> Best when it isn't raining and the wind isn't too strong.
So.... never then?
I have years of sunburn to prove that the Mersey can be warmer than Spain...you just have to pick your times.
Readit Newskeithpeter commented on Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle citymetric.com/transport/... · Posted by u/hunglee2
keithpeter commented on Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle citymetric.com/transport/... · Posted by u/hunglee2
> he UK has become, surprisingly quickly, a terrible place to live and work, with widespread poverty and low wages, and a job market devoted to zero hours contracts for all.
I wouldn't say 2.8 % [1] of UK works on zero hour contracts mean the job market is 'devoted' to zero hour contracts. Just because it is in the news a lot doesn't mean it happens all the time.
Honestly your post makes it seems like the UK is this corrupt, broke country when it couldn't be further from the truth.
All I see is posts against the tories online but every election they've been the majority.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
Age and education selection when comparing HN with general population.
keithpeter commented on Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle citymetric.com/transport/... · Posted by u/hunglee2
There are a lot better places to live.
I don't like UK outside of London - I find it either sad and worn out with the same cloned high streets repeating every 50 miles, or smugly self-satisfied villages with wealthy people living in houses with names instead of numbers.
London itself is pretty good. It is, however, quite squalid, and crime is getting worse. Best thing going for it is the wages are pretty decent, for Europe. Population density could be a lot higher though, and property cheaper.
I'd like to take London, and plop it into the Alps - somewhere near Grenoble - or the Mediterranean - somewhere near Barcelona, though Barcelona already has a much higher quality of life, IMO. Take London out of England, and it would be fantastic.
By education, I mean primary and secondary. UK exports education at third level and it's pretty good.
Pop up to Liverpool one day and see what you think. Best when it isn't raining and the wind isn't too strong.
Bold Street and Jamaica Street might be good starting points, then there is Renshaw Street and the Baltic area.
keithpeter commented on An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009) web.archive.org/web/20100... · Posted by u/sndean
With tongue-in-cheek apologies to Thatcher, the problem with capitalism in the UK is that you eventually run out of public assets to sell off :)
Education and the health service (think buildings and land as assets for the latter) are the two remaining ones apart from something like the road system. I'm sure they will try these soon.
keithpeter commented on Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle citymetric.com/transport/... · Posted by u/hunglee2
Quote from OA
"The first journey is a bus from the south of the city, Stirchley to, Birmingham. This 3.5 mile journey takes about 20 minutes between 6am and 7am, and about 40 minutes between 8am and 9am."
That would be the school run. To test my hypothesis, I'm going to try to run the results during a school holiday in a bit.
Very pleased someone has actually done what I have often thought about (but done nothing about) while standing at the 97 bus stop in the rain early in the morning... getting the data from the departure system. I wonder how I can get my hands on a sample of the data...
keithpeter commented on An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009) web.archive.org/web/20100... · Posted by u/sndean
Someone replied to you but he deleted it. I meant to continue the conversation with:
If this article (referencing a 2008 paper) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/north-... is to be believed, the UK had the same thing, but the money went to tax cuts for the rich. So it does smell like corruption to me.
[He talked about some conservative governments being corrupt, to which I think:] Conservatism is a con anyway, selling austerity as a pain that the citizenry needs to suffer to get a "healthy economy", which means cutting budgets where somehow the solution is to outsource things (e.g. with the NHS), meaning the private companies owned by the elites rake in the money. And then they sell the "it's the immigrants who are overtaxing our resources" to get the public to vote for Brexit. (Where less EU regulations mean the elite will have more power to influence the government to allow worker exploitation)
Using common goods to finance tax cuts is a conservative party policy and it has been mentioned in their manifestos, although not in bald terms.
They could therefore argue for a mandate for the policy.
keithpeter commented on 1969 and 1970 at Bell Labs larryluckham.com/1969%20&... · Posted by u/colinprince
What happened to the women in tech is that the clerical jobs were all replaced by computers.
I'm still not clear how office work has improved by me not having a secretary. The two hours a day I waste on email, meeting planning etc would pay someone a comfortable wage and mean I don't have to be bothered all the time by emails that I probably don't need to answer, unless it's from those two people.
In my current gig we have an actual full time office manager and it's fucking amazing.
UK, non-government public sector, very senior people still have secretaries - often described as personal assistants. The PAs handle interfacing and information flow, the senior people can get on with the thinking.
keithpeter commented on Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry vox.com/future-perfect/20... · Posted by u/minimaxir
Interestingly everyone who hasn't done anything technical but wants to ride AI train chooses to become "AI Ethics" person these days. You can look up vast number of these AI ethics "experts" giving talks on this subject without ever having trained a model for anything. So apparently the bar for this "field" is zero experience in anything technical but great ability to hold a microphone and induce FUD in public.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/luciano-floridi/
Publication records help to separate the wheat from the chaff.
This seems so strange to me, this sharp distinction between algebra and non-algebra. I might have gone to school in the Soviet system so everything was backwards and such but we were introduced to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_algebra very early and just did simple expression transformations, variable substitutions. That was a lot early than 8th grade. I even taught my 2nd grader a few of those.
I have observed the curriculum so far in US, at least up until the 2nd grade and it's a hot mess. Even for double digit addition problems they jump right into "cool tricks" and "mathematical thinking" while there are just really a few steps to memorize and, guess what, kids are great at memorizing stuff. Later on it's time to show a few short-cuts and kids even discover those themselves.
Now going back to algebra, I am firm believer that a simplified version of this has to be introduced much earlier. It's a bit like a spiral, do basic arithmetic, geometry, number line manipulation, simple word problems, next year do the same but more complicated, add some algebra in there and so on.
But I guess that's just too boring and teachers, and probably higher level authorities, decide that they need to do "something" so they start making changes just to they can slap something on their resume. Developers do that too some extent, "here let me rewrite all this..." we can certainly understand that, but doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Spiral curriculum is actually a widely used concept in teaching...
https://www.teachwire.net/news/ever-increasing-circles-what-...
"GCHQ told Sullivan that Sidebottom "had a small but dedicated following" among its staff."
Couple of people do Sidebottom dialogues as an in-joke to the extent that it begins to annoy co-workers.
"[After random outer triangles explained] 'Right, we've cracked it during a light-hearted training exercise.'"
Took a couple of minutes as a starter in a session.
PS: I use a Playfair style grid to jumble up my pass phrases to try to make them less susceptible to rainbow table attack. Am I wasting my time?