Well for a start felonies arent a thing in the UK, and havent been for 60 years, but also if it is genuinely due to error and HMRC dont think its been done deliberately as tax evasion then yes you can just self report and pay the tax owed plus late fees.

Its not binary but it is strongly clustered into two groups with a small number of outliers from those groups.

Corbyn in the UK is the main counterexample I can think of, but even then that was for less than five years in opposition and with the entire political and media establishment conspiring to bring him down, including the right of his own party (and in fairness, he repeatedly shot himself in the foot and handed them easy wins).

Racsism is likely part of it, but the real value is in having a solid ally that can be used as a base to project power across the largest oil producing region in the world.

How long Israel remains seen as a solid ally given their recent unhinged and mask off behaviour remains to be seen. To me it does feel like there is a sea change in opinion on them, both from everyday people and from politicos.

The post I was replying to was saying

people will stop using it for all the things they’re currently using it for

They will when AI companies can no longer afford to eat their own costs and start charging users a non-subsidized price.

i.e. people will stop using AI when user have to pay the “real” price (what this is is left unspecified and an exercise to the reader to figure out). My point was that even if the AI price from those provided to infinity AI usage wouldnt drop to zero like they imply.

There are free open models you can go and download right now, that are better than SOTA 12-18 months ago, and that cost you less to run on a gaming PC than playing COD does. Even if openai, anthropic et al disappeared without a trace tomorrow AI wouldnt go away.

Quantum entangled communications that are impossible to evesdrop on exist now, cloud computing is the money machine that allows Amazon to keep expanding, virtualisation is used by effectively every company using computers at scale. (blockchain, I’ll admit, was pretty much all hype and vapourware other than laundering drug money and allowing speculation)

Just because there is marketing hype around a term doesnt mean there isnt anything of value there.

Best way I’ve heard Starmer described is Blair without the any of the vision, charisma or political insincts.

Even calling it tax evasion is a stretch, she had a complicated situation involving a trust set up for the house she had with her ex to insure her severely disabled son would be taken care of, then she claimed her new flat was her primary residence leading to a lower rate of stamp duty. She got some advice that said it was ok but was then told she should seek specialist legal advice to check that which she didnt and now has to pay back 40k.

Its not good, and she was right to step down, especially as housing minister, but its hardly a grievous sin.

You are misunderstanding their point. “Good reason” doesnt mean ethically good, it means there is a sound logical connection between the action they are taking and the outcome they want to happen. In that case Microsoft does have good reason to push trusted hardware, in the same way as a bank robber has good reason to buy a face mask.

If people use guns to kill themselves, will they stop killing themselves if we take the guns away? Maybe some will, if the alternatives take so much more time, but the impact won’t be massive.

Generally yes, Suicide tends to be a spur of the moment decision to go through with it and having immediate access to a very easy, very lethal method increases the rate significantly. There have been numerous studies that show that putting up barriers at bridges etc that are commonly jumped from dreastically reduces the suicide rate from them without raising it elsewhere e.g.

Given the judege in that case flat out rejected the claim that there was any infringement for works they had legally aquired, yes.

I’m not defending it or attacking it, mearly saying that

They probably did multiple queries per day at the beginning, found out it isn’t worth it and stopped using it …

Isnt supported by the information given. The GP gave a story they made up about how usage would be falling based on nothing at all, I gave two other alternate stories about how it could be either rising in usage or remaining flat to demonstrate that we cannot say anything about rate of change from a single average.

Probably, my point was that you cant say if its increasing, decreasing or staying constant just from the number of times it’s been used. It could be that for most people its completely useless but for a small group its very usefull and they are using it more and more. Or as suggested it could be that everyone tried it a bit at first found it useless and stopped using it. Or that its kinda useful in very specific cases so it gets constantly used a tiny bit.

The “chart” that you posted, it showed barely any increase in the 1800s and massive increases in the last decades.

Its not a chart, to be that it would have to show some sort of relation between things. What it is is a list of things that were invented put onto an exponential curve to try and back up loony singularity naratives.

Trying to claim there was vastly less innovation in the entire 19th century than there was in the past decade is just nonsense.

Thats complete speculation on your part though. It could equally be people hardly used it at first then started to use it more as they found ways it was helpful. Unless you see the data there’s no reason to say one or the other.

Its pretty funny that you’re the one reflexively assuming that because a western country is doing something it can only be the worst possible thing, and yet you’re calling me a tankie.

Obviously Israel has allowed “sweetie” but that doesnt mean that the UK is giving them intel on how to bomb Gazans. They might be, but you cant tell if they are or not based solely on a plane flying there.

Well no they weren’t, they were “caught” flying a plane over Gaza. Going from that to “directly participating in the operations” is a conclusion you are drawing which seems plausible, even likely, but is not directly supported by a British plane doing loops over Gaza.