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March 15th, 2016 | 56 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Russia’s main problem is that no one smart or rich wants to live there. Their talent has been drained for 80 years. Their chief export now is herpes and orphans. – Commenter ‘Solidar’ on an article over on Reuters called ‘Do you suffer from Russophobia? The Kremlin thinks you might‘. March 7th, 2016 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Developers cannot build software that allows law enforcement to access encrypted communications but prevents malicious actors from exploiting that access. Cryptography cannot distinguish good people from bad, so a backdoor for one is a backdoor for all. Undermining the encryption used by U.S. companies would place the average consumer at risk of attack by malicious third parties, and merely motivate criminals and terrorists to use one of many alternative options. Powerful cryptography tools can easily be built outside the United States; as the self-declared Islamic State’s use of German messaging service Telegram demonstrates, software rarely respects borders. February 26th, 2016 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a key aspect of the samizdata interface is still far from Samizdata HQ, and the local internet is powered by small but very noisy frogs on a bamboo treadmill, rather than the usual industrious British hamsters on a steel one, delays in comment moderation will continue for several days…
[/on David Attenborough Voice]
[/end David Attenborough Voice] February 20th, 2016 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
February 15th, 2016 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The continuing plunge in the price of oil from $115 a barrel in mid-2014 to $30 today is really, really good news. I know just about every economic commentator says otherwise, predicting bankruptcies, stock market crashes, deflation, political turmoil and a return to gas guzzling. But that is because they are mostly paid to see the world from the point of view of producers, not consumers. – Matt Ridley. February 8th, 2016 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a way, then, Palin’s speech was the perfect endorsement for Donald Trump’s campaign: an incoherent mess of angry, resentful sentiment, delivered in a way designed to provide the maximum in media spectacle. Palin effectively—and, okay, somewhat poetically—captured and amplified the identity-politics-driven nonsense that feeds both the candidate and his supporters. January 23rd, 2016 | 73 comments - (Comments are closed)
January 2nd, 2016 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The samizdata server hamsters will be on holiday on Jan 2nd as they sleep off their hangovers. We hope they will be back on their treadmills at some point on the 3rd. December 31st, 2015 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
If Stalin was 75 percent violence and 25 percent propaganda, Putin is 75 percent propaganda and 25 percent violence. – Peter Pomerantsev, from “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” December 4th, 2015 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
A week ago, when 129 people in Paris were massacred as they went joyfully about their Friday nights, there were instant predictions of fury and instability. The cut-off commentariat in particular was worried that ‘ordinary people’ might turn Islamophobic. Hatred will spread ‘thick and fast’, said Scotland’s minister for Europe. Others fretted that there would be displays of jingoism, demands for revenge. Don’t agitate for a ‘clash of civilisations’, observers warned. One expert on international affairs even told us not to get angry, because ‘ISIS counts on anger… to advance its cause’. This elite panic about post-Paris rage spoke volumes about the anti-public mindset of Europe’s opinion-formers, who view us as volatile, easily turned from civilised creatures into warmongers. In the event, though, in the seven days since the massacres, something even worse than all that happened: nothing. There’s been no fury. No clamour for a fightback, whether of the militaristic or intellectual variety. November 21st, 2015 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Universities seem increasingly to focus on the so-called student experience over the students’ education, with universities putting huge resources into public relations, league tables and student surveys. University has become the place for teenagers to go when they wish to delay being an adult, rather than being the bridge to independence it was once considered to be. As someone who chose to leave university, it felt like I was simply putting my life on hold for three years, when I really wanted to jump into the world of work. This feeling was further enhanced by spending time on campus, where it felt like all students were being kept together and shielded from the outside world. November 19th, 2015 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
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