LWN is one of the most important journalistic outfits of the open source software world, not just some guy's blog. As the other commenter noted, it also dates to the '90s.
Funny how all the nuclear chills forget the plethora of issues that come with that tech.
- who has access to nuclear power?
- what happens to nuclear reactors during war?
- where does the Uranium come from?
- how long does it take to build a reactor?
- how many long term solutions have been developed in the more than 60 years of this technology’s existence?
Not saying nuclear doesn’t have a place, but let’s not be blind to the long list of complications that come with it.
You suggest people forget that without considering that perhaps you don't know:
- We killed nuclear power in countries that can be trusted so that is not relevant.
- Nuclear accidents are not as harmful as people imagine.
- We have plenty of access to uranium resources in the west.
- the time to build a reactor is often in large parts regulatory burdens. France built out 10% of its electricity generation needs in a year, for a number of years. That is what is possible.
- Part of the reason there is no innovation in this sector is because regulation has strangled it. There are many innovative ideas in nuclear.
You mean western sources like the USA, that suddenly starts waving it's dick around when the wrong dipshit is elected? The USA that made a nuclear deal with Iran and then scrapped it for no fucking reason?
Is that a joke? You are conflating US meddling in international politics vs. protecting themselves and the world from Nuclear catastrophe by not fighting the likes of Iran, who openly admits wanting to nuke other countries, namely Israel (and by extension radiate Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, the nearby oceans, etc, as well) and the US. Iran who hid their nuclear enrichment facilities underground, which were known to enrich Uranium beyond what's needed for energy production.
I totally agree about the consequences needing to be understood, but in the end, if it comes to this, it’s water. We can’t survive more than 3 days without water. We will boil the oceans if we need to
This is not what the study says, it’s more nuanced. People do not believe that liberalising demand will solve the issue more efficiently than other measures.
Not to take away from your general point (which I agree with), but that depends where local is.
> Identity technology used at a county's pubs and nightclubs since 2023 is to be extended for a further three years.
> Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) Danielle Stone has agreed to provide funding to keep the scheme at 25 venues that open beyond 01:00.
Your local pub doesn't keep records of everything evreryone does in the pub so that they can collate all of your habits and either sell it to advertisers or hand it over to the government when requested.
It's a way different set of incentives and outcomes.
Your local pub will have CCTV and some have names and photos of banned patrons behind the bar. Some bars and clubs have digital ID scanners upon entry.
Most online service providers who verify age are using third-party suppliers who don't provide any details of one's identity, just whether the user has been age verified or not. And much of that is done by recording a selfie, not handing over identity documents.
One local pub may have a face scanner, the other may not and I am free to choose which one I go to without fear of reprisals. Refusing to follow a government mandate can land me in jail.
there's really nothing anybody can do. protests dont work, riots dont work, petitions dont work, and theres nobody else to vote for who isn't also a cunt.
I’m just going to say it: you are wrong, protests, public pressure and civil disobedience are why you have many of the right you have today. I get you don’t have the will/energy/possibility to do anything, but don’t go around telling lies about the usefulness of public intervention.
- I've been to many protests in my time and often I believe them to be counter productive e.g. Critical Mass. I travelled to London twice to see what the protest was about. This was in the mid-2000s. I saw lots of annoyed commuters, lots of people getting drunk/high and it was more of a social gathering than a protest.
- Street movements are easily infiltrated by malign actors e.g. The CIA have a term called "initial instigator", this is where you turn a riot into a protest by inserting a person or people that will cause trouble. The CIA (and I would imagine British Intelligence) have handbooks on how to subvert/run a protest/riot. You can find these online.
- Many of the protesters you see maybe part of a rent-a-mob. You can literally go to company, and much like you would for film or TV hire a bunch of people to be in the background.
- I have plenty of will and energy to get involved. However often I find that many leaders make the mistake of being too inclusive. This means that often you will end up with people that will intentionally or unintentionally turn your movement into something else. If you listen to some of the account of people that were at Occupy Wallstreet, this is one of the reasons why the protests failed.
You’re analysing things in a vacuum, there are historical and contemporary examples of public protest, pressure campaigns and civil disobedience leading to policy change, and you’re arguing they’re what, all CIA plants or impossible? If not, please make your point clearer.
Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis
> You’re analysing things in a vacuum, there are historical and contemporary examples of public protest, pressure campaigns and civil disobedience leading to policy change, and you’re arguing they’re what, all CIA plants or impossible? If not, please make your point clearer.
I am not analysing things in a vaccum. I gave you some reasons why I don't believe these things are productive today.
One of those is an example from my own personal experience of being at a protest that literally had 1000s of people there.
I don't believe that all of it was CIA plants and never said that.
I explained how street movements are infiltrated by malign actors and how some intelligence agencies have used these techniques.
> Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis.
It is well documented. Just not commonly known. TBH you could have looked this up yourself.
It isn't really any different than hiring extras for a TV/Movie production (as I previously stated).
1) You asked for evidence of a rent-a-crowd / rent-a-mob service. Something which you could have looked up yourself.
2) I gave you links to companies that offer these services. I understand that these websites aren't the best, I literally listed the first 4 that were spat out by when searching. I suspect they probably don't get most of their business through the website. They look like websites I was making for companies back in the late 2000s.
3) Then you make allusions to to me delusional.
I think you are looking for excuses to dismiss my point of view. Probably because you don't agree with it.
Spoken like a man who doesn't know what kettling is. Or expedited judicial process for (some) rioters, with prison time for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the UK is not lacking in protest; we do protest.
What I am saying is that protesting is a method of freedom & rebellion that is now flawed for today's modern world. It may work in a few odd countries but overall now achieves nothing.
Protests do not work in these modern times.
It may of worked in the in the 1800's because society was maybe of been more united, less corrupted in power however the power that folks had has been chiseled away and has been decaying ever since.
Adding the fact we are now more divided than ever.
The only kind of protest that would work today are those of who use their wallet. Stop buying from corporations from the likes of Amazon, funding Google. But no, we won't do that; whatever would you do without your Amazon prime.
Instead let's hold a stick with cardboard glued to it and pretend that politicians care. (spoiler: they don't)
Protesting about war and then buying resources to protest about the war off Amazon who back the war is face-palming hilarious.
Otherwise everything is a just waste of time, resources and exposure. But by all means, if it makes yourself feel better then go for it.
how are the plebs meant to operate the state machinations? even Farage went to private school. We are a generation away from being able to make a difference beyond the riots
I really recommend a book called "Moral Ambition" which outlines many examples from history where societal change was made possible through people not protesting or rioting, but through people organising into political organisations which could then implement change - the very first example is of a man who lead the effort for abolition of slavery across the British empire, growing from a single man with an idea to a political force that made the change possible. And that doesn't mean you have to win elections - just grow enough that you are at least consulted on changes like this and treated like a partner not like a pest that has to be squashed and arrested.
They work. But they don't work if your objective is to replace a political party with another one... The problem is the system itself. It needs uprooting.
To quote someone: "You give us rights, only because we gave you riots"
I think the most effective solution is to work to ensure that people who have sensible views and are able to think in a reasoned way on topics like this stand for election themselves.
As much as many people have distaste for the existing parties, a few people getting involved and changing the parties from the inside on one or two topics like this (which are not party political in nature) is likely to be much more effective than standing as or voting for an independent, complaining or protesting.
Anything involved with the electoral process is doomed to fail. The system is designed that way to squash the few voices that want change. It needs uprooting not band-aid.
We just had the government backtrack on stopping giving money to better off pensioners (WFA) and tightening regulations on disability benefits (PIP) under pressure from the backbenchers and the media.
If your preferred cause is not cutting through in that way, it's worth asking what's different about the cause.
Right. The big lie of what's called Our Democracy (in the US, UK, and other Western nations) is that having 51% on your side and winning elections means you get some control over government. What recent years have made clear is that the bureaucratic class does what it wants, and resists most attempts by the people to control it through their representatives, using its media wing to call those anti-democratic and other epithets. At best, you can make temporary changes that the machine will roll back as soon as it can get rid of your representatives.
I really get annoyed when someone suggests this (it not your fault). You are believing what you are told at school about how Politics works. Many of us understand this is unrealistic.
Here is an incomplete list of reasons why I would never get involved directly in politics:
1. It takes literally decades to get a political party off the ground without major backing. All the new parties that you hear of are bankrolled by elite backing.
2. The way the Government and the civil service is setup is designed so you can't actually make any changes. Dominic Cummings has many interviews he did in the last year you can find where he explains how Whitehall is fundamentally broken. I suggest you listen to them.
3. I have a chequed past. Most of my adult life I was abusing alcohol, and as a consequence of that I have done and said lots of stupid things. A good portion of my extended family are criminals (which I don't associate with for obvious reasons). If I or anything connected to me gain any public appeal at all, I would have all the muck which I've put behind me dragged up. I don't want to expose myself or my family to that.
1. Listen, yes it’s very hard work, but it’s this or be squeezed until there’s nothing else. And when people start having famines we’ll have a new French Revolution, millions will die, and this will require a lot more energy than doing changes today.
2. Will do, I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion on that. But unjust, unmovable systems, like monarchies (wink) have been toppled in the past. Even recently.
3. Sorry I was just using my environment as an example, I meant people that trust you, that you trust. This kind of movement starts small
> Listen, yes it’s very hard work, but it’s this or be squeezed until there’s nothing else. And when people start having famines we’ll have a new French Revolution, millions will die, and this will require a lot more energy than doing changes today.
All parties that you would have heard of, will have major backing from a number of wealthy donors. You also have to have the right people involved. Not everyone should be engaged in politics directly.
I am not under the delusion that I can fix the country. I can't even master the mess in my spare room. The best I can do is try to help my family, friends and community.
As for violent conflict. Many people think there is going to be some sort of violent conflict coming to the UK. David Betz has several interviews on YouTube on the subject. I've emailed him personally (about something unrelated) and he is a serious person. I don't know whether he is right or not and only time will tell.
> Will do, I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion on that. But unjust, unmovable systems, like monarchies (wink) have been toppled in the past. Even recently.
For a new political party to succeed in the uk you need millions in funding, and nobodys going to fund something that potentially affects their vast sums of money.
"Just start a new party and tell people about it" is perhaps the most misleading and flawed idea you could present unfortunately. There have been new parties, there are new parties at every general election, you never hear about them for good reason.
The same thing applies in the US doesn't it? There has essentially only been two political parties (three if you squint hard enough) for nearly the entire existence of the country?
Influence for this is obviously a 3rd party bankrolling it, it all came together in about 6 weeks in multiple countries. Doesn't matter who you vote in they'll just bankroll the next one too.
All the main parties are behind it, some say it doesn’t go far enough.
The vast majority of the British public absolutely love to ban things. If you listen to talk radio or daytime tv most of the time they’ll be having a discussion on banning something. We have a nanny state and the public like it that way.
Personally I use an allow list for my kids internet access and don’t rely on the state to parent them. I guess that’s too much bother for most people.
I do the same but let's not pretend that's within the technical ability of the average parent. Of course, it should be and that would be a far better place for the government to direct its efforts.
That’s fair but I use iOS features for it and they do have more simplified set ups like blocking mature content that they define. I wonder how many people take the time to set up screen time for their kids? That is as easy on the level of signing up for a website or managing your online orders.
I appreciate that with recent articles shared here it might look that way. What is difficult as a Brit reading this is that so little has actually changed that I can't quite grasp what you mean.
Firstly, the paper reporting the "power grab" is a national newspaper read by millions. Secondly, as noted in several other places, the spin the newspaper has put on the judgement is deeply cynical. Lastly, this legislation has been in debate for years under multiple governments with a decent (by no means unilateral) amount of public support for some (but distinctly not all) the provisions.
That requires coordination and corporation in a society that is fragmented. It is hard to have a non-hostile interaction these days let alone unity over an online related issue.
Couldn’t agree more, I try my best but sometimes it’s better to just walk away. We have limited capabilities, and the world has an infinite supply of bad faith it would seem
It’s simple: you only need the wille to rig and the power to freely manifest that will. No matter how elegant the design of a democratic system, or how many procedural safeguards exist, nothing can stop you.
Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.
May all who value freedom also have the power to defend it.
I've lived in the UK for 15 years now and the complete political apathy is probably what bothers me the most about this country. Few years back when they made it so that every ISP had to log your entire browsing history and keep it for a year and 17 different government agencies(including DEFRA, the agriculture ministry!) can access it without a warrant, barely anyone cared. Wasn't really mentioned in public media, other than the standard "we're finally making the internet a safer place against pedos!". When I mentioned it to my friends here the reactions were mostly "meh" to "I don't browse any dodgy sites so why should I care".
The other example is when the government changed the student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation, and increased the number of years that have to pass before the loan gets written off. So just for comparison - I paid 12k for a 4 year MSc Computer Science course, and it had 1.1% interest attached to it. So I paid mine off within few years of starting to work. My sister did her degree just few years after me, and her degree cost her 40k + her interest is 8%. She has a job but her payments barely cover the interest. She will never pay it off, so it will get written off at some point, maybe - but until then it's a permament 10% tax on all of her earnings. It's bonkers.
My point is - I feel like in any other country, this kind of economic assassination of entire generation of people would be met with people marching on the capital and burning down cars and setting tyres on fire in front of government buildings in protest. In UK barely anyone cared. Still no one cares. There is no political party that even suggests doing anything about it.
So with this new act - it's more of the same. You've heard our government already anyway - saying openly that if you are against this act you are on the same side as Jimmy Saville(one of the worst child rapists this country has ever produced). Essentially you can't be against it in public or you're compared to actual pedophiles. The only politician who even suggests that hey maybe this isn't right is Farage who is a despicable individual for many other reasons.
If you want my personal opinion on why that is - British society is extremely comfortable with the status quo. People would rather shrug their arms than actually do something about anything, we're surrounded by history, by buildings standing for the last 1000 years, stability is like the paramount value here. That's not to say Britain hasn't has some of the greatest civil movements in history - but right now, in 2025, the feeling I see everywhere is just apathy.
>Few years back when they made it so that every ISP had to log your entire browsing history and keep it for a year
This is a significant exaggeration in two respects.
First, SSL ensures that ISPs cannot log your literal browser history. They can log which domains you visit, how often you visit them, how much data was transferred, etc. etc.
Second, the law requires ISPs to be able to retain this data on a specific individual for up to a year if specifically ordered to by the Home Secretary. So it is not the case the ISPs in general are all recording this information for all of their customers. From their point of view they have no interest in doing so. I suspect that ISPs would in fact lack the capacity to store all of this data for all of their customers all of the time.
I don't support the IPA because I don't think the Home Secretary should be able to directly order surveillance of specific individuals. However, I don't think it is necessary to exaggerate the scope of the legislation in order to make a case against it.
> Two internet providers are tracking and collecting the websites visited by their customers as part of a secretive Home Office trial, designed to work out if a national bulk surveillance system would be useful for national security and law enforcement.
> Home Office sources indicated that it was taking advantage of abilities in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, to test what data can be acquired, how useful it is in practice, and how it might be used in investigations.
Again, this refers to the domains, not the full URL. As a factual point, ISPs do not retain full browser history, and the IPA does not require them to do so for all customers all the time. It's true that we do not know how much data ISPs are in fact recording. I agree that this is concerning. I am opposed to the IPA. However, I also think that we should take the time to get the facts exactly right when criticizing it. This is understandably an emotive issue for a lot of folks on HN, and there is a tendency to let factual inaccuracies slide if they are part of an argument against internet surveillance. In my opinion the IPA is bad enough as is, and it is not necessary to exaggerate its effects in order to make a strong case against it.
I am just correcting some possible misconceptions about what UK ISPs are required to do by law. If you are worried about surveillance by intelligence agencies, then you might be right to be worried, but that's a separate issue.
The URL is sent over the E2E encrypted connection. How do you suppose the ISP would be able to see it? Maybe three letter agencies have back doors into this kind of stuff, but your ISP doesn’t.
For the most part I'd agree, but the Iraq war had a million people (1/60th of the country) who made the effort to protest in London (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm), and similarly every month supporting Palestine (150K-800K).
The legal mechanisms in place don't appear to be adequate as when that number of activists are ignored. Certainly in parallel with the online regulation, the legal right to protest has been restricted by the previous Tory government, and this current one.
student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation
Not quite, "inflation" is CPI, as the government will tell you endlessly if you work for it and ask for a pay rise. Student loans go up by RPI (which is almost always higher).
Chat control is being actively campaigned against, and is not yet law. Civil disobedience, demonstrations and other more disruptive forms of protest come after the democratic options have been exhausted. Is this really news to you?
> Chat control is being actively campaigned against
By a few tech communities with a very limited reach. I refuse to believe at this point that the complete silence on the topic from mainstream media across EU is a coincidence.
I believe the point being made is that you are saying England when it is the entire UK under discussion. You are missing out three of the four nations of the U.K.
They do, but with limited powers. It’s not exactly the same as US states and the federal government, but you can think of them as regional governments or levels of government in that sort of way. The Scottish Parliament can pass some types of laws for Scotland. But Westminster (usually) passes laws for the entire UK.
Absolute bullshit, drug prices are set according to how much they can squeeze out of it. It’s borderline dishonest to pretend the prices correspond to R&D expenditure
Does it make the blogs look more edgy and geeky? Is it a an artistic trend in web design?
I’d love some insights from someone with a better sense of the situation