richh

@richh@mastodon.cloud

UK Midlands. Would like some public transport in my town so I don't have to drive everywhere. Was here before it was cool </hipster>

Work in IT, shoot target rifle to an occasionally high standard. Mediocre photographer, sometime astronomer when the clouds bless me with their absence.

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thomasfuchs, (edited ) to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

If you think it’s impossible that large, established, publicly traded companies can be massive frauds you really need to read the Wikipedia article about Enron.

The alarm signals right now from Tesla (multiple senior people stepping down, massive axing of entire departments, rumored pivot to software/AI only) are bonkers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

richh,

@thomasfuchs That article also links to the WorldCom bankruptcy in which “several executives … were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets”. I can’t think of any contemporary cases like that in NYC right now 🤔 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.

richh,

@thomasfuchs Although on the Tesla front it feels less like accounting fraud and more like Cyber Boer massively over leveraging himself on Xitter at the precise moment Tesla were losing their first mover advantage and needed to turn into a proper car company that had like… QA and build quality. Their model lineup is outdated (by automotive standards) and with no new cars in the pipeline they’re losing ground to other manufacturers. An absent CEO is death at that point.

richh, to random

Pier over Coniston Water.

Very excited to get my first scans back after an impulse purchase of a very-vintage Yashica A TLR last year. Thanks to filmdev.co.uk for their rock solid processing & scanning.

#filmphotography #FilmMastodon #filmisnotdead #120 #blackandwhite #bnwphotography #consiton #cumbria #lakedistrict #ilfordpan400 #ilford

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

This story about a guy boarding a plane at Heathrow without a ticket or passport is bonkers.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-security-heathrow-new-york-passport-new-york-b1138445.html

I can see how you could tailgate through the entry gates. They aren't double gated.

Security doesn't require any ID checks.

Getting onto the plane? Even with multiple lanes for different tiers, I can't see how you would sneak past them. Slipping under a barrier?

Once on the plane - what's the plan? Hide in the loos and emerge later hoping there's an empty seat?

Bizarre!

richh,

@Edent British Shooting blacklisted BA as a provider after losing firearms multiple times going to/from major championships. Firearms are supposedly hand-carried from check-in to aircraft, no conveyors/automation like normal baggage - always physically accounted for. On paper they simply can’t get lost… (You then collect in red channel on arrival w/correct local visitor permits!). T5 have been a disaster for years, but only edge-cases like sport shooters have noticed.

brianklaas, to random
@brianklaas@journa.host avatar

Since I moved to the UK 12 years ago, there has been one significant mass shooting. Six people died, including the shooter.

It’s the guns.

There are a lot of really stupid pro-gun arguments. I debunk them, with data, here: https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/its-the-guns

richh,

@brianklaas Agree w/ a lot of your points, but it’s not just the guns, or Czechia (gun ownership >5x the UK) wouldn’t have a murder rate 50% lower than UK. Most of Europe is safer, despite 3-5x higher gun ownership. UK is shockingly murderous despite our gun laws. The US is a special case, beyond nuance. But “we banned stuff and bad things rarely happen” isn’t true, and (on the evidence) doesn’t make effective policy. Also, a lot of kids shoot in the UK.

https://www.richhemingway.co.uk/posts/its-not-just-the-guns/

richh,

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas Its a shame UK govt banned pistols after Dunblane (Cullen said it wasn’t necessary. Shootings remain rare in Europe & NI(!) where pistols are still legal). Instead ignoring Cullen’s recs re: training for licensing officers, in which case Plymouth might not have happened (police “a dangerous shambles”). Alas, UK policy is political, not evidence based/using Euro best practice.

richh,

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas No, I mean doing whatever the Daily Wail is shouting about. Holding a public inquiry and then ignoring the neutral, expert evidence from Scotland’s top judge in preference to playing to the public gallery is wrong. And ultimately, doing the big-bang/headline thing rather than the boring admin/training things gets people killed down the line. But I get it - “ppl are bored of experts”

richh,

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas More importantly, Blair had an election to win in 1997. So evidence-based or effective policy was less important then winning votes - even though the vote-winning policy was shallow and didn’t improve public safety.

richh, (edited )

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas The ban did nothing. Gun crime went UP between 1997-2004 (till Op Trident got on top of gangs - 99.1% of firearms crime was with smuggled guns - ACPO evidence to Cullen). Here’s the thing tho - Blair could have done BOTH. But by focusing on headlines he got innocent people killed down the line. Parliament responded to looming election, not evidence. Lazy populism =!= democracy.

richh,

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas I didn’t suggest they did. But would you not prefer that Parliament gave expert advice due weight, instead of “well that’s nice but I’m electioneering now and you’re boring so YOLO”. At the end of the day, INNOCENT PPL ARE DEAD BECAUSE PARLIAMENT IGNORED THE EXPERTS. Stop apologising for lazy politicking.

richh,

@samueljohnson @admin @DarrylAnderson @brianklaas Switzerland is tempting. But this is not about guns. This about apologists for bad policy. If we go “ah well, bad calls were made” that invites more bad policy. Pistol ban didn’t stop Whitehaven or Plymouth - but Cullen’s recs might have (if implemented). Can we not call for better/evidence-led policy instead of repeating yesterday’s mistakes?

ProjectFearlessness, to UKpolitics

It's a sad day in Manchester, U.K. as the prime minister Rishi Sunak confirms we can no longer afford to live in the 21st Century.

Rishi Sunak announces he IS scrapping Manchester's HS2 after weeks of denials

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/rishi-sunak-hs2-manchester-leg-27837735#ICID=Android_MENNewsApp_AppShare

richh,

@ProjectFearlessness It hasn't been pledged. Their list of "reinvestment" (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-redirects-hs2-funding-to-revolutionise-transport-across-the-north-and-midlands) is - mostly existing spending. The new Bradford Station was announced last year. Electrification of Man-Leeds has been in the works for ages. Cancelling HS2 "saves" £0 because it's funded by borrowing, so it's "we won't borrow this", which maybe leaves overhead for borrowing for something else... but they won't. They've raked up £30Bn of existing projects and branded as "Network North".

Laukidh, to random

Surprised to see so many people talking about the new raspberry pi after the cop/surveillance discourse last year.

richh,

@Laukidh probably because in the same week the Germans arrested a bunch of neo-Nazis in an operation which would have involved… technical surveillance (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/07/reichsburger-the-german-conspiracy-theorists-at-heart-of-alleged-coup-plot). It’s a high-risk area which requires heavy oversight, but it’s also a necessary role. Of course the RPiF response was extremely tone deaf and ill-judged. No defending that. It is perhaps telling that the most outraged all seemed to be Americans, which says more about the US than it does the RPiF.

richh, (edited )

@Laukidh what seems like a stretch? The idea that TSOs exist and are an unfortunate but necessary function in modern policing? As I say, most people understand that. The outrage was predominantly US in origin (this article quotes 2 angry Americans and 1 Canadian. The Brit is like “eh, he’ll have some interesting insights”), which as I say, reflects the state of the US and policing there than it does the RPiF. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisstokelwalker/raspberry-pi-hired-ex-cop-mastodon-controversy

richh,

@Laukidh "you said it was mostly Americans who were upset, but you think they decided to hold their tongue because of German news?" Whose "they"? Europeans? Yeah, maybe. But look, no argument. U asked why ppl are tlking abt the new Pi. I'm simply pointing out the discourse last year was a handful of N.Americans projecting their local bias on UK Police. Merely ironic that the same week Germany (who know abt Stasi) were busy demonstrating why TSOs sadly need to exist. It was misplaced outrage.

malwaretech, to random

I had a go-to for demonstrating that LLMs don't think or understand. LLMs sort of treated inputs a bit like separate queries. So if you could find two questions on the same topic where a Google search might result in contradictory answers, the training data might be contradictory enough to get the LLM to mirror those contradictions. You could ask two specific questions and get conflicting answers, then ask a third higher-level question that would require reconciling both contradictory answers. The LLM would just pick which of the conflicting answers was statistically most likely based on its data, and completely ignore the other. No matter what you did you could never get it to reconcile the two answers. If you asked follow up questions, it would just go right back to giving contradictory answers.

Over time they'd patch the LLM, I assume by adding some kind of system to address inconsistency, giving the further illusion of thought and understanding. Basically any test you could possibly develop can be addressed without making the LLM intelligent or conscious. It's a great example of the core tenant of Solipsism. You can only be sure that you are conscious. Any sufficiently advanced external system can be made to imitate anything you perceive to show consciousness or intelligence. Since consciousness is a purely internal experience, there can never be any reliable way to test for it (also works both ways, you can't truly disprove it).

Too long, didn't read: are LLMs conscious or intelligent? We can never truly know, but common sense and wisdom says no on both counts.

richh,

@malwaretech I ask it to write an exec summary for the NRA, then for the NRA of New Zealand (a sport governing body, like British Cycling - not a political lobby group). You get basically the same “summary” but substituting the Treaty of Waitangi(!) for the 2nd Amendment. This is mostly because of sample bias in training data. But it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know so subs in something the graph thinks is adjacent. Incapable of assessing it’s unknowns. Autocorrect on steroids.

richh, to fuckcars

Urban Planning Opinion Progression
https://xkcd.com/2832/

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Gerry Anderson called, he said he wants his future back:

richh,

@cstross @lauren Yeah, it’s not that I want SpaceX to have a monopoly on launch, but it’s churlish to deny their leadership in the sector. They broke Russia’s monopoly on manned launch to the ISS (where are Boeing?). Ariane6 is going to be on par with Falcon 9 v1.0. At this point Shotwell seems to have some dedicated Elon-wranglers keeping him away from anything important. The sooner he can be separated from the firm the better.

richh,

@cstross @lauren I assumed a while ago that the people writing cheques at the DoD had probably had a conversation with Shotwell about their expectations in a launch partner and the balance on moonshot projects vs. maintaining routine business operations. They were probably delighted when he bought Xitter - a new distraction to keep him at arms length from SpX.

yetiinabox, to random
@yetiinabox@todon.nl avatar

One child came back from school with a copy of the dreadful Shirley Jackson story "The Lottery" in hand. Along with Lord of the Flies it's a chunk of Cold War libertarian propaganda - so I promptly handed them a copy of Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". I don't know if Le Guin actually intended her story as a point-by-point refutation of "The Lottery" but it does a magnificent job of exposing the underlying ideology and challenging it, right down to the question of what is acceptable in literature for 12 year olds - "Omelas" overtly discusses sex and drugs, with gentle humour, and condemns violence, while "The Lottery" features prudes who practice ritual murder.
If anyone here is teaching "The Lottery" or has a child for whom it is prescribed reading, I heartily suggest Le Guin's antidote to cultural poisoning.

richh,

@yetiinabox in what sense do you consider it libertarian? In so much as “the man is bad” and “public stonings/execution are not good”. But that’s not inherently libertarian (“minimising the states encroachment on individual liberties”), albeit I suspect that definition might be where our interpretations differ. I don’t want to be at cross-purposes. Agree that more people should read Le Guin, albeit I’ve not made it to Omelas yet.

richh,

@johnshirley2024 @yetiinabox Agree. The Lottery was also published at a time when the draft was being reinstated in the US, which is quite literally a lottery. Not that The Lottery is deliberately commenting on the draft, but the idea of fairness and the various deferments available have echoes in The Lottery with Tessie being more upset about the fairness of the draw than the underlying concept (and apparently happy to trade places with her neighbour, husband or child).

thegibson, to random

deleted_by_author

    •
    richh,

    @thegibson surely this means the death of the fediverse? As if Protonmail announced they’ll only exchange mail with tutanota/approved servers… unless the “list” is one that anyone can sign up to after agreeing to a no-meta/ads/good-conduct pact (like an IX). Which is really a more-stringent block-list. Allow-only makes new instances infeasible. The effort in seeking approval from all the places your users want to follow would be prohibitive (albeit probably follows the 90/10 rule).

    FlockOfCats, (edited ) to tech
    @FlockOfCats@famichiki.jp avatar

    If tech bros funded by VC tech bros had started wikipedia ( @wikipedia ), the past few years would’ve been the same, but now they’d be pivoting to charge for Verified Editor Badges :deifirev: and introducing a scrollable feed of video shorts for Historical Figures Gone Goblin Mode

    #tech #wikipedia

    richh,

    @cxberger @FlockOfCats @Stark9837 @wikipedia primary sources are fine in so much as they’re a source of (maybe-biased) fact (“A White House press release said x”). Secondary sources establish notability - if I have an article about me, citing my blog is fine if I made some statement, but there need to be secondary sources discussing the issue to show that I’m actually notable or what I said is worthy of inclusion in the article.

    richh,

    @Stark9837 @cxberger @FlockOfCats @wikipedia Yeah, quality of sources is v.important (e.g. WP:EN doesn't allow Daily Mail articles any more). But my main point was secondary sources are important for topic notability, and also context/countering primary-source bias. An article based only on primary refs may be 100% accurate and unbiased (e.g. a log of birds I saw in the garden today), but probably also not notable/encyclopaedic if literally no third party cares enough to report on it.

    spaceflight, (edited ) to random

    : "I'm highly confident it would be less than $10 million 💰 all in, fast forward two or three years from now," said about flight during the presentation * https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starship-rocket-update-flight-cost-million-2022-2

    Visualized : 10 million $ / 100k kg = 100 $ 💵 per kg

    🇪🇺 doesn't look good

    richh,

    @michaelgemar @kentborg @spaceflight I guess middle ground is sending more in-situ instruments that we can pour buckets of samples in. Sample return is predicated on having better labs here than there. An (e.g.) StarShip can carry many more rovers/instruments/drones than life support/meatbags.
    Open to idea that some gear is too delicate & needs human rebuild/calib after space flight. Robust hi-spec science is an interesting engineering problem.

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