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vogon_laureate commented on UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'   netpol.org/2025/11/28/gov... · Posted by u/robtherobber
Natfan · 21 days ago
and that's terrorism, is it?

i just thought it was GBH, but i'll update my definition if you can cite your sources...

vogon_laureate · 20 days ago
Given that the Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act, and its co-founder said just one day after the Oct 7 massacre: “When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas' name for the massacre] we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”

Yes.

vogon_laureate commented on A Love Letter to FreeBSD   tara.sh/posts/2025/2025-1... · Posted by u/rbanffy
mtlmtlmtlmtl · 22 days ago
First of all, FreeBSD has plenty of selling points compared to your typical Linux distro:

Small, well integrated base system, with excellent documentation. Jails, ZFS, pf, bhyve, Dtrace are very well integrated with eachother, which differs from linux where sure there's docker, btrfs, iptables, bpftrace and several different hypervisors to choose from, but they all come from different sources and so they don't play together as neatly.

The ports tree is very nice for when you need to build things with custom options.

The system is simple and easy to understand if you're a seasoned unix-like user. Linux distros keep changing, and I don't have the time to keep up. I have more than 2 decades of experience daily driving linux at this point, and about 3 years total daily driving FreeBSD. And yet, the last time I had a distro install shit itself(pop os), I had no idea how to fix it, due to the rube-goldberg machine of systemd, dbus, polkit, wayland AND X, etc etc that sits underneath the easy to use GUI(which was not working). On boot I was dropped into a root shell with some confusing systemd error message. The boot log was full of crazy messages from daemons I hadn't even heard of before. I was completely lost. On modern Linux distros, my significant experience is effectively useless. On FreeBSD, it remains useful.

Second, when it comes to OpenBSD, I don't actually agree that security is its main selling point. For me, the main selling point of OpenBSD is as a batteries included server/router OS, again extremely well documented in manpages, and it has all the basic network daemons installed, you just enable them. They have very simple configuration files where often all you need is a single digit number of lines, and the config files have their own manpages explaining everything. For use cases like "I just want an HTTP server to serve some static content", "I just want a router with dhcpd and a firewall", etc, OpenBSD is golden.

vogon_laureate · 21 days ago
OpenBSD's philosophy of simple config files and secure defaults are among its best features.
vogon_laureate commented on UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'   netpol.org/2025/11/28/gov... · Posted by u/robtherobber
jimnotgym · 21 days ago
In your view, is it right to categorise PA alongside Al Quaida?
vogon_laureate · 21 days ago
Given that the Palestine Action co-founder said just one day after the Oct 7 massacre: "When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood, we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world."

Yes.

vogon_laureate commented on UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'   netpol.org/2025/11/28/gov... · Posted by u/robtherobber
ThrowawayTestr · 21 days ago
Didn't that group attack an RAF base?
vogon_laureate · 21 days ago
And violently sledgehammered a female police officer breaking her spine.
vogon_laureate commented on A Love Letter to FreeBSD   tara.sh/posts/2025/2025-1... · Posted by u/rbanffy
vogon_laureate · 21 days ago
BSDs taught me how to Unix in a way that I just wasn't able to manage with Linux before. This was during the early RedHat 5.x days and I just found so many pain points with the RPMs and odd file hierarchy inconsistencies for different packages. I tried to setup a firewall for my office network and struggled with iptables (or was it ipchains back then?) and found the documentation confusing.

I tried OpenBSD to setup a firewall system and fell in love. Everything just made more sense and felt more cohesive. PF rules syntax was just so much easier to work with and flexible. I loved the ports system and the emphasis on code correctness and security. The Man pages were a revelation! I could find everything I needed in the command line.

I tried all the BSDs, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. FreeBSD had the most ports and seemed to also have good hardware support, NetBSD had the most platform support, DragonflyBSD was focused on parallel computing, etc. They all borrow and learn from each other.

BSDs are great and I heartily recommend people give them a whirl. This article in The Register is also worth a read:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_...

vogon_laureate commented on June Huh dropped out to become a poet, now he’s won a Fields Medal (2022)   quantamagazine.org/june-h... · Posted by u/bpierre
vogon_laureate · 7 months ago
Fine, but can he solve the Riemann Hypothesis in iambic pentameter?
vogon_laureate commented on UK's Online Safety Act comes into force   ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... · Posted by u/AndrewDucker
vogon_laureate · a year ago
The Online Safety Act provides for Ofcom to develop its own codes of practice and guidelines based on the provisions of the act and public consultation (including with the platforms). It has an enormous amount of leeway in deciding how to implement the Act.

Ofcom has operational independence. Neither its investigations nor its enforcement actions are directly controlled by the Government. The Government does approve Codes of Practice but if it doesn't approve, it can only request modifications. It's still up to Ofcom to decide how to interpret and implement. Secretary of State interventions are, by convention, rare and subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.

vogon_laureate · a year ago
I love how this got downvoted. I literally consulted on the draft legislation.
vogon_laureate commented on UK's Online Safety Act comes into force   ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... · Posted by u/AndrewDucker
EpicQuest_246 · a year ago
The online communities don't exist within the borders of a nation state. They have their own social norms and rules. You can see this on forums, message boards, online games etc. Therefore a nation state trying to enforce its will on those communities is completely asinine.

I don't like that it that American companies enforces it language policing on UK residents, I also don't like that fact that the UK wants to force it language policing world wide (the UK state acts as if it has an empire).

The reason people are unwilling to consider an alternative viewpoint, is that in the past they have been more moderate and what has happened has been a complete erosion of civil liberties under the guise of "stopping the terrorists". I was arguing the same thing I am arguing essentially over 20 years ago.

Ironically many of those groups that we went to war to stop (Al-queda/ISIS) are now being presented as moderate because foreign policy has shifted again.

vogon_laureate · a year ago
No one thinks Al-Qaeda/ISIS are moderate. Furthermore, a large part of ISIS' recruitment success was as a result of its slick social media operation.
vogon_laureate commented on UK's Online Safety Act comes into force   ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... · Posted by u/AndrewDucker
pc86 · a year ago
Why is it inevitable that we should continually erode one's right to privacy?
vogon_laureate · a year ago
Because pedophiles and terrorists exist and this is why we can't have nice things.
vogon_laureate commented on UK's Online Safety Act comes into force   ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... · Posted by u/AndrewDucker
HPsquared · a year ago
Conservatives + Reform got more votes than Labour. More people voted against Labour than for them. In any other system they wouldn't have won, and at the very least wouldn't have a majority.

The other thing to consider is that the electorate basically moved to the right in 2024 (Tory voters moved to Reform), but parliament shifted hard to the left.

vogon_laureate · a year ago
The Online Safety Act came into being under a Conservative government.

u/vogon_laureate

KarmaCake day553September 28, 2016
About
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning) As plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and stipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles,mashurbitries. Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!
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