Posts by Jedit

"There's a new brand of fool out there"

It's not a new brand of fool. It's just the same old brand of fool with a different coat of paint. There has never been an easier way to fool someone than to make them think they are being clever.

"A pint in his memory!"

I would also pour one out for the man. However, I have not yet been able to discover the Higgs Beerson, so will have to settle for the icon.

Re: Look at Brasil's Friends

And like most "free speech advocates", he believes freedom of speech means freedom from consequence.

"Fresh blood shouldn't be expected to 'enter the workforce' at senior research levels"

No, they shouldn't. However, you might have considered that for anyone other than a newbie to attain those levels, they must already be in a lesser existing post. If the people at the top aren't making way for the people one level below them, the lesser posts also remain full. And thus it proceeds all the way to the bottom, where newbies can't gain an entry level position to get on the ladder because those positions are already filled by people who have been unable to get promoted out of them. Which is the OP's point, that you completely ignored.

"We always have a minimum of three workers at a polling place"

Yes, so do we, and for the same reason. If I wasn't clear - the teams of workers are generally in the same room, managing the queue for different parts of the ward. If one of the workers in a team has to leave for a comfort break or whatever, the queue halts until they return but the ballots aren't left alone because the other team is there as well. Other than that your basic setup is very similar to that in the UK, except we never use private property as a polling station - local government bodies provide the use of school halls and community centres - and we retain the requirement to vote at a designated station as the tracking and counting is all done by hand.

I also find it interesting that you mention California allows paid time off to vote and Oregon is 100% mail-in ballots. It appears that the easier it is to vote in an American election, the more likely it is that your state is blue. I wonder why that could be, and if it is connected to voter suppression in red states.

"If companies aren't seeing it, more fool them."

No, they're seeing it. That's why they're not employing you.

Re: "is trying to lock future governments into"

I'm not wrong about Starmer either. He claims to want to make the NHS strong, but he's explicitly ruled out raising taxes or seizing the billions stolen by the Tories during the pandemic to lavish upon their donors for huge (and frequently unfulfilled) PPE contracts at ripoff prices. Instead he's talking about using AI to shorten waiting lists. This is not my opinion - it is a fact, and you can find it in transcripts of his speeches on the Labour Party's own website.

That said, you really don't need to look much past Streeting being funded by private health care initiatives and openly supporting greater privatisation of the NHS. Starmer's appointing him as Shadow Health Secretary - which most likely leads to him taking the cabinet post if Labour enter government - indicates clearly that this is also what Starmer thinks should happen. You don't give someone a job if you don't like the way they want to do it, do you?

"you wish the author were present"

Even more true now.

"Just carry on with the weekly mass murders"

What weekly mass murders?

In 2024 there has been more than one mass shooting incident in the US per day.

"If you buy a too-cheap Rolex from a guy down the pub..."

"... should the publican be required to reimburse you?"

Of course not. But if the publican has been told that there's a guy in his pub selling suspicious watches and he does nothing about it because he's taking a cut, then it does become his responsibility because he's complicit.

Facebook advertising is no different. Facebook is the pub, their advertisers are the dodgy guy. Facebook are not to blame for the actions of any individual advertiser because everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but it is on them to hold their clients to a reasonable standard after accepting their money and it is on them to police their platform when complaints are received. If they instead allow obvious scammers to rip off their users, then they are as complicit as our shady pub landlord.

Re: Who would want to wear

Who would need to? I always know where my peen is.

"Imagine if there was a 30year war over which Spiderman movie was best?"

The people who didn't think it was Spider-Man 2 would be outnumbered 10 to 1, so the war wouldn't last 30 years.

"I think I've spotted a Brexiter."

Nah, just a Daily Mail jihadi posting from his kampfy chair in Tunbridge Wells.

"Are speakers of SAE and AAE equally likely to have professional jobs?"

The AI model isn't sentencing people who speak in ethnic vernacular to death more often on the basis of their personal merit. It's doing so because its data shows that people who speak in the vernacular are more frequently sentenced to death. In other words: the racial bias of the AI is a direct reflection of the racial bias of the American justice system, in which a black person is more likely to receive the death penalty for the same crime as a white person.

That bias also does not exist solely in the justice system. It applies across all parts of life, perpetuating a system where poorly educated people remain poorly educated because their lack of education is perceived as an inability to become educated.

"it was a common skill"

I don't know about that. I was at university before I really got the hang of undoing them by feel.

Oh, wait, sorry, you meant the locks. Never mind.

"They add great value when the time comes to lay people off."

You mean in your company HR aren't usually the ones deciding exactly where the layoffs happen? To get fired from a HR position you have to be pretty much unspeakable, because you need to have pissed off all your own colleagues as well as the rest of the company.

Re: Stop burning down the Tesla factory!

Who's to say it wasn't the cars? Maybe one of these left wing environmental protesters took one for a test drive, and... [see icon]

"journalists and lawyers"

Also a beta service who make things up.

""legitimate interest" options"

Which is an admission that the reasons they normally want your data are not legitimate.

Re: In all modesty, if they weren't stopped...

Please! Nobody has worked harder on their humility than he has!

Re: What would it cost ...

The answer is, as always, "less than outsourcing it". However, efficient internal solutions don't put large bungs into the pockets of corrupt politicians, so that's not acceptable.

Re: "We accept that Big Pharma needs to suck data"

Indeed. And on the subject of Peter Thiel: he's a literal leech and vampire who believes you can prolong life by receiving blood transfusions from the young. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse isn't so much the analogy as employing Count Dracula to be the manager of the blood bank.

"Elon Musk would need to wait several months for his pay packet to arrive"

When are you going to describe the problem?

"No you cannot put everyone in prison."

OK, death sentence it is then.

Joking aside: if the CEOs aren't going to prison for this, then at the very least the companies need to receive fines so punitive that it bankrupts them. The only way they'll ever stop is if they cannot make money from what they're doing.

"The people who are blocking progress ARE the problem."

But ... where's the progression? ChatGPT is not true AI; it cannot infer from its data set or increase its body of knowledge by any means other than being provided with new raw data. When an employer declares that they are using AI to replace people, surely they are the ones blocking progress because they've replaced a thinking, evolving brain with a set of programmed responses?

"Musk said, "no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.""

Note carefully that no mention was made of no Starlink terminals being given to Russia.

"You can expect your post to appear in the next 22.5 hours."

I'm reading this post 22.5 hours after it was made, so that checks out.

The replies appear to be traveling faster than light, but that's standard for people who think someone is wrong on the internet so again no problems there.

"a bitcoin ... will always be worth more next week"

Can you please expand on the rationale behind this? If the price of conducting a transaction in BTC is constantly increasing (scientific "if" BTW, we know it is), then wouldn't the value of the BTC decrease because more of the proposed value is expended on the transaction? Like how using a service with a minimum transaction fee becomes impractical for small transactions because a 1% (minimum 50p) charge represents a 10% surcharge on a £5 transaction.