So now in the house you've got the Conservative leader of the opposition saying About time, you should do even more!

While the PM thinks (wrongly) that household bills will go down as a result of this somehow. And that he'll change tax laws to make that so?

They both agree it's brilliant to drill for more fossil fuels because if we do it in Europe then we don't have to buy it from Russia.

They both think (wrongly) that it increases energy security to drill more oil and sell it on the global markets.

🙄

Agreement from both sides then.

We are so doomed.

#ukpol #pmq

Its sad that we'll never know what happened this morning in the parallel world and alternate reality where the Green Party defeated Labour in Holborn.

Would Labour still have announced they're going to open oil-fields in a world already warmed by 1.5 degrees?

As I say, sadly we'll never know.

We do know that opening the oil fields will contribute towards that warming, that it won't reduce energy costs for UK citizens, that it won't increase energy independence, and that it will create fewer jobs than a similar investment in renewable energy industry and that those jobs will be more dirty, dangerous, and bad for the employee's heath.

So why do it?

One can only assume The Labour Party donors must benefit in some way.

#ukpol #rosebank #labour #oil

They tell me that Open AI have solved four hundred previously open maths problems this week.

The news media, and even the mathematicians, seem quite credulous about it.

No way to know how many of those will really stand up in the end. Lots of proofs turn out not to be really proofs coz they have a mistake, and AI is quite good at discovering mistakes as well as now apparently discovering maths.

Some of them are counter-examples that prove the conjecture is false and those are gonna be good at last. Machines can check it.

Some have other types of mechanical machine-checkable proof, which is interesting in that we can all believe the checker-machine: coz it's deterministic and understandable.

We can't trust the machine that isn't deterministic or understandable as much though.

GPT says these things are true. Now maths people have to check, because OpenAI staff aren't expert mathematicians either, mostly.

Some of the 400 proofs will fall, I'm sure.

How many tokens will be spent before machines find the flaws that are surely still there? How many tokens until you decide to stop?

But if a machine can prove a thing to itself, but not explain it to any person, is it really doing maths? Even if it's correct more often than people are? Or is doing maths more about making meat understand a thing?

🤔

I'm sure I can't tell if the proofs are true or not. No point me reading them. Mostly won't even understand the question. The boundary of my meager meat-mind's maths-understanding was around barely-degree level.

Can the academic discipline continue as one which is devoted mostly to trying to understand the output of a machine writing about maths, which is mostly right but nobody can really tell without an entire academic discipline trying to check.

In other words, mathematicians now also face a spam problem familiar to many github project leads.

#ai #maths

If Burnham were to walk the walk as well as he talks the talk tody then the country might be in for a less bad time than I'd imagined.

Pressure from the left appears to be working. People vote Green, Greens take London councils, threaten central London seats, make a Labour party wipe-out look inevitable as they lose votes left and right to Greens and Reform.

So a change of course, in the words at least. No longer promising nothing but unrelenting misery, no longer afraid to promise to actually do something.

And that seems to be exciting his members.

Here's hoping he can be forced to follow though and also pull it off.

Best way to force that is to continue the pressure from the left and Greens of course. A Green win in Holborn next month is the best hope for that. Coz he still isn't doing enough, on the environment and all those other things.

#ukpol #labour #confrence

Oh no!

I started making a new computer game again.

Now I shall have no time or interests or friends and just spend all my hours engrossed solving puzzles pressing buttons in the dark.

It's that tunnel shooter of my dreams, only now written also for VR, for in a spiny-chair, or for lying down flat on your back staring at the tunnel oncomming from the roof. Might work pretty well on the steamdeck with controller-rotation for steering.

I should like it frantic, explody and filled with particles, but also slow and easy and meditative so much you could maybe play in a coma or if barely physically able.

I think I have got further than I would have expected in a week or so but I will have to do other things like have a life and friends and jobs more in the coming weeks,

Using Godot and blender which are both very fine.

#godot #gameDev

Can't test if it always does that till next month when the free-email-account gets more sending tokens. 😆

I have not seen a Mastodon email-confirmation email in many many years back many many versions.

I have no idea why it says "Return to BoomProtocolProbe" on all the buttons here.

The phrase apparently hasn't existed on the web so far as DDG thinks.

Have I screwed up a server setting? It has the name right in the text.

Anyone know why it says that? Is this a probe checking for some kind of email-transmissible vulnerability? Could that have come from the request-form?

So the wave of spam-registrations I figured wouldn't really affect us here on the tiny server with registrations closed and clear instructions that only users who know us personally are welcome and we will check.

Turns out no. Our server has run out of email credits from sending lots of email-validation messages.

Hope everyone remembers their passwords, coz password-reset emails and notification emails and whatnot won't be going out for a little while.

All .jp addresses and about half of them bounced as not real email anyway.

Started 10am yesterday, not an hour gone by without some since.

Nothing even clicking those activation links I don't think, certainly nothing filling in the "So who do you know then?" form to create an account.

With email notifications not working, replies to moderation actions could be slower. Not that there's ever much really.

I've turned registration off entirely. Probably should be that way anyhow really here. If you want an account, ask someone who has one personally.

#spam #mastodon

Burn ham or Burn Oil?

Sounds like first policies are going to be more oil drilling and taking "control" of Thames Water.

Note that more oil drilling will NOT reduce the price of energy to the consumer, nor do much to increase sovereign energy independence. It will however mean lots of profits to the party donors from the oil industry, and of course mean more heat-domes and wildfires and floods and rising sea levels. More death from heatstroke.

Note also that "control" of Thames Water is not nationalization, not "ownership", it's just really more (likely toothless) regulation of private industry.

Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.

RE: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-16/burnham-to-back-north-sea-oil-and-take-control-of-thames-water

#labour #ukpol #burnham

So, maybe all you really can hope for from an acceptance speech is a bit of empty rhetoric, but that is indeed what we got here.

Unity and decentralization and a promise that he has a plan.

Unity is easy to say, but requires unity to achieve since you ain't in control of all the factions.

Decentralization tends to be fought by centralized powers, and is a tactic really not a strategy. What do you hope to achieve with it? Can end up just remote offices for centralized power.

And that plan he reckons he has? I look forward to hearing what it actually is.

#ukpol #burnham

Burnham has been made leader of the Labour party then. No other candidates got the required number of nominations so it's a coronation.

He has a few things to say.

He's proud. The party is united, he says, and now they'll put that power of unity to give people hope back. And he is ready to build on Kier's foundation. Thanks Kier, for all the NHS work and renters rights and rebuilding the nation's reputation (??).

He does like to name-check all the various towns and unions of the country. Just listing them. They made Labour, apparently.

We must recognize that this generation of politicians, including Burnham himself, have failed. Four decades of neoliberalism have not been kind to all those places he listed.

He pledges to be better, and will do five things.

1) Work relentlessly to build a culture of one Labour team. No infighting. Wants to eradicate the split. End factional politics.

I guess end Starmer's war on the left then? 🤨

2) Work to build a new politics. This is the last chance for change, and we must take it together. Tell people what Labour will do, not just pick fights with other parties. Seek consensus with those other parties instead, to improve the political discourse.

3) Change political direction: know exactly where he stands and set a direction that is distinctively Labour. No out-greening greens or out-reforming reform or wearing tory clothes. Boldly confidently authentically Labour.

Housing, water, energy, transport, all broken due to privatization and concentration of wealth and power.

Four decades of political power draining from regions to corporations and central government ends now.

Take back the slogan "take back control" from the right, who gave away power to corps and quangos.

Life should be more affordable.

4) Be a leader for the north, south, east and west, for Scotland and Northern Ireland (aw, shame for the midlanders 🤣 ).

Gonna do to everywhere what he done for Manchester he reckons.

Kids shouldn't have to leave their home towns to prosper.

5) Take power back from westminster and give it to the place where you live.

More power for regions, to run trains for passengers not shareholders. Improve high-streets, and back shops and pubs, and education, and reindustrialization.

He's gonna be pro-business.

Add all that together and he reckons we'll bring back hope.

Thanks a few people in particular.

He says he knows what he believes and what he wants to do, he has a plan. He wants change, to be close to the people.

He wants it to be Andy 4 us. Labour 4 us. Bring back hope.

#ukpol #burnham #labourParty

Fucking hell. Count binface has an actual good chance of becoming an mp and ousting Farage. What a country.

Cometh the time, cometh the bin.

The press have been hounding Farage. Pointing out his corruption. Asking what he has spent the millions of pounds he's been gifted on.

Question doesn't really make sense to me. Money is fungible. The money went onto his money pile. He's spent money since, but was it that money? Or different money? How do you even know or measure that?

Anyway, he's fed up with it all so is standing down to cause a by election. At which he will stand. Imaging, wrongly, that this might make corruption charges go away. Other parties seem to be saying they won't dignify it with a contest, so he might be unopposed.

Could be just him and Count Binface. Would be properly hilarious if Binface won. I'd vote Binface in that case for sure.

#ukpol #farage #corruptFinance

Hey Fedi! I will be in Malloca for a few days very soon. In particular in Pollencia, but I'll have a car and the island isn't big.

I hope to spend most of it writing in an air conditioned hotel room or reading by a pool or on the beach and there's a boat trip planned.

But I should also try and talk to people and explore what the island has to offer I guess?

Anyone local wanna meet for dinner or drinks? Any events in the first half of this month worth checking out? Or anyone ever been there and wanna suggest something particularly fun or educational or meaningful they enjoyed?

What's the oldest thing on the island? What's the coolest? Where are the best bands?

:boosts_welcome:

#mallorca #majorca #pollencia

FWIW the reason James OBrian blocked me on Bluesky was for pointing out that its always centrists who build the machinery of the fascist state and they think they are doing a good thing while they do it.

Think that one was jury trials rather than internet publishing though.

Sounds like now is a good time to re-up my rant about age-gating from a few months ago.

https://dalliance.net/blog/agegate/

A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.

Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.

Sounds like parents are happy because now when their ten year old says "Can I have a phone, can I have instagram?" they apparently feel 'supported by the government' in saying no.

Could we not do that without all the surveillance infrastructure and corporate monopolies for ID-providing services just by having official government advice without any enforcement that children shouldn't have these ten apps until they are seventeen?

Seems pretty ridiculous that parents feel like they can only say no to their kids if it's backed up by the government and it's police and armies.

OBrien on the radio thinks that its okay to ban kids from Youtube even though their exam revision videos are on youtube, because the revision videos will just end up somewhere else.

He thinks though that the suicide encouragement and terrible anorexia mutual support will not simply end up somewhere else I guess. 🤷‍♂️

"No downside to this at all" he reckons. 🤣

"Nobody sensible can be against this ban"

This is what irks me most. The absolute refusal to see any issues at all in the ban. Just refusing to understand that there's any support help or encouragement for kids on these forums. That they are only places for radicalisation and bullying.

TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, X, Threads, Facebook and Kick.

I note that Bluesky didn't make the blacklist. I expect it'll be added during debate. Can't list everything though, so the kids will surely just go to whoever isn't listed? 4-chan seems to not be included? What a strange list.

I don't use any of them besides Youtube so won't be forced into ID checks for them myself. My youtube account is itself over 18 years old so don't think they'll ask.

#ukpol #socialMedia

Whatsapp users. Instagram users. Facebook users. Threads users. Even us Oculous users. Everyone trusts Zuck.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@mattburgess/116693207149186541

“Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine.”

Hard to know why people think this company is okay, and that everyone should be their cattle. Rather than thinking everyone on the executive team should be banned from any business activity on ethical grounds.