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These are the lowest leader approval ratings I have ever seen. Surely they can't go on?
These are the lowest leader approval ratings I have ever seen. These are the lowest leader approval ratings I have ever seen. Surely they can't go on? – politicalbetting.com
By all accounts some cursory research suggests this not at all undeserved. But it’s so low it’s a a statistical singularity. More on the lizardman https://t.co/sEDbALOZgm
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* I mean GCHQ aren't busy at the moment....nothing going on in the world that slightly more important.
The fact we even having any discussion that VPNs could be restricted in a Western liberal democracy is bonkers to me. It is actually why the likes of Proton with their VPN / Email etc is so important.
Imagine the scenes at GCHQ, we can either monitor those Russian spies in Salisbury or we can monitor Ben Smith, aged 14, in Reading downloading a VPN so he can watch some porn.
Off-topic & FPT:-
The lyricist Alan Bergman has died. He co-wrote The Windmills of Your Mind. Since this is pb, here is that song reworked as a satire on Boris Johnson:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_gojozdxok
As I and a quite a few other pointed out at the time, not only is there loads of competition for ISPS (it could be better in terms of fibre, although Starlink is now an option), but that would put into the hands of the state your connection to the internet......
Somebody like President HYUFD would be cutting households left, right and centre for VPN usage or if little Johnny got on the interwebs and saw some boobies.
About twenty years ago I had a client whose idea of IT security was buying new laptops/desktops every 18 months.
F1: fair to see the Belgian Grand Prix wasn't a classic. Hopefully Hungary can be rather better. Anyway, in the latest Undercutters podcast I look back at the former and ahead to the latter. Also, I predicted the whole podium correctly, which I don't imagine will happen again.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-belgian-gp-review-and-hungarian-gp-preview/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-belgian-gp-review-and-hungarian-gp-preview/id1786574257?i=1000719601725
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/07ACb2EOAQthqeJ7TLGUbg
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/f515ce67-661e-449d-a899-1b2e730cf684/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-belgian-gp-review-and-hungarian-gp-preview
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/07/f1-2025-belgian-gp-review-and-hungarian.html
As was said when the Tories originally tried to instigate it, the Online Safety Act is largely performative, and may well have the opposite effect to the one intended.
Peter Kyle: “If Jimmy Savile were alive today he’d be perpetrating his crimes online, and Nigel Farage is saying he’s on their side”
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1950086188649365825
With one exception, they all had in common that they didn't understand the first thing about actually running computers. They were experts in coding and data analysis, not technology. They used them but if they broke they had to get somebody else to fix it.
It may have changed - very probably has - but that doesn't inspire confidence that they would be any good at monitoring and understanding VPNs.
I mean, despite Hyufd's claims, even the Chinese government can't do that (can't even begin to do that) and they spend enormous amounts of time and money on it. Even North Korea found it near impossible which is why they set up a completely sealed intranet.
Then when they needed to get his WhatsApp messages back he'd forgotten the PIN for it.
Clown show all around.
The sooner we ban these vile child-slaying Machines of Death the better.
Anyone who disagrees thinks Anakin Skywalker should be in charge of every nursery in the country.
donkeysre###ds, especially anything technological.I reckon rather than the price of milk gotcha, politicians should be asked to describe the attention mechanism in transformers or the difference between DDIM vs DDPM in Diffusion models.
We're still seeing unwind from the Great Financial Crash, coupled to the damage from Covid, and with Putin's Massive Ego Trip, er, Special Military Operation thrown in. It's still causing massive economic hardship and it's rather difficult to see any meaningful way out of it.
It does make it to some degree understandable that many will roll the dice on those who offer simple solutions or the blaming of others, but unfortunately their inadequacy tends to make things worse (Syriza's fiasco in Greece springs to mind).
I'll state my usual bias - more babies / less politicians.
Well, let's face it, most of them are smarter than Lee Anderson, Margaret Ferrier and Zarah Sultana.
(Edited to correct the name.)
Around the time Trump did the League Cup draw live on Saint & Greavsie live from Trump tower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzO8SKEC-no
But I suspect it is in the same providence as Osama bin Laden being an Arsenal fan.
The Apple Enclosure is most like East Germany.
Whatever is wrong with the OSA, saying " we just have to live with this" doesn't entirely wash, either. A fence doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
Fences don't have to be perfect - but equally they should not impede half the population in the normal course of their lives.
We should be very grateful for those people though. Could be earning a fortune in the private sector but instead spend their time "having fun".
And that isn't a great thing.
THere have been some strange laws in the past. The Profane Oaths Act of 1745 springs to mind (not actually repealed until 1967, but routinely ignored). Or the law that all newspapers must be printed on specific paper.
But do we really want to give teenagers the idea that all laws are made by idiots and are completely impossible to enforce? We're having enough trouble with that already (see e-bikes).
There are numerous other ways this could have been achieved in a much less draconian and much more effective way. Enhanced parental controls might be one. Notification to ISPs of people under 18 at an given address might be another.
It's a sledgehammer to try and crush a large nut, but unfortunately the ground underneath is very soft so the nut just gets pushed into it and becomes harder to break.
Essentially, his account is that GCHQ / Five-Eyes had a way to squirrel in and became complacent.
A lot of the things we need to return to proper economic growth and better public finances can be fun.
What’s our main problem? Companies and consumers aren’t spending enough money. They’re sitting on assets, sweating them like Dickensian misers, and forcing government to take up the slack. This despite wage inflation having run ahead of overall inflation for about 3 years now.
Yet ask many in this country and they seem convinced the route back to the good times is pay restraint, spending cuts, tax hikes, “hard decisions” and general misery.
And the trouble is even those simple solution politicians, Farage and Corbyn and others (Greens, notably), are at it too. Negativity, country’s broken, policy based on identifying the enemy and promising to make their lives more miserable, whether immigrants, bankers or “zionists”.
It’s just as bad in France. Everyone has such a downer on everything.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/toddler-bites-cobra-to-death-lives-to-tell-tale/amp_articleshow/122922613.cms
No - it's about appropriate regulation, and in one (amongst other) particulars making our road network fail-safe not fail-dangerous. And that is both the environment, and the operators of the machines.
A key measure is to institutionalise alternatives as practical options (ie can walk without being forced out into the traffic).
Sadly i think everyone will get bored andcin a year no-one will talk about it anymore ecen though it doesn't work.
Who designs the rolling "healthy life" rolling displays in GP surgery waiting areas?
(I asked my surgery and the chap said it came from outside somewhere; they did not do it there.)
While it was theoretically secure, it demanded using 2 incompatible protocols at the same time
It was deprecated after we pointed this out
New protocols mean it could actually be deployed today, but the protective marking scheme has changed
For various reasons I haven't posted much these last 2 days but have scanned the thread, and with the greatest respect @HYUFD hasn't a clue on the subject of the use of the Internet by children
Our son is head of IT at a local school, and has three children, so knows more than many on both the use in schools of smartphones and of course in his family
He has installed controls on the time his children can spend on line, but even with restrictions his children still beg borrow and steal online time
Of course in school peer pressure and knowledge expands the sites his children [11 and 13] access and our son is in favour of a ban on smartphone use in school with no exceptions
I watched Peter Kyle this morning allegation about Farage and Saville, and as much as I am not a Farage fan what a ridiculous thing for Kyle to say when the OSA needs genuine and serious discussion
I did wonder about children using VPN, because unless they are already in use they could not upload the software without payment
I also am not sure what happens if a child uses their parents e mail address to verify their age. Does the site confirm the verification back to the e mail address or is it just taken as the verification
We are living in extraordinary times but @HYUFD is in for an eye watering experience in due course if he has his own children and I think Kyle may well have to retract his allegation
If you want a good example, I can point you to a fairly recent incident where a car followed another car into one of our dangerous "maximum throughput and speed" 40-50mph traffic islands, where a block of small trees had since been grown on the verge (no joined up thinking), so the sight line into the first exit was obscured.
So when the guy came round the corner, and could not stop, he said "I was forced to go up the pavement; I had no choice", where he killed someone on the pavement.
Of course the stupid fuck had lots of choices.
He had the choice to drive at a safe distance behind the car in front, at a safe speed for the distance he could see, to hit the car in front rather than careen up the pavement. IIRC he was still over the stupidly high DD limit from the night before, so he had the choice not to get pissed-out-of-his-brain when he knew he would be driving the next morning.
@Sunil_Prasannan you will be pleased to know there is a documentary on R4 at 4 today about Depeche Mode. I just heard a trailer for it on this morning’s special three hour special of Woman’s Hour.
On the question of age verification, first you'd need to distinguish whether a site uses a third party service (which makes most sense). Such a third party might consider the age of the account, I suppose, or use it in conjunction with something else, such as text messages: if I email you this code, can you text it back to me (or vice versa)?
Look, I don't know the specifics of your particular site. If I were running that site, I'd use a third party service. First, it would reduce the chance of scaring away porn consumers as the porn site would not see the user's personal identification, and the verification site would not see which videos the user watches. Second, it passes liability (to an extent). Thirdly, age verification is more likely to be done competently.
Given how safe the roads are, it is likely that a statistically significant number of accidents on any stretch of road will be only one or two, and might be obscured by accidents that are nothing to do with road conditions eg drunk driving or inattention. Or there might be lots of near misses where both drivers think "shit, that was close" and drive on, and traffic planners never get to hear about them.
A few of his friends have parents who install software to lock down their phones and PCs. Usually it is laughably unsophisticated, basically forcing a certain DNS server.
They all circumvent it with ease.
The actual statement. Healy neither says nor suggests that the UK is “ready to fight” in the Pacific nor in defence of Taiwan.
As usual, the Telegraph’s headline is wholly inaccurate and deliberately misleading.
https://x.com/John_A_Ridge/status/1949859194271617206
https://x.com/lowkey0nline/status/1878185415225614400?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I’ve graduated from ballet school.
I got a 2:2.
I don't have a lot of time for Reforms simplific sloganeering solutions but on this it will be like Konstantin Kisin vs Jimmy thr Giant.
Personally I think the OSA is poor legislation but it’s time opposition politicians used the Reform playbook .
The problem there was the Borisism ie Boris was either deluded or lying (I'm not opening windows on men's minds), as has been very well demonstrated. And it was when he had his back to the wall in the Commons; perhaps he thought he was still a journo.
Starmer was not in on the decision, which was taken by a prosecution lawyer in the CPS.
Here's Full Fact checking it: https://fullfact.org/online/keir-starmer-prosecute-jimmy-savile/
Responsible discussion over the act is needed, not mud slinging
Unlike some, I'm scared of commenting on the OSA and revealing the extent of my technological ignorance. Censorship of a form for children and adoloscents has always existed - in my time it was trying to get into an "X" film at the local cinema but that takes us into the even murkier waters of parental responsibility and morality into which any Government should avoid wading unless they are really sure of what they are doing.
The other point is why we frame legislation and rules on the basis everyone will meekly comply. Trying to figure out how any regulation could be circumvented would be a better place to start and put in mitigation or counter measures would at least optimise the impact but technology is evolving so fast what seemed impossible not so long ago is now easily achievable and the extent to which any legislation can keep pace with that evolution is dubious at best.
What's your stance on public ownership of utilities....nationalise them all, did I tell.you about utilities provision in Gaza....
In a country which specialises in politicians who are both corrupt and aggressively incompetent, she has excelled.
Liz Truss would do a better job - literally, and after a sober consideration of the facts.