The previous big spike over 5% is, you guessed it, the pandemic, and that's all accounting for furlough which popped off-books a huge range of workers.

'Universities are communities of people and those within Scotland’s universities play a critical role in shaping our regions, our nation and our international reach and impact.'

Devolution dividend: staff matter too. A huge contrast to DfE/Jacqui Smith approach in Tuesday's testimony. 3/3

these folks appear to just be using HTR and other very well established technologies. So it's not a problem at all! We have done stuff like that for ages, my sense is OCR stuff and similar isn't even that energy hungry relative to other options.

I think machine learning is one thing and large language models hungry for infinite compute and infinitely stealing everyone's stuff is another. Part of the problem of defining everything as AI now is it flattens a raft of varied technologies.

as a class this really is one of our worst collective impulses, this remarkably self-absorbed sense of our own special carve out, our deserved exception to the obvious rule.

howling:

"The good news for NBA fans is that there’s a happy ending. Trust is indeed restored, requiring only the intervention of two armies, a god descending on a chariot of eagles, and some two dozen lucky coincidences."

this whole thing has me howling, it's lovely fun.

I think people are being remarkably nice given the words 'the creator of Flask' and of 'Django' are in here as sources of... authority I guess?

That is the main objection to LLMs. It is the technological extension of James' theory on assholes: A technology of little use, that few people actually want, being pushed on them by people who get mad when you complain about it.

This is a massively dumb way to fund things. Just fund local government properly through fiscal devolution, council tax reform, and social care reform. Oh, wait, you ducked all of those again....

I mean as a poor oppressed inhabitant of Kent I get you on that, we've got some real shites in power in KCC, but councils are going bankrupt and literal bins are going uncollected and this is a huge part of the feeling of 'britain not working'

I mean I've got no idea on that one, I think present valuations based on present property values are the way to do this, and are the way it's done basically everywhere else.

Would love some in-depth numbers on what the majority of 20-30 somethings basically paying a 9% higher marginal tax rate has actually done to economic behaviour. Feels very under-discussed bsky.app/profile/igma...

nope, only thing so far is about keeping student loan rate of repayment the same for 2-3 years or something. Haven't heard anything else connected to us, and doubt I will.

Top end houses need to be revalued, they're underpaying massively compared to their footprint; and this is a council tax change, why would it not go to councils?

The other massive thing is obviously the two-child benefit cap being completely removed. That is a huge and positive move and while it's not going to magically turn the country's finances around or anything but this is absolute the right decision on both moral and economic grounds.