the ML/AI papers. I designed an app to keep me up to date on them - filters arxiv papers to my niche, uses semantic search to match them, caches them locally, can give you multiple LLM-generated summaries in different styles.
And it was the first app I've written where I wrote zero lines of the code. Just wrote out what I wanted (admittedly with the tech/libraries/etc I wanted it to use). And for about 50-80 quid it managed to create it to an acceptable level.
The one thing none of the coding agents could manage however was to make two particular buttons line up on the screen. I'm still not sure what blind spot I was hitting in terms of tokens or context. But across GPT/Claude/Gemini/Qwen/whatever - none of them could solve it. When it was just a
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
Well you should stop.
It isn't big. It isn't clever.
It isn't healthy.
I enjoy what I do and passed my health assessment this morning with flying colours…
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
We joke, but… At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
Would the Irish government make any allowances if they introduced such a system?
If the Irish and Northern Irish want cards without a flag on, so be it.
(I'm still against ID cards.)
It wouldn't be necessary except for the very few irish people in the UK without a passport... because for the moment it's an optional service designed for those who haven't got any form of ID...
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
Yeah, there’s things worth getting wound up over and things not worth getting wound up over and ads are not worth getting wound up over.
It’s not going to change anytime soon, if ever, so just accept it.
I don’t think I’d really noticed it anyway until this kerfuffle as I pay little attention to them.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
I can't read the article so not sure where the "The company’s estimates therefore suggest" is coming from or what "may be exchanging" means - but that's about 1-1.5% of their users? Which seems surprisingly low compared to FB/reddit/twitter/etc.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
We joke, but… At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
Well you should stop.
It isn't big. It isn't clever.
It isn't healthy.
I enjoy what I do and passed my health assessment this morning with flying colours…
I generally enjoy what I do.
But I enjoy not doing it a hell of a lot more.
I’ve worked with some of my clients for 25+ years - in many ways they are friends now. And my job basically involves chit chat and relationship building while other people do the actual work…
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
I can't read the article so not sure where the "The company’s estimates therefore suggest" is coming from or what "may be exchanging" means - but that's about 1-1.5% of their users? Which seems surprisingly low compared to FB/reddit/twitter/etc.
In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around .07 percent of active ChatGPT users show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania” and .15 percent “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”
I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?
Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.
Indeed. In general, I must say I've found over the years that colleagues that are keen to tell you they are snowed under and working every hour God sends aren't generally the stars, but rather startlingly inefficient people.
You have obviously never run tech start-ups in the ML / AI sector.
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
I used to easily do 9/9/6. 30 years into my career I’m probably doing 9-8 every weekday and 4-5 hours over the weekend
I used to regularly take calls or answer emails when at home and work over and above my contracted hours. I then got, as we all did, a 4% rise when inflation was around 11%. After that I did what I was contracted to do. Quiet quitting I believe the term is.
My clients call, I answer.
And that’s Fine for you and good on you.
For me, I wasn’t adequately rewarded, in spite of an excellent appraisal, I had an effective 7% pay cut, so I just stopped going the so called extra mile. Fuck them. I see work in purely transactional terms.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
We joke, but… At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.
It will have done Turbo - even the smallest villages down have some ethnic diversity these days. And all the better for it.
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
I can't read the article so not sure where the "The company’s estimates therefore suggest" is coming from or what "may be exchanging" means - but that's about 1-1.5% of their users? Which seems surprisingly low compared to FB/reddit/twitter/etc.
In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around .07 percent of active ChatGPT users show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania” and .15 percent “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”
Goodness - that's much lower than I would have guessed. I wonder what the figures are for Grok/meta/claude/etc.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
We joke, but… At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.
It will have done Turbo - even the smallest villages down have some ethnic diversity these days. And all the better for it.
I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.
But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?
But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.
But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.
There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.
The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
I haven't come across quite such nonsense since I was a student.
I cannot begin to understand the tortuousness of her mind.
It is seriously not worth the effort.
Actually, it is.
Zelensky wants to build Ukraine into a modern, Western, Social Democratic state. A part of the European Union.
To the Fruit & Nuts, this is creating another Western Imperialist Capitalist Enemy.
The fact that he is doing so on *their* sacred ground - the soil of the former Soviet Union - is to them, an added insult.
"Not one step back!"
The Tankies *still* get angry when you point out all the radios in the T-34s were American made.
Not the ones used in Hungary in ‘56 which is where the term ‘tankies’ originates. The Soviet ones were in fact inferior but that wasn’t such an issue when suppressing a largely civilian uprising compared to a large scale mobile offensive.
Odds on both of these bills screwing up their target constituencies even more than they are already?
I have a nasty feeling that the changes in the Renter’s Rights Bill will result in even more property being taken off the rental market & rents climbing ever higher as a result.
The Employment Bill is going to completely screw over anyone with a spotty work history. All those people who have been out of work with anxiety / actual long covid / heart issues etc etc since 2020? Good luck getting them into work if their prospective employer can’t sack them within a six month probationary period. Why would any employer take the risk of employing them in a soft jobs market where they have other options?
2 years is too long to get normal employment rights, but why go from 2 years to first day? I think either six months, or a phased in approach with some at 3 months and the rest after a year, would be about right, but even if they made it 1 month it would give employers a chance to make a risky employment decision. Instead it will all end up with temp agencies instead, how is that better?
Bit late in the day, but I thought I'd necro this post as I've a fairly relevant perspective having just been round the hamster wheel of taking on a hard case of an employee.
Six months ago I took on a lad aged about 30. Life a bit of a mess, no job, up to his eyeballs in debt, precarious living arrangements but seemed genuinely keen to come and work. Offered him 40hrs a week at min wage, with the possibility of his rate increasing fairly quickly if he shaped up to be any good.
When he turned up, he did generally work fairly hard. But he was forever not turning up (always with a plausible sounding sob story of an excuse).
I've not seen him for three weeks, two weeks ago he sent me a sick note because he's apparently had a nervous breakdown, so I'm now paying him SSP. Whilst he was off, I got an "Attachment of earnings order" from the local court requiring me to deduct ~£170 from his wages and send it to them for some sort of unpaid fine. Last night he messaged saying he was much better and would be in today. Today - not a sign of him.
I'm basically done with him at this point. I've given him massive benefit of the doubt, I've put up with behaviour that most employers wouldn't. It's not even what he costs directly (until the latest episode with the apparent mental breakdown, if he didn't turn up, I wasn't paying him), it's the amount of my (very limited and expensive) time that he wastes. I'd pretty much decided he had to go (although I hadn't actually said anything to him) a few weeks ago, then he had a spurt of good behaviour and tried really hard for a week, and so I foolishly relented. Needless to say, it didn't last.
I'm now debating between sacking him whilst he's still off on the sick, or sacking him when he comes back. Neither is great, but I've got to do one of them.
Anyway - the Employment Rights Bill means to complete end of this sort of shenanigans. Never again will I try taking on a hard case if I can't boot them without repercussions if it goes wrong. Yes, in theory I could sack this lad anyway, but I run a small business - I don't have time to document everything, give him umpteen formal warnings etc.
The current 2 years before acquiring rights is probably about right. I've given my lad loads of rope because I don't have a looming cutoff to get rid. 3 or 6 months will just mean employers have to sack the borderline cases before they get rights. Even a year would feel pressured.
I can only assume the government hates people on the margins of work - there will probably be ten losers for a every winner from day one rights.
I suspect this lad I'm about to sack will never work again, because of the Employment Rights Bill. We, as taxpayers, will fund his existence for the next 30, 40, 50 years. What he actually needs is a massive kick up the arse in a "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat" sort of a way, where he literally has to hold down a job or go hungry but that's anathema to the idiots currently in power.
Comments
https://www.acas.org.uk/dismissals/unfair-dismissal
The saving to parents is the difference between privately provided childcare and school breakfast clubs, private childcare in the morning so that you can get to work on time is significantly more expensive than school provision, as is afterschool childcare.
We easily saved the daily amount that £450 per month would be equivalent to when we were able to switch to school provision, that was 6 years ago and the private child care was basic.
You're embarrassing yourself, and me a bit
When you lose such empathy and shared experience you lose a lot more than prople think.
This makes them, despite the appearance of edge, incredibly risk averse. If they use or represent disproportionate numbers of any group, this will be why. They will be wanting to conform to the needs and wishes of those who have most power to trash the brand.
Perhaps one should feel sorry for the advertising industry in the USA, where working out what might trash the brand is probably quite hard.
sounds bit mealy-mouthed to me??
It gives them the opportunity to bang on about their causes and virtue signal without allowing them the opportunity to do any meaningful damage.
{Insert 4 Yorkshiremen Here}
During my PhD / Post-doc time, 10hrs a day / 6-7 days a week was completely normal, ramping up to easily a 100hrs a week the month before paper submission time (which was every 3 months). It really the only way you could keep up with speed of technological change and ensure you got enough papers published. Speaking to everybody in that field often felt like I slacked off only doing the 60 hrs a week during down time. 9/9/6 for the Chinese students was absolutely bog standard minimum effort.
In other good news he can tell a donkey from a tiger in a dementia test.
For instance, the top tier NeurIPS conference now get 50k papers submitted every year now. There are individuals sending in 20-25 papers at a time. And that is just one conference out of 3-4 per year for the pure side of ML. There are ones for vision, graphics, etc etc etc.
Compared to every other field its a total outlier now in terms of research output. Is it all top tier amazing stuff, no, but the sheer amount of effort being deployed particularly from American and Chinese academics is mind blowing (and that also includes the core teams at the big tech companies who are also working the insane hours).
Nobody is doing 30-40hrs a week. Its like there is a war on. There was an article just the other day saying the top LLM labs, they are genuinely working 7 days a week and sleeping just here and there for a few hours a day.
A better policy might be something around a limit on staff turnover rates or something? Or a refundable NICs fee for each new member of staff?
In France and Spain, such protections have resulted in companies being very loathe to hire anyone. Easier to hire in a subsidiary abroad.
As a French friend put it - "Start a company in France and hire people? Are you insane?!"
It got so bad in Spain that you now have a two tier system - the full employment rights system. And a gig economy one (only with less rights than in the UK). So the factories take people on in the latter.
If you don't believe me, check my commenting history for 10+ years....you will probably find it is light in the afternoon as that is when I do meetings etc.
A councillor who quit the Conservatives to join Reform UK earlier this month has stepped down from the party after 20 days.
Grantham councillor Mark Whittington will now sit on South Kesteven District Council as an unaligned independent member.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn51kpzz1vro.amp
A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.
"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."
https://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.com/2014/11/is-eastenders-more-racist-than.html
The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.
I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.
Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.
I am one of the more modest and self effacing people at my office, relatively speaking.
Major problem with Starmer's ID card scheme. (Did no-one in government think of this before?)
"Starmer’s digital ID plan could be jeopardised by Irish jobs agreement
Political parties in Northern Ireland have criticised the plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/digital-id-cards-ireland-good-friday-agreement-b2852740.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qGFR3zz12p0
BlancheLivermore September 26
Are we going to force Irish citizens to have a Sir Keir ID card if they wish to exercise their existing right to work in the UK?
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5333635/#Comment_5333635
edit - I don't remember much discussion though
That's 24 minutes an hour, 7 hours a day.
In terms of productive time, that's not far off.
With a bus-full of Glaswegians singing loudly to keep themselves awake on the way.
I still remember being so tired and watching bits of discarded fag-packet silver paper 'float up' off the bus floor and dance around in the air. Quite mesmerising. And also unlikely.
Still. Learned a lot. Like... not doing that again.
It isn't big. It isn't clever.
It isn't healthy.
To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.
And it was the first app I've written where I wrote zero lines of the code. Just wrote out what I wanted (admittedly with the tech/libraries/etc I wanted it to use). And for about 50-80 quid it managed to create it to an acceptable level.
The one thing none of the coding agents could manage however was to make two particular buttons line up on the screen. I'm still not sure what blind spot I was hitting in terms of tokens or context. But across GPT/Claude/Gemini/Qwen/whatever - none of them could solve it. When it was just a on one of the buttons.
But I enjoy not doing it a hell of a lot more.
"Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis. About 2.4 million more are possibly expressing suicidal ideations or prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their loved ones, school, or work. "
https://x.com/LaurenGoode/status/1982914539286081898
At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.
If the Irish and Northern Irish want cards without a flag on, so be it.
(I'm still against ID cards.)
It’s not going to change anytime soon, if ever, so just accept it.
I don’t think I’d really noticed it anyway until this kerfuffle as I pay little attention to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tw7LIykvBw
For me, I wasn’t adequately rewarded, in spite of an excellent appraisal, I had an effective 7% pay cut, so I just stopped going the so called extra mile. Fuck them. I see work in purely transactional terms.
Six months ago I took on a lad aged about 30. Life a bit of a mess, no job, up to his eyeballs in debt, precarious living arrangements but seemed genuinely keen to come and work.
Offered him 40hrs a week at min wage, with the possibility of his rate increasing fairly quickly if he shaped up to be any good.
When he turned up, he did generally work fairly hard. But he was forever not turning up (always with a plausible sounding sob story of an excuse).
I've not seen him for three weeks, two weeks ago he sent me a sick note because he's apparently had a nervous breakdown, so I'm now paying him SSP. Whilst he was off, I got an "Attachment of earnings order" from the local court requiring me to deduct ~£170 from his wages and send it to them for some sort of unpaid fine. Last night he messaged saying he was much better and would be in today. Today - not a sign of him.
I'm basically done with him at this point. I've given him massive benefit of the doubt, I've put up with behaviour that most employers wouldn't. It's not even what he costs directly (until the latest episode with the apparent mental breakdown, if he didn't turn up, I wasn't paying him), it's the amount of my (very limited and expensive) time that he wastes.
I'd pretty much decided he had to go (although I hadn't actually said anything to him) a few weeks ago, then he had a spurt of good behaviour and tried really hard for a week, and so I foolishly relented. Needless to say, it didn't last.
I'm now debating between sacking him whilst he's still off on the sick, or sacking him when he comes back. Neither is great, but I've got to do one of them.
Anyway - the Employment Rights Bill means to complete end of this sort of shenanigans. Never again will I try taking on a hard case if I can't boot them without repercussions if it goes wrong. Yes, in theory I could sack this lad anyway, but I run a small business - I don't have time to document everything, give him umpteen formal warnings etc.
The current 2 years before acquiring rights is probably about right. I've given my lad loads of rope because I don't have a looming cutoff to get rid. 3 or 6 months will just mean employers have to sack the borderline cases before they get rights. Even a year would feel pressured.
I can only assume the government hates people on the margins of work - there will probably be ten losers for a every winner from day one rights.
I suspect this lad I'm about to sack will never work again, because of the Employment Rights Bill. We, as taxpayers, will fund his existence for the next 30, 40, 50 years. What he actually needs is a massive kick up the arse in a "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat" sort of a way, where he literally has to hold down a job or go hungry but that's anathema to the idiots currently in power.
If you're going to write fiction, change the names. Or just don't write common tropes.