xenophanean | Reading

Two weeks after seeing the CGI Lilo and Stitch at the cinema I'm watching the original with the kids. And it's so much better. The direction, the writing, the acting are all just much higher quality.

The remake felt much clumsier. And I don't really understand why.

Edit: Just realised that they entirely cut the Ugly Duckling part from the remake. Why would you do that? It's key to Stitch's arc!
And all of the bits where Lilo how to be like Elvis.

In fact, nearly all of the bits where Lilo talked to Stitch and built a relationship with him.

andrewducker

1. Australian politicians do not mince words: (tags:australia politics video )
2. An Australian piece on why 25 degrees really is hot in the UK: (tags:temperature architecture climate uk australia video )

andrewducker

1. Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft -- and people are paying anyway: (tags:taxi automation business )
2. How much is golfing at St. Andrews worth to the Scottish economy? (over $400m): (tags:golf Scotland business )
3. Recording orchestral music for a computer game (Bloodborne, Cleric Beast fight): (tags:games music video )
4. Why Israel Struck Iran Now: (tags:Israel Iran nuclearweapons )

andrewducker

1. UK sanctions Israeli ministers over Gaza comments: (tags:uk israel gaza )
2. Rough sleeping to be decriminalised in England and Wales: (tags:homelessness England law )
3. The pictures that show why the UK has run up a £49bn repair bill: (tags:UK infrastructure OhForFucksSake austerity )
4. Krakencoder predicts brain function 20x better than past methods: (tags:brain algorithms )

andrewducker

Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".

And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.

The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?

Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?

If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.

Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...

andrewducker

My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up to 95 degrees and hold it there"

(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

andrewducker

I spent the day feeling bad for lacking focus, and wondering why I couldn't get anything done.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.

andrewducker

I see we're back at the "Labour attempt to introduce a mandatory ID card" stage of history*.

My feeling last time, was that the main problem that they always have is that they *start* with the cards being mandatory.

If you start with "Here is a thing that makes your life much easier, that you can carry about if you like." then that will get you 85% of the way there. And then, once you have a voluntary ID card that's not causing any problems for anyone, and that 85% of the population is using to make their life easier, *then* you move in and say "The only people who don't carry an ID card are weirdos and troublemakers, and they're causing friction in the system, we could make it all run more smoothly if only they *had* to carry one."

But no, they always try to go instantly from "Nobody has an ID card." to "Everyone must carry one at all times." - which forms a coalition of all sorts of people from across the political spectrum, and ends up being far more politically costly to them than if they'd just boiled their frog slowly.

(None of which should be taken as me taking a position on ID cards. I'm just constantly bemused by their inability to get things done by trying to rush them through in the most authoritarian manner possible.)

*Younger readers may not remember the fuss in 2006 (repealed in 2011)

andrewducker

1. Craftlings - Lemmings meets Settlers meets Terraria: (tags:games video trailer )
2. Autonomous drone from TU Delft defeats human champions in historic racing first: (tags:automation drone ai race )
3. What are people doing right now?: (tags:people humans visualisation viaLinkMachineGo )

andrewducker

Terribly comfy under these trees.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

andrewducker

British Voters are happy that UK net migration is down. But they still think it's too high. Sadly, there is no information about how much immigration voters would like, but I suspect that they think that zero is good. And probably that negative is better.

And a fair chunk of this is because Labour and the Conservatives are both backing the idea that immigration is a bad thing. Lib Dems are in favour of being more humane about it than either of them, but only the SNP seem to have a policy that recognises that if immigration doesn't go up the economy is fucked.

Britain is aging. With serious economic consequences, with insufficient people entering the workforce to make up for the people leaving it, and increasing healthcare costs.

If we want the economy to function then either we will have to have more children or to bring more people in to work here. Those are the two options. And nobody has successfully managed to get a developed society to do the former*. So either we deal with an insupportable economy or we increase immigration. But neither of the big political parties wants to deal with the Daily Mail screaming at them, so we're going to spend the next few years doing the economically** stupid thing.

* Except Israel. Who we are unlikely to emulate.
** Obviously I haven't touched on the moral case here.

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Alex's Livejournal

Reading

Confused by Disney ineptitude

Interesting Links for 14-06-2025

Interesting Links for 13-06-2025

Interesting Links for 12-06-2025

Interesting Links for 11-06-2025

The advice in the UK over teachers and AI is baffling to me

Interesting Links for 10-06-2025

Interesting Links for 09-06-2025

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Photo cross-post

Interesting Links for 07-06-2025

The Sickening Has Me

History Repeating Itself (Labour and ID cards edition)

Interesting Links for 06-06-2025

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Photo cross-post

Interesting Links for 03-06-2025

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Some thoughts on the UK and immigration

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August 2018

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