We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
There’s nothing funnier than an electronic billboard showing a Windows error message, so obviously I stop to take a photo.
A man comes up behind me. It is a solider in fatigues with a gun. “No photo”. This is a little tiresome. I attempt to point out that I am attempting to take a photo of a billboard, and what possible security risk could this be, but (as always) this is futile. Also, do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to take a photo of *anything* with modern technology without you realising it? But I know the rules, and they are rules. I accede and walk on. There are various security barriers and roadblocks nearby, so there is sensitive stuff nearby – government buildings, I think.
I block further, there are more security barriers, a guard post, and a soldier on duty. I am unsure I am allowed to walk down the road. I point down the road and beckon to the soldier, politely. “It’s okay to walk down there?”.
“Oh, sur.. Where are you from?”
“Australia”.
“O wow”. (Excitement). “I love Australia. Where Australia?”
“Sydney”.
“Oh, great!!!!. I was in Granville”.
(Fairly nondescript westerly but not extreme westerly suburb of Sydney, probably best known to me as the location of Australia’s worst rail disaster in the 1970. Perfectly pleasant place).
“Yeah, man. Granville”
“Where are you going?”. He now wants to give me directions. I wasn’t asking for directions – just wanting to know if he would stop me if I tried to walk down the street. However, if he wants to give me directions, I’ll let him give me directions. “Monot street”.
“Oh, about 200 metres that way. Have a great time”.
“You too. Come to Australia again some time”.
“Yeah. But I’m in the army. Fuck man!!!!”.
(He holds up his palm. I give him a high five). “Yeah. You’re in the army. Fuck man”. Explaining that I am completely opposed to compulsory military service as a matter of high principle and I therefore completely support his feelings would probably be excessive.
I go on my way, hoping that the safety was firmly in place on his rifle throughout all this.
Users of Samsung’s Smart TV devices have raised concerns over the device’s privacy policy, which seems to suggest that they should not discuss any sensitive topics in their living room while the television is plugged in.
The warning relates to the product line’s voice recognition services, which lets users control their television with voice commands input through a microphone on the set’s remote control.
Samsung privacy policy warns: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of voice recognition.”
Get it now before the rush; the word is that this technology soon really will be a “must-have”. Because it isn’t just Samsung or the company that provides Samsung with voice-recognition software that you need to worry about. As the Boomtown Rats put it back in ’79:
And when the place comes ablaze with a thousand dropped names
I don’t know who to call.
But I got a friend over there in the government block
And he knows the situation and he’s taking stock,
I think I’ll call him up now
It is fascinating to see Members of Parliament and Rabbis joining forces to ban free speech. Indeed it is even more fascinating to see Rabbis and Imams (and indeed the Pope) all steadily uniting to undermine one of the primary pillars upon which modern liberal western civilisation rests, which is to say freedom of expression. And of course I mean liberal not in the nonsensical debased American sense of the word (by which they mean something that is illiberal).
… because last night I visited full time evil genius and part time mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein Alec Muffet, and whilst cackling “It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!“, he created so fearsome a work that the very fabric of reality strains and writhes as unspeakable… things… threaten to slither into our mundane reality!
So now I grasp things that mankind was never meant to know, the terrible forbidden knowledge…
Only the bravest should gaze upon what lies below this line, you have been warned…
The number of “techie” people who are in favour of government regulation of the internet is especially depressing. It reminds me of George Orwell (himself a socialist) who complained that when other socialists said “under socialism” they really meant “everyone else under socialism – and me on top if it”.
The techie types think government regulation will put them in charge – so they can do lots of good, and not have to worry about grubby businessmen obsessed with money…
They are fools – they are fools with wonderful technical skills, but they are still fools.
The best way any government in the UK can bring prosperity is not by being ‘pro-business’ but rather by being ‘pro-market’. Labour sneeringly loathes both business and markets, the LibDems do not understand either and the Tories do not grasp that there is even a difference.
The solution? Try to do your business in Hong Kong, Singapore or New Zealand if you realistically have such a choice.
The statistical methods used in the paper are so bad as to merit use in a class on how not to do applied statistics. All this paper demonstrates is that climate scientists should take some basic courses in statistics and Nature should get some competent referees.
Ah, the ‘do it again, only HARDER’ fallacy espoused by so many pro-regulation types. I still wonder why people assume that something will be good if you sprinkle the magic pixie dust of government on it.
In Britain a new Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s or Asda opens every other day. But across the country people are battling the relentless march of the ‘Big Four’. John Harris, who has taken up the fight himself, reports
And here is John Harris writing in the Guardian in February 2015:
Tesco’s profits crisis means that plans for 49 shiny new stores have been ditched. Where does that leave places such as Kirkby, Bridgwater and Wolverhampton, where regeneration schemes linked to the supermarket chain now lie in ruins?
There is a fair point to be made relating to the bad effects on a town of endless shilly-shallying about whether a supermarket will be built, but John Harris isn’t making it. One of the commenters, DrRic55, is:
Seems this is less about Tesco, and more a grubby and poor quality class of local politicians.
I know from my old line of work how eyes light up at the mention of Section 106 agreements, and all manor of pet projects appear to be funded – sometimes assisting and enabling the development, sometimes nothing to do with it.
If we didn’t have such ridiculous planning laws the private sector would get on and build where there was demand. Instead we have a system not far off bribery of the local bureaucrats, and endless consultations that drag on forever. If you want to see another effect, look at the state of housebuilding in the UK.
Tesco has obviously failed in some pretty big ways, but I can’t help but see the dead hand of local government all over these disasters.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won its four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over secret legal interpretations of a controversial section of the Patriot Act, including legal analysis of law enforcement and intelligence agency access to census records.
Question: why have overseas subsidiaries at all if you are a US business? Why not just hive off any non-US based businesses into actual, and not just nominal, separate businesses? As other nations do not try to tax and regulate non-domicile activities in the way the US does, surely it make more sense to simply do business elsewhere, have your HQ elsewhere and just make deals to sell your stuff to US only based companies if you want to access the US market (i.e. do it indirectly)?
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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