The W11 market share isn't shrinking though. A few statistics tracking of websites shows that, but there are plenty of reasons that would go down for w11. Nobody (<0.05%) are buying machines and installing W10.
[For those who are not into the LTSC IoT stuff: Basically it's a decrapified Win10 with support and security updates until January 13 2032. Yes, 2032.]
I am seeing the exact opposite. It's not just that my tiny company has completely moved to Win10 Enterprise LTSC IoT, but every newly bought computer gets Win11 nuked and that installed. In Germany (shady) resellers of Win10 LTSCblabla licenses are popping up.
Pretty much everyone in the embedded electronics industry that has to use Windows is doing ass covering right now by buying the LTSC licenses while you still can.
The departures time table on your airport or train station is not going to be replaced because M$ claims that Win11 is incompatible with it. It will be moved to LTSC if it's not already on that for long. Same for ATMs, the strange machine my dentist uses together with her drills etc.
Of course I have no clue how/if Win10 LTSC market share is or can be detected at all. But from inside the embedded electronics industry I can say: Panic buying of Win10 LTSC licenses going on.
Not a contradiction to what you wrote, by the way: "Nobody" ) is buying Win10 Pro or Ent anymore. But they are buying LTSC in heaps according to sadly only anecdotical evidence.
) Well, not in their online shop, but if you ask, you very well can still buy new Thinkpads with Win10 installed from Lenovo, for example.
One of the screens on the Vancouver SkyTrain platform crashed once and displayed the xfce logo, which made me feel a bit of excitement in wondering how it was implemented.
I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something.
An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen.
I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE project[1], where we can start raising the barrier of entry for all of these bot farms to require at least a felony in identity theft to start.
Can it be used without a smartphone aka "portable telescreen"? Do they explicitly guarantee this'll remain the case? If not, you're just being hoodwinked via cheap convenience.
In Denmark a similar system (NemID) gave you a piece of paper with long alphanumeric codes to be used instead of the app. Now it's replaced by another system (MitID) which I haven't verified that supports those, but it's highly unlikely that it stopped supporting physical codes.
It's actually quite a good idea to have this, even if you have a smartphone, in case that you lose access to it temporarily.
The Austrian version (which I use an appreciate a lot) allows some hardware FIDO2 tokens instead of a smartphone. Guarantee? Not by law but it will be hard for them to take that away.
It won't be hard at all to take it away if only few people are using it. And I assume the vast majority is using smartphones and won't understand the need for anything else.
I think it will be hard enough to take it away. The current solution also exists because there are lots of elderly people that do not have a smartphone.
> Guarantee? Not by law but it will be hard for them to take that away.
Last year they removed the ability to register[0] yubikey FIDO2 tokens affected by the EUCLEAK 'vulnerability', despite it not posing any security risk even by their own admission, and nobody seems to have cared. The whole thing screams security theater, they require the much more expensive FIDO2 Level 2 keys for no reason (which limited you to just Trustkeys at the time after yubikeys got banned) while their own sites crashes[1] if you give it a secure password.
At the end of the day, if not it's required by law the only other guarantee you have is a broad userbase that will complain if it's taken away and at least at the moment it's clear that no such userbase exists.
You don't have to tell me, I absolutely hate that passkeys support attestation. But there is pressure to support a non smartphone based sign in, and it does exist.
In Portugal, our version can use the smartphone app, an (open source) desktop app that supports reading your ID with a smart card reader, and you can also get the codes via SMS. The smartphone app is purely a convenience if you don’t have your wallet with you.
Everyone has a smartphone lol - i can tell that living in a country with great digital services is a lot less stressful than in country with no digitization and old school paperwork i have gone through both.
If smartphones are to be a requirement for participation in civil society, privacy- and freedom-preserving smartphones are needed at the very least. People shouldn't be required to submit to some company's Terms of Service in order to participate in society.
Meaningful regulation would mean e.g. air-gapped infrastructure so they can't make inadvertent privacy mistakes. And guaranteed service levels, and a service of last resort.
Google have based built a business model without accountability and transparency. Which is fine, as long as we're not forced to use them by the state.
Telcos are licensed. Mobile phone manufacturers and, crucially, OS providers, are not. Although in the EU they are now subject to some Digital Markets Act control.
And telco licensing isn't even really relevant. Afaik, licensing condition only has to do with their use of the airwaves and other such technical stuff. It's got nothing to do with ensuring the rights of the telco users.
> Should everyone be required to use private banks to access e.g. foreign exchange?
Maybe so, I don't know. Though it is worth remarking that "private" banks in the US really are only semi-private. The (admittedly imperfect) regulations that banks are subject to starts to blur the lines between public and private. Not to mention that there are far more banks than smartphone handset-and-OS makers.
> No modern society is going to maintain a parallel government economy to serve the vanishingly small minority who live in fear of private companies.
This is not the only option (though it would potentially be an option for some sufficiently-powerful societies). Other options could include:
1. Multilateral coalitions to do some combination of specify/design/build smartphones and/or their OS
2. Specify a set of user rights and regulate smartphone handset and OS manufacturers accordingly
As a sibling commenter said, this isn't about living in fear of private companies as such. It's about not wanting to be coerced into a system of products that don't preserve liberal rights.
Not everybody wants to carry a smartphone around all the time.
If the ID becomes about more than proving right to work, and becomes a daily carry, it's not hard to see the appeal of a government down the line tapping into an always on-hand microphone, GPS, internet enabled device.
Even putting the tin foil hat aside, I and many people like me enjoy leaving the phone at home, and want as little time spent on the thing as possible.
Yup. Look at train tickets in England. For now it's a convenience but you'll notice the law hasn't kept up with the push to have tickets on phones: the law still says you must produce on demand a ticket when requested. So if your battery runs out or your phone crashes or the app glitches or you've annoyed the "safety" department of Google/Apple... it's entirely your problem
A moody ticket inspector is under no obligation really to give you a few minutes to sort it out
Or, if like I experienced yesterday, the most popular train ticket app stutters during peak rush hour and you cannot display the ticket you have actually bought to the conductor and exit gates at the destination.
Digital is more convenient at the loss of privacy. And no, absolutely not, NOT everyone has a smartphone nor can use one. Go read the thread on teaching iPhones to seniors.
Not everyone has a smartphone. A substantial number of especially older people don't. Plus poor people, and just.. well, offline people whose lives are much more communal than ours. The requirement for a hundreds-of-units-of-currency device to prove who you are is bonkers.
But this isn't a conversation about people being excluded from the latest JS framework, this is a conversation about people not using a smartphone being increasingly excluded from pretty fundamental things. App only tickets for public transportation? Grandma can't do that. E-voting? Grandma can't do that. Online banking? Grandma can't do that, because grandma struggles to send a text message much less to navigate a modern app with five different dickbars that is outright designed to get people to sign up for marketing trash.
Having an option for digital ID is great, and there are many potential benefits to it. Requiring a modern smartphone for it is wildly out of touch.
>Second, you're on the wrong forum complaining that people need a device to do things in life.
I think it's exactly right forum, because we know how unreliable and unmagical are those things and are in a good position to judge the risk of relying on them too much.
From the UK and listening to people who don't have things like passports, it sounds like it'll make proving your right to work much easier for people, too. I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is:
1. To open a bank account you need an address
2. To rent somewhere (get an address), you need a bank account
3. See above
The same happens for children opening their first bank account. They get round this usually by having a parent vouch for you, however, this isn't much use to children with estranged/dead/abusive parents.
A system that is mandatory, acts as sufficient ID in all cases (proof of ID, proof of address, etc.) and is free for the recipient has the potential to make otherwise excluded peoples' lives easier.
For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad.
If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.
It is not a problem to open a bank account with a foreign passport in the UK, and most banks have accounts for those who've just moved to the UK. Hundreds of thousands of people move to the UK every year...
However, you also need proof of address to open a bank account. Which someone moving to the UK won’t have yet. This limits their options of bank accounts.
Absolutely, it’s a major problem. I would think this system needs to hand out ID cards to everyone who needs one (student, work visa, alongside NI number, etc.) to break that loop.
For a while the UK had the stupid situation where there was a high-security biometric identity system, but only for immigrants, and one of the things you did as part of the process of becoming a citizen was the requirement to hand back or destroy the ID.
(this of course tells us where all the ID pressure is coming from: voters want an identity system that can be weaponized against immigrants and The Other.)
In the US you can just tell the bank an address and they will type it in the computer. They make zero effort to verify it. They will even print a piece of paper with that new address on it that you can take down to the DMV and get an ID with that address printed on it. Is this a lot different in the UK?
As the parent said, you need proof of address to open a current account that can be used for day-to-day payments.
A savings account you don't need proof of address but I think most will ask for your NI (social security) number. Some will send snail mail to the address you provide to enable withdrawals.
That's not the case in the UK. You need a utility bill (gas, electric, council tax, bank statement) or an existing bank customer to verify your identity. It's only in the past 5-10 years that electronic statements have been accepted. Meeting customers in person is becoming less common, so I worry for, say, women whose husbands handle all the bills.
Some do, some don't. Traditional banks will ask for a proof of address (and only accept a council tax bill, utility bill or rental contract). Some new online banks like Revolut will allow you to get around that step.
At the end of the day, somebody has to take your word for it and type it into the computer. The only questions is who has access to the records of which computer to cross-verify them.
The fact that the system is not 100% consistent 100% of the time is a feature, not a bug.
Except they will? We require multiple proofs because there’s no central place a bank or company, etc, can go to prove that you live in the UK. The excessive requirements to provide multiple proofs to your employer of your right to work are explicitly because there’s no single proof of your right to work in the UK.
If you don’t have a passport, for instance, it’s much harder for a UK citizen to prove their right to work in the UK, for which your employer is liable if they get it wrong.
So please, tell me again how having a clear proof of identity tied to your right to work, and other things, will “not change anything.”
If you have an address, you have a proof of address. Digital IDs won't magically prove your address, and I don't think there plan is to include addresses. But if Dìgital IDs include address then you'll have to prove your address to the Digital ID first exactly like you prove your address now: with documents.
Regarding right to work (you are changing topic): if you are a citizen you can show your passport, if you don't have a passport because you don't want one you can show your birth certificate. If you are not a citizen you show your passport and provide a share code. It is simple and there are no "excessive requirements".
> If you have an address, you have a proof of address
No! This is another one of those things that ends up being a serious problem for a few people, because the current proof of address standard is "utility bill".
> you are changing topic
This seems to be particularly bad in the "digital ID" discussion, almost every speaker including official sources seems to mean something slightly different by this phrase.
You just need something with you name and address. Bank statements, council tax, driver license (it doesn't even need to be a full one). It doesn't need to be a utility bill, it just often is one.
If you do not have a permanent address (I didn't for many years). You just need someone with a permanent address where these things can go e.g. friend or family member or you can pay a small amount for a letter box with a key (which is what I did).
> because the current proof of address standard is "utility bill".
Because utility bills are the simplest. Obviously you can show a tenancy or lodger agreement, or letters from "official sources".
If you have nothing then Digital IDs won't help you anyway because, if they do include address, you will also need to start by providing a proof of address to the Digital ID system!
>If you have nothing then Digital IDs won't help you anyway because, if they do include address, you will also need to start by providing a proof of address to the Digital ID system!
The way it works where it works -- you register with municipality and then whenever you need something, they either give a letter with your address (and maybe charge 25 bucks for it) or the agency gets it from the registry maintained by municipality on the need to know basis.
Since the need-to-know basis is set by law, your explicit consent isn't asked for.
Most tenancy agreements are just printed off by a landlord, so they're absolutely useless as proof of address.
> if they do include address, you will also need to start by providing a proof of address to the Digital ID system!
Yes, you're correct, however, there are starting points (like what's needed for a passport application). The difference is that, if there's a legal requirement to have one, then the government will provide ways for more people to get it for no cost. Unlike a passport that costs over £100 (+ the photos).
> If you don’t have a passport, for instance, it’s much harder for a UK citizen to prove their right to work in the UK, for which your employer is liable if they get it wrong.
No it isn't. You need a Birth Certificate and a previous paycheck and something that has your NI number on it, and usually something to prove your address e.g. Utility Bill.
This has nothing to do with passport applications. He is talking about right to work checks. There is nothing excessive about them and they does not require even photo-card ID e.g. driving license / passport.
Also you don't have to insert your personal brand of politics into every discussion. There is nothing outrageous about the list of professions of counter signers. All they are wanting is someone that can be identified easily in a community.
A driving license isn’t sufficient for right to work checks because you can have a driving license without being able to work.
For shits and giggles, I just looked up the checker on the UK Gov website and… if you don’t have a passport or easy access to your birth certificate, you don’t have enough evidence of right to work.
Is this possible for most people? Yes. Does it leave groups excluded? Absolutely!
> A driving license isn’t sufficient for right to work checks because you can have a driving license without being able to work.
I never said that you required a driving license. I said that at driving license was photo-card ID.
You need a passport or birth cert and NI number as a British Citizen for a right to work check. Most employers also want proof of address, so bring a utility bill.
I've been through this process about 3 times in the last 5 years. It isn't difficult or onerous.
> For shits and giggles, I just looked up the checker on the UK Gov website and… if you don’t have a passport or easy access to your birth certificate, you don’t have enough evidence of right to work.
I actually posted the checklist. I am quite aware what is required.
You can literally order replacements for a birth certificate easily. A replacement birth cert can be got for £12.50 and takes 4 days to receive.
> You need a passport for a right to work check. I've been through this process about 3 times in the last 5 years. It isn't difficult or onerous.
A new passport costs over £100 for a paper application. That can be prohibitive for people.
> You can literally order replacements for these easily. A replacement birth cert can be got for £12.50 and takes 4 days to receive.
These are additional costs, it's also an extra £3.50 to find it (taking 15 days), and possibly another £38 to get it quickly.
So yes, these are all costs that add up to exclude people from partaking in society.
And all of this assumes your employer knows what the hell they're doing. Given the fines are painful, it's entirely possible your employer refuses valid documents "just in case" and sticks to the ones they've relied on in the past.
This is not an argument, and is merely a way to shut someone up because you don't like them disagreeing with you. It is quite a loathsome tactic.
> A new passport costs over £100 for a paper application. That can be prohibitive for people.
I agree that it is expensive. However you don't require a passport though and you can use a Birth Certificate and something that shows your NI number.
> These are additional costs, it's also an extra £3.50 to find it (taking 15 days), and possibly another £38 to get it quickly.
Ok. So £15. This is not "excessive" cost. Like with many things if you want something done more quickly you are required to pay extra.
If you are looking for work you really should make sure you have these documents as you should know that you are going to need them.
> So yes, these are all costs that add up to exclude people from partaking in society.
It may surprise you that a good number of things require monetary payment in some form or another to partake in society.
It is perfectly reasonable for the government to require basic checks to be carried out before you employed.
> And all of this assumes your employer knows what the hell they're doing. Given the fines are painful, it's entirely possible your employer refuses valid documents "just in case" and sticks to the ones they've relied on in the past.
I am not sure what you are trying to say here.
That to avoid fines an employer would break the law and not do right to work checks? Or that they are doing a right to work check and do additional checks?
> This is not an argument, and is merely a way to shut someone up because you don't like them disagreeing with you. It is quite a loathsome tactic.
Ok, let me break the argument down for you:
1. Person needs job
2. Person doesn't have job
3. Person therefore is low on money
4. Person needs to prove right to work to get job
5. Person needs money to buy proof of right to work (+ time to receive it)
6. Person needs money
7. See 2 and 3
Your privilege is what blinds you to a simple process.
> If you are looking for work you really should make sure you have these documents as you should know that you are going to need them.
This is what I mean by "your privilege is showing."
> That to avoid fines an employer would break the law and not do right to work checks? Or that they are doing a right to work check and do additional checks?
Read it again: they're skipping the checks and just using the one they know (passport) because they don't know if other legal forms of documentation are good enough. I know this is going to blow your mind but plenty of employers have no idea what the laws are. You might say "well that's on the employer," but it's the person who needs the job who suffers.
I understand this process that you outline can conceivable happen. However this scenarios is still extremely unlikely. Firstly the cost of a replacement Birth certificate is low.
Failing that, there are other support mechanism in place provided by charities, family, friends and even the state itself, in the unlikely event they are that are completely destitute.
None of this says anything about whether I am privileged or not. You know nothing about my personal circumstances or family background. The only reason anyone uses this line of argument is an attempt to shut people up or as a shaming tactic. Neither of which will work with me.
It also doesn't make any of the checks "excessive". It merely means that they may cost a relatively small amount of money.
As for the ability to produce basic documents, there is nothing privileged about being able to produce basic documents. What you are showing is simply a "bigotry of low expectations".
> Read it again: they're skipping the checks and just using the one they know (passport) because they don't know if other legal forms of documentation are good enough. I know this is going to blow your mind but plenty of employers have no idea what the laws are. You might say "well that's on the employer," but it's the person who needs the job who suffers.
I read it fine the first time thank you.
What you are describing now I would imagine is discriminatory and thus illegal. However IANAL. In this scenario the problem is with the potential employer in this circumstance. That isn't a problem with the right to work checks, and is a problem with the employer.
TBH. It really feels as if you are inventing reasons why right to work checks should be considered "excessive" to shoehorn in your own personal politics.
> However this scenarios is still extremely unlikely.
I watched a video just yesterday from someone (middle class) who explained that, by not having a passport, it took him weeks to get the necessary documentation together to prove his right to work in the UK. As a UK citizen.
> None of this says anything about whether I am privileged or not.
Oh boy, let's see:
> It merely means that they may cost a relatively small amount of money.
> What you are showing is simply a "bigotry of low expectations".
> What you are describing now I would imagine is discriminatory and thus illegal.
Out of this comment alone.
> I read it fine the first time thank you.
Except you completely misunderstood what I said, so you didn't "read it fine."
> However IANAL.
I can tell.
> the problem is with the potential employer in this circumstance.
Which primarily hurts the person who needs to work. What do you propose they do?
> TBH. It really feels as if you are inventing reasons why right to work checks should be considered "excessive" to shoehorn in your own personal politics.
I'm just pointing out how a mandatory Digital ID system, designed to prove right to work as a way of tackling illegal immigration (and thus illegal employment), could also benefit groups who aren't well-served by the current system.
> I watched a video just yesterday from someone (middle class) who explained that, by not having a passport, it took him weeks to get the necessary documentation together to prove his right to work in the UK. As a UK citizen.
This is an issues with the employer not following the checklist, which I posted in my first response to you.. That is not the fault of the legislation. The checklist is easy to understand and straight forward.
I do not have a passport (for quite a long time) and have no once had a problem proving my right to work with an employer.
> I'm just pointing out how a mandatory Digital ID system, designed to prove right to work as a way of tackling illegal immigration (and thus illegal employment), could also benefit groups who aren't well-served by the current system.
No that isn't true. You original claim was that it was "excessive". I took umbrage with that as it is a complete misrepresentation. It just isn't true and your scenarios that you presented are either unrealistic or not to do with the legislation itself.
Combine that with you being preoccupied about my supposed "privilege" as tactic to deflect from the point being made and making snarky backhanded comments, I no longer wish to talk to you. I am going to leave it there.
> Because you've had 4 opportunities to answer my basic question and can't?
No. It is because you've been rude several times to me without cause, you don't seem to actually read anything I say and therefore I no longer wish to talk to you.
I've done nothing but quote and answer your responses, while you ignore my questions and (wilfully?) misinterpret everything I say and projecting your own behaviour onto me. Don't be surprised that I have a low opinion of your contributions.
It implied there was something wrong with trusting every chiropodist and professional photographer more than any cook or army sergeant. It implied nothing about being middle middle class.
For Spain, for online stuff signatures & verification it's mtls, with a client certificate issued by the government. You can sign documents with it or authenticate with it entirely offline (effectively nobody does the latter, but you could, and signing documents with it is very common). Government has no idea how it's used. 3rd party just verifies the government has signed the cert and it's got a valid date.
There's other issues (UX, privacy to the 3rd parties) and further improvements here coming with better wallets (EU-wide) soon, but even today it's absolutely possible to have digital id that doesn't tell the government every time you use it.
They can definitely track when and where you log in.
I can't say if there are backdoors in place for them to log in, and if that is (currently) legal.
Hospitals and libraries are government run, I would assume even if they had their own login, they could manage to snoop the data, no?
These are all online service. So it's not even a wallet argument. But we recently got digital drivers license, which can be used in the "real" world. That is one card less you need to carry around. Only in DK and only for DK citizens though.
Hospitals and libraries are government run, I would assume even if they had their own login, they could manage to snoop the data, no?
In the United States, what you read is your business. The librarians have been one of the very few groups who have successfully pushed back against the new administration's demands for information.
Last year, I could log in to my very large city's library web site and see everything I checked out for the last few years. I looked a couple of weeks ago, and all that history has been purged, I presume as a cautionary move to preserve my privacy. Good for them.
A lot more effort. In the UK public libraries are run by local authorities who do not seem to routinely share that information with other government bodies.
Libraries and hospitals are not purely online services though. I do carry a library card. I do not need one for hospital or doctors appointments.
No, it does not mean that. In Germany the card holds the information, which is signed. So trust is established via certificate. The government has no idea when or where I use the card.
> It is possible, to trust the government in other parts of world.
That means trusting all future governments, all layers of government, all govt organisations with access to the data, and all governments they might share data with, and all other organisations they share data with.
You have to trust them to both use data correctly, AND to have sufficient security to keep the data safe while greatly increasing the attack surface.
The idea is we should develop systems that are resistant to relying on trust. Ideally, I should have faith in my life being okay without needing to blindly trust every single company I interact with.
You can't actually. Everything we interact with eventually ends up relying on trust, even the blockchain, but especially everything with humans and politics.
> An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen.
I get the convenience part. I am from Sweden. We have BankID. I really get it.
But in reality, when centralized systems go to shit, they go to shit REAL BAD. So I personally oppose any such measures on both principles but also... it's okay if life is a little bit less convenient. Not everything needs to be ultra optimized for efficiency. Privacy and systemic integrity is worth at least that much imo.
The Netherlands has had a standard for authentication, which is supported by all government organizations, many insurance companies, etc. for 21 years and it only got better with time. I also strongly prefer it over the shitty, broken authentication systems many government organizations, companies, etc. come up with otherwise (we lived in Germany for a while and the crappy systems we had to deal with were endless). Or even worse, let some FAANG company do the authentication.
I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable.
To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal.
Perfect enforcement leads to an ossified society that only changes when the people who can lobby for laws that benefit them want it to. It will be a perfect dictatorship that can never be toppled, it can only get worse.
Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do.
This is the part of the argument I don’t get. A digital ID system like the one in NL is basically just a login system. It’s oauth for public services, not too different from “sign in with Google”. How does that lead to perfect law enforcement? Like, how does it prevent homosexuals from kissing?
I don't mean this dismissively. I assume there is a series of steps that make sense that I’m not seeing.
Digital ID is fine if it is a choice of citizen if to use it or not, without any consequences - soft or hard. It is convenient to use, and can streamline processes.
If physical ID gets heavily discouraged and Digital ID gets mandated for everything, you basically have to keep a tracking device(a phone, which already fulfills that role) that is now tied to government records. Location, who do you meet, your contacts, when do you access your bank etc - all of that can be exposed extremely easily. The ease of access is the problem - as normally law enforcement needs to go through lengthy process to access such data across multiple vendors - but now all it takes is just storing metadata about access to Id Portal, and can do so in bulk.
Now they have it in single place - and in most cases - no code is open source, with no way to verify if it even does what it promised to even if it was open source.
The issue is that even if you have 100% trust in current government, you are one election away from a change to something vastly different. Always ask yourself this question when a law is proposed:
- would I be fine with this legislation if the government in charge represented everything I hate?
Are you saying that it's 100% garanteed optional in all situations? It has no power to be used to control or even coerce you or discriminate against you or build a profile and track you which can be used at a later date by a different party when a new political wind decides it finds you inconvenient? I find all of that hard to believe while still performing the convenience function let alone any legitimate law enforcement function.
I didn't say this specific system does, some systems might, and those are the ones I'm against. If it's just a login (we have the same in Greece), I'm fine with it.
The ID checks in the UK are an example of something I'm against.
The main concern here is that it will create a narrow bridge (i.e, the digital ID system) between people and various services and opportunities which will make it an easy target for people who wish to wield power against someone.
Perhaps your digital ID is needed to open a bank account, get a phone number, sign up for insurance, etc. Now, suppose some fascist government comes into power. They could start cancelling the digital ID's of people or groups they do not like or are bigotted against. These people start losing access to critical infrastructure.
Now, this could already happen, even with imperfect paper IDs, of course. But by making everything digital, we are reducing societal resilience towards such kind of hostility.
We already have exactly this right now, without digital ids, it's not even theoretical. The government blocks plenty of residents from aspects of society (eg can't work based on visa rules, can't access public/health services at all without legal residency). Currently that's enforced by random members of e.g. medical staff looking at your skin colour to decide whether to ask to check your physical paperwork before they'll look at your weird looking mole. Governments enforce plenty of paperwork checks & blocks today. I think a digital id strictly improves this scenario.
> We already have exactly this right now, without digital ids, it's not even theoretical.
That is true. I was answering skrebbel's question about [how does having a digital ID system lead to perfect law enforcement?].
> Governments enforce plenty of paperwork checks & blocks today. I think a digital id strictly improves this scenario.
I hope you are right. Personally, I am not against Digital ID. My concern is, (a) how can we make sure that the infrastructure operating the digital ID is democratically controlled and not just owned by tech oligopolies; and (b) what security practices, social norms, and legal checks and balances shall we implement to prevent weaponization of this sort of infrastructure and violations of privacy?
>(eg can't work based on visa rules, can't access public/health services at all without legal residency)
You aren't a citizen in such case - you aren't legally allowed to do so. This is another issue with law being in power but it's enforcement over the years was spotty - and people just got used to it.
What you are saying is that government blocks you from committing a crime - which it should try to do so as government's responsibility should be first and foremost towards it's citizens.
Whether you agree if such law is moral or not is irrelevant in this case. As an active participant in the system you could vote for parties that want to change it or campaign to have it changed(even by talking to people) if you find it immoral.
Digital ID on the other hand affects citizens, and allows power abuse towards citizens from government, including unelected officials and middle-level clerks.
> government blocks you from committing a crime - which it should try to do
You may have missed stavros's comment in the parent thread. The fact that the government is not perfect at blocking people from commiting crimes is actually good in some cases
The first step you need to take is view a government as a hostile entity. It's not your government, it's occupational government. It's unjust by default and you don't agree with the rules it makes, including immigration and taxes.
Now imagine there are three arms of the government -- the one that collects taxes, the one that administers unemployment benefits and the other, which gives out visa, including family reunification permits.
You, as natural born citizen want to bring another person from the outside as a partner and for that you need to sponsor their visa. Government in their infinite wisdom decided you need to earn a certain amount of income for a certain time to be able to sponsor a partner (otherwise you both will be able to claim benefits). To do so you get a list of unemployment premiums paid from one agency and submit to the other.
Now here is the kicker -- if the government is able to aggregate the data from all the agencies mentioned above, they can better implement their policy, i.e. deny you family reunification visa AND bust your for not paying taxes. To aggregate the data they need to have the primary key to join datasets, including data sets from the governments from other countries (see CRS).
In this imaginary situation you can get your partner a visa and immediately stop working. If the government is able to join datasets, something will automatically trigger and you will get the letter saying visa is revoked.
You can disagree or agree with any specific policy, or you can deny government the capability to implement privacy invading policies.
Think of it as a backslash against tracking by google on all the sites with ad sense, algorithmic feeds and the rest. Maybe gestapo is not sending you gulash tomorrow, but it's symptomatically not great.
Add:
Can the government ask Palantir to join datasets without the primary key? Sure they can and they do, that goes against the same principle as above. Is it better to have civil freedoms and privacy protection that come from literally doing Holocaust? It's better, but it's not on menu yet.
"But the government can already do all that without Digital ID."
That may be true, but the point is that it makes law enforcement less perfect, and that can be good. That is the point "stavros" is making.
Rosa parks broke the law by seating on a seat where she was "not supposed to". Hypothetically, if there were a quick ID check machine on the bus, it could have just prevented the whole thing from happening at all.
If you start with the premise that the government is hostile by default, it logically follows they will get some capability they didn't have before or increase the one they had. You will have less chance to fall through the cracks and the friction you get from not having the convenient thing is a proof that the beast is at least partially crippled.
It's very often that government has a capability to retroactively assemble a very detailed information about a specific person, but doesn't have a capability to proactively screen the whole population and implement policy.
Illegal immigration is a good example of it -- when somebody is already sitting in a van it's possible to figure out whether they are a citizen or not and maybe even find pictures of watermelons on their phone. It's however impossible to selectively block phone numbers and bank accounts of all the people who are present in the country without government authorization.
* ID checks for social media (to protect children)
* A digital ID card, allowing ID check records to be provably linked to the original ID document (to prevent illegal working)
* The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media
And even if you trust the current government, there are very real fears the next government will be Trump-admiring right wing populists who are eager to upend the status quo.
> The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media
When you look into these cases, they always turn out to be "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals". It took years for even Glinner to finally cross that line and get his collar felt.
For the most part it doesn't go as far as the arrest but it gives the right for police to do "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals" because their kids are posting unpopular memes on social media
> because their kids are posting unpopular memes on social media
I can't work out what this is supposed to refer to? Is this supposed to coexist with the "parents have complete responsibility for their kid's internet usage" from the Online Safety Act discourse?
I don’t follow this stuff in depth but if the arrests are part of a "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals" by the police that sounds worse IMHO?
They meant the people who were arrested were arrested for harassment and abuse of individuals. Not posting unfashionable takes. Graham Linehan was their example.
> When you look into these cases, they always turn out to be "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals".
No that isn't the case. The are substantial problems in the UK around the the various hate speech and terrorism laws. Pretending there isn't by hand waiving away concerns and pretending that them being found not guilty later after having their life turned upside down (the process is the punishment) is quite honestly disingenuous.
Case in point is actually the Netherlands, which is the country the GP is from. When the Nazis took over the Netherlands, they relied on the state's exceptional record keeping of individuals to hunt down the undesirables. Many people died that didn't have to die because the bad guys were enabled by the data systems built by the good guys.
> It will be a perfect dictatorship that can never be toppled, it can only get worse.
This might be the asymptotic steady state, due to the absorbing nature (in a Markov state sense) of future dictatorships. You only have to enter the state once, then you get stuck in that state. But democracy has to be ever vigilant, and it cannot fail even once. There is an unfortunate offense-defense asymmetry there.
> When the Nazis took over the Netherlands, they relied on the state's exceptional record keeping of individuals to hunt down the undesirables. Many people died that didn't have to die because the bad guys were enabled by the data systems built by the good guys.
In many cases, they looked at the census records; something that most western nations have today anyway.
Let's be real: if your government decides to slaughter an entire class of people in its own borders, there's nothing you as a citizen can do except flee and hope to get out without being caught (or sent back).
> Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do.
I dunno, the Nazis did a fucking good job without Digital ID. They weren't overthrown by a resistance movement, they were crushed by the combined might of the Allied and Soviet armies.
We're also seeing how this plays out with ICE in the US: they're doing random street sweeps, and then the burden of proof is on the victim. They're not stopped by the lack of an ID system.
Always useless? No. Useless most of the time? Yes. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you’re Luke Skywalker fighting the evil empire: your entire life already depends on the government and your fellow citizens working together in society. If that breaks down, or the government comes for you, there’s very little you can do to stop it. Multiple oppressive regimes, genocides, atrocities throughout history make my point for me.
You kinda prove the point with it. Nazis killed more Jews in places with more complete and accurate population registers too. If the municipality already has a list of all the people in one table and records their faith or ethnic origin you just need to get it.
Agreed, all the scaremongering is hilarious. As if a digital ID is what is going to be used to repress the common (wo)man.
News flash, if your "liberal western government" wanted to they have more than enough tools to do it already. See all the repressive governments with institutions stuck in the 60s.
- Don't trust corporations that you have no control over.
- Vote wisely for the government you do have some control over.
- Accept compromises are needed in a society of millions rather than constant political conflict.
I don’t think it’s scaremongering or hilarious. I think you’re weak. Oh it’s nice to have this, so I’ll relinquish my sovereignty, if you can’t beat em join em. Enshrined in a false dichotomy: how about we don’t trust the corporations OR the government?
As far as their “tools” I invented a stack which demolishes all digital surveillance. The real point is we need people like me not people like you, then we’d actually have solutions to these problems. YOU are the problem. Your weakness and laziness is what enables these horrible patterns.
Only if you didn't pay attention in history class.
Certain European governments didn't tattoo serial numbers on the arms of certain citizens so they could more easily access government services and check out library books.
You can say "Europe isn't like that anymore" all you want. Governments change. Power shifts.
Less than a decade ago, Europe was saying that Russia is no longer a threat because it was welcomed into the Western economy. Things change.
I think in Germany, such efforts are doomed to fail (or were at least doomed to fail when we lived in Germany) because Germany is reluctant to connect different government administrations due to historical baggage (SS, Stasi, etc).
We have had DigiD in The Netherlands since 2004 (at least that's when it got its current name) and it's glorious. Everything from requesting a new passport, logging to your tax administration, registering as a company, making an appointment for Corona vaccination to doing declarations with your insurance company is done with DigiD. The authentication flow is super-smooth and quick.
I know there are risks to having one central account (slightly mitigated by support for 2FA and scanning your ID card/passport/driver's license NFC as another factor). But it makes dealing with the government so much easier. We lived in Germany and it was a total disaster in comparison.
Germany as a whole has become a total disaster sadly. From public transportation to schools over retirement homes to rent prices. Everything is crumbling and its depressing. I wished we could at least have good technical infrastructure, as its relatively cost efficient, but no, we lack competence and old people are blocking every modernization there is (in public offices). Its honestly extremely frustrating.
This is one of the most exaggerated takes on the country I've come across. I lived there for 8 years and Germany is, frankly, a superb place to live.
I left Germany 3 times and my quality of life took a hit each time. The first 2 I went back; sadly I can't do it again.
Public transportation was in the top 3 of what I've experienced in Continental Europe; schools are seen as respectable and good; healthcare was generally very good if expensive (14.x% of salary is a bit much). I could go on.
Germany has definite problems, and the federal overruling of things like “rent brakes” is cause for concern. But to call the country ’a total disaster’ can only be done by one that, quite honestly, has no idea of what a bad or even mediocre country looks like.
8 years, wow. Try 30 and actually growing up in this country. School is letting people down, rent prices are exploding. Public transportation is a complete joke (https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=1S258ynDJZkGZdoT)
Sorry, but with how rich Germany is I can and should expect more from this country.
Public schools, public transport, well, public everything is being dismantled or cost-savings-worsened by neoliberal governments all across Europe.
I've yet to live in a country where the public institutions aren't being torn apart by privatisation and cost-cutting. That's sadly universal. So I'd say Germany fared better than the other places I've lived: Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium. In Belgium we have a higher marginal tax rate with the same results as you're complaining about.
Your universities are still seen abroad with high regard.
Rent… well, damn, yes. Rent is very high everywhere, for a number of reasons largely due to letting foreign and corporate investment hoard up property, while at the same time building too much high-cost residential and not enough for lower and middle class people (single or otherwise). The market won't correct itself until only individuals are allowed to own housing and up to a certain highly-progressively taxed limit. That said, my rents in Germany were lower than, say, Belgium.
I agree you have a rich country and I didn't live there all my life. But it's still one of the few countries I'd say is doing something for its citizens, largely due to the German understanding of the collective good and social norms :)
Dutch digid is tightly coupled with your address. All documents only go via regular post to your registered address in the Netherlands. No address? Moved to another one? Didn't register new address? Moved out of country? Good luck getting or updating digid.
Digid verification goes to your phone. Lost phone or get stolen? Changed mobile number? Guess what, no digid for you anymore.
Oh man, you probably never used it. You cannot register digid without paper documents being sent by post to your registered address in the Netherlands.
Also, once you go beyond very basic services you might discover digid only works if you are a citizen. Otherwise you are back to papers.
Well, yeah. There’s no way to curb the modern cheating epidemic without increasing security measures. Riot Games via Valorant truly pushed the industry so far ahead by reducing their cheating percentages so low that the cost to cheat for more than a few weeks at a time is thousands of dollars a month.
For the bad apple one; I tried something like that, it works if you're directly querying the authoritative DNS server, but if a cache is involved the records will be re-ordered by randomisation (even in some cases with TTL=0). That's why I ended up doing this as a single very long record, because then it can be cached without worrying about reordering.
No. It used to be more even between datacenter and gaming for NVIDIA, but that's not been the case for a few years. Gaming has brought in less money than networking (mellanox) since '24 Q4.
But the same thing that makes GPUs powerful at rendering is what AI needs - modern gaming GPUs are basically supercomputers that provide Hw and Sw to do programmable embarrassingly parallel work. That is modern game rendering but also AI and crypto (and various science engineering) which is the second revolution that Intel completely missed (the first one being mobile).
AI (apparently) needs much lower precision in training and certainly in inference than gaming requires though. A very very large part of the die on modern datacenter GPUs is effectively useless for gaming
I disagree that HW blocks for lower precision take up that much die space. Data center GPUs are useless for gaming because it's tuned that way. H100 still has 24 raster operating units (4050 has 32) and 456 texture mapping units (4090 has 512). That's because there's only so much they can tune the HW architecture to one use-case or the other without breaking some fundamental architecture assumptions. And consumer cards still come with tensor units and support for lower precision. This is because the HW costs and unit economics are such that it's much more in favor of a unified architecture that scales to different workloads vs discrete implementations specific to a given market segment.
They've also not bothered investing in SW to add the H100 to their consumer drivers to work well on games. That doesn't mean it's impossible and none of that takes away from the fact that H100 and consumer GPUs are much more similar and could theoretically be made to run the same workloads at comparable performance.
But you can use a gaming card to do AI and you can use H100 to game. The architecture between them is quite similar. And I expect upcoming edge AI applications to break down and end up using GPUs more than having dedicated AI accelerator HW because A) you need something to do display anyway B) the fixed function DSPs that have been called "AI accelerators" are worse than useless for running LLMs.
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