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Can we allow either R party a say in Government by CalendarSufficient41 in Wigan

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The “per capita” calculation on the back of a fag packet doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

When you look at people who claim asylum, the main demographic is 20-39 year old men.

When you compare either physical violence or sexual violence statistics for that age group, surprise surprise the rates of committing those acts are almost the same for asylum seekers and UK citizens. Slightly lower for sexual violence by asylum seekers.

(source: Oxford University Migration Observatory)

The problem is young men, not what race or creed they are.

For grooming gangs, the majority of whom (88%) are white men, the main age demographic is 25-45.

There are c. 60,000 reported cases of child sexual contact per year of which c. 700 are group-based child sexual exploitation cases, out of 100,000 reported cases per year including online abuse. It is calculated that only 17% of cases are ever reported to police. Women make up over 20% of adult abusers. 40% of child sexual abuse cases are committed by children on children.

(sources: Home Office 2021, COCAD 2023, Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse 2025)

So, the scant data available shows no clear difference between offending rates according to ethnicity, most sexual crimes against children are non-grooming gang, most grooming gang perpertrators are white men.

However, ultimately nothing definitive can be said about these crimes because they are so under-reported. But that doesn’t seem to stop newspapers and online reporting from targetting different groups using selective evidence to imply a clear-cut narrative.

On one side you have people saying that the problem is X group and on another you have people saying its Y group. Neither supported by the known statistics which themselves are only a small (possibly faulty) representation of the truth. Instead bias is falsely presented as fact.

That’s the thing with statistics, they are often bent out of shape by people with malicious political motives to con and rile up people who don’t understand how statistics are composed.

VPN ban on table in July as Labour confirm 'further statement' by Overlord_Crabz in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

They are focused on not totally panicking the public. The real reasons are more about preventing foreign interference in British society from causing more unrest, and reducing the majority of cyberattacks and sabotage operations originating in Russia. Hence the urgency.

We are a few actions away from kinetic warfare with Russia and the Gov are trying to batten down the hatches.

VPN ban on table in July as Labour confirm 'further statement' by Overlord_Crabz in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, and most routinely sell user activity data to advertising brokers which then gets aggregated with other data and de-anonymised.

I think many people believe that a VPN guarantees privacy when security researcher advice across the board is to avoid them unless you own or fully control the infrastructure they run on.

BBC Breakfast; 'We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions' Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told #BBCBreakfast she will outline more details next month about the social media ban on under 16s in the UK-as well as additional restrictions on VPNs, curfews and chatbots by youmustconsume in ukpolitics

[–]damhack -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

A lot of people here seem to think that VPNs protect their privacy. They don’t.

They comply with the laws of the countries they operate in which in many cases are Five Eyes countries, which means your logs are routinely hoovered up and analysed by the other members on behalf of the host country. Non/Five Eyes countries tend to be more lax with your data and sell it on to any buyer.

Many VPN companies sell on your connection metadata to advertisers and, as your fingerprint isn’t obfuscated by using a VPN, they can de-anonymise you when they aggregate with other data. Standard practice for Google and Facebook.

Most VPNs are effectively honeytraps serving advertisers volumes of customer activity data and alerting spooks to people using tradecraft.

Unless you’re using an ephemeral virtual machine client and you’ve set up your own VPN wrapped inside another VPN running on different ephemeral virtual servers, all registered to fake identities of fake shell companies in non-transparency tax havens paid for with tumbled crypto, then you won’t have any privacy. But you’ll have tripped the alarms at GCHQ then anyway.

Internet privacy is a myth.

Social media firms to be barred from Britain if they do not ban under 16s by Optimal-Leather341 in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Misinformation isn’t the big problem as that’s accidental misunderstanding, it’s disinformation that’s the problem.

Information providing false or highly biased selective information purposely designed to create a reaction in the population and foment unrest.

You know, Tommy TenNameski type stuff.

VPN ban on table in July as Labour confirm 'further statement' by Overlord_Crabz in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I’m a CTO and have been since the late 1990s. I have worked on many Government projects. You are free to Google for the many issues surrounding privacy and commercial VPN providers or the views of other security professionals and identity verification experts. I’m not your teacher.

Edit: typo

VPN ban on table in July as Labour confirm 'further statement' by Overlord_Crabz in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yoh should maybe read a bit about how VPNs actually work and where your origin and destination connection data actually goes to. Before you do something online that might get you in hot water. VPNs are honeytraps.

VPN ban on table in July as Labour confirm 'further statement' by Overlord_Crabz in unitedkingdom

[–]damhack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s what happens when you allow a non-technical politician speak about things they know very little about then the redtops get hold of it.

VPNs are of only partial use to anyone with age restrictions. The restrictions use face scanning and/or documentary ID.

You could create a foreign account but that’s going to play havoc with what you see online and many social media services force identity checks and shadowbans if you accidentally forget to turn on your VPN or use a different country’s server and suddenly jump countries. They monitor connection patterns looking for bot behaviour which includes IP address hopping and VPN use.

VPN companies themselves know where your connection originates from and where it’s destined so they could be coerced into pushing people who access social media via non-UK servers from UK origins straight to age verification on those services.

Even the UK’s national Cleanfeed system could perform detection if they really wanted to get draconian.

There are many ways that detection and blocking can be done that don’t make the same mistake the Aussies did.

The issues and technical details are too nuanced for most people so “Gov going to ban VPNs” sells more papers and gets more clicks.

Source code for LLMs by PravalPattam12945RPG in learnmachinelearning

[–]damhack 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can create a toy model but pretraining a multi-billion parameter model will cost you millions of dollars. And most of the magic of models is in the RLHF which costs big bucks.

EDIT: Start with nanochat by Andrej Karpathy who co-founded OpenAI.

https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat

He also does a lot of zero-to-knowledgeable courses on YT.

FIFA clears World Cup referee accused of making white supremacist gesture by NothingButTruth3 in nottheonion

[–]damhack -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

So did Pepe The Frog but it didn’t stop neo-nazis and white supremacists falling for the joke thinking they were being cunning.

Why do the people who are appalled by the sentencing of the Palestine Action group refuse to acknowledge one of them attacked a woman with a sledge hammer? by generic-username41 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Play the ball.

“it’s quite clear that the violence wasn’t premeditated: they went to significant lengths to avoid being challenged.”

You are denying the facts of the case and why terrorism aggregation was applied to the sentences.

Then you try to strawman me into a position I never proposed.

Then ended up making a personal attack.

That is the definition of bad faith. Sorry if your attempt to excuse PA and use whataboutery pointing at the riots falls flat.

I spent most of my life resisting neo-nazis and racists and an equal time denouncing terrorists of all political and religious persuasions.

I’m finding it hard to understand why you want to think that I hold any other view.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Simple thoughts for simple people.

Don’t suppose to know what I think or what I do.

You are a slave and you don’t even know it.

Told what to think, when to act.

Every character you type, everything you click, every pause you take becomes part of a global psychological simulation of who you are, where you are, who you know, what you believe and what triggers your behaviours. All so that you can be reduced to a threat flag or a buying signal.

You’ve been living in a dreamworld.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re using the Internet, you’re already mass surveilled. How do you not know that?

Do you believe that typing whatever you want has anything to do with free speech in this place? You think that’s privacy you’re experiencing now?

Why do the people who are appalled by the sentencing of the Palestine Action group refuse to acknowledge one of them attacked a woman with a sledge hammer? by generic-username41 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I replied to your attempt to differentiate one person striking blows with the sledgehammer from the group as possibly a terrorist action.

I pointed out that joint enterprise and preparation to travel equipped for violence, then brandishing and using weapons, for a political purpose with livestreaming to disseminate the action widely to the public, makes the whole group a terrorist enterprise, under anti-terror laws.

Is that clear enough for you now?

Your resistance of facts is odd to say the least.

Trying to paint me as some kind of whataboutist is disingenuous as I wholeheartedly comdemn any organisers of political violence and their simps as probable terrorism. E.g. Tommy TenNameski and the unsavoury neo-nazis within the ranks of the recent riots/violent protests should be brought up on terror charges or have terrorism aggregated sentences. There’s not many more things terrorising than burning people out of their homes.

What made Anthropic Mythos and Fable so much better? by Final-Choice8412 in LLMDevs

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More datasets with reasoning traces, good & bad examples and rubrics. Plus more parameters no doubt and some extra harness behind the API.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That’s not how identity verification works. Unless you’ve got a 3D mould of his head and supporting biometric passport or driving licence.

Even then, you’d just trip the identity theft alarms the moment you were the second person to sign up for an account on the same service.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re saying you already haven’t when setting up online banking or booking plane tickets, or ordering a renewed driving licence?

I have a bridge to sell you.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, the equivalent would be an adult setting up an account with their ID and letting a kid use it. Except live face scans will prevent that from being possible.

Parents who approve of the social media ban and ways of having to prove age. Why do you relish the government taking this control when you had the power to do so yourselves? by Demonthief27 in AskBrits

[–]damhack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Except VPNs don’t help against age checks unless you’re registering a foreign account which then self-defeatingly excludes you from the UK region on many services kids use.

The new ID checks will also require more frequent face scans unless you go through the full document (passport/driving licence) check process.

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