Womble
@Womble@piefed.world
- Comment on Mississippi Age Verification Law 1 day 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 6 days 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 6 days 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? 6 days 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 2 weeks 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.
- 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 2 weeks ago:
You're right that there's orders of magnitude difference, but its the driving that's far more! One query to a chatGPT type model uses roughly 1Wh of energy, which is about the same as is released in burning one droplet of gasoline.
- 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 2 weeks ago:
No I'm a meat eater who is anti-car! I'm more getting at how people have latched on to the energy use of AI models without realising the huge energy usage that goes into their daily lives.
- 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 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, I too hate those hypcrites who complain about the massive environmental impact of AI, then drive a 10 mile round trip to buy a burger made from a cow raised on soy.
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
Just FYI, this use of republic is not recognised in political science and as far as I've seen is only used by americans justifying why their system is undemocratic. Republic just comes from "res Publica" (public affair) and means the head of state is not a monarch but a member of the public. There are very democratic republics like Finland and there are very undemocratic republics like the PRC
- Comment on A 2003 complaint about Half Life 2 3 weeks ago:
The most annoying thing is there is a trivial to implement way to close to halve these stupidly inflated sizes: make the highest resolution of textures a free DLC that you optionally install
- Comment on GOG NSFW Giveaway 3 weeks ago:
Presumably the devs have to agree to it. I dont think gog cn just decide "were going to give away this game we dont own for free"
- Comment on ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results 3 weeks ago:
Yep, and when you click a button that liteally says "make this discoverable on search engines" which is off by defualt, its the later.
- Comment on 4.2% pay rise for police officers across England and Wales 3 weeks ago:
Eh, public services have been getting pay increases across the board to make up for the ridiculous tory freezes on wages for a decade. for example, just two monts ago there was a 4% increase for teachers and doctors in england, is that also Keir bribing teachers to get them on side?
- Comment on Peak Energy just shipped the US's first grid-scale sodium-ion battery 3 weeks ago:
It would be nice to see a price/GWh of this (along with running costs, it ways they save 1 Million per GWh, how much wre the running costs before!?), but any improvement in battery tech is definitely a good thing.