Blurry rendering of games on Mac (colincornaby.me)
331 points by bangonkeyboard 12h ago 224 comments
Snapshots of Kids Bike Jumping in the 1970s (flashbak.com)
47 points by bookofjoe 3d ago 33 comments
UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse
142 JoshTriplett 96 8/15/2025, 9:10:43 AM bsky.app ↗
From the article:
>First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.
From the source (emphasis mine):
> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children _(which were dealt with by other parts of the Act)_. Rather, the aim of Category 1 was to capture services that have a significant influence over public discourse. The submission offered, as a possible option, requesting information from Ofcom as to _how content recommender systems function on different types of service_.
The quote leaves out "which were dealt with by other parts of the Act" and the fact that the subject was specifically "Category 1 duties" not the Act in its entirety. It also doesn't mention that the subject was on content recommender systems.
_Again_ this is not a judgment on the Act itself, but providing the full context, which does change the message.
0: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v_Secret...
In fact it is pretty obvious from the OSA itself that the definition of Category 1 is not primarily about capturing porn sites.
Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...
> there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action.
As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say:
> Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.
There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends.
Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property.
Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.
That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.
The censorship in the UK isn't that overt. There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street, what there are is government "nudge" units, media talking heads and government-aligned media trying to push you toward points of view acceptable to the establishment. We're the world leaders in manufactured consensus.
It's a bit hard to argue otherwise when the draconian arrests are well-documented by pretty much every single media outlet.
In practically all countries a bunch of smart people got together in the 19th century to write a constitution but the British thought that they were above such petty concerns.
Many (most?) western societies have a similar concept for civil and criminal law with common law jurisdictions, where precedent is used rather than an explicit, exhaustive legal code. Effectively, the UK's constitution is to written constitutions as common law is to civil law.
It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).
I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.
"Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?"
"Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished."
I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."
None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.
I'd rather not be subjected to fake news on HN.
I strongly suspect it's also meant to curtail growing support among youth for Palestine in the Israel/Gaza conflict.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/665564933022223
Essentially creating an internet for children/teens that echos the government narrative.
But broadly I agree, in the sense that the government are uncomfortable with political movements they lack the ability to shape or control.
In hindsight it's incredible just how much influence the British government has historically had over media. The largest TV and radio stations were often directly government owned (BBC, Radio 1, Channel 4) and many newspapers are vulnerable to defamation / contempt of court accusations / injunctions when they sway too far from the official narratives. Especially on any issue adjacent to criminal justice.
Of course, they'll say all of the state owned media operated without political direction. And that regulators / prosecutors operated in a politically neutral fashion with due process and impartiality.
So, DSIT, Age Verification Industry Association or Molly Rose astroturfer?
It seems uncharitable to immediately assume bad faith.
What is it about the content of the comment you disagree with?
I think it provides a further example to the parent post that regardless of what one thinks about the Act, the discourse isn’t entirely neutral.
It's also a perfectly reasonable point, you just don't agree with it.
But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.
It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
Like… it's okay to complain about bad legislation without misrepresenting it. It's bad enough that you don't need to make shit up about it.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children (which were dealt with by other parts of the Act).
Notice this is under Sunak, not Starmer. The Times chooses when to support and opposite the Online Safety Act based on which party is in government, and provides evidence for its view by lying through omission.
The Online Safety Act is undeniably terrible legislation, but you won't find good-faith criticism of it from the Times.
[0] https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c...
*(A not-small body of which were famously published anonymously in order to escape ostracization. Were these Oxford philosophers to take their own advice, they would forbid all volumes mentioning Voltaire or Spinoza from their libraries).
Once upon a time, yes. But they don't work in the modern world we live in now.
Show me a successful protest that achieved change in the past ten years?
The French yellow vest
The Dutch farmer protests
I can go on if you want
As much as many people have distaste for the existing parties, a few people getting involved and changing the parties from the inside on one or two topics like this (which are not party political in nature) is likely to be much more effective than standing as or voting for an independent, complaining or protesting.
The power structure is designed in such a way that it is difficult for the Government itself to do change anything.
Here is an incomplete list of reasons why I would never get involved directly in politics:
1. It takes literally decades to get a political party off the ground without major backing. All the new parties that you hear of are bankrolled by elite backing.
2. The way the Government and the civil service is setup is designed so you can't actually make any changes. Dominic Cummings has many interviews he did in the last year you can find where he explains how Whitehall is fundamentally broken. I suggest you listen to them.
3. I have a chequed past. Most of my adult life I was abusing alcohol, and as a consequence of that I have done and said lots of stupid things. A good portion of my extended family are criminals (which I don't associate with for obvious reasons). If I or anything connected to me gain any public appeal at all, I would have all the muck which I've put behind me dragged up. I don't want to expose myself or my family to that.
1. Listen, yes it’s very hard work, but it’s this or be squeezed until there’s nothing else. And when people start having famines we’ll have a new French Revolution, millions will die, and this will require a lot more energy than doing changes today.
2. Will do, I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion on that. But unjust, unmovable systems, like monarchies (wink) have been toppled in the past. Even recently.
3. Sorry I was just using my environment as an example, I meant people that trust you, that you trust. This kind of movement starts small
"Just start a new party and tell people about it" is perhaps the most misleading and flawed idea you could present unfortunately. There have been new parties, there are new parties at every general election, you never hear about them for good reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
"The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025 – here's everything we know" (https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-co...)
"Chat Control is back & we've got two months to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans" (https://tuta.com/blog/chat-control-criticism)
Providing you accurately define the Irish in question all four are subject to the OSA, none have actively opposed it in any meaningful way.
The other example is when the government changed the student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation, and increased the number of years that have to pass before the loan gets written off. So just for comparison - I paid 12k for a 4 year MSc Computer Science course, and it had 1.1% interest attached to it. So I paid mine off within few years of starting to work. My sister did her degree just few years after me, and her degree cost her 40k + her interest is 8%. She has a job but her payments barely cover the interest. She will never pay it off, so it will get written off at some point, maybe - but until then it's a permament 10% tax on all of her earnings. It's bonkers.
My point is - I feel like in any other country, this kind of economic assassination of entire generation of people would be met with people marching on the capital and burning down cars and setting tyres on fire in front of government buildings in protest. In UK barely anyone cared. Still no one cares. There is no political party that even suggests doing anything about it.
So with this new act - it's more of the same. You've heard our government already anyway - saying openly that if you are against this act you are on the same side as Jimmy Saville(one of the worst child rapists this country has ever produced). Essentially you can't be against it in public or you're compared to actual pedophiles. The only politician who even suggests that hey maybe this isn't right is Farage who is a despicable individual for many other reasons.
If you want my personal opinion on why that is - British society is extremely comfortable with the status quo. People would rather shrug their arms than actually do something about anything, we're surrounded by history, by buildings standing for the last 1000 years, stability is like the paramount value here. That's not to say Britain hasn't has some of the greatest civil movements in history - but right now, in 2025, the feeling I see everywhere is just apathy.
The legal mechanisms in place don't appear to be adequate as when that number of activists are ignored. Certainly in parallel with the online regulation, the legal right to protest has been restricted by the previous Tory government, and this current one.
What's also concerning is the lack of oversight with MPs, they follow guidelines, which seem to let them off from regular laws (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68503255 using taxpayers money in a private dispute- fraud) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68841840 reads like fiction).
Why MPs are not FCA regulated is beyond me, corruption should be stamped out.
It's worldwide, is the issue. A national government cannot solve the problems created by multinational investment firms.
On a related note, central banks have expressed their desire to increase unemployment.
This hits hard, I never framed the issue like this. We really are living a corpo-fascist cyberpunk nightmare aren’t we? Minus the purple neons sadly
This is a significant exaggeration in two respects.
First, SSL ensures that ISPs cannot log your literal browser history. They can log which domains you visit, how often you visit them, how much data was transferred, etc. etc.
Second, the law requires ISPs to be able to retain this data on a specific individual for up to a year if specifically ordered to by the Home Secretary. So it is not the case the ISPs in general are all recording this information for all of their customers. From their point of view they have no interest in doing so. I suspect that ISPs would in fact lack the capacity to store all of this data for all of their customers all of the time.
I don't support the IPA because I don't think the Home Secretary should be able to directly order surveillance of specific individuals. However, I don't think it is necessary to exaggerate the scope of the legislation in order to make a case against it.
No-one says "cigarettes are censored!", because, obviously, they're not. Same for adult content online. It can still be accessed, as long as proof of age is provided.
> Identity technology used at a county's pubs and nightclubs since 2023 is to be extended for a further three years.
> Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) Danielle Stone has agreed to provide funding to keep the scheme at 25 venues that open beyond 01:00.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm28lmk474o
Most online service providers who verify age are using third-party suppliers who don't provide any details of one's identity, just whether the user has been age verified or not. And much of that is done by recording a selfie, not handing over identity documents.
Stop trying to oversimplify the concept, it’s not a pub, it’s not a store, it’s a virtual service. This comparison doesn’t help us at all.
About the face and not ID: good thing we can’t identify someone using their face! /s
No, you are just tracked when you access them - «cigarettes» being, of course, all """controversial""" expressions.
(Already putting children as an excuse for that...)
*** They have censored lobste.rs . The "for adults only site" lobste.rs ***
https://www.blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks
Now what about the rest of the list.