General News

[Jon the Hat]

16 hours ago, Lionator said:

This very informed expert appears to suggest that if Trump-Putin talks fail to reach an agreement, Putin will likely invade NATO territory and declare WW3. 
 

We’re also doing a test of the nationwide alert system again. While it’s used for weather, it’s obvious that its true dark purpose will be as an air raid/missile warning system. These are very very dark times. 

 

I think that overstating it a little.  Putin isn’t about to invade a NATO country, he can’t even keep Ukraine forces out of Russia. 
don’t underestimate the strength of feeling against becoming a vassal state of Russia in the baltics.

[Jon the Hat]

16 hours ago, Lionator said:

This very informed expert appears to suggest that if Trump-Putin talks fail to reach an agreement, Putin will likely invade NATO territory and declare WW3. 
 

We’re also doing a test of the nationwide alert system again. While it’s used for weather, it’s obvious that its true dark purpose will be as an air raid/missile warning system. These are very very dark times. 

 

I think that overstating it a little.  Putin isn’t about to invade a NATO country, he can’t even keep Ukraine forces out of Russia. 
don’t underestimate the strength of feeling against becoming a vassal state of Russia in the baltics.

[UniFox21]

80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. There'll be a service taking place today, I'm imagining a strong section will be survivors reinforcing lessons needing to be learnt to prevent something like that happening again

[foxy boxing]

80 years I can't imagine they'd be that many survivors today. They have to have been extremely young when they were there. Obviously we need to keep learning and remembering the horrors of history and do what ut takes to make sure nothing like it happens again. Not just against Jews but all ethnic groups. We shouldn't forget srebrenica or Rwanda and other atrocities.

[st albans fox]

29 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. There'll be a service taking place today, I'm imagining a strong section will be survivors reinforcing lessons needing to be learnt to prevent something like that happening again

We could only find  732 orphaned children post war to fill our allocation of 1000 ………

featuring the life of Harry Olmer, 97, who survived concentration camps in Plaszow and Buchenwald.

Harry was one of 732 children taken in by the UK after the war, since most of his family had been killed.

"One thousand were permitted entry, but so few children survived that they were unable to reach the quota," 

[jgtuk]

 

 

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dxj570n21o.amp?amp_js_v=0.1&amp_gsa=1#webview=1&cap=swipe 

 

Not heard anything about this at all, mind you, they’re not brown enough to warrant protests from the Tommy Two Names lot

[Dr The Singh]

4 hours ago, jgtuk said:

 

 

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dxj570n21o.amp?amp_js_v=0.1&amp_gsa=1#webview=1&cap=swipe 

 

Not heard anything about this at all, mind you, they’re not brown enough to warrant protests from the Tommy Two Names lot

Tanning salon must have been closed before they got locked up, how unfortunate 

[Dr The Singh]

15 hours ago, UniFox21 said:

80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. There'll be a service taking place today, I'm imagining a strong section will be survivors reinforcing lessons needing to be learnt to prevent something like that happening again

I can't believe this type of shit happened, and we still killing each like this.  Us humans are scum, we deserve nothing.

[st albans fox]

17 minutes ago, Dr The Singh said:

I can't believe this type of shit happened, and we still killing each like this.  Us humans are scum, we deserve nothing.

I think we’re more subtle nowadays 

mind you, we can’t see what’s happening in n korea or w China 

[Jon the Hat]

4 hours ago, st albans fox said:

I think we’re more subtle nowadays 

mind you, we can’t see what’s happening in n korea or w China 

Lets be honest we have plenty of evidence of what is going on in those and ohter places, but we accept it because we either cannot change it or we have to live our lives.  

[leicsmac]

Being discussed elsewhere:

 

China making the US and other associated parties look a bit daft on the topic of AI.

 

On the general topic; IMO AI is just a tool. If there's a flaw, it's human - it always is.

[Sampson]

18 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Being discussed elsewhere:

 

China making the US and other associated parties look a bit daft on the topic of AI.

 

On the general topic; IMO AI is just a tool. If there's a flaw, it's human - it always is.

There were the same “AI is just a tool” comments about the internet in the 1990s. I think there’s a YouTube video with Jeremy Paxman and David Bowie and article with Bill Gates and Terry Pratchett having a discussion about exactly that. I don’t think it’s a human “flaw” to be unable to predict the negative ways the internet would wire our brains, I think it’s very difficult to actually predict or know that in advance and it’s the same with AI.
 

To be partially to tongue-in-cheek I think an MP (I don’t remember who or for which party) was recently bigging up using AI to check tax and immigration declarations and applications in HMRC and the Home Office. And all I could think was if you want a Deus Ex style post-apocalyptic world where the world nations states all become run by AI which has no care for human life and does not take into account human emotions, then training them to be an objective 3rd party so you can remove the human from the decision making process in asylum processes and rules is probably how you’d start to go about it.

Edited 28 January by Sampson

[leicsmac]

13 minutes ago, Sampson said:

There were the same “AI is just a tool” comments about the internet in the 1990s. I think there’s a YouTube video with Jeremy Paxman and David Bowie and article with Bill Gates and Terry Pratchett having a discussion about exactly that. I don’t think it’s a human “flaw” to be unable to predict the negative ways the internet would wire our brains, I think it’s very difficult to actually predict or know that in advance and it’s the same with AI.
 

To be partially to tongue-in-cheek I think an MP (I don’t remember who or for which party) was recently bigging up using AI to check tax and immigration declarations and applications in HMRC and the Home Office. And all I could think was if you want a Deus Ex style post-apocalyptic world where the world nations states all become run by AI which has no care for human life and does not take into account human emotions, then training them to be an objective 3rd party so you can remove the human from the decision making process in asylum processes and rules is probably how you’d start to go about it.

I think the flaw is that both the good and bad of humanity become accentuated by discoveries like this and that could be disastrous, but yes, I see the point here.

 

WRT the second paragraph, that's certainly one possible situation and I've come to think that if AI does end up ruling the world, it won't be because of some Skynet nuclear war outcome, it will be because it makes our lives so convenient and labour free in some ways we'll beg it to do so. And, yes, that could still end very badly.

Edited 28 January by leicsmac

[ajthefox]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

Being discussed elsewhere:

 

China making the US and other associated parties look a bit daft on the topic of AI.

 

On the general topic; IMO AI is just a tool. If there's a flaw, it's human - it always is.

Exactly. Feed it data that is too small a sample size or biased in favour of any particular variable and it will often just amplify that.

Facial recognition/classification being one that I think is fairly well documented as having/having had some pretty big flaws in certain systems because what was being fed in was lacking in terms of representation of minorities. The fault is with the human input, not the output.

[Dunge]

I can easily see a scenario down the line where some sort of disaster like Grenfell happens, and the legal defence will be “It wasn’t anyone’s specific fault, the blame lies in the AI algorithm. We need to learn the lessons from this (adjust the algorithm).”

 

We already know people are willing to defer to a technology they don’t understand over their own responsibilities from the Post Office scandal, and that wasn’t nearly as complex as AI will be.

[Trav Le Bleu]

Google to Rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in USA Maps

 

BBC News

 

Google will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in its Google Maps app, the company has said, after US President Donald Trump ordered that the body of water be renamed in US government documents.

 

Google also said its US app users would see North America's highest mountain, Mount Denali, revert to its previous name of Mount McKinley, following a separate renaming push from Trump.

 

The Mount Denali thing boils my blood. A nice, simple gesture undone by a moron.

 

Let's get rid of the immigrants, but insist on our own immigrant naming.

 

How long before Greenland, sorry Nova Donaldia, is an island in the American Ocean I wonder?

[Zear0]

17 minutes ago, Dunge said:

I can easily see a scenario down the line where some sort of disaster like Grenfell happens, and the legal defence will be “It wasn’t anyone’s specific fault, the blame lies in the AI algorithm. We need to learn the lessons from this (adjust the algorithm).”

 

We already know people are willing to defer to a technology they don’t understand over their own responsibilities from the Post Office scandal, and that wasn’t nearly as complex as AI will be.

Basically had that with Boeing's MCAS.

[leicsmac]

16 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Google to Rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in USA Maps

 

BBC News

 

Google will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in its Google Maps app, the company has said, after US President Donald Trump ordered that the body of water be renamed in US government documents.

 

Google also said its US app users would see North America's highest mountain, Mount Denali, revert to its previous name of Mount McKinley, following a separate renaming push from Trump.

 

The Mount Denali thing boils my blood. A nice, simple gesture undone by a moron.

 

Let's get rid of the immigrants, but insist on our own immigrant naming.

 

How long before Greenland, sorry Nova Donaldia, is an island in the American Ocean I wonder?

That he can compel government agencies to go along with his horrendous gestures of mayoperialist bigotry is reprehensible, but justifiable.

 

If that same bigotry then gets taken on by tech firms and the world outside the US border also has to share in it... well, that's unacceptable. And, considering the amount of grief China and Russia have got from certain corners of the US for "rewriting history", the height of hypocrisy, too.

[leicsmac]

In all seriousness, though, if the US under this administration actually follow through on their aggression towards Denmark, Panama et al, the UK should seriously reconsider their policy of cooperation with them at least and actually treat them as a potential hostile belligerent requiring some cooperation (like China) at most.

Edited 28 January by leicsmac

[The Doctor]

On 24/01/2025 at 09:50, Zear0 said:

He makes a good point, which is always dragged out whenever people discuss capital punishment.  His point is that there has been historic miscarriages of justice in incidence of poor work by detectives (incorrect DNA testing, circumstantial, unreliable witnesses etc.)   Not sure it's applicable in the case of someone committing a crime in plain sight of 40+ people.

 

I'm no in favour of it, just not sure the above is relevant to this case.

the thing with this is how you create any cut off, like even with confessions, there is a long history of police coercing false confessions to crimes from people. Yes, doesn't apply when he's gone up in court and changed his plea from not guilty to guilty but still, where and how do you draw the line?

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, The Doctor said:

the thing with this is how you create any cut off, like even with confessions, there is a long history of police coercing false confessions to crimes from people. Yes, doesn't apply when he's gone up in court and changed his plea from not guilty to guilty but still, where and how do you draw the line?

AFAIC, I'm not entirely sure that you can.

 

Unless everyone involved in the process actually saw the crime happen with their own eyes and 100% accurately, there will always be an element of doubt in a conviction - it might be miniscule in some cases but it's still doubt, whenever any second hand or even some first hand testimony is called for. That's just a logical conclusion.

 

Whether that degree of doubt is considered acceptable enough to risk taking someone's life again and again it's clearly up to the beholder.

Edited 28 January by leicsmac

[Zear0]

5 minutes ago, The Doctor said:

the thing with this is how you create any cut off, like even with confessions, there is a long history of police coercing false confessions to crimes from people. Yes, doesn't apply when he's gone up in court and changed his plea from not guilty to guilty but still, where and how do you draw the line?

It's an argument for all crimes though.  Why is 12 jurors acceptable for a conviction (unanimous, not unanimous), why not 1 or 1,000?

 

It seems almost circumstantial to the situation in where the crime took place that should dictate our confidence in any conviction.  If someone walks into the centre of the KP and boots someone in the Jaffers (Rudkin ideally), you'd be more confident in convicting them than for something that happens behind closed doors when it's one person's word against another (exemplified by the appalling low rape conviction rates).

 

Forget what it was called, but Channel 4 replicated a murder case and the jurors on the show returned a different verdict than that of the actual trial.  Makes potential uses of AI all the more nefarious.

[Lionator]

4 hours ago, leicsmac said:

In all seriousness, though, if the US under this administration actually follow through on their aggression towards Denmark, Panama et al, the UK should seriously reconsider their policy of cooperation with them at least and actually treat them as a potential hostile belligerent requiring some cooperation (like China) at most.

We wouldn’t ever do that unless we could stand on our two feet a bit more, and there’s not the political will to do that. 

[Lionator]

From a geopolitical perspective I find this DeepSeek very funny and very telling. Western countries invest a crap load of money into a product only for China to efficiently smash it out the park for about a millionth of the price. 

[leicsmac]

34 minutes ago, Lionator said:

We wouldn’t ever do that unless we could stand on our two feet a bit more, and there’s not the political will to do that. 

Sadly I can offer no compelling evidence to the contrary.

 

Another example of the difference between what should be, and what is.