Posts by katrinab

There is, it is called the City of London, and with a population of around 9,000, is the smallest city in England and the second smallest council in the UK.

Greater London Authority - 8.8m, the largest LTLA in London is either Barnet or Croydon depending on where you look, both are around 390k.

Greater Manchester Authority - 2.8m, City of Manchester - 550k.

Birmingham is a very large proportion of the total.

I don't live locally, but I guess it would be along the same lines as how London and Manchester are split up.

As I'm not local, I don't have any proposals for the specific names and borders for the new councils, but they don't all need to be the same size, and the names will likely be based on neightborhood names and the towns that make up what is now Birmingham.

It is the largest lower-tier local authority in Europe, so it is probably too big. There is already the West Midlands Combined Authority which isn't much bigger than Birmingham, it would remain as the upper-tier local authority, but maybe it would be restructured to be more like Greater London or Greater Manchester.

Re: Mastodon remains the most exciting alternative

I guess choosing a Mastodon server is a bit like choosing an email server.

How do people choose an email server these days? I suppose there's basically two choices, Microsoft or Google, and there are actually differences between them, whereas with Mastodon, there generally isn't, they mostly all use the same software.

Re: "arguably the most complicated piece of machinery humans have ever built"

Don't think you can order an EUV machine off the shelf either. Yes, I know Wish dot com claims to have one for £104.20 with free shipping, and Amazon claims to have one for £39.99, but I doubt either of them will actually work.

But then again, my iPhone 15 Pro Max has single-thread performance that is basically the same, or maybe very slightly slower than intel's 13900K.

This is comparing a phone running on battery power with passive cooling that charges from a 20W power source, with a flagship gaming desktop that requires 125W just for the CPU.

Re: Market pricing factors

Yes, but given that O2+Three [O5?] was blocked by the competition authorities, so O2 went with Virgin instead where there isn't so much overlap in their businesses; I really don't see VodaThree going ahead.

Re: Market pricing factors

Having four different providers (not including MVNOs) like in the UK (O2/Virgin, Vodafone, BT/EE, Three), seems to lead to lower prices than only have three different providers like in the US (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile/Sprint).

Re: set up the OS in a configuration intended to delight software developers

No, but I guess it would install WSL2 and give you a choice of linux distros that way?

Re: they "are consistent with the latest international consensus among financial regulators"

But it is going to collapse anyway, so it is best to make it collapse as soon as possible.

I’m not saying a machine can’t emulate it. I’m saying a Turing Machine can’t emulate it.

Some other type of machine probably could, but we are making no progress at all towards discovering what type of machine that might be.

Re: Given how bad some humans are

Could be rephrased as, "do we actually want AI".

Re: Bard says...

Lets suppose you encounter a door with a slightly different shape of handle from any you have seen before.

Will you have any difficulty recognising the handle and opening the door? Do you think other humans would struggle? [with the recognition and understanding the method of opening it, I get that due to disabilities some humans struggle with door handles in general, that's not what I mean]

This is the sort of really obvious thing that computers struggle with.

Re: Bard says...

I would argue that the only one they are capable of is the ability to acquire new knowledge [but not skills].

"Yes, there is emergent behaviour with size such as being able to pass the American Bar exam in ChatGPT 4.x but not 3.x"

Right, but we do know that if you ask ChatGPT to prepare court submissions, then it fails spetacularly, so that suggests that the Bar Exam is defective.

No. The problem with LLMs is that they are language models, and not knowledge models. Doesn't matter how big you make them.

Re: Requiring drivers in autonomous vehicles should be for safety reasons only

Level 5 certification probably needs to be done by the city rather than state or national governments. A computer that is able to drive safely in San Francisco isn't necessarily able to drive safely in New York, and almost certainly isn't able to drive safely in London, or the Scottish Highlands.

The EU is putting a 10% tax on British cars entering the EU, and Britain is reciprocating. If the EU didn't do this, Britain wouldn't reciprocate.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

Efficiency of a petrol engine - around 40%

Efficiency of a combined cycle gas power station - around 50%

National grid efficiency from powerstation to plug - around 92%

Efficiency of an electric car from plug to wheel - around 90%

Multiply those together and you get 41.4%, or basically it is the same. Gas emits less carbon than petrol. Other energy sources emit less carbon than gas, except for coal which mostly isn't used any more.

So the benefits are from using better fuel sources, not the fact that it is electric.