There are definitely a lot of reckless cyclists, but it's worth keeping things in perspective.
According to the Department for Transport's report, there were 41 pedestrians and 7 cyclists killed in traffic collisions in Greater London in 2022. Pedal cyclists were listed as the "other vehicle" involved in fatal collisions 0 times, while cars were listed 39 times, and goods vehicles 23 times. As stated "other vehicles" does not directly describe who is to blame for a collision, but it's a proxy measure for it. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2022...
I didn't mean to imply that cyclists are out there killing pedestrians all the time. That's the most extreme case, it's not that easy to get killed by a bike. Much more likely to get injured or have a big scare.
This map looks cool but it doesn't tell us a lot about the safe and unsafe places to cycle in London. Because it's based on collision data by location, but we don't know how many people cycle on each road per year, so can't normalise for that.
To compare two examples, you can pick out Richmond Park in south-west London due to the low number of collisions in it. But this is actually a highly popular location to cycle. The relatively low amount of vehicles, 20mph speed limit, ban on large vehicles, high visibility, and few junctions, makes it a great place to cycle.
There are also a low number of collisions in the boroughs of Bromley and Bexley in south-east London. But this is not because they're safe, but because very few people cycle there. There are loads of fast roads in these boroughs and little cycle infrastructure, and more of an hostile attitude from drivers compared to many other places in London.
Not to pick on the original post, but one of my all-time biggest data pet peeves is map diagrams that aren't normalized by population/some kind of denominator. They all end up as slightly janky population maps with weird anomalies that only make sense if you know the true denominator anyway.
To your point, Kew Gardens and Richmond Park both show up with blank hexagons on the map. But Kew Gardens doesn't allow bike traffic while Richmond Park is full of bikes.
Side note: As someone who lives by Richmond Park and visits often, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more bike vs. deer accidents than bike vs. car accidents.
> Not to pick on the original post, but one of my all-time biggest data pet peeves is map diagrams that aren't normalized by population/some kind of denominator. They all end up as slightly janky population maps with weird anomalies that only make sense if you know the true denominator anyway.
Bromley is actually a fantastic borough for cycling: mostly rural, great walking/cycling trails, good rail connections for the way back, and it even has weird Victorian era dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park.
Why cycling's not more popular there is a mystery to me.
There must be datasets of cyclist activity in London. BeeLine is a private company that develops a device for cyclists to orient themselves; I know they worked on cleaning up relevant data. Not sure if they would be keen to share with the author.
Are you sure you're thinking of the right author? Filippo used to work at Cloudflare so I can't imagine he got the technical details about it too wrong.
HackTheBox (https://www.hackthebox.com/) is the largest and most active hacker challenge website. Focussed mainly around black box pentesting of vulnerable Windows and Linux machines, but they have lots of other types of content these days too such as CTF challenges and paid lab environments.
Yes while some challenges overlap, we also explore more deeply the mathematics of cryptography, as well as its practical use in protocols like TLS. We recently added challenges on lattice-based post-quantum cryptography. In this way it makes a great complement to CryptoPals.
But it's not all harder, our introductory section gradually introduces concepts like base64 encoding and the modulo operator one challenge at a time.
> - higher lifeforms are more valuable than lower ones (cat vs lobsters)
Choosing between preserving the life of one cat vs one lobster seems straightforward enough. But the trolley problem was asking whether one cat was more valuable than five lobsters. According to the stats, many people agreed, but how about one cat vs a million lobsters? Or one cat vs all the lobsters on earth? Most people would think that making lobsters extinct would be very bad (unless they really hate lobsters).
The difficulty is when we can no longer rely on intuition and have to come up with a precise exchange rate of when one being's life is more valuable than another's, which, like you say, is impossible to do in the complicated world we live in and our limited understanding of consciousness and neuroscience. In absence of that, deferring to the first law "whenever possible, do no harm" seems sensible.
I chose to kill the cat, because there are too many of them and they devastate natural ecosystems, killing birds for instance. Lobsters on the other hand are badly depopulated. In both cases undoing a wrong committed by humanity.
This is prominent in the elderly or children tests. Older people have gifts of experience that can be invaluable to the rest of us, especially when broadly shared. Children have great potential but through most of human history have been relatively cheap, easy to replace, and more of a value sink than generator.
To pick an extreme but well-known thought experiment. You are walking past a pond, and see a child drowning in it. You glance around and there is nobody else nearby. You could easily jump in and save the child. It will certainly die if you do not.
If you choose to do nothing and ignore the drowning child, are you really not morally responsible in any way for the child's death?
If you are morally responsible for the child's death, you are morally responsible for basically every evil in the world right now, since you didn't do everything in your power to prevent all of them.
You may say that that is the case, but if you're responsible for everything, you may as well be responsible for nothing.
> If you are morally responsible for the child's death, you are morally responsible for basically every evil in the world right now
No, you are morally responsible for every evil happening right in front of you that you could immediately change with little risk to yourself.
For instance if you can't swim and the child is in the middle of the pond, I'd argue you aren't responsible because the risk is too great to yourself.
In fact due to the danger of drowning people pulling you under, I'd argue unless the child is in water shallow enough for you to stand in it's not your moral responsibility to save them.
Though in the situation, I'd probably feel compelled to save them anyway.
> No, you are morally responsible for every evil happening right in front of you that you could immediately change with little risk to yourself.
The problem with this is that you snuck a quantitative difference there and made it sound qualitative. How much risk is "little risk"? What if you could spend all your money and save N people from starvation? There's no risk to you, so are you responsible for their deaths if you don't do it?
What if the child is a bit less likely to pull you under? What if even less than that? Where do you draw the line?
You're never completely free of responsibility, there are just varying degrees.
Why not? Why does your presence imply your responsibility? In the given trolly problem, we can infer how events would unfold in your absence. Why does your presence imply they should unfold any differently? Shouldn't responsibility be voluntarily accepted, rather than imposed by default?
How can you impose a duty to fight evil when "evil" itself has no workable concrete definition?
I disagree. There are practical limits to what we are responsible for. And there are current obligations and responsibilities we have for ourselves. Just because we know of something does not make us responsible for it. Proximity and risk also play a role.
I am obligated to my family and to myself. To provide for them as an example. But I would also be able to fly across the world and feed a starving child, in theory. But my obligation to my own family, and myself outweighs that. There would also be risks to the journey. Consequences with those actions as well.
Is this true? I think most of us would say proximity to a situation (and ability to handle it) changes our moral Imperetive. That’s what makes the Trolley problem so… imperfect? It’s hard to say what it extrapolates to every day life, since it’s a situation that would probably never happen.
If you say that proximity does not imply morality, where are you drawing the line? Would family friends and job duties encompass it? Certainly you can’t say that helping your child implies you are responsible for the whole world.
> If you are morally responsible for the child's death, you are morally responsible for basically every evil in the world right now, since you didn't do everything in your power to prevent all of them.
That is my personal take on it. We are all living in sin, in reality we are all full of shit and have only a veneer of ethics.
I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet forums used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities. It was even taught in schools not to reveal who you are online.
Google, FB and other tech giants changed the norms around this completely for most Internet users. Once these platforms realised it was easier to monetise their users, and control abuse when dealing with real identities, they pushed hard for verified accounts (e.g. Google Plus) even though this is antithetical to the founding ideas of cyberspace.
Today we have two Internets, one where anonymity is still possible but you can reveal your true name if you want (e.g. HN), and another of walled gardens with verified identities. The UK government is proposing to enshrine the fully identified concept of the Internet into law. While this will prevent some abuse it's a sad reflection on how some of the early values of cyberspace have been lost, where people could be who they wanted to be, and freely discuss topics they might not wish to have associated with their real names forever. Politicians whose main interaction with the Internet is through their Twitter accounts just don't get that.
It's a matter of scale i think. In small communities, you're not really anonymous in the same way as on facebook. You might only be known as DataDog213 on some forum with a hundred members, but the people there know you and who you are as a person.
In facebook groups with thousands of members with no real bar or entry, you're really anonymous and no more distinctive than anyone else if you don't make yourself stand out. (By bar of entry, I mean things like even finding the site in the first place)
I'm not really seeing that difference in requirements. Most of the forums were trivial to find in all sorts of Google searches, allowing thousands of people to create a new unique account, and then get banned for violating the pinned rules about asking a question by one of the <100 users that could be recognized as being a repeated chat mate on the one forum. Many of those obsessives on one forum would never be findable somewhere else where they might not have been an expert.
I find it a bit sad that thousands of people are on FB using their real names and turning person who says stupid things about several different hobbies into a permanent part of their own fairly permanent identity and I don't actually see how it helps anything. But maybe people who don't find it creepy see something I don't.
Isn't this in reverse??? A lot of people on Facebook know who I am. I was in TONS of forums and no one had a clue who I was in real life and my accounts weren't connected with anything other than a made up email for "confirmation" purposes and promptly deleted.
On social media groups and public posts, you are named but you are nobody to everyone else.
On forums, you are unnamed but you gather a reputation and become somebody.
(And on HN and Reddit, you are both unnamed AND a nobody.)
And I think it’s because on forums, it was a combination of (1) a smaller community and (2) you had an avatar and sometimes a signature, which made every post of yours memorable.
I'm curious, why do you think that these requirements won't spread to the rest of the internet? I doubt the proponents of this law would create a "loop hole" by allowing other sites to maintain "anonymity" (in quotes because there's no real anonymity on the internet for almost nearly everyone).
Also, you seem to be making two contradictory points:
1) Facebook and Google pushed hard for verified accounts
2) Some parts of the internet make it optional to reveal your true name
Verified accounts, as I understand them, on the social platforms are only for people who publicly want to build a brand around their identity. While people have to use a "real name" on Facebook and Google, there's nothing requiring to get verified.
> I'm curious, why do you think that these requirements won't spread to the rest of the internet
I didn't say that, I only said that we currently have two Internets, but that there has been a shift towards the walled gardens of identified accounts over time. The proponents of the law probably would end up creating loop holes just because their main beef is with the big tech firms, and it would be challenging for a single country to enforce legislation on the rest of Internet.
> Verified accounts, as I understand them, on the social platforms are only for people who publicly want to build a brand around their identity. While people have to use a "real name" on Facebook and Google, there's nothing requiring to get verified.
We may be getting mixed up with the meaning of "verified", I'm talking about accounts where the platform has associated you with your RL identity through some method, not just the process to get a public blue tick.
And, while there may be nothing formal requiring verification, there are many reports of people suddenly getting locked out of their accounts and being required to provide ID or at least a phone number shortly after registration. In fact a phone number is a pretty widespread requirement and it's getting harder to obtain a phone number that's not linked to your identity in some way. I don't see the contradiction in what I wrote, I have simply pointed out trends, not absolutes.
I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet forums used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities
I still remember when everyone on the internet was fully open about their identities.
When you posted something online, you'd always use your real name. Often you'd also include your work and/or home address, work and/or home phone number, and where you worked with job title.
I'm not saying that's better than what we have now. Just pointing out how the 'net has whiplashed from one extreme to another in a very short time.
>I still remember the days when almost everyone on Internet forums used pseudonyms and closely guarded their identities.
It really depended. For Usenet, many people were posting from their work or university accounts and their names and affiliations were often on display. And real names were also often common on local BBSs where people would even get together in real life. Random forums (and certainly anything to do with warez/cracking/etc.) that's doubtless true.
Honest question in good faith - Why should we hold true to some past ideals of technologists 20 or 30 years ago?
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the notion of the web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong.
I don’t know that I’m 100% in favor of what is being proposed here (partly because I expect there are likely nefarious reasons why governments are pushing it so hard.)
But I also think you can’t ignore that misinformation from anonymous actors has pushed democracy to the brink of collapse, and “that wasn’t the original idea of the web” isn’t the best rebuttal.
I think that this is a situation where "when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns."
Requiring real world identities to post online had a number of chilling effects on speech online.
- LGBTQ people were outed after having their online persona linked to their real world identity.
- People who need to maintain strong personal/professional life separations have been outed (ex: Slate Star Codex)
- People have had their lives upended by being part of an angry community (ex: Blizzards RealID caused revealing peoples identity to the gamer community. Love my games but wow does that community love doxxing and sometimes SWATing)
- It has not prevented spam / trolls / people being hateful online (ex: Nextdoor)
This has been a long standing conflict (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars). The UKs opinion has always been one of providing as much information as possible to the government for questionable purposes. This is the same government which constantly wants to backdoor encryption so that they can spy on citizens at any time.
> I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the notion of the web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong.
It's an interesting question, but the point isn't as clear to me. First of all I believe most people are able to see through misinformation. The biggest blame should be laid on algorithmic feeds that optimise for engagement, and are therefore designed to lead people into self-reinforcing loops where their ideas never get challenged. That's the main bad "innovation" that social media platforms brought; the arguments about dangerous ideas, censorship, and bad actors echo all the way back to the dawn of the printing press.
> But I also think you can’t ignore that misinformation from anonymous actors has pushed democracy to the brink of collapse, and “that wasn’t the original idea of the web” isn’t the best rebuttal.
I think this is overstating the role of "anonymous actors" - plenty of misinformation comes from well-known politicians and simply normal people. Are you referring to FB's concept of "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" and troll-farms in authoritarian countries? This is definitely a problem which platforms have to tackle, but again I don't think it's as huge a factor as people make it out to be and certainly has not pushed democracy to collapse on its own.
Interesting that democracy is “to the brink of collapse” due to individual people expressing their thoughts on technological platforms. Either this is an exaggeration or maybe there are other reasons for the “collapse” like bad actors in government (not regular citizens) providing false information and trying to manipulate the citizens.
> Why should we hold true to some past ideals of technologists 20 or 30 years ago?
Those aren't (just) their ideals any longer. I adopted them as my own, because I'd like the world to look a little like that.
Besides, what's 20 or 30 years? Since when do we think that the ideals of ancient philosophers, thinkers, religious figures, the FSF[0], heck even the "UNIX philosophy" have nothing to offer just because they're "old"?
Ideas aren't like milk, they don't spoil if you leave them out of the fridge for a few days.
[0] Yes, I know they are controversial, but their ideas were certainly influential.
> misinformation from anonymous actors has pushed democracy to the brink of collapse
If voters in a democracy are basing their votes on random stuff they read on Facebook or Twitter, the problem isn't misinformation. There is no way to have any platform for distributing information that is guaranteed to only distribute the truth. Any responsible adult should be aware of that and should apply critical thinking to whatever information they see, no matter where it comes from.
I don't know, to me it always seems to start with an account with a long name and man or woman in suits, carried on by people in similar online attire with extreme rage and confusion, until it hits someone with an ultrashort name and an anime icon who speaks shibboleth, at which point either the original misinformation is explained, or platform aristocracy kick in.
As far as my experience goes, those with full long names and professionally taken portraits as icons are easiest to trigger and corner because they only ever believe, refuse or double down. They never back down in embarrassment, or verify claims or make refutes with requisite care, and they are extremely angry by default as well. Complete anonymous posters(like in certain gray website) are very problematic in whole different ways but even those are not as easy to manipulate.
Facebook, TikTok, Instagram are a literal cesspool of misinformation that often gets its starting energy by being shared, upvoted and commented on by fake accounts. I don’t think “in any way” is fair.
Verified, authentic, checkmarked and vetted people still post false, misleading, or otherwise deliberate propaganda all the time. Truth claims from popular users fuel the fire of public opinion, whichever way the wind may blow.
Dare I say I don't think insistence on authentic identity will improve things.
> I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the notion of the web as a self protecting organism that naturally rejects misinformation and stops bad actors is completely wrong
Well HN does this thing called shadowbanning, where the user sees their post when logged in, but in a brand new isolated session (when not logged in), their posts are not visible. The only caveat to this is the user spent a considerable amount of energy writing a comment, only to have it ghosted and non-visible to other HN'ers meaning their time was wasted and their ideas essentially censored. Shadowbanning works however, and stops HN getting flooded with spam, but has the sneaky caveat of essentially censoring some content.
Don't know where to find it, but I read another such mystery involving the same real life detective, that involved a girl who when into a motel, and never came out. I'm sure someone will know what I'm referring to.
You answered yourself. Read View is great even with well-behaved sites, use it generously.
Edit: I retract my comment, Reader View shows about the last third of the article, and I had already blocked JavaScript there in a previous interaction. Vanity Fair sucks.
It's the first case I've seen where Reader View shows incomplete content, and I use it almost daily because it makes long reads very comfortable. It might be that Reader View sucks, but I'm more inclined to blame Vanity Fair in this case.
I find Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, followed by a visit to my favorite text editor often works like a champ -- even when scrolling is disabled and only a paragraph or two is visible.
This is fascinating and a great bit of work by Stefan Marsiske. Loved the technical writeup in PoC||GTFO too. This quote from the TFA really shows just how difficult it was for the public to access decent cryptography at the time:
> In her book Operatie Vula, Conny Braam explains how one of her people met a guy, by the name of Floris, in a pub in Amsterdam, who allegedly had developed the PX-1000 [5]. From him they learned that the device had been taken off the market as its encryption was too strong. It had been replaced by a calculator but he suggested to find the older version with built-in crypto.
In all I would say it was a pretty good backdoor for the early 80s, showing how far ahead the NSA's internal understanding of cryptography was. I wonder if they would have anticipated the world we live in today where state-of-the-art cryptography is available and used by everyone on the Internet.
According to the Department for Transport's report, there were 41 pedestrians and 7 cyclists killed in traffic collisions in Greater London in 2022. Pedal cyclists were listed as the "other vehicle" involved in fatal collisions 0 times, while cars were listed 39 times, and goods vehicles 23 times. As stated "other vehicles" does not directly describe who is to blame for a collision, but it's a proxy measure for it. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2022...