Womble
@Womble@piefed.world
- Comment on Michelle Mone demands Keir Starmer ends 'vendetta' against her in letter to PM 1 day ago:
Look she's been made a peer of the realm, it is unacceptable to attempt to punish her for committing crimes. What's more its discriminatory as the state would never try to prosecute old money peers!
- Comment on The Epstein Scandal Finally Takes Down a Politician 1 week ago:
Well for a start felonies arent a thing in the UK, and havent been for 60 years, but also if it is genuinely due to error and HMRC dont think its been done deliberately as tax evasion then yes you can just self report and pay the tax owed plus late fees.
- Comment on The Unbearable Inefficiency of Fossil Fuels 2 weeks ago:
You recharge your storage device (a metal tank) by pouring in more liquid over 30 seconds. That ease of use combined with how energy dense oil derivatives are is such a massive benefit for them.
The problem with fossil fuels is that they are slowly choking our planet, except for that they are phenomenal energy sources on who's backs the modern world was built. That is why it is so hard for us to transition away from them.
- Comment on Organs Cannot Simply Be Classified as Male or Female 2 weeks ago:
Its not binary but it is strongly clustered into two groups with a small number of outliers from those groups.
- Comment on How huge London far-right march lifted the lid on a toxic transatlantic soup 2 weeks ago:
Corbyn in the UK is the main counterexample I can think of, but even then that was for less than five years in opposition to the entire political and media establishment conspiring to bring him down, including the right of his own party (and in fairness, he repeatedly shot himself in the foot and handed them easy wins).
- Comment on Britain trained Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza 2 weeks ago:
Racsism is likely part of it, but the real value is in having a solid ally that can be used as a base to project power across the largest oil producing region in the world.
How long Israel remains seen as a solid ally given their recent unhinged and mask off behaviour remains to be seen. To me it does feel like there is a sea change in opinion on them, both from everyday people and from politicos.
- Comment on 5 Signs the AI Bubble is About to Burst 2 weeks ago:
The post I was replying to was saying
people will stop using it for all the things they're currently using it for
They will when AI companies can no longer afford to eat their own costs and start charging users a non-subsidized price.
i.e. people will stop using AI when user have to pay the "real" price (what this is is left unspecified and an exercise to the reader to figure out). My point was that even if the AI price from those provided to infinity AI usage wouldnt drop to zero like they imply.
- Comment on 5 Signs the AI Bubble is About to Burst 2 weeks ago:
There are free open models you can go and download right now, that are better than SOTA 12-18 months ago, and that cost you less to run on a gaming PC than playing COD does. Even if openai, anthropic et al disappeared without a trace tomorrow AI wouldnt go away.
- Comment on 5 Signs the AI Bubble is About to Burst 2 weeks ago:
Quantum entangled communications that are impossible to evesdrop on exist now, cloud computing is the money machine that allows Amazon to keep expanding, virtualisation is used by effectively every company using computers at scale. (blockchain, I'll admit, was pretty much all hype and vapourware other than laundering drug money and allowing speculation)
Just because there is marketing hype around a term doesnt mean there isnt anything of value there.
- Comment on The Epstein Scandal Finally Takes Down a Politician 2 weeks ago:
Even calling it tax evasion is a stretch, she had a complicated situation involving a trust set up for the house she had with her ex to insure her severely disabled son would be taken care of, then she claimed her new flat was her primary residence leading to a lower rate of stamp duty. She got some advice that said it was ok but was then told she should seek specialist legal advice to check that which she didnt and now has to pay back 40k.
Its not good, and she was right to step down, especially as housing minister, but its hardly a grievous sin.
- Comment on RFK Jr. Blames violent video games for Mass Shootings. 3 weeks ago:
Generally yes, Suicide tends to be a spur of the moment decision to go through with it and having immediate access to a very easy very lethal method increases the rate significantly. There have been numerous studies that show that putting up barriers at bridges etc that are commonly jumped from dreastically reduces the suicide rate from them without raising it elsewhere e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19440880/
- Comment on Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions. 3 weeks ago:
Given the judege in that case flat out rejected the claim that there was any infringement for works they had legally aquired, yes.
- Comment on UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost 4 weeks ago:
I'm not defending it or attacking it, mearly saying that
They probably did multiple queries per day at the beginning, found out it isn't worth it and stopped using it ...
Isnt supported by the information given.
- Comment on UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost 4 weeks ago:
Probably, my point was that you cant say if its increasing, decreasing or staying constant just from the number of times it's been used. It could be that for most people its completely useless but for a small group its very usefull and they are using it more and more. Or as suggested it could be that everyone tried it a bit at first found it useless and stopped using it. Or that its kinda useful in very specific cases so it gets constantly used a tiny bit.
- Comment on What If There’s No AGI? 4 weeks ago:
The "chart" that you posted, it showed barely any increase in the 1800s and massive increases in the last decades.
- Comment on What If There’s No AGI? 4 weeks ago:
Its not a chart, to be that it would have to show some sort of relation between things. What it is is a list of things that were invented but on an exponential curve to try and back up loony singularity naratives.
Trying to claim there was vastly less innovation in the entire 19th century than there was in the past decade is just nonsense.
- Comment on UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost 4 weeks ago:
Thats complete speculation on your part though. It could equally be people hardly used it at first then started to use it more as they found ways it was helpful. Unless you see the data there's no reason to say one or the other.
- Comment on Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws 4 weeks ago:
Given that I havent expressed a preference and have never voted either Democrat or Republican in a single election (owing to not being American) I believe you may be inventing things about me.
And what I said stands, you functionally dont express a preference and what you do is equivalent to staying in bed and not turning out to vote.
- Comment on Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws 4 weeks ago:
So functionally, you abstain from voting and dont express a preference about how you are goverened.
- Comment on Kick faces possible $49 M fine after French streamer Jean Pormanove dies on air 5 weeks ago:
The title kinda buries the lede there. I thought it was ridiculous to fine a platform just because a streamer happened to die on camera, but no, they were streaming months long abuse and torture of this guy at the hands of his co-streamers.
- Comment on Mississippi Age Verification Law 1 month ago:
You can tell when posts are from mastodon as they are full of twitterisms like hashtags and @User to reply to comments
- Comment on How to reform income tax: end the high marginal rate scandal 1 month ago:
Yes, if you want a social security net and dont live in the world's economic hegemon
- Comment on How to reform income tax: end the high marginal rate scandal 1 month ago:
FWIW the article does make sense, though the conclusion I'd draw wouldnt be the same as theirs but:
Jane is earning £60k and claiming child benefit for three children. That’s worth £3,094.
She’s now in the 42% tax band.6 Jane still pays basic rate tax for her income between £12,570 and £50,270, but now pays 42% tax for everything over that. So her total tax bill is (50270 – 12570) * 28% + (60000-50270) * 42% = £14,643 and Jane takes home £45,357.
Jane is thinking of working a few more hours to earn another £1,000. She’s in the higher tax band – so in a sane world she’d expect another £420 of tax, and a marginal rate of 42%.
But that is not the result. Once Jane’s income hits £60,200, the “High Income Child Benefit Charge” (introduced by George Osborne) starts to apply to claw back her child benefit – 1% for every £200 of earnings.
The marginal rate – the tax Jane is paying on that new £1,000. This is 56.5% – and we will have the same result for all incomes between £60k and £80k.
The solution I'd draw from that would be to raise the higher rate from 42 to 45-50% and scrap the means testing of child benefits. Makes the tax take more progressive and reduces administrative burden by not having to assess people's income for if they are eligible for child support or not.
- Comment on What's your thoughts on this? 1 month ago:
If this university hadnt bought this meaningless advert it would have a tiny reduction in the demand for advertising potentially leading to less always lit billboards being made. So no, they dont get a pass for it.
- Comment on AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over 1 month ago:
You think venture capital dictates to the politburo what it's priorities are in China?
- Comment on AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over 1 month ago:
Have you considered that if the worlds two superpowers are dead certain on this being an important area that they are willing to thrwo coutless billions of investment into, that they might know more than you do?
- Comment on OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models 1 month ago:
ok, but running a hairdryer for 5 minutes is well up into the hundreds of queries which is more than the vast majority of people will use in a week. The OP was talking about it being 1-2% of energy usage, so that include transport heating and heavy industry. It just doesnt pass the smell test to me that something where a weeks worth of usage is exceeded by a person drying their hair once is comparable with such vast users of energy.
- Comment on OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models 1 month ago:
Do you have a source for that? Because given a chatgpt query takes a similar amount of energy to running a hair dryer for a few seconds i find it hard to believe.
- Comment on Why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment 1 month ago:
Thank you for posting this, I've tried to say the same thing to people quite a few times but to roughly the same reaction as this post has got. Its an entirely emotional reaction, people have convinced themself that AI is bad (arguable) therefore anything bad said about them is true (incorrect).
- Comment on Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point 1 month ago:
Its an urban planning and transport issue essentially. Medium density housing (think 4-6 story blocks) allows enough people to live in an area that it becomes feasible to have trams/light rail serving that area.