Interesting Links for 16-06-2025
Jun. 16th, 2025 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- 1. Damaged paintings can now be restored in hours rather than months but printing the fix and applying it on top.
- (tags:painting technology art )
- 2. The Meta AI App Lets You 'Discover' People's Bizarrely Personal Chats
- (tags:privacy ai facebook )
- 3. A New Obesity Pill May Burn Fat Without Suppressing Appetite
- (tags:weight medicine obesity )
Interesting Links for 15-06-2025
Jun. 15th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. U.K. lesbians are resisting state-mandated transphobia
- (tags:LGBT lesbians transgender )
- 2. Cray supercomputer Vs Raspberry Pi
- (tags:computers history )
- 3. In San Francisco, Waymo Has Now Bested Lyft. Uber Is Next
- (tags:USA automation driving taxi )
- 4. For some people chronic pain could be an autoimmune disorder
- (tags:pain immune_system )
- 5. People asking LLM AIs about their medical issues get the right result ⅓ of the time (Vs ½ the time for doing their own research)
- (tags:ai medicine )
Tags:
- ai,
- automation,
- computers,
- driving,
- history,
- immune_system,
- lesbians,
- lgbt,
- links,
- medicine,
- pain,
- taxi,
- transgender,
- usa
Photo cross-post
Jun. 15th, 2025 05:15 amandrewducker
It was about ten seconds later that we realised how terrible Crocs are
for climbing.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Confused by Disney ineptitude
Jun. 14th, 2025 12:03 pmandrewduckerTwo weeks after seeing the CGI Lilo and Stitch at the cinema I'm watching the original with the kids. And it's so much better. The direction, the writing, the acting are all just much higher quality.
The remake felt much clumsier. And I don't really understand why.
Edit: Just realised that they entirely cut the Ugly Duckling part from the remake. Why would you do that? It's key to Stitch's arc!
And all of the bits where Lilo how to be like Elvis.
In fact, nearly all of the bits where Lilo talked to Stitch and built a relationship with him.
The remake felt much clumsier. And I don't really understand why.
Edit: Just realised that they entirely cut the Ugly Duckling part from the remake. Why would you do that? It's key to Stitch's arc!
And all of the bits where Lilo how to be like Elvis.
In fact, nearly all of the bits where Lilo talked to Stitch and built a relationship with him.
Interesting Links for 13-06-2025
Jun. 13th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft -- and people are paying anyway
- (tags:taxi automation business )
- 2. How much is golfing at St. Andrews worth to the Scottish economy? (over $400m)
- (tags:golf Scotland business )
- 3. Recording orchestral music for a computer game (Bloodborne, Cleric Beast fight)
- (tags:games music video )
- 4. Why Israel Struck Iran Now
- (tags:Israel Iran nuclearweapons )
Tags:
Interesting Links for 12-06-2025
Jun. 12th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. EU puts Monaco on money laundering blacklist
- (tags:fraud money Europe )
- 2. Steven Universe Sequel Series Heads to Prime Video
- (tags:TV animation scifi GoodNews )
- 3. Houseplants Do Not Purify the Air
- (tags:air pollution plants )
- 4. Solar Orbiter offers first glimpse of the Sun's poles in breakthrough mission
- (tags:sun astronomy space solarsystem )
- 5. Cthulhu's ABCs: A Heavy Metal Muppet Parody Song about the Alphabet
- (tags:muppets language funny video cthulhu viaKirsty )
- 6. Book burning is a modern free speech test for Labour
- (tags:uk freespeech religion )
Interesting Links for 11-06-2025
Jun. 11th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. UK sanctions Israeli ministers over Gaza comments
- (tags:uk israel gaza )
- 2. Rough sleeping to be decriminalised in England and Wales
- (tags:homelessness England law )
- 3. The pictures that show why the UK has run up a £49bn repair bill
- (tags:UK infrastructure OhForFucksSake austerity )
- 4. Krakencoder predicts brain function 20x better than past methods
- (tags:brain algorithms )
Tags:
The advice in the UK over teachers and AI is baffling to me
Jun. 10th, 2025 08:31 pmandrewduckerReading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".
And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.
The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?
Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?
If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.
Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...
And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.
The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?
Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?
If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.
Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...
Interesting Links for 10-06-2025
Jun. 10th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. This seems like a reasonable overview of how Labour are doing on the economy
- (tags:economics labour uk )
- 2. The Trump Administration's Nasty Campaign Against Trans People
- (tags:lgbt bigotry usa transgender OhForFucksSake )
- 3. The Allegory Of The Cave - Further Details
- (tags:comic philosophy funny )
- 4. Fiber Optic Bird's Nest Heralds A Fiber Drone Summer In Ukraine
- (tags:Ukraine fibreoptics drone war nature birds technology )
- 5. World fertility rates in 'unprecedented decline', UN says
- (tags:fertility population )
- 6. Civil servants told to consider quitting if they disagree with policy over Gaza
- (tags:uk gaza government )
- 7. Give new dads six weeks off work at nearly full pay, MPs say
- (tags:uk parenting fatherhood )
- 8. Uber brings forward trialling driverless taxis in UK
- (tags:automation taxi uk driving transport )
Tags:
- automation,
- bigotry,
- birds,
- comic,
- driving,
- drone,
- economics,
- fatherhood,
- fertility,
- fibreoptics,
- funny,
- gaza,
- government,
- labour,
- lgbt,
- links,
- nature,
- ohforfuckssake,
- parenting,
- philosophy,
- population,
- taxi,
- technology,
- transgender,
- transport,
- uk,
- ukraine,
- usa,
- war
Interesting Links for 09-06-2025
Jun. 9th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Have you experience the glory that is "It's Raining Tacos"? Because my children have subjected me to it over 5,000 times now...
- (tags:music video children food funny )
- 2. Mapping Edinburgh planning applications
- (tags:Edinburgh planning maps visualisation )
- 3. The UK's North-South divide in transport funding - mapped
- (tags:uk transport government money )
- 4. AI - where are we now?
- (tags:ai programming globalwarming economics )
Tags:
- ai,
- children,
- economics,
- edinburgh,
- food,
- funny,
- globalwarming,
- government,
- links,
- maps,
- money,
- music,
- planning,
- programming,
- transport,
- uk,
- video,
- visualisation
Interesting Links for 08-06-2025
Jun. 8th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Summarising the last few days in American politics
- (tags:USA politics EpicWTF republicans )
- 2. UK — High Court to lawyers: cut the ChatGPT or else
- (tags:UK law ai )
- 3. After Pornhub left France, Proton VPN saw a 1,000% surge in minutes
- (tags:VPN censorship porn France )
- 4. Reform UK doesn't know how government spending works
- (tags:UK bureaucracy politics )
Tags:
- ai,
- bureaucracy,
- censorship,
- epicwtf,
- france,
- law,
- links,
- politics,
- porn,
- republicans,
- uk,
- usa,
- vpn
Photo cross-post
Jun. 7th, 2025 12:29 pmandrewducker
My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a
weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up
to 95 degrees and hold it there"
(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Interesting Links for 07-06-2025
Jun. 7th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. "Free Roam" mode is Mario Kart World's killer app
- (tags:Mario nintendo games driving )
- 2. Low-calorie diets make you depressed
- (tags:diet mentalhealth depression )
- 3. "I serve school dinners at state schools and private schools - here's the difference"
- (tags:food money school england )
- 4. Robots are coming for mail-sorting jobs
- (tags:robots video viaKenny )
- 5. Well, CAN You Prove You're a US Citizen?
- (tags:usa citizenship )
- 6. Women warned weight-loss jabs may affect contraception
- (tags:drugs contraception weight )
Tags:
- citizenship,
- contraception,
- depression,
- diet,
- driving,
- drugs,
- england,
- food,
- games,
- links,
- mario,
- mentalhealth,
- money,
- nintendo,
- robots,
- school,
- usa,
- viakenny,
- video,
- weight
The Sickening Has Me
Jun. 6th, 2025 08:20 pmandrewduckerI spent the day feeling bad for lacking focus, and wondering why I couldn't get anything done.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.
History Repeating Itself (Labour and ID cards edition)
Jun. 6th, 2025 03:39 pmandrewduckerI see we're back at the "Labour attempt to introduce a mandatory ID card" stage of history*.
My feeling last time, was that the main problem that they always have is that they *start* with the cards being mandatory.
If you start with "Here is a thing that makes your life much easier, that you can carry about if you like." then that will get you 85% of the way there. And then, once you have a voluntary ID card that's not causing any problems for anyone, and that 85% of the population is using to make their life easier, *then* you move in and say "The only people who don't carry an ID card are weirdos and troublemakers, and they're causing friction in the system, we could make it all run more smoothly if only they *had* to carry one."
But no, they always try to go instantly from "Nobody has an ID card." to "Everyone must carry one at all times." - which forms a coalition of all sorts of people from across the political spectrum, and ends up being far more politically costly to them than if they'd just boiled their frog slowly.
(None of which should be taken as me taking a position on ID cards. I'm just constantly bemused by their inability to get things done by trying to rush them through in the most authoritarian manner possible.)
*Younger readers may not remember the fuss in 2006 (repealed in 2011)
My feeling last time, was that the main problem that they always have is that they *start* with the cards being mandatory.
If you start with "Here is a thing that makes your life much easier, that you can carry about if you like." then that will get you 85% of the way there. And then, once you have a voluntary ID card that's not causing any problems for anyone, and that 85% of the population is using to make their life easier, *then* you move in and say "The only people who don't carry an ID card are weirdos and troublemakers, and they're causing friction in the system, we could make it all run more smoothly if only they *had* to carry one."
But no, they always try to go instantly from "Nobody has an ID card." to "Everyone must carry one at all times." - which forms a coalition of all sorts of people from across the political spectrum, and ends up being far more politically costly to them than if they'd just boiled their frog slowly.
(None of which should be taken as me taking a position on ID cards. I'm just constantly bemused by their inability to get things done by trying to rush them through in the most authoritarian manner possible.)
*Younger readers may not remember the fuss in 2006 (repealed in 2011)
Interesting Links for 06-06-2025
Jun. 6th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. First case on AI and copyright referred to the CJEU
- (tags:europe law copyright ai )
- 2. Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat
- (tags:ai drugs )
- 3. What it's like being made responsible for the behaviour of Conservative MPs
- (tags:Conservatives chaos politics UK )
- 4. Reform leads in voting intentions - but where does their vote come from?
- (tags:voting polls uk politics )
- 5. The Universal Tech Tree
- (tags:Technology history visualisation )
Tags:
- ai,
- chaos,
- conservatives,
- copyright,
- drugs,
- europe,
- history,
- law,
- links,
- politics,
- polls,
- technology,
- uk,
- visualisation,
- voting
Interesting Links for 05-06-2025
Jun. 5th, 2025 12:00 pmTags:
- ai,
- automation,
- drone,
- games,
- humans,
- links,
- people,
- race,
- trailer,
- vialinkmachinego,
- video,
- visualisation