Tag: town
Fury as nearly 3,000 town hall penpushers earn £100,000-plus in pay and perks
NEARLY three thousand town hall penpushers earn £100,000-plus in pay and perks.
Some 721 of the 2,759 bureaucrats received more than £150,000 for the past year, research reveals.
Staggeringly, 165 of these made more than PM Rishi Sunak’s £164,951 salary, with one mandarin at Guildford Borough Council landing £607,633 — the most for any town hall worker.
The deal included pension contributions of £339,158, the TaxPayers’ Alliance found.
Next highest paid, at £570,000, was Sunderland’s executive director of neighbourhoods.
The amounts come amid recent reports of some councils in England taking up to 18 months to fix potholes.
TaxPayers’ Alliance boss John O’Connell said: “Many authorities continue with extremely generous pay and perks, like bonuses and golden goodbyes.
“Local people, meanwhile, are facing record council tax rises and a financial squeeze.
“They want to be sure they’re getting value for money.”
The Local Government Association said it was important to retain “the right people with the right skills” to help large, complex councils operate.
It added: “Senior pay is always decided by democratically elected councillors.”
Guildford Borough and Sunderland City Councils both said their bumper payments reflected the recipients’ long service.
What Happens When You Put 25 ChatGPT-Backed Agents Into an RPG Town?
“Generative agents wake up, cook breakfast, and head to work; artists paint, while authors write; they form opinions, notice each other, and initiate conversations; they remember and reflect on days past as they plan the next day,” write the researchers in their paper… To pull this off, the researchers relied heavily on a large language model for social interaction, specifically the ChatGPT API. In addition, they created an architecture that simulates minds with memories and experiences, then let the agents loose in the world to interact…. To study the group of AI agents, the researchers set up a virtual town called “Smallville,” which includes houses, a cafe, a park, and a grocery store…. Interestingly, when the characters in the sandbox world encounter each other, they often speak to each other using natural language provided by ChatGPT. In this way, they exchange information and form memories about their daily lives.
When the researchers combined these basic ingredients together and ran the simulation, interesting things began to happen. In the paper, the researchers list three emergent behaviors resulting from the simulation. None of these were pre-programmed but rather resulted from the interactions between the agents. These included “information diffusion” (agents telling each other information and having it spread socially among the town), “relationship memory” (memory of past interactions between agents and mentioning those earlier events later), and “coordination” (planning and attending a Valentine’s Day party together with other agents)…. “Starting with only a single user-specified notion that one agent wants to throw a Valentine’s Day party,” the researchers write, “the agents autonomously spread invitations to the party over the next two days, make new acquaintances, ask each other out on dates to the party, and coordinate to show up for the party together at the right time….”
To get a look at Smallville, the researchers have posted an interactive demo online through a special website, but it’s a “pre-computed replay of a simulation” described in the paper and not a real-time simulation. Still, it gives a good illustration of the richness of social interactions that can emerge from an apparently simple virtual world running in a computer sandbox.
Interstingly, the researchers hired human evaluators to gauge how well the AI agents produced believable responses — and discovered they were more believable than when supplied their own responses.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Where Should I Retire?: We want to retire in the Carolinas or Virginias in a walkable town neither too large nor too small — where should we go?
YELLOW-GREEN HUMANOIDS Appear in Russian Town After Aerial Event
Was this a case of a craft landing and the occupants disembarking to gather information? ‘Aged men’ with strange yellow-greenish-looking faces appear in a Russian town after light phenomena incident.
The incident to place near Balashov, Saratov region, Russia. During the night local residents noticed four fiery columns of light in the clear northeastern sky. The columns or beams of light were nearby of each other, with blue and white shades. The phenomenon lasted for about 2 hours. After that, the area became dark again and the sky again appeared normal.
Soon after this observation, bizarre-looking strangers appeared in the Saratov region. These “men” looked aged, like elderly men, with strange yellow-greenish-looking faces, and all the men were beardless. These strangers visited several villages but never begged for alms. When the locals attempted to communicate with the strangers they only mumbled in an unrecognizable language that the Russian villagers could not understand. So the strangers were then considered eccentric or crazy (if indeed extraterrestrials, a perfect disguise that did not attract too much attention).
Neither village elders nor district policemen detained the strangers. But as was found out later the strangers aroused the suspicion of local representatives and authorities. The strangers seemed to move very quickly between villages and never stayed one night in any of the villages. But the authorities could never corner or pinpoint the whereabouts of the strangers. All of the strangers appeared to vanish soon after October 6, 1848, when a report was sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the town of Balashov.
This report stated that on the above date at around 2100, there was very bright lighting over the area corresponding with the rumble of thunder which lit the sky. And then at 2200, a blood red colored spot appeared in the center of the sky which was visible for 5 minutes, the spot then took an elongated form, becoming pinkish in color and moving towards the northwest, in half an hour the sky appeared to clear and the red “spot” moved to the west and separated into several dozen cone-shaped columns stretching to the horizon and becoming dark red in color. After that, the north was covered with whitish-red stripes which slowly drifted towards the west. The phenomenon vanished around 2300.
NOTE: This account was forwarded to me by a colleague. Lon
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Researchers populated a tiny virtual town with AI (and it was very wholesome)
What would happen if you filled a virtual town with AIs and set them loose? As it turns out, they brush their teeth and are very nice to one another! But this unexciting outcome is good news for the researchers who did it, since they wanted to produce “believable simulacra of human behavior” and got […]
Researchers populated a tiny virtual town with AI (and it was very wholesome) by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch
Elated Brits hit the town to celebrate Easter weekend and party ahead of bank holiday Monday
BRITS made the most of the Easter Sunday sunshine as they crammed into the pubs and bars.
Revellers up and down the country put on their best fancy dress and partied with pals ahead of another day off on Monday.
A group of women in Leeds dressed for the occasion with colourful bunny ears[/caption]
These friends were looking glam in Leeds as they posed for the camera[/caption]
As the UK basked in sunshine, daytime drinkers were out in force in Leeds as partygoers made the most of the long weekend.
Some had made huge efforts to dress up in fancy dress with everything from Fred Flintstone to a hot dog sausage making an appearance.
Boozy Brits sank pints in the sunshine and were in good spirits as they posed up for the camera in their best outfits.
Groups of girls ditched their winter coats and dressed up in summer dresses and high heels as the UK really started to experience some Springtime weather.
While some queued up to get into their favourite boozer, others looked like they had already indulged a bit too much, with some worse-for-wear revellers sitting on the floor and resting on benches.
A large group of mates had gone all out with their fancy dress, with one dressed as a banana and another as Austin Powers.
Most read in The Sun
No doubt there will be some sore heads tomorrow morning, but as the weather is set to turn on Monday, that might not bother too many people.
According to the Met Office large swathes of the country will be hit with downpours tomorrow making for a wet and miserable bank holiday Monday.
Despite the rain temperatures are still expected to be around 16C, but the blustery showers may put many off venturing outside.
Two mates dressed up as chickens in Leeds[/caption]
One woman looks pretty in pink sunglasses as she queues to get into one venue[/caption]
Revellers dressed in fancy dress to celebrate the long weekend[/caption]
These women opted for mini dresses taking advantage of the Easter sunshine[/caption]
Partygoers looked a bit worse for wear sitting on a bench[/caption]
Fred Flintstone was joined by two of his pals[/caption]
Two friends looked ready to party in their cowboy hats[/caption]
Fancy dress was popular among bank holiday revellers[/caption]
What’s life like in the UK’s priciest seaside town?
Move over, Sandbanks: Now Salcombe, Devon, is the UK’s priciest seaside town
Map reveals UK holiday rental hotspots – is your town filled with rowdy tourists every summer?
A MAP has revealed which parts of Britain are being infiltrated by rowdy staycation tourists.
New data shows how short-term rentals and Airbnbs have been taking over Britain’s holiday hotspots.
Shropshire and Herefordshire saw a 29 per cent rise in listings[/caption]
The study from AirDNA shows sleepy spots like Dorset and the Peak District are now seeing a surge in holiday lets.
And with its popularity growing locals are complaining that their quiet streets are being overrun by drunk, loud guests, reports MailOnline.
In the last three years, listings in Dorset have increase by 36 percent while the Peak District is top of the list with 37 per cent.
Meanwhile, Shropshire and Herefordshire saw a 29 per cent rise in listings.
Surprisingly, Bristol, Bath, Brighton and London saw a decline in listings during the same period.
It comes as rowdy revellers who hire out AirBnBs to party late into the night will be banned from blighting neighbourhoods in new rules.
The PM hit out at “unacceptable” drunken parties in rented homes and flats after being confronted by a furious resident.
Pensioner Jeff Jones told how a local pub in his village of Great Baddow – just metres from the back of his house – is causing them regular misery.
It has been converted into a short-term let with a 10-person hot-tub and karaoke room costing £2,100-per-night.
Jeff hit out: “These places are let by the owners to groups of people with no control whatsoever.
“Anti-social behaviour and especially noise nuisance can go on through the night and there is no restriction.”
Owners will now have to register their short-term lets with the local council – and if they become party houses, they can take tough action against guests and owners.
Airbnb welcomed plans revealed late last year to introduce a national register for short-term lets.