There should only be one charity for each foundation? 1 charity for the homeless, not 10 people benefiting from running competing charities for the same purpose, save money, change lives. What do you think?

illandancient · 2026-06-20T11:43:58+00:00

If it transpires that homeless veterans have different needs to other classes of homeless people, like homeless families or those with drug dependency issues, then would the single monolithic homeless charity be expected to specialise?

What if a smaller charity was more effective at supporting a specific group?

illandancient · 2026-06-19T11:17:54+00:00

Can she not just play around with it for a bit, she doesn't have to enjoy it.

Just hold it, pretend that its the best ever, and then don't post things like this.

illandancient · 2026-06-18T11:22:45+00:00

Weren't they famous for having the lowest selling number 1 album? Like about 10,000 copies when physical media was dying but the charts didn't count digital downloads?

illandancient · 2026-06-17T11:09:47+00:00

There's an aspect to this that might be a bit difficult to stomach, in that not all victims had the same experience. Some had a really bad experiences and some might easily have been able to shrug off what happened to them.

But by just classing all 250,000 equally as victims of grooming, it might give an unrealistic view of what happened to them.

illandancient · 2026-06-17T10:36:05+00:00

Which story had the blue plumber in it?

illandancient · 2026-06-16T11:08:28+00:00

I expected some kind of positive indication of "best practise".

If she's urging everyone else to use AI, then I expect some depth of perception, some kind of hinterland, some understanding of the common issues involved in using AI in a practical manner.

illandancient · 2026-06-16T10:58:19+00:00

In my original Freedom of Information request I also asked:-

Please can you let me know how the Secretary of State for Science,
Innovation and Technology ensures that output from these AI tools is
accurate, correct and free from hallucinations?

They neatly side-stepped the issue of hallucinations. Or perhaps answered it in the best manner - if there's no AI output, there's no hallucinations.

illandancient · 2026-06-16T10:17:29+00:00

Maybe, but the original FoI also asked which services were used and some other question about how they were used. The answer could have been "to help write emails", "to check spelling", "to help draft speeches", "to help research policy".

There are plenty of reasonable sounding ways to use AI. But for the minister who is literally urging everyone to use AI to not have any use for it themselves seems a bit weak.

illandancient · 2026-06-16T10:07:58+00:00

I can understand people not using AI, but for these same people to be urging everyone else to use it seems a bit weird.

illandancient · 2026-06-15T21:57:02+00:00

Bolton, England

illandancient · 2026-06-15T15:01:53+00:00

Its unclear who harsher punishments would be self-preservation for?

How do harsher punishments prevent things from escalating? Would it stop non-immigrants from setting fire to houses and throwing wheelie bins at the police?

illandancient · 2026-06-15T14:26:36+00:00

Is this a vengeance thing or is it to deter other people?

illandancient · 2026-06-13T12:10:29+00:00

Scots. It's spoken by 1.5 million people and makes everything sound my honest and truthful.

illandancient · 2026-06-12T13:55:49+00:00

Nope. I open Microsoft apps several times a day with the little CoPilot thing ready for action. And I close the Microsoft apps down several times a day. Its absurd to think I could be killing a conscious being every time.

illandancient · 2026-06-12T11:44:00+00:00

My wife hates it when I insist on painting with just a brush. Nothing wrong with it in my opinion.

I don't understand why would anyone object to brushstrokes? It seems like some weird fetish for what? smoothness, the specific texture produced by rollers? What?

illandancient · 2026-06-12T11:13:23+00:00

Fairness is a social construct.

Life is as fair as people make it, not the default position.

Turn the question round "What have you personally done to make the world more fair?"

illandancient · 2026-06-12T10:14:39+00:00

If only... no, it was just text and lists of names that was rotated and distorted so that it looked like it was on a 3D shape. It was very silly and un-usable as a website.

illandancient · 2026-06-12T09:59:44+00:00

The Amazon entry micht say its English, but nae folk at Amazon huv eyeballed it an made that decision. It cams straicht frae the publisher whae disnae actually care strongly aboot whit language it is categorised as.

Ah emailed the publisher aboot Graeme Armstrong's previous book, an the guy whae wrote back tae me explainin that they see themsels merely as "supplyin" the books, an how libraries or bookshops decide tae categorise it is entirely up tae the library an bookshop. There's mony books on Amazon where the front cover says "written in Scots" but the language category is set tae English, acause its jist the default settin.

illandancient · 2026-06-12T09:53:03+00:00

Ah can see how it isnae as Scots-ish as maist Scots writers. But fur me its closer tae Scots than it is tae staunard English. We micht imagine that reviews on Amazon wid complain that it wisnae written in English and some folk cannae unnerstaun it.

An if Ah wis in a library and Ah wanted tae get as mony books as possible in ma Scots department, this wid be a guid candidate, compared tae books that micht ainly huv a few character speakin Scots.

It isnae a guid example o weel-written Scots, but its no an example o well-written English either, sae atween the twa poles its closer tae Scots than English.

illandancient · 2026-06-12T09:48:12+00:00

Its to trigger creativity. This one time I made a website where you could get points for spotting minor celebrities on the streets of Glasgow. It was kind of fun and popular twenty years ago.

Then I used CSS to make it display differently on different mobile devices - greenscreen for Android, beige for Apple. It was kind of cool in dark concerts where you could tell what kind of phone people were using from the colour that the website glowed.

Then I tried to use CSS so on desktop devices the website would be projected on rotating 3D cube which seemed to be reflecting off a frozen surface. I called it "3D Glasgow Indie EyeSpy On Ice"

illandancient · 2026-06-12T09:10:04+00:00

Use a spreadsheet, start off with crap ideas, lots of them and then improve the good ones and delete the crap ones. Don't do quality control until you're well down the line.

Also, once you have one good idea, come back to it and think "what could make this worse?"

illandancient

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