Posts by Jellied Eel

Getty's image-scraping sueball against Stability AI will go to trial in the UK

Re: Having trouble getting my head around what exactly is at issue here

You should be fine if your AI can view the images for training in the same way as a human does

But it can't, unless they can somehow argue that building the training dataset can be done without copying the images. A key point behind copyright though is allowing the creator exclusive rights to exploit the work. Scrapers are exploiting the work without permission, or compensation. Perhaps a fair compromise might be for all AI developers to put their code on public display so we can train our own 'AI's using their IPR. Somehow, I suspect they wouldn't agree to their code being included in a 'training library'.

Re: Having trouble getting my head around what exactly is at issue here

I recommend reading the CDPA 1988. The work has been made available to the public, regardless of watermarks. Therefore, it comes down to whether the output (the trained model) is infringing.

I.. don't think so, but IANAL, just someone who has to consider IPR stuff and consult lawyers if necessary. Sure, the work has been 'made available', but with limitations. An image library kind has to do this because otherwise people wouldn't be able to browse, and then licence images. This seems to be about making money from the images that have been made available, without necessarily having the rights to do this. I don't think it's a blind spot in the law, yet, just one that perhaps hasn't properly been tested. Kind of the old adage that something isn't really illegal until they've been taken to court and found guilty of doing it.

So I think it's testing the input side, so if ingesting a slew of copright works as 'training data' without permission or paying licences is a breach of copyright, or not. For the output, that is perhaps clearer, ie creating derivative works, plagiarism etc, which has all been pretty well tested in court. Maybe not to the extent of an AI doing it, but if it outputs something like a Hobbit, I'm sure the Tolkien Estate's lawyers will be on them like a ton of Balrogs.

I'm not exactly a fan of Getty, but I'm not a fan of big tech helping themselves to IPR without compensating the original creators, especially given the potential for displacing human creators.

Re: Having trouble getting my head around what exactly is at issue here

Is Getty claiming their photographuc images are in some sense stored in the LLMs and thus violates their intellectual property rights?

I don't think they need to claim that, simply that the images were used without paying or permission to use those images, and that the usage was for commercial gain. I'm just a photographer and occasional author, not an IPR lawyer. One aspect I am curious though are IPR issues around creating unlicensed derivative works based on copyright material that's been scraped without permission.

Europe signs off on up to €1.2B in state aid for homegrown cloud project

Re: There is no need to localise clouds.

Lowest cost, maximum reliability, total security.

Err. Nope. Besides some lower cost stuff already exists inside the EU, eg datacentres being built in places like Lulea, Sweden to take advantage of it being rather brisk outside. But the idea would offer almost no security. So slap it somewhere outside the EU, and the EU has a harder time regulating it, or leaning on the providers. Or the host nation might decide they have the EU's balls in their fist and cut off the cloud. So the money will go to a safe pair of hands, like Germany or France.

One thousand jobs are expected to be created in AI, cybersecurity, data, cloud, and software engineering. A further 5,000 new jobs are expected once the project reaches its commercialization phase.

More like 950 jobs in manglement and consultancy gigs, and it'll end up being a private instance of an MS, AWS or AlphaGoo cloud. Only at least 3.14x more expensive. Cynical I know, but I've consulted on jobs like this before, and never again..

YouTuber who crashed plane for sponsorship dollars earns 6 months behind bars

Re: sell the plane instead

It was able to fly, so the engine instruments were good at least. But maybe he sold them after he helicoptered out the wreckage.

Apparently he swapped the engine out and removed a bunch of other parts, so it was pretty stripped down. Was interesting watching the aviation community going through the video and picking out all the evidence for it being staged. One of the reasons he's in jail though is for recovering the wreckage and then trying to hide it so the 'accident' couldn't be investigated.

Re: Curious

I am a licensed skydiver and pilot and I have no intention whatsoever of being such a five-star fuckstick.

This was one of the slightly odd aspects to this case. Apparently Redbull had wanted to do a similar stunt. Lots of safety planning, doing it over an unpopulated area, promising to clean up etc etc. But apparenly the FAA won't give you a license to intentionally crash a plane, even if it's for a well organised stunt. I'm guessing it's a combination of liabilty avoidance, and probably not wanting to encourage muppets like this one. Kinda curious how Hollywood does/did some of it's aerial stunts, but I guess from the amount of paperwork involved, the answer now is probably CGI.

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan

One question I ask deniers such as yourself and have never has a single reply is: Plainly we can't add CO₂ to the atmosphere for ever (if you disagree 'll find a chamber with 25% CO₂ for you to spend some time in) so there must be a point where it's too much - what is that point? -- You don't know so how can you say with any confidence that it's not already a problem when literally every climate scientist on the planet says it is.

I can say with 97% confidence that it isn't a problem. Climate 'science' is the problem. Go do some research into how the '97%' figure came about, or just think about why 'consensus' in science isn't really that important. Especially when studies like the 97% ones don't actually represent climate scientists. There are a lot of climate scientists who disagree with the dogma, but of course they get branded climate deniers instead. We used to be called sceptics, but then the PR gurus behind the dogma probably realised scientists are supposed to be sceptics, not deniers of reality.

But it's a good question, and if you thought about it, you'd realise the problem. It's basically the question I asked Muskrat, and they couldn't answer, and is this-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels rose from 280 parts per million (ppm) in the 18th century, when humans in the Industrial Revolution started burning significant amounts of fossil fuel such as coal, to over 415 ppm by 2020. As CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it hinders heat energy from leaving the Earth's atmosphere. In 2016, atmospheric CO2 levels had increased by 45% over preindustrial levels, and radiative forcing caused by increased CO2 was already more than 50% higher than in pre-industrial times because of non-linear effects.[12][note 1] Between the 18th-century start of the Industrial Revolution and the year 2020, the Earth's temperature rose by a little over one degree Celsius (about two degrees Fahrenheit)

This is on from wiki, so it must be true. And there has been much edit warring over anything climate related on wiki to ensure The Truth is maintained. And then..

The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is the long-term temperature rise (equilibrium global mean near-surface air temperature) that is expected to result from a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration (ΔT2×)... Computer models are used for estimating the ECS

So this is the multi-trillion dollar question. How much warming, for how much CO2, or the expected temperature response per doubling. So for simplicity, 280-415ppmv = 1C warming. Next doubling would be 415-830ppmv and we'd get another 1C. So by the time we're at 830ppmv CO2, we'd have warmed by a whole 2C! Maybe. So then it becomes a simple question of finding the carbon to do this. Since 1850, we've burned gigatonnes of fossil fuels and maybe increased CO2 levels to 415ppmv. During that time, we've also gone from domestic coal and Clean Air Acts to burning fossil fuels more efficiently.

How would, or could we generate enough CO2 to hit 830ppmv? Where is the carbon?

Then there's the 'non-linear effects'. It's assumed ΔT CO2 is a logarithmic response, so front-loaded, hence the claim that going from say, 280-320ppmv provided 50% of the radiative forcing and so most of the 1C warming we've measured to date. So as we increase CO2 beyond 415, we should see warming accelerate again and then level off. But we don't. But this is where climate 'science' meets homeopathy, and the less you have, the greater the effect.

But as wiki explains, ECS assumptions are plugged into climate models, and those spit out results ranging from +11C warming to very little. Funnily enough, models have become more accurate by lowering ECS, which is why it's been revised downwards pretty much every IPCC Annual Report. Those reports also explain that the atmosphere is relatively insensitive to CO2 because of it's basic physical properties, ie it's a weak GHG. But to get to Thermageddon scenarios, climate 'scientists' have also assumed a slew of 'forcings' and 'feedbacks' where the effects of CO2 are somehow amplified to produce scarey numbers. Reality and observations have proven most of those wrong as well. Climate deniers assume that if their models say their predictions are true, then it must be reality that is wrong. Climate sceptics tend to prefer to trust reality and observations.

But CO2 is far more economically important than it's radiative properties suggest, ie it's a proxy for human activity, and human activities can of course be taxed and regulated. Ecofreaks don't like oil & gas, therefore seize on it's CO2 potential to try and ban it, and force social change. More pragmatic people just look at how they can profit from CO2 and flog 'renewable energy', carbon credits, carbon offsets etc etc. which is why there's 70,000 or so scumbags in Dubai at the moment looking for their slice of the Green pie.

But some good news has emerged, ie nations saying they're going to invest in nuclear power, which is a far more sensible use of their money than tilting at windmills. New fission reactors may provide clean, reliable, zero CO2 power for 30yrs or more, and by then, fusion may be commercially viable.

I did have access to data from other nearby stations as I was considering using them to extrapolate readings for any missing data but I decided to just leave the gaps in place because people like you would jump on "extrapolated readings" claiming it was data manipulation.

And it would be. But it happens a lot in climate 'science', ie kriging to create temperature measurements where none exist. It's one of the problems with climate 'science'. Large parts of the world aren't covered by instruments, or don't extend very far back in time. Some do, eg our good'ol CET, but don't necessarily show 'global waming'.

Wind as a part of an integrated system has no downsides.

Other than cost and intermittency. Burning banana peels for electricity also has no downsides. We just need to invest the money in collecting, drying and probably growing bananas for fuel. With global warming, this could be a future proof, sustainable solution for the UK. Except it's a dumb idea, just as windmills are. Sure, they can provide some electricity when the wind's blowing. But the wind doesn't blow all the time. Again we know this from history when we used to use wind for energy. We replaced them with steam so we had more power, when we needed it. The downsides then to wind are many. So there's the impact on the grid, stabilising that grid to deal with very variable inputs when we need and expect highly consistent outputs. So the 'renewables' scumbag's solution is to spend even more money to overcome wind's fundamental inadequacies. So invest billions to extend the grid, stabilise it with some form of storage, and provide pretty much 1:1 stand-by generation for when the wind doesn't blow.

Nuclear doesn't need any of this. It just works.

...all I said is it's not as clean as some proponents make out but assuming they can make it work continuously it's still it's much cleaner than fission. There is a problem with tritium supply but there's a few years before that becomes a worry, plenty of time to sort out a solution.

It's not that dirty either. We could manage nuclear waste, if only the Greens would let us. Tritium isn't necessarily a problem because maybe we could get commercial aneutronic fusion working that just uses lithium and deuterium. Then we'd just need to figure out how to turn fast alpha particles into electricity. Or there's a fun project the US is doing to wrap a fusion reactor in a fission blanket and use fast neutrons to generate heat. Think Kyle Hill did a video on this, but can't find it.

But we have waaaay too many neo-luddites who insist we 'invest' in pre-industrial technology instead of JFDI and builing more nuclear. But then those neo-luddites have spent decades spreading radiation FUD, and are paid to promote 'renewables' instead. But perhaps try watching this-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

Nuclear waste is a solved problem, if only the neo-luddite Greens would let the nuclear experts get on with managing it.

Re: I worry the "clean" nature may be being overstated here

But the statement that heat pumps don’t work at moderate frost is wrong.

Not really. The UK has decided to go Net Zero. This means electrifying heating, cooking and transportation. This means roughly tripling electricity demand. This we can't supply with windmills, because as the recent cold snap shows, when those happen, there's no wind. Plus there's the very high cost of 'renewable' energy. Heat pumps require electricity, and their efficiency varies. So they 'dont work' in the sense that they cost a lot more, and are less efficient at heating compared to traditional gas central heating. People will argue efficiency, but I mean that in a practical sense, like cost/heat output. Not to mention other headaches, like having space to install ground source, or the noise from air source.

Re: Tilting at windmills

This -- paid by consumers, not the government. -- is something I have to disagree with - you make it sound as though the government has a source of income other than the consumers.

It shouldn't, and the article makes it pretty clear that the subsidies are policy costs that are forced onto all UK consumers. This is why despite the bs from the 'renewables' scumbags that their product is cheap, our energy costs have been rapidly increasing rather than falling. The opposite is also kind of true, ie the claims that the fossil fuel industry is subsidised. It's not, it's heavily taxed in everything from higher CT rates to extraction duties to the fuel duties we pay on consumption. The majority of the claims for 'subsidies' just comes from VAT being applied at a lower rate to energy from fossil fuels.

Re: Tilting at windmills

A genuine question - why did the last ice age end - we weren't around (or if we were not in significant numbers) so what caused the warm up that time?

That is one of life's great mysteries. Also whether it has actually ended. Most long time scale temperature and isotope proxies show climate oscillates, with periods of warming and cooling, but it's unclear why. For ice ages though, it's generally assumed to be this-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

So orbital changes altering insolation, ie the amount of energy the Earth receives at the top of the atmosphere and then surface varies. So theory goes that the Earth's orbit changes, and we get less energy from the Sun. But it's one of those things where effect exceeds cause, ie we need quite an excursion to lower and raise insolation enough. It's a gradual process though, and includes many factors. So Earth wanders, slowly cools, ice cover increases, albedo changes, more energy is reflected and radiated away, atmospheric water vapor levels change, the atmosphere contracts.. And more. Then it reverses again, we start warming, ice melts, biosphere wakes up and CO2 levels start to rise. CO2 can't really drive this process.

So then if you accept natural influences, it gets harder to accept that CO2 is the magic molecule that can drive a planetary system. It's just a small bit player. Plus there are a whole bunch of other natural climate cycles, like solar and oceanic that play a part. The Sun's output varies both in raw intensity and spectral shifts, those have effects on the atmosphere, and we don't have a lot of data showing how it varies. Sunspot records go back a long way, but spectral measurements do not. Again it's one of those fun areas where effect may exceed cause, ie we know it changes, but does it change enough?

Then there's my personal favourite-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark#Cosmoclimatology_theory_of_climate_change

Where cosmic rays affect CCNs (Cloud Condensation Nuclei), which affects cloud cover and thus temperatures. There's a whole slew of factors included in that theory, ie Solar output which increases/decreases cosmic rays hitting the Earth, our own magnetic sphere intensifying or declining, or maybe we just end up flying through some dusty space every once in a while. There was a fun NASA paper explaining 'cosmic fluff' and Voyager flying through it.

But it's fascinating to learn more about real climate science, and frustrating at times to be called a 'denier' by the cult of CO2.

That is very much less of a problem when windmills all over the country are connected together by

Magic? Have you ever looked at a weather map, and the area covered by a typical winter blocking high, as we just saw a few days ago and covered much of the UK and our EU neighbors..

Incidentally, these are pretty much the same people that lobbied for the tobacco industry, so they're not exactly burdened by morals.

True that. Naiomi Oreskes cut her teeth lobby against the tobacco industry, now lobbies for the Green Blob. Throw out a bunch of pseudo-science and the gullible will believe it. Even Obama quoted the '97%' meme!

I'm quite capable of looking at all the climate science,

No, you are not. You clearly exhibit selection and confirmation bias, which is something scientists are normally warned about. But apparently isn't required for climate 'science'. See Mann et al for more info..

These have such a miniscule, and slowly changing effect in comparison to AGW as to be akin to rounding errors.

You could have just shortened that to 'Milankovich Cycles' and then I cite this-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Theory_constraints

and point out effect exceeds cause, rain follows plough (ie CO2 increases lag warming in ice cores) etc etc. Yet much as with the X-Files, you have to believe to explain ice ages or past climate changes that are well documented and can't be explained using CO2 dogma. The of course there's other stuff like ENSO, AMO, PDO and good'ol solar cycles where they have different periodicities and in the past have correlated with climate effects. Just because there was climate change during the last grand solar minima, it doesn't automatically follow that it will during the current Eddy Minima.. assuming that's actually happening right now. Perhaps that will lead to another LIA, or climate deniers like you will just carry on pretending that never happened.. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. If it does, then we may be in for the cooling period scientists warned us about in the '70s.. Except we'll be totally unprepared for it because we've assumed unstoppable warming.

Yes well you are the "climate denier" and your "evidence" is complete cherry picked nonsense without any actual evidence or peer reviewed research to back you up.

And yet I cite papers. Either the atmospheric physics one, or the infamous Indie article from actual climate 'scientists'. Kids won't need peer-reviewed literature to know what snow is, they can simply look out of a window..

It's the trends that matter, a single hot or cold summer does not signify. 10 hot summers in a row however is a trend and does matter.

Not really, although they are essential for the climate con. Single data point and you could generate infinite trends. Add more data points, you may produce something more statisticaly significant. But even 120yrs is a blip in time given a climate interval is normally 30yrs of average weather. Then of course if you cherry pick a start date, like the end of the LIA, you get an exagerated warming trend. Pick a date during the peak of the MWP and you can get a cooling trend.

But regardless, a single weather station will tell you nothing about Global Warming. The data will tell you nothing about weather land use changes around that weather station, incorrect location, maintenance etc etc have potentially contaminated the data. Pretty much as it does with airport measurements where a summer record was set for about 15 mins as a flight of Typhoons took off. Airports are common locations for temperature data, but places like LHR were very different a century ago.

Then of course there's all the deliberate data corruption and manipulation, ranging from the good'ol Hockey Stick to erasing the MWP & LIA, or just 'revising' temperatures measured during the 1920s in the US. Or again, finding tree and plant matter under melting glaciers. There is an enormous amount of evidence that it was warmer in the relatively recent past than it is today, if only you could be bothered to look for it.

But no, don't invest in fusion because it's dirty! Invest in windmills, because they'll save the planet! Except of course we've been there, done that and should already know that wind is a lousy power source for a modern economy to rely on.

Re: Tilting at windmills

"Eco freaks" such as heads of state, going to an international summit, which is more a piece of political showboating than anything to do with resolving the climate crisis.

Uh huh. And the tens of thousands who.. aren't heads of states? But plant a few trees and it's all good.

If you feel like doing your own research, which you really should do, before spouting off, you can equally well look up literature on the spectra of incoming solar radiation into the Earth's atmosphere, and the reflected infrared spectrum from the ground, so you can establish for yourself how the greenhouse effect works:

I know how it works. You clearly do not. I asked you to provide a simple number between 1 and 2 that represents the current climate sensitvity number wrt CO2. But of course you can't and instead gish-galloped into a trap...

Also, here is Svante Arrhenius' original 19th century paper that works out the greenhouse effect from first principles:

Yes, I mention Arrhenius and the debate that's been ongoing ever since. It's why I mention him and Angstrom, and even Einstein piled in. And of course Arrenhius published before knowing about CO2's 4th absorption/emmission band. But according to Arrhenius, doubling CO2 would result in 4°C warming... We've doubled CO2. How's Arrhenius's prediction looking?

But such is science. It moves on, and predictions can be falsified by evidence. Normally.

But I also cited you a paper from a couple of atmospheric physicists who explain it all as well.. But what would atmospheric physicists know about climate 'science'? Much better to trust the members of the tree ring circus I guess.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, "vested interests", let me check, yes! RWNJ BINGO! Where do I collect my prize?

Ask your boss? You claim to be reasonably well educated, yet have made some very basic mistakes in your defence of the scum sucking parasites in the 'renewables' industry. I apparently have multiple jobs doing PR for oil & gas, Putin and probably now Musk.. Where do I find the time, and more importanly, where's my damn paycheck!

But this is how it goes. Climate deniers like you fabricate evidence, or believe in things without any actual evidence..

If you look at the data in the whole then your entire thesis falls apart - I have worked with met office data both processed and raw, even down to scans of handwritten reports from the 1960's and the climate has changed far more quickly and severely than could be down to natural changes.

That's nice. Which data? CET? That doesn't show anything unprecedented. Sea level? Neither does that. Maybe you mean data that goes back a couple of thousand years, and covers the RWP, MWP, LIA and all those things that make CO2 dogma fall apart, unless you deny them?

Re: I worry the "clean" nature may be being overstated here

A few more facts needed. What's the comparable cost of a boiler of equivalent heat output? Does it also produce DHW or would there be extra costs to alter the plumbing to reinstate/install a hot water cylinder and header tank?

The biggest ongoing cost would be the electricity required. Which Germany has just discovered is.. a slight snag-

https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/ev-chargers-heat-pumps-may-be-curtailed-in-germany-as-of-2024/

Re: Tilting at windmills

The legitimate issues people have with fracking are based on how it is used. Fracking itself isn't the problem, it is the sort of fracking that is used to extract gases, where it is continuous and ongoing, and fracking fluid is constantly pumped into the ground to displace the hydrocarbons it is used to harvest.

Err, no. You can't even get that right. Fraccing isn't 'continuous and ongoing', and there's a big clue in the name, which is short for 'hydraulic fracturing'. You are confusing it either due to ignorance, or intentionally with enhanced oil & gas recovery, where a fluid is pumped into a well to extract (usually oil) product. And it may suprise you to learn that one of the most popular fluids for this is.. CO2! Which explains why the oil & gas industry is keen to promote CCS and maybe get a cheap source of liquid CO2. Or just make a few million using old wells for the storage part.

Yes, that water is going to get mineralised, but the same issues of things like groundwater pollution and ongoing tremors just don't apply (the minerals in those rocks would usually seep into groundwater anyway, unless you're going very deep through multiple strata of different rock types).

Are you sure you're a science grad? So.. I'm curious. Admittedly I'm no geologist, but why would oil & gas be where it is, if there was permeable rock above it? I'm also curious what contamination may come from the chemicals used given they're usually detergents, and even Marmite. But geothermal also fracs. It has to to get a path between the injection and extraction sites. It recirculates the water, and loses a lot. That water will get mineralised, and in the Eden Project's case, become radioactive. Obviously there's exactly the same risk of ground water contamination, except unlike oil & gas fraccing, the working fluid gets more contaminated over time.

You.. also miss something rather obvious. So geothermal works by removing heat from hot rocks below the surface. What happens when things cool? Do they.. expand, or contract? Or other fun stuff can happen-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Environmental_effects

Construction can adversely affect land stability. Subsidence occurred in the Wairakei field.[8] In Staufen im Breisgau, Germany, tectonic uplift occurred instead. A previously isolated anhydrite layer came in contact with water and turned it into gypsum, doubling its volume.[48][49][50] Enhanced geothermal systems can trigger earthquakes as part of hydraulic fracturing. A project in Basel, Switzerland was suspended because more than 10,000 seismic events measuring up to 3.4 on the Richter Scale occurred over the first 6 days of water injection

I think there's also a mud volcano still erupting somewhere in Australia from another failed geothermal project. The Basel one was fun though because that 'Green' experiment caused quite a lot of damage, despite geologists apparently warning them it would happen.

Re: Tilting at windmills

Gas is, of course, only going to get more expensive, as the limited resource becomes more scarce, and harder to extract (e.g. from fracking rather than from free deposits, or from deeper deposits),

Fraccing is cheap. It's all the regulatory stuff that makes it expensive. Tens of thousands of eco freaks have jetted off to Dubai to insist we ban fossil fuels though, and expert climate scientists are using fossil-fuel derived adhesives to glue themselves to roads, demanding that we ban plastics, chemicals, drugs and the many things we rely on and produce from oils & gas.

Indeed. So what, pray tell is the precise climate sensitivity wrt CO2? Like how many W/m^2 at what concentration? Please cite your sources.. The IPCC of course knows CO2 is a weak GHG, and the climate is pretty insensitive to CO2 levels. Hence the reliance on 'feedbacks' and 'forcings' to amplify it's effects. Yet those effects cannot be observed, or modelled accurately, especially strongly negative ones like cloud dynamics. Then if you assume a logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperatures, we've already virtually all the warming we may expect due to 'The Science', and don't have enough carbon to double it again.

But if anyone's actually interested in the science, there's a handy paper explaining it here-

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.00808

Re: Hope this goes well

This was only one instance of pre-H&S days use of nasty materials

Don't forget 'Mad as a Hatter' thanks to the mercury nitrate used in felt making for hats. As Simon Whistler might say, the past was the worst.

Re: Tilting at windmills

We already have geothermal power in Cornwall and the government only had to chip in £22M unlike the £30Bn going into nuclear. It only takes some politicians with imagination to see that even in areas where the earths core is not close enough to the surface for geothermal, we can create it at a fraction of the cost by dumping wind & solar power into the ground, then sucking it out again as needed.

Go look at the planning docs for the Eden Project's geothermal plant. It used fraccing! And more importantly, it produces a lot(ish) of radioactive waste because Cornwall's granite is pretty radioactive. So the water used in the heating loop and heat exchangers becomes irradiated to a level where it's (regulatory) dangerous and has to be treated as radioactive waste. Plus of course there's the earthquake risks..

But the biggest problem is still the cost, and the quantity of energy that would need to be stored to be any use during blocking highs and cold weather like we just experienced, and will undoubtedly experience again this winter.

Re: Tilting at windmills

I don't think you'd find many of the people providing those wood-pulp chips for burning are members of Greenpeace, or other environmental lobbyists, so you've made a bit of a category error there.

Go look at Drax's website. As for environmental lobbying, one of Drax's execs sat for years on Gummer's 'Climate Change Committee'. Burning 3m tonnes of forest is somehow 'Green', at least in the most important sense of keeping the subsidiy money pouring in.

Re: Hope this goes well

This is only because "the vast majority" in terms of volume is low-level waste, such as gloves that have been used to handle things that have some into contact with the robots that are sued to service the secondary cooling systems, and things like that.

Actually, it's probably gloves that have come into contact with stuff being used to treat patients. The NHS is (I think*) the largest source of low level radioactive waste because a lot of radioactive stuff is used in radiotherapy, imaging etc etc. This stuff is so dangerous and deadly that it's fed to people!

Which could also be a GoodThing(tm). Greens could carry Radiation Refusenik cards and refuse any treatment like x-rays or radiotherapy. This would be perfectly in line with other refusals on religious grounds like the JW's and save the NHS money and bed spaces. Also one of those fun things the neo-luddites don't think about, like if we close down all nuclear, where would the isotopes come from? Sure, some can be made in accelerators, but that's a lot more expensive and impractical than nuclear alchemy.

*Think because I can't find the report that identified all the different sources of radioactive waste. There are many, and the nuclear industry itself is only a small part of this.

Whilst some bias does creep into the scientific literature (largely due to those funding the research being selective about what they fund, and what they publish, especially if it contradicts their financial interests), it is much closer to primary evidence than Jeel's bullshit.

Weren't you whining about ad homs earlier? But I do also wonder whether you have vested interests yourself.

Again, the problem is extremely obvious and we have centuries of data, knowledge and experience to explain it. We used to rely on wind and water for power centuries ago. We stopped when we produced better, cheaper and more dependable alternatives. Sail gave way to steam.

Sure, technology has allowed us to build bigger windmills, but the fundamental problem is the same. They rely on the weather, and cheaper alternatives do not. This is all the more bizarre when climate 'experts' tell us that we're experiencing more weather 'extremes'. Which is bs, but high winds damage windmills and solar. So does stuff like hail, and of course when it freezes, there's the problem with icing and also keeping blades turning to avoid creating flat spots on bearings. So windmills spin from being energy producers, to consumers. Or you could look at the Met Office's historical wind data, which shows average wind speeds have been declining.

As for snow, I'll just leave this here-

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/12/04/david-viners-blunder-saved-for-posterity/

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event"...

...David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Oh, those crazy climate 'experts' that conned gullible politicians into building windmills instead of reactors..

Re: Tilting at windmills

That's about 7GW of capacity that will have to be replaced sometime in the next decade before we can get back to the day job of displacing fossil carbon.

This one is also going to be fun-

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/11/25/enviva-near-collapse/

With Enviva being a major supplier to Drax's woodburning kettles, and Drax being one of the only things keeping the lights on at the moment. Like the article says though, it also exposes one of the great, Green lies.. like it burning trees, not 'scrap wood'.

Re: Tilting at windmills

People who clearly know a lot more about the subject than you or I have done the sums and worked out that if they invest in building them, then there is a financial return. The subsidy by the UK government towards all "green" power generation is around £200M per year, which is a lot less than it has indirectly subsidised fossil fuels through tax breaks (around £2.5B per year).

It's not an ad-hom to point out people are either ignorant of simple realities, or intentionally trying to mislead people. The subsidy regime around windmills are complicated, but the majority of the subsidies are paid by consumers, not the government. This is why our energy costs are so expensive compared to virtually everywhere else in the world. The fossil fuel 'subsidy' argument is also a lie given it's pretty much entirely based on energy not being charged 20% VAT, and ignores all the additional taxes and duties levied on those industries. But apply your big brain to this-

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/11/24/environmental-levies-to-cost-95bn-in-next-six-years/

In short, the cost during this financial year is expected to be £14.4bn, rising to £18.1bn in 2026/27, equivalent to £670 per household.

Not all of the extra costs incurred because of policy are included. For instance, there is no mention of the costs of grid upgrades, system balancing costs and constraint payments – all the direct result of increased renewable generation.

Which is an accountant looking at the OBR figures. This is the only reason there's investment in 'renewables', because the massive subsidies generate windfalls, not electricity.

Meanwhile building Hinkley C, the only new nuclear power generation this century, will cost over £30bn, and then we are locked into high prices for the electricity generated from it. It then gets decommissioned after a few decades, at which point the next generation is left with the problem of large amounts of high and medium-level nuclear waste.

That's because government negotiated a very lousy deal to help bail out EDF. Other countries are building new nuclear far faster, and far cheaper. Indexation on energy prices is also another reason why 'renewables' are costing is more because those contracts are also indexed. So food prices increase inflation, wind power gets more expensive.. And because our politicians are clueless fuckwits, they haven't yet realised that because energy costs are inputs to everything, the more they go up, the faster inflation rises. So in their infinite wisdom, they've managed to create self-inflating inflation.

There also isn't a problem with waste. There aren't large amounts of either, and both are manageable. Except neo-luddites wibble about stuff remaining radioactive for 100,000yrs because that sounds scarey. With your education, you should know that it's the stuff with shorter half-lives that's more dangerous, and decays to manageable/safe levels pretty quickly.

Again, I'm not opposed to conventional nuclear, although the primary purpose of building all of those reactors in the second half of the 20th century was for plutonium production, not power generation, and I do oppose that.

Agreed, but nobody is really proposing doing that. But the fuel cycle is the key. At the moment there's plenty of fuel in the world to carry on doing once-through, or thorium-based reactors where fuel was previously waste. Plus the ability to recycle existing or future nuclear waste. Then again, there are some interesting fusion/fission designs that might need more Pu as a neutron blanket around a fusion core.

Yes, renewables like wind and solar are intermittent. There are two obvious fixes for this

Rather than just piling on more costs, why not accept that they're fundamentally flawed and stop throwing good money after bad? Wind and solar are the problem, not the solution.

Re: Tilting at windmills

Research is being done into better energy storage, which would largely mitigate the issue of peaks and troughs in production. Things like flow batteries and supercapacitors. These will undoubtedly become part of the electricity grid in time.

So there's been say, 2 days with virtually no wind. Current demand is 42GW. The wind has picked up a bit, so current generation is 13.6GW, or 32% of demand. To deliver electricity when there's no wind would require 650GWh of batteries. This would add billions to the cost of wind generated electricity. Then of course there are the minor details about where to put them, and how long they'd take to recharge.

Alternatively, we just build 20GW of nuclear and call it good. No batteries required.

However, the point to make here is that nobody is saying we should rely on a single source of energy production, and saying "this is useless because it doesn't work 100% of the time" is not only a false argument, but really, really boring to hear over and over again without any hint that you understand nuance.

It's not a very nuanced argument. We've know the problems with wind for centuries, which is why we replaced sails and windmills the first time around. The problem is neo-luddites like you haven't grasped the obvious lessons of history and simply want to pile on costs to fix a fundamentally flawed generating system.

As for the grid being close to collapsing, this is down to a prolonged lack of investment by successive governments. It's not only the fault of the current Tory government (although, having had almost 14 years to do something to fix it, and having done nothing, they have to shoulder a large portion of the blame)

It is not lack of investment, but investment in the wrong things. The money we've wasted on windmills could have been better spent on nuclear generation, or even modern coal plants. Coal would have met CO2 emission targets simply by virtue of using more efficient technology, even without wastes of money like CCS. The fault is political, yes, but almost entirely due to the idiotic Ed Milliband and his 'Climate Change Act', which a government could easily repeal.

Re: I worry the "clean" nature may be being overstated here

While we're at it, let's remember that burning coal produces radioactive waste as well, and releases it into the environment at much higher levels than are allowed with nuclear fission, so drawing attention to the issue of radioactive waste may not have the desired effect of convincing people that this is a clean form of energy production.

This-

https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind

or-

https://grid.iamkate.com/

Should be better justifications, especially after the last couple of days of freezing temperatures, no wind and reports of people being paid not to use electricity. So the usual winter conditions of a high pressure weather system leading to no wind and very little solar. Plus to make matters even more interesting, the company that supplies Drax with much of their shredded trees is in the process of going bust, affecting the supply and price of the wood chips it burns. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of useful idiots flew into Dubai to demand more windmills. Well, except for the ones who's private jets were snowed in at airports like Munich.

Downside to nuclear, fission or fusion is not managing the waste, because we can do this now.. But it's the lead times to bring new generating capacity online when we really need it now. Cars stuck on the roads in Cumbria that won't easily be moved if they're EVs. Heatpumps that won't work because temps were -5c or lower, and a switch to electric heating is going to massively increase demand.. It's only just December, and already our grid came close to collapse.

Elon is the bakery owner swearing in the street about Yelp critics canceling him

Re: Maybe intentional

Musk's perceived wealth is number of Tesla shares multiplied by share price. That number is partly fiction: selling some Tesla shares drops the value of his remaining holding. To spend that money Musk must instead borrow it from some banks offering shares as collateral. His credit was so good he could get banks to lend Twitter version 2 the money needed to buy Twitter version 1. The banks agreed to this because they believed they could sell the debt to greater fools.

I think the bigger challenge is Tesla's PE is around 77x vs most other car makers 6-7x. So Tesla is massively overvalued, competition is increasing, and product launches may be failures, eg the Cyberduck. If Tesla's revalued, along comes the margin call and all the fun that goes along with that. Remember one of the previous richest men in the world, Bernie Ebbers?

Personally I think Twitter/X is safer, given it's an app, and Musk is a software guy at heart. Plus he's been doing the capitalist thing and ruthlessly cutting the fat. It may not stop an investor, or activist investor try to force bankruptcy by triggering debt covenants, and a forced sale to a 'friendlier' owner though.

Senate bill aims to stop Uncle Sam using facial recognition at airports

Re: BIG FAT Problem:

The ink thing is a reference to "Snowcrash". The mention of chipping people is already out there. It's being sold as more "convenient" for people to have a chip in their hand to access their workplace, buy from vending machines and unlock their car. I know somebody that sort of DIY'd a chip in their hand to start their car. (They had somebody quasi-medical person do the implanting). Eww.

Aha! Captain Cyborg! Previously Reading Uni's nutty proffessor. Met him in a pub where he was showing off his 'secure' chip implant and how useful that would be. Told him I was pretty good with a knife. But what you describe is pretty much the 'creeping compulsion' Labour used to try and sell ID Cards. Buying booze, or a train ticket would be so much easier and more convenient with an ID Card! Most of the lists of things we could do with ID we could already do quite happily, but wouldn't then create an entry in the national ID database. Then stuff like social credit, or individual carbon allowances would be harder to implement. But it's already going this way with requiring people to have smart phones and apps to do stuff. That has the added benefit of tying ID related transactions to location information. Also includes facial recognition, eg during the Panicdemic there were proposals that Australians(?) prove they were complying with home detention by sending selfies of them at home, on demand.

Chips in passports, chips in phones, chips in cards.. So why not chips in people. Think of the convenience and time saved!

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

That's why I believe there is far more to it than just what Media Matters is saying.

Maybe, but that's where the court case could get interesting with opportunities to force disclosure on both sides.

Maybe that's what happened, where social media combers were only looking at posts for feedback to the company, they might have also started looking at what sort of ad content was showing up against the company's ads and surrounding user comments too.

But would that work? I'm by no means an expert on Twitter having never used it. But the court filing implies that the ads are served based on the user profile. So you and I may see different ads for the same post, and it may not be possible to monitor. I suspect this will be something X & Media Matters argue, ie X will say it's only a problem because MM made it one, MM may try to argue it's commonplace and show evidence. But arguing that may be difficult, and have wider implications either for free speech, or just demonstrating that most social media ad spend is just wasted money. I guess for advertisers, it's still the problem of very fragmented audiences and there's no real alternative to X of equivalent size for an advertiser like Disney to promote stuff.

Re: Why is it...

...that people who like to crow about free speech are always the first to try to sue others for things they have said?

It's like the guy who only just discovered "pizzagate," despite owning the platform that proliferated that particular batch of crazy, still hasn't discovered irony.

Lawfare is expensive, and as others have pointed out, free speech, even 'absolutist' comes with consequences. But there is plenty of irony in this story. Look at the execs at Media Matters and you'll find claims of blackmail, and even the possible origins of 'pizzagate'-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock#Personal_life

Brock made a six figure payout to Grey in order to avoid his former partner going public with accusations of corruption regarding Brock and Media Matters. Brock initially paid, then sued afterward for what he now termed "blackmail". Grey filed a lawsuit against Brock in January 2011, and Brock countersued Grey in March 2011. The dispute was settled at the end of 2011 on confidential terms.

Maybe the richest man in the world could make an offer to Grey to breech those confidentiality terms. And-

Brock was formerly in a long term relationship with James Alefantis

.. owner of the famous (or infamous?) Comet Ping Pong pizzeria that started that particular conspiracy theory. It's a shame that politics has gotten so dirty, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes I guess.

Re: I despair for my country

What isn't redacted is the broadest reach I've ever seen (not saying all that much). I'm not even sure that some of it is even faintly possible without Twitter having retained logs in excruciating detail. It's also not of particular usefulness since aside from DM's, it's not hard to see what somebody did on Twitter.

Yep, seems to be a very broad fishing trip. And agree on retention, but think it mentioned Twitter had been ordered to retain logs for longer than it normally would. I guess the usefullness would be for SNA, or 'Social Network Analysis', which can be a powerful tool for figuring out assosciations and possible (criminal) networks. But that assumes whatever Twitter dumped from it's log servers can be imported into whatever tools the DoJ has, and if it could parse them in any useful manner. Plus sometimes there are shenanigans.. Like one time a company complied to this kind of request, but in hard copy, printed on purple paper that made it very difficult to read or scan. But they complied..

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

Going the other way, people may start to subconsciously take a dim view of IBM if their xits are often paired with unsavory content.

But this is the point that's still being overlooked. According to X's filing, the pairing was extremely rare and Media Matters had to force it. If pairing were frequent, Media Matters should have been able to find many more examples, or IBM's marketing people might have noticed themselves, seen customer complaints etc etc. IF X's filing is correct, then this was really much ado about nothing. Media Matters crafted an account that only followed the advertisers and a few nutjobs. Only the Media Matters saw the ads, allegedly. The only other people who might have seen those ads I guess might be the nutjobs and their followers, who appear to be a tiny community. And I'm also curious how many of the nutjobs followers would be accounts like Media Matters, looking for drama.

So it seems to be a big nothingburger that's been blown waaay out of proportion, and may result in some very large damages againts Media Matters. It's had a bit of a Streisand effect highlighting free-speech and corporate/political activism that might blow back on the advertisers. We know this can happen, eg the opposition to AB, Target etc cost them around $40bn in shareholder value, some of which hasn't recovered. That really suprised me given it was a fairly organic response against virtue signalling, and doubt it'll happen to the same magnitude here.. But who knows?

Which really just leaves the biggest problem. What is 'unsavory content', and who gets to decide? If it's unsavory and illegal, that should be simple. If it's unsavory just because it's a difference of opinion, then X seems to limit exposure anyway. Don't follow it, don't see it, or ignore it and don't see it.

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

That would really be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I'm not sure anything short of human trafficking, arms sales and ads for recreational drugs are unwelcome.

Yep, it's strange YT and TikTok get a pass for content/advertising while the focus is on X. But arms sales is one possibility. Maybe not extolling the virtues of the latest environmentally friendly cluster bombs, but simpler stuff like firearms, accessories and outdoors things. AlphaGoo seems to object to those, but there's a bunch of guntubers & outdoor channels, and it's a multi-billion dollar market in the US. Sure, some people find shooting sports objectionable, but with an s1 FAC, and land, it's even legal in the UK. Or maybe X can just figure out how to make ads more relevant to content. I also watch a lot of crafting channels, yet none of the ads are relevant to the content.

There seems to be a lot of opportunties to improve online advertising and target it better. YT has a ton of flags & tags to categorise content. So as an example, I've been getting back into cosplay stuff. Sometimes, I see stuff being used I want to buy, then have to go hunt for suppliers. How hard could it be to have an advertiser category and pool of craft supply companies and match those to crafting channels? Sure, they may not have the ad budgets of Disney, but if they knew they were getting in front of a relevant audience, they may spend something. And some already do, ie in-content sponsorship, but AlphaGoo or X aren't getting a cut of that.

Re: I despair for my country

The US would see a "brain drain" the likes of which no country since Nazi Germany has experienced and the economy would crumble within a few years.

It's already crumbling, much like US infrastructure. I doubt many people really care who the talking head is on tele, interrupting their viewing with yet another State of the Onion address. The majority probably care about the smaller, more tangible things. Like do they have a job? Have the potholes on the way to work been fixed yet? Will they make it to work, or get car jacked? Can they afford their bills, or will they have to cut back on luxuries that they'd previously taken for granted? But there have already been 'brain drains', or more importantly tax base drains from people moving away from liberal utopias like LA, SF and NY to other states and cities.

This is why Twitter is in the $hitter and now referred to and branded as Xcrement!

8 people thought that was witty and clever enough to upvote. We really are devolving. Or maybe it's just Friday and people have been to the pub.

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

There should be an exercise in due diligence before entering into a commercial relationship. I agree. Exiting such a relationship requires none.

Not true. Exiting a relationship also required diligence. So what's the cost of continuing the relationship vs terminating it? That may be contractual, ie what penalties might apply. It might be financial, ie what lost opportunites might there be by exiting that platform? Or it might even be reputational, ie IBM et al fell for some epic trolling from Media Matters. There may also be some benefits, ie how many people ever bought IBM because of an ad they saw paired with a tweet?

Answering the question about who may have decided not to buy IBM on the basis of a tweet seems a lot easier. If what X included in their court filing, the answer is only Media Matters, or one other instance of those pairings. The harm from that to IBM was non-existant, until Media Matters chose to blast the story out to a gullible MSM, who didn't bother to 'fact check' Media Matter's methodology. But they KNOW X is a wretched hive of scum and villainy because companies like Media Matters have been churning out endless articles saying it is, ever since Musk took Twitter over. They want their echo chamber, and anyone with an opinion that differs from theirs to be banned from the 'net.

But IBM has shareholders. They may challenge the boards decision. So do the other companies that have decided to boycott X. Disney won't be able to promote it's content to millions of eyeballs on Twitter. Neither will Discovery. How will I ever know the great mysteries that are being uncovered at the Blind Frog Ranch? Answer to that one is simple. I don't care anymore and cancelled my Discovery subscription. Not because of their boycott, but because their content is garbage. Other people are apparently cancelling subscriptions because of perceived anti-free speech or anti-commercial behaviour. That can be far more damaging, ie AB's decision to re-imagine Bud Lite. That cost around $18bn to discover they'd switched brand into a teeny market. Shareholders weren't happy, heads rolled. And it's much the same with Disney. Get Woke, Go Broke. They focused on messages that mainstream audiences don't want to hear, and produce blockbuster bombs. Disney's shareholders aren't very happy either. People are apparently cancelling Disney now.

So it's all rather amusing. Direct damage, virtually zero. Don't want to see objectionable content on X? Don't follow objectionable people. Wider impact? Who knows. Companies like Media Matters have used their voice to push their paymaster's policies. They may lose their court case and be bankrupted out of existence. Their paymasters will simply move on and create new astroturfing companies. Maybe those will be banned from Twitter. Maybe more people will start thinking about free speech, and political dirty tricks, and Musk has a very loud voice.

Re: the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company

Yes, in the same way that Tesla and X are killing my company by not spending millions advertising on MY website. Put your hand in your pocket Elon and fork over the moolah, otherwise the whole world will soon know that you killed my company.

Bill Hicks got it right. Advertising and marketing is a strange business, and it got weirder with the explosion of the Internet. Want to flog tat to lefties? Buy some space in the Grauniad. To the right? The good'ol Daily Mail. Which has weighed in on this story-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12813467/elon-musk-advertisement-row-x-hate-speech-not-return-twitter.html

Going a step further, one executive, Tom Hespos, of consultancy business Abydos Media, said that not only was he advising clients not to advertise on X but also to cease even posting on the platform.

'You can't with a good conscience make a recommendation to a client that they continue to be a part of [X],' he said.

Ohnoes! I've heard of Martin Sorrell, and even Abydos, but not that media company. So a quick search finds the website. Which didn't find things I'd expect to see for a media consultancy, like a list of it's clients, which would hopefully include some companies or brands I might recognise. It did give the address, which is in NY, but isn't in NYC's adland, just some small residence near Long Island Airport. I'm sure Musk is trembling at the prospect of losing that client income. But such is the world online. There's a billion of these new & social media companies, all generating noise, but not much in the way of useful revenues for their clients.

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

Just because some individuals may want to "attack Musk" and "destroy X" does not imply that corporations who make the decision to take their advertising elsewhere have a goal of doing so.

Or maybe it does. ESG became a big thing, reputation is a big thing. But so is concentration of risk. That's a standard risk measure in big business, ie you depend on a few big customers, what happens if one or more of those customers decides to leave? Or one of those customers exploits the relationship to demand things, because if you don't, they may leave? This is sadly normal in business, and driving down costs is common so companies can boost their profits at their supplier's expense. It can also be very satisfying to tell a big, prestigious brand 'No, we will not do business with you on those terms'. Or even better, not renew a contract because the VIP customer is generally a PITA.

But this saga seems to have been a very deliberate effort by Media Matters to drive a wedge between Musk and his revenue streams. Media Matters is one of the DNC's pet attack dogs, and politically motivated. If Media Matters were really concerned about content, they could have shown their report to X and given them the opportunity to respond. Instead, they blasted it out to the gullible media who seized on the story and amplified the potential damages that might get awarded in X's lawsuit. That also contains maybe a bit of trolling, ie it demands Media Matters take down the story everywhere. Which means if X wins, even the stories here will have to get disappeared.. But if the problem were as widespread as Media Matters implied, shouldn't the advertisers have noticed? Don't they monitor the performance of their adverts? And as for the 'everything' app, maybe that's something Musk could deliver, after all he started out as a sofware guy making those types of apps, including payment systems and maybe could challenge PayPal's dominance in that space.

Only if you believe like Musk does, that Twitter is entitled to its advertisers to continue paying them for advertising regardless of whatever lunatic shit he posts, or seeing their ads alongside Nazi accounts,

That's just a strawman that will hopefully be tested in court. Media Matters created the pairing between advert and 'Nazi accounts', and X's filing claims that this was very much abnomal behaviour. Rest would be in the contracts between X and the advertisers, or their agencies. Those haven't been filed yet, and may not become public. But they probably have language like minimum spend committs and 'reasonable endeavors' to match adverts to eyeballs, or avoid placing ads next to objectionable content. But that may also be impossible, ie I could probably create a Twitter account, follow a bunch of lefty stuff, make a bunch of lefty posts to establish the accounts profile and then go off on a rant to try and blackmail advertisers, or X.. Much as Media Matters has done.

You can whine all you want about your theory of how these corporate meanies want Musk to fail, but there is no evidence of that. But given that a sizeable percentage of you idiots still believe Trump won the election despite that lack of a single grain of evidence ever presented in any court of law anywhere in the US, you obviously don't consider facts when you decide what conspiracy theory to hitch your wagon to.

Oddly enough, I am going by the evidence. You're also conflating free speech arguments. A bunch of posts here have been disappeared. That's fair enough, El Reg's house, their rules. Twitter can delete posts it finds objectionable or break their house rules. Twitter pre-Musk banned a sitting President.. Which maybe takes it to extremes. Advertisers don't have to advertise on Twitter. Twitter can refuse advertisers. But there does seem to be a concerted effort to shape what is permissable on 'private' social media platforms to favour a certain party. That starts to blur the lines between general free speech, and constitutionally protected free speech, especially when PR companies like Media Matters are perhaps not very independent.

As for elections, that certainly has created it's fair share of conspiracy theories. So Al Gore's hanging chads and the way his election win was stolen. Or Hillary having her win stolen by those pesky Russians. Or just this-

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/11/13/constitutional-challenge-georgia-voting-machines-set-for-trial-early-next-year

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg issued a 135-page ruling late Friday in a long-running lawsuit filed by activists who want the state to ditch its electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots. The state had asked the judge to rule in its favor based on the arguments and facts in the case without going to trial, but Totenberg found there are "material facts in dispute" that must be decided at trial.

Which is as it should be. Obviously for a representative democracy to work, the voting systems must also work. There were a number of questions regarding the reliability and accuracy of voting machines, some already answered, some not. Some problems have already been found, ie the accuracy/reliability of things like signature reading, some may not have been tested thoroughly. Some people believe the systems are perfect, flawless and absolutely should not be tested or challenged. But then the judge also said-

Totenberg made clear in a footnote in her order that the evidence in the Georgia case "does not suggest that the Plaintiffs are conspiracy theorists of any variety. Indeed, some of the nation's leading cybersecurity experts and computer scientists have provided testimony and affidavits on behalf of Plaintiffs' case in the long course of this litigation."

We're IT types. We know all the myriad ways our systems can produce interesting and unexpected results. We don't know the details wrt voting machines because so far, they've really only been tested in the media. Maybe this trial will find that these specific e-voting systems are secure and reliable, maybe it won't. If it does find that they're flawed.. Who are the conspiracy theorists then? All the 'fact checkers' who got it wrong, and branded these questions 'misinformation'?

Re: Delusional narcissist - Trump?

Donald is not dumb, its an act. You dont understand he is playing to a certain audience. He is no different to say fundamentalist preachers, they too know their religion is bullshit and its all an act so they keep their position.

But this is true of any politician. You have to know how to work your audience and play to that crowd to attract voters. So I think we tend to end up with people who are charismatic, not necessarily intelligent. Al Gore was a preacher, Biden's an everyman, Trump and Musk are carny hustlers like P.T.Barnum. Both of those must have some intelligence because both developed big businesses. Many politicians are just career politicians though. Some of Musk's statements have been strange, like his Hypeloop and comparing it to an air hockey table. Trains riding on a cushion of air, in a vacuum tube.

Re: I despair for my country

And of course, since the US has only 2 main political parties, the ugly polarizing bickering based on the view from many Deomcrats that almost all Republicans have extreme far right views, and conversely the view from many Republicans that almost all Democrats have extreme far left views.

You're not alone. The UK has much the same with our 2 parties, and so does much of Europe. What's perhaps a little more alarming is stuff like this-

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.259110/gov.uscourts.dcd.259110.22.1.pdf

It's interesting that that pdf can't easily have it's contents copied & pasted, but basically Special Counsel Jack Smith demanding to know what Twitter ads Trump was served. Wonder if there were any from IBM, Disney etc? Perhaps more alarming is Smith also demanded details of any user who re-tweeted, forwarded or mentioned Trump. More on this here-

https://nypost.com/2023/11/27/news/heavily-redacted-documents-related-to-search-warrant-for-trumps-twitter-account-released/

Including that over half of Smith's warrant was completely redacted. I guess the DoJ is still putting together it's Xmas lists of who's been naughty or nice.

I made what I thought was a reasonable suggestion, perhaps Twitter/X should allow for ad controls like has been going on for TV/radio for over 50 years (you can choose to not have your ads on certain shows) and other websites and platforms. I mean, I did an Android app with banner ads, I could select not to have gambling, alcohol/tobacco, and "adult" ads, and conversely the ad suppliers could choose to not display their ads on gambling apps, "adult" apps, etc.

Agreed. According to X's filing in their case against Media Matters, there seems to be some control over this, ie the 'nazi' stuff and the ads seemed to be exceptional and took Media Matters some effort to create their pairings. I have no idea how this works, but curious what may be revealed in the case. I've also been puzzled that YT doesn't seem to allow this for their content creators either, and again have no idea what controls YT offers it's advertisers. It seems wrong though that content creators have no ability to choose not to have crypto/gambling ads inserted into their content. The creators know their audience, so should be better able to match advertisers to their content anyway.

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

So you are a "free speech absolutist" but you don't think IBM et al have the right to "speak" with their advertising dollars where they choose to? Musk seems to believe Twitter is entitled to these advertisers spending money there, and if they choose not to it is "their fault" if Twitter goes bust.

Where's he saying that? Maybe he's saying advertisers don't have a right to set editorial policy. Maybe he's saying IBM was wrong not to do some due diligence and acted prematurely after Media Matter's hatchet job. Maybe he's saying some advertisers have too much control and influence. Maybe IBM won't run ads on any media that criticises their age discrimination policies, or any of their actions. About that story you ran. Be a shame if we pulled our adverts, wouldn't it?

You clearly do not subscribe to what you claim to, or have a remarkable ability to choose when and where free speech rights are "absolute" and where they are non-existent.

Well, there does seem to be a concerted effort to destroy X, and attack Musk. Should corporations be doing this? Does that have free speech implications? But interestingly, some people are calling for a boycott of those advertisers. I'm not sure how effective this will be, ie how many pro-free speech people would bother watching Disney. But consumer activism can be effective. So Budweiser decided to ditch it's 'frat boy' market and rebrand as tranny fluid. AB lost what, $18bn and still hasn't recovered. Most of Disney's recent movies and shows have tanked, and Disney's been bleeding cash, so maybe it's vulnerable to consumer boycotts. IBM's perhaps safer because they're not exactly a mass market or consumer brand, but also have their own problems. Pretty much every advertiser can be easily substituted by their customer base, especially if those customers are already feeling alienated or just ripped off already. I've cancelled my Discovery subscription, not really as a result of this fiasco, more because it doesn't do documentary shows any more.. Plus of course, the unskippable ads it forces into it's shows.

Re: Delusional narcissist - Trump?

That really casts doubts as to whether standardized IQ ratings are valid.

They've been debated for years. Like if they're really an ability to do IQ tests. Practice them, you get smarter! Otherwise, intelligence should be an ability to solve problems. Or create more interesting ones. It cuts both ways. I think as a society though, we're certainly dumbing down, especially when we're apparently no longer supposed to question anything.

Re: Delusional narcissist

So basically what you're saying is, is that the pay is shite, but you've burned basically every other bridge and its the only job you can get anymore.

A very strange inference, aerogums. Maybe I don't need the money? I'm sure being pro-free speech pays a lot less than anti-free speech 'fact checkers' pays. But why would anyone pay me anyway, if I'm simply expressing my own opinions? Have you by any chance looked at how much the 'non-profit' bosses at Media Matters pay themselves, or where their money comes from? Still, if Musk wants to bung some money my way, I'd probably take it. I agree with him when it comes to protecting free speech, but I disagree with him on other matters.

Re: Delusional narcissist

If major advertisers are loath to place ads someplace where they are likely to have their ads shown on the same page as some anti-Semitic tirade

You're rather missing the point. This all exploded due to 'Media Matters' fabricating a story. According to the filing, advertisers were extremely unlikely to find their ads placed there, and MM had to go to great lengths to get their smoking gun. Then blasted it all over the MSM, who promptly demonstrated their own confirmation bias. Musk is evil! Burn the witch!

But that's the genius of the blackmail. If IBM did nothing, MM might blast out another press release claiming IBM funds nazis. Which is probably the situation right now. The advertisers initially said they were pulling their ads 'while they investigate', but the anti-Musk and anti-free speech mob want that to be permanent. Minitruth must be brought into existence, and controlled by the right sort of 'fact checkers'.

Re: Actually, I kind of agree with him

Which is why I'd like to see the entire advertising ecosystem destroyed along with social media as we know it. Unfortunately, that's a real pipe dream.

I think it's beginning to work. Advertisers have been struggling to grasp the online world and how to reach potential customers. Sometimes, it's misjudged this spectacularly. Disney's been struggling to make money and has a content strategy that's clearly not reaching audiences. See the Marvels and it's riveting live stream of.. cats. Or see the latest Bbc/Disney co-production, Dr.. Who? Lots of message, not much story. Lots of misandry, no misogyny. Lots of negative press pointing out how discriminatory RTD & the Bbc's dream team can be. People in wheelchairs can't be evil.. They really don't get it, yet these are the brilliant minds that want to censor and control what people can say and think.

But this is where it gets interesting. Disney's a train wreck. I have no idea how much Twitter managed to sucker out of them, but all X needs to do is find replacement advertisers who can take up the slack. Maybe advertisers that aren't welcomed on, say, YT. Maybe Musk can figure out ways to get referal fees or commisions on product sales. Sure, YT's maybe cornered the mass market in advertising crypto, finance scams and other garbage but whether Musk can attract enough advertisers that are currently shunned by the MSM and lefty socialist media sites. If the lefty corporations don't want those customers, maybe there are other businesses that do, and will offer better products and services than the old dinosaurs?