Posts by Elongated Muskrat

Microsoft keeps adding stuff into Windows we don't want – here's what we actually need

Pretty much everything here makes sense

I will point out, though, that the Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X (and Ctrl-A) shortcuts are pretty much standard in many applications, and not just the OS, so allowing you to change them in one place is unlikely to affect them elsewhere, unless you were to mandate an API to find out what those key combinations are and force applications to use them, which would open a whole, nastier, can of worms. Sure, the OS might handle the functionality, itself, but what happens when you re-map paste to Ctrl-P, and your video editor no longer pauses due to the conflict you have just created?

I think the underlying problem with Windows is the manifestation of end-stage capitalism. Everything is tending towards forcing adverts into your face, and selling you things that you don't need at accelerating prices to support the myth of eternal growth, coupled with magical AI slop that the capitalists hope will take away your job and pass your income onto them.

Re: First of all...

The problem is that the magic incantation shouldn't be the thing you use to *not* end up with a Microsoft account, it should be the other way around.

No more Blocktoberfest? German court throws book at ad blockers

Re: Real world analogy

Or, indeed, filling out the answers in the Viz Craptic Crossword. What a silly bunch of 25-downs.

Re: CSS too ?

Ultimately the contention is that the publisher can mandate through the courts which browser(s) you were permitted to use to view their material.

By extension, the user-agent request header must also be a work of copyright, otherwise it would be trivial to override it with "adslinger/shitehawk" or whatever they want to call their browser.

Re: Other examples of copyright infringement

I think the pertinent point here, is that it would only be hacking if it was an attempt to modify the code on the provider's servers, and I think the argument that what you have running in your browser on your computer is somehow someone else's protected property is more than a little thin...

Re: What if the ads fell into a hole before they got to my computer?

Issue the Halt and Catch Fire instruction to the processor, duh.

Re: What a stupid decision

You're blanket refusing to engage with any advertising; yet still taking the product it pays for.

The website owner may very well have an agreement to serve up ads in return for revenue. This is an agreement between the website owner and the ad-slinger, and I am not party to it. If the owner of the website decides that I have some sort of duty to honour their agreement with a third party, then they are sadly mistaken.

If someone paid me to shout obscenities in your face, you'd be under no obligation to listen, and would be quite within your rights to try to avoid this situation. It is simply a matter of degree.

Re: How would they enforce this?

...and that page is being displayed in a browser on your computer, so by doing so, are Google not gaining unauthorised access to your computer? An offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Surely all advertising should be strictly opt-in, to establish consent from the user?

Marc Andreessen wades into the UK's Online Safety Act furor

Re: The ReJester

Exactly. Nominal figureheads with no real powers are a good thing. Their ownership of palaces and vast swathes of land, as well as handing out free public money to them in the form of the Civil List should rightly be open to criticism and debate.

Re: The ReJester

We are, thankfully, not yet as mental and prone to kicking off as the left-pondians where people get physically attacked for holding signs.

Yeah, have a word with the Met about that one. They don't exactly have a shining track record. I mean, there's that whole thing with Jean-Charles de Menezes for one, and the heavy-handed approach to female protesters quite rightly protesting about misogyny within the Met, and the culture that allowed Wayne Couzens to operate pretty openly, right up to people being arrested en masse for protesting over the government branding a protest group as terrorists, just for throwing paint on some planes. I think they (and other forces) have got form.

I started losing my digital privacy in 1974, aged 11

Re: Why would you ever delete patient data?

Whilst this is true, in open spaces, in places where people are concentrated, such as towns and cities, there are many things that can affect signal strength. Buildings block, reflect, and destroy signals, as do various sources of RF. I frequently find my phone switches between cells (or between 4G and 5G services) while lying in bed at home, which would imply that the relative signal strength between towers is varying without me even moving (or that they are doing some sort of load-balancing). In rural areas, where towers are few and far between, even the sort of triangulation that can be done across wide open spaces is going to give limited accuracy. Admittedly, a lot of cell towers are directional and aimed along sections of road or railway, so may give better accuracy for moving vehicles, but there are also still plenty of dead spots in rural areas (as I discovered when driving around Suffolk recently and attempting to use Google Maps to find specific rural churches).

So, yes, triangulation *can* give fairly good location accuracy, in some cases, but it is also far from universal. It has uses, notably for police knowing which cell a phone was attached to when it was turned off, or lost power; my understanding is that they still need to have to apply to get this information from the mobile operator.

Re: Why would you ever delete patient data?

Traffic cameras with ANPR can indeed be used to track vehicles, but they are generally widely spaced, so can only really be used to say if a vehicle was in a certain area at around a given time, if it happens to have driven past one, most of which will be on main roads, motorways, and routes into and out of city centres. It's quite possible to drive around all day and not pass one if you are on local or minor roads.

As for mobile phones, they can be used to work out which mast your phone was near at a given time, again, this isn't exactly fine-grained information, and isn't going to work if you leave your phone at home, turn it off, or are in a building with thick walls, or underground, unless there are repeaters within that structure to provide a signal (such as those now fitted to most stations on the London Underground).

It's worth noting that neither of these things actually proves your identity, they provide information about the location of your car, and the location of your phone. These can be loosely tied to your identity, but unless your phone is surgically grafted to you, or you are part-man-part-car, that is all. There's a reason you get a letter asking if you were the one driving the vehicle when you get caught by a speed camera.

Re: Why would you ever delete patient data?

I honestly don't understand why the UK is so extremely allergic to the principle.

In the Netherlands, in the 1930s, they kept extremely good records of everyone's identity, including address, ethnicity, and religious background. When Germany invaded, they used this information to systematically track down and murder specific groups of people on an industrial scale.

This is why people object to such a thing; not because it provides a convenient way to prove your identity, but because it can be abused to identify specific sections of society that are the scapegoat of the day, and commit genocide, or, at best, refuse them work, imprison them, or otherwise derogate their human rights. If you think there aren't well-funded powerful groups, on the rise in the UK, and elsewhere, right now, who would absolutely commit his kind of abuse, then you are so naïve that you should probably have a responsible adult assigned to you for your own wellbeing.

OpenAI's GPT-5 looks less like AI evolution and more like cost cutting

Wait, what? Surely you're not suggesting that it's not possible to make an AGI simply by making LLMs so contorted that nobody understands how they work or what they do, so the magic consciousness pixies can creep in?

Shut up and buy this 3D TV so you can have a more immersive metaverse experience! We've got virtual fidget spinners you can buy on there and everything.

Californian man so furious about forced Windows 11 upgrade that he's suing Microsoft

Re: Meanwhile, over at Apple

One of the many reasons I have never liked Apple (not that this is an endorsement of Microsoft either), is their planned obsolescence, as well as their history of deliberate hardware incompatibility which allows them to charge extortionate prices for peripherals.

If I own a computer, I want to be in charge of it, thank you very much. I'm not keen on Microsoft doing this either, but at least my PC can dual-boot other operating systems, and there are technical means to eliminate the worst of MS's excesses (*cough* Pi-Hole *cough* Local accounts, not "cloudy" ones *cough* disable AI bullshit *cough*)

Re: last version?

But I'm also glad they never made good on the threat to make Windows as a service.

MIcrosoft Azure has joined the chat.

Re: Being sensible for a moment

My car was manufactured 15 years ago, and I have had recent cause to replace all the suspension springs on it, as well as replacing the cam belt and water pump at 100,000 miles. If the manufacturer of this car had told me that it was no longer supported, and that road springs were not available, and that they would not provide a new cam belt, after a mere 15 years, and I have to buy a new model, then I would rightly have cause to complain about this.

The car analogy really doesn't work in your favour in this argument. I can expect to keep it running until something fails catastrophically on it, that is not economical to fix, such as a blown head gasket, or a severely rusted chassis.

Similarly, I should be able to keep a PC running with the OS that I paid money for, as long as something doesn't fail catastrophically on that PC, such as the motherboard chipset melting. Like a car, I can replace individual parts as they reach EoL. Since I have been smart with the components most likely to fail, and bought decent quality ones from a manufacturer that offers a lifetime warranty, if something like one of the RAM modules fails, I can get it replaced. I have had this happen exactly once, by the way, in the last 30-odd years of owning and using PCs.

Again, like the car analogy, I might choose to buy new at some point, but that's a choice based on ageing hardware, not an OS one. Also, as with cars, we have pretty much reached the point in the development of PCs that any improvements are incremental, a new car offers an engine with pretty much the same performance as a 15 year-old one, and things like processor speeds and the cost of RAM in a PC have pretty much plateaued for several years now. I won't be buying a new PC just so I can use the latest Windows (my PC supports Win11 anyway, so this is moot), just as I won't be buying a new car just so I can use the latest built-in sat-nav, phone integration, or fancy HUD.

Microsoft's attitude towards no longer servicing Windows 10 is akin to a Ford deciding that garages can no longer service cars older than 8 years. I can understand main dealerships doing this (who in their right mind gets their car serviced by a dealership anyway), but if they inflicted this on my local garage, there would be a hairpiece from Hades (Hell toupée).

The White House could end UK's decade-long fight to bust encryption

Re: Thanks Donald.

Yeah, the problem is that the "alternative" is even more hateful. If Labour lose the next election (which is entirely possible), it will be Reform who get in. The wholesale loss of personal freedoms that will come with the advent of that lot of far-right reactionary bigots will have us looking back on the OSA as a sign of better, gentler times. They are linked with the same group of people who are building concentration camps in Florida, and if you're not "with them", then they are against you. When it turns out that immigrants weren't actually the ones causing all this country's problems, be careful that you're not in the next group targeted for scapegoating, and given that a lot of people working in IT are neurodivergent in one way or another (software development, in particular, attracts a lot of autistic people), then many people reading this are likely to be targeted.

Prohibition never works, but that didn't stop the UK's Online Safety Act

Re: The Online Safety Act only protects children, it does not limit adult freedoms.

"The AVPA; 2 publicly visible posts, 38 down-votes, no up-votes"

How's that astroturfing working out for you, bud?

Yeah, it's the exact same reason I regularly see school children riding rental e-Scooters (often 2- or 3-up) despite the companies that rent them insisting that you have to be 18 and have a valid driving licence. It's utterly inconceivable that the kids might be using someone else's DL to hire and joyride the scooters about. INCONCEIVABLE, I TELL YOU!

The rental companies will probably try to tell me that it's adults wearing school uniforms or something. The local po-po certainly don't seem to care about policing these things. I've actually seen a drunk person ride one into the side of a parked police car (with coppers inside) on a Saturday night and then ride off again without eliciting a reaction from the donut-eaters within.

This is actually a great metaphor for how well the OSA is going to work out...

Re: Ignorant politicians

Downvote me harder, Daddy!

Behold the wood-block wonder of the Kilopixel display

Re: Ah, steampunk ...

My goth friends and my steampunk friends would be offended by that, if they weren't the same people.

Re: Kindle

That's not too far off how an LCD works

Make Redmond angry by setting up Windows 11 with a local account

Re: Depressing that this is even necessary.

Exactly, it's additional attack surface.

Role-playing an attacker: "I've tried obvious password guesses like Passw0rd!, and those don't get me in, they've obviously taken advice and chosen a strong password, let's try guessing answers to security questions instead. Was my first pet called Spot?"

Not only does more attack surface mean more vulnerabilities, why try to batter the door down if the window is open?

(The obvious answer here is not to have windows; or Windows, for that matter, see what I did there?)

Millions of age checks performed as UK Online Safety Act gets rolling

Re: Madness

In the late '90s, when I was at university (well, mid-late '90s anyway), having a TV in student halls was still pretty much a novelty. It's entirely possible that it was just my parents that were mean (they certainly weren't low income), but we had one TV in the family home throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s.

Re: Madness

Anyone who says parents should parent like their parents did back in the 1970s-90s is probably thinking of their parents parenting by taking the TV out the [sic] child's bedroom. Tell me how this is done with devices that by definition are movable, unless the parent follows the children around all day?

If it's beyond your wit to take the internet-connected devices from your little darlings at night and perform a simple measure such as putting them in a cupboard and turning off the Wi-Fi, then might I suggest you consider not breeding.

Internet-connected devices such as phones, tablets, and laptops, are generally not cheap, so it's unlikely that little Anonymous Coward Junior is going to be buying additional devices out of their pocket money.

For those of us who did grow up in the "70s-90s", the idea of having a TV in your room was a wild fantasy to most; this probably indicates that either you weren't there, or that you came from a fairly privileged upbringing yourself, and should know better.

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Re: "Everyone Knows"

I'm surprised they didn't get Boris Johnson (complete with Gilson pipette in each hand, held the wrong way round) to do it. He did so many "lab" photo-ops, that I'd be surprised if Gilson didn't use him in their marketing material.

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

Re: There have been so many things

You either go on-prem - and even thats vunerable [sic] to a sufficiently motivated state actor - or you risk assess it.

That should read, "you either go on-prem, whereby you are responsible for mitigating vulnerabilities to sufficiently motivated state actors, or you go off-prem, where you are not, have no control over outages, and are never aware of any breaches."

Putting it "on the cloud" doesn't inherently improve security; if anything, it just makes it part of the larger, juicier, target.

Selling your digital soul to use Bluesky's DMs isn't just a bad idea, it's the law*

Re: Moden Slavery

A male doctor LARPing as a women

How to say that you've never met any trans people, without saying you've never met any trans people.

It's funny how your characterisation of trans women is veering towards the implication that somehow they are all desperate to rape people, when, statistically, they are more likely to become rape victims themselves, but why let reality get in the way of a little bit of hate speech and hyperbole.

Hey, look, one of my degrees is in a biological subject as well. I suspect bio-organic synthetic chemistry is about as relevant as your degree to the matters of biological sex and gender.

Re: Government I’d verification

You are correct, I can only assume the down-voters are there because you forgot to use this icon -->

The last time I checked (just now), my driving licence said "DRIVING LICENCE" on the top of it.

Re: CPP UK Edition

With Donald "if you vote for me you'll never have to vote again" Trump? If he lives to the end of his term*, do you honestly expect to see free and fair elections in the US? It's already fairly well arguable that the weird system of electoral colleges, devised as a hack, at a time when communicating election results took days or weeks, unfairly distorts the vote, where one candidate can get more votes than the other, and still lose.

*The mysterious bruising and obvious catheter bag suggest he has a serious health disorder, and the forward-leaning posture that is characteristic of someone with vascular dementia, indicate that he probably won't.

Re: Is this already in place?

Can you provide an abstract or summary of that article, or an alternative source? Since The New Scientist was bought several years ago by the Daily Mail Group (after the quality of its journalism had already been in decline for many years), it doesn't get my clicks. This isn't to say I'm questioning the veracity of the article's contents, just that DMG don't get advertising revenue from my visits, or the opportunity to dump tracking cookies in my browser, as a matter of principle.

Re: Moden Slavery

Oh dear. Buy a dictionary, find the entries on "hate" and "hate-speech". See how they have different definitions. Ask yourself whether this might be because they are not the same thing.

People who play these little semantic games always think that they are being oh-so-clever, but in reality they are only displaying their own ignorance. It's like a little exhibition on the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Re: Possibly

You are still failing to realise the distinction between insulting someone and making an insult against someone, which, in common parlance might not be a noticeable distinction, but in legal terms, words, and their use, have very specific meanings.

Whilst it is amusing to hear you repeatedly claim that I am wrong, I'm afraid that logically, a conclusion must be preceded by adequate reasoning, and ability it would seem that you are devoid of.

In plain words, for the simpleton: Saying I am wrong does not make it so. Neither does repeatedly changing your argument in the hope that one will stick.

Re: Possibly

Thank you for finally providing the citation you were asked for, rather than alluding to it and slip-sliding all around the place. It wasn't so hard, was it?

And as for "getting tired of being wrong," maybe a purchase of a mirror would be in order.

So, it seems, it is specifically illegal to slander, defame or "insult" someone in political life. It's probably noteworthy that slander and defamation are illegal against anyone, and the word "insult" is probably not used in the sense you think it is.

Now, if you go and translate that from the German, it comes to this:

Section 188 Offences directed against persons of political life, slander and slander [I'm assuming this is an artifact of the translation of two similar words that both roughly translate to slander]

(1) If an insult (section 185) is committed against a person standing in the political life of the people, in a meeting or by spreading a content (section 11 (3)), for reasons related to the position of the offended person in public life, and if the act is suitable for considerably more difficult to his public activity, the penalty shall be imprisonment of up to three years or a fine

So, my reading of this (and it may have lost something in translation), is that it's not actually illegal to insult a politician; it's illegal to make a legal insult against a politician in a way that relates to their political work and that makes their work more difficult. In other words, it's a protection for politicians against frivolous slander that is publicly made and which prevents them from doing their job, which they are paid, as a public servant, by the German people to do. Really, since those acts are probably illegal against anyone, it just specifies (presumably tougher) penalties, I should think because of the political consequences. This actually sounds reasonable to me, and it would be nice if everyone kept their political discourse civil; we might get away from the current trend of muck-throwing that seems to have originated in the US.

Now, it's worth considering that this is written in legal language, and that the words probably have very specific legal meanings beyond the generic day-to-day meanings. For example, "insult" in this case almost certainly is a legal technical term which means a little more than name-calling, and is probably closer to slandering someone. I'm not a legal scholar, and I'm certainly not a fluent German speaker. I suspect, neither are you, or the people who you got this particular piece of distorted information from.

For reference, it is probably roughly this meaning; in other words, defamation against someone's character. Like if I were to say that Anonymous Coward is the sort of person who routinely likes to have sexual intercourse with farmyard animals. Are you implying that you think defamation should not be illegal?

Do you ever get tired of being both wrong, and of hiding behind the cowardice of anonymity? You could just use your forum handle, it doesn't have to be your real name, you know. It would be elucidating to see whether it correlates to one of the other regular forum shitposters.

Re: Possibly

One of those things is a subset of the other.

Yes, but you made a specific claim about the subset.

Here's an analogy:

If I were to say that, in the UK, it is illegal to punch a left-handed ginger person under 5'6" in height, it would be technically true. However, it might lead people to question whether short ginger left-handers are getting special treatment, whereas punching anyone in the face is an offence of common assault.

You claimed that it is illegal to insult politicians in Germany, implying that politicians get special treatment, but actually what is illegal is harassing speech (or similar) against anyone. To be fair, we have something similar in the UK, it's called libel law; if you publicly make an untrue claim against someone that is damaging to them, then you're on the hook for a civil prosecution.

Re: Moden Slavery

Morrissey was not chanting that as a call to action. Same with the Dead Kennedys.

Ding! Correct! Now you're getting it; there is context. It just happens that you seem to think it's fine to willingly misrepresent the context when it suits your argument.

The difference is normal people do not have a huge platform and millions of followers.

I don't think, on the scale of things, that the two musical acts in question have a huge platform or millions of "followers" either, but let's dissect the argument here. At what point does someone reach the threshold for being a public figure, where their voice is subject to additional censorship? A million "followers"? A thousand? A hundred? Five? Can you see the logical fallacy you have made here yet?

Jo Cox? I know that Kneecap are trying to be all edgy and stuff, despite them all being born long after the end of 'the troubles'.

A few points here: firstly, yes, people found it offensive because of Jo Cox. Do you seriously think that Kneecap were inciting people to go and repeat what happened there? Or do you think the context might have been different? If you think it was the same, can you explain how a group which most people would describe as very left-wing would be endorsing the act carried out by one far-right xenophobic nut-job? Secondly: a quick Google turns up the fact that the oldest member of Kneecap is 34. The Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998, which is the point that is generally accepted as the end of "the troubles", although it's also worth noting that sectarian violence in Northern Ireland has continued sporadically since. It is currently 2025. How many years ago was 1998? It seems we can add maths to reading comprehension as subjects that you will be getting a poor grade on at school this year.

So when you quote Trump, Vance or Elon out of context does this still apply?

Apart from this being one of the most blatant examples of whatboutery I've seen in recent times, I'm not sure whether I've even read or heard anything Vance has written or said. I certainly can't recall quoting either of the others, within, or out-of context, any time recently, so I'll invite you to give me some citations here, or admit that now you're just "making shit up".

OK, lets break this down a bit. For decades if anyone dared to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the government of a far off land might be having an undue influence on western politics you'd be screaming until you were blue in the face.

Oh, know me, do you? Or are you simply just projecting here? Again, I'll invite you to give me some citations, because my opinions on these matters (beyond, "don't get involved in a land war in Asia"), whilst maybe evolving over time, as any thinking person's do, have actually remained remarkably unchanged for many years.

This is actually far more telling about the way you think, as projection always is.

This runs contrary to many claims from certain groups where if you are not actively pro what they want then you are immediately their enemy. You've done this.

Again, citations, or just, really, do fuck right off. Where, exactly have I said, to paraphrase, "if you don't support "group X", then you are my enemy." I do not appreciate people putting words into my mouth, and it really does seem that you are one of those people for whom starting arguments is a form of fun. Literally everything you have written is a load of old bollocks. It seems that you wanted to start an argument, but when you have had your posts picked apart and demonstrated to be false, you have resorted to simply lying. Poor form.

Re: Moden Slavery

That's an interesting definition of "keep referring to" you're using there, presumably one which means "paraphrased another post, in one instance". it seems your reading comprehension skills might still need some work, perhaps you should ask your teacher for some extra help?

Re: Possibly

Didn't try very hard? Well, if you mean "didn't search for something other than that which you claimed", then no.

"In Germany it is illegal to criticise politicians."

"It is basically illegal to insult someone in public in Germany."

Those two things aren't the same, are they? I'm assuming you are the same AC who has been shit-posting throughout this thread, and, once again, this is a lovely example of argument-switching.

In Germany, it is also illegal to fly a flag with a swastika on it. Have a think about why this might be, because, with this claim, as with others, the context is probably both important, and being deliberately missed. One might suspect, in order to mislead.

Re: Moden Slavery

Ooh, the old "pretend offence". Did you not like my use of the word "fuck"?

Also, sadly for you, name-calling is not the same thing as an ad-hominem attack. I can safely call you a thundering fuckwit, and it wouldn't be an ad-hom. Perhaps you should fuck off and read the wiki page on that as well, rather than continuing to display your copious ignorance. For reference, if I dismissed your argument based on who you are then that would an ad-hominem attack, as it is a formal logical fallacy to dismiss an argument based on who is making it. On the other hand, calling someone a fuckwit for making fallacious arguments is nothing of the sort.

As for taking offence at words, rather than the meaning conveyed by them, and dismissing what the person is saying based on that, guess what you've just done? Ding! Ding! Correct! That's the ad-hominem fallacy.

Now, are you ready to fuck off yet? You must be tired of making all this word salad.

Re: Moden Slavery

I'm assuming you'd like to see Morrissey arrested for "hang the DJ"?

There's a couple of points here:

Firstly, and most obviously, punk music has always been pretty left-wing. To quote the Dead Kennedys: "Nazi Punks, Fuck Off".

Secondly, politics doesn't exist in a vacuum, and musicians and performers are entitled to a political opinion.

Thirdly, context is everything; the comments by Kneecap about killing MPs might have been highly distasteful, but it has been widely quoted out of context.

Fourthly, and finally, calling for death to the IDF is calling for the death of an organisation, not of the people within it. This is an organisation that is currently engaged in committing genocide by pretty much every measure, and this is agreed upon by pretty much every competent international body, for example, the ICC. Again, though, context here is everything, and the context which you are so blatantly ignoring is one of one group being censored in their opinions (the BBC, a nominally non-partisan broadcaster (ha!), refused to broadcast them), so another group stepped up to reinforce the sentiment. If you think the people chanting at Glastonbury were actually inciting murder, then give your head a wobble. Any reasonable person looking at it in context would agree that it was a clear expression of condemnation of genocide. It takes a fair bit of twisting and turning to characterise it as an antisemitic death chant, especially when many Jewish organisations share the view that the state of Israel is currently engaged in genocide, via its military force, the IDF (the D here is very much a misnomer, because the bombing of hospitals, for example, is very much an offensive action, in every sense of the word).

Now, without wishing to get too drawn into a discussion of the myriad woes of the Middle East, I should be clear that a condemnation of the actions of the far right (and this is used correctly) Israeli government is not a condemnation of Jewish people. The people of Israel are no more responsible for the actions of their leaders than you or I are for ours, and they have been subject to decades of anti-Arab propaganda. The history of the region is a litany of wrongdoings by many parties, going back to before the creation of the Israeli state (and there were atrocities carried out in that act as well). Britain bears its own responsibility for this too, nobody is blameless. However, a sane perspective would be that the people of Israel and the people of Gaza both have the right to exist, and of self-determination. One of these two has been denied self-determination since the days of Mandatory Palestine, and its people are currently being exterminated as a collective punishment for the wrongdoing of a terrorist group. It's all a mess; I can't solve it, you can't solve it, but denying genocide doesn't make it go away either, no matter who it is being committed by.

Edit: just for absolute clarity; condemning the actions of one group does not imply an endorsement of another. I know the type of argument that is often used, "if you condemn A, then you must endorse B". Do you know what? It's the people of the region who suffer at the hands of their leaders, on every side, and it's clearly not a binary A vs B situation.

Re: Moden Slavery

"It's them, the other group, they're trying to silence me"

Grow the fuck up.

Re: Moden Slavery

Put down the crack-pipe, friend. Nobody called anyone far-right.

You started this whole little exchange by railing against "the left". I have merely pointed out that left vs right arguments are not only tiresome, but utterly pointless. Those engaging in them will seldom even agree on what "left" and "right" mean, and will resort to stereotypes, and argue against those, rather than engaging in any real conversation.

Railing against "The Left" is a clear example of a thought terminating cliché, and I do strongly urge you to go and read that Wikipedia article and understand why your posting is fruitless.

I have to say, though, labelling people as "the far right" is, in my experience, far less prevalent than people who label anyone they disagree with as "the left". Not least because of Godwin's Law. One has to be very careful before employing accusations of right-wing extremism, and clear parallels to actions that are accepted as being far right are required, such as pogroms against minority groups, governments that excessively mix private business interests with governance, or violent silencing of dissent. What is alarming is that things that could be classified as "far right" are becoming more prevalent in modern politics, especially, and worryingly, in countries that were formerly considered to be liberal democracies (and, for clarity, that's "liberal" as in referring to political freedoms, not referring to anywhere on a left-right political spectrum).

Personally, I would say that people who are on the far right are the enemies of literally everybody else. It's an innate consequence of taking a political stance where you set yourself up as the enemy of anyone of a different political persuasion. Others are able to grasp the concept of plurality. Once again, Karl Popper summarised this more eloquently.

I'd suggest that if your experience is of lots of people increasingly accusing you of being far-right (and, once again, for clarity, nobody has, yet), then it would be wise to examine whether you are espousing right-wing ideology.

Re: Is this already in place?

We'll have to see what happens then when this comes in. It will be interesting to watch the inevitable fallout from this half-baked law. I'm reminded of attempts in the US to legislate that pi=3. Politicians would do well to remember that no amount of legislation can change fundamental aspects of reality.

Re: Possibly

The same Trump who has gangs of masked "officials" in unmarked vehicles raiding places, "arresting" people and deporting them to Alligator Auschwitz without any due process? The same Trump who recently very publicly threatened to revoke the (birthright) citizenship of his critics and "deport them" (to who knows where). I think we're a few steps past the "illegal to criticize the Donald".

It doesn't take a lot of extrapolation to see what will happen to Trump's large number of political and ethnic detainees when it turns out there is nowhere to "deport" them to. He's already building the concentration camps. Anyone cheering for these would do well to remember that the leopard will happily eat your face too.

Re: Possibly

Would that be the archaic law against insulting foreign dignitaries that was abolished in 2017, or another law, presumably one limiting hate speech?

Personally, if it's the latter, I think it is, on balance, fine to be allowed to publicly criticise public figures, but where that becomes incitement of hatred or violence towards a person, then it crosses a line. It's a difficult line to define, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one who codifies where it lies. However, you have to weigh up everyone's right to a private life, even public figures, with the right to level legitimate criticism.

A quick google search turned up no examples of any extant law in Germany that makes it illegal to criticise German politicians though. I suspect your post may be referring to a specific case, and almost certainly has been done so out of context, without stating all the facts. For instance, are you alluding to a case where someone has made public statements that have led to a politician having legitimate concerns for their safety? If this is the case, do you believe that politicians have no right to personal safety? I know they often don't talk or act like them, but they are actual humans too.

Is this already in place?

I ask, because I have a bluesky account, which seems to have no problem with allowing me to see adult and graphic content (although I have it set to warn). Perhaps this is because I am already "verified" by linking my account to a domain, and they assume that if you can work out how to administer the DNS entries for your own personal domain, you're probably an adult?

Re: Moden Slavery

What has whether a bunch of organisations that have no bearing on this conversation got to do with your little crusade against people you deem to be "the left" and therefore, presumably, your enemies? You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that anything left of (what you deem to be) the political centre is inherently bad. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about whether you think that, and I also couldn't care less about getting drawn into yet another Internet Argument about which side has the bigger willy.

I'll see your subject-changing statement, and raise you a reiteration of my point, railing on about "the left" and "the right" is a though-terminating cliché. It adds nothing to any sensible discussion, and reducing everything to some point-scoring argument about "left and right" is both tedious and pointless.

Now, do you have any original, interesting points to make about the actual article, or are you going to, as I previously suggested, fuck off?

Re: Moden Slavery

To paraphrase, "Kristallnacht was all the doing of The Left."

Yeah, I reiterate, you can fuck off.

I can see, from your cowardly and indirect allusions, that you are obviously also of the opinion that it's not genocide if it's committed by the grandchildren of people who suffered a genocide. Again, learn from history, or fuck off. Actually fuck off, AND learn from history. Your sort of Nazi-appeasing rhetoric is exactly what children need protecting from. That, and Andrew Tate.

Re: Moden Slavery

It's not "the political left" that tries to sue people out of existence for saying things they don't like. Apart from the fact that the whole "left vs right" thing is a load of tiresome old bollocks in the form of a thought terminating cliché.

Stop grinding that axe, because there are forms of speech that do cause harm. Incitement to violence (that actually leads to violence), and death threats that lead to people genuinely fearing for their lives are very clearly things which are not good, and should not be tolerated. If you want to go all freeze-peach absolutist and start arguing that these things are valid and should be protected, then you, good sir, can fuck right off. Everyone can see where mob rule leads, and, sadly, unless everyone can be trusted to not act in bad faith, such restrictions are required. They are the cost of living as part of society; the problem stems from people who think they are above other people and don't need to play by society's rules. You cannot simultaneously be a part of society and withdraw yourself from its rules. Pick one. Again, might I reiterate that you always have the option to fuck off.

Edit - and for $deity's sake, go and read the paradox of tolerance. There's a reason Karl Popper wrote it, and people who would espouse the same ideology as a certain central European political party from the early-mid 20th century would do well to learn why that ideology is a hard fail.

Learn. From. History.