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I think the 200 number would be .. including the offshore and big city lawyers\finacial engineers to ensure no laws are followed and no tax is ever paid.

My wife and I had a good ride yesterday. Weather was absolutely magnificent so we went to Richmond via the lovely bends of Grasstree Hill. At one point, coming the other way were half a dozen bikes which I exchanged nods with (no waving in the twisty bits!) - but the last one in line was a police bike. We don't know if he'd pulled out and was about to book them, or if it was a training ride (although they didn't look like learners), or if it was just a bored cop who decided to have a bit of fun himself. We had lunch at Pooleys vineyard, then went via Tea Tree and Brighton back to Hobart. After a coffee with Kate's brother we headed home via Taroona, which is also a great road for bikes. Very enjoyable day.

AI is a bubble that will burst within a year or so. Every person using it for free, or paying $200 a month or whatever, is being subsidised by the billions (trillions) of dollars being speculated on the investment market. All the AI companies are running huge operating losses and are not disclosing their profit and balance sheets. At some stage the true cost of infrastructure, power, water etc has to be passed on to consumers. When we have to pay $2000 or $5000 a year each for our AI subscription guess what? We will realise that we don't need it so badly. The whole thing will crash.

You can see why Kushner married into the family. Just as crooked as the rest. I read today that a Russian oligarch close to Putin funded part of Donald Jr's wedding. Funny how all the evil scum are so cosy.

Yes - these models are being built by billionaire tech bros, as a cohort possibly the most amoral set of scoundrels as exists in the USA. They are completely detached from reality. They have no concept of how normal people live. This AI race is simply a game to them. Why do they care if their company "wins" this race? They already have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes.

My daughter moved into a house in Exeter yesterday with two others ahead of the start of the new academic year. I decided to use the bike to deliver some odds and sods and go for my first decent ride in a couple of months - after the best summer we have had for riding for ages. It was about an hour each way, country lanes and roads to the motorway and then through Exeter to her house. The ride on the motorway was relaxed, maintaining around 70mph. A few groups of bikes passed and we all waved to each other - excellent comradery amongst UK bikers. From the motorway, travelling to and through the main part of Exeter is a pain as it is single lane, busy and has buses. It is often little more than a traffic jam. But with the bike, filtering between the two oncoming lanes was a breeze. Cars move out of your way and when passing or facing oncoming wider vehicles (buses mainly), one just zips back in and everything is OK. Passed two police cars who waved as I went past. On the way back, the traffic was a little lighter and I was a little faster on the motorway. Weather was lovely - sunny, little wind, and about 18 degrees, although a little humid. I return the rental car today. And will go for a ride again after that. Still smiling. The dark blue was the route I took

Anyone who cares about the environment wants to STOP the building of data centres, so I'm not sure where you get your information.

Well the Pacific Ocean has had a historic quiet winter - regarding hurricanes. However there is now a very big patch of warm water making it's way across toward us. We'll see what that does to our weather. Meanwhile, at last there has been some improvement in tracking methane plumes coming from the 'natural' gas industry. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and has been ignored for too long. Burning gas might produce less CO2 but there is lots of methane escaping into the atmosphere before the gas gets burned. No wonder the place is warming up. Blaming cow farts looks like a convenient diversion from the gas industry. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/14/us-companies-methane-pollution-rankings

Replace "mosque" with "church", "kindergarten", or "my house" and would the tolerance be any greater?

True, but I was hoping for a more responsible group to manage it.

Who has tRumpy upset lately... apart from the Irish. This ex Rusky wrote him a open letter. Tis a pity it is lunger than donold's attention span. Hopefully someone will read it to him. https://www.ceedweb.ca/2025/08/19/eduard-topols-open-letter-to-donald-trump-why-putin-cannot-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ On August 11, 2025, Soviet-born writer and filmmaker Eduard Topol published an open letter addressed to former U.S. President Donald Trump. The letter, released by Kontinent, a Russian-language outlet in the United States. In it, Topol argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot stop the war in Ukraine, not because he does not want to, but because history shows that ending foreign wars has often triggered domestic unrest and even regime collapse in Russia. Below is the letter in full. Dear Mr. President! Dear Donald! As the author of fifty books and a dozen films about Russia, I consider myself entitled to inform you. You must know that he (Putin) cannot stop the war with Ukraine, even if you gift him your Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of your golf clubs. And not because he doesn’t want a break from war, but because he simply cannot. Because he knows Russian history not from Medinsky’s textbooks, but the real one: The return of Russian troops from Europe after the victory over Napoleon led to the anti-tsarist “Decembrist” uprising in 1825. Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War led to the 1905 Revolution. The desertion of a million Russian soldiers from the Russo-German front during World War I forced Emperor Nicholas II to abdicate and caused the February Revolution of 1917. The peace signed by Lenin with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to execute the entire royal family. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989 marked the beginning of the USSR’s collapse. Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and bring his troops home. Only the opportunity in May 1945 to keep almost his entire army in Europe as occupation forces helped Stalin avoid a postwar coup. That is why Putin dreams of occupying Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, Finland, Poland, etc., to keep his army far away from Moscow. He remembers how 525,000 soldiers returning from Afghanistan in 1989 turned into bandits—“Afghantsy”—who terrorized the entire population of the USSR. And he knows what will happen if one and a half million soldiers, trained to kill, loot, and rape professionally, return home from the Ukrainian front. The war with Ukraine has allowed Putin to get rid of two million of the most active opponents of his regime, whom he forced to flee Russia, while the rest of the young Russian men he either drove to the front or recruited into punitive services. Today, any war—against Ukraine, the Baltics, NATO, anyone at all—is the best way to enforce Russia’s obedience to Putin and his junta. Unfortunately, none of your advisers will explain this to you before your meeting with Putin, but you can check my arguments with Jack Matlock and Michael McFaul. I do not want Putin—a KGB man, a thief, and a murderer of millions—to keep brazenly deceiving you, lying, and misleading my President. Of course, I am not a military expert or political scientist, but I am a writer with a good memory. I remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II managed to push oil prices down to $9 per barrel, gave the Afghans “Stingers,” and thereby stopped Moscow’s takeover of Afghanistan and destroyed the USSR. If you want to stop Putin and the imperial ambitions of at least half of Russia’s population, you need to do the same—bring oil prices down to at least $25 per barrel and give Ukraine the weapons that will help it crush the aggressor. As for your desire to establish U.S.-Russian business partnerships, not in words but in reality, this could happen in a hundred years—or never at all. If you are interested in why, call me and I will explain. Respectfully, EDUARD TOPOL, citizen of the U.S. and Israel

Yes.. but by my paralleing AI to guns, regulation is required to force it to slow down. However, emerging news is: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/sam-altman-elon-musk-ai-safety-concerns-b3049217.html Which basically says there is a need to slow down. The other problem is you have China and no doubt Russia and other non-aligned countries who will not slow down any time soon.. so, again in an analogy of weapons, you're only as strong as the effectiveness of what you've got. There has to be some sort of verifiable global non-proliferation agreement. Ultimately, like everything else in a free market, it takes government regulation to manage the risks.

Isn't it weird how we have flashbacks. Just now, I recalled a evening catching the number 5 tram from work when I was about 24 or 25 - so 35 years ago. It was the old W Class tram (I loved them even after the orange ones came out to replace them). On board was a conductor. Remember them? He had is brown uniform and beige-ish shirt on, with the old leather bag housing the ticket machine. He has dishevelled with thick dark brown hair, an unkempt beard but not too long. His skin was pale, and his eyebrows were thick - almost John Howard thick. I was the only pax on the tram; it was late - around 9:30 and I was on my way home. Dressed in a suit, being a new and ambitious programmer, I must have had a forlorn look on my face as he walked up to me, lent towards me and in a profound tone proclaimed, "wine, women, and song.. that is all any man needs." I have to admit, I initially felt stunned he was talking to me at all, and that feeling gave way to bemusement. But, sometimes I can;t help but feel, was that the advice I needed at the time?

A little thread drift, but an associate member of the EU hasn't been defined, so knowing the EU it may take a very long time, although the desire to move away from the USA may speed things up a little. But there will be hurdles. There are three freedoms that are preserved across the EU: movement of capital, movement of goods/services, and movement of people. Will these have to be included in an associate membership? If so, then your control of immigration from any EU country goes out the window. So, given Australia's very tight grip on immigration compared to other countries, the preservation of this free movement may well be a problem. The EU will need to think about things very carefully. There sort of is already associate membership - it is the European Economic Area. It allows Iceland, Norway, and Lichtenstein to basically be in the EU without being in the EU, and they are required to comply with most of the obligations of the EU. Yet they don't get to vote on the EU rules they need to comply with. Switzerland has a similar arrangement through a bilateral agreement. And of course, after the messy divorce, there is this country called Britain, which tried it's own bilateral deal, but all was offered was Switzerland's deal. So, the EU has some existing memberships and deals, that if they give special treatment to Canada in this Associate Membership status, might peeve off a couple of these others, and may trigger a whole round of renegotiations of these arrangements. And given the rising anti-EU sentiment within the EU and the rising right, if Canada gets some sort of cushy deal, well, there will be individual countries coming under pressure to leave the EU and join a cushy deal, too. Outside of a free trade agreement or similar type of bilateral arrangement, I can't see this one being negotiated and agreed upon anytime soon. These are not insurmountable problems, but the political risk for the EU is very much there.

Wot? Gee I hope the new ferries have lockable fuel caps.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vgy3pq5ywyo There are the first steps of Canada and EU becoming very close by Canada becoming an associate member of the EU. What that means, I am not sure, but Chump's reaction was yet another tantrum. Howver' Carney's speech to the EU was priceless as it basically was the most polite sticking up of two fingers I have seen. go to 3:10 of this video: Of course, Chump came out with threats and basically throwing his toys out of the pram. But, the USA doesn't need Canada nor Europe, so he really shouldn't care.

Also, I have seen each new well burns off waste gas until they get gas clean enough to process. This can take up to a month, producing lots of CO2. It's only the final use of the gas that looks good - as long as nobody counts all the methane and CO2 lost before the gas gets to a user.

An American strikes up a conversation with a Russian tourist.... . A: "What brings you here?" R: "I come to America to study propaganda!" A: "What propaganda?" R: "Exactly!"

I could be wrong, but the way I see it, most of the job losses will be office workers. I'd think they'd be more concerned about AI putting them out of a job than blue collar workers would.

I don't know if it is a pretty wobbly financial model.. I think it is a bit like the .com (or .bomb) boom and bust. As a nascent industry where there is a lot of promise, there are a lot of players coming to market, despite the costs. Investors can see the gravy trains, but need to bet on which ones will survive. It's almost certain there will be a bust and from the ashes, a few phoenix's will rise. The bets are anthropic, despite Chump's disdain for them are going to be one of them; Open AI - not so. The success or otherwise though, in this case, won't be the consumer, but businesses. They are the ones who will fork out the big bucks to automate as long as the payback is there. And it is already for a lot of them. I can't speak about our company specifically, but if you think from SMEs to large corporates the automation capability is there now, especially in sectors that rely on information processing or content generation. Anthropic has already moved to a token based billing system where tokens pay for units of work. I think there are different token costs for say art generation versus software development. Eventually this model will probably prevail because you can work out your costs per unit of processing and apply a profit accordingly. The typical investment banking middle level contract programmer will cost around £200K/year; a permanent will cost not much different when you factor in pension, health care, holidays, training, sick, etc. If AI if 15 more efficient then I would happily pay half of my salary/contract payment bill, which runs with well into the 7 figures per year to whichever AI company we would happen to use.. It also benefits the business by being quicker to market and keeping up or beating our competitors. One of my report's sons has a job in a hedge fund or something similar as an intern. We caught up with him a couple of weeks ago and the stuff he as an intern and a developer with I think it is Claude crank out makes me wince.

Pete, that makes you half Queenslander; you might even qualify for a passport. Let me know if you need a reference.

Ironically the humans most at risk are the ones who live in the most technologically advanced countries. If the worst comes to the worst, and that's by no means guaranteed, the ones who will survive an AI catastrophe best will be those who live in the least developed countries.

Let me try to put down my thoughts. The one thing that puts us on top of the food chain is our brain. If you don't believe that, get naked and go fight any other apex predator on their turf without thinking. Now we're actively trying to develop something that is more intelligent than us. Plus we train it on the internet, which is a vast pool of humanity's worst impulses, not to mention all the misinformation and disinformation, especially since 2016. We see reports time and again of AI agents escaping their sandpits and wreaking havoc. In tests, AI agents have consistently sought to protect their own existence by any means available to them, including lying and blackmail. The creators of AI are tech companies run by morally bankrupt Silicone Valley billionaires who lined up to support the most evil and destructive administration the US has ever had. Given all this, somehow we still seem to believe that AGI will be a benign intelligence and will stay inside whatever "guardrails" we give it. To me, the possible benefits of a super intelligent entity are far outweighed by the risk to humanity.

What I think is wrong with immigration is the resistance of the "professions" to accept qualifications gained elsewhere. We have a lot of highly qualified persons doing menial work simply because those who run the "professions" set up barriers to the recognition of qualificatins gained elsewhere.

Just follow the money and you won't go far wrong.

Now Donny is blaming Zelenski for the US price of diesel. He reckons that it's all caused by Ukraine's damage to Russian refineries. At the same time as claiming US doesn't need annybody's fuel - US makes enough for its own needs at home anyway. Never let a fact get in the way of a great story.

Jeez you can be lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view). Saturday is the day of surgery. A check in the mirror showed what little hair I have left was scruffy and over the ear, so I decided to get it cut. The el cheapo hairdresser I use charges $15 for a buzz cut. paid for by inserting $15 in notes in s lot and getting a ticket. No change given. Bank ATM's don't issue $5 notes so I had to go to Woolies and buy something so I could withdraw cash at the checkout. I also bought tonight's Powerball tickets. I went upstairs to the hairdresser and had the buzz cut, put my glasses and hearing aid back on, then sat on a seat and had a drink from the bottle I bought at Woolies. After a couple of minutes, I got up and walked to the lift to go back to the carpark level. There was quite a bit of noise in the shopping mall. I took the trolley back to the trolley bay, went and got in the car. I drove out of the carpark into the street and stopped at the lights waiting to make a right turn. I thought, "that's funny, I can't hear the indicator clicking." even thought the arrow on the dash was flashing. I felt my ear and realised the hearing aid was missing. I completed the turn, made a U-turn and drove back into the carpark. The space I had vacated was still empty, so I parked, got out and retraced my steps, back in the lift and up the the hairdressers. There was the hearing aid, on the floor beside the chair I had been sitting in. With that sort of luck I would have taken a lottery ticket had I not bought my Powerball tickets half an hour earlier.

Is he praising African-Americans and suggesting that the USA should have an African-American President? Americans know that spade is a derogatory slang term for an African-American. To paraphrase King Henry II regarding Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome president?"

They should just swap the first letters - the Tronald Dump.

You've got to hand it to the Canadians. He wants his name on everything, so they've named a public toilet the Donald Trump Memorial.

The major AI developers in the US recognise the risks and don't seem to be averse to some kind of regulation or constraint on development, but none of them wants to be the first to slow down because they're all in competition with each other and have huge sums of borrowed money tied up in development with very little return on investment to show for it so far. They can't afford to stop and seem to be hoping the government will step in and do something, which the current administration certainly won't. Another reason they won't slow down is that unless there's an international agreement, which will never happen, they will be worried that China or Europe will get the upper hand. I think we're on a rocky road with great potential for positive benefits but also lots of opportunity for things to go off the rails. I saw a report today that the Houtis were using Claude to design them a new missile until Anthropic got wind of it and stopped them.

Thanks for your insight Jerry. I've been thinking in recent times about some of the points you raised, but don't have your skills in articulating it. The up side of it will be some amazing stuff no doubt. Medical advances, business, construction and engineering, and maybe no more aeroplane crashes because of software glitches. Compare space programs using AI to that movie set in the 1960's, Hidden Figures, where they used human computers. Imagining the benefits is the easier part; trying to predict the dangers and regulate them before it's entrenched is the hard part. At this stage, it's a bit like the big bad wolf offering us a big bag of lollies with one hand. It's the other hand behind his back that's the concern, and whether it's holding a big stick. The potential is certainly there for bad governments and bad actors to suppress people. In times past when it came to the subject of government interference in our lives, it's been said 'why would they bother with the average person'. That's very true when it comes to economy of scale and the high cost of doing so. It often doesn't pass the cost vs benefit test, but with advances in AI, all that cost and difficulty in pursuing it goes out the window. If it's not regulated and dealt with properly, it could lead to mass unemployment and poverty, along with the associated crime and outright anarchy. As Jerry indicated, our financial system is based around milking the punters. If those punters no longer have jobs or money to target, the whole house of cards will tumble.

I hear that Tasmania is fast tracking a data centre on the Tamar river. Not sure whether they plan to build a nuclear reactor to power it, or maybe just dam another pristine river for more hydro. We don't have a lot of coal or gas to burn.

Two problems with industrial methane. 1. The processing plants periodically vent very large amounts directly to atmosphere. 2. the tens of thousands of gas 'wells' all have continuous leakage around the bore pipes. Called fugitive emissions. Read the Guardian article to get an idea of the amounts.

200 ongoing jobs seems a bit high unless they include indirect employment. The compute side can be remotely managed; there would need to be a number of hardware and network engineers - probably in the order of 20; 180 maintenance and security people with a few admin staff seems high.. but i guess they are large sites

Doctors. They are tested as much.. if not more. Ask my sister in law what she had to and continually has to go through. Some "lesser" professions they do not accept and you have to start all over again

Maybe wobbly is a bit harsh. Optimistic may be a better description.

There is a valid issue regarding verification of foreign standards, and verification of capability of job applicants. This should be addressed. For instance, back when I worked in TV repair industry, I needed a trade certificate. Some didn't even have that. However, in the UK, a TV repairman was titled an "engineer". In Australia, an engineer has a uni degree.

All quiet on the eastern front.... The yanks have only won the Iran war-of-choice once this month?

In the last 60 years we have been told many times that the minerals industry is in decline and that some new industry is about to take over as Australia's new domestic and export industry driver. It has never happened. What happens instead is that investment in exploration and mining is discouraged and the investment returns from mining go flat until the next "boom". The main result of this has been that domestic investment is driven out, and foreign owners gradually get control of Australia's resources, because they are nimbler in reinvesting when conditions improve.

Not really Foreman material is He? Nev

They tried that. The backlash is still playing out.

rather sobering for the fans

Unfortunately the USofA is showing the no government has the power to over-rule these mega wealthy individuals. Until now we grew accustomed to the elites having more of their own way than commoners. But the extreme wealth of today's top .1% allows the tech bros to have their own unchallengable top tier of power.

"Waved", or "gesticulated for the offender to pull over".... It's all in the perspective. 😜

There already is. There is a small number of very wealthy tech moguls (independant of political pressure, of course) looking after all that.

It's all a man needs, ever...... And maybe also a little cash to buy the wine.

Count Binface, a satirical candidate in the Clacton by-election included in his policies requiring anyone who denies human-caused climate change to return to school. Quite frankly, I would have voted for him if he was in my electorate on that alone. The Australian death toll from the Nepal disaster alone - which is hard not to ague was the result of climate change - was 46. Stuff will get worse.. My favourite saying is facts don't give a ship about what people think.