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It's all Litespeed's fault. He mentioned Abbott on page one, and that was enough to send Nev into his usual rants. DO NOT mention anything other than Ukraine reports in this thread. If you must, start a new topic.

Agent Provocateur Litespeed at your service. Clandestine operations by appointment.

This one has been seen before, but worth a rerun.

I was going through some old images on a hard drive, and on today of all days, I came across this.

So, it has come to pass. Back in 1968, I was an apprentice TIT. One of a hole bunch of TITs. We watched in awe as our instructor held aloft a beautiful object about the size of an A4 page. It was a maze of fine golden wires in a matrix of tiny ferrite toroid rings. "This" he proclaimed, "is a matrix memory. It holds a thousand bits of data for a computer. It was made last year and today is obsolete. At the present rate of development, in a few years we will see computers so smart that they can develop their own programmes!" So I have seen the original Matrix. It took a bit longer for it all to happen, but it has come to pass. OME, never fear, all those redundant coders will soon be free from enslavement.

Claude.io from Anthropic is considered the bee's knees for coind. They have just released Mythos, it's next gen.. except they haven't released it to the general public. Apparently, without specific training, it identified zero day and other vulnerabilities. It is claimed to exceed the capability of all but the best developers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/04/08/what-is-claude-mythos-and-why-anthropic-wont-let-anyone-use-it/ The software development industry is already being turned on its head. I used claude.io to quickly develop a prototype app that is fully industrlalised (i.e. uses all the correct data, application, user iunterface, security, distributed, and scaling techniques, complete with application and server health monitoring and the like). On the free version, it took my about two months because they have much stricter usage limits than ChapGpt. But, it was exceptionally well written code - and I didn't have to tell it what technoogy to use.. I basically said this is what I need, and it did the rest. Many companies are turning to AI.. a lot of Intergrated Development Environments (IDE's), which are th programs where you write code, debug, ibuild, etc, have AI already integrated. However, Claude is next level stuff already. Mythos basically will make the software development industry almost entirely automated. We are currently hiring a lot of software developers for a big new program of work - it is huge. I won't go into numbers, but from about September/October last year, I have increased my analysts fby a factor of 10. We have been hirign developers (we already have a reasonable number) - looking quadruple our developer count. Despite it being a buyers market, we are finding ti tough to find quality candidates and we are paying decent rates for London. So, I will be proposing to our AI team adopting an AI dev tool for our project. We have to deliver a shed load in a year, which is why we are looking to hire an army of people. But, for literally a few hundre dollars per user per month, we can get exceptional throughput. And here's the interesting thing: It can write the code and a separate AI bot will review the code and suggest improvements. If they are accepted, the improvements are fed back intoi the code writing bot as well. So, what does this do to the industry? It doesn't kill it entirely... The first thing I predict will be a virtual removal of programming languages.. Of you think about it, programming was originally writing a bunch of 1's and 0's in a specific way and took an eternity. And then, Assembler/Assembly (depending on which side of the tracks you were born) was developed as a human readable extraction of the CPU instructions. You had to learn Assmbler for each processor family (and sometimes individual chips). That saved a lot of time compared to the binary coding and the instruction set was somewhat standardised for standard operations. This is effectively a second generation language. Then came 3GLs - these were BASIC. fortran, COBOL, C, and these days Java, C#, Python and the like. They are general purpose langiages that are feature rich and provide a programmer all of the control needed, but the difference is that the language applied to any computer (wlell, almost).. as a compiler or interpreter to convert that code to binary code (executable code). So, in theory, if I wrote a COBOL program on an IBM Mainframe, it would compile and run on a PC with a COBOL compiler. The truth is there are extensions and platform specific functions. Although, Java, C# and Python have fixed that by being interpretative, and the use standard library extensions. 4GLs made a relatively brief appearance, in that they were higher level 3GLs - an attempt to make programming more English like and democratise development to the users. Ironically, langiages like Python, which are modern 3GLs have done more for that than the 4GLs. There are 5GLs, but they are largely obscure. But AI - especially such as Claude will, IMHO, replace computer languages as we know it. They will become English (or other human language) builders. At the moment, they are code generators.. I asked Claude to develop my app using Java and specific frameworks (though it suggested some better ones than I requested, so I went with its suggestion). When it did create a bug, a quick prompt fixed it. The article above talks about usign humans for reviewing the code, but I would suggest once there is critical mass of confidence in the technology, code will no longer be required. For example, you have your series of prompts to build an application. Claude (or other AIs) can generate the executable (or interpretive bytcode, a sort of executable) direct - no production of human readable code required. It will be tested and if it works, it can be deployed; if not, adjust the prompt, rebuild and retest. Back to my team; about 1/2 of my analysts are ex developers/software engineers - like myself. We have very good business domain knowledge and reasonably good, if outdated software development knowledge. My idea is that we are given a system architecutre (data lake, data frameworks, service platform, user interface platforms - e.g. desktop, tablet, phone), asd we start crafting the prompts to build the system. The first will be the data model, of which there are industry standards we can tweak. I would suggest we will have the data model done, say, in two days. We can use AI to populate the database and then write tests to ensure it works property. Say 2 - 3 days. Within 5 days I can have something that would take as maybe a month to get what we think is right and would probably take 2 analysts and some database admin support. The I can start building the individual functional services asnd UI, as well as integration to other systems. Let's say 2 months to build, system test, performance test, and have the users acceptance test it. The it is a deploy to the production environment. In fact, we could easily automate the testing, as well as for updates, any regression testing. Say add 2 months, maybe with a lead tester/QA person, an architect part time, a senior dev part time to review stuff, and maybe a database administrator part time. Otyherwise we would use analysts - probably between 3 and 5 because of the number of functions we have to deliver. And the best thing is, even if it produces spaghetti code (which it doesn't), I don't care, because what is important to me is the promtps that build the system. And you don't need to be a linguist or an expert in the coding or the specific language, database, user interface technology to use it. In fact, in my little home experiment, Clause inferred much of what it had to do without me needing to even hont at it. As I said, I can't give you exact numbers, but our non-AI plans are close to 100 people all up, with a minimum viable product at about a year, and then the full enchilada in two years.. and there will still be kinks to iron out, performance issues, regressions in releases, etc. But with maybe 5 analysts and a smattering of other support, I cam have the whole enchilada within 6 months. Now work out the man days. In the UK, there are about 220 working days for professionals.. 100-ish people * 220 days * 2 years = 44,000 working days. And my business has a cost of using manual processes and elevated operational controls from day 1, but reducing as more is delivered over a two year period. Now I have, say all my staff in an AI world on it full time (which I doubt, but let's go with it) = 110 days * 9 (5 analysts, 1 developer, 1 QA, 1 DBA, 1 Architect): 990 days. Assume $1000/Day per person. Without AI, $44m; With AI: $990,000. Assume $500/mo per user (that is what a company a friend of mine is paying Anthropic for Claude): $27,000 gives a total with AI of $1,017,000. Even if I am really, really optimistic, and we quadruple the estimates, that is $4,068,000, noit quite 10% of the costs of doing it the old way. It is going to be a bumpy ride, but in theory, all services should get cheaper once widespread AI adoption kicks in.

Engine block is best because it bypasses the cable from negative battery to starter motor.

If they are so good(and I love pumped hydro) Why aren't they building more. Ireland has one that fills up at night with coal and then runs with coal during the day. That runs well. Turlogh hill I think. You are right there are other spots around the east coast of Australia, doesn't do the rest of us much good. You think they would have had some geologists and engineers that would have allowed for hitting rock when boring through a mountain in the initial price. I think they under quoted so they could get started and then slug the government more money later on. bet that has never been done before!! Same ting is happening with a lot of transmission projects https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/transgrid-inflated-cost-of-running-power-line-underground-farmers-20230718-p5dp2o https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-01/energy-transmission-project-billion-blowout/104983108

Yes, I remember stamps with Magyar from my childhood stamp-collecting phase. According to AI: Magyar is a relatively common surname in Hungary, acting as an ethnic name that means "Hungarian". It is frequently found across the country, particularly in regions with mixed historical ethnicity. As a surname, it is sometimes the result of historical "Magyarization," where families changed foreign-sounding names to more patriotic ones. Key Facts About the Name "Magyar" Meaning: The word magyar is the autonym for Hungarians and means "Hungarian". Origin: The name stems from the ancient Megyer tribe, which was a dominant clan among the Hungarian tribes in the 9th century. Commonality: It is a common surname in Hungary. Related Names: Similar to other ethnic surnames in Hungary, such as Horváth (Croat) or Német (German). Distribution: Data shows high concentrations of individuals with the surname Magyar in areas like Budapest and regional centers such as Hajdúszoboszló and Kecskemét. While it means "Hungarian," it is important to note that the country itself is called Magyarország (literally "Land of the Magyars") by its inhabitants.

Is it all about nulear capability, or is that the magician's diversion from the real reason - profiting from the oil that the USA has under its own land? This video raises that question. The presenter is pretty level-headed and fair. I suggest that you hear what he says and then form your opinion one way or the other. The idea presented heremakes more sense, based on what we know of the economic behaviour of the USA for over 100 years, than political or military security reasons.

Pumped hydro is not really electricty generation, just shifts the time. Also looks like it can be quite expensive. Snowy2 quoted at $4B, currently at $12B and talking $20B and they reckon nuclear goes over budget! Apart from the alpine regions Australia hasn't really got the climate as the water has to come from somewhere still unless you use sea water. Only one I know of and that is in Japan(Kunigami, Okinawa) and I don't think it is currently being used. Priced up one in SA but looks like there wasn't enough money in it. see attached. Tidal is still a young technology although people have been looking at it for years. salt water and machinery don't mix. One sunk off the coast of SA a few years ago when it was being towed to position. Australia's good geothermal area is a long way from anywhere so transmission is an issue. Also has been looked at for years but not much happening. (Petratherm been at it for years) No one has with a GW size grid, successfully got close to net 0 unless they have a heap of traditional hydro(Norway), accessible geothermal(Iceland), Nuclear(France ) , generous neibours(Lithuania) or a mixture of these(Sweden, New Zealand) Comments welcome😁 See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/cultana-pumped-hydro-energy-storage-project-phase-2/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-11/works-finally-begin-to-partially-remove-carrickalinga-oceanlinx/13237328

On the ABC radio yesterday there was a representative of a company speakng about their trailer auxillary drive product they are marketing. It drives the front axle of the trailer tri (or bogey) and increases the truck horsepower by about 400, so roughly doubles the total horsepower. Depending on battery size, it can weigh up to three tonnes, so that much payload is lost. He was saying it's a good or even better alternative to a full electric truck which has certain problems having that extra weight of the propulsion system on the drive of the prime mover. I'm assuming it would be easy to shut off at any time from the driver's position. I don't know what it has in the way of safety overrides, like switching off in a heavy braking situation. Having driven semis and road trains at times throughout life, I'm trying to visualise what it would be like to drive. I'd say it's best application would be on a straight uphill pull, second to that, long flat straights. I can see some road situations where it would have to be switched off. It sounds like a good concept, but would all depend on initial setup cost and permanent loss of payload vs savings in running costs. Theoretically it should extend engine life as well, so long term overhaul or engine replacement costs would be reduced.

BTW, Back in 1968 my apprenticeship was called, "Technician-In-Training". Which made us a whole class of new TITs.

Sounds like teh AI you describe will put half the population of Asia out of work.

Technology is posing a serious challenge to the megalithic Merdok empire. I stumbled across something new (to me). “Pink slime” journalism. It is named after a meat byproduct and describes outlets that publish poor quality reports that appear to be local news. ProPublica, CJR, Margaret Sullivan (then at the Post), Jane Mayer, and many others have written urgently about the dangers of pink slime, but it’s still not a widely-known term. Seems there are thousands of pink slime fake news websites in the U.S. More than there are local news outlets. Pink slime content overwhelmingly has a conservative partisan slant. Most of the known major pink slime networks are funded by right-wing dark money groups and billionaires. I notice that sometimes when I websearch a suspect news item, I sometimes get copy-&-paste repeats on a news outlet that I didn't know existed.

Just about every thread has drifts about 'The Media.' So I thought we should have a thread just for News, Etc.

Sorry about that. Thread drift is my specialty. I promise I'll stick to one depressing thought at a time.....

Isn't that the basis of my post about the intention? I have no doubt about this. But that doen't, IMHO, change the fact that oil is the primary interest of the US, and Israel in this case is a smokescreen. I am not suggesting Chump is even driving it.. he may well be a puppet. The empire is in decline alright; the fall of Rome comes to mind. They won't go bankrupt for some time; and it is doubtful they ever will. The UK would have defaulted on its debt in 1976 but got an IMF or similar loan to keep it afloat. This was because of a sharp drop in teh £, but that was caused because of a banana republic type economy at the time. I think it is fair to say the UK never really recoverd and the EU gave it a bit of a lifeline. The US is likely to go the same way. From a credit risk perspective, a country can never go broke. It can continue to print its way out of problems, which will compound its internal economic woes; if they have debt denoted in a foreign currency they ahve to print more and accept hyperflation; if it is in their currency, their creditors get less. In credit risk, we treat each sovereign country as a going concern. We attache a CLR - Country Legal Rating; this means that we determine a ranking of how much they conform to the law. The US (even under Chump), the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, most of western Europe and some of the central/eastern European countries all rank 1 (highest). Whilst their credit ratings will move, they are generally considered almost risk free (techncally the US is risk free, but that may change) in the sense that even if they default in their payments, you do eventually get it back with the back interest paid; it costs you to fnd the difference of the duration, though.

I didn't realise Kharg Island (red pin) was almost 850 km from the Strait of Hormuz.

Forestry company parks electric truck despite spike in diesel prices sounds like it was a conversion.

Nahhh, we pay for it all. The Gov has no money, only our money. And eh, they grab and just blow to actually, more of it than just about any other country in the world too. But yet you wanna just go see how some other gov's look after their people and their country and what their country can do, yet their people are only paying half what we do.