"The Ukraine" is offensive, please refrain from using it. Wikipedia covers some of the history behind the use of the definite article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine#English_defini...
1,776 karma · joined September 30, 2014
Russia does have resources, it has the desire, and importantly the state it depends on (China) has a very strong motivation to have Nato distracted when it acts on its plans for Taiwan.
Previously, we always had the output of office work tightly associated with the accountability that the output implies. Since the output is visible and measurable, but accountability isn't, when it became possible to generate plausible-looking professional output, most people assumed that that's all there is to the work.
We're about to discover that an LLM can't be chastened or fired for negligence.
I will just link instead of re-typing the same points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44711336
It's not a Labour Party's action, the deadline was written into the act two years ago.
If your preferred cause is not cutting through in that way, it's worth asking what's different about the cause.
> It is high time the government took action, by which I do not mean passing the Online Safety Bill, an approach that is like putting a new filter in the opium pipe.
Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the article flaunt what they are, their first posts after the blackout are about Israel.
[0]: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...
Study visas do not have a pathway to settlement. Students paying through the nose for the privilege of staying for a few years to study and then leaving (or getting work visas like everyone else) is hardly a bad thing.
Any stats showing uniquely high propensity for violence?
> uneducated
Any stats here?
> incompatible with your culture
Any data here? My MP is not white and was granted asylum, what incompatibility are you talking about precisely?
> illegal immigrants
People seeking asylum aren't yet illegal, the legality of their stay is decided when their case is heard.
The reality is that travelling over multiple countries and crossing the channel just to claim asylum in a country someone wants to be in requires a ton of determination, bravery, and desire to improve one's life. Way more bravery than anonymously spreading xenophobia online.
It's not just emergent disconnection, there are many documented cases ([1][2][3] etc) of nation states trying to sow division and fear. The impression that you got is a good example of them succeeding.
[1]: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...
[2]: https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/new-whitepaper-telling-c...
Take this law: it's not new, it was passed in 2023 by the previous government. The law had a two year deadline attached to it, and companies didn't introduce any restriction before the deadline. The new government has a lot on its plate, so it's hardly surprising that repealing a law that was already passed with little attention to it was not high on the list of priorities compared to things like not defaulting or unblocking planning permissions. And yet, twitter and other places are full of very loud voices describing the law as new and designed to oppress them now, even though the deadline was set two years ago.
On a more general note, we have our problems, but the UK is in a pretty good place. Sam Freedman covered some bases in his recent post [1] (crime is down, the economy is struggling but improving, etc), but I'll add some more:
* We're probably the least racist, most integrated society in the world. The leader of the opposition is a black woman and first generation immigrant [2]. When Rishi Sunak became a PM, his race wasn't brought up once in any media, including very right wing; compare and contrast with all the bullshit about Obama and his birth certificate dog whistles.
* First time in years we're reducing the backlog of asylum applications. People applying for asylum can't work because they haven't proved their status yet, so naturally they need to be looked after. All the noise you hear is caused entirely by the conservative party defunding and then outright pausing application processing. This means that people looking for asylum had to live in limbo for years, which caused multiple problems. No backlog, no problems.
* We punch WAY above our weight in arts and theatre, and the industry is flourishing. Ever noticed how overrepresented British actors are in Hollywood?
* Compared to our main ally overseas, we have a very effective parliament. The executive is kept in check even with the very large majority Labour has now, and the Lords proved their worth during Brexit, putting brakes at the worst impulses of the previous government.
* We largely preserved our core military capabilities and alliances over the decade of austerity, slowly repairing, recovering, and expanding now. We're a major partner on nuclear programs, tier-1 partner on F-35, AUCUS is happening, we do a lot in Ukraine, and we're one of the only two nuclear countries in Europe and just signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with France.
* We are helping people in Hong-Kong, Ukraine, and Afghanistan with targeted immigration programs.
* We're rolling back anti-nuclear nonsense, building two large NPPs, and deployed wind generation at a massive scale.
* A bunch of important reforms are going through the parliament [3], from enhancing renters right to a YIMBY reform.
But very little of that filters into online environments. The most unhinged, xenophobic, paranoid voices get amplified, creating the impression that you cited, even though it can't be further from truth.
Britain is a beautiful country, open to the world, with a globe-spanning network of alliances and relationships, and an incredibly resilient democracy. We should do SO MUCH MORE, yes! But it doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate where we are now, too.
[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3luwmp2vpd62...
[2]: she was technically born in Britain, but she and her mother returned to Nigeria very soon after her birth
- how much design work was put into it. So many of it, from little bits and bobs (an awning, an electric socket, a doorframe), to the overall layout are unique to the area they are in and aren't copy-pasted elsewhere! It creates a coherent, but varying ensamble that is vibrant and alive, and is not just a grid of repeated elements.
- relatedly, how deeply organic the maze of the Barbican is. Contrast the raw concrete of the Barbican with the flowing lines of the Walkie-Talkie: one has an organic and smooth shape, but is really a 3D grid of repeated blocks; the other is made entirely of exposed raw concrete, but you never know what you will see around a corner. In this sense, the Barbican is more organic than most modern architecture. It's a place of wonder and surprise.
I love the Barbican.
On the one hand, the tech is impressive, and the demo is nicely done.
On the other, I think the demo completely misses the point. There's a disconnect between what learners need to learn and what this model optimises for, and it's probably largely explainable by how difficult (maybe even impossible) getting training datasets is. That, and marketing.
I believe most learners optimise for two things: being understood [1] and not being grating to the ear [2]. Both goals hinge on acquiring the right set of phonemes and phonetic "tools", because the sets of meaningfully distinct sounds (phonemes) and "tools" rarely match between languages.
For example, most (all?) Slavic languages have way fewer meaningfully distinct vowels than English. Meaningfully distinct is the crucial part. Russian word "молоко" as it's most often pronounced has three different vowels, at least two of which would be distinct to an English speaker, but Russian speakers hear that as one-ish vowel. And I mean "hear it": it's not a conscious phenomenon! Phoneme recognition is completely subconscious, so unless specifically trained, people often don't hear the difference between sounds that are obviously different to people who speak that language natively [3].
Same goes for phonetic "tools". English speakers shorten vowels when followed by non-voiced consonants, which makes "heart" and "hard" distinguishable even when t/d are transformed into the same sound (glottal stop or a tap). This "tool" is not available in many languages, so people use it incorrectly and it sounds confusing.
So, how would ML models learn this mapping between sounds and phonemes, especially when it's non-local (like with the preceding vowel length)? It's relatively straightforward to find large sets of speech samples labelled with their speakers' backgrounds, but that's just sounds, not phonemes! There is very little signal showing which sound structures matter for humans listening to the sound and which don't. [4]
There's also a set of moral issues connected to the "target accent" approach. Teaching learners to acquire an accent that superficially sounds like whatever they chose as a "target" devalues all other accents, that are just as valid and are just as English, because they have the same phonetic system (phonemes + "tools"). It can also make people sound a bit cringe, which I saw first hand.
Ideally learners should learn phonetic systems, not superficial accents. That's what makes speech intelligible and natural, even if it's has an exotic flavour [5][6]. Systems like the one the company is building do the opposite. I guess they are easier to build and easier to sell.
[1]: On that path lies a nice surprise: being understood and understanding are two sides of the same medal, so learning how to be understood a language learner inevitably starts to understand better. Being able to hear the full set of phonemes is the key to both.
[2]: There's a vast, VAST difference between people not paying attention to how someone speaks and them not being able to tell that something's off when prompted.
[3]: Nice demonstration for non-Hindi speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7iUUp-cX8 When isolated and spoken slowly, the consonants might sound different, but in normal speech they sound practically indistinguishable to English speakers with no prior exposure. Native speakers would hear the difference as clear as you would in cap/cup!
[4]: Take their viral accent recognition demo. Anecdotally, among three non-native speakers with different backgrounds I talked to, the demo was guessing the mother tongue much better than native speakers, and it errors were different. This is a sign of the model learning to recognise the wrong things.
[5]: Ever noticed how films almost always cast native English speakers imitating non-English accents rather than people for whom that's their first language? That's why, English phonetic system with sprinkles of phonetic flavour is much more understandable.
[6]: By the way, Arnold Schwarzenegger understands this very well.
I guessed you meant that that one case proves something about air superiority or Iran having an advantage over USAF, so I responded with a historical parallel.
Air superiority alone doesn't, but it's a massive force multiplier.
F-35s has a much lower crash rate than F-16s during their first 20 years in service [2] and just recently passed 1 million flight hours [3]. The program has its problems, but it resulted in an incredibly capable fighter plane. Practically every US ally that has access to the F-35 run their evaluations and concluded that the F-35 is the best option (eg [4], quote: "F-35A offers highest overall benefit at lowest cost by far").
[1]: https://www.gao.gov/blog/f-35-will-now-exceed-2-trillion-mil...
[2]: https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/are-new-fighter-jets-more...
[3]: https://theaviationist.com/2025/03/04/f-35-one-million-fligh...
[4]: https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas...
I don't think you can conclude that when neither of the belligerents has the capability. As Gulf War shows, training and capabilities (including stealth) do enable SEAD/DEAD to an extent that unlocks air superiority.