The UK is following the USA in adopting conviction-free, hell, trial-free presumption of guilt. It starts with ‘obvious’ bad guys but as USA’s example with asset forfeiture shows, it doesn’t stop there.
– Perry de Havilland, discussing this.
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The BBC is breathlessly reporting cases of parents whose bank accounts have been cleared out by their children playing games with in-game purchases.
It is possible to prevent this. My own children often ask to buy in-game items, which tells me I have somewhat succeeded in training them to ask first. Steam has a PIN code that only I know. The iPad requires my fingerprint before it will take money. And Google Play is set up to require a password. So far, so good.
Now things are getting tricky: user interfaces are hard to get right even when you are trying not to confuse people. I can remember a handful of occasions where I have done something daft with a computer, have been met with no sympathy at all from support staff, but objected that the problem is that the user interface was misleading. There are worthy complaints here. Now politicians are taking an interest. There is always this instinctive call: The Government should Do Something! I do not see the need. Complain instead to marketplace. Google Play, the Apple App Store and Steam are in a position to enforce user interface standards and they can probably do better with default settings, spending limits, and better-designed family accounts. July 15th, 2019 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Imagine, John Lennon The Times editorial I am about to quote, like John Lennon’s much-loved song, begins with the word “Imagine”. It describes a little incident, seemingly unimportant to all but those most directly affected, that took in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. At least, Vanuatu calls itself a nation, and it has a flag and a seat at the UN and all the paraphernalia of a nation, but it seems to have decided that it no longer wishes to function as a separate state. A little incident that took place there four days ago gives a preview of what Lennon’s dream of a world where borders did not matter would really be like.
The South China Morning Post report on the same story is quite bold to make an explicit link to the protests in Hong Kong against the proposed bill allowing extradition to mainland China, given that the newspaper has itself been subject to pressure from Beijing. July 10th, 2019 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
I say let the Nazis speak. There is no evidence that the alt-right’s propagandists can turn impressionable YouTube viewers into deranged mass-shooters. We have little to fear from open debate. Let the Nazis preach white separatism and white supremacy. Let them deny the Holocaust. Let everybody see how full of shit they are. Let them openly sell a product nobody wants. These ideas have been around for decades, and few people are persuaded by them. There is significant reason to believe that Twilight Sparkle will prevail over the alt-right in the marketplace of ideas. June 26th, 2019 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
There’s an interesting video story on the BBC website today:
My immediate sympathies were with Ella, but I can see both sides. I support the right of women (indeed the right of all people) to do what they like with their own bodies. On the other hand, the Spearmint Rhino club agreed to abide by certain rules about what could be done on the premises, and it does seem to me as if the covert filming by “Not Buying It” made a good case that those rules were being broken. I did not find Ella’s argument that the investigators had misunderstood what they saw entirely convincing. And it won’t wash to say that the conditions of the club’s licence were merely another example of state repression; though it would be better if they were voluntarily entered contracts between private parties, zoning rules of that broad type would probably still exist in a libertarian utopia. Still, I found this statement from Dr Rakoff problematic:
So, according to Dr Rakoff feminism has never been about women’s individual choices. I had heard otherwise but perhaps that merely reflects my ignorance of modern feminism. As I said in a recent post, ‘I’m still holding on to the idea that “what a feminist looks like” can include what I see in the mirror. But it is getting harder.’ I would also like to know exactly who is included in the “all of us” she mentions as having some right to override an individual woman’s choice to be a lap dancer. All of humanity? Just the female half of it? Self-identified feminists? Or just those feminists who meet Dr Rakoff’s standard of feminism uninfected with neo-liberal selfishness? June 21st, 2019 | 109 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you’ve ever seen an episode of The Prisoner then you’ve seen Portmeiron, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’ Italianate architectural fantasy on the Llyn peninsula in Wales. In politics, Sir Clough was sometimes less of an individual than in architecture – he could echo the fashionable leftisms of his set. One day, the state noticed what he was achieving at Portmeiron and ‘gave’ it protected status. After that, anybody who wanted to do any more building there had to satisfy the bureaucrats. “I was rather surprised”, said Sir Clough, “to discover that ‘anybody’ included me.” Recently, Nancy Bass Wyden, wife of Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat), had a similar experience in De Blasio’s New York. I wonder if she was similarly surprised when all her democratic party connections and all the 11,000 signatures on her petition against it did not prevent De Blasio adding one more bureau to the list of those who get to tell the increasingly-titular owner of the Landmarks bookstore what she can and cannot do. (And if you think none of these bureaucrats would notice if Landmarks ever seemed overeager to push an off-message book then I have a bridge in De Blasio’s New York that you can ‘own’ every bit as much as Nancy owns Landmarks.) Ayn Rand’s architect hero in The Fountainhead has one solution for what to do when the state steals your building – blow it up – but I’ve always found that a bit negative. Trump has, I suppose, at least ensured that whatever excuse they ‘trump up’ to attack his buildings, it won’t be by declaring them much loved landmarks that must be preserved. But I’ve yet to think of a general solution. Buildings, alas, cannot vote with their feet. June 17th, 2019 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill writes In defence of Jo Brand:
And
I do not hesitate to endorse the last paragraph (though I would delete the word “censured” from “no one should ever be censured, censored or punished for anything”) but in defence of the snowflakes of the Right who are making a fuss about this, could it not be said that they are only applying the fourth of Saul Alinsky’s famous Rules for Radicals, “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” A month ago the YouTuber and UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin a.k.a. Sargon of Akkad was investigated by the police for saying “I wouldn’t even rape you” to the Labour MP Jess Phillips. Someone called Steve on Twitter posted this clip of what Jo Brand said about Carl Benjamin then:
She delivers the line rather well, but did not seem too concerned that Benjamin was being investigated by the police for making a crass but obviously not seriously intended threat to commit a crime. Technically it wasn’t even a threat; he said he wouldn’t rape Jess Phillips. Now the boot is on the other foot. If Carl Benjamin wants some quick brownie points he should ride out in Jo Brand’s defence like a non-rapey knight in shining armour. I assume nearly everyone who reads this believes in free speech. In the present circumstances, what should we be doing to defend it? Should we take the high road, or apply Rule 4? June 14th, 2019 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not always agree with Stephen Bush, the deputy editor of the New Statesman, but ain’t that the truth?
Even odder that the very suggestion that the leading candidate to be prime minister might not have taken cocaine on multiple occasions elicits laughter from all quarters. In fact according to the Sun, seven of the eleven candidates for the Tory leadership admit they have used banned substances in the past. The same article adds that Boris Johnson claims that he only did it the once, but hesneezedsoitdidn’tgouphisnose, and it mayhavebeenicingsugaranyway. Now, I do not deny that kind of thing can happen. I was first offered the chance to smoke some grass when I was at secondary school. Man, that was some real grassy grass. But the idea that, having left Oxford and achieved such early success as journalist that getting sacked by the Times for falsifying a quote was but the start of his career, the freewheeling young Boris was so chastened by his early experience that he never again sought to obtain the substances so widely used by his media colleagues convinces about as well as the idea that he stuck to icing sugar thereafter. Ladies and gentlemen: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Stephen Bush’s article in the Guardian, “Michael Gove got high but his party champions a futile war on drugs”, continues:
June 9th, 2019 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
The quote is from a comment to this article (that I found from instapundit). The commenters – Californians who have decided to vote with their feet – complain they’ve seen one too many
They expect to be as annoyed by NC’s right-wing politics as by CA’s left-wing politics. It may be just their way of expressing it. And I suppose it will be a culture shock (understandable they’ve not moved to Texas, or Alabama – or Samizdata 🙂 ). But I have a hard time imagining being as annoyed by politics that will allow me to dissent as by politics that will punish any hint of dissent. But maybe that’s just my typical right-wing focus on the honesty of the process rather than the nobility of the goal. May 22nd, 2019 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
I thought this day would never come!
At last “progressives” have acknowledged that to run up the UK deficit by reckless government spending is to bribe the present electorate at the expense of ruinous consequences for future generations. I do not know what caused the likes of the Green Party’s only MP Caroline Lucas, the Labour MP Thangham Debonnaire, or the famously wet Tory MP Tracey Crouch to belatedly see the wisdom of the US Tea Party movement and Senator Rand Paul’s Balanced Budget Amendment, but whatever caused this Damascene conversion, it is most welcome. Naturally these generally left-wing MPs see the proposed “Compassion Threshold” that would bind this and all future Parliaments in what laws they can pass as primarily affecting issues of more traditional concern to the Left:
But since it should obvious to anyone how readily this proposed law could be used to enforce stringent budget responsibility on future governments, including what may very well be our next Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, let us wish the sponsors of the Bill every success. May 6th, 2019 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
All flights are grounded, today’s local elections have been indefinitely suspended, and jury trials will be replaced by military tribunals for the duration of the emergency. Citizens failing to report to their local branch of the Sustainable Farming Commission for voluntary labour service will be docked ten points of social credit. Commenting on this post is forbidden. The internet will be closing shortly. May 2nd, 2019 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
I like Lego. It is nostalgic. It is a good quality product: the bricks fit together just so. It has a certain feel to it. I like the product design. I like the Ninjago and the Technic. I like the movies. I do not want Lego to change. I do not want to hear about them taking the monosodium glutamate out of the bricks to save the environment because I know the world will be a worse place as a result: the bricks will not feel the same or they will not last as long or they will not fit together in quite the same way. I get warm fuzzy feelings about the company. I do not want them cutting costs or laying off staff or going out of business. I do not like Lepin. Lepin is a Chinese company who copy Lego sets piece for piece, slightly change the artwork into a bizarre alternate reality version of the original artwork, and sell them for a fraction of the price. It is an inferior product: the bricks do not fit together so well, the plastic is not so durable, there is probably a greater chance of having a set with a missing piece, there are reports of strange residue on the bricks. More importantly, if other consumers do not mind these things as much as I do and do not love genuine original Lego as much as I do, I am more likely to find myself living in a universe where original genuine Lego is not as good as it is now because it is pressured into cost-cutting, just as I find myself living in a universe where Nik Naks don’t contain monosodium glutamate for some unfathomable reason. Chinese police raided Lepin factories in China, arrested people and seized goods. Now people are saying that Lepin is no more. It is the end of Lepin and Lego is saved. Hurray! But I am not sure how happy to be about state violence against non-violent people who did no more than copy an idea. I am ambivalent about intellectual property. Lepin did not take anything that Lego had not already given away the moment they published their designs. A lot of activists complain about digital rights management. I see it as an elegant non-violent method to preserve a revenue stream for a product that is by its nature infinitely copy-able. DRM is much better than inducing the state to lock up people who threaten your business model. It does not really work for designs for physical objects but despite my concerns above I am not convinced this is a big enough problem to warrant a large state apparatus just to solve it. Lepin bricks are, after all, only viable because they are cheaper, and only cheaper because they are inferior. As much as I enjoy living in a universe with monosodium glutamate snacks and real Lego, raids and arrests and seizures is not a good price to pay for this. Another question that arises out of this: why now? Is the Chinese state making a renewed effort to align with the rest of the western world’s ideas about intellectual property, or did the owners of the Lepin factory recently stop paying their dues to the state? May 1st, 2019 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
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