TheGrandNagus

@TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan using generative AI less than other countries⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rachel Reeves to announce £500m for investment in youth services projects⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Good. Things like this being gutted under the Tories was incredibly short-sighted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tax pubs on profit not property value, urges Greene King boss⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course we can’t do anything about this in the short term, but long term we should be doing everything we can to fix property pricing. It’s such a stranglehold on both citizens and businesses.

  People can’t afford to go out and spend because it’s all servicing a mortgage or rent, which goes to wealthy landlords or banks, rather than circulating locally.

  Businesses have to hike prices to pay for exorbitant rent rates, which further reinforces people not being able to go out and spend.

  The government spends several billion per year on housing benefits, which has went from a benefit to help the few who fell through the cracks and needed a bit of assistance, to huge numbers of people completely reliant on it else they can’t afford to house themselves. And who gets the money? That’s right. Landlords.

  We obviously can’t snap our fingers and have more houses overnight, but I hope the upcoming panning reforms and mandatory building targets actually bear fruit.

  I’m a home owner by the skin of my teeth (I worked 84 hour weeks, saved relentlessly - destroying my social life, and moved to the North East where housing is cheap), but I’m fine taking a hit in house value if it’s for the good of the nation. Fuck the people who pulled the ladders up after them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can still enable uBlock Origin in Chrome, here is how⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Why jump through all these hoops, and lessen the security of your browser in the process, just to do something that is being fully stripped out soon anyway?

  Just install Firefox. It’s not like you can’t import your bookmarks and such.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labour housing plans could destroy 215,000 hectares of nature in England, analysis shows⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The effect of this would be extremely minimal. Almost all empty homes in the UK are homes that are temporarily empty pending sale or between renters. Having empty homes is actually extremely normal, you can’t really not have empty homes, as people are always moving.

  The UK has far fewer empty empty homes than anywhere else in the developed world. Our housing stock isn’t enough.

  There’s no other option but to build more. I hope Labour’s plans can help with that, but who knows. And it’d need to be sustained.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labour housing plans could destroy 215,000 hectares of nature in England, analysis shows⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  NIMBYism is killing this country. We have the smallest available housing stock in Europe by some margin. Labour are right to be trying to make a dent in the issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeremy Corbyn confirms new ‘socialist alternative’ before next election to fight Starmer⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Authoritarian arrest?! They broke into an RAF base and crippled multiple planes, FFS.

  Why do you want Farage to win so badly? He’d be awful for the country. Do you not see the damage he’s already done?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owen Jones: This column does not express support for Palestine Action – here’s why⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course defence is important. How separated from reality are you for you to think it isn’t?

  Sabotaging UK defence is obviously a bad thing, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owen Jones: This column does not express support for Palestine Action – here’s why⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Come on, “throwing around red paint” is quite misleading, no?

  They poured it into the engines of multiple RAF jets, destroying those engines. That’s several million in damages, and a lot of downtime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BREAKING: X CEO Linda Yaccarino Steps Down One Day After Elon Musk’s Grok AI Bot Went Full Hitler⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly the above comment infuriated me.

  They would not be defending this person if they were a man.

  Having lower expectations of women isn’t progressive, it isn’t feminist. It’s infantising. It’s misogyny of lower expectations.

  A woman who is happy to support Elon is every bit as bad as a man that is happy to support Elon. Supporting a nazi is supporting a nazi.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeremy Corbyn confirms new ‘socialist alternative’ before next election to fight Starmer⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Farage could not have asked for better news than this. Ugh.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apparently Debian has alienated the developers⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I will never understand why people think FOSS is or should be apolitical.

  FOSS has always been political. It’s literally never existed in any other way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK expands NHS dental services for vulnerable patients⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Reading into this, it seems like there’s actually a lot going on right now when it comes to sorting out our decaying (ha) dentistry services.

  Good.

  If this gets well and truly sorted, this will be a visible, tangible thing people can point to and say they’ve done well there.

  People can’t really conceptualise the less visible things like “wages have gone up by 2% more than inflation this year”, “inflation has dropped by 0.3%”, “infrastructure investment has been raised by X%!”

  We’re bad at understanding numbers like that and visualising what impact they will make on our lives.

  The difference between “I’ve not been able to get a dentist appointment for 4 years” and “I can trivially have one booked every 6 months” is something that everyone will notice and appreciate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ban on controversial NDAs silencing abuse: The Employment Rights Bill will ban employers from using non-disclosure agreements that silence workplace harassment and abuse.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Excellent move.

  One of the multiple improvements I’ve seen Labour make where I’ve thought “wait, that wasn’t the case before?! Why the hell not?!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Children in England ‘living in almost Dickensian levels of poverty’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Really frustrating that children are 3x likely to be in poverty as pensioners, yet a disproportionate amount of money is redirected towards pensioners, the richest demographic by a long shot.

  And as has been made clear, any attempts to address that will not be tolerated by media or by the electorate. Labour couldn’t even get the original WFA cuts through, despite the poorest still being entitled to them!

  Labour restarting SureStart in all but name will surely be a big help for young children and new parents, as will things like the sizable minimum wage increases. But it won’t be enough to fix this problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Danish Ministry switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Same. I have to tinker with it a lot to make it less frustrating to use. I like how customisable it is but man I don’t really want to customise everything anymore.

  I want a UX that is great out of the box in terms of theming, functionality, and ease of use. I want sane defaults.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China’s Next-Gen TV Anchors Hustle for Jobs AI Already Does: The rise of AI in broadcasting is pushing China’s top journalism schools to rethink what skills still set human anchors apart.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Having artificially generated news anchors seems so bizarre to me.

  It’s one person that in a country like china will be seen by tens or hundreds of millions of people. Is it really worth it to axe that job and put some uncanny valley CGI figure in their place? The per viewer cost saving must be fractions of a penny.

  Now, if initiatives like this can be used for things like generating a figure that can do sign language in the corner of a screen that would be an amazing development, but this? I just don’t see it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI agents wrong ~70% of time: Carnegie Mellon study⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  LLMs are an interesting tool to fuck around with, but I see things that are hilariously wrong often enough to know that they should not be used for anything serious. Shit, they probably shouldn’t be used for most things that are not serious either.

  It’s a shame that by applying the same “AI” naming to a whole host of different technologies, LLMs being limited in usability - yet hyped to the moon - is hurting other more impressive advancements.

  For example, speech synthesis is improving so much right now, which has been great for my sister who relies on screen reader software.

  Being able to recognise speech in loud environments is improving loads too.

  As is things like pattern/image analysis which appears very promising in medical analysis.

  All of these get branded as “AI”. A layperson might not realise that they are completely different branches of technology, and then therefore reject useful applications of “AI” tech, because they’ve learned not to trust anything branded as AI, due to being let down by LLMs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anger as Nationwide refuses members a binding vote on boss’s 43% pay hike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Women are underrepresented in CEO positions, although perhaps not for the reasons people think.

  The average age of a CEO is 55. Many are far older. You get to that point by being in management positions within an industry for decades. Outside of fringe cases, it takes a long time to become a CEO.

  Obviously, that filters out some women due to them choosing family life over chasing job position above all else, as well as things such as in the past there being an even greater disparity in the difference between maternity and paternity leave than there is today (and it’s still not great today either!), as well as past sexist attitudes in having women in managerial roles.

  IMO, there being fewer women in CEO positions is an indicator of sexism in the past, not sexism in the present.

  Nowadays there are far more women in managerial positions, and that will naturally translate to more CEOs. It will just take time.

  Will it be 50/50? Eh, probably not. The fact that women give birth means there will always be a not insignificant amount of women that take a significant amount of time out of work and prioritise family life to a greater extent than men.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nexus Mods to Enforce Digital ID Age Checks Under UK and EU Laws⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I miss the internet being a wild west.

  It certainly had its downsides, but it felt a lot better than the nonsense that’s been happening over the past decade+.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why compare it to nuclear rather than what’s currently being used in that area? Coal and gas.

  Nuclear is good for providing a stable base load, but having the entire grid be nuclear would be very expensive. And if everyone were to do the same, the market cost of fissile fuel materials would skyrocket.

  Lots of solar and wind in the energy mix is a no-brainer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prison term for ‘legal first’ prosecution of man who encouraged a vulnerable woman to commit serious self-harm online⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is such a depressing read. So fucked up. How can people be this evil?

  I’m glad this has become illegal, but I’m sad it even had to be in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The State of Consumer AI: AI’s Consumer Tipping Point Has Arrived - Only 3%* of US AI users are willing to pay for it.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One way to interpret this is “ha, people consider AI worthless!”

  However another way to interpret this is the same way users view everything on the web, from social media to journalism and media streaming: this should be free and they should use my data and advertise to me instead, consequences/enshittification be damned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The UK needs more affordable electric heating tariffs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know why there is such a focus on taxes in this article. For energy, the VAT rate is only 5% - even if we scrapped it entirely, it’d barely make a dent. I truly do not understand where the “getting rid of levies will cut energy bills by over £500” thing comes from.

  The only way to bring bills down is to bring the cost of energy down by increasing supply and bringing down our average cost per MWh for production of energy.

  The good news is that the government, to their credit, have been doing that.

  The bad news is that this isn’t a “press the ‘fix everything’ button in No. 10, then everything will be hunky dory” situation, it’s a “take action now so that we can benefit from it in 5-10 years” situation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google hit with $314m fine for collecting data from idle Android phones without permission⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Break the law and pay 0.014% of your market cap, or 0.31% of their 2024 profit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech firms suggested placing trackers under offenders’ skin at meeting with UK justice secretary⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tech firms will suggest any invasive nonsense that will make them money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK to host Donald Trump for full state visit this year, says Buckingham Palace⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no backdoor. We do not have the export variant of the F35 with US-controlled software. The software on our F35s (and Trident missiles) is British. This came as the result of concerns New Labour had about the very thing you mention - US backdoors.

  And I agree that the US cannot be trusted. Thankfully our sixth gen fighters have no US ties, and most of our other recent military developments aren’t either. For the time being, though, we can’t really abruptly scrap trident or F35s, despite maintenance not being 100% done here (particularly for Trident). Our missiles only need maintenance every 10 years - I’d hope we have facilities to do that domestically by then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ok so you think that the old 4" screen phones should actually have been sub 2". That seems excessively small to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK Stop Killing Games Petition's Map of Signatures ✍️⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a disproportionately high amount of old people in Northumberland and Cumbria - a demographic probably less likely to care about a gaming preservation petition.

  The same demographics issue is likely true on the Scottish side of the border too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK Stop Killing Games Petition's Map of Signatures ✍️⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  First I’ve even heard of it, damn, I’d have totally signed.