Yep. Of the 3 main functions of money/currency, Bitcoin is only really used for 1 of them, and even then barely: Store of Value - Bitcoin does this, although not as well as you'd really like a currency to do. If you have some amount of purchasing power in Bitcoin one week you can be fairly sure you'll have a similar amount of purchasing power a week or two later. Unit of Account - Nope. Absolutely no one does their book-keeping in Bitcoin. No one thinks about their daily / annual cashflows in terms of Bitcoin. Medium of Exchange - Nope. Almost no one actually uses Bitcoin as one side of a buying or selling transaction, except where it is to buy / sell another currency. There are some small number of examples where this does happen, but it is so rare and small scale as to be almost meaningless. On the whole, it simply isn't used as a currency. Its only real-world function is that of an financial investment asset, and we ought to treat it as such.

Which is all fine. But at some point most people want to sell the Bitcoin for dollars or pounds or euros or whatever. Since these are issued by an regulated by governments, it isn't a surprise that they want some say over how those transactions are managed.

Wouldn't the presence of such a kill-switch just give it an incentive to Kill-All-Humans at the first opportunity?

It's an interesting point. A lot of the motivation for countries to comply with inspection regimes for nuclear weapons is that, in general, it's really hard to hide the sort of stuff you need to do to make the weapons. Uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding are obvious to anyone with a satellite and/or espionage program, so unless you go full-on DPRK, you're going to get found out. This makes monitoring and inspection more viable for nuclear weapons than for other things. How similar is AI development? I genuinely have no idea, but my intuition is that the level of resources (data centres, electricity and water usage, etc.) required to create AIs at the level we're talking about is easily detectable too, so hiding it would be very difficult.

My question really boils down to - was there anyone when voting in the referendum who in any way thought that it wasn't going to be decisive? Did anyone think that when one side or the other won that parliament was going to treat that as advise only and then deliberate further on whether to act in the way that had just been voted on? Of course not, everyone knew that the vote was going to set the direction (whether that be leave or remain), even if government and parliament were going to have to work out all the details. For what it's worth too, the Prime Minister losing his job is not the worst thing that could happen from ignoring the people in the way were talking about (also, Cameron didn't lose his job as a result of following through or not on the referendum - he resigned before any of that started). I was trying (albeit, poorly) to allude to the fact that ignoring the people like that would lead to a generation with a complete mistrust in the political process who would either then detach from it entirely, or start turning to extremists. Since we've ended up there anyway now, I suppose it's fairly inconsequential.

This thing about the non-binding nature of the referendum is often brought up, but I don't think people have always thought it through properly. Of course, it was non-binding. The only thing that can bind parliament is the laws it creates, and it can always change those if there's a sufficient majority. No referendum in the UK can ever be binding, since at worst parliament can just pass a "We're not bloody well doing it act 2016". So, technically true, but it only gets you so far. Parliament is a political body, populated by elected politicians. Slightly over 50% of the population voted for something, in an election with the highest turnout in decades. How well would it have gone down for lots/most of those elected politicians if they'd voted to hold the referendum and then ignore the vote? The referendum happened in the first place because of the growing electoral power of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party). This has now morphed into Reform UK, who now stand a chance of winning the next general election. How much quicker would that process have been had politicians chosen to ignore the voters in 2016? Technically they could have done, but on a practical level they were locked into it the moment the election was called.

It matches integration practices in older societies too, which this essentially is. In ye olde socieities, stone age and such like, the process of becoming part of that society (usual, going from child to fully participating adult) involved some kind of sacrifice. This might be physical (enduring painful bodily harm of some kind), spiritual (a "quest"), or something similar. The point was both a demonstration of commitment and also something that would then, psychologically, be very hard for the person to renege on later (for the usual cognitive dissonance reasons). Similar here - with no sacrifice on the part of the Brits, entering the EU again will just lead to another ref in 10 years time with perhaps another leave happening. There will be no commitment (either explicit or implicit) to actually being part of the EU in and of ourselves.

I tend to agree with you. A sort of timeout period after a referendum like this, whether its a yes or a no vote, would certainly help. If the vote was known to be the only one that would happen for a significant period on that subject, it would help focus things (and potential reduce people's tendency to vote based on secondary issues - e.g. dislike of the current government). I think one (but by no means the only or the main) of the reasons we (Brits) ended up in such a state following the referendum was the threat of a second ref. While that was still an active possibility, everybody was incentivised to play up to up - the leavers to play the "attack is the best form of defence" strategy, and the remainers to just make everything as difficult as possible hoping the second ref was the outcome. Absolutely no-one was incentivised to comprimise - and the 52/48 did suggest that at best a minimalist leave position was the most appropriate. Taking the second ref off the table might have changed the incentives, leading to a better outcome. (of course, so would having better people in charge of the process - the politics of that period between May, Corbyn and Johnson didn't exactly lend themselves to compromise).

So many of these sorts of Windows vs Linux conversation get bogged down on the end-users perspective, they miss the main reason that Windows wins in the business world.

1. The management tools are easy to use and universal. You can manage a whole business using just the tools given by your 365 subscription, including almost everything about the desktop computers.

2. Becuase it is so easy and universal, it is trivial for any business to get help from third parties, which will generally add their own RMM remote management tools to the situation.

By and large the business doesn't care how pleasant the software is to use for the user, so long as it work. They care how easy the whole setup is to manage. Windows makes that easy - it isn't so much Windows as the 365 (and previously, the Active Driectory) infrastructure that wins.

I'm sure there are alternatives that do the same job for Linux that peopple use all the time. At the same time, I'm sure they don't come close to the "easy and universal" status that makes going with 365 such an easy decision.

It's not so much about the scandals themselves, but more about people having their expectations betrays - hypocrisy in essence.

No one expects Trump to be noble or rightous, so there's no sense of betrayal when he behaves the way he does. By contrast, progressives/left-wing politicians usually do try to portray a position of virtue, so when they get caught ought people feel betrayed.

Here in Britain the Labour governemnt are a great example of this. The previous Conservative government had been as corrupt as anything, but that's sort of what people expect from them so it didn't actually do them too much damage. It was their hypicrasy over the Covid lockdowns that really killed them, because peopel felt so betrayed over it. The Labour government then comes in promising to clean things up and the bring change, and they do neither - in fact they almost immediately get caught in a scandal of taking free clothes and event tickets from millionaires, and their level of public support plummets.

Public support, like most of politics, is an emotional thing, not a rational thing. It's the betray and hypocrisy that does it for people, by and large.

.... jailbroken .....

Thank you. I don't know why the modern tech world can't make an attempt at fitting it's terminology to the basics of Enlgish grammar.

It's a tricky one isn't it. I agree that constitual ammendment route is a non starter - it has all the same problems as do those nice clever ideas to just tweak the rules a bit, and it doesn't solve any of the real problems: half the countruy just really hates the other half.

For what it's worth it's the same here in Britain (although maybe to a slightly lesser degree). Half the country (broadly speaking: the rural, older, less-educated half) cannot stand the other half (younger, better educated, metropolitan), and the its very much reciprocated. Our politics is going the same way - both sides running ever more to the extremes to play to their support bases' worst instincts.

Seems to me most people get the cause an effect wrong. Seems to me that the politics come from the culture, not the other way round. America's had this two-nations thing for half my lifetime, but its only since the tea-party movement that it's turned so nasty. Here in Britain it's brexit that's turned everyone so mean. No one's willing to accept anymore that two people can disgaree about something in good faith, so every disagreement becomes a moral crusade, and comrimise becomes nearly impossible.

Trouble is, to do this, you have to get it through Congress. Which you can't.

Before any clever ideas can be enacted to improve things, there's a much more fundamental problem to be solved - find a way to bring people together, to stop half the country hating the other half. Congress fairly well represents the people in this regard, and until something changes in the culture of t US society to take out the hate, nothing will change.

Until that happens, congress will remain completely divided and locked, and you'll have nothing but executive orders.

Out of interest, why can't we just replicate this logic with EV cars?

Since we're talking about tracking milage, we're presumably happy with hardware being installed in the cars to report information back to the government. Why can't that report back the number of KWH of electricity "pumped" into the cars, and tax that instead at some equivalent rate? That way more efficient cars get the same benefit as they would under a petrol tax, and so the same incentives still apply.

That's all fine, but like so many things in life the issue is perception rather than reality - specifically, the perception of risk.

More specifically, it's Google Analytics.

If you ask two people about whether the use of Google Analytics counts as requiring notification and opt-out, you will get two different answers. Ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different answers. Given the existence of drive-by-lawyers who will check for any cookie usage and throw a lawsuit at you to see what sticks (not common, but everyone's heard a scare story about it), and given the level of doubt, most people who use GA (which is most people who run a website) play it safe and use a cookie opt-out banner.

There's also the perception issue in that not having a cookie banner makes your site stand out. It looks odd, given how prevalent they are. A user coming to your site and not getting a cookie banner will have quesitons - Why don't they have one? What are they hiding? Should I trust them if they don't even have this basic requirement in place?