Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things. But - exposure to whatever Palantir does is very likely bad for the second regardless of whether or not it's bad for the first.
> Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things.
"Everything in the name of man, everything for the good of man!" — The 3rd Program of the CPSU, 1961. As the joke went, "and if you get to visit the Party Congress in Moscow, you will even get to see that very man!"
If a person or an organization can "trust the government", that means they don't have to trust their business partners that much, and don't even have to bother with a lot of contract language, since the government will force the other party to general legal norms and to act in good faith.
If the government cannot be trusted, or rather, can be trusted to be biased and corrupt, then - a person or an organization needs a lot of trust in their partner, and writing contracts is, like you say, not very interesting.
But actually, I would say it's the middle ground, where trust is partial, is where you see long and detailed contracts with provisions and indemnification clauses and long definitions and long lists of corner cases etc.
I am completely against the US-Israeli war on Iran. That said, they are not carpet-bombing Iran. That is, they appear to be selecting individual targets rather than engaging in carpet bombing entire areas:
The choice of targets is not legally legitimate (and the entire campaign is illegal AFAICT), and sometimes they used old/invalid intel, like what happened with that girls' school that's supposedly close to an IRGC base. Still, it is mostly individual buildings or installations rather than an attempt to flatten entire areas.
Oh so your line is carpet bombing? The attackers has shown they can do almost any atrocity many times (already killed thousands of woman and children in Gaza with zero remorse or accountability)
what's your line? respecting "sovereignty" of dictators and mass murders/internet blocks/Armageddonian Islamic cosmology?
talking about "your line" is way too simplistic. think in second and third order consequences. Iran exported and financially supported terrorists because of a repressive theological dictatorship
Indeed, Israel and the US are quite vile. I have said so many times on placard which have then been ripped apart by the Israeli police. I only made a comment about the term "carpet bombing", as that is a specific term which means something else than "wide-scale bombing".
I always loved the "white phosphorous" stuff. The meme appeared on reddit out of nowhere, and once it did it made everyone who heard it completely utterly stupid. Suddenly it's a chemical weapon, the worst sort of atrocity anyone's heard of.
The meme will never die. Skynet could be hunting down the last of humanity hiding in caves, and those humans will be crying "maybe it will just be nukes, please god, don't let the robots white phosphorous us!".
If these reasonable people knew that, then why did you have to say this? It's the dog whistle that they need so that they'll behave as expected...
White phosphorous is a way to light up the night sky during warfare. Like all warfare, it is dangerous to human life even when that's not it's direct intent... people fall off cliffs and shit while fighting (or running from it). Their deaths are no less tragic for it.
But when crackpots start screaming "they're trying to make people stampede off cliffs to their deaths!", it shows you for the very unreasonable and quite likely mentally ill person that you are.
> White phosphorous is a way to light up the night sky during warfare
Lol No. Hilariously no. The thing to use to light up night sky is Magnesium (mostly, also aluminum. nowadays specialized resins). The primary use of WP is for smoke, but it is used illegally as an incendiary munition.
For someone who talks so much about WP I did not expect this level of ignorance. Empty vessels sounds much, I suppose.
Use of WP is banned * in warfare by international treaty, on the grounds of avoiding unnecessary cruelty and suffering. There are other banned weapons, for example, dumdum bullets. *There is a specific exception made for WP, which the Israeli army habitually and illegally abuses.
No other army is known to be a repeat offender with regards to WP. It's use in an area with civilian population is strictly prohibited. Cliffs are not.
Given the number of false equivalences you have been drawing you sound like a shill.
Whining that bad people do illegal things is asinine.
>*There is a specific exception made for WP, which the Israeli army habitually and illegally abuses.
You mean it's not actually illegal.
I'm honestly not a big fan of Israel, but until we can locate all six of their submarines that launch the Popeye Turbo nuclear cruise missiles and destroy them (at sea, hopefully) with megaton nuclear first strikes, Israel gets to do whatever they want. They'll Samson all of Europe, North America too. But that might be a little too harsh... you're still hoping to shame them into behaving. Or something.
So would a dumbass running a redlight t-boning me on the way home from work. Doesn't make it a weapon or a war crime. Do you have any arguments that are actually intelligent?
I understand your compulsion to rationalize things, make excuses for your abusers, but I ask you to contemplate for a moment what you are defending. One, hopefully we have all seen the genocidal bombing of Gaza turning whole regions of large apartment blocks into an hell-scape of rubble with tens of thousands of people buried underneath them; people, not animals, not “just brown people”, not “terrorists”… people like you, like your wife or girlfriend, like your daughter or son or nephew…people who also want to live just like you even if far more humbly, without all the waste and decadence of the avg American. Should your loved ones be bombed and buried under a resort and luxury condo towers because a clan of billionaires do not like that you won’t leave your land?
Two, at the very least, the most generous interpretation, the very first strike to start an illegal war of aggression that the Nuremberg trial clearly established as the “mother of all subsequent evil”, was not only on a girls school that killed dozens and dozens of young girls, but did so in a “double tap“ process where they observed that people arrived in ambulances and parents in cars to pick up very small humans, and then they hit them again with another missile. Let us be clear about what you are excusing… They intentionally splattered the guts and flesh of young girls and their parents rushing to save them all over a 300 foot diameter blast radius.
We can lie to ourselves that may have been a “mistake“ but as established during the Nunberg trials, there is no defense in claiming that if you started the illegal and immoral war of aggression.
Three, why are they hiding what is happening if it’s all above board? Why would they not permit unfettered access showing what is being targeted bombing and that the Iranians are lying when they say that thousands of civilian structures have been bombed including schools and hospitals? You trust Hegseth? Trump? Need I say more?
And all that is without even addressing that these people have done nothing but lie and lie about lying about lying.
And let’s also remember that as shocking as the files that gave been released, they have not even released even the slightly uncomfortable parts of the Epstein Files, let alone arrested any of the rapists and pedophiles that are now on yet another murder spree, starting that prosecuting everyone would cause the whole system to collapse!
If want to believe people like that, people who do nothing but lie, rape, murder and cover up for it; then I guess there is nothing else to say and you will have to deal with that on your own as it eats you up from the inside. I for one am opposed to these types of people and actions and will speak out about it even if people don’t like it. And I refuse to make excuses for it for any reason, be it personal weakness or comfort.
They did not defend it or make excuses for it. They argued about the very specific claim of carpet bombing in Iran, before pointing out the entire campaign is illlegal and calling the choice of targets "not legally legitimate".
They also said nothing about Gaza.
I share your concern about both Gaza and Iran, but criticising people for calling out an exaggeration is not helping anyone.
Imagine if Montata required that all compute platforms sold in the state to be free of user restriction: That they be amenable to modification, that all source code, firmware and hardware specs be open, and when that is not the case - the company would be compelled to release the relevant information on pain of having assets seized, required to refund payments etc. That would have been a hoot :-)
South Korea should be pressuring the US to cut it out with the unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iran. Both because of the Hormuz straights situation, and because next time, Trump or some other genius US administration might decide to pull some kind of similar stunt somewhere even closer to SK, putting it in more serious danger, despite of its objections, and of intl. treaties, and of basic common sense etc.
Both of these comments are needlessly snarky. Although it is true that the RSS capability of Thunderbird has been around for quite a while, I enjoy articles that simply reflect the author's discovery or use case.
Like you, I was consuming RSS through Thunderbird around that time as well and thought it was really good. I have since moved to something else(many times) as my needs have changed.
In the spirit of HN, the poster maybe wanted a discussion of how the use of RSS has declined and walled gardens took its place which is not good for the longevity and usefulness of knowledge.
* Many of the people maintaining FOSS are paid to do so; and if we counted 'significance' of maintained FOSS, I would not be surprised if most FOSS of critical significance is maintained for-pay (although I'm not sure).
* Publishing software without a restrictive license is not 'generous', it's the trivial and obvious thing to do. It is the restriction of copying and of source access that is convoluted, anti-social, and if you will, "insane".
* Similarly, FOSS is not a "miracle" of human cooperation, and it what you get when it is difficult to sabotage human cooperation. The situation with physical objects - machines, consumables - is more of a nightmare than the FOSS situation is a miracle. (IIRC, an economist named Veblen wrote about the sabotaging role of pecuniary interests on collaborative industrial processes, about a century ago; but I'm not sure about the details.)
* Many people read licenses, and for the short, paragraph-long licenses, I would even say that most developers read them.
* It is not insane to use FOSS from a "fiduciary standpoint".
It's the suburbs of Chicago. Funding for schools is largely from local property taxes, which creates large gradients in the quality of those schools between towns.
Towns with better school districts command higher property values, creating a positive feedback loop in resources but also pricing younger families out of those same areas.
Another typical situation is a divorce, where one parent moves out of the expensive town but still wants the kids to attend the same schools for continuity.
> That can't exactly be true, because scarcity is a physical limit.
Indeed, but - human productive capacity has become so vast, that the only way for there to be scarcity is for it to be artificially maintained.
> The natural human instincts are beyond terrible at allocating resources
Disagree, in the sense that a lot of what we consider "natural" is the result of social circumstances, emphasizing or encouraging the expression of some sentiments and tendencies over others. In other words, "natural" is usually rather artificial.
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