oldboysmith.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

West doesn't even offer thoughts and prayers. We're bankrupted in the eyes of the world.

submitted 10 hours ago • 10 comments

Every day. Deliberate massacres of unarmed, starving civilians. The world does nothing. A shame on all of us. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 23 hours ago • 12 comments

Here’s this week’s column - essentially, how can AI save us if it can’t stop making shit up? (And yes I know, chatbots ≠AI but we do seem to be investing them with quite a lot of hope…): www.theguardian.com/business/202...

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Starting a war in order to divert political and diplomatic attention away from a genocide. Doesn't get much worse than this. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

submitted 3 days ago • 10 comments

Yes to this by Thomas Aubrey on.ft.com/4jSU1sK Lessons from the Victorians for funding big projects

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Dozens of people are shot dead every day in "Gaza Humanitarian Fund" aid distribution centres. People desperate to feed their families, shot dead in the chaos and panic that inevitably surrounds these sites. Israel has created a real version of "the hunger games". 1/

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

“Large language models do not, cannot, and will not “understand” anything at all. LLMs are impressive probability gadgets that produce writing not by thinking but by making statistically informed guesses about which lexical item is likely to follow another.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Its quite telling that this article is all about hyping up AI, but the only concrete example they give (at Ocado) seems to be about using more robotics www.ft.com/content/5009...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

The thing with Trump is that he doesn’t hide what he’s doing. ‘The bar is what I think it is’ says that constitutional guardrails have been abandoned. In the context of putting troops and marines on the streets, everywhere.

submitted 8 days ago • 13 comments

Worth reading in full

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

“These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others”

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

“So, effectively “LLMs for coding” are largely a cover story for improving throughput by relaxing quality standards”. Yep

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Here’s a prophesy from 1982 👇

submitted 14 days ago • 5 comments

either: 1. Bailey doesnt know what he is talking about - in his scenario, banks switch from reserve to gilts, LOWERING cost of funding for public purse. 2. Bailey doesnt WANT banks to lower cost of funding, dressing up political preference for austerity in (wrong) technicalities.

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Not sure why you need to chase Reform voters when there are millions of disaffected voters who would quite honestly make do with a Labour party that showed a bit of compassion and vision.

submitted 15 days ago • 39 comments

I’m afraid people saying that Blue Labour is just a fringe group forget that, as Maurice Glasman (Blue Labour’s founder) says that Morgan McSweeney is ‘from us’. It doesn’t matter that they only have a few MPs. They have the ear of the PM.

submitted 15 days ago • 8 comments

Starmer's Labour Party expels leftwingers for the tiniest perceived infractions. Yet it welcomes people who are basically Trumpists into the very heart of its operations. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

submitted 15 days ago • 160 comments

True, but no Labour government before this one has ever used language like ‘incalculable damage’ about immigration.

submitted 16 days ago • 4 comments

Mobs of Israelis march through Jerusalem chanting "Death to Arabs" and "may your village burn", while trying to convince us that saying "Free Palestine" is genocidal.

submitted 20 days ago • 5 comments

“The thinktank (Compass) was hoping to mobilise the progressive majority around a revitalised Labour party, but that moment has passed.”

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

This is what Israeli former PM Ehud Olmert says of his country's "war of annihilation" in Gaza. A war Tory leader Kemi Badenoch uncritically supports.

submitted 23 days ago • 2 comments

FT: “30 per cent of the company’s code is already written by AI”. What was actually said: “30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software” Very, very different. www.ft.com/content/cb9e...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

A welcome antidote to the current hype surrounding AI.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Excellent piece from @resi-analyst.bsky.social. Housing transactions are collapsing and we desperately need property tax reform. Shifting from stamp duty & council tax to an annual property tax could increase transactions & the tax take, increase labour productivity and growth. on.ft.com/4jiWbSn

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

This. BoE reason for QT: "the aim is to ensure that it is possible to undertake QE again". So we are failing to address child poverty , so that the BoE can undertake an operation whose main effect is to make housing less affordable. Brilliant.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Halting QT would have precisely that effect. What’s more nobody who doesn’t read the FT would even notice

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

Nor do you get growth from keep cutting public spending. There really is an intellectual incoherence at the heart of this administration which is going to destroy it.

submitted 29 days ago • 8 comments

The antediluvian Right hating your deal is a feature, not a bug. The last thing this economy needs is a deal that Nigel Farage welcomes.

submitted 29 days ago • 6 comments

Whisper it quietly, but Brexit itself was a disaster for the fishing industry.

submitted 29 days ago • 4 comments

ICC Chief Prosecutor, despite huge amounts of lobbying from multiple governments, continues with investigation of Israeli "activities" in Gaza. Microsoft blocks his email account - all because the orange imposed sanctions on ICC staff, putting severe restrictions on their work and personal lives.

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s silent Dominic Cummings with a matching level of toxicity. He’ll be the end of Starmer - and #Labour.

submitted 31 days ago • 20 comments

A computer scientist’s perspective on vibe coding:

submitted 31 days ago • 18 comments