I get the occasional request to NordVPN image assets beginning with `/nordvpn/media/` on my server. Apparently this is or was a way to find out if an IP address is acting as an exit node.
In the comments here I read a lot about if this is whistleblowing or not, or if disciplinary measures are warranted for an employee "badmouthing" an employer's client while not having an official mandate to speak in public, while mostly ignoring the threats made by a government official.
This is exactly the problem why the world sucks so hard.
The engineer, certainly knowledgeable in this field, made a measured public remark, which could have saved lives. He has done nothing wrong, because he didn't claim to speak on behalf of his employer, and has the right to speak his mind as a person. In public, and with a lot of reach.
The government official, however, applied unconstitutional pressure to get the engineer fired and threatened his employer to lose business. Humanly very low and damaging to future public rail infrastructure, if a capable company is not allowed to provide services anymore and therefore most likely to increase prices through diminished competition.
If anyone should lose their job over this matter, it clearly should be the UK rail minister.
> while not having an official mandate to speak in public
Gareth Dennis has been a public figure for a while, appearing on BBC News a few times. So there was apparently a provision for this in his contract with Systra: https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829053692508623154
> [Gareth's] passion and enthusiasm for all things rail are well-known across the sector through his weekly #Railnatter podcast and as a regular national press rail commentator
Ah that's an interesting revelation. But yeah totally unsurprising really, he's very good at talking in plain, accessible English about rail-related matters that might otherwise cause people to glaze over and ignore. And it's not like he's ever been a shit-stirrer either - in the interview in question he was pretty reasonable. It's just that this guy Lord Hendy has taken a dislike to NR being called out and started a little vendetta against Dennis.
What's great about this is that instead of covering up the issue, Henry's behaviour has caused it to blow up and become way more visible. I certainly hadn't heard about any of this until reading OP.
True, but it's kind of a shame we're dependent on those emails being leaked. If they hadn't been then it'd be Dennis' claim that someone in the government pressured his employer to get him sacked. Which doesn't hold a great deal of weight and could easily be dismissed by a government keen to cover its ass.
What aspect of the UK's nebulous "constitution" do you claim was violated here? (Or are you just reflexively/thoughtlessly saying "unconstitutional" because it would be a First Amendment violation in the USA?)
Well, the UK doesn't have a constitution, so technically you're correct in mentioning that, but it should also be said that something like this happening in Europe is beyond shocking. It sounds like an April's fool joke. But isn't.
Absolutely. He's guilty of precisely what he complains about. He suggests that this engineer is implicating the "safety of Network Rail" whereas he's just implicating the safety of a _single decision_.
Instead of reacting to a single statement the minister has decided to implicate his entire job. Which is madness. He should be deeply ashamed of how he abused his position, and quite frankly, for his inability to accept and react appropriately to criticism.
I suspect the minister may be an ex-minister soon, alright; it’s not a good look, and he’s only been in the job a month or so, so replacing wouldn’t be a huge deal.
> he’s only been in the job a month or so, so replacing wouldn’t be a huge deal
He's way, way than more than just some guy who has been rail minister for a month, he's one of the most respected, perhaps the most respected transport executive in Britain(at least until yesterday). He's not an elected politician, he has worked professionally in rail transportation since 1975.
For 10 years he was Chief Executive of Transport for London which runs all public transport in London.
Following that, for the past 10 years he was and still is Chairman of Network Rail, the organisation which is responsible for the entire British Railway Network. It's in this capacity that he sent the letter, not as a minister.
Unless this turns into some huge scandal, which seems unlikely, he'll be fine.
For non-UK residents, this is a perfectly normal thing that happens regularly[1]. For example the last government did it to David Cameron, who was not an elected MP at the time he was made foreign secretary.
To become a minister, that person needs to be an official politician. Part of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. So if a sitting UK government wants an expert in their cabinet who is not an MP, they ennoble them. They make the person a Lord to get them to be able to operate officially as a minister in the government.
"An executive of of a rail company" is not really the full picture here. Network Rail is state-controlled and a government minister appoints the Chairman.
In countries that actually have a strong constitution—the US is the primary example though I hope others exist—the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land and is, by design, difficult to amend. When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.
In that sense, Britain does not have a constitution. Obviously it has a constitution in some sense, because there is always some set of laws, norms, traditions, and historical precedents that constitute the basis of government. But this is a much weaker sense of the term. For instance, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was a “constitutional” law that supposedly made it impossible to call a snap election, but a snap election was nonetheless called in 2019 via the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, which only required a simple majority because it had equivalent authority to the FTPA itself.
I'm not sure the US is currently a particularly great advertisment for its model of constitutional government. In place of acts of Parliament that have a relatively clear interpretation (and that can be undone or modified by elected representatives), there is legislative deadlock and an endless series of judicial séances attempting to determine whether or not Ben Franklin would have supported gay marriage, abortion rights and concealed carry of MANPADS if he'd been born 300 years later.
It is very odd that after 200 years of independence they realised that they had failed to realised that the constitution granted a right to have an abortion, and then a few decades later realised that it did not after all.
It feels very much that you have a different arm of the government (the judiciary) making laws in place of the legislature.
Historically it also took a while to get the thirteenth amendment so the constitution was pretty seriously flawed for a very long time.
On the other hand the free speech protections are something I envy.
No. Originalism is just a form of textualism; it’s based on the “original public meaning” of the law as written. This is a common misunderstanding. The point of originalism is that you can’t interpret a law written in the 18th century as if it was written in the 21st century because language usage changes over time. There’s no good faith reason for it to be the sort of bogeyman it’s become.
Laws are loosely written to effectively apply to anything and are interpreted by the courts. Sentences are subjectively and unevenly applied depending on the 'circumstances' of the offender.
No, in that sense the UK does not have an American-style constitution - no more, no less. It is not accidental that Parliament can reverse any decision taken by an earlier Parliament: in fact it is one of the most important parts of the constitution that no Parliament can take a decision which binds a later one. It is different from the American design, yes, but the way in which the American constitution is used does not seem praiseworthy, not does it suggest that it would be wise to copy it.
The Bill of Rights begins with the words, "Congress shall make no law..." before enumerating some of the basic human rights that Congress is constitutionally prohibited from infringing. I think it is highly praiseworthy indeed that, unlike Parliament, Congress is constitutionally prevented from infringing on basic human rights. It is also highly praiseworthy that, unlike Parliament, Congress is constitutionally prevented from forming a kangaroo court to sentence the head of state to death or from subsequently installing a military dictatorship (which is the exact historical precedent whence parliamentary supremacy was established).
And how's that going for you at the moment? You have a supreme court which has just decided that the president is effectively outside the reach of the law. This was in response to a case where the outgoing president attempted to overthrow the results of an election and establish a dictatorship.
As for the trial of Charles I - that was anything but a kangaroo court. Great care was taken to give him a fair trial, while establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.
Much better than it is for the UK. Most of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights was carried over from English common law. Britain has since explicitly abolished some of them and openly carves out exceptions to the others. How many people in Britain have been jailed for mean tweets?
> You have a supreme court which has just decided that the president is effectively outside the reach of the law.
That’s a false oversimplification of that ruling.
> As for the trial of Charles I - that was anything but a kangaroo court. Great care was taken to give him a fair trial, while establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.
Charles I, the king, was charged with treason, which was defined prior to that trial as disloyalty to the king. The king was disloyal to the king? It’s complete nonsense and they were clearly making it up as they went along.
The English Civil War was a violent revolution that overthrew the previous system of government and imposed a new one by force of arms. I’m not against that in principle but at least the American revolutionaries were honest that that’s what they were doing.
> When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.
Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.
And, the Executive branch is free to ignore what the Judicial branch [1] does since ya know, it's the Executive branch that would execute any decisions.
> Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.
It's a rather simple application of the premises that (a) the Constitution supersedes other statutory laws and (b) the courts have jurisdiction over disputes about the application of the law.
No /s required. You can see a list of landmark judgments here, some of which apply to the UK. (Although you’re confusing the EU with the Council of Europe.)
If you're trying to compare Britain unfavourably to the US with this comment then that doesn't really hold up.
People are sacked all the time in the US for bringing their employer into disrepute, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually did or not, since the employer doesn't have to give a reason anyway.
What? That's a clause with almost every UK contract I've ever signed. The US constitution doesn't touch on employment rights.
Id also point out that the UK is generally an extremely poor country, living standards for the majority are low, income is extremely low after taxes, especially compared to the states.
Britain compares itself unfavourably to the US on almost every metric that matters.
The same as an American citizen, then. That piece of paper locked up in the national archives (or wherever) didn't come running, armed with a gun, to save the life of George Floyd or anyone else.
There is a basis in UK law for freedom of speech (most recently, Article 10 of the Human Rights act). It's true that protections for free speech are not as extensive in the UK as they are in the US, but the US is the outlier in that case. Very few countries have free speech protections as strong as the First Amendment.
The UK laws elaborate on what is and isn't free speech, while the US law basically just says "there shall be free speech (as far as Congress is concerned. Other parties can do whatever they like to stifle speech)"
UK law is extremely loosely defined. Judges are ultimately responsible for its interpretation, which they do relatively literally - so as long as the police and CPS bring a case there's a good chance you've fallen foul of the law, subjectively - which is how they are written. E.g malicious communications act.
The US constitution is even more loosely defined if you exclude the outcome of hundreds of years of judicial interpretations of it. Hence the endless disagreements over what is or isn’t constitutional.
Which must be tosh, you can literally go to prison for years here for stating facts. What if some day somebody takes offence to 2+2=4? The guy who says 2+2=4 goes to jail for years whilst rapists and murders get away with 6 months or suspended sentences. But don't mention that, or else!
You are right about Gnome vs. macOS. It has many features which are not obvious and may be hidden behind an alt modifier key. But this makes it very usable for beginners and experts at the same time without alienating the other.
In the end Gnome seems to strive for a UI which scales from smartphones to big desktop screens with varying success. It's cool to know, that your desktop feed reader could work on your smartphone without changes in the future. But this Gnome future is always distant.
This isn't "a couple of weeks ago" issue. The enshittification most likely begin when they rolled this modern design and used variety of darkpatterns on existing users to trick them to move into updated interface. This was all done to attract younger audience who has short attention spawn and who doesn't mind ads and sponsored content served via this bulky interface that keeps you interacting with site under dozens of "load more" elements.
Tho, perhaps the slow decay of site started even earlier with arrival of Ellen Pao; content already was spiraling down at that time
I don't think there's any hope for reddit; I expect that site will be even more sanitized to the point no "unsafe" content will be allowed to be posted. There are subs around that already are being used as platform for spreading PR of companies, which have nothing in common with these exotic truly run by ordinary people small communities.
I’m not sure if this is a downside yet, but I know even less of what’s going on in the world since July, having bailed on Twitter and FB years earlier and having made a conscious decision to stop purposefully consuming “news” a few years ago.
Reddit was the only site I would scroll by world events to learn of their happening. (clearly I’m still here, but it’s a bit more niche)
I agree with your sentiment, but I do wonder what could replace reddit. It's true that the larger subreddits have been pretty terrible for years. However, reddit has often been the _only_ good source for useful and true user-sourced information. What vacuum should I buy? How can I get some old PS2 game to run on my steam deck? Can I disable the telematics system on a Toyota Tacoma? etc.
It's easy to see this sort of access to information disappearing, and it's also easy to imagine that even if it didn't die now, it would soon be destroyed by large-scale usage of AI. I think the internet very briefly put a lot of power in the hands of users, but the pendulum is swinging back hard.
I completely agree and it often baffles me the lack of nuance I see here on HN. “Reddit became crap”. No it didn’t. Maybe it’s less appealing and valuable than in the past, but it certainly still is a goldmine in more niche subreddits. Or simply to have a laugh at r/funny.
There's goldmine of information on 4chan's niche boards as well. But people referring to "4chan" the website tend to talk about the wide strokes of communities.
It's the same with reddit. Sure, I do appreciate some small gaming communities that I can't find anywhere else, but it's not what the site cares about, nor what many people see when they go to reddit.com. You need to search for those communities,and they aren't guaranteed to be good. Or active for that matter.
What we're seeing is the downsides of centralizing. Replacing Reddit would require putting everything in one place again, and would likely lead to the same result down the road.
There are still active forums for most topics, and site search works just as well. What changes is a return to the old world where you can't put in one site to get it all anymore.
Has there ever been an online community that improves over time? At best it seems they grow, then they’re doomed to either maintain at a certain level (like HN), or slowly slump into the melt and burn away.
Reddit started charging huge money for API access. Thing is, reddits leadership are wildly incompetent and those APIs were relied upon by the mods to actually handle the vast oceans of posts that go on each day.
Its left the mods with greatly increased workload as they now need to use the crappy tools Reddit gives them, and for some communities like the folks on /r/blind the site is totally unusable.
Most subreddits have ended the protests, and those that don't have had their mod teams forceably replaced, usually be people who are more interested in being mods than actually moderating.
Reddit had hundreds, if not a thousand people willing to work for free managing their site for them and they still screwed it up, just unbelievable stuff.
API access is still free for moderation and accessibility tools. It’s just third party clients with high API usage that were effectively killed with the pricing change.
disappointing but not unexpected. These are just other "irrelevant power users" to reddit, but for the sake of pretending to care they at least try to keep up the appearance of caring.
And for those who go "the average redditor doesn't care": well, here is another example of "power user" you may not have considered. They certainly are the minority, can't disagree with that.
The problem is that knowing the rug can be yanked out anytime, the desire of people who helped write and maintain the tools to do so has somewhat fallen to zero.
Perhaps that's a good thing in some ways. The communities with only a very light-touch moderation to get rid of spam are often the most enjoyable, where you can speak relatively freely without the looming threat of some overbearing mod censoring and banning you because they don't like your opinion.
Although he is fascinated by the craft of spying (and I can see why some people might find that objectionable or regrettable) Le Carre does not engage in the moral stereotyping or moral certainty you describe.
Also, spies probably save lives: if for example the Kremlin had been more skilled at collecting and analyzing information about Ukraine's military capabilities, they probably wouldn't have invaded.
"which threw almost half the world's population from the wrong side of the iron curtain under the bus."
I am one of those people. We didn't get to choose, but most of us hated the regimes that ruled us. I am fine with their portrayal as prisons of nations, because that is what they were. No need to whitewash Communism.
The Soviet empire was brutal and evil, and I am not at all surprised that a former KGB thug now started the biggest land war in Europe since 1945. It perfectly fits the imperial mentality of the Siloviki [0], who all made their early careers in Soviet armed forces and secret police.
Many extensions need full access to the DOM, because their functionality depends on it. Their sole purpose is to manipulate the DOM for various purposes.
That's why it is always a risk to use browser extensions and you really have to trust the people behind the extension.
Obviously, if the browser supports it, the access should be limited to the sites where it actually matters. Like a YouTube ad blocker to youtube.com. Unless you make a living from YouTube. Then you don't want to block ads for ethical reasons as well as security reasons, because it can kill your livelihood.
> It's sad to NUCs go, but it was inevitable. They made products for customers, while simultaneously competing with said customers.
That is true, but they're already a decade into shipping NUCs. Maybe it wasn't a problem after all. It could also be just a move to show the stock market that they focus on getting leaner.
You can then argue that they've spent the last decade slipping into irrelevance, so perhaps the NUC focus was a distraction from their core issues. They're at an inflection point in the company where either they turn the ship around and successfully become the second largest foundry, closing their technology gap with TSMC, or they continue losing market share. They can't fund new fabs and new nodes without a massive reduction in their cost center.
