No, people are being arrested for making malicious communications. They would have suffered the same punishment if they had used email, letter, graffiti on a billboard.
You cannot go around threatening to harm people without repercussions.
He was offered to undergo "re-education." You might not like this meme. You might find it offensive. But should he be arrested by several officers for it? Of course not. This is just one example of many people being being arrested and imprisoned for offending people. It is against the law to offend people in the UK.
Re-read what you just linked. In the response from the JIMU:
"A 51-year-old man from Aldershot was arrested on suspicion of sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing message or matter."
This is the legal basis for the arrest. Without the retweet, police would not have had authority to turn up to his place of residence - twice - and demand entry. No doubt they preferred Brady voluntarily submit himself for interview at the station, but he refused, which I hope we can all agree is the morally correct position. No one should have police turn up outside their house - TWICE - because of a parody retweet.
The law might be a bad one (and probably is) but on balance better that police investigate suspected illegality than don’t. Overall I’d rather be somewhere where even a former royal can be arrested than somewhere the rule of law is optional.
Haha, any comments on that? The police didn't even apologize or admit a mistake, they believed they were doing the right thing and just made a waffle statement about "reflects need in our local communities."
Police make mistakes, in some countries they arrest someone trying to incite an arrest and that's bad. In some countries they shoot someone for driving 5mph over the limit, that's worse. The police in the UK do far worse than wrongful arrests so while bad, it's not really on my "top ten problems" list.
People are certainly being arrested *in the USA* for speech (e.g. opinions) that are theoretically protected by the first amendment.
Unfortunately, last I tried to look this up, I found that there simply do not exist useful and easy to find stats for "malicious communications" in the UK such that stalkers and people making death threats can be separated from mere political correctness.
And even with actual death threats, there's stuff like this, where I don't myself have a single sustained state of my own mind about how I would respond to such a tweet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial
Kinda irrelevant, given that the go-to examples I see on Hacker News of this happening in the EU and UK are either actual death/violence threats etc. (which are also not protected speech in the USA) or also not upheld in higher European courts.
And? I didn't say anything about "incitement", I said "actual death/violence threats", because I meant people making actual threats of violence up to and including death, are the actual things tweeted in the most commonly seen examples given on Hacker News (besides the aforementioned "also not upheld" that the commenter I was replying to tried to use to justify when Americans get arrested for tweets).
The people in Europe have a different view of freedom of speech and that’s fine. Not everything that’s a slightly different perspective on freedom of speech and what that entails and includes is tyranny.
I’m European and I do not. France and the UK especially come from the same liberal intellectual root as the USA. What we see today is a bastardisation of these principles in Europe. Only the US was smart enough to canonise it into law.
Democracy also includes sometimes things not happening the way you want to … happens to me all the time, too.
Obviously free (and not merely democratic societies) need strong protections of minorities and broad freedoms, but I don’t see free speech implementations in Europe broadly infringing on that.
So there is censorship, you just think that it is good. That's fine! But you should own the position and justify it on its own terms instead of pretending that it doesn't count as censorship.
Sure but filtering what you say is also a form of censorship. Swinging the term around like it's some form of morality is silly; anyone who isn't for a form of censorship is just a moron and an asshole. Or even worse: a liberal.
”Margaret Dodd of one offence of improper use of a public communications network,
contrary to section 127(2)(c) of the Communications Act 2003. This provides that a
person commits an offence if “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or
needless anxiety to another [she] … persistently makes use of a public electronic
network”.”
Considering all forms of sharing information as freedom, USA have huge problem with copyrights. Copyright limits people right to speech to protect interest of corporations, same as ban of stalking or slanders limits freedom of speech to protect victims.
Author here. Yeah, unfortunately, that's kinda it: just rebuild a lot. At work we have a custom setup with a build server and agents for provisioning, which is nice for multiple nodes, but also even slower. The QEMU setup in the attached repo was added later and also handy for testing multiple nodes. QEMU is also nice because you can just trash the disk images to get a clean start.
You're right, it's very much a trade-off and preference where you put control, NixOS or Kubernetes. I'm not so much torn, but more believe you always have to weigh pros and cons.
For CoreDNS specifically, this setup adds CoreDNS to every node, and every node does DNS locally, so there's no redundancy benefit to using a Kubernetes deployment for CoreDNS. It does become a benefit as soon as you can't have a CoreDNS per node. I guess the obvious downsides to CoreDNS per node are that cache becomes very spread out in larger setups, and you may end up hammering your API server and upstream DNS servers more.
Yes. And most importantly, the Incus API and CLI client (which uses the API) presents a consistent management language for system containers (the default ones with a init/systemd-controlled userspace), OCI containers (unpacked, not layered), and VMs. Well, as consistent as makes sense for each. There are a number of options/properties that are specific to each, but it feels very consistent.
The Incus server inside IncusOS is the same software. The difference is as little userspace as possible alongside it (not even busybox).
star/plus/cirrus etc - pure debit-only networks - aren't accepted on a plane
debit cards that are on one of the credit card rails (visa, mastercard, etc) are very common. those work because they're just a normal visa transaction
> those work because they're just a normal visa transaction
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. In some payment situations you’re asked whether you’d like to have the transaction go through as debit or as credit—so those two must be different somewhere. And probably in more than just a bit in a packet, as, for example, paying with debit Visas or MasterCards (normal ones, not Electron resp. Maestro) in the Netherlands (where locals almost universally have credit cards) is something of a crapshoot.
They use largely the same rails/network (for example Mastercard). The only meaningful difference is on how and when funds are reconciled.
Some payment providers ask up front to simplify the flows as it's not totally trivial to determine what sort of card it is, and also because different fees apply - historically some merchants added specific fees to basket etc. (less so nowadays but the UI convention sticks)
> Some payment providers ask up front to simplify the flows as it's not totally trivial to determine what sort of card it is
And because the same card can be both. At least here in Brazil, most bank cards have multiple uses (credit, debit, ATM) in the same card. AFAIK, they're separate applications within the same chip, and the terminal has to select which one to use before starting.
Interesting! Did not know that offhand but just looked it up in the technical docs and this is part of the standard. Interesting to hear how other countries have adopted different approaches.
From memory, online and offline transactions are usually split out by BIN number (first six digits)
The BIN will tell you which bank was the issuer and which class of card you have, like standard or premium, though most readers probably don't take that into account beyond the card scheme and card type associated with the range that the individual BIN is in. Many banks will have multiple BINs for the same card type if they are large.
Credit / online debit / offline debit usually get different ranges. The reader gets a list of the ranges when it updates and they don't change super often. Offline readers can be configured to reject cards with a number in an online only range.
It's usually based on the chip settings. Rules aren't as simple as "always online" or "never offline"; an issuer can e.g. convey that they'd prefer online transactions for certain types of payments, while offline is ok for others, via relatively complex configurations of the code of the chip application.
Before that, there was the service code on the magnetic stripe, which also can convey things like "online only" or "domestic use only".
The BIN is only involved in risk management on the terminal's side: Many of these in-flight terminal accept deferred online transactions, which means that, even though they're completely offline, they take the risk of accepting an online-only card. (For truly offline capable cards, the risk is often with the issuing bank.)
That type of risk management can benefit from knowing what type of card it is, and prepaid cards are often seen as riskier (because customers might intentionally drain them before a flight). Of course, debit and credit cards can also be empty/marked as stolen, but these are marginally harder to get and replace.
Yep you are completely correct; people don't realise how complex the chip is - it has what you'd legitimately recognise as an operating system! It can also be reprogrammed over the wire, if your chip and pin is taking a bit toooo long that might be what's happening.
Your correct on the risk spread. I wasn't confident last night (I'm not totally versed on the terminals) but looked it up. As I understand if you choose to accept offline only payments then you accept the risk of the transaction failing. If it's the issuers choice they own the risk.
> The only meaningful difference is on how and when funds are reconciled.
Nope, even this is identical. These days the difference between a debit/credit card is pretty much aesthetic, from a transaction processing perspective there generally isn’t any actual differences. Differences that people see today are most artificial for the purpose of justifying extra fees, or higher interchange based an entirely arbitrary factor that has zero correlation to any risks that appear in the transaction processing and clearing mechanisms.
Basically the only reason anyone really bothers keeping the difference between credit/debit cards around, is as a technical excuse for discrimination and abusive fees. Notably in the EU nobody cares if a debit or credit card is used, because the EU outlawed all the crazy fees and other bullshit, so now there’s no commercial reason to differentiate between the two 99% of the time.
There are a few differences for sure. All entirely technical in how the money moves or clears. The most obvious point here is debit card moves your money from your account, credit moves the issuers money from their account.
But to your wider point; from a transaction fee point of view you are dead right. Of course a credit card has other attractions; for example it's credit :D but also things like section 75 protection.
> There are a few differences for sure. All entirely technical in how the money moves or clears. The most obvious point here is debit card moves your money from your account, credit moves the issuers money from their account.
From the perspective of the card network and the merchant, there is no difference here. The card network has a contract with the issuer, so all transactions, in all scenarios, are always first paid by the issuer. It’s then the issuers problem to figure out where they get the money from.
It’s entirely possible to perform transactions on debit card that will place the account attached to it in a negative balance, and for the person owning that account to vanish. The card issuer is still on the hook for the money, neither the card network, nor the merchant, care if the issuer recovers the funds or not, they always get paid.
But there is a lot more complexity than, I think, you are glossing over. For example, you also likely have at least one technical services partner in the flows, probably two.
Additionally, money often doesn't move in real time, especially when credit cards are involved. The process is, intentionally, split.
Your point on that is fair, but remember, many credit providers are also not banks, and the money is in a bank account owned by a third party. So, as a trivial example, I can't just assume money coming to me from Bank A is related to transactions from Bank A's cards.
A lot of people don't realise that the main way all of this works is through very large batch files with lists of transactions in moving back and forth between various parties behind the scenes.
(We are on semantic points, though, but I just wanted to clarify the complexity behind the scenes that most people don't see or understand)
> those work because they're just a normal visa transaction
> I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
I would be very sure about that.
> In some payment situations you’re asked whether you’d like to have the transaction go through as debit or as credit—so those two must be different somewhere
Edit: OK maybe there's different level of trust and some take a leap of faith :) In my experience debit didn't work but it appears that its not the same everywhere.
I don’t see why not, they can be run just like a credit card through the same network.
When a debit card prompts for a PIN, don’t enter it, press submit, and it runs as credit instead of debit, but functionally works the same as far as the card-holder is concerned. It might take slightly longer to settle, and the merchant likely gets charged higher fees, but it works just fine. When I got my first debit card 20+ years ago my bank specifically told me to select credit and using it, instead of using it with the PIN as a debit card.
These days I’ve noticed the systems tend to auto-prompt for the PIN instead of asking credit or debit. But skipping it functionally works the same as pressing credit used to.
This is not the case of debit cards in Europe. Debit cards are tied to bank accounts. Most people only have a debit card or don’t even know what a credit card is (or what the difference is). We just call them “cards”.
You can buy debit (or more accurately prepaid) cards in supermarkets in Europe too (which is a big and relatively diverse place, so just because that is/was not a thing in the countries you're familiar with doesn't mean it didn't exist).
I have no idea how the terminals operate, but I was on a flight two days ago and paid with a debit card. The flight otherwise required devices to be in airplane mode. Though there are flights that offer wifi, so there's a good chance the terminal can communicate with the ground, but they just don't allow anything else.
Yep, but IIRC only if they are credit, not debit. I guess they also have certain special conditions with the processor...
Edit: I've also seen it when paying on the cafe car while on train trips in Spain. Even without any cellphone/internet coverage they'll let you pay, but only with credit.
It’s definitely not that simple. It’s totally random. I have only European debit cards, and I can pay everywhere. The same was true with my cards from other countries. Sometimes only Apple Pay/other NFC based system worked for some reason, which is connected to the same cards, when on the same airline I could pay with my physical cards in any other instances. Sometimes I can pay only with my physical cards. Sometimes one of my card doesn’t work. However, I didn’t have problems with them in the US in the past few years. It was more complicated over there before COVID.
Can’t debit account go negative where you live? It’s definitely possible. Even when you don’t have an account credit, or what it’s called. Of course, this is possible only in strange circumstances, but still, I had a debit account with negative statement once. If I remember well, it was because similarly delayed offline transactions. It probably depends on country and/or bank.
I think that is true when you initially switch and are still comparing browsers, but I certainly no longer check if something broken happens to work in Chrome. Stuff may equally be broken by my adblocker. Too lazy to debug someone else's work.
Too often the only sites I find are broken in Firefox are "necessary" things like financial and medical things. I rarely see any issue with hobby and nonsense sites where "laziness" might be excusable.
It's the perverse incentives where companies with a captive audience that can't easily churn will be the ones that ship broken half-arsed sites and not care.
One phenomena I am seeing more that makes me boil with fury is infinite captchas in Firefox. If Firefox increasingly gets excluded "for security" then...
> One phenomena I am seeing more that makes me boil with fury is infinite captchas in Firefox. If Firefox increasingly gets excluded "for security" then...
I can't figure out if this is true. I certainly get constant captchas, but everybody else I know who uses firefox is also ad-blocking, dropping cookies, resisting fingerprinting, forging referers, downloading embedded videos, etc. etc... A lot of us look like anonymous bot traffic because we are trying to look like anonymous bot traffic. I don't know what the solution would be.
Pretty sure I try disabling protections in such situations but maybe not. I returned to the last site that did it to me to try this out (on a different machine) and it didn't captcha me at all with protections on! Ugh.
I can't remember the last time I encountered a site that didn't work in Firefox. Very rarely I need to disable uBlock for a site, but not for anything mainstream such as my bank, utilities, online shopping.
Personal gripe, but there are a gazillion note taking tools, but very few of them do real-time collab.
Me and my partner currently use Apple Notes for this, simple stuff like grocery lists, todo lists, etc. But Apple Notes perf is abysmal with real-time collab. The app constantly hangs and fans are spinning non-stop. iOS is not much better.
> The EDPS has also decided to order the Commission to bring the processing operations resulting from its use of Microsoft 365 into compliance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.
Which, to me, reads like they can keep using Microsoft 365, they just need to work with Microsoft to bring it in compliance.
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