I don't buy that. I've met uk politicians and they are not really like that. However it may be more about being able to say to the voters that we are taking action against terror and paedos than actually catching any.
I mean I am not against the investigations at all. Also I believe that in such cases (terrorism) better way of extracting the secret key is sourcing it from the suspect him(or her)self.
I do neither, however what I wanted to highlight (in this black humour way) that the burden of de-encrypting lies on the police/govt. Also opening some encryption on ever person's device just because some government wants to check a few people is stupid. First of all: today it's let's say "good government" and tomorrow it'll be the "bad government", and secondly it can be used to fight the opposition (non-democratic behaviour)
I mean, investigations when you're a suspect is one thing. A system setup to monitor everyone and everything that treats everyone like a suspect is another.
I guess I am too dumb to understand. The argument that if you don’t have anything to hide makes more sense to me than nefarious secret spies are going to read your shopping list. I just don’t see what all the paranoia is about. I realise this is an unfashionable opinion to have on HN, and I’m not looking to debate or change anyone’s mind, but to understand with a substantive argument rather than one sentence replies.
I don't think you're dumb or trying to change anyone's mind or you have an agenda in general, and just trying to understand. Also, the "fashionability" of your PoV doesn't matter for me, because we're discussing here, and trying to learn from each other.
There are two problems with this PoV.
First argument is, we really don't understand how much private information we have, and how making it public is creepy. Your finances, what you own, how much you earn, your sincere chats with people you love or care are your private information. These things maybe known by limited parties, but when all of it is public to anyone, even to an algorithm reading it, and making it searchable is creepy and unsettling. I don't want a copy of asking my friend about their personal well being indexed anywhere.
This brings the second argument, and the above paragraph becomes a dangerous precedent. Consider you were chatting with your friend, spouse or child. One party says something and it can be very dangerous if it's taken out of context. One person shared an anecdote about their Alexa device. They found a recording in their account, their child saying "Why daddy always beats me?". Think about it for a second, and how dangerous this can be... The context was they were playing Uno, and dad beat their children in the game.
Again, take this recording or a couple more. Fine tune an AI sound engine with it. Extrapolate from there.
You see where this is going...
We want privacy not because we do nefarious things, but because we don't want our private matters to be publicized and not abused to harm us. This is why you put a password to your phone. Not because you hide something, but not to leave everything lying there.
Lastly, in the words of Edwards Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
Many of your remaining freedoms are provided by dissidents who fight for them, not you. Their fight against the state requires secrecy and plausible denial. If the state is able to peer into all aspects of your life and others they can route out dissidents by process of elimination. States naturally evolve to be fascistic and the culture required to prevent that generally decays as the memory of what exactly ‘Chesterton fences’ were preventing is lost to time.
Because while you might agree with the current regime, laws, etc, and they may not be abusing their all knowing powers, allowing government (or any corporation) such power means they can change the rules, for example in an authoritarian direction, and you have 0 recourse, power, or leverage in the situation.
To add, think of the common joke “I’m not going to google that, I don’t want to end up on a list”. The fact that it is known that government agencies monitor internet activity and keep “lists” has a pervasive cooling effect on what people are willing to search for. Not all things and not all people but the effect is real.
Many government policies around multiculturalism and immigration have gotten to a stage where criticism against it can be seen as incitement to violence / disturbing the peace. Protected class communities have a hecklers veto whereby responding to even mild criticism with violence they’re able to send those who criticize them to jail, often more so than the jail term for violence. States care more about criticism than the violence.
This has an effect of making criticism of government policy a heavily punished crime. A situation the government has fostered.
Multiculturalism is incompatible with free speech and since multiculturalism is government policy free speech has to be sacrificed.
It’s a slippery slope and it’s been going on for some time so very little can be done about it.
The naive belief that having more data means the organization will be more effective at carrying out its goals.
Doesn't matter what data - the algorithms/AI will figure it out.
Doesn't matter how messy the data - the algorithms/AI will figure it out.
Post-9/11 governance is filled with the CYA view that if we collect enough data we can connect the dots before another event happens.
Privacy issues aren't important, as the organization's goals are good, with strong guards against corruption. (While DOGE accesses highly personal data entrusted to the IRS.)
While the world's data centers are smothered in unused data, collected because it's too hard to figure out what not to save and the Thiel and his malign ilk promise that their tools are good for us.
exerting control over powerful people who aren't as politically connected as the people who have access to this private data, in addition to finding excuses to spend money on military stuff (with kickbacks)
> It's a textbook example of getting offended on behalf of other people, who aren't even complaining in the first place.
the person who started the thread stated they're from Australia - so they're getting "offended" on behalf of themself.
FWIW I'm also Australian (living in Europe now) and found this kind of thing (using vague, location specific timeframes like "winter" or "holiday") quite confusing, too. It's obviously easier for me to understand now that I live in the northern hemisphere.
The "issue" is that it's a bit annoying to have to look up where a company is based and then the weather patterns in that locale to understand something, when they could just as easily say "Nov-Dec 2025" for example. And when you live in a sub-tropical or tropical locale where there aren't clear demarcations between four seasons like there are in western Europe and North America, you can't just say "winter there is summer here" and vv.
It's not a serious, "stop everything and fix this right now" issue, just a common annoyance, and it's nice to see Blender here try to make that a bit clearer.
> The "issue" is that it's a bit annoying to have to look up where a company is based and then the weather patterns in that locale to understand something
The only thing you have to do here is understand that seasons are switched in different hemispheres, which is taught when you're about 6 years old in most schools. And in case you forgot that, they even helpfully noted that their "winter of quality" is referring to winter in the northern hemisphere.
Yes, working with people from different parts of the world to you is "a bit annoying".
The Blender group - and entire worldwide open source software community - is already making massive concessions by doing everything through English.
If the only thing you have to put up with that's "a bit annoying" is different holidays and seasons, you should recognize that you're actually incredibly privileged. You already speak English natively. You grew up in a western English speaking country, you share basically all the same reference framing aside from some minor calendar differences. It's honestly selfish as hell to expect people to adapt even their seasonal reference frames to suit you. They're already speaking your entire language instead of their own.
> The only thing you have to do here is understand that seasons are switched in different hemispheres
Like most things taught to 6 year olds, this is also a massive oversimplification of the real world.
There isn't even widespread agreement over which exact months constitute "summer"/"winter" within the Northern hemisphere, let alone when you start bringing in more tropical climates (which tend to have Rainy/Dry/Windy seasons instead).
You notice a deprecation warning in the logs, or an email from GitHub and you make a 1 line commit to bump the node version. Easy.
Sure you can make typos that you don’t spot until you’ve pushed and the action doesn’t run, but I quickly learned to stop being lazy and actually think about what I’m writing, and get someone else to do an actual review (not just scroll down and up and give it a LGTM).
My experience is same as the commenter above, it’s relatively set and forget. A few minutes setup work for hours and hours of benefit over years of builds.
The non-solution solution, to simply downplay the issues instead of fixing them. You can solve almost anything this way, but also isn't it nice when things around you aren't universally slightly broken?
I guess I'd disagree that this is "slightly broken". That's just how it works. I don't think there's some universally perfect solution that magically just works all the time and never needs intervention or updating.
If you're on-call, you're working - it doesn't matter if there's an active incident or not. Unless you're a contractor (in which case, you're unlikely to be on-call) the company you work for pays for your time, not delivery of specific work-items. On-call pay should reflect this.
I do long(ish) distance running as a hobby - it's not feasible to take a laptop out on a two hour run.
If I want to go meet a friend for a drink or food, I have to lug around a backpack, keep an eye on it to make sure it's not stolen. If I wanted to have a beer or wine, I can't because I may need to work at any point.
Favourite band is performing? I suppose you could take a backpack and the laptop to the venue, but again there's a chance it's pinched, and they'll make you check it at the cloakroom for the performance.
> If I want to go meet a friend for a drink or food, I have to lug around a backpack, keep an eye on it to make sure it's not stolen. If I wanted to have a beer or wine, I can't because I may need to work at any point.
If this is a stated requirement from your employer, talk to a lawyer. This is a common litmus test for whether you need to be paid while on call, even if you aren't actively working. Depending on the jurisdiction you may be entitled to pay (or trigger a relaxation of your company's policies).
I use my pocket computer if something comes up. It's not nearly as pleasant to use, granted, but way more pleasant than carrying a laptop everywhere. But I also wouldn't hesitate to have a beer if the desire arose. Perhaps I'm just not as committed to my work as you.
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