Linkage

Neural nets are typically trained by “supervised learning”. So they’re presented with many examples of an input and the desired output, and then gradually the connection weights are adjusted until the network “learns” to produce the desired output.

To learn a language task, a neural net may be presented with a sentence one word at a time, and will slowly learns to predict the next word in the sequence.

This is very different from how humans typically learn. Most human learning is “unsupervised”, which means we’re not explicitly told what the “right” response is for a given stimulus. We have to work this out ourselves. 

While negative gearing gets all the hate, it really was John Howard who destroyed our housing market by handing out a big tax-free gift to property investors.

Prior to June 2000, if you made a capital gain (ie a profit from an investment) you discounted the profits by the level of inflation over the period of the investment before paying tax.

Then Howard (and Costello) changed it to being a straight 50% discount.

If you bought a property for $500,000 and 10 years later you’re able to sell it for $1m at a profit of $500,000, rather than pay tax on the whole $500,000, you only pay tax on $250,000. The other $250,000 is yours, tax free.

That is about as sweet as it gets.

[…]

At some point you have to admit what you’re doing has not worked. Or perhaps we need to admit that the aim all along was higher house prices.

Howard infamously said in 2003: “I don’t get people stopping me in the street and saying, ‘John you’re outrageous, under your government the value of my house has increased’.”

The tax policies he put in place worked. They ensured house prices would go up much faster than income and reduce affordability. Maybe it’s time to admit that if we keep them in place that situation will continue.

• In short: Data detailing the air quality at Melbourne's Southern Cross Station has been released for the first time.
• It shows nitrogen dioxide levels in parts of the station have regularly been more than 90 times the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.
• The Victorian government and the station's operator say they've been meeting Australian workplace standards.

My first budget day as a trader was in 2009. There was still a Labour government back then and Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown were adamant it was time to tax bankers’ bonuses. I was a banker but a very poor, very young one. Around that time I slept on a broken mattress and used a little plastic hose from Argos to take showers while sitting in the bath.

I was worried. But I turned round to Billy, and Billy wasn’t worried. He was laughing. He was leaning back, pointing at me, and laughing. He stood up and grabbed me hard by the shoulders. “Don’t worry, Gal. They’ll never tax us,” he said.

Organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and protest groups such as Palestine Action are among those that could be affected by the non-statutory move to block groups from funding or accessing venues if they are regarded as promoting an ideology that undermines “British values”. The plan was reported by the Observer last year.

A minister said on Tuesday that he would not be happy if, for example, gender-critical feminists were labelled as extremists by a change of government policy.

The trade minister Greg Hands told Times Radio that the prime minister had talked about taking on extremism and the government needed to work on definitions.

“The communities secretary, Michael Gove, is doing that right now. More work is being done. But obviously we need to target real extremism and not just a difference of views, honestly held views about these things,” he added.

A remarkable body of research over many years has demonstrated that the sort of teaching in which students are provided with answers or shown the correct way to do something — where they’re basically seen as empty receptacles to be filled with facts or skills — tends to be much less effective than some variant of student-centered learning that involves inquiry or discovery, in which students play an active role in constructing meaning for themselves and with one another.

[…]

Now put yourself in the place of one of those hard-liners who want teachers to remain the center of gravity in the classroom, disgorging information. How might you circle the wagons despite all the research that undercuts your position? Even more audaciously, how could you try to get away with saying DI is “evidence-based” or supported by the “science of learning” — a favorite rhetorical gambit of traditionalists?

To the rescue comes an idea called cognitive load theory (CLT). This concept, primarily associated with an Australian educational psychologist named John Sweller, basically holds that trying to figure things out for yourself uses up so much working memory that too little is left to move whatever has been learned into long-term memory. It’s therefore more efficient for the teacher just to show students problems that have already been worked out correctly or provide them with “process sheets” that list step-by-step instructions for producing the right answer. (Imagine Jack Nicholson as the cognitive load theorist, hollering at students, “Inquiry? Your brain can’t handle inquiry!”)

Today, the FTC and Department of Justice took action to fight algorithmic collusion in the residential housing market. The agencies filed a joint legal brief explaining that price fixing through an algorithm is still price fixing. The brief highlights key aspects of competition law important for businesses in every industry: (1) you can’t use an algorithm to evade the law banning price-fixing agreements, and (2) an agreement to use shared pricing recommendations, lists, calculations, or algorithms can still be unlawful even where co-conspirators retain some pricing discretion or cheat on the agreement.

The agencies’ work in this space is especially important given rising residential housing rental prices. Rent is up nearly 20% since 2020, with the largest increases concentrated on lower- and middle-tier apartments rented by lower-income consumers. About half of renters now pay more than 30% of their income in rent and utilities, and rising shelter costs were responsible for over two-thirds of January inflation.

Meanwhile, landlords increasingly use algorithms to determine their prices, with landlords reportedly using software like “RENTMaximizer” and similar products to determine rents for tens of millions of apartments across the country.

We the undersigned, being Jewish, wish to support and join a complaint against the Metropolitan Police, for their racist and anti-Semitic assumption that all Britain’s Jews support Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.

We further believe that the decision of the Metropolitan, Police to delay the starting time of the March Against Genocide in Gaza on 17 Feb. 24 from 12.00 to 1.30 pm ‘to accommodate an event at a synagogue along the route’ is lslamophobic, based as it is on the assumption that the large numbers of Muslims taking part pose a threat to Jews worshipping in congregations nearby.

I can't help thinking that the author's desire to see "a sustainable Cloud" is misguided. What does "the Cloud" do? What's it for? Why do we need it?

To get at the matter of the Cloud we must unravel the coils of coaxial cables, fiber optic tubes, cellular towers, air conditioners, power distribution units, transformers, water pipes, computer servers, and more. We must attend to its material flows of electricity, water, air, heat, metals, minerals, and rare earth elements that undergird our digital lives. In this way, the Cloud is not only material, but is also an ecological force. As it continues to expand, its environmental impact increases, even as the engineers, technicians, and executives behind its infrastructures strive to balance profitability with sustainability. Nowhere is this dilemma more visible than in the walls of the infrastructures where the content of the Cloud lives: the factory-libraries where data is stored and computational power is pooled to keep our cloud applications afloat.

As always, the cruelty is the point:

Christian nationalism has provide little in terms of tangible benefits for the the group from which it draws its support, while seeking to erode the rights and status of almost everyone else. The losers under Christian nationalism will be the targets of White reactionary politics. Again, from Perry:

"Religious, racial, and sexual minorities lose as their very existence (not to mention their cultural and political influence) is publicly demonized and perhaps in some cases curtailed. Working class White Americans (even the Christian ones) exchange the possibility of a better economic future for the false promise that some mythical Christian heritage and values will be preserved."

Second, there are some areas where Trump has delivered, such as on abortion access, that provide guidance to what he will do in a second term. Judges appointed by Trump are primed to present to SCOTUS cases that allow them to push the boundaries of Christian nationalist values. More such judges, more cases, offered to a SCOTUS supermajority that no longer feels the need to find a middle ground on these issues.

Third, Trump’s approach to governance will be more sophisticated in a second term. He has a blueprint for governing that bears the imprint of supporters who are open about the goal of imposing Christian nationalist values. This includes familiar areas such as immigration, and education. Trump lawyers committed to a Christian nationalist agenda will operate in concert with their judicial brethren. The Alabama IVF decision rested on an 1872 law. Trump allies plan to leverage the 1873 Comstock Act to prevent the distribution of abortion medication. The1872 Alabama law was about civil lawsuits for wrongful death of children, and the Comstock Act is about the shipping of obscene materials. But sufficiently motivated Christian nationalist lawyers are happy to explain how each law prohibits the use of technologies that would not be invented for a century.