CharlesW

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• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  The making of arbitrary political decisions about deeply divisive issues by the US Supreme Court has made a complete mockery of the US constitution: it is in effect a judicial coup d'etat. So where will the counter-coup come from?...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Musk asked how they would use $6billion to help solve world hunger. The answer he got was to give $6billion worth of food and vouchers to people. My take was that Musk was looking for how they would invest $6billion...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Excess corporate Jet use maybe: but no Yachts or expensive houses or football clubs or private islands or ......
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  I have not heard about Tesla racism. For sure Musk is a very mixed human being. I think Tesla has significantly advanced progress towards electric vehicles, and SpaceX has significantly advanced rocketry. I regard both of these as good things....
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  I don't know much about most of the ultra-wealthy but most of them have appeared to be worse than useless and to positively do harm. I do have a soft spot for Tesla and SpaceX and hence for Elon Musk's...
• Commented on Hugos, 2022
  I think you should win - it is an amazing and brilliant series. (I admit I am a bit biased since I have not yet read the other contenders)...
• Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
  Yes but "The United Kingdom" or "The UK" as in we visited the UK to see the Queen, BUT we visited England to see the Queen...
• Commented on Bad news day
  _ Zeitenwende_ Late to the party but how about: The times they are a-changin'...
• Commented on A death in the Firm
  He was an interesting bloke with many good and bad points, and deserves a lengthy obituary. But our celebrity culture and royalty-obsessed media will inevitably make this a totally over the top event which I shall do my best to...
• Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
  Back to the original post: here is an interesting paper from Microsoft Research: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/denoised-smoothing-provably-defending-pretrained-classifiers-against-adversarial-examples/...
• Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
  "WebAssembly framework (based on top of JavaScript running inside a web browser hosted on top of a traditional big-ass operating system) wouldn't be terribly fast" I thought WebAssembly was supposed to be compiled to its own virtual machine and to...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Presumably if enough US people wanted to control USA guns in a similar way to the rest of the world then the problem could be fixed, unless a counter majority regards the US constitution and SCOTUS as religious things...
• Commented on A Quick Infomercial
  Pigeon @522 Comparing the last general election to the previous one, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results BBC says Tory share of vote was up 1.2% Labour share of vote was down 7.8% There are many opinions about the reasons for that change (personally I...
• Commented on What happens now?
  Is there any chance of sufficient consensus now to shorten the transition period to something much safer and shorter?...
• Commented on I ain't dead
  ATM Falcon 9 is aimed mainly at the commercial launch market plus Dragon plus internal use for StarLink. Falcon Heavy is mainly aimed at NRO/USAF/Space Force and NASA lunar stuff, you are correct to say that there is not currently...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE, Part 2
  @Charlie "Its never going to end : BREXIT is a Utopia project " Absolutely right, and what makes the present situation worse is that the EU is also a Utopia project. The result of 2 colliding Eutopias has never been...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  On the Border Problem: AFAIK both the Irish and UK government have stated that they will not implement a hard border under any circumstances including no deal. So presumably they both have some sort of border contingency plan for no...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  @Elderly Cynic, I don't know if you have watched the Assange program, but the last quarter of it shows what I would consider paranoid megalomaniac sociopath characteristics. I don't think he is "evil" and should be destroyed, (mad might be...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  I agree that his behavior does increasingly look like that of a paranoid megalomaniac sociopath. But why should that exempt him from facing trial/investigation in Sweden?...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  And : "What should happen is this: I would say 'I am sorry if I hurt your feelings' and they should say 'Thank you. We are sorry to have caused you so much trouble and interrupted your work. We withdraw...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  You should watch the program ... to paraphrase a few chunks: "Hilary is a danger to me so I need to attack her" "You don't understand the global situation but I do and I am going to fix it -...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  Just finished watching the Assange program on BBC4, trying to see the other point of view that many people seem to have. I felt the program started out sympathetic to him, portraying him in a favorable light, but by the...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (2)
  Not sure I see how either Brexit or revoking AT50 affects the probability either way of a war between France and Germany ......
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  @Charlie - I really hope you win the series Hugo. Congratulations for the nomination, you deserve it....
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  Scotland's Gini income numbers look fairly static since 2000 centered around 32, whereas the UK numbers are higher but declining slowly from a high of 36 to around 33-34. https://www.gov.scot/publications/poverty-income-inequality-scotland-2014-17/pages/3/...
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  Apparently the Yamnaya did a major rape, loot and occupy of mosts of Europe 5K years ago ... https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132230-200-story-of-most-murderous-people-of-all-time-revealed-in-ancient-dna/...
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  For more recent UK Gini numbers see https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=GB https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed...
• Commented on Lessons learned: writing really long fiction
  @Charlie Charlie, where do you see yourself on the plotter vs pantser spectrum? (In my SW dev efforts I am more pantster than I should be ...)...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  I think the Home Sec understands that his decision will be overturned in the courts, but he thinks that its still worth doing for 2 reasons: a) discouragement for like-minded 15 year olds: your actions have consequences b) its politically...
• Commented on Someone please cancel 2019 already?
  @Charlie 209: The UK Gini income coefficient is not soaring dramatically - its actually been fairly stable recently. The problem is the increasing ratio of extreme %s at the top and bottom rather than the middle 80% https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed...