> Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister.
Different person, but while this is true, it's also true that the Prime Minister is not elected: they [ordinarily] emerge as being the leader of whichever party commands a majority in Parliament. It's how we've had so much Prime-Minister turnover since the Brexit referendum: those didn't happen because the electorate "determined" it.
Yes sure, it’s a simplification to say that elections always directly determine who the Prime Minister is, and I probably should have been clearer on that point. However, this difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential one has nothing to do with rogue Kings going mad with power.
BREAKING NEWS: conservative blames "socialism" for the ills caused by conservatism
People thinking that New Labour is left wing is both frustrating and amusing. There's constant in-fighting in the Labour party for a reason. Thatcher supposedly thought one of her greatest achievements was making the Labour Party agree on the economy. Labour is increasingly socially regressive. Mrs. Snooper's Charter herself became Prime Minister as leader of the Conservative Party and brought in a ton of state surveillance and new terrorism laws. I'm genuinely baffled as to what you think "socialism" even is or what you think it's to blame for here.
Socialists governments do have taxes, yes, but to suggest that tax rate alone can define socialism implies to me a deeply misinformed understanding of what socialism even is.
This kind of stuff is fascinating because it's the state interacting with itself. The Queen was powerless to reject his request, he being the leader of the government who governed in her name, whose prorogation was overturned by judges she appointed. She ultimately did not need to act because she had an army of people who acted on her behalf. This is not to say that every misuse of power is always caught, but rather that the Monarch gets to maintain a facade of impartiality because all the partiality is being done by their institutions instead.
Surely there has to be some level of "getting stuff done"/"achieving a goal" when /making/ things, otherwise you'd be foregoing for-loops because writing each iteration manually is more fun.
I think you misunderstand the perspective of someone who likes writing code. It's not the pressing of keys on the keyboard. It's figuring out which keys to press. Setting aside for the moment that most loops have a dynamic iteration count, typing out the second loop body is not fun if it's the same as the first.
I do code golf for fun. My favorite kind of code to write is code I'll never have to support. LLMs are not sparking joy. I wish I was old enough to retire.
I have a 10-year-old side project that I've dumped tens of thousands of hours into. "Ship the game" was an explicit non-goal of the project for the vast majority of that time.
Sure, but, in the real world, for the software to deliver a solution, it doesn't really matter if something is modelled in beautiful objects and concise packages, or if it's written in one big method. So for those that are more on the making /things/ side of the spectrum, I guess they wouldn't care if the LLM outputs code that has each iteration written separately.
It's just that if you really like to work on your craftsmanship, you spend most of the time rewriting/remodelling because that's where the fun is if you're more on the /making/ things side of the spectrum, and LLMs don't really assist in that part (yet?). Maybe LLMs could be used to discuss ways to model a problem space?
I yearn for the mindset where I actively choose to accomplish comparatively little in the brief spells I have to myself, and remain motivated. Part of what makes programming fun for me is actually achieving something. Which is not to say you have to use AI to be productive, or that you aren't achieving anything, but this is not the antithesis of what makes programming fun, only what makes it fun for you.
> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is
It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark contrast to the common strawman touted by freeze peach types of "are you just going to compile a list of 'bad words'?!" Hate speech is not magic: you're not casting the self-incriminatus spell by saying the bad word.
That said, I wont pretend like that aren't misuses of police powers in regard to speech, and expression more generally. We've seen a crackdown on protests over the past few years which is more than a little frightening. That said, it's become a pattern that anytime I encounter a discussion online about the UK trampling on freedom of speech or whatever, it always comes back to hate speech. It's almost never about protest or expression. I think that's interesting.
EDIT: Correction, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 did not make stirring up or inciting "homophobic" hatred an offence, but rather hatred on the basis of sexual orientation. So one could get prosecuted for being inciting anti-straight hatred.
In the UK the arrests are mostly about "grossly offensive" speech. That's more of a grey area than the clearly defined hate speech. Often there are arrests and investigations but convictions on these are less. Convictions of hate speech also occur but are not news worthy and no one objects. The two different offenses are being confused and so it becomes news. In the US they don't have the grossly offensive category.
It's an issue because people are being investigated because people are offended by some things while others are not, and others (like comments here) see the difference between offensive speech and outright calls for violence. The police in some areas are encouraged to actively investigate reports of offensiveness whether or not they seem to them serious. It's a good idea on paper but the ambiguities and unequal application of their policy is newsworthy. It leads to conspiratorial and political theories.
There is also a related newsworthy issue of the widening of what hate speech means to encompass forms of offensiveness. So some may say it's a direct call to violence to say some things but others may say it's not. This ambiguity leads to an effect and discussions.
"Silence is violence" and "From the river to the sea" are topical example quotes used in this debate.
Yeaaaah, the Communications Act 2003 is not fit for purpose in the modern information age where [seemingly] the vast majority of conversation is taking place in digital spaces. Sidenote, I do think it's amusing how, prior to the Online Safety Act 2023, it was an offence to Cunningham's Law someone (posting a knowingly-false statement online to annoy someone into correcting you). That said, I'm more or less ambivalent about "grossly offensive" speech: most of the examples I find people moaning about are people being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better. But again, there are examples of police and prosecutors getting it wrong.
But I think the leap from acknowledging that to "speech should never be infringed", as many freeze peachers would advocate, to be infinitely more destructive: just see what it's doing to America. Just look at what the infiltration of American-style freedom of speech principles is doing to this country: we have people defending Lucy Connolly, the woman who publicly advocated for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, calling her a "political prisoner", that the government is "silencing the right".
One part where I agree with you is "From the river to the sea": there are two versions of this (more than two, but they are variations of the same thing), the first being "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and the other "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty". Guess which one our government finds objectionable. And guess which one is being used to justify a genocide. It does bother me that the government can chill and punish speech that objects to its foreign policy. But I feel as if (this is just vibes, feel free to correct me) the most harm being done is through anti-protest laws, not grossly offensive digital communications: I personally know of multiple people who regularly post abrasive, if not downright virulent "silence is violence" type content online, but do not go to protests because they fear arrest, detention, and being fired.
> being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better.
This is an incredibly stupid take, and I would vote for a legislation to penalise incredibly stupid ones before gratuitously abhorrent, and more harshly so. It would be gloriously wonderful, too.
> which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred.
If you point out that one racial demographic is responsible for more crimes than another, would that run afoul of the statute?
If not, what if you additionally point out that the reason these crimes were committed is likely because that behaviour is normalized in their culture? This seems like it would definitely run afoul of the statute, and if this logical deduction were valid, then this sort of criticism would be suppressed despite being legitimate, and could be weaponized against people.
I'm frankly not so convinced that it's possible to define hate speech in a way that does not allow for these failure modes.
Does the law explicitly specify that dry facts would be excluded? Or is it sufficiently broad that dry facts could be included if some over-zealous bureaucrats get it in their head that some speech or people are problematic?
I am interested in the letter of the law, because that's what matters, not how it's being applied while the winds are blowing in a particular direction.
Okay, so just to be clear, you don't have even a single example of someone being prosecuted under hate speech laws for stating facts in the 40-odd years since its passage? Why is this not just concern trolling?
As to the general question, no, a statement being true does not immunise it from an accusation of it being used to stir up or incite hatred, or at the very least such a defence is not defined within the Public Order Act 1986. We do have the Human Rights Act which protects Freedom of Expression, but whether you could use it or other defences is pure speculation on my part: I would need to see some actual caselaw.
I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk. Please let me know if you find such a case because I genuinely think that would be interesting to debate, but debating over pure speculation and innuendo is very boring.
> Okay, so just to be clear, you don't have even a single example of someone being prosecuted
To be clear, I haven't even looked, but being a recent topic of debate, it seems important to clearly establish the letter of the law.
> Why is this not just concern trolling?
Because the law-as-written is what matters, like I said, not the law-as-it-has-been-exercised-so-far. Unless you think people inclined to abuse the law will never be elected.
> I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk
Depending on the specifics, that already seems problematic. There are also chilling effects that are not clearly visible until after the fact. How long have some people wanted to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of these laws?
> How long have some people wanted to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of these laws?
I don't know, perhaps you should give some examples of this actually happening rather than relying solely on implication.
Yeah, I'm failing to see how this is an example of "people [wanting] to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of [hate speech laws]". The article makes no mention of hate speech laws or anyone being prosecuted under them for discussing the representation of various ethnicities in sexual-assault statistics.
What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice. In fact, I am somewhat surprised you are not using this to argue that government officials are too scared of free speech to do their job: that the implied threat of some people using their free speech to call the local government racist is enough to paralyse its function.
No, to me, what this article shows is how unfettered speech actually functions: a foreign billionaire with the loudest megaphone in history is dredging up a decade-old stain in our country's criminal history to aid and abet our domestic right and far-right political parties. And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.
> The article makes no mention of hate speech laws or anyone being prosecuted under them for discussing the representation of various ethnicities in sexual-assault statistics.
Consider the counterfactual: if hate speech laws were not in place, would the probability of a whistleblower in the police, or a journalist picking up the story from one of the victims go up or down?
> What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice.
Yes, not openly resisting improper application of hate speech laws (or any law) is always cowardice, but cowardice is common, and that's exactly what all unscrupulous officials bank on. Most people respond to even subtle incentives, like implications of racism, and hate speech classifications are even less subtle.
Hate speech laws don't have to involve a gulag to have chilling effects and cause real harm, as this case shows quite well I think. That the possibility of being called racist was even remotely effective as a threat is a downstream effect of accepting the legitimacy of hate speech laws IMO.
> And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.
It's hard to be censorious once something has achieved enough public exposure.
In any case, this all seems to be somewhat besides the point, because how a law is applied in practice is less compelling than how broadly it can be interpreted by future officials who may be less compassionate or scrupulous. As I've been saying all along: what does the letter of the law say?
You keep saying that I shouldn't rely on implication, but the law is all about implication. What could possibly matter more than the implications of how the law is written?
With all due respect, all you're doing here is presenting me with even more implication and innuendo. You are making a claim, you should be able to substantiate it, otherwise just be transparent about it being an opinion. You originally replied to me asking about whether stating something factual can run afoul of hate speech laws and now the goalposts have moved to whether in some alternative universe without hate speech laws it'd be more or less likely there would've been a whistleblower in this specific instance. How is anyone supposed to answer that? It's pure innuendo and doesn't merit a response. Unless you have anything substantive to provide, I think I'm going to leave it here.
It's pretty apparent that the arrests are happening to people who explicitly call for violence, eg the woman who called for burning down all hotels housing immigrants. Musk, Rogan, etc are patient zero of the ones amplifying the false idea that you can get in legal trouble "for posting an opinion."
> It's pretty apparent that the arrests are happening to people who explicitly call for violence
Unless the statute specifically makes that distinction, then that's not very compelling. There are already laws against inciting violence. Hate speech laws are specifically understood to be about outlawing speech that contain or incite "hate", whose definition is typically broad.
Do you not think that trying to malign your opposition by putting a comical misspelling in their mouths is a bit infantile as a rhetorical tactic? The same thing being done to you would look something like an insinuation that what is being banned is "hurting someone's widdle fee-fees"; surely the discussion here would not benefit if everyone stooped down to that level.
> surely the discussion here would not benefit if everyone stooped down to that level.
Oh we were already at that level by that time: the comment mine responds to makes the claim that "it is really difficult to define what hate speech is" (untrue); that "more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition" (unsubstantiated); and claims that the UK government's intentions match that of Iran and Russia (untrue).
For some reason, so many people seem to tolerate outright disinformation but draw the line at mild childishness. It's bewildering.
Do you think that the people who made those remarks you cite considered them untrue themselves? If yes, you are suggesting bad faith (which should be grounds to extricate yourself from the discussion and/or call it out, not add fuel to the fire); if not, you are suggesting that factual disagreement is appropriately answered by childishness, which basically is saying that you think every discussion worth the name should devolve into childishness.
Often, it seems like this concept of "disinformation" you invoke just serves as a way people give themselves moral license to suspend normal rules of debate conduct in the face of disagreement. Being charitable to your opponents and having to engage with their claims is tiring and difficult, and sometimes they even come better prepared - how much easier if you can just frame dissent as dangerous enemy action and shut it down.
Do you also insist that we treat with proper decorum those who throw out assertions that jetfuel cannot melt steel beams? I notice you have yet to criticise them for posting what is at best misguided and unsubstantiated misinformation, and at worst disinformation. Hardly decorum on their part, is it? Instead, you are hyperfocusing on my "freeze peach", disregarding everything else I said in my comment. I find this to be a boring distraction from the topic at hand.
Well, I don't see anything obvious to criticise about what your interlocutors posted; their statements seem plausible enough to me, and if there is actually a knockout argument against them, I don't know it, because the person who seemed to disagree (you) was busy making childish noises instead of making it!
> jet fuel/steel beams
This debate was carried out sufficiently publicly that I got the sense people actually ran experiments confirming the pro-beam softening/structural failure/whatever case; certainly the "truther" case should have been taken seriously before that, and with decorum always because there is no situation in which any debate in a moderatable forum benefits from playground behaviour.
The previous law used to control racial hatred was the law of criminal libel; it was successfully used to prosecute antisemitism etc. As a species of libel, it had an absolute defence of of speaking the truth. Now, clearly you can be clever enough to spread hatred by only the use of true statements. But we have reached the point where those speaking the truth about atrocities committed by a foreign government are imprisoned for hate speech, and vastly more self censor. Your implied claim that those criticising the law just want to be free to be racist is not defensible - and indeed, you're not bold enough to defend it, merely "find it interesting".
It's inaccurate to say there's a war against Hamas. We have enough video evidence by now, posted by the people doing the acts so there can be no doubt to its authenticity, to see it's a war against civilians.
Norwood vs UK was about Norwood displaying an "Islam out of Britain" sign.
Samuel Melia was jailed 2 years for publishing downloadable stickers saying "Mass immigration is white genocide," "Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back," and "Labour loves Muslim rpe gangs".
Are those messages controversial? For sure. Should originator of these messages be prosecuted? I don't think so. Are anti-christian, "dead men don't rpe" or "eat the rich" messages treated the same in uk? Absolutely not.
If you want to spell rape on HackerNews you can just spell it. There’s nothing wrong with using the word in its proper context, or in quotations. There’s no algorithm censoring the word, and you’re not shielding someone from “getting triggered” by replacing the vowels with an underscore.
> Norwood, a member of an extreme right-wing political party [the British National Party], placed a poster on his apartment window that called for the removal of all Muslims from Britain.
> the poster in question contained a photograph of the Twin Towers in flame, the words “Islam out of Britain – Protect the British People” and a symbol of a crescent and star in a prohibition sign. The assessment made by the domestic courts was that the words and the images amounted to an attack on all Muslims in the UK. The ECtHR largely agreed with the assessment, and stated that such a general, vehement attack against a religious group, implying the group as a whole was guilty of a grave act of terrorism, is incompatible with the values proclaimed and guaranteed by the Convention, notably tolerance, social peace and non-discrimination
> Melia was the head of the Telegram Messenger group Hundred Handers, a social media channel that generated racist and anti-immigration stickers that were printed off and displayed in public places.
> The stickers contained "ethnic slurs" about minority communities which displayed a "deep-seated antipathy to those groups", the court heard.
> The judge told Melia: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist.
> "You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite."
> Melia, who was also found guilty of encouraging racially-aggravated criminal damage, was sentenced to two years for each charge to run concurrently.
Scope guards are neat, particularly since D has had them since 2006! (https://forum.dlang.org/thread/dtr2fg$2vqr$4@digitaldaemon.c...) But they are syntactically confusing since they look like a function invocations with some kind of aliased magic-value passed in.
It depends on governance, for want of a better word: if a project has a benevolent dictator then that project will likely be more productive than one that requires consensus building.
That's what I'm saying. Benevolent dictator is the rule, not the exception, in FOSS. Which is why GP's argument that private companies good, FOSS bad, makes no sense.
I think OP is directing their ire towards projects with multiple maintainers, thus is more likely to be hamstrung by consensus building and is thus less productive. It does seem like we've been swamped with drama posts about large open-source projects and their governance, notably with Rust itself, linux incorporating Rust, Pebble, etc. It's not hard to imagine this firehose of dev-drama (that's not even about actual code) overshadowing the fact that the overwhelming majority of code ever written has a benevolent dictator model.
The argument isn't about proprietary vs open, but that design by committee, whether that committee be a bunch of open source heads that we like, or by some group that we've been told to other and hate, has limitations that have been exhibited here.
Maybe for a project of a given size and popularity? But BDFL projects might be more likely to be smaller. Projects with a lot of contributors might be more likely to need consensus building, but if they are productive at doing so they can be very productive due to their larger size. This is to say, project structure is not the only indicator of productivity.
Okay, seriously, can we just get one, just ONE document/image spec that doesn't let you embed scripts or remote content? What is with this constant need to put the same exactly vulnerability into EVERYTHING?! Just let me have a spec for completely static documents, jfc!
The continual conflation of speech that harms society as "speech I dislike" is absurd. And yes, it's not American-style freedom of speech... we've never had that nor should we. Just look at what American-style freedom of speech has done to America.
Different person, but while this is true, it's also true that the Prime Minister is not elected: they [ordinarily] emerge as being the leader of whichever party commands a majority in Parliament. It's how we've had so much Prime-Minister turnover since the Brexit referendum: those didn't happen because the electorate "determined" it.
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