The WTF? Thread

[Bruno]

Plenty of chicks dug Python.

[Sporting]

Monty Python was for the brainier geeks in my high school. The same guys who were into XTC and Kate Bush and Squeeze. Literate nerds who weren't troubled by the time-consuming ladies....

Squeeze were actually known in the US? I wonder if the expression up the junction was a thing there.

[WOM]

Canada, not US. We had a pipeline to 'weird' UK stuff through radio station CFNY and a pioneering video show called The New Music, which was on the air 2 full years before MTV.

[Sporting]

Ah, sorry. I still don't know the gender of some folk here, let alone where they live.

[WOM]

Male, Canadian, 45-54.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I get the impression that they were bigger, later in the US.

They became popular almost as soon as I arrived here in 1972. I couldn't believe it. If ever there was a more consummately Brit referencing show at the time I don't know what it was and I'm sure PBS were gobsmacked. But it really was huge among counter-culture types. On reflection, there was already an "underground" audience for The Firesign Theatre, early National Lampoon productions and Zap Comix, so maybe it was to be expected.

[Sam]

Having only heard about it a few hours ago, I've just checked back a few pages, and I believe we've missed the New York Times putting up a job ad for a Nairobi Bureau Chief which reads as if it's been written by Cecil Rhodes.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I'm just going to shoehorn this in here, as we were discussing Python. Which it isn't. It's John Cleese in a film. I haven't seen the scene in decades I remember thinking the bit from 1:14 was ever so clever:

[Guy Profumo]

Police tell residents after being evacuated from Whalley Bridge to "fend for yourselves"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-49189955

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/oliviamesser/status/1156948815766798337?s=21"]https://twitter.com/oliviamesser/status/1156948815766798337[/URL]

[Balderdasha]

Plenty of chicks dug Python.

My female peers, age 15-16 in the late 90s, were big Monty Python fans, singing Bruce's philosopher's song whenever they were drunk, using 'your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries' as the insult of choice, and often pretending to be the knights who say 'ni'. I hadn't heard of any of it until they introduced me to it (my parents weren't particularly fans). I especially liked the upper class twit of the year sketch when I caught a rerun on TV late one night.

[Guy Profumo]

What utter and complete tosh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49191645


AI should be regarded as inventor in patent application.

Makes you wonder what sort of scum even think about trying this on.

[Guy Profumo]

My female peers, age 15-16 in the late 90s, were big Monty Python fans, singing Bruce's philosopher's song whenever they were drunk, using 'your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries' as the insult of choice, and often pretending to be the knights who say 'ni'. I hadn't heard of any of it until they introduced me to it (my parents weren't particularly fans). I especially liked the upper class twit of the year sketch when I caught a rerun on TV late one night.

Wenn ist das Nünstuck git und Slotermeyer?

Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gerspudt!

(sic)

And yes.

I misquoted it.

Deliberately to keep any German speakers from suffering fatal seizures.

[Hot Pepsi]

What utter and complete tosh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49191645


AI should be regarded as inventor in patent application.

Makes you wonder what sort of scum even think about trying this on.

I don’t see what’s “tosh” about it. If a machine invents something, then the machine is the inventor. The future is going to happen whether we like it or not.

[Guy Profumo]

wtf.

But in a good way



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49196745

Woman survives 6 days in a ditch during heatwave surviving on rainwater.


Says she is "lucky to be alive"

No kidding

[Guy Profumo]

I don’t see what’s “tosh” about it. If a machine invents something, then the machine is the inventor. The future is going to happen whether we like it or not.

Don't be ridiculous.

A made thing, a device cannot be assigned a patent

Otherwise your saying machines are salient, when clearly, and easily demonstrably they are not

[Guy Profumo]

Sapient.

Not salient.

[Hot Pepsi]

A made thing, a device cannot be assigned a patent

This is begging the question. The issue in question is whether or not it can be assigned a patent and if not, then why not. Just saying "it cannot" is not an argument for that position. It's just restating the position.

Patent law began in the middle ages, IIRC. They did not imagine machines inventing other machines back then. They didn't imagine a lot of things that are now commonplace. The law needs to adjust to reality instead of trying to make reality fit the law.

I'm not a laywer, but it seems that the patent rights should belong to whomever made the AI that invented the thing. That would at least be consistent with the reasons we have patent law in the first place and better than just letting something invented by an AI be in the public domain just because it doesn't fit into the traditional pattern of how invention works.

Otherwise your saying machines are sapient, when clearly, and easily demonstrably they are not.

No, that is not what I'm saying nor is that the logical outcome of this position. The point of assigning a patent is to create a system that incentivizes innovation. It also "gives credit where credit is due" because people's egos need that, apparently, but that's not as important. Both purposes can be served by acknowledging that AI can invent things. AIs cannot - at least not yet - also hire lawyers and press patent infringement cases in court, etc. So the law should not pretend they are the same as human inventors. But it shouldn't pretend they don't invent things if it can be shown that they can.

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1158054382094733312?s=21"]https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1158054382094733312[/URL]

[WOM]

Sapient.

Not salient.

I think you might actually mean 'sentient'. Something that thinks or feels.

[Ginger Yellow]

Patent law began in the middle ages, IIRC. They did not imagine machines inventing other machines back then.

They did, however, put animals on trial.

[Ginger Yellow]

[URL="https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1158054382094733312?s=21"]https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1158054382094733312[/URL]

Holy fuck. I'm astonished the child survived, though it seems they may still not.

[ursus arctos]

Same. Fingers crossed.

[MsD]

The child is apparently stable. Let's hope he survives without life-changing injuries.

I know someone who fell, drunk, from the fourth floor of her parent's Chelsea townhouse, broke loads of bones but is now fit and well and a successful novelist. (She had a "what am I doing with my life?" kind of epiphany, which wouldn't apply to a six-year-old.)

I spent much time this morning fighting off racist ghouls who sooooo wanted the attacker to be black or brown. It's a relief of sorts that he's reported to be a white man.

As I said on Twitter last night - I'm a member of the Tate, and a frequent visitor, but I only ventured onto that viewing gallery once, and immediately started to panic. Since I had panic disorder a while ago, my spidey senses are hypervigilant; sometimes that's inconvenient, but it's also a human defence mechanism that protects me from harm. You could argue that they can't foresee random nutters throwing kids over the rails, but they sort of should. Two young men were thrown over the railings of Hungerford Bridge about 10 years ago, only one survived. Since then, the bridge was rebuilt, with sort of buttresses, and (I think) a safety mesh? Whichever, it's no longer somewhere you can easily tip someone over and they have nothing to hold onto.

If you're building a high structure with an open platform, look out for hazards, places that kids and daredevil drunks can fall off, or risk being thrown from.

[ursus arctos]

That is good news. Fingers remain crossed.

There are also locations that are magnets for potential suicides.

After 1,700 deaths (with the number accelerating) the Golden Gate Bridge is taking action.