JB

technology. change. vfm. tweets are my personal views.

[JB @buckmoy]

@RichardDawkins @Glinner I think a root cause is people wanting to be polite when in a group. Decisions made this way “what I expect the group wants” - each person amplifying a signal which is much quieter in reality than the outcome suggests

[JB @buckmoy]

@FynnMinkus Interesting. What proportion of CMXTs valuation is now down to that IP would you say? Or is that an impossible question a decade and a half on from the acquisition

[JB @buckmoy]

@AdamBarryGreen @thesundaysport The way I rationalise it… It’s about getting about 10 years ahead of people that would otherwise cost us more money (defence budget, asylum costs). Sensible logic unless channelled into trans marsupial projects

[JB @buckmoy]

@horrormuseum @albellisimo I prefer to think it was Chris Morris, Charlie Brooker and a couple of the cast getting busier

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

THE FIVE TESTS

For weeks I've argued that this party, and this country, needs a proper debate about where we go next. Not a reshuffle. Not a few degrees of course correction. The big, difficult, honest choices we've spent thirty years avoiding.

A few people have asked me what that debate should actually be about. Fair enough. I spent 24 years in the Marines and two in government, and I resigned because I couldn't win the argument I believed in from the inside. So let me make it here, plainly.

This isn't a manifesto, but a set of five tests. Anyone asking to lead our country should be able to look down this list and say yes to all five.

1️⃣ ⁠The Frontline Test
Do we give the people on the frontline the kit they need to do the job, and stand by them when the job is done?

I joined the Marines at 18. I've buried friends. So I do take this one personally.

I sat in government and watched us write a defence plan for a world that no longer exists, discussed in rooms I was kept out of. A 100k drone is now sinking warships that cost a billion. That is the reality of the wars being fought right now.

Passing this means 3% of GDP as the floor, not the ceiling. Buying for the next war, not the last. And fixing the Legacy Act so blokes in their seventies aren't back in the dock for what they were cleared of decades ago.

2️⃣ The Next-Generation Test
Are we handing the next generation a better deal than the one we inherited, or a worse one?

I'm a lad from a tough part of Aberdeen. My mum raised five of us through some bleak years. The only reason I got out was because I was given an opportunity. That cannot be said for young people today.

Nearly a million young people, around one in eight, are now outside work, education or training. That isn't their failure. It's ours.

Fixing this means a NEETs and youth unemployment target with a date, the youth guarantee delivered not just announced. Restoring the link between work and a decent life for the under 30s, on housing, wages and opportunity. Skills and apprenticeship numbers that beat the last government, not just match it.

Talent is everywhere in this country. Opportunity isn't. Fix that and you fix half of everything else...

3️⃣ ⁠The Trillion-Pound Test
Is the plan to add a trillion pounds to what Britain earns, or to manage the decline more politely?

Here's the lesson I learned from Ukraine and in government, and it never changes. We invent things. Other countries build them. Other countries decide. We're brilliant at the first mile and absent for the next ninety nine.

So set a target and be judged on it. A trillion pounds added to our GDP within a decade. Yes, it's ambitious. We should be ambitious!

Getting there means backing the high tech inventors just as much as the high street traders. Your local coffee shop shouldn't be paying more tax per cappuccino than Starbucks does. So why on earth do they?

It means an industrial strategy worth the name. Things to make and things to sell, in Barrow, in Derby, in every region. Our industrial base is national security, so we should fund it like it.

And it means building the chips and the compute here, not inventing the breakthrough and watching someone else scale it. Data is the new gunpowder.

4️⃣ The 10% Test
Can we make the country work 10% better, instead of only ever asking for 10% more?

I saw this from the inside. We patch the symptom this year, but the bill grows next year, and we end up paying for failure at the most expensive end of every system.

A 10% improvement in outcomes across a handful of our biggest problems, ill health, reoffending, wasted potential, would free up somewhere between £40 and £60 billion a year. We're already paying those costs. We just pay them too late, when they're at their worst.

Passing this means investing early instead of paying far more later, and having the honesty to admit that not every pound we spend today delivers an immediate return.

5️⃣ ⁠The Lights-On Test
Does our energy policy keep the lights on, the bills down and factories open, or do we keep chasing a target and hope the rest sorts itself out?

For years we've treated net zero as the only goal, and everything else, your bill, our industry, whether the grid even stays up, as a problem for later. That’s the wrong way around.

Make energy security the goal. Power that people, businesses, and industry can afford, and a grid that stays on when someone tries to switch it off. Do that and net zero follows. Chase the target on its own, and you end up with neither.

Passing this means a serious baseload, nuclear and the North Sea, built in time to matter. Strong countries have cheap, secure energy. Weak countries don't.

None of this is complicated. It's the oldest deal there is. You serve the country, the country stands by you. In uniform, in a hospital, in a classroom, on a building site. Right now that deal is broken, and everyone keeping our country going can feel it.

That broken deal is the real reason for the frustration out there. It's why trust has drained out of politics. And it's why our party that won a landslide is, halfway through the term, already arguing about who leads it.

But changing the person at the top fixes nothing if we don't fix the deal underneath. Swap one leader for another and leave the deal broken, and we'll be right back here in eighteen months, asking the same question all over again.

So I'm not interested in who gets what job. I'm interested in whether we've got the courage to pass these tests.

We've been promised a debate. This is my opening offer to it. And if that debate ever becomes a contest, it should be fought on this ground, not on personalities.

I know where I stand.

[Paul Powlesland @paulpowlesland]

This is the worst “strong support” I’ve ever received.

However, the malevolent uselessness of @EnvAgency is not limited to the recent incident on the Aldersbrook. Over the last 10 years I have been battling, along with hundreds of dedicated local volunteers, to protect & restore the River Roding against all the odds. The Environment Agency has not lifted a finger to help in these actions & indeed has often been a blocker to our work on the river.

Here’s some examples of the “strong support” we’ve received from the Environment Agency over the years… 🧵

[How To Prompt @HowToPrompt__]

A toothpaste company has quietly killed the entire market research industry and nobody is talking about it.

Colgate published a paper showing you can predict real purchase intent at 90% accuracy by simply asking LLMs to roleplay customers.

And this is beyond insane.

If you ask an AI, "Rate this product from 1 to 5," it gives safe, middle-of-the-road garbage.

So researchers invented a method called Semantic Similarity Rating (SSR).

Instead of asking the AI for a number, they asked it to roleplay.

They gave the LLM a demographic profile. They showed it a product concept. And they asked it to write down its raw, unfiltered thoughts.

Then, they used a semantic model to translate those written thoughts into a numerical score.

The results are staggering.

Tested against 57 real corporate surveys and 9,300 actual human responses, the synthetic AI consumers matched real human buying behavior with 90% reliability.

They perfectly mirrored how different age brackets and income levels react to price changes.

And they provided detailed, qualitative feedback that was deeper and more critical than what actual humans wrote.

This destroys the economics of traditional market research.

You don't need to wait a month to see if a product will sell.

You can simulate 1,000 hyper-targeted customer interviews overnight.

You can A/B test pricing across every demographic instantly.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

I wonder if in retrospect it will turn out to be one of those very important accidents of history that we got the EU, with its culture of regulation, at about the same time (on a historical scale) as we got AI.

[JB @buckmoy]

@RaeKopaka “Trip hop”.

[JB @buckmoy]

@gavinski_s @nubient Their best since Geogaddi and time will tell it might even be better. I’m delighted that despite the weight (and wait) of expectation they still felt they could be playful.

[JB @buckmoy]

@DadRockDefender No it’s very good

[JB @buckmoy]

@DrewDisneyDude They had better not change the music

[JB @buckmoy]

@brucefenton Tax flex: HQ was in Clonakilty, Ireland. Also home to the best black pudding available anywhere on the planet.

[JB @buckmoy]

@elonmusk @teslayoda

[JB @buckmoy]

Fascinating. What is the root cause of this attitude? What is it reinforced by?

[camilo @AscendedYield]

the general public overestimate the margins businesses make

[JB @buckmoy]

@DaftLimmy Charles DaWean

[JB @buckmoy]

@DaftLimmy Let’s put an end to this once and for all then

[JB @buckmoy]

@bitfunded .

[JB @buckmoy]

@rickygervais @chippychop_ Get a guide dog then

[JB @buckmoy]

@roisinmurphy the Kind Bureaucracy will dictate what you must accept