davesmith
@davesmith@feddit.uk
- Comment on Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House 3 weeks ago:
This isn’t a past we are moving from, it is a future we are moving towards, and a present we are in.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
The thing that makes something ‘scientific’, rather than ‘faith-based’ is that it can be proven wrong. Think of it as our best guess so far, rather than some incontrovertible truth.
I am sure a basic search will return plenty of well researched and evidenced books on evolution.
As an aside I will say that I heard an interview with a data scientist whose recent work had found that genetic mutations weren’t random (in some way). Which could potentially throw an interesting wrinkle in there, lol. The bloke I heard interviewed stressed his paper had not yet been peer reviewed, and, iIrc, really just pointed towards the need for more research. I am just mentioning this as a bit of an aside.
- Comment on Wales’s 20mph speed limit has cut road deaths. Why is there still even a debate? 4 weeks ago:
Survival of the fittest means something like ‘those most able to adapt to evolutionary change’.
In this context, your inability to adapt to a change that improves life for everybody, from the direct reduction in deaths, to reduced micro plastics (of which car tyres are something like 25%) makes you the unfit one. You are the idiot.
Let’s not ban all cars, even though it would be a positive development, let’s just ban idiots (to use your word) like you.
- Comment on Government to save £5bn by restricting benefits to 'those with the greatest need' 5 weeks ago:
It has been red tory v blue tory for decades.
The end result of this will be reform in power. The rich won’t mind this. The poor, who vote for it, won’t benefit. But to them it will feel like the only option that might help.
It is a similar dynamic to the US playing out in different ways. Musk’s slash > privatise the government is a speed-run of what has been happening in the UK since Thatcher - the last looting of empire being the looting of the profitable bits of the British state itself on behalf of the rich/capital (call it whichever you want).
- Comment on Quarter of Gen Zs consider quitting work as young Brits cite mental health as key reason to go unemployed 5 weeks ago:
Or they could deal with the reasons why workers’ mental health is so bad.
Sorry, joking. I know the driving motivation os maximising profit, while minimising tax burden on the richest.
- Comment on Musk shares post that Hitler didn’t kill millions, public workers did. Union rages 5 weeks ago:
It’s a meme stock.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
I said direct me to a low carb plant based diet.
In response you told me it didn’t need to be low carb. Easy block.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
You didn’t say what diet your mum changed from. You could replace a lot of grains and root vegetables (very high in carbohydrate) with a lot of non-root vegetables and see a big reduction in diabetes symptoms, but that doesn’t mean the diet is particularly low carbohydrate.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
Oh I see, it’s the angry non-factual person.
I am not wasting my time with this. Block it is.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
Please direct me to a low carbohydrate plant-based diet.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
A high carbohydrate and so high insulin-producing plant-based diet certainly isn’t healthy for me. The evidence that it is extremely problematic for many if not most people is compelling.
- Comment on The UK must make big changes to its diets, farming and land use to hit net zero – official climate advisers 1 month ago:
With the best will in the world, the plain and simple reality is that there are too many people. We are not anywhere near food or energy secure.
- Comment on UK's Lammy: It's time to seize Russian assets, not just freeze them 1 month ago:
Ah yes, David “will of the people bollocks” Lammy, as he put it on twitter in response to the brexit referendum outcome.
- Comment on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row 1 month ago:
Before I go any further I will say that this is my last post on this subject.
I’m not aware of the UK government using torture to crush dissent.
This is a so-called straw man argument, I never said the UK government used torture to crush dissent. If you expect me to go to the trouble of a response, frankly, do better.
The social contract is not “I give up the freedom to murder without legal consequence in order to not be murdered” in a civilised society. Is in 1025 or 2025? (This is a rhetorical question.)
I don’t think the public should be spied on all the time. But if there is some way that illegal communications (like planning murder) could be intercepted, without spying on others, that would be good.
We do not particularly disagree. Except that due to information security being an interest of mine, I know that it isn’t technically possible to weaken encryption for one without weakening encryption for everybody.
Being something like a specialist interest of mine, I also know that weakening encryption is one part of the creation of a total-surveillance state that is taking place - much like the explicit oligarchy we see forming now in the US has taken decades to build. This environment is certainly one in which fascism will thrive - something I don’t want to see, seeing as how I still remember people talking about the second world war and all that.
I also know that this snooping capability will be placed in the hands of future, and some current, political and business leaders who don’t have the interests of the public at large at heart, and who even might actually might be prepared to murder people: the US is now aligned with a Russia that has committed war crimes in Ukraine. If I mention Gaza and war crimes there is some (presumably small) chance I might be arrested under the Communications Act 2003, which defines illegal communication as ‘using public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety’.
Here is a letter written by experts regarding removing end to end encryption:
haddadi.github.io/UKOSBOpenletter.pdf
Take note of the 2003 communications act. Here are a few articles from a very quick search that explicitly show the kind of society that is being built, brick by brick:
…org.uk/…/big-brother-watch-condemns-uks-first-us…
nytimes.com/…/london-police-facial-recognition.ht…
www.verdict.co.uk/most-surveilled-city/
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68274090
theguardian.com/…/britain-leads-the-world-in-crac…
As I said, I am done with this thread now. Thanks
- Comment on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row 1 month ago:
Couple of things: I am sure that the likes of GCHQ get the messages of specific individuals who threaten the UK without any court orders right now. This cartoon sums up the limits to encryption’s effectiveness in this sort of context: xkcd.com/538/ And it has been red Tory v. blue Tory, one party, since 1994. I assume you disagree on this my second point - I am always happy to agree to disagree.
Regarding encryption, surveillance, and snooper’s intrusion: I was brought up being told the stasi were the bad guys. The stasi would blush at the surveillance foreign corporations and the British government now engage in as a matter of course: it is beyond their wildest dreams.
But spying on all of the public all of the time comes at a cost to society I would rather not pay. It quells dissent in the short and maybe mid term, but that extreme intrusion, ultimately drives otherwise moderate people into the hands of extremists (on every side). The terrorists win when we sacrifice liberty for temporary security (or whatever that quote was).
- Comment on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row 1 month ago:
I saw it called “end to end encrypted icloud backup” in the news. I guess it is that, in that it is encrypted at rest on apple’s servers, then between those servers and the end-user’s device. But that is a bit different to what signal does. Signal doesn’t store anything at rest on any servers they own as far as the experts I rely on for information on this (and who signal allow to audit them) say.
It seems to be the case that as long as apple offer any products at all to the UK market, the UK government have the right to ask, in secret, for apple to provide encryption backdoors into their products for all of apple’s customers whatever the nationality. It seems likely that the UK will share this information with five eyes countries’, allowing those countries to circumvent their own legal processes.
It isn’t clear if that has happened or is going to happen but it seems likely that they will, if they can get away with it without it becoming public knowledge. Which has pissed off, for instance, US information security professionals who like iphones whose data now can’t be considered secure.
It might be the case that apple has had to withdraw this particular product from the UK for public relations purposes because somebody whitleblew. But as long as apple wants to sell products in the UK it seems the snoopers charter allows the snoopers to request backdoor access to their products globally.
The Chinese have done the same. People here call them totalitarian for doing so.
- Comment on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row 1 month ago:
I understand where you are coming from, but the encryption is not secure if somebody else holds your password.
- Comment on Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn 1 month ago:
I worked in recording studios for nearly a decade about twenty years ago or so ago, recording all kinds of stuff including film and tv scores.
Producers and composers were overwhelmingly from a privilieged > public school > Oxbridge background. Presumably the lack of representation from other groups is either the same or worse now.
The people I worked with tended to have grown up with money/privilege (meaning it is easy to piss about producing films). But some kind of Oxbridge old boys network/snobbery mostly covers why this lack of opportunity for the general public exists. Of course Oxbridge is all about nepotism and privilege. I have lived around very privileged people and very underprivileged people. I haven’t noticed one iq point of difference between the two cohorts. If anything, being forced to struggle makes people atronger (until the amount of hardship to be endured becomes too much).
I can say that it was often the ones that acted like they expected to be waited on hand and foot, who didn’t show any class whatsoever when it came to actually paying their bills on time (often if at all).
British society is rife with it. Ultimately these type of people being in charge makes our society extremely weak.
- Comment on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row 1 month ago:
The question is do you want serious criminals including financial criminals, and whatever authoritarian government shows up at some point and starts tearing up the already increasingly authoritarian UK rule book (hi America) to have access to all communications? Do you want to protect stuff like online shopping? What about https, that protects the sniffing of data in transit across the internet, so a huge chunk of online privacy?
You don’t get one without the other.
It must be said that personal privacy is a cornerstone of a civilised society. You either ahve that or you don’t.