sunbeam60
@sunbeam60@feddit.uk
- Comment on Heat pumps and insulation would cut UK living costs more than new oilfields, study suggests 12 hours ago:
They make economic sense if you have to upgrade to a new gas boiler (from an old gas boiler) or even worse, a oil-based boiler, but only under BUS conditions.
In other countries, though, where they are widespread, they are cheaper to both install and run than gas boilers.
- Comment on Heat pumps and insulation would cut UK living costs more than new oilfields, study suggests 2 days ago:
There’s an element of cost and an element of reducing our footprint here.
Be that as it may we are going for a 10 kW array and 24 kWh battery so I’m hoping we can do the heating on our own juice in all but a couple of months. At least if my calculations hold.
But I’m sending four kids into the world. I’d like to do my bit to avoid making it worse for them, so it’s ok if it all together ends up costing over the next 5-6 years.
- Comment on Heat pumps and insulation would cut UK living costs more than new oilfields, study suggests 3 days ago:
Going through an ASHP, solar and battery install in our house at the minute. Tbf, the £7,500 BUS grant is pretty generous and brings a heat pump conversion (in a modern house) into same price range as a new boiler.
- Comment on Britain’s second richest person leaves UK for Monaco 2 weeks ago:
But do be mindful that he can only spend 90 days/year in the U.K. I guess the rest he’ll spend on his yacht. Oh no.
- Comment on 'Paedophile' American diplomat 'smuggled out of London to US in dawn raid under British police's noses' 5 weeks ago:
If true (I mean, it’s GB News, so who knows?) the location where he was seized matters enormously. On the US embassy, driven in a blue license plate car, onto a US base with US jurisdiction? Entirely within the rights of the US, as per long standing diplomatic norms and U.K./US treaty.
- Comment on Netflix is garbage 2 months ago:
To the high seas, me hearties!!
- Comment on UK drought: crop harvests at severe risk of collapse 2 months ago:
I always prefer eating money.
- Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age' 3 months ago:
Why do you think the tech bros are so busy investing? When you don’t even need the other people to maintain your luxury, they can just die off and leave the planet to them. Clean, empty, serviced by “I have no mouth and I must scream” AI robots and rewilding. Paradise for them and death for the rest of us. The stench of death will only last 10 years and then the robots can clean up.
- Comment on High-street slot machines and casinos could face £460m tax rise under Burnham 3 months ago:
Gambling is a terrible addiction. We should treat users and work to eradicate suppliers. Why is it so hard for humans to improve their own condition?!
- Comment on Farage under mounting pressure to prove Russian hack claim 4 months ago:
No he is not. The people who vote for him couldn’t give a shit, they just want “brown people out of the country” and head to the sunlit uplands where The Empire still rules and we were a superpower, instead of a failing state with a economy in tatters.
- Comment on Zack Polanski declares two-party politics dead after Hackney mayoral win 5 months ago:
Just our election system. Honestly FPTP is the cause of so much crap in our country.
- Comment on Apple's chips are winners, but Windows fails help it most 6 months ago:
Hence the “all” in “all their hardware”.
- Comment on Apple's chips are winners, but Windows fails help it most 6 months ago:
Can you freely choose what OS you run on all their hardware? If not, it’s a walled-garden.
- Comment on Epstein files photos appear to show Andrew on all fours over female 8 months ago:
“Well, you see, I was in fact in the process of resuscitating this female, as she had feinted after getting off from a sofa in a rather fun party game. The skill of resuscitation is, of course, something I picked up while being a WAR HERO!! in the Falklands WAR”
- Comment on Epstein files photos appear to show Andrew on all fours over female 8 months ago:
But to be fair, not being able to sweat and having perfect Pizza Express date recall are pretty sweet buffs.
- Comment on Epstein files photos appear to show Andrew on all fours over female 8 months ago:
If Andrew Mountwhatshisface decides to sue the BBC, claiming the pictures are AI generated or something, or done by an imposter, then “appears to” shields the BBC against lawsuit and political fallout.
The BBC are treading on eggshells here, being publically funded and with the oncoming majority in parliament being ready to privatise the lot (shudder!).
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
It may theoretically be a false assumption but in practice it’s really not. The MitID identification and signing framework of Denmark, and many other similar systems across the EU, is based entirely on “the device is personal, access to it is limited and the secure enclaves within them are trustworthy”.
You are correct that this framework is not designed for anyone who wishes to root their device or install a custom OS. In other words, it cuts out 0.00000000001% of the population. The colour of the app has a bigger impact than “oh no! We can’t support rooted devices”.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
The article is talking about banning social media under a particular age. This is enabled by the new Digital Service Act, and specifically the Age Verification Blueprint within the European Digital Identity Wallet. The same discussion is happening all across the EU exactly because the EU now has shared standards defined for how age verification will work online.
So while it’s true that counties can enact their own laws, like a US state can, they do so within a framework of European supranational regulation and they definitely cannot (easily) make national laws that circumvent EU directives. Well, they can, but the punishments and the hassle is severe.
But very specifically these discussions are popping up all over the EU because suddenly the EU is actually putting in place the machinery that allows it to happen. So yes, it’s a French discussion, but one borne of and fed by the European-wide framework discussion.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
There’s nothing in the EU age verification structure that requires you to hand more information to the places where you need to verify your age. In fact the system expressly prevents it.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Ah I see what you mean.
I suspect the EU will regulate in the same way it’s done other enforcement; if you are above a certain size, different requirements apply to you.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Defining what is and what isn’t something is exactly what law has to do every single time it gets defined. I’m sure we can work this one out too.
The size of the tech giants cannot be the reason to not attempt regulation. If anything, it’s exactly the reason to regulate.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Our democracy regulates a lot of things that it (we) believe to be harmful to children: Cigarettes, gambling (also online), pornography, violence in media, alcohol etc etc.
Why is social media any different?
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
I agree that for the system to be anonymous the state has to live up to its commitment to anonymity. Have you read the EU’s regulation about this? In there is exactly a commitment that age verification has to be anonymous.
But, let’s take a reality check here:
- For the vast majority of the population, their ISP already collects every single website they visit.
- if the state wants to know what you’ve searched for and where you’ve been online, they already have that data stored. They can only access it legally with a court order.
Yes you can circumvent this logging (to some extent) through VPN - just like you can circumvent the requirement to verify your age with a VPN. But the vast majority don’t.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
My intent isn’t bad. I want kids to grow up without the harms of social media, just like I want them to grow up without the harms of gambling, tobacco etc. I wouldn’t expect children to be let in to see an 18-rated film? Why is social media any different? If we define it causes harm, which it definitely does, then why can’t we attempt to minimize harm through regulation?
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
What are YOU talking about?
I’m talking about French age verification, which is a national example of the EU’s ZKP age verification system.
To the instance that issues the ZKP tokens you of course have to prove who you are. Once you have the ZKP age verification tokens and actually use them to prove your age, those tokens are negotiated solely between your device and the asking entity.
Have you actually read the EU’s required structure for this?
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Only the entity that owns the private key can generate signed tokens. You can read about the Danish solution, which is the first and most developed implementation of the EU’s requirements for anonymity: digst.dk/…/implementing-age-verification-with-dan…
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
You don’t own the signing private key so you can’t - mathematically can’t, not opinion can’t
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Once again, have you read the EU proposal?
The UK, no longer part of the EU, of course have gone much softer and enabled non-anonymous verification. I am of course deeply against this.
What I AM talking about is the ZKP method mandated by the EU, which is anonymous.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Chat control was an insane suggestion that wouldn’t work politically nor technically and, logically, has been abandoned. For Denmark not to check Germany’s position on it, and for the flagrant disregarding of all technical positions that called out the utter bullshit, was laughable and one of the major failings of Denmark’s presidency.
But chat control and age verification is not the same and one sensible suggestion shouldn’t fall on the insanity of another suggestion.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 9 months ago:
Well we definitely agree pretty much 100% about social media as it stands today, in terms of its ills.
I don’t know what “regulation” of social media would be without requiring identification of users, though. The vast majority of its ills comes from, as you identify, monetised engagement which promotes bots. Therefore it is in social media companies’ interest to allow bots to play, which enables an undermining of our democracy.
Though we will disagree on what “verification” of users mean in terms of privacy risks.
The EU proposal for age verification has a legal requirement for anonymisation. This means that your “age verification” app simply holds signed verification tokens that it hands over to the service. There is no way for that token to be tied back to an identifiable user.
And there’s a million ways that could be circumvented by the state, agreed, but if the state circumvents its own laws (“must be anonymous”) they are already able to circumvent ISP logs, phone records etc. We have laws for dealing with it.
My point being that you either trust your government, in which case the requirement for anonymity will be upheld, or you don’t, in which case this doesn’t increase your risk surface (as you already believe your government circumvents laws and accesses logs illegally).