This with the right controls and rules could actually be a positive thing for people who don’t want or aren’t ready for a relationship with a real person. However as the people who are running things are Elon, Sam, and Mark, there is fuck all chance of that and whatever this ends up as it will be exploitative and will result in deaths.

Those who purchased farms to avoid paying IHT such as Clarkson can usually afford to pay for a good accountant to help them plan avoiding as much IHT under the new rules as possible as its quite generous if you have at least seven years (and money for a good accountant) before your kids will inherit.

Those who are actual multi generational farmers, even if that’s just the parents and the children they want to inherit the farm, there aren’t that many who are over the threshold for a married couple plus the various exceptions if they can go the seven years.

Its those who lack the time or lack the quality advise that will struggle, its not a huge number, less than 500 farms a year should be dragged into paying more without proper planning at the seven years to implement it due to allowances. I think thats the only bit I do not like, as once again we have allowed a loop hole for those who can and should be paying more tax and the expense of everybody else.

I am convinced that at least some of that is from her competition in her own party who lean further right and republicans. Best time for a coward to attack is when your opponent is already down

Two decades ago we needed the water companies to fix their leaks rather than paying bonuses, dividends, and loan repayments to help the former.

At least that long ago we needed more reservoirs rather than allowing the cost and nimbies to stop them.

But right now we need to be cutting back on new data centres and other new projects that can’t afford their water debt. Stop making the problem worse without an actual plan or funding to fix it.

People panic and jam on the accelerator with their foot thinking its the brake pedal. Its very common with elders when they panic when they past the point they should be driving anymore.

Hes also exactly the type of person who this would cause a massive hissy fit over and demand immediate changes to Grok that would further stunt its working

Its possible that the local businesses have lost business because terminally lazy people can no longer park directly outside their shops and will not walk a short distance to them, this should be extremely easy for the business to prove if its actually true, I have my doubts its a significant amount. I suspect the people most inconvenienced by not being able to park outside the businesses are those that actually work there. This is the only remotely serious suggestion I see from the anti bike lane crowd in this instance.

My local village center is meant to be no parking on the high street, has had times its been enforced properly and times its been ignored due to pressure by local businesses. Recently they started enforcing it, directing people to the free (under two hours) car parks on the edge of the high street. Car parks were full with people who own and work in the shops, so they prevented them from parking in the car parks all day, so now they park on the residential streets off the high street enforcement area.

Not really at all.

Fifty shades of grey had to change its entire setting and characters to get published. I can’t just produce princess monoke two and not get sued.

I can’t even sell t shirts with either on via etsy or similar without risk. Yet I could steal studio ghibilis art style with zero talent involved using a llm to advertise my business, seemingly perfectly legal right now.

Which is more capitalistic, giant corporations like Facebook stealing others work and devaluing labour and talnet further or self created content that could be quite easily self published? Its classic big guy verses little guy.

Difference is for me, if I feed a LLM your work and now it can produce books, music, or art in your style, then yeah its infringement, especially if you monetise that output. Its devaluing your ability to make new and unique content if your work isn’t protected if I can copy your style with a simple prompt for say a recruitment ad for ICE and there is fuck all you can do about it.

The problem is that when the audience is bored of the shovel-wear you been making for the past few years you cannot rely on that to motivate people to go to the cinema if the cast isn’t well know and an attraction in themselves. Its why they paid buckets of money to get Downey and the like back after their previous attempt to reboot the cast failed.

Disney need their big tent pole films to make over a billion, otherwise they wont waste a prime cinema release spot on a film making less than that as they have other franchises they can spend the money on for that spot. Last thing you want is your big four quadrant film competing against another film you made in the same release window.

I get dropping the budget for these films reduces the expectation of how much money they need to make, but thats irrelevant when you have other products you can sell for the limited consumer dollar that month for more money overall because its more popular.

I use only 40% and 30% keyboards, thats ones without dedicated number or f key rows, and have done so for about six years now. Majority I use are standard stagger but a few are ortho or splits. Almost all of them that I like using are split space with left half as enter and the right as space.

I can touch type, although I am not the fastest, only a bit above 80wpm. This is mostly due to me being dyslexic so spelling is challenging for me and I can get bogged down looking up words or retyping it. If I do not give a shit about spelling I can easily get well over 100wpm.

I think the main show off skill I can do is look at a person I am talking to while typing a different conversation on the computer. Obviously I cannot do either if its complicated conversations but simple stuff is fine.

Yeah that’s the point of the license from Ofcom, to approve the endpoint address used for the VPN. Most work places don’t use some random IP address but a small pool of known DNS entries for their endpoint. Just because you are using a VPN doesn’t mean nobody can see which endpoint you using.

It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the “child” “violent pornography” etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.

Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.

Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.

If you going to use these, you really want to be using a drill press to make the holes otherwise its very hard to make them perfectly perpendicular and the right depth every time by hand without some sort of guide. I have a simple Drillmate Pro I use for portable jobs like this

They would try to lock down minimum service period to also include x number of years post qualification, some bullshit around “huge investment made in their education”, failing to reconcile that with the effort made by the new doctor to get on the course in the first place and then qualify.

Mechanical keyboards are like guitars, you can play the same notes on a cheap one as you can on something custom made for you for thousands. Do they sound very different? Almost always, although the guitar needs someone who can actually play well, unlike the mechanical keyboard.

However, if you really really care and you really really know what you want out of either you can tweak absolutely everything about both. You want ultra soft silent keyboard? Sure. You want the most clickty keyboard with tons of pressure? Sure. You want something thocky but still has lots of flex? Sure.

He got a lot more near future and current possibilities rather than his more esoteric earlier works. I think hes been quite on the money with a lot of predictions as hes predicted things like needing someone to filter out AI and pysop shit from your social media feeds, the split between the anti science right and everybody else, etc.

If you liked Gibsons shift from far to near future then this is a similar shift. He has also become more succinct, his books are shorter, which I think in the main is a good thing as he was overly verbose at times.

Romulans could also line up against the Black Numenoreans, fits the split from the good line of Numenoreans, Vulcans. Either is good though

I can see the Quark thing, especially with the Dwavern rings enhancing their lover of material things