The “benefitting from being friends with the US” is exactly the frame Trump would love for you to use. It’s a little more nuanced than that imo.
After WW2 the US wanted the European powers under its wings rather than rebuilding their own militaries to the level of a global power. There were to be two powers: the US and the Soviets.
It suited the US interests to force Europe in a dependent position. Partly for good reasons like preventing us fighting amongst ourselves starting another war. Which we’d just done twice, so fair enough.
But also to stop us from coming under communist influence voluntarily. And, just for imperialist reasons. They were just more modern and subtle about it than the empires they replaced, most notably the British Empire. The almost-century of western Europe being effectively part of an US empire culturally, financially and militarily is now coming to an end. How we’re gonna deal with that? No idea. It’s going to be pretty damn hard in a lot of ways.
Funny, how we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information.
Yesterday, if you'd have publicly shared this one substation is enough to take down Heathrow for an entire day, you'd have been disappeared by the British spooks for sharing extremely sensitive information threatening national security and you'd probably end up behind bars for over a decade.
Today, we all just know because it happened to catch fire, exposing the flaw.
This kind of information has been available via open data for ages, and it isn't exactly hard for a foreign power with boots on the ground to figure out either.
With this kind of large-scale infrastructure it just isn't viable to rely on security through obscurity. If you want to protect against failure, invest in redundancy.
I didn’t mean this substation existing. I know that’s obviously not a secret. The fact taking it out takes out the entire main airport for at least an entire day is a different matter. Do you really think they’d have been fine with you announcing that to the world yesterday?
Don’t forget the BT Tower existing was technically classified under the official secrets act, even though it was extremely obviously there for everyone to see including on maps.
There's "significant problems" and there's taking out *the* most important airport in the country. Yes, there are other airports but this one matters most. Both in terms of (inter)national perception and in terms of real damage to the economy.
From an US perspective it'd be like taking out JFK, LAX and ATL at the same time. But even then, it doesn't really compare.
What a weird take. Arresting someone for reporting a major security vulnerability is pretty shitty thing for a state to do. What you're suggesting is that that's not actually that bad.
Same sort of logic that leads to people getting arrested for looking at HTML and reporting that it includes passwords.
Renaud discovered that Social Security numbers for teachers, administrators and counselors were visible in the HTML code of a public Missouri State Education website and reported it.
Governor Mike Parson tried to file charges against him and labelled him as a criminal for doing so.
I've been on the side of disclosing a handful of times and it's a gamble each time whether I'm going to get a CFAA threat (both implicit and explicit threats).
> What you're suggesting is that that's not actually that bad.
When did I ever say or imply that? I agree that intelligence agencies are draconian, but to imply that you'd be locked away (never to be heard from again) for pointing out that a substation could be bombed and cause power issues is ridiculous.
They were using a bit of hyperbole for sure (though another poster accurately pointed out to you methods used against Northern Irish folk), but the reaction of gov agencies to use imprisonment (even as a threat!) for pointing out security fuckups isn't without precedence. It's happened to me :)
So, I guess I really don't understand your point. That being arrested for pointing these things out isn't bad because it's not being disappeared?
I shouldn’t have used the word disappeared, I just meant picked up. And yeah no, not for saying a substation exists and could be bombed.
But for saying there is a single substation that, if taken out (by sabotage, terror attack, arson, or whatever), would cause great embarrassment and economic damage to the country by disabling THE British Airport? I think that’s a whole different matter.
> we're all suddenly privy to highly classified information
Its not highly classified. Its not even plain classified.
Its available on streetmap. The substation (like most are) is located on the edge of a residential area / industrial estate. People walk and drive past it every day.
Looking at streetmap, there's even a multiple big signs outside that says "North Hyde Substation". They don't even make any effort to hide it with obscured fencing, its all out in the open.
As others have also pointed out, its in open data downloads for ages.
The fact this substation exists, yes, obviously. The fact taking it out takes out the entire airport: not so much! These kind of things usually aren’t dependent on a single substation. The fact that it is, is not something the UK government would have liked to be made public.
> The fact taking it out takes out the entire airport: not so much! These kind of things usually aren’t dependent on a single substation.
Let me re-phrase that for you:
It only took down the airport because the airport clearly did insufficient capacity planning in terms of backup mechanisms.
How can I be so confident ?
Because that exact same substation serves a number of large datacentres in the vicinity.
Due to the grid constraints previously discussed here, many of those same datacentres take ALL their feeds (A,B,C etc.) off that one substation, the only difference is the cables are diversely routed. Not their choice, it was imposed on them by the grid.
They have ALL been without ANY electrical feeds all day. I know that for a fact.
HOWEVER, those same datacentres have been running non-stop like nothing happened. I know that for a fact.
Why, because they have N+1 generators (which are regularly tested) with at least 48 hours of fuel, which was topped up this morning as soon as it became clear it was a major incident and with multiple fuel deliveries already pre-scheduled from multiple independent suppliers. I know that for a fact.
The grid are of course very busy trying to work some magic to re-arrange things to get the datacentres back online. Meanwhile the datacentres are very happy to keep ticking away on generator power for as long as it takes, its not a problem for them, its an event they plan, prepare and practice for.
Heathrow could have done the same. They could have added generator plants here and there over the years when they re-built terminals and such like.
They didn't, or at least they didn't do so with sufficient capacity.
Maybe Heathrow also fell behind on their generator maintenance and testing regimes. Who knows...
There are people out there who say it is because their motto is "spend little, charge a lot", so they did de-minimis, prefering to focus on maximising revenue generating space. I could not possibly comment.
Sure, no argument there, but the fact is there was a weakness there and a weakness that would be considered a threat to national security if it were to get out - before today
> weakness that would be considered a threat to national security if it were to get out - before today
If it was considered a "threat to national security", that substation site would have been much better secured.
In addition, if it was a "threat to national security", the site location would not be on open public databases, it would be on List X.
As it stands, the substation site "security" consists of two low, easily scalable, fences. And probably some CCTV. That's about it.
Security by obscurity is not security. We are in 2025, you have streetview and satellite photos.
Anybody who knows anything about electricity distribution could look at that substation and tell you it was pretty important given the large size of transformers located there.
It also doesn't take a rocket scientist to see Heathrow is minutes away and put two and two together.
And if you think the bad guys don't have the ability to give some poorly paid maintenance guy at the electricity company some cash in relation for extra detail, I've got an igloo to sell you.
Not a conspiracy theorist here, but... there's been quite a few expensive things which caught fire in Europe in the past year and change and it turned out those things didn't catch it by accident.
And it's very clear that multiple undersea cables have been intentionally cut by Russia-linked entities. You just don't drag anchors for hours over known cables by accident (the cables are on charts precisely to help captains avoid damaging them).
We're at war with Russia, and these kinds of attacks have both economic and psychological harms. They also allow Russia to practice techniques in case they need to ramp things up for a hotter conflict.
You don't get disappeared in UK. Stuff goes wrong, Gov does stupid things, so do police - but that's process/people being stupid, not institutionalized disappearances.
I mean, if protesting for the Palestinian cause can get your green card revoked, I don't think America has any moral high ground on the topic of free speech anymore.
There's an enormous difference between expelling a foreigner and imprisoning a citizen.
America absolutely has the upper hand in free speech. In Europe you will get sentenced for blaspheming against the Quran.
Edit: That's why the Quran burnings in Sweden was such a big deal. It was one of the countries who hadn't outlawed blasphemy against Islam. Of course any blasphemy against Christianity is perfectly legal in Europe and strongly encouraged.
You are facing a constitutional crisis right now, something most EU members can say they do not.
> Khalil called his lawyer, Amy Greer, from the building's lobby. She spoke over the phone with one of the ICE agents, who told her they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Greer said when she informed the agent that Khalil was a permanent resident of the U.S. in possession of a green card, the agent responded they would revoke the green card instead. When Greer said she needed to see a warrant before Khalil could be detained, the agent hung up. Abdalla said they were not shown a warrant and that "within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car". A Columbia spokesperson declined to say whether, before the arrest, the university had received a warrant for the ICE agents to access property the university owned. The spokesperson also declined to comment on the arrest.
> On March 9, Greer said she was uncertain of Khalil's whereabouts, noting the possibility that he could be as far away as Louisiana. Abdalla, who sought to visit him at a detention center in New Jersey, was informed that he was not there. Khalil is detained at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. [0]
Without appropriate warrants or being accused of a tangible crime in the court of law, a permanent USA resident has been detained, while being denied his right to speak with his lawyer for a significant part of his detention, with the post-hoc justification being his engagement in "anti-American", though not illegal, activity, ignoring claims of monetary ties with terrorist orgs made on national TV without being able to provide any corroboration when pressured.
Let's ignore political affiliations, who's on what team, and who you're rooting for. Applying abstraction, replace America with "Country X" and you see, plain as day, this as an attempt at silencing unfavorable speech. As a Ukrainian, sharing a language, geography, and personal connections across the border with Russia, I can tell you with certainty: this is how "disappearing" someone looks like. The target does not matter; the "enemies of people" set has a funny tendency to expand, starting from those for whom the least will stand up.
The government breaking the law isn't a constitutional crisis. It becomes a constitutional crisis when different parts of the government pull it in drastically different directions and the whole thing breaks apart. Currently the government is moving in exactly the direction the executive branch wants it to, the judicial branch has found that it has no traction to pull it back and the legislature isn't really even participating except for cheering on the executive. Like it or not, the possibile crisis has already been resolved by the executive discovering that it can do whatever it wants.
> you see, plain as day, this as an attempt at silencing unfavorable speech.
Of course it is. But there's a huge difference between making a foreigner leave, and sentencing a citizen. Any foreigner can be denied entry to a country for any and no reason whatsoever, without any due process. So a foreigner's "right" to stay in a country sits very loosely.
> Any foreigner can be denied entry to a country for any and no reason whatsoever
That's a completely different thing than what happened here. Those are the rules, everyone knows that, and acts accordingly. The biggest problem in the US right now, is that the government isn't being ruled by it's own laws (sort-of). That's what's meant by a "constitutional crisis".
If the US government changed the rules to allow non-citizens to be arrested & held without warrants, then that would a different kind of thing. It would be a little totalitarian, but not a breakdown of the rule of law.
Note, I said sort-of above because the laws are written in such away as to be somewhat vague so that some people claim the government is acting legally.
And outside the US this wouldn't even be a discussion, because you don't have freedom of speech. That's why people consider him a victim for being kicked out.
I think the word "foreigner" is perfectly correct. The difference is that as a foreigner, you have chosen to come to another country – among hundreds to choose from. As a native citizen, you haven't made any such choice and you might not be able to even if you wanted to.
> there's a huge difference between making a foreigner leave, and sentencing a citizen
The White House has shown open contempt for the judicial and legislative branches. Why do you think they'd stop, simply because the person they've chosen to make an example of is a citizen?
But fine, he's a foreigner. What's so hard about the human right of due process, here? Serve the warrant. Appear in court. Argue the case that is, according to those in favor of yeeting this guy out the country, so blindingly obvious.
> Why do you think they'd stop, simply because the person they've chosen to make an example of is a citizen?
The ink was barely dry on my own comment:
> President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court in a series of emergency appeals Thursday to allow him to move forward with plans to end birthright citizenship
> But there's a huge difference between making a foreigner leave, and sentencing a citizen
Not nearly as huge as one wants it to be, especially when the current executive is experimenting legally with citizenship revocation.
You divide human beings under your jurisdiction into wide categories with hugely unequal rights and the incentives are heavy for rulers to remove the inconvenient in their society by reclassifying them. It's much safer for citizen and non-citizen alike to strongly protect the non-citizen in your borders.
where do you get sentenced for blaspheming the Quran in the EU?
Italy is a traditional religious country and blaspheming gets you <checks notes> a 50€ fine. Also, not a big deal if your blasphemies ara against Mary, that's ok.
What they were probably referring to is the times people made a nuisance of themselves or harassed Muslims in public with Quran blasphemy.
Nowhere in Europe is it illegal to sit at home and eat pork. It is illegal to harass other people. I gather that's not illegal in the US (unless the people you harass happen to be powerful) and the general mindset in the US is so far in that direction that a lot of Americans can't even conceptualize what harassment is.
"The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Finland to change the criminal provision, arguing that it restricts freedom of expression."
You can easily find the law in matter, the prime minister on video saying that burning the Quran is outlawed, and many other media links from government channels talking about this. And there are court cases where people have been sentenced in Finland for burning the Quran – not in public as has been the case in Sweden.
Before you write that the law applies to the Bible and Christians as well – it is not the case. Police, prosecutors and judges will not use the law against any other blasphemy than against Islam.
Directly from the courts of law. When European governments and courts do unflattering things, the media makes sure to shuffle it under the carpet. There's a very different culture around free speech and public debate in Europe vs America.
Yeah, but all you reference is Finland. That’s one country with strict blasphemy laws, not specifically about Islam, but about any religion. It’s curious you seem to only care when they apply it to Islam. You get into the same amount of trouble there whether the book you’re burning is a bible or a quran.
And, yeah, I agree. Finlands blasphemy laws are bad and need to be abolished. But the way you’re representing them as specifically about islam and as being representative for most of Europe comes across as disingenuous to me.
And, yeah, there’s more European countries classified as red (worst category) on https://end-blasphemy-laws.org/countries/ but definitely not a majority. Israel is on there too by the way.
> That’s one country with strict blasphemy laws, not specifically about Islam, but about any religion. It’s curious you seem to only care when they apply it to Islam.
The police, the prosecutors and the courts only care about this law when it applies to Islam. Yes, it is very curios indeed!
> You get into the same amount of trouble there whether the book you’re burning is a bible or a quran.
That's absolutely not true. You in fact get into no trouble at all.
I have downvoted your comment because of "the media makes sure to shuffle it under the carpet". These cases are widely reported in national media.
I wasn't familiar with the Finnish politician, but it's easy to find coverage of the case and related news on Finland's national broadcaster: https://yle.fi/a/74-20015426
Well I'm not talking about any Finnish politician. I'm talking about everyday people who get sentenced by the courts for blasphemy against Islam. These cases get local media coverage at most.
Believe me, I think blasphemy laws should be abolished everywhere, but publicly burning Bibles/Qurans/whatever doesn't sounds like a "everyday people" activity to me.
It's not, but it should be allowed to be an everyday kind of thing. If your society does not allow open critique of itself to be normalized, that's bad.
But the US right definitely has no high ground to go around complaining about freedom of speech in the one country that has exceptionally weird and dumb blasphemy laws, seeing as we now live in a USA where the Whitehouse is explicitly saying only they can choose what information journalists have access to. The evangelical right were explicitly calling to deport US citizens for expressing their opinions on college campuses. IMO, reacting at college kids saying the country sucks is one of the most unamerican and pathetic things you could possibly do, but we did once shoot a bunch of college students who dared to stand in a crowd because we shouldn't have been bombing Cambodia, and 58% of the country, when surveyed by Gallup, blamed the students for the incident, so hey, maybe we have made progress, since we only deport them now, instead of murdering them.
This is a somewhat typical European response, even though you might not be European: always blame the victim.
Everyday people are killing each other in trenches in the Ukraine as we speak.
The cases I know where "everyday people" have been sentenced for blasphemy against Islam is when people have emotionally lashed out. One case where a gay man live streamed himself spitting at the Quran and cursing it after the Orlando nightclub massacre in the name of the Quran. It wasn't a real Quran, but the court said that it didn't matter. He might not be an "everyday person" to you. You might have acted more cool in such a situation.
And there are a plethora of other cases where Europeans have been sentenced for publicly criticizing Islam, where no Quran burning has been involved.
The situation in reality, beyond hacker ideology, is that European countries are prosecuting and sentencing people for blaspheming or criticizing Islam. And it usually is not activists who are targeted.
I’ve recently been shooting film with an old EOS camera from the 90s I bought used and it was really nice being able to use the EOS lenses I bought for my DSLR in the 2000s and 2010s. It’s a dying standard now but it’s really impressive it lasted as long as it has, with significant technological innovation on both sides of the lens mount while retaining full compatibility. A brand new EOS EF lens still works with an 80s camera and a new 80D from 2017 can still use the lenses from the 1980s without any adapter. 30 years ain’t bad for a standard!
I must be old -- I vividly remember the Nikon crowd crowing loudly online forums (fredmiranda.com I'm looking at you) about how Canon broke backwards compatibility when they moved from FD to EF. Whereas you could slap an F-mount lens from the 1950s on any Nikon DSLR ever made, no problemo. (Remarkably, this continues to be true!)
Except if you mount an old, so called pre AI lens, on certain Nikons, you will have to disassemble the camera to get it off. Many modern Nikons can't autofocus older AF lenses due to not having a motor. And many AF film SLRs couldnt meter with manual lenses. So far from perfect compatibility.
Nikon F mount was introduced in 1959. The oldest mount used today is probably Leica M from 1954
Oh yeah, that’s even better, totally agree, but it doesn’t negate my point. I don’t think Canon’s 30 or 40 years would be matched by a hypothetical present-day camera upstart, let alone Nikon’s 70 years.
As a Canon owner, Nikon has a much longer back compatibility range. Having autofocus motors and IS in body rather than in lens seems to be a part of their trick.
The traditional Nikon mount has a small screw that is turned. The camera autofocus speed is limited by the amount of torque that can be applied to the screw - which can make focusing some of the heavier lenses slower.
The "AF-D" lenses have contacts back to the camera body that communicate distance information (that is in turn used by the camera body to calculate flash power).
The G mount lenses remove the manual coupling for the f/stop which means that only bodies that can control the aperture from the body can use them. My FM3A has no aperture control on the body and so with that camera, I unlock the aperture ring.
The AF-S camera lenses have the focusing motor in the body.
The impressive part of Nikon's compatibility isn't only the "you can use an AI-S lens on a modern (professional) body, but also "you can use any of the F mount lenses on an old body" (the G lenses don't have the f/stop ring and the E lenses have the focus motor in the lens).
While it appears that Nikon has mostly shifted to E and G mount, third party lenses are still being manufactured for the F mount.
Difference between G and E-type lenses is that 'E' stands for Electromagnetic Diaphrapham.
The G type lenses have an aperture tab for diaphrapham control as dictated by the camera body, the E-type lenses leave this to being controlled by the camera electronically.
> you can't jiggle the film around to keep it in the same place.
Contax had an AF solution (Contax AX) that actually moved the entire film plane to focus. I suppose that the same thing could be done in other axises, but I also suppose that there is a reason that only one manufacturer tried it.
> Optical Image Stabilisation is effective with movement across a range of frequencies, so it can cope not only with simple camera shake (0.5Hz to 3Hz), but also with the engine vibrations encountered when shooting from a moving vehicle or helicopter (10Hz to 20Hz).
I can't help but read a strong implication in the article of the problem being with Labour policies. But up until recently, the Conservatives have been in power, for 14 years straight.
We can pretend the problem is all nanny state and neglected shitty council housing - which I agree it partly is - but it's also the creation of a vast class of landlords and property developers milking the population for rent with shoddily built super-expensive apartments. Classical free market thinking would have you believe they'd build enough housing to satisfy demand but they seem more than satisfied with maintaining the status quo so they can continue to charge exorbitant rents for little shitboxes with paper-thin walls, made to look fancy from a distance. These landlords have had a tremendous influence on Tory politicians and on policy.
And with everybody stuck in those high-rent dividend-machines, people under 40 can't afford to outright buy a house or even an apartment. And if you own a house, by means of its value gradually increasing, your mortgage reducing, and your salary hopefully increasing somewhat, you can eventually move on to a bigger/better house making room for the next young family to buy the house you're leaving behind.
Not to mention the absolute scam that is selling people leaseholds on apartments designed to make it prohibitively expensive to buy off the lease. An uniquely devious instrument dreamt up by the rentseeking class to screw over the average middle-class Brit.
The free market, cutting red tape, etc, isn't the answer. The government and the councils could and in my opinion should pick up the slack from the property developers. Build affordable houses, sell them at a reasonable rate with a provision mandating the buyer actually occupies the property for the coming 5 years or so (outside of exigent circumstances like divorce - we can work out the details). Sell them to people who are actually going to live in the house rather than use it as a financial instrument to speculate with or to rent out.
Is that unfair competition to the rentseekers? Yes, it is. Tough luck. You can't demand the government play by free market rules if you've successfully been undermining the free market functioning for at least two decades.
Sadly, with the current Labour government being very 'Tory but change the typeface and make it red,' this isn't going to happen. Cause they're friends with the real estate class too.
I think not just like art, it is art. Making something for the sake of making it, not because it serves a practical need or purpose. Perhaps even because it doesn't.
That was true for Trump 1. This time round, things appear to have changed. The CEOs of these companies sitting front-row at the inauguration is the most visible sign of their newfound mutual love. MAGA have found out these companies will just bend to their ideological will in the interest of shareholder value and it shows.
Maybe in future, but for now these companies are not liked in MAGA-land, and simply attending the inauguration of a president hasn’t really changed anything.
Not just for Trump 1. It was true right up until January 1 of this year. Their "conversion" just started and it remains to be seen whether there is any depth to it or it's a publicity stunt to avoid Trump's ire over the next 4 years.
Yes! I think the name put a lot of people off, but it’s super good. Really makes you appreciate breakfast and the integral principles of the structural dynamics of flow as a nice bonus.
Sure, but every country was affected by Covid. Not always to a similar degree as Britain but the differences in Europe in that regard aren't so big. Most handled it similarly, saw similar infection rates and are seeing similar long-term consequences. Just like we were all affected by cheap Russian gas disappearing.
I think you can safely cancel out Covid and Putin when comparing the way living standards and cost of living have changed over the last decade between the UK and countries like France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, etc.
After WW2 the US wanted the European powers under its wings rather than rebuilding their own militaries to the level of a global power. There were to be two powers: the US and the Soviets.
It suited the US interests to force Europe in a dependent position. Partly for good reasons like preventing us fighting amongst ourselves starting another war. Which we’d just done twice, so fair enough.
But also to stop us from coming under communist influence voluntarily. And, just for imperialist reasons. They were just more modern and subtle about it than the empires they replaced, most notably the British Empire. The almost-century of western Europe being effectively part of an US empire culturally, financially and militarily is now coming to an end. How we’re gonna deal with that? No idea. It’s going to be pretty damn hard in a lot of ways.