I've written to my MP several times about this. Each response just repeats the same talking points about safety whilst completely missing the underlying technical issues and consequences.
I've been met with that kind of stone walling before too, you know what eventually worked to actually turn the position of a local councilwoman? Going to her office and demand to speak with her, then sitting down, listening and having a conversation with her. Turns out that most of the emails "she" wrote to me was written by an assistant "to save her time" and she weren't aware of the points I was trying to bring up. Granted, this was like one and half decade ago, but if I was met with something similar today I'd try the same thing.
People tend to be a lot more reasonable in person, and also if you listen to them first.
Yeah, also they could be male. Don't take it so literal, the point I'm making is about going and physically meeting people, not about what title/label those people have.
There are lots of replies stating that their MP gave them a cookie cutter response, so it is a waste of time.
I can tell you that isn't entirely true. When they get a lot of messages about the same thing, or better still you meet them in person, they may keep giving you the 'party line response', but they will also be feeding back that there is discontent to the whips.
This. It's not a waste of time. I know it's frustrating. You have to set your expectations. The best you can do is write as eloquently and succinctly as possible to get your point across and make it clear what you're advocating for. Better still, encourage others to write / email / call with that same clarity.
What you are telling me in effect is that all the exchanges I have are ultimately disingenuous with the MP. It also tells me that the MP represents the party and not me (as they are acting as nothing more than a glorified public relations officer).
This undermines the entire point of the process and only further degrades public trust.
Here on the other side of the pond, writing our so-called Representatives to complain, produces the same kind of result. If your rep has a (D) by his or her name, you'll get back one form-letter, and if your rep has a (R) by his or her name, you'll get back the other form-letter. There's no attempt to address the points you might bring up. You write--and they respond back with their pre-baked talking points.
A politician is like ROM: Once it's written, that's it, you have to swap it out with a different ROM if you want even one of its lines of programming changed.
What you describe is the representative democratic system. Misunderstanding is the source of any distrust. It is frustrating to write to an MP only to be given boilerplate in return. But setting your expectations and continuing to advocate for your point of views is the only way to participate. One letter won't change anything, and how could it? There are other people writing opposing points of view. It's taken in the aggregate.
Same, my MP is clueless. They won’t listen to the experts. This is what he said:
The UK has a strong tradition of safeguarding privacy while ensuring that appropriate action can be taken against criminals, such as child sexual abusers and terrorists. I firmly believe that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive—we can and must have both.
The Investigatory Powers Act governs how and when data can be requested by law enforcement and other relevant agencies. It includes robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy, ensuring that data is accessed only in exceptional cases and only when necessary and proportionate.
The suggestion that cybersecurity and access to data by law enforcement are at odds is false. It is possible for online platforms to have strong cybersecurity measures whilst also ensuring that criminal activities can be detected.
The response is the same boilerplate responses I used to get when I used to write to my MP. This is why I just gave up emailing my MP. You are essentially pleading with someone to reverse their previous position when they have no incentive do to so.
All of which is arguably true, but misses the point that uploading your age verification documents to every social media site you might want to look at is very likely to result in them getting hacked and leaked.
Working with startups, I've signed up for 100s of sites. My password manager lists 550. Those signups are currently low-risk: just my email (already widely public) and a random password. But it would put a big chill on my work if I had to upload government age verification docs to each one.
Same. I have protested over email about the Online Safety Act (amongst other things). I get a generic reply after 6-8 weeks with the same talking points.
Legislation like this does not make children safer, it makes everyone else less safe.
Which SQLite Go library do you use? My biggest pain with using SQLite in Go is often the libraries and the reliance of CGO which is what puts me off using Turso
Edit: Looking at the go mod file I noticed github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3 which I think is a C wrapper library so I'm assuming you rely on CGO for compiling
The problem with mocks is that they test your assumptions, not reality...
When you mock a CRM client to return one account, you're assuming it always returns one account, that IDs have a particular format, that there's no pagination, that all fields are populated. Each assumption is a place where production could behave differently whilst your tests stay green
Your contract tests use cached JSON fixtures. Salesforce changes a field type, your contract test still passes (old fixture), your mocks return the wrong type, production breaks. You've now got three test layers (contract, mock scenarios, E2E) where two can lie to you. All your contract and mock tests won't save you. Production will still go down
I have zero confidence in these types of tests. Integration tests and E2E tests against real infrastructure give me actual confidence. They're slower, but they tell you the truth. Want to test rate limiting? Use real rate limits. Want to test missing data? Delete the data.
Slow tests that tell the truth beat fast tests that lie. That said, fast tests are valuable for developer productivity. The trade-off is whether you want speed or confidence
> I really dislike this idea of testing in go: only ever use an interface, never the real implementation + mockgen the mocks based on this interface + use the mocks to assert that a function is called, with exactly this parameters and in this exact order.
Same I have zero confidence in these tests and the article even states that the tests will fail if a contract for a external service/system changes
I see this kind of testing as more for regression prevention than anything. The tests pass if the code handles all possible return values of the dependencies correctly, so if someone goes and changes your code such that the tests fail they have to either fix the errors they've introduced or go change the tests if the desired code functionality has really changed.
These tests won't detect if a dependency has changed, but that's not what they're meant for. You want infrastructure to monitor that as well.
Been trying to decide whether adopting a traditional RFC process or Oxide's RFD (https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0001) would better suit my team. We're using ADRs at the moment but we've ended up mixing a discussion like process into it and review process and using ADRs more like RFCs/RFDs
I'm currently working on a project that is using an OpenAPI library that decided to use a non-standard JSON encoder. The developer experience definitely suffers when you can't use common encoding/json patterns in your own code. Simple operations become unnecessarily awkward
I've been using the minio-go client for S3-compatible storage abstraction in a project I'm working on. This new change putting the minio project into maintenance mode means no new features or bug fixes, which is concerning for something meant to be a stable abstraction layer
Need to start reconsidering the approach now and looking for alternatives
There is probably a legitimate basis for some powers against actual foreign intelligence operations. But the proposals in the article defining "subversion" to include environmental activism, independence movements, or criticism of UK policy show how quickly these things expand beyond their original scope. The Terrorism Act was meant to exclude domestic activists but two decades later it has been used against protest groups
As is tradition. Put the tool in the toolbox, label it "it's for bad guys" to sell it to people, oh no, govt used it for something else, what a surprise.
And even if current government is 100% benevolent, just putting the tool in the toolbox means any subsequent govt, that might not be that, can use it.
> But the proposals in the article defining "subversion" to include environmental activism, independence movements, or criticism of UK policy show how quickly these things expand beyond their original scope.
Yes, but I wouldn't put "independence movements" in that list. Much as I'm relaxed about the Welsh and Scots' independence movements, for Northern Ireland to do whatever it wants including the current kicking-can-down-road approach, and for any future potential from the Cornish and London vague aspirations that nobody currently takes seriously…
… if I was a hostile foreign power, then I would absolutely support all of those campaigns. And more. (Independence for Langstone! :P)
I would do the same. But the response should be to root out foreign influence campaigns, and foreign money sponsoring divisive voices. A policy that marks your own people as subversive starts from a disadvantaged position.
So, you support the government labeling those movements as "subversion"? Your opinion isn't very clear here. If so, why are those movements so different, or are you supporting the government's move entirely, because of those cases?
Noticing that an issue has two opposing sides with good points doesn't mean I must pick a side to favour, nor even that I am competent to do so.
I'm in no position to weigh these things even in isolation, let alone against each other.
All I can do is say that I sympathise with everyone in the UK who wants independence from Westminster, and yet I would absolutely abuse the hell out of that kind of sentiment if I was a foreign agent trying to undermine the UK. Divide and conquor, very old technique.
It will never cease being funny to me how Eurocrats/Anglocrats pout their chests, proclaim proudly how "free" and "democratic" they are, and then proceed to implement a police state and surveillance regime which the DDR could only dream of. Sure you have "nothing to hide", and "intentions are good". Was that also true for every decade in European history? Will that also be true in 10 years? In 20 years?
It’s not just the use against protest groups but selective use of it, that makes this extra bad. From the article:
> The risk is magnified by the racist and colonial legacy of Britain’s intelligence and policing institutions, whereby ‘loyalties’ and ‘foreign influence’ are racially coded terms. It is clear who the state thinks may constitute an agent of ‘foreign power’. Hall acknowledges the risk of “putting certain nationalities under the spotlight or appearing to question their loyalties”, but this is brushed over by the alleged extraordinary threat of national security risk.
This type of abuse of powers is already becoming normalized in America. For example, Governor Abbott of Texas and other politicians from right-leaning states have explicitly condemned Sharia Law and Islam, and are taking various actions to marginalize those communities. The recent incident with an Afghan national has further radicalized the right.
I can see how Sharia Law has no place in a democratic constitutional republic, but Christianity shares many of the same issues as Islam in terms of supremacist tendencies. And many on the right have no issue openly claiming that America is a Christian nation, and advocate for puritanical integration of their religion into law. This gets no condemnation from the right, and I doubt they’ll use their powers to stop the push for theocracy.
This is classic "think of the children" backdoors; whether in the legislation or enforcement or literal backdoors. Politicians know that no one is going to publicly come out and say a law to "protect" children shouldn't be passed.
Most antifascist groups are not protest groups. Most of them are watchdogs. When a story about military groups (including police) making nazi salutes or getting nazi tattoos or praying in front a a picture of Hitler come out, 99% of the time it's an antifa group that contacted a journalist and provided them picture, dates and specifics about the story. If you want to arrest all antifascists, you will have to arrest half of the OSINT community, because they're the one who developed a lot of the tools.
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