> In reality, this wouldn’t happen, because, generally, people understand that stabbings are a cultural issue, rather than a technical one
Many UK MPs don't understand this. I've heard of MPs making (moronic) suggestions such as selling kitchen knives without the point on it. I've literally seen this advertised as a solution on the news.
For whatever reason they don't seem to understand that literally anyone can make a shiv.
"We believe that paedophiles are using an area of internet the size of Ireland, and through this they can control keyboards." – Syd Rapson MP in 2001.
But really, with 650 MPs there's bound to be a few that are a bit silly at least some of the time. You can hear some wild takes at the local pub too (or nextdoor), but that doesn't mean everyone in your area is a moron.
I too have watched Brass Eye, and they literally had MPs telling people about the dangers of "cake" in a previous episode. It showed that MPs and TV celebrities would literally say anything Anchorman style if it was put on a teleprompter / script in front of them. They are nothing other than paid actors.
While I don't believe everyone in Parliament is a moron. I think more than enough of them are moronic, out of touch, malicious or home combination of the three for it to be a problem.
Generally the only solution presented for any issue in the UK is banning something. There is no other course of action that they can envisage. So you end up in a false dichotomy, discussing whether something should be banned or not. There is no discussion why the issue is happening in the first place, only whether <thing> should be banned or not.
Some journalist shows up with a somewhat implausible story and can tell any lie to convince you it's real. I can see how an MP might fall for it, and it's a mistake to think you're somehow above that. We also don't see any of the false positives; did they go "MP shopping" and we only saw the ones that did fall for it?
I would love it if my steak knives did not have a point. Never once have I needed to stab my steak. The only thing I’ve ever stabbed with them is myself by accident.
> I've heard of MPs making (moronic) suggestions such as selling kitchen knives without the point on it. I've literally seen this advertised as a solution on the news.
As someone who is clumsy and easily distracted, I have such a kitchen knife. They are commonly available. It works absolutely fine and it has three times minimised an injury that would have been nasty because I am an easily-distracted tired old idiot.
The point of a knife is only needed in a handful of kitchen applications. Most knives do not need to be able to stab at all. Only cut.
And combined with rules on the sales of longer blades that do have a point, this idea could genuinely be part of reducing knife crime (especially among the very youngest).
Because it does reduce access to knives that would be useful for stabbing, and it reduces the severity of injuries caused by the youngest in knife crime incidents. Without meaningfully affecting the kitchen usefulness of most small blades at all.
If I go to a supermarket and buy a long enough knife with a point on it, in theory I am asked to prove my age (in practice they laugh at the idea that I might not be young enough). The same is true for many (not all) products on Amazon, in fact.
The knife without a point on it did not trigger age verification. Nor does a boxcutter type thing, in practice; only retractible blades that don't snap off are on the list, AFAIK. (And only flick-knife-type mechanisms are banned).
I anticipate being downvoted for simply writing about this, but harm reduction through knife sales controls is not something that just stupid MPs think: it is supported by expert opinion.
Knife crime in the UK is a problem. It is still not a problem as severe per-capita as it is elsewhere, but we are trying measures to dissuade it.
Behaviour modification is not always stupid or evil; cultures do it all the time.
A tipless knife may prevent accidents, but if you purposefully tried to stab yourself or someone else with one of those knives, do you honestly believe it wouldn't tear right through your flesh? Neither my butter knives or bread knives have tips, and yet I could easily stab people with them.
FWIW the data suggests that thin cotton clothing can stop these knives much more effectively, and therefore could at least make impulse knife crime (indoor assaults) much, much less deadly.
I don't really find anything in those sources convincing. One is a researcher for an anti-knife crime advocacy group that makes vague statements about how it will reduce injuries, but don't specify how much, and says their research still needs to be validated before publishing. And the other stuff is just statistics of how many people get stabbed with kitchen knifes with the assumption that if everyone had blunt knives instead that either less people would be stabbed or their stab wounds would not be so serious, which is the point I find suspect to start with.
Yes if you wear enough cloth it can block blunt stabs okay, but I very much doubt peoples regular clothes are going to do anything except drag some dirty cloth into the wound unless they walk around with thick work bibs on all the time or 3-4 layers of denim. And even that is still very limited protection to someone actively trying to stab through it. A screwdriver is even more blunt than these blunted knives and it would have no problem going through any clothes except maybe a reenactors linen gambeson.
> The point of a knife is only needed in a handful of kitchen applications. Most knives do not need to be able to stab at all. Only cut.
But this isn't about what "most knives" need to be able to do.
This is about what everyone in the UK will be permitted to buy.
"I don't need to do X often, so why should I worry about it?" is a really, really bad attitude to take when your government is considering banning X for the entire country.
It's about what everyone not old enough will be permitted to buy.
Nobody is saying that pointed knives shouldn't be sold; they are saying two things:
1) children shouldn't be able to buy them (they can't)
2) behaviour modification might suggest that fewer such knives even have to be made, because they aren't as important as they seem, and that might keep more convenient knives out of the hands of very young misguided children
The law has created a situation where I as an adult can:
1) buy a pointed knife if it looks like I am an adult (or it doesn't and I can prove I am)
2) buy a non-pointed knife without proving it.
This seems acceptable to me. I expect to be downvoted without a meaningful reply for saying so, because that is the way of things here.
I appreciate your policing my attitude but I don't know where you get the complete nonsense that the government is considering banning X for the entire country for this X or any other. Because they are not.
We in Europe try not to assume that Marjorie Taylor-Greene speaks for all Americans. There are 650 MPs in the UK Parliament, and some of them are silly or misinformed. One or two are as stupid as she is. Try to take that in.
> As someone who is clumsy and easily distracted, I have such a kitchen knife. They are commonly available. It works absolutely fine and it has three times minimised an injury that would have been nasty.
I am clumsy, I am dyspraxic actually. I managed to learn how to handle a knife properly. Not sure why you can't, but different people have different abilities I suppose.
However that shouldn't preclude me (or anyone else who is law abiding) from buying a knife with a pointy bit on the end. I have never thought about stabbing anyone. I am not a violent individual and I can handle dangerous tooling responsibly.
> The point of a knife is only needed in a handful of applications. Most knives do not need to be able to stab, at all.
False. I use it all the time actually. It is insanely useful for getting into annoying plastic wrappers, piercing the skin of fruit / veg / meat, which is all frequently done in any normal kitchen. Sometimes when I can't find my Stanley knife, I use it to get through parcel tape on packages.
BTW you are aware there are different knives in the kitchen for different uses right? You don't use the bread knife to cut veg, and you don't use a butter knife to eat steak. God forbid you find out about a carving fork.
I really shouldn't need to explain this, but here we are.
> And combined with rules on the lengths of blades that do have a point, this idea could genuinely be part of reducing knife crime (especially among the youngest).
No it can't be. You are believing in the same stupid delusion the MPs that suggested such things are suffering from.
Anyone (and I mean almost anyone) can make a shiv. IIRC Chimpanzees can make shivs. Not even in super max prisons can they stop prisoners from making shivs.
There are still shootings in the UK (guns are heavily restricted). I would wager there in an dingy industrial estates somewhere, there are guns being manufactured illegally. I can 3D print a bloody gun if I wanted to.
If you can't stop people making guns (which are much more difficult to make), how the hell are you going to stop people making knives/shivs?
The issue isn't someone having access to a weapon. isn't the blade or access to them. The root cause of violence is something else.
You'd supposed to not tell people they're believing in stupid delusions. That's just name-calling, in the sense that the site guidelines ask you not to do.
The poster thinks that knife crime can be reduced by making knives not pointy. An idea that is rightfully mocked by anyone with two brain cells to rub together. It is ridiculous on the face of it. Anyone believes in it is believing in something ridiculous. Believing in things that are obviously ridiculous is delusional. Therefore it is not name calling. It is a statement of fact.
Repeatedly sending someone a link to the rules do not in anyway stop this from being a statement of fact.
Quite a lot of research is being done on this, quite a lot of police forces support it, and more to the point, British retailers already distinguish between these knives in terms of what young people can buy.
So it's not just one MP and one guy on HN is it?
But I am delusional, for sure, because I believe that experts deserve a hearing.
> I am clumsy, I am dyspraxic actually. I managed to learn how to handle a knife properly. Not sure why you can't, but different people have different abilities I suppose.
Little gold star for you. I cut myself accidentally quite a lot. I value the design feature.
> False. I use it all the time actually. It is insanely useful for getting into annoying plastic wrappers, piercing the skin of fruit / veg / meat, which is all frequently done in any normal kitchen.
All uses which cause accidents and for which there are better tools. You are misusing your knives and a good chef would yell at you for it.
> Sometimes when I can't find my Stanley knife, I use it to get through parcel tape on packages.
Foolish person.
> BTW you are aware there are different knives in the kitchen for different uses right? You don't use the bread knife to cut veg, and you don't use a butter knife to eat steak. God forbid you find out about a carving fork.
Of course I am. I'm surprised you do, given how you confess to misusing knives.
> There are still shootings in the UK (guns are heavily restricted). I would wager there in an dingy industrial estates somewhere, there are guns being manufactured illegally. I can 3D print a bloody gun if I wanted to.
There is vanishingly little of this, in fact; armourers get caught. Will 3D printing make it more difficult? Clearly the police think so. Challenges evolve. But you know what? You can make it illegal to print a gun with a 3D printer, (it is) combined with an awareness campaign (as a 3D printer owner, I can assure you people are aware, because it's all they ask about) and it seems to mostly stop it happening, surprisingly.
Nuance is a burden. The solution is to engage with it and try to work with it, not just abandon any attempt to navigate it.
I have a small-ish flat-cut paring knife that has a non-pointed blade. It is very sharp, and even the squared off end is enough to pierce a tomato, say.
I can't think of any application where the point of the knive is particularly essential for fruit or veg, and I can think of several veg where using the point of a tool is actually quite likely to cause an accident. Sweet potato being one of them.
There is one true application: deboning or filleting. But most people simply don't do this in a kitchen anyway, because they are buying deboned and filleted meat.
I don't see a particular problem with asking people who do want to cook to that level to prove they are adults before buying knives that have such obvious dual use as a weapon. Because you're asking people who already know they should be responsible with knives (and not for example use kitchen knives to get into plastic packaging, like an idiot).
You really don't need the point of a kitchen knife all that much in a kitchen, and the fact that the counterexamples raised are misuse (stabbing into packaging etc.) is pretty illustrative.
You could use this, yes. And buy it, as an adult. I have not suggested you could not. (I just don't think the point is necessary, myself, and I am glad of options without it)
But you quite possibly cannot buy it on Amazon or in any UK shop already without proving you are an adult if your age is in doubt. Do you have a problem with their terms on that page?
"Age Verification Required on Delivery: This product is not for sale to people under the age of 18. To confirm the recipient is over 18 years, valid photographic ID with a date of birth may be required upon delivery. The driver will input your year of birth into their device and may then require an ID check to complete the age verification process. The driver will not be able to access your information once the delivery is complete."
(The "may" here is crucial. I've never been asked to prove I am an adult this way either, because I look like one)
Looks like you don't have any serious counterpoints or arguments and are just not happy about how I use something legally in my home. So I think we will leave it there.
The whole country could sign that petition and it will be ignored. There is no legal/political solution to this. The sooner people accept that the better.
Nonsense. Promoting the petition and keeping talking about the law is one of the most effective things that can be done to make life uncomfortable for the politicians who are responsible for this mess. More pressure is needed and politicians will have to face journalists asking unpleasant questions when people continue to complain.
> Nonsense. Promoting the petition and keeping talking about the law is one of the most effective things that can be done to make life uncomfortable for the politicians who are responsible for this mess.
They frequently ignore these petitions, especially when it comes to privacy, freedom of speech, surveillance etc.
When you do get a response back from these petitions, they are frequently either don't address the issue properly or you get some gaslighting response back.
My pessimism has be undefeated thus far.
> More pressure is needed and politicians will have to face journalists asking unpleasant questions when people continue to complain.
I am sorry this is utterly naive. Have you've seen the responses from Politicians so far? They basically call anyone that opposes them a paedophile.
I wouldn't put any faith in the journalists either. Most either work for the state directly or they have corporate masters.
The mistake you are making is that you are taking a LinkedIn post at face value. The LinkedIn post is rage/engagement bait.
The problems are usually harder e.g. write a Roman Numeral Converter in 25 minutes that satisfies these tests. Just setting up a test project in Visual Studio and then installing the Nuget packages can take few minutes (You will need to install XUnit/NUnit. So in reality you only have 20 minutes to do it).
One of the ones I had. I didn't understand. I sent the test to several other contractors I know after snapping a screenshot. I literally said "Am I being dumb?" to the group and all of them said said they didn't understand it either.
Sometimes the machine isn't setup the way you are used to, different version of the IDE, keyboard bindings are wrong. So you end up fighting the IDE setup or faffing with settings in the interview.
Then some of the reasons your code is rejected (especially TDD places) is because you didn't use some over-engineered language features e.g I had feedback on some code where I didn't use some Functional Enumerator Constructor thingy. Apparently using a foreach loop is too simple.
Some of this I swear is to see how you act "stressed".
2 years ago given a coding assessment "Roman Numeral Conversion". Was given a set of test cases. I got near the solution. I think if I had another 5-10 minutes I would have solved it fine. Sat down that evening with the same test cases and did it from scratch in 20 minutes.
5 years ago, I didn't get a job because I while I did well technically. The reason for the rejection was that I appeared "stressed" while being assessed. What do they expect?
10 years ago. I walked out of an interview essentially after about 10 minutes. The interviewer(s) interrupted me the moment I started writing any code, constantly interrupting my train of thought. I think it was intentionally done to irritate me. I've had companies play these stupid games in interviews before.
It has the benefit of banning bots that hammer you SSH trying to log in. Even if password auth is disabled. I've had friends that setup a small VPS and they've been hammered by bots, which can use a lot of resource on a £5/£10 VPS. Told them to install fail2ban, and the issue was solved in a few minutes.
Good security is about having multiple layers of defense. Fail2Ban protection is one of those layers.
> It has the benefit of banning bots that hammer you SSH trying to log in. Even if password auth is disabled.
You can use the built-in firewall for that (`ufw limit ssh`).
> I've had friends that setup a small VPS and they've been hammered by bots, which can use a lot of resource on a £5/£10 VPS.
`ufw limit ssh` solves this as well, performant, efficient, nothing else needed than the built-in firewall. If you are targeted by a botnet, fail2ban will solve nothing.
> Good security is about having multiple layers of defense. Fail2Ban protection is one of those layers.
Let me quote again the readme of fail2ban: "Set up services to use only two factor, or public/private authentication mechanisms if you really want to protect services."
True defense in depth means choosing effective layers, not putting arbitrary layers on top of each other. Defense in depth doesn't mean every possible layer is good.
You want layers that meaningfully improve your security posture without adding unnecessary complexity or false confidence.
function add(a: i32, b: i32): i32 {
return a + b;
}
Than the example you provided and it is approximately the same length. I used to arrow functions everywhere in TS/JS and it made it difficult to read IME, and there was zero benefit. They are find for things like event handlers, promises chains etc. But I'd rather just use function when I don't have to worry about the value of this.
All major UK political parties are in support of the Online Safety Act. Even if they say they are against it, you cannot trust them because typically they won't overturn laws put in place that grants them additional powers.
The large tech companies benefited immensely from relative few regulations in the 2000-2010s. Once they are established, they are happy to comply with regulations which will make it more difficult for competitor to even exist since complying with regulations is often prohibitively expensive for new player.
It is known colloquially as "Pulling up the ladder behind you".
Partly. But it isn't necessarily Xenophobia. Those who have different cultures happen to be typically immigrants, but not always.
e.g. In Northern Ireland (and parts of Scotland) there were clashes between Protestants and Catholics. I used to see them all the time on the news when I was a kid. There are two distinct groups (both Christian) that have not co-existed very well historically. I don't know if you would call them different cultures but they are distinct enough to cause a schism.
If you have immigration into one country. These people with different cultures, have different values. That creates a schism between them and the natives.
e.g. You can see this in Spain between British Expats and Spanish Nationals. The British Expats essentially live in particular areas and they are their own subculture in Spain (I know I was one). I lived the entire time in Spain learning nothing more than being able to order Beer, Lunch, Taxi and working out how to use the automated bill payment machine at the BBVA.
Sure. That's a very generous interpretation. But I am quite certain OP does not mean "priviliged white dudes" as the issue with "multiculturalism". May OP can expand on what they mean exactly.
No it isn't a "generous interpretation". You seem to be taking very uncharitable interpretation while insinuating they are some sort of unrepentant racist. I am not sure why you are doing that. I find it extremely tiresome.
I deliberately gave examples where both groups were White Europeans so to avoid any conflation with racism. Otherwise the conversation is guaranteed to go nowhere as it ends up in accusations of people being secretly racist.
The problem is simply a clash of values between two disparate groups of people as they come from different cultures. The ethnicity of the groups is often irrelevant.
Many UK MPs don't understand this. I've heard of MPs making (moronic) suggestions such as selling kitchen knives without the point on it. I've literally seen this advertised as a solution on the news.
For whatever reason they don't seem to understand that literally anyone can make a shiv.