Pretty much. I’m not sure if it got included but if it was feasibly possible they absolutely would — which is just as bad in my opinion. Lack of capability does not nullify intent.
Nothing was changed. The government just trotted out a nobody to make a statement that basically said "we won't do it until we think it can be done"; the sensationalist media thought they had got their U-turn, ran a few headlines, and moved on.
The bill just passed as it was.
The British establishment is occasionally infuriating.
He's selling a book demonstrating how great and scary AI is for 17 dollars and his friend from OpenAI was really keen to show off the fantastic new AI model his company has lined up.
Great thinly veiled ad for OpenAI and this guy's book. A book which appears to be nothing more than a bunch of AI generated poems. He even says that they could have just been posted online but that they're selling through a publisher for "credibility".
Another alarmist poised to profit from the alarm. Not saying all of them are mind, just this one seems that way.
I agree and would add that it's a particularly good time to be a Linux gamer. I recently started downloading games in Fedora on my dual booted machine and so many games support Linux officially now, I think the success of steam deck has contributed to this.
For games that don't officially support Linux, Steam's Proton means most of mine bar two run perfectly on Fedora.
I haven't booted up Windows in months, a good outcome.
Steam has been putting in the work for years. I stopped booting up Windows over 4 years ago thanks to proton and haven't had much of a reason to miss it
> The King or Queen functionally has zero power over much of anything - their role is pretty much entirely ceremonial in purpose (they can theoretically choose to not sign laws, but this would just result in them getting sidestepped).
This is the same in the UK I’m not sure I see the stark difference. The Monarch doesn’t really have power over parliament.
So the Queen read bills and gave her opinion on them, which is public record, before they were debated? And that constitutes political power?
It also states that this is a purely formal part of the parliamentary process and she never refused something being debated, even if she did parliament could override it.
I’d argue that if David Beckham tweeted his annoyance at a bill being passed it would have more influence. Not to mention the hundreds of lobby groups that get their way.
I think people forget that the relationship between Monarch and people in Britain has always been different to the rest of Europe. No Magna Carta or equivalent document was signed anywhere else in Europe in the 1200s. It took the famously rebellious France 150 years to abolish their monarch after the English did.
Personally I don’t mind the monarchy, if they replace it then fine, but I want it replaced with something decent. I definitely don’t want to see a US style presidential republic set up here, with executive orders, etc.
I’ve said this before in another thread but growing up as a not very well off ethnic minority the Queen seemed to care more about me than anyone in parliament. The monarch in the UK shows more civil devotion and service than any politician.
Fair enough, I got a bit hyperbolic. Although I also consider monarchy and aristocracy evil by definition.
I feel like one obvious way to address the incontrovertible problems with the monarchy is to recognize that the system no longer serves any purpose besides acting as a symbol of imperialism and class hierarchy that has no place in the modern world, and dismantling it.
Keep the castles and whatnot for the tourist money but why still have a King?
Most if not all of the castles and palaces in the UK are open to the public through the national trust. The Monarchy have multiple residences but apart from Windsor castle (which is open to the public when they’re not there) and Buckingham palace, they are mostly cottages or manors in the countryside.
The monarchy today is not seen by anyone as a symbol of imperialism and class hierarchy unless they explicitly set out to see them as a symbol of imperialism and class hierarchy.
They are mainly to most people a symbol of the country and its traditions. Again the monarchy has existed for a thousand years and has changed as society has changed. They are a reflection of the country that hosts them. Everyone is taught about the English civil war at school and knows that the monarch was beheaded and a republic was formed (150 years before the French Revolution). Nobody feels like the monarch has us under their thumb.
As an ethnic minority growing up in Britain I can tell you from my experience and the experiences I’ve heard from other ethnic minorities, the monarchy represented to me a more fair and kind view than the politicians we elected.
The Queen would have seen me (had we met) as a subject like any of her subjects regardless of race or class, she stood above it all and the monarchy still is above it all.
While the BNP and EDL were organising marches across the country the Monarchy actually made me feel like I belonged in the country I grew up in, that is a powerful thing.
Personally I like having a politically neutral head of state as a personification of the country.
An elected head of state will be impossible to keep politically neutral and inevitably will polarise things.
Maybe a system with an appointed head of state instead of elected, similar to peerages in the House of Lords. Someone vetted and trusted, approved by an elected parliament.
Although the Monarchy is already completely controlled by parliament which is democratically elected so I’m not sure what the difference would be.
This basically my position too. I think the concept of a stable and politically neutral head of state makes a lot of sense.
For me it's more the out dated ceremonies and the displays of wealth that I don't like. I think if the monarch just lived in a nice country house and deprecated silly things like the Crown Jewels and the Royal Carriage then I'd be completely fine with them.
I think it's the "royal" part of the monarchy that people oppose rather than the system itself.
The monarch has not exercised direct political power since the English Civil War.
Yes they’re wealthy and have exercised power that wealth gives you but they’d still be wealthy if they were not a monarch.
If we want to talk about the power that money brings you in politics then we’re having a different discussion, a discussion that is not UK specific.
But yes the monarchy as an institution has not involved itself in political matters in living memory, and has not exercised political power (executive orders, vetoing bills) in centuries.
Parliament is the sovereign political power in the UK. If they wanted to they could pass a bill today that dismantled the crown and the monarchy.
Direct political power is one thing, but indirect political power is very much another. The monarch gets briefed in advance on pretty much everything. Where there’s direct commercial impact to the crown’s businesses the laws are often changed to favour them.[1] There’s also a wide range of exceptions written into the UK’s legal system after direct political pressure specifically for the royal family.[2] This might be done in the shadows, but done it nevertheless is.
I think if you assembled a list of elected MPs who have changed laws to suit them or lead directly to their profit (the PPE scandal, the recent scandal with Rishi Sunaks wife owning shares in a company the government officially endorsed, etc). You’d have a much longer list than the laws the crown has influenced.
I think if you made a list of how many laws and bills have been influenced by private lobbying and donations you’d have an inconceivably large list.
My point earlier is that the wealthy get their say, the monarchy as an institution hold the same amount of political power as the wealthy in the UK, but they do not hold direct political power.
In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment.
Not sure why but generally journos seem to write about issues like they are only hitting the UK when a simple google search shows they aren’t.
It does come across like a weird concerted effort to paint the UK as collapsing since leaving the EU. The majority of journos seem to be able to write only negatively about UK current affairs unless you read something like The Express who are delusional in their own right.
Most recent ones I can think of are the failed space launch and British volt going under.
These were both highly ambitious projects that had a high chance of failure, especially the space launch. It’s unlikely you’re going to get your first launch right, famously it takes many attempts.
When both of these happened journalists seemed to revel in the failure. It was very odd to see.
I understand with these two examples a lot of it has to do with government/brexiteer chest thumping which shon a spotlight on them. However it was still odd to see.
I think this then trickles down to places like HN (who’s membership generally has a bias towards remain) who also see an opportunity to revel in it.
This is odd as well because I can see why Britons or Europeans would be passionate about membership in a regional trade bloc, Americans who get really passionate about it confuse me. As a Briton I didn’t really care when America left NAFTA.
This is assuming the majority of people on HN are American but based on time zones and when articles are posted I’m probably wrong.
Edit:
This is a UK based publication writing about Groceries in the UK which is why it’s so specific. Your comment just spurred something I’ve been thinking recently.
> In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment.
Especially on Hacker News. I tend to avoid UK-based posts on here because the content is fairly predictable: the UK is going to shit and Brexit is to blame, repeated ad nauseam in the absence of any evidence that it's true. If I wanted thoughtless UK doom mongering, I'd read the Guardian or the NYT.
Yeah I do the same. It seems to permeate into everything, even positives.
UK announcing research into x: comments will probably be negative and about how it’s a boondoggle.
UK company doing exciting stuff like fusion or quantum: comments will probably be negative and about how it’s a boondoggle.
It’s tiring.
Edit:
That being said it does lead to hilarious moments where I’ll read the Guardian and see a headline like “The NHS won’t make it to Christmas (for real this time) but it doesn’t matter because we’ll all be dead by then because of Brexit” and then I’ll see the Express in my corner shop with a headline like “Brexit HERO Boris makes Ursula von der Leyen CRY when he announced new BRITISH MOON BASE”
- Governemtn forecast 4% lower GDP than without Brexit
- UK car industry significant decline in output since 2015 (around 30% IIRC)
- People who immigrated here for work (and have the right to stay) are choosing to leave
- Low investment compared to comparable regions / countries
- Turmoil around NI
- Banking migrating to Europe and New York in particular
- Trade deals not materialising
It’s not what “project fear” warned us of, but it’s certainly not good. Many of these effects are playing out across years so haven’t really hit home for people yet.
It's because there are narratives to follow, sides to pick. There's no room for facts by themselves, they have to fit some story your pack has bought into.
Right, left, middle, or anarchy, it's all the same; you're part of a herd.
I see a huge difference between people online and normal people.
Obviously we are going through a tough time at the moment. While there are some things unique to the UK (such as the nurses and junior doctors strike), for the most part what we are experiencing is common to most of Europe and often even the USA. I mean look at France - Paris is drowning in rubbish due to bin strikes and protesters are setting things on fire - yet if anything that seems to be being covered as something positive for them. People taking back power and exerting their rights. Last time that happened here, though, it was treated as an almost apocalyptic event and emblemic of Broken Britain. Sure the Paris strikes are ostensibly about pensions, but really they're about more than that.
By default, Brits tend to lean toward the negative side. I think even before Brexit/Tories/etc. most British people would broadly have considered the UK to be a bit shit, and generally complain more than they say anything positive. However, when measured, the UK is in the top 10 countries on a huge number of metrics and isn't particulary awful at anything. I do find the general negativity a bit tiresome, but it's not entirely a bad thing. That negativity is probably partly behind why we have managed to become and remain such a successful and stable country for so long.
Online, though, British people seem to be incredibly negative in a way that I've rarely experienced in person. I figure one reason why people online are so unflinchingly negative about the UK is that online Brits seem to lean very hard left and we're now on our 13th year of Tory leadership. I'm pretty lefty myself, but an awful lot of the chronically online UK types are literally Trots and Tankies (who are, nevertheless, pro-remain #FBPE, despite the contradiction between those views). Look at, e.g. Corbyn's online popularity versus his real (un)popularity with the electoral base. Or how the Tories actually generally get a similar popular vote to Labour, but online it's hard to find a single person who expresses any support for them.
I also think the UK generally gets its news about Europe from US news sources, especially when it comes to economic policy and comparisons. The US news (especially NYT and such) love to paint the US as a capitalist hellscape compared to the utopia of Continental Europe and the Nordics in particular. In reality, of course, the EU and Nordics are a lot more complicated than that, and in socioeconomic terms we're a lot closer to Europe in most ways than we are to the US, but that doesn't seem to feed through so people draw the same comparisons that are popular in US papers. You also get that with the NHS vs USA's system, as though those are the only two options.
1. This will weaken the UKs ability to have private and secure communication services.
2. Will weaken the UKs tech industry.
3. The technology to provide the frankly bullshit notion of “privacy for the good guys” doesn’t exist and would be difficult to foster.
4. Education, “report don’t share” and tackling child abuse at its root (by not massively defunding the agencies responsible for tackling child abuse) are better solutions then setting up an apparatus of mass surveillance.
Hopefully these points will be brought up in the committee stage of the bill, I’m sure they will.
Edit:
Sorry this isn’t from the House of Lords this was from the joint committee before the bill was introduced to the lords.
Essentially you are allowed to use the rules of DnD (and other games that use the license) to make derivative work as long as its also published with OGL.
It allows homebrewed content to exist and is part of the reason the DnD community is so big.
WoTC (Wizards of the Coast, the owner of DnD) is “updating” the license from 1.0 to 1.1 and is using the update as an excuse to clamp down on competition and limit what can be used.
This has a far reaching effect because 1.0 would be revoked which means lots of content that has already been created would be put in a grey area, WoTC could sue anyone who made content for ownership even if it was made with the previous license.
It also puts entire games like Pathfinder into question as these are essentially modded DnD.
>WoTC could sue anyone who made content for ownership even if it was made with the previous license.
Unless I misunderstand, according to the submitted thread this isn't the case.
>The good news is that, because of the reliance principle, third party creators who have already created a work under the OGL likely could continue to sell that work even if the OGL were revoked. They just could not create any new works.
I thought they dropped that part of the bill, I may be mistaken though.