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Comment Re:That's not news (Score 4, Interesting) 77

John Brunner's 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar
The title is an allusion to a thought experiment in which it was calculated that all the human beings in the world could fit shoulder to shoulder on the Isle of Wight; given population growth, Brunner expanded this to the island of Zanzibar.

Comment UK "Life Sentence" may be only 15 years in prison (Score 1) 45

See this random example from yesterday, top of Duck Duck Go's News search
A Cambridge man who strangled a former flatmate to death over an argument about a passport has been handed a life sentence.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge-news.co....
On Friday (June 6) he was jailed for life at the same court, and told he will serve a minimum of 16 years.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fart...
A man who stabbed a teenager to death ... sentenced to at least 15 years in prison

Comment Re:Maybe I am soft on crime (Score 1) 45

Bruce Hyman was a barrister (he also produced an episode of Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and may have been a speech writer for a UK Prime Minister). Representing a client in a divorce case, he forged an email and sent it to his client's husband, expecting it to then be produced in court. He then accused him of submitting a faked judgment to the court. It all unravelled and he was sentenced to 12 months in jail.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Flegalfamily.wordpress....

Comment Official judgment (Score 1) 45

Official judgment

The referrals arise out of the actual or suspected use by lawyers of generative artificial
intelligence tools to produce written legal arguments or witness statements which are
not then checked, so that false information (typically a fake citation or quotation) is put
before the court. The facts of these cases raise concerns about the competence and
conduct of the individual lawyers who have been referred to this court. They raise
broader areas of concern however as to the adequacy of the training, supervision and
regulation of those who practice before the courts, and as to the practical steps taken by
those with responsibilities in those areas to ensure that lawyers who conduct litigation
understand and comply with their professional and ethical responsibilities and their
duties to the court.

Comment DuckDuckGo (Score 3, Interesting) 51

I've been using DuckDuckGofor what seems like ages (a couple of years?). I find it returns useful results about 80% of the time, however when I am using more than 3 words in the query, it tends to pick up on the more frequently used ones and ignore the ones I'm using to narrow the search.

Google also covers more of the internet. One example from today is a search for "You can safely disable CFG80211_CRDA_SUPPORT". No results from DuckDuckGo, but several Gentoo Linux related ones from Google.

Comment More detail at "Talking Points Memo" (Score 5, Informative) 100

Recently updated news at Talking Points Memo

March 29th: Sketchy First Reports

March 30th: More Details on Situation at Indiana University

March 31st: Another Update on the Situation at Indiana University

I wanted to provide a quick update on the case of Professor Xiaofeng Wang at Indiana University. For overview details, see the posts below. The latest is the IU chapter of a faculty organization (the American Association of University Professors) has sent a letter to the university challenging Professor Wang’s termination. You can see that letter here. The letter itself is the best evidence we as yet have that Wang was in fact fired by the university. The university itself has not confirmed that or publicly commented at all. And at least no one who is talking appears to be in contact with Wang. So we don’t have any confirmation from him or anyone speaking on his behalf.

It’s important to note that all of this is unfolding in the context of people having pretty little information about what’s happening. It appears that Professor Wang is the target of a federal investigation of some sort. ...

Comment That's me leaving, then (Score 1) 14

I've been playing almost since the start, and have walked 5,931km whilst playing.

1) I don't trust the Saudis with my GPS location details.
2) I won't forget their murder and butchery of Jamal Khashoggi.
3) This seems like yet more sportswashing.
4) They will try to extract as much money from players as
      possible: see what they've done to Monopoly Go - "pay to win".
5) and now I'm at level 16, it's become a bit boring.

I'll be deleting my account.

Comment How many old people really are the age they claim? (Score 4, Informative) 97

From this paper: Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

As record keeping improves, we should expect to see a reduction in the number of supercentenarians.

The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. In the UK, Italy, Japan, and France remarkable longevity is instead predicted by regional poverty, old-age poverty, material deprivation, low incomes, high crime rates, a remote region of birth, worse health, and fewer 90+ year old people. In addition, supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on the first of the month and days divisible by five: patterns indicative of widespread fraud and error. As such, relative poverty and missing vital documents constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.

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