"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Don't - we were supposed to have a production release on September 15th. I said on the 10th it wasn't in a state to go live.
It finally went live on September 29th (when I was away on holiday, thankfully) - without the release approval paperwork being done or downtime confirmed.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Don't - we were supposed to have a production release on September 15th. I said on the 10th it wasn't in a state to go live.
It finally went live on September 29th (when I was away on holiday, thankfully) - without the release approval paperwork being done or downtime confirmed.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
So the world is turning right wing and authoritarian, including the left wing/libertarian parties, the Chinese are scheduling a war for 2027, and all is conflict and not-nice stuff
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
Yes, it does and I can't see Jenrick standing aside in such circumstances and why should he?
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
There are actually some really good Indian developers in India - but all the ones I know are now very high up in the India offices of the none Indian outsourcing firms.
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
Yes, it does and I can't see Jenrick standing aside in such circumstances and why should he?
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
Howard was the only broadly-tolerable candidate left by then, and the job was so obviously probably a Luftwaffe-tail-gunner gig that it wasn't that attractive. (See also Sunak 2022 and Starmer 2020, except the latter nincompoop went and spoiled it by winning the GE.)
Jenrick, for reasons that defy human reasoning, seems to actually want the job of Conservative leader.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
From my limited experience, and from what others have told me, Indian developers anywhere outside India are generally very good (*). Indian developers in India are ... less brilliant. This makes me wonder if it's a problem of culture in the Indian businesses. Those who can get out of that culture shine. Or only the great ones manage to get out...
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
From my limited experience, and from what others have told me, Indian developers anywhere outside India are generally very good (*). Indian developers in India are ... less brilliant. This makes me wonder if it's a problem of culture in the Indian businesses. Those who can get out of that culture shine. Or only the great ones manage to get out...
(*) And IME great people.
Once employed it's very hard to get rid of Indian workers. Hence for every good one you get they dump a few bad ones on you..
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
I also had 2 senior managers in 2 different countries calling me asking why it wasn't working...
Green PPB. Very Corbynite. ‘Wealth tax now’ stuff.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
For a good while now it's been obvious to anyone not wrapped up in the hype that AI is never going to produce a return on the incredible sums sunk into it, and I fear the sheer gargantuan amount of cash invested means the bubble will do real economic damage when it bursts. Anyone who buys shares in LLM vendors like OpenAI will get burned in the long-term.
Ditto Nvidia, which is going to go south quickly when demand for AI hardware dries up and the existing stuff ends up on Ebay at firesale prices. It'll be like the crypto mining collapse, only orders of magnitude more severe.
On the positive side AI image and video generation and editing is absolutely going to be a nice revenue source. No more needing to be a photoshop expert to do professional quality image editing, just explain in english to an editing model like Qwen and it'll do the job for you. The quality these models can generate on even fairly modest hardware is impressive, and improving almost on a weekly basis.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
For a good while now it's been obvious to anyone not wrapped up in the hype that AI is never going to produce a return on the incredible sums sunk into it, and I fear the sheer gargantuan amount of cash invested means the bubble will do real economic damage when it bursts. Anyone who buys shares in LLM vendors like OpenAI will get burned in the long-term.
Ditto Nvidia, which is going to go south quickly when demand for AI hardware dries up and the existing stuff ends up on Ebay at firesale prices. It'll be like the crypto mining collapse, only orders of magnitude more severe.
On the positive side AI image and video generation and editing is absolutely going to be a nice revenue source. No more needing to be a photoshop expert to do professional quality image editing, just explain in english to an editing model like Qwen and it'll do the job for you. The quality these models can generate on even fairly modest hardware is impressive, and improving almost on a weekly basis.
That's pretty much how I see it. AI is going to change our economy radically but it is not free. The energy requirements are massive. The capital costs are ridiculous. The upside of of monetising this is huge but it is not necessarily huge compared to the capital and the energy needed. There will be some winners and they will be spectacular but there will be a lot of losers. It vaguely reminds me of the early chaos of railway boom nearly 200 years ago. So much investment. So few winners. But wow, those winners.
Green PPB. Very Corbynite. ‘Wealth tax now’ stuff.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
Truss' problem was she cut tax but not spending as well
Truss's real problem was that she conspicuously sidelined the watchdogs at the Bank, Treasury and OBR, so the markets panicked that she must be hiding something really big and really bad. After that, any funding gap was bound to, well, the rest is history. That is why Reeves is always waiting for OBR approval despite their terrible record.
Green PPB. Very Corbynite. ‘Wealth tax now’ stuff.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Labour are not One Nation Conservatives.
Not even close.
Calm Down Dear. It was a joke.
They are far too right wing to be One Nation Conservatives.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
From my limited experience, and from what others have told me, Indian developers anywhere outside India are generally very good (*). Indian developers in India are ... less brilliant. This makes me wonder if it's a problem of culture in the Indian businesses. Those who can get out of that culture shine. Or only the great ones manage to get out...
(*) And IME great people.
Once employed it's very hard to get rid of Indian workers. Hence for every good one you get they dump a few bad ones on you..
Sometimes it's the basics. A lot of companies go into India wanting to pay as little as they can get away with. My own international megacorp employer did that. After doing six to 18 months to get our big name on their cv, the good ones jumped ship. Only when we started paying better did things improve and by that time the director who sold the board on ‘labor [sic] arbitrage’ had found something else to screw up.
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
Yes, it does and I can't see Jenrick standing aside in such circumstances and why should he?
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
Howard was the only broadly-tolerable candidate left by then, and the job was so obviously probably a Luftwaffe-tail-gunner gig that it wasn't that attractive. (See also Sunak 2022 and Starmer 2020, except the latter nincompoop went and spoiled it by winning the GE.)
Jenrick, for reasons that defy human reasoning, seems to actually want the job of Conservative leader.
No David Davis wanted it as did Ken Clarke still but Howard got the backing of ex IDS and ex Portilllo backing MPs to ensure enough for a coronation.
I suspect the 1922 would anoint Cleverly if 2/3 of Tory MPs back him and if it is Jenrick and his supporters who bring about the VONC to topple Kemi, then Cleverly could likely get that with support from his 2024 backers and former Kemi supporting MPs
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
You have to make a positive choice to attend a Welsh-medium school and have Maths/Science/Whatever lessons in Welsh.
I can understand people thinking it would be a bit daft to have a child learn Welsh for only a year or two, but it wouldn't disrupt their education in other subjects.
That's the official line, but not the reality.
The primary system in Gwynedd is Welsh only, if you enter it as an English speaker you get a term in an intensive Welsh language unit. The secondary system is supposedly bilingual, but the reality is that some schools are Welsh only. You won't find much English being spoken in Ysgol y Berwyn (Bala) or Ysgol Y Moelwyn (Blaenau Ffestiniog).
I went (admittedly 20 years ago now) into a 6th form as an English only speaker in a supposedly bilingual school in North Wales, doing subjects officially either taught in English or bilingually. The music teacher taught 90% in Welsh. She did translate the Welsh study notes into English for me - and gave me her handwritten originals. That was how confident she was she wouldn't ever again have anyone else in her class who didn't speak Welsh. The maths class was more even handed, but even so I only got a decent A level pass on the back of also doing Physics (Upper 6th class of 2, taught in English by probably the most talented teacher I've ever met).
I did alright out of it, but I'd existed successfully as an English speaker in a mainly Welsh language environment for most of my teens. Chucking someone's random teenager into that world mid GCSEs would be pretty rough on them, and quite probably stuff up all of their GCSEs/A levels/Uni applications pretty badly.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
I'll not have a word said against St Ted who took us into the Promised Land of the Common Market.
Green PPB. Very Corbynite. ‘Wealth tax now’ stuff.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Labour are not One Nation Conservatives.
Not even close.
Calm Down Dear. It was a joke.
They are far too right wing to be One Nation Conservatives.
Where does this nonsense come from?
They are gleefully selling out British interests left, right and centre, and jacking up tax and spend.
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
Yes, it does and I can't see Jenrick standing aside in such circumstances and why should he?
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
Howard was the only broadly-tolerable candidate left by then, and the job was so obviously probably a Luftwaffe-tail-gunner gig that it wasn't that attractive. (See also Sunak 2022 and Starmer 2020, except the latter nincompoop went and spoiled it by winning the GE.)
Jenrick, for reasons that defy human reasoning, seems to actually want the job of Conservative leader.
No David Davis wanted it as did Ken Clarke still but Howard got the backing of ex IDS and ex Portilllo backing MPs to ensure enough for a coronation.
I suspect the 1922 would anoint Cleverly if 2/3 of Tory MPs back him and if it is Jenrick and his supporters who bring about the VONC to topple Kemi, then Cleverly could likely get that with support from his 2024 backers and former Kemi supporting MPs
It's all just deckchair arranging at this point, isn't it.
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
Like or loathe Truss, the Tories fucked themselves over by buying into the false narrative that she 'crashed the economy'. They could never have overturned that narrative, but they could have, and should still be trying to, drive a counter-narrative that the Bank also had huge questions to answer. A combination of Sunkite tribalism and the usual Tory toadying to anyone with money or power prevented this from happening.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Technically half of Conservative members do not want Badenoch to lead them into the general election. 46% may want Jenrick to lead them but that is little higher than the share he got when Badenoch beat him in the members ballot for leader last year.
If Kemi went Tory MPs would instead likely crown Cleverly as leader. They will have noted yesterday's Telegraph poll too which had Jenrick performing worse head to head against Farage than Badenoch and Cleverly. Jenrick is a possible option to succeed Farage as leader of the populist right at the general election after next but not to lead the Tories to take on Farage at the next general election
Doesn't it have to go to a members' vote if there's more than one candidate?
Yes, it does and I can't see Jenrick standing aside in such circumstances and why should he?
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
Howard was the only broadly-tolerable candidate left by then, and the job was so obviously probably a Luftwaffe-tail-gunner gig that it wasn't that attractive. (See also Sunak 2022 and Starmer 2020, except the latter nincompoop went and spoiled it by winning the GE.)
Jenrick, for reasons that defy human reasoning, seems to actually want the job of Conservative leader.
No David Davis wanted it as did Ken Clarke still but Howard got the backing of ex IDS and ex Portilllo backing MPs to ensure enough for a coronation.
I suspect the 1922 would anoint Cleverly if 2/3 of Tory MPs back him and if it is Jenrick and his supporters who bring about the VONC to topple Kemi, then Cleverly could likely get that with support from his 2024 backers and former Kemi supporting MPs
It's all just deckchair arranging at this point, isn't it.
It would be, if they hadn't flogged off the deckchairs in 2023.
"Welsh Labour has removed a social media post linking Reform UK’s Caerphilly Senedd by-election candidate Llŷr Powell to Vladimir Putin, after Nigel Farage’s party threatened legal action."
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
My factoid of the day is that the AI bubble boost to US GDP exactly explains my miss--by-a-mile prediction for that measure in the PB competition.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Yes, at the bottom end the pension is a pittance, so up-rating it is good. What's needed is to claw it back more effectively at the top end.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Madness doesn't come close to describing this. Stride was absolutely terrible on Today this morning. His speech was dreadful. His failure to recognise how deep we are in the hole is driven by politics not be economics. Its bordering on disgraceful. And he pretends that he is "responsible". No wonder people just laugh.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Unfortunately, in this particular climate and against this political backdrop the Tories would be signing their own death warrant (more than they are doing already) by pledging to abolish the triple lock.
I don't like that, but I can accept the political realty. In a similar way that Cameron needed to "share the proceeds of growth" rather than talk about spending cuts until the GFC, because otherwise he would run straight into the Labour line of attack about cutting the NHS/public services which was their trump card from 1997-2008.
There will perhaps come a time and a place when someone will have political cover to abolish it, but that time is not now.
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Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Theresa May - who has seemingly been all but forgotten - was also very bad at this sort of stuff and had to be told by advisors to do the most basic, obvious stuff.
My theory is that it's a sign of self-unaware Autism. There are loads of us who know that we are lacking in what many would consider 'commonsense emotional intelligence', so we make the effort to check over our shoulders periodically, in case we need to do something that doesn't occur/come naturally to us. We know it's a blind spot and train ourselves to compensate for it. Indeed, sometimes we overcompensate and end up looking a bit awkward and Alan Partridge-like.
But for the Heaths, Mays and Badenochs who are almost certainly 'on the spectrum' but not accepting or acknowledging of this, there is a stubborn continuation of their natural selves and obliviousness to the poor optics.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
My understanding of this deal is OpenAI has to buy significant amounts of AMD's AI accelerators, and gets the penny shares as a kind of reward when the purchases go through. For AMD getting OpenAI's endorsement is good news, they're seen as very much second-tier in AI hardware behind NVidia.
But I have no idea how AMD is going to come up with a huge extra supply of AI chips. AMD fabs its chips at TSMC who are capacity constrained, and will be for some time to come. AMD already has to split its limited wafer allocation between CPUs, GPUs, chips for XBox and Playstation consoles, etc. AI GPUs are huge and require specialist packaging techniques and High Bandwidth Memory, which is also supply constrained right now.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
@TSE once said that he wanted the moderate Conservative not obsessed by Europe Party. I so wish that party actually existed.
Not obsessed by Europe Party was code for mildly and conventionally pro-Europe, however.
Well, that was because we were in and that was the status quo. Now we are out and that is the status quo. What we know is that the EU is neither the answer to our prayers or the source of our nightmares. We have so many more important things to sort out and address.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
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By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Well. One out of five. Pity he's dead or he could manage Rangers.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Any Chancellor bringing the state pension above the personal allowance is asking for trouble and I expect it will be headed off at the pass. The problem is bureaucracy as much as politics.
Either the pension will have to be brought into the PAYE system (or vice versa) which will take oodles of work, or every pensioner in the land will have to submit a tax return which will overwhelm HMRC and be beyond the ability of many pensioners.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
More infrastructure spend by a software company. None of the spend is by actual customers for AI. It's all just more air in the bubble.
Okay. Let's suppose it is a massive bubble. At some point there are going to be all these data centres stuffed full of GPUs that someone could buy for pennies. What could you do with that compute capacity that would be worth the cost of electricity?
The Badenoch tale of sandwiches for the proles but something else for herself reminded me of the old apocryphal Thatcher joke, which I'm sure you all know but I'll repeat anyway. Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting. Steak, she replied. And what about the vegetables? she was asked. They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
Plaid Cymru called it a "complete waste of money" and "an insult to our language" while the Conservatives said parents should be able to choose the language in which their children are taught.
because
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) spends about £1m a year sending children to private schools in north Wales because "state schools teach some or all lessons in the Welsh language".
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By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
The Badenoch tale of sandwiches for the proles but something else for herself reminded me of the old apocryphal Thatcher joke, which I'm sure you all know but I'll repeat anyway. Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting. Steak, she replied. And what about the vegetables? she was asked. They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Heath’s complete absence of interpersonal skills is an oddity, in a politician.
It was weird, he could inspire real loyalty among some people yet was incredibly rude, I heard first hand how at a party he was seat with women on either side of them, for nearly three hours he just ignored them and spoke to the men at the table whilst not leaving his seat.
Somebody said that he wasn't gay, just very badly damaged by the one lady that got away.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Unfortunately, in this particular climate and against this political backdrop the Tories would be signing their own death warrant (more than they are doing already) by pledging to abolish the triple lock.
I don't like that, but I can accept the political realty. In a similar way that Cameron needed to "share the proceeds of growth" rather than talk about spending cuts until the GFC, because otherwise he would run straight into the Labour line of attack about cutting the NHS/public services which was their trump card from 1997-2008.
There will perhaps come a time and a place when someone will have political cover to abolish it, but that time is not now.
It doesn't have to be abolished, just tweaked very slightly. You could replace 'ax' with 'in' or the whole word with average.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
The Badenoch tale of sandwiches for the proles but something else for herself reminded me of the old apocryphal Thatcher joke, which I'm sure you all know but I'll repeat anyway. Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting. Steak, she replied. And what about the vegetables? she was asked. They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
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Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
The Badenoch tale of sandwiches for the proles but something else for herself reminded me of the old apocryphal Thatcher joke, which I'm sure you all know but I'll repeat anyway. Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting. Steak, she replied. And what about the vegetables? she was asked. They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
Wasn’t that a Spitting Image sketch ?
Yes, I think it was - well remembered, I'd forgotten the source.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
Comments
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
https://x.com/trussliz/status/1975229735450894615
It finally went live on September 29th (when I was away on holiday, thankfully) - without the release approval paperwork being done or downtime confirmed.
HMRC curiosity seems to be around days/year in the UK, Cottrell takes private flights and .... https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-03-27/inspector-criticizes-uk-private-aviation-security-checks so HMRC will probably remain curious
i changed all our "loading..." states to "thinking.."
we are an agentic AI startup now
Still. They seem to have sorted out the Predator franchise. So Yay for that. Here's the latest trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDL3Zjdz514
A few years ago somebody sent an email to my work address saying if I didn't pay them $10,000 within 48 hours I would end up with said convictions.
I didn't pay them the $10,000 so....
So I'm very sceptical about an MPs' coronation Michael Howard style.
"Oilfield Units: a Measurement System so Cursed it made me Change Career"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdWEGzWFcCc
Jenrick, for reasons that defy human reasoning, seems to actually want the job of Conservative leader.
(*) And IME great people.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she
was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has
begun inviting in small groups for lunch.
Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that
Badenoch famously declared last year that
she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1%
of the British public), they replied "oh no,
the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had
something hot brought in".
https://bsky.app/profile/michaeljsc.bsky.social/post/3m2jhne5dpc2h
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Reform UK: National Front
Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen
Labour - One Nation Conservatives
LibDems - Blairite Labour
Greens - Millibandite Labour
YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Ditto Nvidia, which is going to go south quickly when demand for AI hardware dries up and the existing stuff ends up on Ebay at firesale prices. It'll be like the crypto mining collapse, only orders of magnitude more severe.
On the positive side AI image and video generation and editing is absolutely going to be a nice revenue source. No more needing to be a photoshop expert to do professional quality image editing, just explain in english to an editing model like Qwen and it'll do the job for you. The quality these models can generate on even fairly modest hardware is impressive, and improving almost on a weekly basis.
@SpencerHakimian
·
1h
Democrats hold a 4 point lead in 2026 generic ballots.
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1975234069832368281
(not really)
That should be the tagline for the whole administration
Not even close.
A 4 point lead should still see the Democrats retake Congress next year but it could be close
They are far too right wing to be One Nation Conservatives.
I suspect the 1922 would anoint Cleverly if 2/3 of Tory MPs back him and if it is
Jenrick and his supporters who bring about the VONC to topple Kemi, then Cleverly could likely get that with support from his 2024 backers and former Kemi supporting MPs
Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
The primary system in Gwynedd is Welsh only, if you enter it as an English speaker you get a term in an intensive Welsh language unit. The secondary system is supposedly bilingual, but the reality is that some schools are Welsh only. You won't find much English being spoken in Ysgol y Berwyn (Bala) or Ysgol Y Moelwyn (Blaenau Ffestiniog).
I went (admittedly 20 years ago now) into a 6th form as an English only speaker in a supposedly bilingual school in North Wales, doing subjects officially either taught in English or bilingually.
The music teacher taught 90% in Welsh. She did translate the Welsh study notes into English for me - and gave me her handwritten originals. That was how confident she was she wouldn't ever again have anyone else in her class who didn't speak Welsh.
The maths class was more even handed, but even so I only got a decent A level pass on the back of also doing Physics (Upper 6th class of 2, taught in English by probably the most talented teacher I've ever met).
I did alright out of it, but I'd existed successfully as an English speaker in a mainly Welsh language environment for most of my teens. Chucking someone's random teenager into that world mid GCSEs would be pretty rough on them, and quite probably stuff up all of their GCSEs/A levels/Uni applications pretty badly.
They are gleefully selling out British interests left, right and centre, and jacking up tax and spend.
They are NOT right wing.
Has Netanyahu recognised Palestine?
Like or loathe Truss, the Tories fucked themselves over by buying into the false narrative that she 'crashed the economy'. They could never have overturned that narrative, but they could have, and should still be trying to, drive a counter-narrative that the Bank also had huge questions to answer. A combination of Sunkite tribalism and the usual Tory toadying to anyone with money or power prevented this from happening.
They'd probably drop to 6% in the polling without it.
If they want their democracy to continue the Dems need a landslide in 2026 imho.
https://caerphilly.observer/news/1053766/labour-reform-legal-row-caerphilly-by-election
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/ted-heath-hunger-games-mps-qmsnmrbqm
I don't like that, but I can accept the political realty. In a similar way that Cameron needed to "share the proceeds of growth" rather than talk about spending cuts until the GFC, because otherwise he would run straight into the Labour line of attack about cutting the NHS/public services which was their trump card from 1997-2008.
There will perhaps come a time and a place when someone will have political cover to abolish it, but that time is not now.
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Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen
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YourParty - continuity Corbyn
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Theresa May - who has seemingly been all but forgotten - was also very bad at this sort of stuff and had to be told by advisors to do the most basic, obvious stuff.
My theory is that it's a sign of self-unaware Autism. There are loads of us who know that we are lacking in what many would consider 'commonsense emotional intelligence', so we make the effort to check over our shoulders periodically, in case we need to do something that doesn't occur/come naturally to us. We know it's a blind spot and train ourselves to compensate for it. Indeed, sometimes we overcompensate and end up looking a bit awkward and Alan Partridge-like.
But for the Heaths, Mays and Badenochs who are almost certainly 'on the spectrum' but not accepting or acknowledging of this, there is a stubborn continuation of their natural selves and obliviousness to the poor optics.
It's why he played the piano (by himself), sailed a yacht (by himself) and talked so tortuously pompously (by himself).
It's a middle-sized refinery that hasn't been hit before.
Ukraine do seem to be stepping up the tempo of their attacks on Russian oil refineries.
It will be a very detailed cock and balls at this rate.
But I have no idea how AMD is going to come up with a huge extra supply of AI chips. AMD fabs its chips at TSMC who are capacity constrained, and will be for some time to come. AMD already has to split its limited wafer allocation between CPUs, GPUs, chips for XBox and Playstation consoles, etc. AI GPUs are huge and require specialist packaging techniques and High Bandwidth Memory, which is also supply constrained right now.
Grenade launcers, parts for bombs, parts for Military Planes amongst the imports
Pity he's dead or he could manage Rangers.
Either the pension will have to be brought into the PAYE system (or vice versa) which will take oodles of work, or every pensioner in the land will have to submit a tax return which will overwhelm HMRC and be beyond the ability of many pensioners.
Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting.
Steak, she replied.
And what about the vegetables? she was asked.
They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
Somebody said that he wasn't gay, just very badly damaged by the one lady that got away.