The official AI Opportunities Action Plan has been published on gov.uk which may be worth a read.

Encouraging the greater development of the UK’s tech sector generally is a good thing. But having “unleashed AI” as the foundation for that doesn’t sound the best idea.

Throwing money at AI seems a big gamble for productivity.

I’d rather see the UK invest in its human workers instead, with better education and training. IT skills for example as still lacking in the country. PCs have now existed for 30+ years yet so many still struggle with task like making simple spreadsheets.

We desperately need to improve productivity, but I’m not convinced that going all in on AI is a great bet. The tech is still in its infancy and currently very unreliable. Letting it loose in places like the NHS sounds like a recipe for disaster.

By all means open doors for research, but I don’t think this tech is ready for critical implementations yet. We’d get more reliable productivity gains by investing in upskilling workers instead.

If there is going be insistence on platforms being open there shouldn’t be these distinctions.

All of these devices are capable of general purpose computing at a hardware level, phones, tablets, PCs, headsets are now very similar and generalised in that regard. I don’t see why a phone platform should be forced to be open while a games console gets to remain closed, when there is now only a hair’s breadth separating an Xbox from a Windows PC.

Considering the latest changes at Meta, it seems their latest innovation is to transform social media into antisocial media.

USB-C has been a blessing and curse. One port that does everything, except when it doesn’t. Even charging is now complicated by the “guess the cable that supports the right PD type” game.

Not that the old days were much better. I don’t miss faffing around with the myriad of serial and parallel port modes and settings.

Take the AI crap out and give it an open display API and it would be a fun desk toy.

A rotating phone screen in a cylinder creating a hologram-like effect to display notifications/metrics/whatever else.

So the plaintiff’s are claiming Siri was recording them without consent, and that Apple were sharing those recordings with third parties including advertisers.

Apple claims they were sometimes wrongly keeping recordings for internal quality control/analytics but hasn’t admitted to sharing them, and have agreed to the $95m settlement.

The sharing with third parties is the most egregious part here, but it doesn’t seem to be addressed any further.

Or we could make less rubbish to begin with. We wouldn’t need to burn or bury it then.

The Wisbech incinerator has been dragging in for years. Before Wisbech there was a plan to build a similar plant in nearby King’s Lynn, but that was rejected after immense local pressure.

I can’t see building 40 plus more of them around the country going down well.

But this is flatly untrue. There are laws requiring local authorities to take this into account and they can compel developers to contribute either financially or in-kind.

There have been multiple developments in my own area where the initial proposals included service provisions alongside major housing. But for each one the infrastructure commitments get dropped but the houses go up anyway.

We may well have laws on the books that are supposed to address this, but they do not seem to be working.

What causes the problems with doctor’s surgeries is not new developments but austerity, which is why it’s a problem everywhere.

I agree austerity is also a problem, and it has to be addressed to make provision for community infrastructure.

We must have a carrot and stick approach to this issue. It’s not unreasonable for people to object to their communities being turned into giant dormitories. If they can’t make that heard at local planning committees they will make it heard at the ballot box. Labour’s reforms will do no good if they are all undone in a backlash at the next election.

Whatever the underlying reasons, service infrastructure must be delivered alongside housing commitments. It’s the only way to ensure this shift will be politically sustainable. I am not convinced that only increasing housing supply will itself attract infrastructure development later. It’s not really doing so in my own community.

Considering the doomsday bunker fad that’s popular in techbro and executive circles currently, such honesty might not count against you.

For TVs now, by buying used. Help yourself and the environment by buying an unwanted “dumb” TV that’s free of this sort of crap.

Or if budget allows, look at industrial displays.

Supply answers demand, is we stop buying junk smart stuff and take our money elsewhere the market will eventually follow.

A while ago a company patented a method using eye tracking to monitor whether TV watchers were paying attention to ads.

It can always get worse.

Zuck bending his own knee in the vain hope he won’t get bent over Trump’s.

Maybe he should have spent a little less attention on Caesar and tried to learn a few other lessons from history.

Several Leave voter’s I know said they voted that way for “change” or to “shake things up”, not out of any particular or more definable political reason. I think it’s part of the broader disillusionment with politics, or politics at usual, that’s become so pervasive.

They don’t evaluate the potential consequences because they don’t trust the establishment explaining them. They’d rather roll the dice on the unknown, because all they think they do know is the current normality hasn’t been working for them.

I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable. “Infrastructure” in terms of discussing housing developments tends to mean roads, doctors surgeries, shops etc. The things that don’t seem to get built (despite promises) when both green and brownfield sites get cleared and blanketed in suburbs.

There are always some who so deeply NIMBYish that they will oppose anything and everything for the sake of it, and there will never be any appeasing them. But the most common real complaint I hear about new housing is the lack of new services to keep up with the increasing population. If Labour could finally make those kinds of infrastructure commitments really stick to new housing projects I think a lot of NIMBYness would subside.

Most people don’t object to having a few more neighbours, but they do object to feeling they have to fight them for a GP appointment.

It’s an interesting poll but I think a lot hinges on how people interpret those ideologies. They may be hone lost popular but there’s probably a lot of differing and conflicting views on what environmentalism and feminism actually are.

There’s a few curious data points there too. Like libertarianism being more popular among Green and Labour votes, and 1 point less among Reform compared to Conservatives.

Power costs vary a lot around the world, depending on where OP lives every little saving can help.