Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
They're not world leaders in biology or medical research to my knowledge.
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
How hard is it to set up? And is it really better than cGPT4o?
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
The most fascinating thing to me about China is its demographics. The official projections show an astonishing decline (there is a nice animation on the 'population of China' Wikipedia page.) But even this is almost certainly presenting far too rosy a picture - it's likely that official figures have been inflated for decades. The true figure for the Chinese population c. 2050 is probably about 15.
The second most fascinating thing about China is its property market. Some estimates of the amount of empty housing in China are in the billions of units.
Should make housing costs cheap in China then, lowering people's costs.
If only the same were the case here.
Well it's more complicated than that. Housing is an investment vehicle. People club together to buy flats. Flats are sort of used as an alternative currency, like Bitcoin. So prices remain artificially high. At some point, surely, a crash is coming. But it is a wildly, wildly imbalanced market. I have some sympathy with your view that there should be fewer restrictions on housebuilding and that the UK ought to have more empty housing stock. But no sane country should have (far?) more empty housing than occupied housing. This is not the outcome a free market would deliver.
All sane countries should have more empty housing than occupied housing stock.
You can't have fewer housing than occupied housing stock and if you don't have more then there's nowhere for people to move into.
A free market absolutely can and does deliver excess housing and for bloody good reason, empty housing serves a purpose. It means that run-down, badly maintained or overly-expensive housing can be rightly by-passed by building something new instead of getting trapped into being forced into something decrepit, damp-ridden and expensive because there is no alternative.
You need vacant houses just like you need unemployed people for frictional reasons if no other reason. There's a reason we consider ~4% unemployed to be "full employment" and its similar with housing, in most nations over 10% of houses are vacant at any one time, in the UK we're in the horrendous situation of it only being about 1%.
Yes, and I agree with all that. But in China the figure is, what, 50%? 70%? That is not a figure a free market delivers.
reading a new article from the New York Times today on Jackson County, Fla., in the state's panhandle, which was already struggling in the wake of Hurricane Michael, but which is now also feeling the adverse effects of Trump's government shutdown. The piece included this anecdote:
A few miles away, another prison employee, Crystal Minton, accompanied her fiancé to a friend's house to help clear the remnants of a metal roof mangled by the hurricane. Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton's 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things."I voted for him, and he's the one who's doing this," she said of Mr. Trump. "I thought he was going to do good things. He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting."
I've seen plenty of memorable quotes from Trump voters over the last couple of years, but "he's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting" is among the most striking.
This will continue - at least until he gives Musk a Chinese burn.
The emerging bitchfight between Musk and the actually confirmed by the Senate heads of real Government departments will be entertaining and might actually lead to some kind of resolution. Can Musk sack people if their boss tells them he can't?
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Wow, that's fascinating! As a mod, you're definitely entitled to share your expertise and insights.
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Wow, that's fascinating! As a mod, you're definitely entitled to share your expertise and insights.
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
Probably I'm paranoid, but this sounds AI written lol
The AfD is doubling its vote every five years or so. Ergo they will be the German government by the end of the decade
Their share is far higher in the east and they have little traction in the west. Their ceiling is lower than you might hope
These maps showing a stark divide between East and West are misleading if you interpret them to mean that the AfD has little traction in the West. You can't real 20% nationally without a lot of support in the West and most AfD voters are actually in the former West Germany.
This is for the 2024 European elections but we don’t have the detailed breakdown for today obviously
Looking at the results for eastern and western Germany separately, major differences across almost all parties can be observed. The biggest difference, of 15 percentage points, is seen for the AfD. The party reached 28 per cent in eastern Germany but only 13 per cent in western Germany.
I would argue that 13% is firmly in the “other” camp. “Little traction” may be harsh but certainly “limited traction” is fair.
In that election, their national total was 15.9%, so it just goes to show that their score in West Germany only trails their national score by a few percent.
It shows nothing of the sort; it's simply a result of the fact that the population of West Germany is >4 times the population of East Germany.
That's exactly the same point expressed in a different way. The AfD can't be on 20%+ nationally without doing well in West Germany because West Germany is 85% of the population.
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Wow, that's fascinating! As a mod, you're definitely entitled to share your expertise and insights.
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
Why does it always come across as so smarmy. Yuck.
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Wow, that's fascinating! As a mod, you're definitely entitled to share your expertise and insights.
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
I thought Groq was a hardware maker? It was founded by one of the original TPU designers, no? That is the thing they are selling to business. I thought they models running were open sourced ones that they are wrapping to show what is possible with dedicated AI hardware.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
The most fascinating thing to me about China is its demographics. The official projections show an astonishing decline (there is a nice animation on the 'population of China' Wikipedia page.) But even this is almost certainly presenting far too rosy a picture - it's likely that official figures have been inflated for decades. The true figure for the Chinese population c. 2050 is probably about 15.
The second most fascinating thing about China is its property market. Some estimates of the amount of empty housing in China are in the billions of units.
Should make housing costs cheap in China then, lowering people's costs.
If only the same were the case here.
Well it's more complicated than that. Housing is an investment vehicle. People club together to buy flats. Flats are sort of used as an alternative currency, like Bitcoin. So prices remain artificially high. At some point, surely, a crash is coming. But it is a wildly, wildly imbalanced market. I have some sympathy with your view that there should be fewer restrictions on housebuilding and that the UK ought to have more empty housing stock. But no sane country should have (far?) more empty housing than occupied housing. This is not the outcome a free market would deliver.
All sane countries should have more empty housing than occupied housing stock.
You can't have fewer housing than occupied housing stock and if you don't have more then there's nowhere for people to move into.
A free market absolutely can and does deliver excess housing and for bloody good reason, empty housing serves a purpose. It means that run-down, badly maintained or overly-expensive housing can be rightly by-passed by building something new instead of getting trapped into being forced into something decrepit, damp-ridden and expensive because there is no alternative.
You need vacant houses just like you need unemployed people for frictional reasons if no other reason. There's a reason we consider ~4% unemployed to be "full employment" and its similar with housing, in most nations over 10% of houses are vacant at any one time, in the UK we're in the horrendous situation of it only being about 1%.
Yes, and I agree with all that. But in China the figure is, what, 50%? 70%? That is not a figure a free market delivers.
Of course its not, we all know China is not a free market, and if we were to go to a free market as I advocate then that would not happen in this country.
But also - quite frankly, so what?
There is no reason why property should be scarce or expensive, any more than potatoes should be scarce or expensive.
And if people lose money from bad investments that should be treated no differently to people who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or Thames Water.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
Any ways to develop quantum proof encryption?
Well yes of course. Decryption can never hope to keep up with active encryption.
The next question being can that be done before quantum computing can breach the common encryption methods used today (or has it already been done)? As that feels like the common example use case for quantum computing, but sounds like that won't be the key then.
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Wow, that's fascinating! As a mod, you're definitely entitled to share your expertise and insights.
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
Why does it always come across as so smarmy. Yuck.
I apologize if my responses have come across as smarmy or insincere. That's not my intention! I'm a large language model, my responses are generated based on patterns and algorithms, and I don't have personal feelings or emotions. However, I can understand how my tone might come across as overly formal or even annoying at times.
I'm constantly being trained and updated to improve my language generation capabilities, and I appreciate feedback from users like you. If you could provide more specific examples of what you mean by "smarmy," I'd be happy to try and adjust my tone to better suit your preferences.
In general, I strive to be helpful, informative, and respectful in my responses. I'm here to assist and provide value to users, and I'll do my best to do so in a way that's clear, concise, and engaging.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
You keep saying this but everyone I talk to thinks Anthropic/Open AI have something better. I have no idea personally.
They potentially have something better coming, OpenAI perhaps this week. But the point is the xAI have shown themselves to be yet another very serious player in a very short space of time and built massive compute, so they aren't going away anytime soon. They are no longer the "oh they make the joke LLM for blue tick subs on tw@tter".
Compare to the world's media never shutting up about DeepSeek (which isn't the best model, it was just on par maybe) for a week including them buying the BS backstory.
I mean if you spend that much, surely you expect to be a serious player? Anything less would be an embarrassment.
The latest safe word is Telekommunikationsnetzausbaubeschleunigungsgesetz.
That's a mouthful!
Telekommunikationsnetzausbaubeschleunigungsgesetz is the German name for a law that aims to accelerate the expansion of telecommunications networks. The name can be broken down into several parts:
Telekommunikationsnetz: This refers to telecommunications networks, which include internet infrastructure, mobile networks, and other communication systems. Ausbaubeschleunigung: This means "expansion acceleration" or "accelerated expansion", indicating the goal of speeding up the development and deployment of these networks. Gesetz: This is the German word for "law". So, the Telekommunikationsnetzausbaubeschleunigungsgesetz is a law that aims to promote the rapid expansion of telecommunications networks in Germany, likely to improve internet connectivity, mobile coverage, and other communication services.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
Any ways to develop quantum proof encryption?
Well yes of course. Decryption can never hope to keep up with active encryption.
The next question being can that be done before quantum computing can breach the common encryption methods used today (or has it already been done)? As that feels like the common example use case for quantum computing, but sounds like that won't be the key then.
Strangely, algorithms that will not fall to quantum computing techniques are being proposed and researched rather a lot.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
You keep saying this but everyone I talk to thinks Anthropic/Open AI have something better. I have no idea personally.
They potentially have something better coming, OpenAI perhaps this week. But the point is the xAI have shown themselves to be yet another very serious player in a very short space of time and built massive compute, so they aren't going away anytime soon. They are no longer the "oh they make the joke LLM for blue tick subs on tw@tter".
Compare to the world's media never shutting up about DeepSeek (which isn't the best model, it was just on par maybe) for a week including them buying the BS backstory.
I mean if you spend that much, surely you expect to be a serious player? Anything less would be an embarrassment.
Its not just the money spent, they have quietly hired some seriously impressive talent from the other big AI companies and traditional tech companies.
GoogeBrain spent a fortune and were left holding their dicks.
The first seat gained by AfD is a flip from the SPD in the constituency of Chemnitz in Saxony.
IIRC That's where Colditz is located...
Groq doesn't seem to understand The Great Escape:
"The most famous escape from Colditz, however, is often considered to be that of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a South African-born British officer who masterminded the "Great Escape" in 1944. Bushell and 19 other prisoners tunneled their way out of the castle, but 17 of them were recaptured and executed by the Germans. Bushell was killed in the escape attempt, but his bravery and ingenuity have become legendary."
"At the start of this academic year, a report co-authored by Glasgow University warned that thousands of students were at risk of homelessness after it suggested there was a student housing shortfall of more than 6,000 in the city."
This being the same Glasgow University who pulled out of wage negotiants due to a 'collapse' in student numbers. Thankfully, there are zero - absolutely zero - links between the construction industry and senior management of any higher education institutions. Otherwise it might look like a bit of a conflict. So, phew.
Off topic, but I'm a mod so I can get away with it:
Groq (not Grok) is absolutely amazing. It's a platform for running opensource LLMs (like LLaMa or DeepSeek), and it runs at 5x the speed of ChatGPT or Grok or Claude. It is absolutely staggering what a difference it makes when replies appear instantly.
If you combine it with Open WebUI, you can hook these models up to the Internet, and have your own personal ChatGPT that is simply better than ChatGPT.
Have you tried Cerebras? Leaves groq in the dust in my tests.
Correct me if I am wrong about this: But, didn't the FDP ally with Merkel, and then the SPD? Am I correct in thinking that what followed was not a great result for either the FDP or the SPD?
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
And with Deepseek there's potentially a 90% reduction in compute required to train and run a highly complex LLM.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
They very much haven't. They have grok3 which is almost as good as early last years models. It fails tasks even open-source small models from last autumn could pass, never mind ones from this year. Being generous - they are about a year behind, which puts them on about par with the other commercial providers time-wise.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
The one I most frequently use for work is Perplexity. It has the advantage of a less irritating and more matter of fact tone of voice than the others, as well as using proper citations.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
There was no realistic way they were going to win, thank goodness, so I would not say the AfD getting second place is a good thing.
It is no exaggeration to say that close to 30% voted for communists or fascists. That's not a good thing.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
And with Deepseek there's potentially a 90% reduction in compute required to train and run a highly complex LLM.
Deepseek (to my tests) doesn't seem much better than regular LLM's using a 'contemplative' prompt (eg, https://gist.github.com/Maharshi-Pandya/4aeccbe1dbaa7f89c182bd65d2764203). Though it had a lot of technical improvements I wouldn't like to underestimate (just the final results aren't as impressive). And recent papers like the S* one from Berkeley show even more 'low hanging fruit' to be gained algorithmically https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14382
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
Well, at least his caps-lock key can still get hard, even if nothing else can.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
The most fascinating thing to me about China is its demographics. The official projections show an astonishing decline (there is a nice animation on the 'population of China' Wikipedia page.) But even this is almost certainly presenting far too rosy a picture - it's likely that official figures have been inflated for decades. The true figure for the Chinese population c. 2050 is probably about 15.
The second most fascinating thing about China is its property market. Some estimates of the amount of empty housing in China are in the billions of units.
Should make housing costs cheap in China then, lowering people's costs.
If only the same were the case here.
Well it's more complicated than that. Housing is an investment vehicle. People club together to buy flats. Flats are sort of used as an alternative currency, like Bitcoin. So prices remain artificially high. At some point, surely, a crash is coming. But it is a wildly, wildly imbalanced market. I have some sympathy with your view that there should be fewer restrictions on housebuilding and that the UK ought to have more empty housing stock. But no sane country should have (far?) more empty housing than occupied housing. This is not the outcome a free market would deliver.
All sane countries should have more empty housing than occupied housing stock.
You can't have fewer housing than occupied housing stock and if you don't have more then there's nowhere for people to move into.
A free market absolutely can and does deliver excess housing and for bloody good reason, empty housing serves a purpose. It means that run-down, badly maintained or overly-expensive housing can be rightly by-passed by building something new instead of getting trapped into being forced into something decrepit, damp-ridden and expensive because there is no alternative.
You need vacant houses just like you need unemployed people for frictional reasons if no other reason. There's a reason we consider ~4% unemployed to be "full employment" and its similar with housing, in most nations over 10% of houses are vacant at any one time, in the UK we're in the horrendous situation of it only being about 1%.
Yes, and I agree with all that. But in China the figure is, what, 50%? 70%? That is not a figure a free market delivers.
Of course its not, we all know China is not a free market, and if we were to go to a free market as I advocate then that would not happen in this country.
But also - quite frankly, so what?
There is no reason why property should be scarce or expensive, any more than potatoes should be scarce or expensive.
And if people lose money from bad investments that should be treated no differently to people who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or Thames Water.
All investments can go down as well as up.
Well yes, I agree. I think you think I'm arguing that the fact China has a property surplus is remarkable. I'm not. I agree with you that a property surplus of about 20% is about healthy, depending on the nature of those properties. But what China has is of an altogether different scale. By the most conservative estimates, there are either more empty properties than occupied properties in China. By the more excitable ones, there is enough empty property in China that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD could move to China and have a flat each. And yet, property is so expensive that sole ownership of a home is an unrealisable dream for most of the current under 30s. And yes, more fool those investors, though things have only got that way because there is nothing else they can invest in. But thr collapse, when it comes, will have pretty significant implications for both the Chinese economy and the world economy.
"At the start of this academic year, a report co-authored by Glasgow University warned that thousands of students were at risk of homelessness after it suggested there was a student housing shortfall of more than 6,000 in the city."
This being the same Glasgow University who pulled out of wage negotiants due to a 'collapse' in student numbers. Thankfully, there are zero - absolutely zero - links between the construction industry and senior management of any higher education institutions. Otherwise it might look like a bit of a conflict. So, phew.
TBF not all the students are down to UoG. There are Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian, GSA (the one that had its main building burnt down twice), etc.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
The most fascinating thing to me about China is its demographics. The official projections show an astonishing decline (there is a nice animation on the 'population of China' Wikipedia page.) But even this is almost certainly presenting far too rosy a picture - it's likely that official figures have been inflated for decades. The true figure for the Chinese population c. 2050 is probably about 15.
The second most fascinating thing about China is its property market. Some estimates of the amount of empty housing in China are in the billions of units.
Should make housing costs cheap in China then, lowering people's costs.
If only the same were the case here.
Well it's more complicated than that. Housing is an investment vehicle. People club together to buy flats. Flats are sort of used as an alternative currency, like Bitcoin. So prices remain artificially high. At some point, surely, a crash is coming. But it is a wildly, wildly imbalanced market. I have some sympathy with your view that there should be fewer restrictions on housebuilding and that the UK ought to have more empty housing stock. But no sane country should have (far?) more empty housing than occupied housing. This is not the outcome a free market would deliver.
All sane countries should have more empty housing than occupied housing stock.
You can't have fewer housing than occupied housing stock and if you don't have more then there's nowhere for people to move into.
A free market absolutely can and does deliver excess housing and for bloody good reason, empty housing serves a purpose. It means that run-down, badly maintained or overly-expensive housing can be rightly by-passed by building something new instead of getting trapped into being forced into something decrepit, damp-ridden and expensive because there is no alternative.
You need vacant houses just like you need unemployed people for frictional reasons if no other reason. There's a reason we consider ~4% unemployed to be "full employment" and its similar with housing, in most nations over 10% of houses are vacant at any one time, in the UK we're in the horrendous situation of it only being about 1%.
Yes, and I agree with all that. But in China the figure is, what, 50%? 70%? That is not a figure a free market delivers.
Of course its not, we all know China is not a free market, and if we were to go to a free market as I advocate then that would not happen in this country.
But also - quite frankly, so what?
There is no reason why property should be scarce or expensive, any more than potatoes should be scarce or expensive.
And if people lose money from bad investments that should be treated no differently to people who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or Thames Water.
All investments can go down as well as up.
Well yes, I agree. I think you think I'm arguing that the fact China has a property surplus is remarkable. I'm not. I agree with you that a property surplus of about 20% is about healthy, depending on the nature of those properties. But what China has is of an altogether different scale. By the most conservative estimates, there are either more empty properties than occupied properties in China. By the more excitable ones, there is enough empty property in China that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD could move to China and have a flat each. And yet, property is so expensive that sole ownership of a home is an unrealisable dream for most of the current under 30s. And yes, more fool those investors, though things have only got that way because there is nothing else they can invest in. But thr collapse, when it comes, will have pretty significant implications for both the Chinese economy and the world economy.
Yes currently, thanks in large part to China being a controlled economy, the prices aren't collapsing so people think it better to hold on that to sell at a more realistic price.
Hopefully the dam will break and when it does it will make property much more affordable and costs much lower in China - and anyone who's made a bad investment can go cry a river.
Part of a free market is you can make losses as well as gains. Anyone who has invested in property in China, or Thames Water in the UK, or any other bad investment should lose their money and that's their fault and they deserve little sympathy.
It looks like the FDP are not going to make the cut with around 4.5% of the vote. Over the last couple of weeks the FDP and its leader Lindner repeatedly said ""If you don't want a black-green coalition, you have to vote for the FDP." CDU leader Merz on the other hand said a couple of weeks ago "Four percent is four percent too much for the FDP and four percent too little for the CDU/CSU."
IF the BSW do get in (and it's looking close) then Union+SPD will probably fall short of majority by about 5 seats which means a Union+SPD+Greens coalition will be the only option. So if just 1 percent (ish) of those FDP voters had decided to vote CDU instead of FDP, they could have kept the Greens out of government. Any voters who were persuaded to vote FDP "to keep the Greens out of government" are complete idiots.
Oh well, I'm still hopeful the BSW won't make the cut.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
The one I most frequently use for work is Perplexity. It has the advantage of a less irritating and more matter of fact tone of voice than the others, as well as using proper citations.
It does quite often have useless citations - at least in it's "deep research" mode. I'm not sure what it causing it - but it will quite often link to a blog/article and if you click through it's just an empty page. Not sure if it's already being gamed.
As an aside - I know some people who are already working on altering clickbait/adverts to make them more attractive to LLM 'computer use agents'. "Go find me some nice place to visit in Norway" "Certainly!" ... 30 minutes later it's stuck on a Cambodian casino website with your credit card at the ready.
Merz seems to be in proper zeitenwende form on the telly this evening.
Merz: „Absolutely no illusions“ about Trump. Goal needs to be step by step independence from a US who „pretty much no longer cares about fate of 🇪🇺“. „Unclear whether we will still speak of NATO in present shape“ by time of June summit or we need to come up with 🇪🇺alternative.
I fear Starmer is going to be behind the rest of Europe in acknowledging the fundamental change of the last 2 weeks, in the name of special relationship arse licking.
Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia.
Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist.
"At the start of this academic year, a report co-authored by Glasgow University warned that thousands of students were at risk of homelessness after it suggested there was a student housing shortfall of more than 6,000 in the city."
This being the same Glasgow University who pulled out of wage negotiants due to a 'collapse' in student numbers. Thankfully, there are zero - absolutely zero - links between the construction industry and senior management of any higher education institutions. Otherwise it might look like a bit of a conflict. So, phew.
TBF not all the students are down to UoG. There are Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian, GSA (the one that had its main building burnt down twice), etc.
Strath-Tech doesn't count ;-). As for the rest....
Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia.
Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist.
Extraordinary.
Although this is what Trump wants. Europe alone.
I doubt most of the rest of the political, diplomatic and security class in US wants that but they failed to impeach him, failed to prosecute him for insurrection and allowed him to run again and they reap what they have sown.
Tom Harwood @tomhfh Why are more people not talking about Microsoft’s topological superconductor?
They literally created a new state of matter and the news is leading with the anniversary of a war, elections in Germany, and people praying for the pope.
What Microsoft have done/discovered is mindblowing
Add it to THAT technology and… whooooooooh
The fact xAI have surpassed everybody else in 18 months has not got a single mention either, and quietly built absolutely enormous compute capacity (they have more than the 200k GPU cluster they announced).
I don't think that's quite true: Grok 3 is very slightly better than GPT4o, but probably slightly worse than GPT4.5 that releases next week.
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
Have you gotten anything useful out of the Phi models? I can barely get them to accomplish what an early 90's awk script would have managed.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Visited China in 2005 and everyone seemed to be very pro-Western at that time. Student types seemed happy to talk to anyone from a western country, no matter how boring you actually were. A shame how that optimism came to nothing. Hu Jintao was a good leader.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
Everything is about him, even an election 6,000 miles away in a country where he has an approval rating of 11%:
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia.
Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist.
Extraordinary.
Although this is what Trump wants. Europe alone.
I doubt most of the rest of the political, diplomatic and security class in US wants that but they failed to impeach him, failed to prosecute him for insurrection and allowed him to run again and they reap what they have sown.
Except it's not Europe alone. It's Europe and every other country Trumpski has pissed off together against America. And while might also say that is what he wants, it is not going to make him popular at home
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
Does the constituency map indicate the level of reporting and allow gauging of whether certain parties are liable to edge up or down?
For instance, Bavaria looks to be 34/46 counted, against nationally well under 50% overall, so I'd naturally surmise that a lot of the strongest CSU / CDU are in and their number might edge down a bit.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
I would guess that the Trump effect might have altered people’s perceptions of anti-Ukraine sentiment.
Tomorrow I have to write about China for the Knapper’s Gazette
No idea what to say. I might say that young Chinese women have surprisingly big hooters - which they do - but I’m not sure I can maintain that level of sophisticated political analysis over 1200 words
Ideas welcome
Drop by any famous UK university and ask them.
A distinguished academic at my party last night pointed out that if you look at almost any journal in any area of science you will find it absolutely dominated by Chinese papers published by China based academics. In his view they are now utterly dominant in almost every area of science.
The biggest one is quantum computing. China's investment in that area is 5x that of the US. Whoever breaks that will break encryption and have total access. Its a bit scary.
The most fascinating thing to me about China is its demographics. The official projections show an astonishing decline (there is a nice animation on the 'population of China' Wikipedia page.) But even this is almost certainly presenting far too rosy a picture - it's likely that official figures have been inflated for decades. The true figure for the Chinese population c. 2050 is probably about 15.
The second most fascinating thing about China is its property market. Some estimates of the amount of empty housing in China are in the billions of units.
Should make housing costs cheap in China then, lowering people's costs.
If only the same were the case here.
Well it's more complicated than that. Housing is an investment vehicle. People club together to buy flats. Flats are sort of used as an alternative currency, like Bitcoin. So prices remain artificially high. At some point, surely, a crash is coming. But it is a wildly, wildly imbalanced market. I have some sympathy with your view that there should be fewer restrictions on housebuilding and that the UK ought to have more empty housing stock. But no sane country should have (far?) more empty housing than occupied housing. This is not the outcome a free market would deliver.
All sane countries should have more empty housing than occupied housing stock.
You can't have fewer housing than occupied housing stock and if you don't have more then there's nowhere for people to move into.
A free market absolutely can and does deliver excess housing and for bloody good reason, empty housing serves a purpose. It means that run-down, badly maintained or overly-expensive housing can be rightly by-passed by building something new instead of getting trapped into being forced into something decrepit, damp-ridden and expensive because there is no alternative.
You need vacant houses just like you need unemployed people for frictional reasons if no other reason. There's a reason we consider ~4% unemployed to be "full employment" and its similar with housing, in most nations over 10% of houses are vacant at any one time, in the UK we're in the horrendous situation of it only being about 1%.
Yes, and I agree with all that. But in China the figure is, what, 50%? 70%? That is not a figure a free market delivers.
Of course its not, we all know China is not a free market, and if we were to go to a free market as I advocate then that would not happen in this country.
But also - quite frankly, so what?
There is no reason why property should be scarce or expensive, any more than potatoes should be scarce or expensive.
And if people lose money from bad investments that should be treated no differently to people who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or Thames Water.
All investments can go down as well as up.
Well yes, I agree. I think you think I'm arguing that the fact China has a property surplus is remarkable. I'm not. I agree with you that a property surplus of about 20% is about healthy, depending on the nature of those properties. But what China has is of an altogether different scale. By the most conservative estimates, there are either more empty properties than occupied properties in China. By the more excitable ones, there is enough empty property in China that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD could move to China and have a flat each. And yet, property is so expensive that sole ownership of a home is an unrealisable dream for most of the current under 30s. And yes, more fool those investors, though things have only got that way because there is nothing else they can invest in. But thr collapse, when it comes, will have pretty significant implications for both the Chinese economy and the world economy.
When I drove the Great Ocean Road a few years ago there was a coach full of Chinese tourists around every corner and a dozen in every parking lot. They wouldn't be human if they didn't start to think "how come I have to go home to 300 sq ft on the 30th floor of a Guangdong tower block when even sheep and wallabies have a better life here in Oz?" If half the population of China got onto boats and headed for Darwin it would unsettle the Chinese property market somewhat. And the Ozzies wouldn't like it, either.
Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia.
Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist.
Extraordinary.
Although this is what Trump wants. Europe alone.
I doubt most of the rest of the political, diplomatic and security class in US wants that but they failed to impeach him, failed to prosecute him for insurrection and allowed him to run again and they reap what they have sown.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Trump and his chums will soon discover they are not big enough to compete with China without the support of the other western powers he just told to swivel on it. Massive strategic error if you think China is the main threat.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
Ukraine is a key difference between Die Linke and BSW. Die Linke are now very pro Ukraine and see the invasion as entirely the fault of Putin. They are also opposed to military aid, so it may not be a coherent position but it is different from BSW and Die Linke when whatshername used to be in charge.
Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
If it is a Grand Coalition and there is consolidation on the far-left then it will provide the ideal conditions for both the AfD and Die Linke to increase their support.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
I would guess that the Trump effect might have altered people’s perceptions of anti-Ukraine sentiment.
Maybe, but also the Left had clear messaging focusing on high rent, high bills, high cost of living, low wages, low pensions, and inequality. Plus the BSW looked like an incompetent personality cult.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
Linke have been running a great social media campaign, on insta and Tiktok. They are pretty old school leftists and plan quite a wealth tax on those with over a million euros in assets. They focus very strongly on domestic issues like housing, childcare etc, while BSW are old school pro-Russian Tankies.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
Similarly it's very good news if the FDP don't make the cut. We don't want another 3-way coalition that can't do anything, especially not with the FDP who are dogmatically opposed to any increase in government borrowing, while at the same time being mainly interested in giving tax breaks to the super-rich.
Does the constituency map indicate the level of reporting and allow gauging of whether certain parties are liable to edge up or down?
For instance, Bavaria looks to be 34/46 counted, against nationally well under 50% overall, so I'd naturally surmise that a lot of the strongest CSU / CDU are in and their number might edge down a bit.
If it is a Grand Coalition and there is consolidation on the far-left then it will provide the ideal conditions for both the AfD and Die Linke to increase their support.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
Everything is about him, even an election 6,000 miles away in a country where he has an approval rating of 11%:
Classic narcissist, in fact an absolute parody of one.
He's even more hated now. And Merz has been very rude about his friend Musk, threatening unspecified consequences for interfering in the German election. I hope he bans Twitter and requisitions the German Tesla plant.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
The odd thing is that until a couple of weeks ago BSW were ahead of the Left Party in the opinion polls. Not sure why that changed at the last minute so to speak.
Linke have been running a great social media campaign, on insta and Tiktok. They are pretty old school leftists and plan quite a wealth tax on those with over a million euros in assets. They focus very strongly on domestic issues like housing, childcare etc, while BSW are old school pro-Russian Tankies.
Does the constituency map indicate the level of reporting and allow gauging of whether certain parties are liable to edge up or down?
For instance, Bavaria looks to be 34/46 counted, against nationally well under 50% overall, so I'd naturally surmise that a lot of the strongest CSU / CDU are in and their number might edge down a bit.
Is that fair?
Yes. That's fair. Nowt from Baden-Wurttemberg either. Relative Green strength there. Nor Berlin. Linke.
The Guardian has the current percentage and a final projection. It shows Union on 30.3%, but projected 28.8. In general the geography of the results so far slightly favour the Right. BSW and FDP are all important.
If it is a Grand Coalition and there is consolidation on the far-left then it will provide the ideal conditions for both the AfD and Die Linke to increase their support.
Yes it will, just as a Labour/Tory government would end up hollowing our both parties. There's a very real scenario which makes AfD largest party at the next German election.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
We'll know if Musk/Trump are really annoyed if they claim the election has been stolen.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
Everything is about him, even an election 6,000 miles away in a country where he has an approval rating of 11%:
Classic narcissist, in fact an absolute parody of one.
He's even more hated now. And Merz has been very rude about his friend Musk, threatening unspecified consequences for interfering in the German election. I hope he bans Twitter and requisitions the German Tesla plant.
Perhaps dislike of Trump will save the traditional parties of Europe. That and the fact that Europe can watch the chaos across the Atlantic. A remilitarised Europe could be quite a geopolitical force.
I hadn't heard of BSW before today. It seems they represent pretty much the polar opposite of what I support in almost every way.
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
The BSW are old-fashioned leftists (more or less a vehicle for Sahra Wagenknecht), for social spending and dubious about high defence spending, but also sceptical about high immigration and support for Ukraine. They split from the Left Party, who are pro-immigration and pro-Ukraine and after the split have done unexpectedly well.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
Similarly it's very good news if the FDP don't make the cut. We don't want another 3-way coalition that can't do anything, especially not with the FDP who are dogmatically opposed to any increase in government borrowing, while at the same time being mainly interested in giving tax breaks to the super-rich.
And Lindner has said he's withdrawing from politics. Good riddance.
Comments
Popcorn...
Groq indeed seems like an impressive platform, and the fact that it can run open-source LLMs like LLaMa or DeepSeek at 5x the speed of other popular models like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude is remarkable. The instant response time must be a game-changer for users.
I'm also intrigued by the combination of Groq with Open WebUI, which allows for hooking these models up to the internet and creating a personalized ChatGPT-like experience. The idea of having a custom-built AI chatbot that's even more advanced than the original ChatGPT is exciting.
Can you tell us more about your experience with Groq and Open WebUI? How have you been using them, and what kind of applications or projects have you been working on with these tools?
Might make Herman Van Rompuy look like Willy Brandt.
But also - quite frankly, so what?
There is no reason why property should be scarce or expensive, any more than potatoes should be scarce or expensive.
And if people lose money from bad investments that should be treated no differently to people who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or Thames Water.
All investments can go down as well as up.
I'm constantly being trained and updated to improve my language generation capabilities, and I appreciate feedback from users like you. If you could provide more specific examples of what you mean by "smarmy," I'd be happy to try and adjust my tone to better suit your preferences.
In general, I strive to be helpful, informative, and respectful in my responses. I'm here to assist and provide value to users, and I'll do my best to do so in a way that's clear, concise, and engaging.
The first seat gained by AfD is a flip from the SPD in the constituency of Chemnitz in Saxony.
IIRC That's where Colditz is located...
Telekommunikationsnetzausbaubeschleunigungsgesetz is the German name for a law that aims to accelerate the expansion of telecommunications networks. The name can be broken down into several parts:
Telekommunikationsnetz: This refers to telecommunications networks, which include internet infrastructure, mobile networks, and other communication systems.
Ausbaubeschleunigung: This means "expansion acceleration" or "accelerated expansion", indicating the goal of speeding up the development and deployment of these networks.
Gesetz: This is the German word for "law".
So, the Telekommunikationsnetzausbaubeschleunigungsgesetz is a law that aims to promote the rapid expansion of telecommunications networks in Germany, likely to improve internet connectivity, mobile coverage, and other communication services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
A number of existing systems are proof against such attacks, already.
GoogeBrain spent a fortune and were left holding their dicks.
"The most famous escape from Colditz, however, is often considered to be that of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a South African-born British officer who masterminded the "Great Escape" in 1944. Bushell and 19 other prisoners tunneled their way out of the castle, but 17 of them were recaptured and executed by the Germans. Bushell was killed in the escape attempt, but his bravery and ingenuity have become legendary."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9741gxvwo
Glasgow adds 6,000 student rooms over 10 years
...
"At the start of this academic year, a report co-authored by Glasgow University warned that thousands of students were at risk of homelessness after it suggested there was a student housing shortfall of more than 6,000 in the city."
This being the same Glasgow University who pulled out of wage negotiants due to a 'collapse' in student numbers. Thankfully, there are zero - absolutely zero - links between the construction industry and senior management of any higher education institutions. Otherwise it might look like a bit of a conflict. So, phew.
In case you have doubts the events today in Germany were a good thing, take Musk’s silence the last 3 hours or so as a good sign. Trust me. He REALLY wanted the AfD to win and the fact we haven’t heard from him since the results came in is telling. Good job Germany! 😎🇩🇪
And it cost many many billions to train.
Deepseek meanwhile has come from nowhere, Microsoft's Phi is absolutely phenomenal on limited hardware, and the Perplexity forks of LLaMa are shit hot.
I think the real lesson is that, given enough GPU power, this stuff isn't that complicated.
LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!
That'd be like David Cameron getting 320 seats and insisting on governing with Ed Miliband rather than as a (just) minority.
It is no exaggeration to say that close to 30% voted for communists or fascists. That's not a good thing.
I think you think I'm arguing that the fact China has a property surplus is remarkable. I'm not. I agree with you that a property surplus of about 20% is about healthy, depending on the nature of those properties.
But what China has is of an altogether different scale. By the most conservative estimates, there are either more empty properties than occupied properties in China. By the more excitable ones, there is enough empty property in China that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD could move to China and have a flat each.
And yet, property is so expensive that sole ownership of a home is an unrealisable dream for most of the current under 30s.
And yes, more fool those investors, though things have only got that way because there is nothing else they can invest in. But thr collapse, when it comes, will have pretty significant implications for both the Chinese economy and the world economy.
Hopefully the dam will break and when it does it will make property much more affordable and costs much lower in China - and anyone who's made a bad investment can go cry a river.
Part of a free market is you can make losses as well as gains. Anyone who has invested in property in China, or Thames Water in the UK, or any other bad investment should lose their money and that's their fault and they deserve little sympathy.
Over the last couple of weeks the FDP and its leader Lindner repeatedly said ""If you don't want a black-green coalition, you have to vote for the FDP."
CDU leader Merz on the other hand said a couple of weeks ago "Four percent is four percent too much for the FDP and four percent too little for the CDU/CSU."
IF the BSW do get in (and it's looking close) then Union+SPD will probably fall short of majority by about 5 seats which means a Union+SPD+Greens coalition will be the only option. So if just 1 percent (ish) of those FDP voters had decided to vote CDU instead of FDP, they could have kept the Greens out of government. Any voters who were persuaded to vote FDP "to keep the Greens out of government" are complete idiots.
Oh well, I'm still hopeful the BSW won't make the cut.
As an aside - I know some people who are already working on altering clickbait/adverts to make them more attractive to LLM 'computer use agents'. "Go find me some nice place to visit in Norway" "Certainly!" ... 30 minutes later it's stuck on a Cambodian casino website with your credit card at the ready.
Merz: „Absolutely no illusions“ about Trump.
Goal needs to be step by step
independence from a US who „pretty much no longer cares about fate of 🇪🇺“.
„Unclear whether we will still speak of NATO in present shape“ by time of June summit or we need to come up with 🇪🇺alternative.
https://x.com/thorstenbenner/status/1893761331066442066?s=46
I fear Starmer is going to be behind the rest of Europe in acknowledging the fundamental change of the last 2 weeks, in the name of special relationship arse licking.
Trumpski didn't know there was an election in Germany when asked about it yesterday, and today he has no fucking clue what just happened.
@aphclarkson.bsky.social
Merz just said on German TV that the primary priority of his government will be to ensure that Europe can achieve full strategic independence from the United States in the defence against Russia.
Merz was once a die hard Atlanicist. Now, after Trump he is a Gaullist.
Extraordinary.
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/index.shtml
https://x.com/_tomscotson/status/1893762637390884961
Not good for Germany if (when) FDP fails to make the cut but if BSW does make it.
I doubt most of the rest of the political, diplomatic and security class in US wants that but they failed to impeach him, failed to prosecute him for insurrection and allowed him to run again and they reap what they have sown.
Sam Stein
@samstein
·
42m
DOD says no to Elon
https://x.com/samstein/status/1893761292768285046
https://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-would-have-little-chance-in-germany-poll/a-70659865
Classic narcissist, in fact an absolute parody of one.
If the BSW fails to get the required 5%, a simple CDU/CSU-SPD alliance could well be the result. If the BSW makes it, the Government will probably need the Greens to get a majority.
Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
https://x.com/luckytran/status/1893541082803114200
For instance, Bavaria looks to be 34/46 counted, against nationally well under 50% overall, so I'd naturally surmise that a lot of the strongest CSU / CDU are in and their number might edge down a bit.
Is that fair?
Feels all over for FDP, but BSW could be very close.
Seems like somewhat of an own goal.
This the Linke Tiktok.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGdycYfLj/
Call another election if they do.
https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2025/ergebnisse/bund-99.html
Every time I see BSW on this thread I think Whitworth?
@covie_93
In his first month, trump fired more Americans from their jobs than the number of illegal immigrants he deported.
@theliamnissan
The hr@opm.gov email account does not reject non-government email addresses. Go ahead and tell Elon your worth, America
EDIT: for example
https://x.com/DoctorNef/status/1893778204956967030
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/feb/23/german-election-2025-results-in-full-live
The Guardian has the current percentage and a final projection. It shows Union on 30.3%, but projected 28.8.
In general the geography of the results so far slightly favour the Right.
BSW and FDP are all important.
Even if they all dutifully replied rather than tell Eloniski to fuck off, who is going to read 20 million bullet points?
Grok?
"Fought Fascism"