ein0p 9 hours ago

Doesn't he live in a literal police state (the UK) where encrypted backups are illegal and people are fined and thrown in jail for Twitter shitposts?

  • blandcoffee 9 hours ago

    I ask this with sincere curiosity - what does his current place of residence have to do with his message that programmers should avoid companies building infrastructure for the police state?

  • foldr 16 minutes ago

    It’s not illegal to encrypt backups in the UK and the country does not come close to meeting any generally accepted definition of oa “police state”. There is currently a lot of anti-UK hype in certain online spaces (including HN) which wildly exaggerates various real problems (such as the UK government’s attacks on data privacy) to the extent where people end up with a wholly false picture of what life in the UK is like.

    Consider that PG could live more or less where he likes (leaving aside any private personal circumstances of his, which I know nothing about). If he chooses to live in the UK, that may suggest that it’s not actually as bad over here as you imagine.

    Based on your other comments in this thread, you seem to be more annoyed by alarmist news stories about the UK than you are by ICE throwing people with no criminal records into Salvadoran jails without trial. I’d question your media consumption choices if ‘UK’ makes you think ‘police state’ and yet current events in the US appear wholly unconcerning. Flooding the zone, indeed!

  • archagon 9 hours ago

    Jail (with due process) is still better than freaking El Salvador.

    • ein0p 9 hours ago

      Don't join a violent gang and enter the country illegally, then?

      • archagon 9 hours ago

        What was that about gangs? Most of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador appear to have no criminal record. And Trump has explicitly said that citizens are next.

        • tgma 9 hours ago

          > Most of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador appear to have no criminal record

          Your appear to does a lot of heavy-lifting here. Appear to whom?

          > And Trump has explicitly said that citizens are next.

          You have a different dictionary than I do: explicitly does not mean what you think it means.

          • archagon 9 hours ago

            And what, pray tell, do you think that word means? Because I saw him say it in an interview. And in other venues, too.

            > "I call them homegrown criminals," Mr. Trump told Fox Noticias. "I mean, the homegrowns that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat. We have — and push people into subways, just before the train gets there, like you see happening sometimes. We are looking into it, and we want to do it. I would love to do that."

            https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-homegrown-criminals-forei...

            • tgma 8 hours ago

              "We are looking into it" means he is looking for ways to do it [under the law], which is non-trivial for the regular US citizen. This is leaps and bounds different than "citizens are next."

            • ein0p 5 hours ago

              This is called "trolling", you should look it up. Trump is a media guy, and has been for much of his life - he does this deliberately to flood the zone with something ridiculous so that attention is diverted from the more salient things. See e.g. "51st state", "Greenland", etc, etc. Protip: he's not going to do any of this, but while y'all are hyperventilating, DOGE is cutting costs, agencies are getting shut down, illegals are getting deported, nominees are getting approved, etc.

              • lazyeye 15 minutes ago

                I think you might be right. I think "flooding the zone with shit" might be the only effective response when the zone is already flooded with everyone else's shit (msm, social media etc)

giraffe_lady 10 hours ago

I'm ready to accept my "right too soon" medal whenever.

Y'all owe shanley kane an apology too she's been writing about this shit for years. Sydette harry, so many others. We've known for so long, been saying it for years.

CamperBob2 11 hours ago

Paul, there are also a huge number of other places where you can post your thoughts, rather than at a site owned by someone who pals around with the chief of the police state and does his level best to bring it into existence.

  • wnevets 9 hours ago

    paulg loves that site's owner because stopping the "woke mind virus" is worth it for him

    • archagon 9 hours ago

      Well, this is the natural end state of the “‘woke mind virus’ virus.”

      I hope he realizes that at some point. But I feel like influencers have a hard time with humility and introspection.

  • add-sub-mul-div 10 hours ago

    Principles are important, but not I'll-post-on-a-platform-with-less-clout-potential important.

    • 1shooner 10 hours ago

      It's not really purely principled when the platform is known to manipulate that 'clout' to meet ideological goals.

tgma 9 hours ago

There is an individual[1] who goes to pro-Hamas protests in England carrying a sign that states the official stance of UK on Hamas (i.e. that it is a terrorist organization) and inevitably gets arrested by the UK police state. Quite rich of 'pg to throw stones from his UK glass castle.

[1]: https://x.com/GhorbaniiNiyak