SleafordMod @ SleafordMod @feddit.uk

Posts

33

Comments

124

Joined

8 mo. ago

Why do you think that what Russia says is true?

Russia said they didn't poison Alexei Navalny in 2020, but they did. They said they didn't kill Alexander Litvinenko, and they said they didn't poison Sergei Skripal, but they did both of those things.

I think the 3% target is intended for the next parliament though. The target he wants to hit in this parliament is 2.5% from 2027 onwards.

I guess raising defence spending makes sense so that the UK can better protect itself from threats like Russia.

Fair points. That open letter is interesting. I didn't mean to be annoying with my responses, I was just giving my view.

I do think the oligarchy in the US is pretty worrying. As for encryption, I should probably learn more about it. I guess my understanding at the moment is only pretty basic.

What's dim is refusing to recognise that this war was started by Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, then increased their invasion in 2022. Ukraine asked the West for military help so the West provided military help.

Maybe Ukraine should have been allowed to join NATO years ago when they asked, and then they might not have been invaded.

NATO has already been on Russia's borders - the Baltics and Poland were already NATO members that bordered Russia.

I think the invasion of Ukraine was indeed a conquest for land. John McCain over 10 years ago predicted that Putin wanted to grab a "land bridge" between mainland Russia and Crimea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLAzeHnNgR8&t=58s

proxy war

So you think Russia waged this war just to stick it to the West? To me it looks like a war of conquest - Russia invaded so they could take land.

True. I still think I'd prefer the firing squad though. Maybe it's because I think the effects of the other two options could be less predictable and therefore more unpleasant.

Interesting idea. I suppose you could start a Lemmy community for meet ups for people in your country. I don't know how easy it would be to find willing people who are relatively local to you though.

I think I'd choose firing squad if I had the choice. Lethal injections and electrocutions can go wrong, and I think they sometimes do go wrong, causing a lot of pain and suffering. Firing squad should be a pretty quick death with less suffering.

Yeah there's some truth to that. Working at home can be lonely in my experience. But on the other hand you save all the hassle with commuting.

The stasi would blush at the surveillance foreign corporations and the British government now engage in as a matter of course

My understanding is that the Stasi were very repressive - "using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent". I'm not aware of the UK government using torture to crush dissent.

But spying on all of the public all of the time comes at a cost to society I would rather not pay. It quells dissent in the short and maybe mid term, but that extreme intrusion, ultimately drives otherwise moderate people into the hands of extremists

I don't think the public should be spied on all the time. But if there is some way that illegal communications (like planning murder) could be intercepted, without spying on others, that would be good.

The terrorists win when we sacrifice liberty for temporary security (or whatever that quote was)

There's a quote by Benjamin Franklin which apparently is: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". I always thought that quote was a bit weird though, because humans do give up some form of liberty in return for safety. E.g. we give up the freedom to murder other people without legal consequences, because in return we get some safety: protection from being murdered by others.

True. On Lemmy I can still be bombarded by stuff about the two billionaires running the USA, if I look at the active threads on all instances. But I can avoid that by just looking at threads from the instance I'm on, or by visiting particular communities individually.

I've been thinking how socialising on the internet with strangers is so hugely different to socialising with people in real life.

In real life you can see someone face to face, you can get a sense of their personality, and you learn to trust them. Those things are harder on the internet. You can't see a person's face, or hear their accent. Someone on the internet could be lying when they tell you about themselves, and it's harder to tell if they're lying.

Also of course on the internet people are much more willing to be rude and offensive because there are few penalties. If you meet someone in a pub, they probably won't be rude to you, most of the time. If you disagree about something, you might say "okay, agree to disagree" and move onto another topic. But on the internet people will just be disrespectful cunts because they can get away with it, without negative social consequences for themselves.

In conclusion, internet socialising should be better than it is.

Maybe I should read more about encryption. I was thinking maybe a company like Apple could just keep the encryption keys stored somewhere. So if needed they could decrypt particular messages. There could be big punishments, prison time, for anybody within Apple who decrypts messages without a court warrant.

I would probably argue that China is a little different to the UK, given that China is a one-party state.

Yeah maybe the UK government shouldn't be able to spy on Apple messages sent anywhere in the world. But maybe UK agencies like GCHQ should be able to get the messages of specific individuals who threaten the UK, with a court warrant, like how law enforcement has been able to bug the phones of criminals with a court warrant.

I dunno. Maybe I should educate myself more on encryption and how it all works.

I guess I think of it like bugging a phone. The technology for bugging phones has been around for a long time, but that doesn't mean the authorities are bugging everybody's phones all the time. Even if they can theoretically listen to everyone's conversations, that doesn't mean they are always listening. There would be too many conversations to listen to.

I guess it's not the kind of thing I normally listen to, but I came across Jobseeker on YouTube and thought it was good. That feeling of authority figures being patronising and belittling and you just want them to piss off.

Maybe people just use what's popular. Telegram is pretty popular in some countries even though I don't think they have end-to-end encryption by default.

Anyway I guess I don't know what the answer is. Personally I would probably still use iMessage and WhatsApp even if I knew the companies behind them could potentially read my messages by decrypting them. If there's a proper system in place so that messages are only read when there's a court warrant, it's probably unlikely my boring messages to friends and family would be spied on by anybody.

Maybe I need to send more interesting messages and then I would care about the privacy of them a bit more.

Fair points. Also I guess practically big companies like Apple would never allow a situation where their encryption is compromised while encryption on smaller platforms like Signal isn't. Apple etc would spend billions lobbying so such a situation never happens.

I like the deadpan style. Yeah he's had quite a few TV shows. If people keep offering you work and you find the work pretty straightforward and you get paid, why not take it, I guess.