When do parties lie? – politicalbetting.com

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

Wales receives £120 for every £100 in England due to the Barnett formula

And its even more than that up here north of the wall. And yet our councils are absolutely broke because that cash isn't available to them.

We have two problems - it costs too much money to do anything, and we don't put up enough cash to cover the bill. Hence councils and public services having a dangerous lack of cash.

The solution is not to vote out the respective governments. That doesn't change the maths - we need to do things cheaper and pool budgets. Cutting the number of teachers cos we can't afford it costs us more money. And yet regardless of party they get stuck in this "cut the service and the need goes away" nonsense.

Taz said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

??

Bernard Arnault is exploring a potential acquisition of struggling French Artificial Intelligence company Mistral citing a need for France to "maintain it's edge in artisanal goods post ASI."
https://x.com/techbrospod/status/1883952340023280083

Mistral just raised €600m at a €5.8bn valuation.

France is working on an authentically French rival to Deepseek, but every time they try to launch it, it goes on strike.

Won’t they just regulate it out of existence ?

Gardenwalker said:

Have we all read this - in my view entirely accurate - review of why the British North (including the Midlands) is so poor?

https://tomforth.co.uk/whynorthenglandispoor/

Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.

malcolmg said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Gardenwalker said:

I’d like to download DeepSeek but I’m worried about Chinese surveillance.

My attempts to get Claude to write spy thrillers haven’t been terribly successful, to be honest.

It's open source, you can download and spin it up yourself if you've got a modern GPU.

You can run it on your phone, assuming you have Android. I get remarkably snappy performance from the 1.5bn parameter model.

Nice, what's the word on Apple silicon? I just got my M4 Pro laptop delivered last week, finally replaced my old M1 Pro now that I don't have a laptop from work.

Eabhal said:

malcolmg said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.

It's all going on social care Malcolm, after years of council tax freezes and real terms cuts to general grant. You can moan about the Scottish Government and the NHS all you want - councils really deserve a pass IMO.

Eabhal said:

I don't actually get why this is so fatal for Nvidia. Surely a massive advance in AI is going to be brilliant for them, long term. One thing we know from tech is an insatiable demand for bigger, better, faster.

DougSeal said:

ohnotnow said:

Gardenwalker said:

rcs1000 said:

Gardenwalker said:

https://x.com/lukedepulford/status/1883893208150937802?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg

Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.

Errrr

Anyone can download the Deepseek model, and run it themselves using Ollama on their local computer. And you can even do it with no internet connection.

I actually got Deepseek (1.5bn) running successfully on my phone with acceptable performance levels. (Obviously, I have insanely powerful phone. But still.)

You lost me with Ollama.
I’m well known offline for my lack of technical chops.

I get you can run it locally, but I still don’t trust it, especially since at the end of the day none of my devices are permanently offline.

The models are just like massive Excel formulas. They can't 'do' anything apart from take your input, and return some output. If anything, I trust them more than Excel these days.

I know of a couple of writers who use local models via Ollama as they need to write 'adult' scenes (whether murder/mystery or kissy-fun-times) and the commercial ones just point-blank refuse.

Have they considered “writing” the scenes in question?

RochdalePioneers said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

Wales receives £120 for every £100 in England due to the Barnett formula

And its even more than that up here north of the wall. And yet our councils are absolutely broke because that cash isn't available to them.

We have two problems - it costs too much money to do anything, and we don't put up enough cash to cover the bill. Hence councils and public services having a dangerous lack of cash.

The solution is not to vote out the respective governments. That doesn't change the maths - we need to do things cheaper and pool budgets. Cutting the number of teachers cos we can't afford it costs us more money. And yet regardless of party they get stuck in this "cut the service and the need goes away" nonsense.

Phil said:

Scott_xP said:

Eabhal said:

I don't actually get why this is so fatal for Nvidia. Surely a massive advance in AI is going to be brilliant for them, long term. One thing we know from tech is an insatiable demand for bigger, better, faster.

That's the problem.

Yesterday, Nvidia claimed you could only run the models on their expensive hardware.

Today you can run them on a phone.

That's a problem for people who make really expensive hardware...

This is silly. The 1.5B distills of Deepseek-R1 that you can run on your phone are better than other people’s 1.5B sized LLMs, but they’re still mostly terrible & completely unable to cope with contexts of any reasonable size. Great for when you’re out & about and just want a question answered with a tolerable probability of the answer being wrong, not so great for anything else.

Deepseek is causing investors to panic about NVDA because they claim (quite reasonably, given their published papers) to have trained their full-size, 671B parameter model for $5million. That’s nothing compared to the amounts US AI companies have spent on training their models. This has immediately punched holes in the likely demand for NVDA hardware for training & the effectiveness of the US embargo on hardware exports to China which has been shown to be completely pointless, even counterproductive.

On the flip side, cheaper, higher quality inference (deepseek R1 is also much faster at inference than other models) is likely to drive demand for hardware for end users to use. Right now you can only run Deepseek on NVDA hardware. Tech types are buying NVDA hand over fist right now because they expect end user demand for NVDA hardware to sky-rocket as a result.

We’ll find out who’s right eventually.

Burgessian said:

Dopermean said:

malcolmg said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.

I've got a well-run local council who despite the real terms cuts in funding from central govt have managed to keep libraries and leisure centres open, services running and roads repaired, despite the increasingly heavy hgvs that destroy manholes, collapse drains and any areas washed out by mains water leaks on our road.
I live in fear of increasing support for the lib dems locally, they run the neighbouring council and levelled their local leisure centre before realising they couldn't afford to replace it amongst other examples of incompetence.

LibDems are great at putting out leaflets and being "community".

Less good at running multi-million pound budget service providers.

Dopermean said:

malcolmg said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

"We are already clobbered enough on council tax" says Isabel Oakeshott questioning the number of times rubbish is collected.


https://x.com/TalkTV/status/1883822499151872462

Narrator: Isabel posted an article yesterday on Telegraph saying she has been living in Dubai since...erm. August 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

Our main bin collection has been once a month for several years and our council tax has risen by 10.1% in 23, 9.67% in 24 and expected 10% this year

Welcome to North Wales

Possibly because the funding from central government is not keeping pace, hence the increase in the poll tax amount. It's not difficult.

They are inefficient and as they have no competition they have no reason to actually fix the issues, they can just milk the public by keeping charging higher and higher amounts. Just grifters.

I've got a well-run local council who despite the real terms cuts in funding from central govt have managed to keep libraries and leisure centres open, services running and roads repaired, despite the increasingly heavy hgvs that destroy manholes, collapse drains and any areas washed out by mains water leaks on our road.
I live in fear of increasing support for the lib dems locally, they run the neighbouring council and levelled their local leisure centre before realising they couldn't afford to replace it amongst other examples of incompetence.

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

Eabhal said:

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

Only Leon. It must be torture.

Can PB tech experts tell me if it's worth fishing my 1050ti out and using it to mine...something?

Gardenwalker said:

Have we all read this - in my view entirely accurate - review of why the British North (including the Midlands) is so poor?

https://tomforth.co.uk/whynorthenglandispoor/

Includes this chart which kind of explains why UK local services have gone to fuck.

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

Only Leon. It must be torture.

Can PB tech experts tell me if it's worth fishing my 1050ti out and using it to mine...something?

No, Nvidia only started adding tensor cores to consumer GPUs with the 20 series.

Cyclefree said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

Only Leon. It must be torture.

Can PB tech experts tell me if it's worth fishing my 1050ti out and using it to mine...something?

No, Nvidia only started adding tensor cores to consumer GPUs with the 20 series.

This isn't even a recognisable form of English.

viewcode said:

Labour are shit, volume XXIII...

"Is Keir Starmer a worse Prime Minister than Liz Truss?", Richard J Murphy, 7mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBCfPWkIbA&list=UUGlMOIZ1A3zluwLXTGpzZfw&index=3

"...Reeves is actually working against the best interests of the people of this country and in favour of the hierarchy of wealth. That isn't what Labour should be doing!...and if Labour does deliver austerity in March as (I expect) then I have little doubt at all that she will become worse than Liz Truss, because she actually is going to deliver what Liz Truss fail to do: an economy totally biased to the interests of wealth.

How did we get to a point where Labour is so corrupted, has so lost touch with its core values, is so out of touch with the people of this country who put it into office?...positively working against the best interests of most people in this country? I wish I knew the answer to that question. I can only put it down to corruption: political corruption, intellectual corruption, and plain straightforward alignment of the personal interests of those who are in office with those who have wealth..."

Casino_Royale said:

Cyclefree said:

I thought AI chat was banned ......

I find it so boring I can't even read it.

DougSeal said:

Selebian said:

Evening all. Have we discussed the case of the father found guilty of murdering his daughter - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly9zx02rejo - even though the only witness, his wife, insists it was accidental?

Seems, from the reporting, to rest in part on expert testimony that the knife could not have accidentally caused the fatal wound - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04n7yyqz9po - i.e. that it's just not plausible for an accidentally thrown knife to hit so that it pierces ribs cage and reaches vital organs in that way. However, the alternative, that an apparently untrained man managed a single stab wound with that precision, without apparent motive and with his wife in the room and that his wife would then be complicit in passing it off as an accident - well, that seems vanishngly unlikely too.

Maybe there's more to it (reporting often isn't great) but it seems to rest on that testinmony and a bit of confusion in stories of what actually happened. Even if the man was holding the knife, you surely have to completely disbelieve the wife's testimony to come to premeditated murder rather than manslaughter. Just seems a very odd case, but maybe there's compelling evidence that wasn't considered interesting enough to make the story?

The jury was entitled to completely disbelieve the wife’s testimony. She could have been a terrible witness and she may well have wanted to keep her partner out of prison. As for motive, domestic violence, particularly involving alcohol and cannabis, has a multiplicity of motives, and few that could be described as “rational”.

The forensic evidence was that -

Home Office pathologist Dr Jennifer Bolton carried out a post-mortem examination and found that the kitchen knife breached the chest wall between the fifth and sixth ribs, went through her lower lung and passed into the left ventricle of the heart.

Scarlett died very quickly from blood loss, the pathologist found.

Dr Bolton said it was her opinion that the knife was being “held tightly” at the time so that when it came into contact with Scarlett, it went into her.

“That typically means a firm grip and that arm is braced in a certain way,” she said.

Asked by prosecutor Mark McKone KC if she thought the knife could have been thrown towards Scarlett, Dr Bolton said: “Kitchen knives aren’t designed to be thrown, they aren’t designed to go through the air.

“So, it is practically impossible for a kitchen knife to be thrown for it to travel in such a way that it lands on Scarlett’s clothing and then her skin at 90 degrees, so it doesn’t simply bounce off or scratch across, and then go 11cm in and apparently come out again.”

Forensic scientist Gemma Escott also studied the large knife and judged that material on the blade indicated a stabbing motion had been used.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/simon-vickers-guilty-murder-darlington-forensics-play-fight-b2686977.html

The amount of force required to throw a knife so hard it penetrates the chest wall and and then travels four and a half inches into the body, exiting the other side, suggests javelin thrower force. To suggest he could additionally, accidentally, do it so that the tip struck at precisely 90 degrees is, from a layman’s perspective, “practically impossible”. I can completely understand why the jury found no reasonable doubt.

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

JohnLilburne said:

Selebian said:

Evening all. Have we discussed the case of the father found guilty of murdering his daughter - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly9zx02rejo - even though the only witness, his wife, insists it was accidental?

Seems, from the reporting, to rest in part on expert testimony that the knife could not have accidentally caused the fatal wound - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04n7yyqz9po - i.e. that it's just not plausible for an accidentally thrown knife to hit so that it pierces ribs cage and reaches vital organs in that way. However, the alternative, that an apparently untrained man managed a single stab wound with that precision, without apparent motive and with his wife in the room and that his wife would then be complicit in passing it off as an accident - well, that seems vanishngly unlikely too.

Maybe there's more to it (reporting often isn't great) but it seems to rest on that testinmony and a bit of confusion in stories of what actually happened. Even if the man was holding the knife, you surely have to completely disbelieve the wife's testimony to come to premeditated murder rather than manslaughter. Just seems a very odd case, but maybe there's compelling evidence that wasn't considered interesting enough to make the story?

Having read that it seems likely they are both lying. "Some tongs flicked up the knife so it penetrated four inches into her chest" seems on the face of it extremely implausible.

MaxPB said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

I think what makes it quite technical here is that a few of us are in and around LLMs for work reasons so have a reasonably good (me) or very good (Phil) understanding of the how so that's why the conversation tends towards it rather than the "so what" which is probably a more important discussion.

Gardenwalker said:

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

It would be interesting to see if UK academe has suffered the same runaway administration costs that U.S. higher education has.

Essentially, the cost of actual professors has stayed pretty much the same or even lower, but the “professionalisation” of universities has resulted in bloated and unaccountable administration overheads.

Scott_xP said:

Eabhal said:

I don't actually get why this is so fatal for Nvidia. Surely a massive advance in AI is going to be brilliant for them, long term. One thing we know from tech is an insatiable demand for bigger, better, faster.

That's the problem

Yesterday, Nvidia claimed you could only run the models on their expensive hardware.

Today you can run them on a phone.

That's a problem for people who make really expensive hardware...

MaxPB said:

Gardenwalker said:

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

It would be interesting to see if UK academe has suffered the same runaway administration costs that U.S. higher education has.

Essentially, the cost of actual professors has stayed pretty much the same or even lower, but the “professionalisation” of universities has resulted in bloated and unaccountable administration overheads.

My sister works for a major London university and has said in the 12 years she's been there the university has almost doubled the size of "support services" but she doesn't know what half of them do now, even in her department where she just continually gets extra budget for staff.

Luckyguy1983 said:

viewcode said:

Labour are shit, volume XXIII...

"Is Keir Starmer a worse Prime Minister than Liz Truss?", Richard J Murphy, 7mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBCfPWkIbA&list=UUGlMOIZ1A3zluwLXTGpzZfw&index=3

"...Reeves is actually working against the best interests of the people of this country and in favour of the hierarchy of wealth. That isn't what Labour should be doing!...and if Labour does deliver austerity in March as (I expect) then I have little doubt at all that she will become worse than Liz Truss, because she actually is going to deliver what Liz Truss fail to do: an economy totally biased to the interests of wealth.

How did we get to a point where Labour is so corrupted, has so lost touch with its core values, is so out of touch with the people of this country who put it into office?...positively working against the best interests of most people in this country? I wish I knew the answer to that question. I can only put it down to corruption: political corruption, intellectual corruption, and plain straightforward alignment of the personal interests of those who are in office with those who have wealth..."

The man appears to have zero knowledge of the wealthy or of wealth. What we have at present is an economy based on the interests of wealth. Vast amounts of money extracted from electricity bill payers into the pockets of windmill-owning investment funds via green energy subsidies is an economy run in the interests of wealth. High barriers to entry so only huge corporations and established players can be in business and small businesses go under - that is an economy based on the interests of wealth. No grammar schools so there are no uppity poor people thinking they can be Government ministers - that is an economy run in the interests of wealth. Centrist 'post-capitalist' social denocratic greenery is a massive way to extract wealth from the middle and working classes. What Liz Truss was aiming for was a fast moving, fast growing economy with lots of opportunities to get wealthy, which by its nature operates as an efficient distributor of wealth, because vested interests are having to compete with new entrants in a free market that is functioning as it should.

Gardenwalker said:

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

It would be interesting to see if UK academe has suffered the same runaway administration costs that U.S. higher education has.

Essentially, the cost of actual professors has stayed pretty much the same or even lower, but the “professionalisation” of universities has resulted in bloated and unaccountable administration overheads.

Flatlander said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

Indeed, today it is more geopolitics than anything.

I've just installed Deepseek locally, and it has gone into a tizz because I asked it about Winnie the Pooh and whether the character was ever compared to any national leaders.

So there are some things it just won't do...

MaxPB said:

Gardenwalker said:

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

It would be interesting to see if UK academe has suffered the same runaway administration costs that U.S. higher education has.

Essentially, the cost of actual professors has stayed pretty much the same or even lower, but the “professionalisation” of universities has resulted in bloated and unaccountable administration overheads.

My sister works for a major London university and has said in the 12 years she's been there the university has almost doubled the size of "support services" but she doesn't know what half of them do now, even in her department where she just continually gets extra budget for staff.

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

Luckyguy1983 said:

viewcode said:

Labour are shit, volume XXIII...

"Is Keir Starmer a worse Prime Minister than Liz Truss?", Richard J Murphy, 7mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBCfPWkIbA&list=UUGlMOIZ1A3zluwLXTGpzZfw&index=3

"...Reeves is actually working against the best interests of the people of this country and in favour of the hierarchy of wealth. That isn't what Labour should be doing!...and if Labour does deliver austerity in March as (I expect) then I have little doubt at all that she will become worse than Liz Truss, because she actually is going to deliver what Liz Truss fail to do: an economy totally biased to the interests of wealth.

How did we get to a point where Labour is so corrupted, has so lost touch with its core values, is so out of touch with the people of this country who put it into office?...positively working against the best interests of most people in this country? I wish I knew the answer to that question. I can only put it down to corruption: political corruption, intellectual corruption, and plain straightforward alignment of the personal interests of those who are in office with those who have wealth..."

The man appears to have zero knowledge of the wealthy or of wealth. What we have at present is an economy based on the interests of wealth. Vast amounts of money extracted from electricity bill payers into the pockets of windmill-owning investment funds via green energy subsidies is an economy run in the interests of wealth. High barriers to entry so only huge corporations and established players can be in business and small businesses go under - that is an economy based on the interests of wealth. No grammar schools so there are no uppity poor people thinking they can be Government ministers - that is an economy run in the interests of wealth. Centrist 'post-capitalist' social denocratic greenery is a massive way to extract wealth from the middle and working classes. What Liz Truss was aiming for was a fast moving, fast growing economy with lots of opportunities to get wealthy, which by its nature operates as an efficient distributor of wealth, because vested interests are having to compete with new entrants in a free market that is functioning as it should.

rottenborough said:

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬

I'm very much afraid that the first of the really big explosions is about to drop in Higher Education: at Cardiff University, where management speak of an 'immediate existential crisis'. And this is just the start. Solidarity with and to all colleagues at Cardiff.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgqwcduitc2i

I can help - fire all the bullshit admin staff that waste our time (e.g. EDI)

One wonders whether the NHS and HEIs have suffered the same problem in the last forty years: the true professionals (hospital consultants and senior academics) who ran their little worlds have had to be by-passed and "controlled" by business unit types with MBAs who want to run things "efficiently" because the spreadsheet says X and Y?

I left the uni world (as a staff person not student) in early 2000s. Already the air was wracked with talk of students as "customers" who had to be "serviced".

No longer a community of learning but a business administration centre.

Flatlander said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

Indeed, today it is more geopolitics than anything.

I've just installed Deepseek locally, and it has gone into a tizz because I asked it about Winnie the Pooh and whether the character was ever compared to any national leaders.

So there are some things it just won't do...

It's has, however, probably managed to add your name to a 'list' for future reference.

Only on my computer. Though when that becomes sentient I might be in trouble.

This might be a hit to NVIDIA and some AI companies, but is it a hit to users? Perhaps making it cheaper or better for everyone won't be a net negative.

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

Indeed, today it is more geopolitics than anything.

I've just installed Deepseek locally, and it has gone into a tizz because I asked it about Winnie the Pooh and whether the character was ever compared to any national leaders.

So there are some things it just won't do...

It's has, however, probably managed to add your name to a 'list' for future reference.

Only on my computer. Though when that becomes sentient I might be in trouble.

This might be a hit to NVIDIA and some AI companies, but is it a hit to users? Perhaps making it cheaper or better for everyone won't be a net negative.

My dabbling with various AI tools has left me deeply unimpressed tbh.

TimS said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

Indeed, today it is more geopolitics than anything.

I've just installed Deepseek locally, and it has gone into a tizz because I asked it about Winnie the Pooh and whether the character was ever compared to any national leaders.

So there are some things it just won't do...

It's has, however, probably managed to add your name to a 'list' for future reference.

Only on my computer. Though when that becomes sentient I might be in trouble.

This might be a hit to NVIDIA and some AI companies, but is it a hit to users? Perhaps making it cheaper or better for everyone won't be a net negative.

My dabbling with various AI tools has left me deeply unimpressed tbh.

I oscillate between very impressed and rather disappointed. I think that’s because every time I’m impressed it raises my expectations of the technology for next time.

Nunu5 said:

I use Copilot everyday at work ( science technician) it's brilliant. AI has its uses other than making dumb memes.

WhisperingOracle said:

TimS said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Benpointer said:

Flatlander said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem with banning AI talk is that it’s like banning atomic bomb chat in 1945, or dreadnought discussions in 1910.

However perhaps we need a way to discourage the more technical stuff.

Indeed, today it is more geopolitics than anything.

I've just installed Deepseek locally, and it has gone into a tizz because I asked it about Winnie the Pooh and whether the character was ever compared to any national leaders.

So there are some things it just won't do...

It's has, however, probably managed to add your name to a 'list' for future reference.

Only on my computer. Though when that becomes sentient I might be in trouble.

This might be a hit to NVIDIA and some AI companies, but is it a hit to users? Perhaps making it cheaper or better for everyone won't be a net negative.

My dabbling with various AI tools has left me deeply unimpressed tbh.

I oscillate between very impressed and rather disappointed. I think that’s because every time I’m impressed it raises my expectations of the technology for next time.

I find the mathematicians, coders, gamers and financial experts tend to be very impressed by the latest AI.

Literary, philosophical, political and historical people, less so. It doesn't perform their tasks and there's a tidal wave of hugely-funded bullshit in that area.

ohnotnow said:

Eabhal said:

Nunu5 said:

I use Copilot everyday at work ( science technician) it's brilliant. AI has its uses other than making dumb memes.

What relationship did Bill Gates have with Jeffrey Epstein?

"I'd really like to help, but it seems this topic is off-limits for me. Sorry about that!"

Funny - it started to go into quite some detail and then wiped itself.

I have a lot of problems with the LLM's - but I can give them a break for 'don't say something that will cause lawyer-grief'. Certainly in the regular chat UI's.