I knew someone who worked at Psygnosis (later Studio Liverpool, later dead...), and got to play early cuts of Ridge Racer and Wipeout. It was clear at the time that this was a step above anything else that was out and it was going to be a huge success.

I also remember hating the name when it first appeared as well - PSX was the pre-launch name, and it seems to have stuck around in people's consciousness since as well.

The real-life initialLuddites were protesting working conditions and quality, not the machines per se. They threatened to destroy the machines because of low pay and poor quality output when they were made to operate them. That movement changed, and did eventually look more like a full on "destroy the machines" movement, true.

It's a pet hobby-horse of mine - the origins of the movement are far more nuanced, and directly applicable in fact, than the dismissive way we use the word today.

And the home computer wars started before the console ways. British playgrounds in the 1980s were full of ZX Spectrum vs BBC Micro, and later vs Commodore 64. Throw in the Amstrads, Dragon32, Oric Atmos and I even knew someone with a New Brain and you've got yourself a party.

So then - all these AI generated adverts and film sections...we're saying those can't be copyrighted? I can just take them and do what I want? Sounds too good to be true so I'm assuming I'm missing a restriction somewhere.

Deterministic Siri, or any voice assistant, is useful. AI wibbly thing may or may not be depending on the task.

For me Siri has been a way to send and read messages, to control smart devices in the house (bulbs, sockets etc.), play music in the car, navigate and set alarms/timers. Within the last couple of years it also became a way to run shortcuts and control my car. All of these are deterministic tasks - I'm completely happy learning set phrases that make them work, and I truly hope they don't drop this level of certainty in favour of AI 'deduction' all the time. They need to improve it certainly, but at its heart these commands remain deterministic.


The freestyle AI wibbly bit I don't dismiss, but am much more cautious about. I was researching solar panels and had a quite long and 'detailed' conversation with an AI assistant about them, quite informative. But you always have to remember that what it's doing is reading out other people's articles and search results, then paraphrasing them to sound conversational. In itself it doesn't know, and if you treat the information accordingly then it's good to get rough to medium level impressions. If had to sacrifice one for the other though - I'd pick improving the deterministic side every time.

Sorry - mistake. Have driven an EV since 2018, in the interests of accuracy. It was a 2014 EV that I bought second hand in 2018.

I mean - I live just out to the west of London, have driven an EV since 2014, do the commuting distance and times you're describing and the use case is absolutely perfect for an EV. I'd be surprised if they're doing 100 each way and then 50 when at home on the same day, but even if they are that's doable. Charge up overnight on cheap rates - all good.

Have saved hugely by doing this.

It's already there for iOS. On iOS: Settings->->Personal information then Date of birth and Age Range for Apps.

For family, it's Settings->Family->->Apple Account->'Age range for apps'

The Economist's Babbage podcast has done several episodes on lab-grown meat. One of the ones that makes most sense to me is there was a company targeting fish, not beef or pork. Their reasoning was that fish is a more homogeneous meat than the other two, and also it would have a larger environmental impact since popular fish species can be heavily overfished and become endangered.

This always made complete sense to me, yet I've only ever seen plant-based steak and burger alternatives. Lab-grown fish meat seems absolutely perfect since it doesn't have to reproduce the marbled texture of land-based meat, something that the process struggles with today.

As an aside I'd love to switch to lab-grown if it were widely available and similarly priced. I'm never going to become a vegetarian, and if there's a way of supporting that without affecting actual animals...yep, sign me up please.

I didn't see anyone give the true reasons, talking about population this and that. I spoke with a pub owner - they said it literally cost more to keep the lights on than they were making in profit.

It's not demographics or 'young people drinking less' - I've heard that every generation. It's purely cost driven - high energy, high rates (property tax), increases in national insurance (employers tax) and wages, to a lesser extent increases in duty vs buying at a supermarket...all leads to high drink cost at a time of low disposable income. That's the driver.
br. Many of the pubs closing are rural pubs too. These had already declined due to drink driving laws and accessibility (and to be clear - I'm in favour of such laws). The attendance is the same as when they were profitable, it's the cost base that has increased not the customer interest dropping away.

Further resources here. The original argument suggests that British authors were paid but without copyright, This is mostly incorrect, as some authors with sufficient clout were paid a little but the vast majority got nothing.

That's absolutely incorrect, and US 'piracy' of publishing rights in the 19th century is well documented.

I've put out a couple of albums and a few tracks in the past. They haven't shaken the earth and neither should they - they're ok, some tracks less ok and some tracks more.

Then suddenly one week I started getting played a lot. I had no idea why - hadn't released anything, I don't really promote...it's all just a hobby for fun. Turned out another track with the same name as mine had gone super-popular, and I was picking up the results of bad searches. (Annoyingly, it was also one of my tracks that..err...'could potential improve from a remaster'. ). Covers get you heard. Soundalikes get you on playlists. If you actually do want to promote yourself and you're an unknown bedroom writer, you need to do some covers and ideally create playlists of popular tracks that also have your own tracks intermingled. This is how you get started in a purely online world, leaving aside the obvious let's all pay for fake views and votes route.

According to this inflation calculator, 2015's $158k would now have be 2025's $214.61. So the actual change is 6%, not 44%.

Also, every year someone pops up to say correlation is not causation. It isn't, but it's a damned good place to start. Like if I'm thirsty, standing at a t-junction and all the people walking from the left are carrying fresh new bottles of water and all the people walking from the right look like the last thing they tried to 'drink' is sawdust...it's not 100% proven that there's a place to get water from in one particular direction, but on the other hand...it's pretty damned well correlated and guess which direction I'm going to head in.