4 ms·

Last rites for the UK Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

113 points by beardyw 3y ago

Joeboy 3y ago
Well that was a misleading headline.
pacifika 3y ago
The only way to proof how bad of an idea this is, is to try it.
- gherkinnn 3y ago
  So Brexit?
  - pydry 3y ago
    It's unfortunately really hard to untangle the side effects of Brexit from covid and the war.
    - yawpitch 3y ago
      It’s not all that hard, really… especially when you consider the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid, and Covid in turn only being as bad as it was in the UK as a side effect of the kind of “leadership” that allowed something as stupid as Brexit to happen in the first place. And then you think about Putin’s calculus around attacking UK democratic norms in the lead-up to Brexit and only acting on his plans for Ukraine after seeing Europe / NATO both divided (Brexit) and wounded (Covid). If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it.
      - veave 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - pjc50 3y ago
        > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9476/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32252583.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow.
        andyjohnson0 3y ago
        > > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... In the end its going to be a bunch of things, perhaps including the ones you noted. For example, I've read credible analysis suggesting that the Russian demographic implosion is a long-term driver: in a decade they may not have enough military age people to operate even their weak military and economy at the same time. That makes them vulnerable to India and China and, in their paranoid fantasies, Europe. But re brexit, the rolling political weakness in the UK, and its severe lack of credibility in Europe, must have looked like it would help their more recent ambitions in Ukraine. I'm fairly confident that brexit will eventually be shown to be at least partly due to organised financing and political disinformation from the Russian state, and I'd be surprised if didn't fit onto some projected timelines in some ministry in Moscow. > > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. > Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow. Yep.
        3y ago
    - ajb 3y ago
      Because all three only affected the UK... Except the last two didn't. Where I agree with you is that people who only go by media stories are going to find it hard to untangle them. Those who can go on the actual data, not so much.
      - pydry 3y ago
        That untangled data doesn't exist. Sure would be nice if it did but it doesnt.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the difference between that and where the UK is (less growth, more inflation etc) is Brexit. Unless there is some pressing reason to think otherwise? I don't accuse you of this but plenty of brexiteers seem to want to hide in the "we'll never know if it was a good idea because there is no perfect counterfactual" fallacy. It should not be tolerated.
      - throwaway22032 3y ago
        This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.
        aunty_helen 3y ago
        True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
        LatteLazy 3y ago
        I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
        throwaway22032 3y ago
        It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      Not sure that's true. Firstly a lot of the effects of Brexit hit before covid or the war (eg devaluation of Sterling by about 25%) secondly you can control for covid and the war because those have happened to all the Eurozone countries as well, although each country got its own chance to muck up the covid response which muddies the waters somewhat.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Brexit hasn't even begun, Uk does not do checks on EU goods entering the country because it would cost too much, they accept all electrical goods from EU and have not made any changes to their regulations of anything from e-bikes to vacuum cleaner power ratings. Because no-one will produce goods specifically for UK, it will be massive extra cost. Recently they announced that the EU CE (Conformité Européenne) mark will be accepted indefinitely. As son as they start changing any of the EU laws on the book, even for maximum allowed power of vacuums, that will cause trade issues.
endominus 3y ago
This is just an opinion piece from someone who believes the "advent of Veilid" (a distributed, secure P2P messaging framework) will prove the UK's attempts to break encryption in messaging applications pointless. Discussion of Veilid itself on HN is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118124
throwboatyface 3y ago
My pet peeve: "information wants to be free" just means the universe tends towards entropy. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, once information has been distributed it will take energy to "undistribute" it. Trying to extend this to "information wants to be encrypted" is both stupid and inaccurate - people want things to be encrypted, but the plaintext "wants to be free" as much as any other data.
- clippablematt 3y ago
  The more complete quote from Brand is: “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. ...That tension will not go away.” People often only remember the first bit… —— “ On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other”
  - Isamu 3y ago
    Thank you! This context is so much more valuable than the empty quip that you hear everywhere.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      Most importantly, the context changes the meaning of "free" from libre to beer. Most people use the phrase to mean libre.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  > But we discovered something. Our one hope against total domination. A hope that with courage, insight and solidarity we could use to resist. A strange property of the physical universe that we live in. > The universe believes in encryption. > It is easier to encrypt information than it is to decrypt it. -- http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm

113 points by beardyw 3y ago

Joeboy 3y ago

Well that was a misleading headline.

pacifika 3y ago

The only way to proof how bad of an idea this is, is to try it.

gherkinnn 3y ago
So Brexit?
- pydry 3y ago
  It's unfortunately really hard to untangle the side effects of Brexit from covid and the war.
  - yawpitch 3y ago
    It’s not all that hard, really… especially when you consider the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid, and Covid in turn only being as bad as it was in the UK as a side effect of the kind of “leadership” that allowed something as stupid as Brexit to happen in the first place. And then you think about Putin’s calculus around attacking UK democratic norms in the lead-up to Brexit and only acting on his plans for Ukraine after seeing Europe / NATO both divided (Brexit) and wounded (Covid). If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it.
    - veave 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9476/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32252583.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow.
      - andyjohnson0 3y ago
        > > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... In the end its going to be a bunch of things, perhaps including the ones you noted. For example, I've read credible analysis suggesting that the Russian demographic implosion is a long-term driver: in a decade they may not have enough military age people to operate even their weak military and economy at the same time. That makes them vulnerable to India and China and, in their paranoid fantasies, Europe. But re brexit, the rolling political weakness in the UK, and its severe lack of credibility in Europe, must have looked like it would help their more recent ambitions in Ukraine. I'm fairly confident that brexit will eventually be shown to be at least partly due to organised financing and political disinformation from the Russian state, and I'd be surprised if didn't fit onto some projected timelines in some ministry in Moscow. > > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. > Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow. Yep.
        3y ago
  - ajb 3y ago
    Because all three only affected the UK... Except the last two didn't. Where I agree with you is that people who only go by media stories are going to find it hard to untangle them. Those who can go on the actual data, not so much.
    - pydry 3y ago
      That untangled data doesn't exist. Sure would be nice if it did but it doesnt.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the difference between that and where the UK is (less growth, more inflation etc) is Brexit. Unless there is some pressing reason to think otherwise? I don't accuse you of this but plenty of brexiteers seem to want to hide in the "we'll never know if it was a good idea because there is no perfect counterfactual" fallacy. It should not be tolerated.
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.
      - aunty_helen 3y ago
        True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
      - LatteLazy 3y ago
        I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
        throwaway22032 3y ago
        It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    Not sure that's true. Firstly a lot of the effects of Brexit hit before covid or the war (eg devaluation of Sterling by about 25%) secondly you can control for covid and the war because those have happened to all the Eurozone countries as well, although each country got its own chance to muck up the covid response which muddies the waters somewhat.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Brexit hasn't even begun, Uk does not do checks on EU goods entering the country because it would cost too much, they accept all electrical goods from EU and have not made any changes to their regulations of anything from e-bikes to vacuum cleaner power ratings. Because no-one will produce goods specifically for UK, it will be massive extra cost. Recently they announced that the EU CE (Conformité Européenne) mark will be accepted indefinitely. As son as they start changing any of the EU laws on the book, even for maximum allowed power of vacuums, that will cause trade issues.

endominus 3y ago

This is just an opinion piece from someone who believes the "advent of Veilid" (a distributed, secure P2P messaging framework) will prove the UK's attempts to break encryption in messaging applications pointless. Discussion of Veilid itself on HN is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118124

throwboatyface 3y ago

My pet peeve: "information wants to be free" just means the universe tends towards entropy. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, once information has been distributed it will take energy to "undistribute" it. Trying to extend this to "information wants to be encrypted" is both stupid and inaccurate - people want things to be encrypted, but the plaintext "wants to be free" as much as any other data.

clippablematt 3y ago
The more complete quote from Brand is: “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. ...That tension will not go away.” People often only remember the first bit… —— “ On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other”
- Isamu 3y ago
  Thank you! This context is so much more valuable than the empty quip that you hear everywhere.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Most importantly, the context changes the meaning of "free" from libre to beer. Most people use the phrase to mean libre.
johnnyworker 3y ago
> But we discovered something. Our one hope against total domination. A hope that with courage, insight and solidarity we could use to resist. A strange property of the physical universe that we live in. > The universe believes in encryption. > It is easier to encrypt information than it is to decrypt it. -- http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm