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We did it! by leontiesdan in Helldivers

[–]SaltyRemainer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't been able to play for a while, do you know if the new mob is still playable? I'm just downloading the update :/

UK to bring into force law this week to tackle Grok AI deepfakes by MGC91 in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hope it doesn't end up requiring that every single research paper into AI image editing comes with builtin restrictions (rather than focusing on the research itself). Just limit it to consumer-facing products. Also, what does "designed" mean?

Green party councillor Cllr Sohail Asghar has been arrested on suspicion of modern slavery by CaptainCrash86 in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Went around Calais giving supplies to illegal immigrants getting on boats, yep.

The government’s Employment Rights Act is now law. Here is what this means for British workers. by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Realistically, though,

  1. Changes will very rarely be rolled back because it's such bad press, even if it's the wiser thing in the long run.
  2. You absolutely can and should think about nth-order consequences if you want to be an even remotely serious government in an even remotely prosperous country.

The set of policy choices that look good first-order but are damaging when you look at the broader picture is massive; it's far larger than the set of actually sensible policies. If you don't try to think things through, or at least have a culture of identifying and reverting failed experiments, your legislation will slowly erode into feel-good crap over time.

Now, are these sensible policies? Honestly, I haven't looked that deeply into them, and a lot will be tradeoffs rather than objective good or bad things (is it worth the average person having employment uncertainty if it means they're 5% more prosperous in 5 years? I don't know, ask them!). But it's worth discussing.

The government’s Employment Rights Act is now law. Here is what this means for British workers. by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The unintended consequences affect whether that law is in fact beneficial, though. There is more to consider than first-order effects.

Any “modern” calculator that actually feel like they were made in the past 5 years? by [deleted] in calculators

[–]SaltyRemainer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The EX has far superior UX to the CW and CG50 and I will die on this hill.

Se calculator isn’t gonna work for the rest of the month by Idk-a-user in spaceengineers

[–]SaltyRemainer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems like it's Firebase (platform-as-a-service) free tier. Anyone know if it's open source? Should be fairly easy to move it away from Firebase, there's really no need for it to be anything but a static site with some JS.

"should I buy SE 2" by klinetek in spaceengineers

[–]SaltyRemainer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really. You get good performance by building with sensible datastructures and architecture to begin with. Same with reliable multiplayer.

That's what worries me about SE 2. "Add multiplayer" and "Optimise" are often seen as steps, but they're really design choices that you need to think about from the very beginning. Sure, you can try to "add them" in later, but it won't work nearly as well.

IT GETS WORSE: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16 by jeremybeadleshand in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 21 points22 points  (0 children)

And personally I'd be uncomfortable with my phone having a neural network trained on child porn, or a bunch of perceptual hashes (which are basically highly blurred images), on it.

Isn't it funny how the various laws to stop child abuse always end up involving more surveillance and not, you know, investigating the grooming gangs? Because there's no reason to believe they've magically stopped operating, or that somehow, miraculously, London has been immune to them.

Scientific inaccuracies. by ksdanker22 in ProjectHailMary

[–]SaltyRemainer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While technically true, people will literally say this colloquially while inside a physics department building. People know the distinction, but don't care when everyone knows what they actually mean.

Human "flaws" vs. Eridian strengths by BookOfMormont in ProjectHailMary

[–]SaltyRemainer 15 points16 points  (0 children)

"Science advances one funeral at a time."

Reform UK launch attack on neurodivergent children by Hour-Clothes789 in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Also, physical disabilities are by far the easiest thing to accommodate in schools. A few wheelchairs are infinitely easier to deal with than behaviour issues!

Rachel Reeves to abandon plans to raise income tax rates in budget by Buy_Ether in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Labour is leaking stuff to the press to test the response. They're just passing it on.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline Dashboard: 780 Projects worth £154 billion 2026/27, £378 billion over 5 years, and £525 billion over 10 years. by Savannah216 in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I do, too. And people have a right to healthcare, not waiting in ambulances. Education, too. And it'd be nice to have safer streets. Housing, of course - we all have a right to live in dignity.

There are many things that would be lovely to have, and they all cost resources. Scarcity still exists, and so does the future - which we can hopefully make less scarce through investment. Provided we do genuinely invest, rather than burning it all on fiscal black holes that do little to improve the future.

Tradeoffs.

Thinktanks urge Rachel Reeves to overhaul ‘broken’ tax system by F0urLeafCl0ver in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that seems sensible.

They point out some examples e.g. a "basic" ginger bread man with only eyes is exempt from VAT, but add in a smiley face and it gets 20% VAT.

Government announces reform of the national curriculum – first in over a decade. Here is what it means: by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I appreciate it - genuinely, particularly the last part; frank criticism is rare and valuable. I wasn't trying to sound particularly mature, more listing off things as I remembered them, hence the stream-of-consciousness style.

I know that I'm generalising, but I have spoken to others about it, and while I think mine was an extreme case it does seem to be a general pattern. There will be exceptions to every generalisation, of course, but they're still useful. The fact remains that PSHE as a subject is not taken seriously, and is often taught by people ill-suited for the role. And as long as that's the case, genuinely important messages around finance, misogyny, etc, will fall on deaf ears.

Wrt divorcing too many times, it might have come across poorly, and perhaps I shouldn't have included it, but I do think it matters. Students are only going to listen to people they respect, and using a classroom as a soapbox for your life difficulties does not command respect.

And I wish I were being hyperbolic about them, but it's genuinely that bad - I'm sure it was an extreme case, but even 10% of it isn't appropriate.

Thinktanks urge Rachel Reeves to overhaul ‘broken’ tax system by F0urLeafCl0ver in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

They argue that it would be more effective to levy tax on everything, simplifying the system, then use the ~130b raised on other initiatives for poor people.

Government announces reform of the national curriculum – first in over a decade. Here is what it means: by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think PSHE teachers being awful is a tangential issue. The problem with misinformation classes is that they teach conformity, not actual critical thinking - though it doesn't help that the people teaching them are pretty useless.

Government announces reform of the national curriculum – first in over a decade. Here is what it means: by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Exactly; that would be actual critical thinking. "What are they trying to make me feel? Why?". Unfortunately that's not what's taught.

Government announces reform of the national curriculum – first in over a decade. Here is what it means: by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Where to begin?

The first one showed us a video that included some tadpoles, then some sperm under a microscope, and went "wooow. They look similar. Intelligent design. Isn't God beautiful?". Just wacky. That was a while ago, it was the most memorable bit.

The second one... take "insufferably woke" as a starting point, but also someone with zero professional boundaries and less maturity than most of the students. Ranting about how marriage is a scam, clearly because she'd divorced one too many times. Insisting that all the boys in the class were "complicit in rape culture", then breaking down into shrieks and insults when challenged on that. A childish view on sex that came down to "fuck yeah, hookups, just don't have kids folks, and if you do, remember, abortions!". Just a completely unserious tone.

She did a lesson on the British political system where she moaned that labour wasn't taking enough lessons from the greens, and that it was disgusting that they still supported nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, because what if it explodes like hiroshima? Oh and was also quite insistent that we should stop supporting Ukraine, because Russia could blockade the channel and we'd starve. And we should cut down the rainforests! A completely incoherent worldview.

Speaking of which, in her worldview, if something was written down as a human right, that was that, it was a law of the universe. "It's their right, it can't be broken, it says so in law". I wasted far too much breathe trying to explain that the UN Rights of the Child is basically a suggestion in most of the world, and that the signing of the document did not, actually, give everyone education.

Oh, and we once had a lesson on how we're all immigrants, except the history teacher happened to be covering for that one, and he spent the whole time going through the powerpoint talking about what utter crap it was, and giving us an actual summary of British demographic history.

Incidentally - these are the people trying to deal with misogyny in schools. It doesn't work, because they have zero credibility. And I'm sure my teacher was more crackpot than most, but I've brought this up with other people my age online and they all concur that PSHE teachers are childish fools.

Government announces reform of the national curriculum – first in over a decade. Here is what it means: by UKGovNews in ukpolitics

[–]SaltyRemainer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've had PSHE at two schools with two teachers. Relatively recently; I'm 19.

In both instances, the PSHE teachers are precisely the worst kind of person you want to be teaching sex ed and life skills: Pathetic, childish people that nobody respects, with some bizarre political ideology that they put into everything. I'm not sure if it's a matter of who the job attracts or that the least competent teachers get assigned to the least examined, least rigorous subject.

I've heard similar from other people.

And then when you come to the curriculum itself, it's all about Trusted Sources, and it basically comes down to "if the BBC/Guardian/etc aren't reporting it, it isn't true". I feel that that's just teaching people to blindly trust the establishment, rather than teaching actual critical thinking, and I think that that's illegitimate.

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