Derivative Fool

dfool.bsky.soc etc

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

Doesn’t need experts. The cost of building the average UK house has risen 50% in 5 years - half of which is tax and regulation. Strip those back, volumes will follow.

[Jardine Matheson Internationalist @emergenteffects]

The same fellow who negotiated the Chagos surrender is now being *directed* by the government to review election spending limits ahead of a possible election.

If this were happening in another country, we would sanction their officials.

[Liam @liam43102]

Grim reading from Chris Gibb on HS2. It’s hard to comprehend the £100bn spend and yet be faced with this potential outcome - slower journeys to Glasgow, fewer seats, no tilt, no kitchens, no room for growth. Do the public comprehend what a total disaster this project has been?

[Andrew Orlowski @AndrewOrlowski]

This is an interesting bit of news.

AISI are nominally public servants who are obliged to obey the Civil Service Code - this is a formal contract.

AISI are also a UK outpost of the Effective Altruism franchise, and joined in The Summer of Rogue AI™️

Now we learn that Jade Leung, the Prime Minister's official AI advisor, was funded by Sam Bankman-Fried, as were her colleagues at AISI. Because, of course they were.

[Derivative Fool @derivativefool]

@Mr_Andrew_Fox Run by Capita? War would be lost by the time the million volunteers had their third medical appeal for eczema

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

AI explainer for muggles:

AI in the hands of mortals = “The force”. Aka Magic. Craft.

AGI - intelligence beyond humanity’s understanding. This itself has the power to manifest in two forms. As the dark side (misanthropic) and the light side (anthropic). Entropy vs balance. Hell vs Heaven. Gwi ma vs light. Valar vs Sauron.

LLM scientists and labs = modern day Merlins who claim to know how to control the force. White wizards when they’re humanity aligned, dark-side practitioners when they’re not. Jedi vs Sith. Kpop demon hunters vs demons.

Alignment = which path you serve. Do you work to make the force aligned with humanity or anti humanity.

Lockdown = containment of the worst or best parts of the force. The Honmoon. The new Manhattan project. The neo Occult.

Sandbox - a genie in a bottle which only responds to the right master.

Using the kill switch = back to the dark ages. Forgetting. Reset. Starting again.

🤷‍♀️not a perfect explainer because I don’t personally think humanity’s optimal path is an either or equation. Or that the choices are necessarily binary.

Humanity flourishes, I think, when it finds a balance between all these forces. We are neither all perfect or all evil.

At the end of the day, too much openness and freedom can lead to chaos and entropic collapse.
Too much occultism, control and order (even if well intended) can lead to tyranny and Borg-like outcomes. Thus neither side is invulnerable from corruption. And when they do get corrupted they tend to require interventions from the other side to set them back on course.

⚖️

[TheLvivJournal @LvivJournal]

Remember in 2010, when "hero" of freedom of speech, Assange, said to a russian newspaper "We have [compromising materials] about Russia, about your government & businessmen, we will publish these materials soon." And then he mysteriously changed his mind & became comrade Assange?

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

In case anyone forgot who Julian Assange works for:

In 2016, Assange refused to publish a Russian military and intelligence dump on the Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas.

In 2012, Assange refused to publish a leak on a 2 billion euro transaction between the Syrian dictatorship and a Russian government bank.

[The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post]

Report: Al Jazeera has fired 24 journalists and staff members who worked for the network in the Gaza Strip, amid a lawsuit filed in the US accusing the Qatari broadcaster of providing support to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

https://t.co/1dWMhWmfFt

[Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 @bayraktar_1love]

A stunning shot of a Ukrainian F-16 pilot looking back at a jet-powered Shahed he had just shot down over Kyiv with his onboard cannon.

[🖤 Christine @christinelu]

A reminder that when you don’t push back on an authoritarian country’s bullshit claims, you get more bullshit.

[Mia @MiaAI_lab]

UPDATE: Qwen3.8-Flash for a single DGX Spark 🔥

- 117 tok/s prose & 180 tok/s code at 8 streams.
- Optional official Nvidia NVFP4.
- 24/7 auto-restart supervisor.
- Cached-token reporting in every response.
- Peak memory down from 101 to 91 GiB.
- LOTS of bugs were fixed.

This is still the BEST model to run on a single spark.

Full details below 👇

Get it here:
https://t.co/LG0I9PJKxI

[AG @AGHamilton29]

A few key revelations related to Gaza coverage in last few days:

- Almost all of the media in Gaza were in a Hamas-run WhatsApp group that dictated and coordinated coverage. Including contributors to major western news organizations.

- Al Jazeera fired 24 of their media members from Gaza for direct ties to terror groups

- Admission that anyone in Gaza who reported anything contrary to Hamas claims was likely to be killed by Hamas.

Almost all of the information that came out of Gaza was part of a coordinated disinformation campaign by the very people who started the war.

[Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板 @BaldingsWorld]

1. The deal gives the US much greater control over Greenland than it has ever had before and much in excess of what had been discussed publiclly anyway pre-blow up with Denmark 2. While I am sympathetic to the argument that Trump has harmed the relationship with Denmark and NATO I am going to give Trump a lot of leeway here. The reality is Denmark has no Navy of any size, they had not previously discussed this level of control, and NATO and Europe at large is only being dragged into taking security seriously kicking and screaming by the Trump administration threatening Europe in a variety of ways. Do I wish this could have been handled better and do I wish Europe would actually take security seriously? Sure. As they say....when angels govern. Here we are.

[C Schmitz @chrisschmitz]

The current activity of NATO is a clear indicator of a change in posture by NATO, and a very clear attempt at deterrence.

Let me explain:

IF! the current activities of NATO were related to "defending" against Russian Greyzone activities, it would actually be ineffective.
You do not stop sabotage by moving QRA to Latvia, sending rapid reaction forces to Gotland or shadowing every RU Ship and Submarine closeby.

This is where it gets interesting, when we ask "WHY THEN?".
The answer is very straightforward i believe. A kinetic reaction by NATO for specific "hybrid war/greyzone/green men/lost russian farmers" has now been priced in to be very likely necessary.

What we see now is NATO is preparing for a situation where Russia gets its nose bloodied by NATO and NOT back down. NATO indicates that the force posture to go "the whole nine yards" is already in place and active, and Russia should not make a mistake of thinking it can get away with anything.

The signal is: Russia, you need to be afraid of us, not the other way around.

[CEOInterviews.AI @CEOinterview]

Big Short investor Steve Eisman says the AI labs know they have no moats and are manufacturing a crisis to get regulation that hands them a duopoly

"I think this is all nonsense."

[ You think it's all nonsense? ]

"All nonsense. I think that there's something else completely going on here. ... What I think is happening is that token maxing is over. The open weight models are taking big market share. I think these companies are very nervous. They realize that there are no moats around their business whatsoever, and they're trying to manufacture a crisis that will create regulation, and that they think they can then manipulate to create the moats, to create the duopoly that they want."

[ Wow. ]

"That's what I think is going on."

"Honestly, I think this whole Terminator thing is garbage. That's for sure."

[Dominic Frisby @DominicFrisby]

The pound has lost ~40% of its purchasing power since 2020 (partly due to Covid money printing), so the number of UK millionaires “should” have increased to reflect the debasement and the increased money in circulation.

But the number of millionaires has actually declined by ~60% since 2021.

The wealth destruction taking place in this country is staggering.

The US is growing its number of millionaires at 1,200 per day meanwhile and over 1.6 million since 2020.

[Leah Goodridge @leahfrombklyn]

This grandma was in Tennessee minding her business. Never even been on a plane.

Police all the way in North Dakota used AI to catch a bank thief. It randomly suggested this lady. Feds arrested her. Had her in jail for SIX MONTHS before they dropped the charges.

She’s suing!

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

The head of Russia's propaganda apparatus celebrating Julian Assange's return. They don't even try to be subtle anymore.

[Derivative Fool @derivativefool]

@mfranz_on Its a tool for software and technical professionals.
With inflation its basically what audio and video editors spent on a high end mac for the last 20 yrs.