Quotulatiousness

August 12, 2025

Britain warns online platforms about “overzealous” interpretation of online safety law

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

“Ben the Layabout” posted a note over at Founding Questions linking to a Telegraph article [archive.ph link] that seems to indicate the British government is demanding that online services both enforce the letter of the law and the spirit … whatever that might mean at any given moment in time:

Social media giants face huge fines for curbing free speech by “overzealous” enforcement of online safety laws.

Ministers have told platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok they must not restrict access to posts that express lawfully held views.

The warning, in an apparent change of tone from ministers, comes amid a backlash over websites blocking users from viewing material, including parliamentary debates about grooming gangs.

Campaigners have said that free speech is threatened by the Government’s application of the Online Safety Act, which is meant to protect children from harmful content.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, used a visit to the UK this week to warn ministers against going down the “dark path” of censorship.

Whitehall sources have expressed concern that social media firms, some of which have criticised the law, “have been overzealous” in enforcing it and must be “mindful” of the right to freedom of expression.

The Science Department, which oversees the legislation, told companies they could face fines if they failed to uphold free speech rules.

A spokesman said:

    As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression.

    Failure to meet either obligation can lead to severe penalties, including fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue or £18m, whichever is greater.

    The Act is not designed to censor political debate and does not require platforms to age gate any content other than those which present the most serious risks to children such as pornography or suicide and self-harm content.

    Platforms have had several months to prepare for this law. It is a disservice to their users to hide behind deadlines as an excuse for failing to properly implement it.

So online sites big and small are required to obey the British law, but only as and how the British government wants it enforced or they’ll levy massive punishment. Too lax? Punishment. Too strict? Also punishment. It’s almost as if Britain wants to be cut off from the rest of the internet …

German-Soviet Invasion of Poland 1939

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Real Time History
Published 8 Aug 2025

Germany and the Soviet Union both regarded the Polish state as a creation of the post-WW1 system, and both had claims on Polish territory. In the summer of 1939, Adolf Hitler decided to invade Poland in a fait acompli against the Allies. In a secret agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union they agreed on dividing up the Polish state and Eastern Europe.
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AOL to shut down its last dial-up access: dozens to be inconvenienced

Filed under: Business, Humour, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

James Lileks on the end-of-era announcement from AOL — and I can’t recall the last time I thought of that company — that they’ll be eliminating the last of their dial-up internet access accounts:

New tech: shiny today, tarnished tomorrow. Everything that was once bright and brilliant now stamps its walker towards the exit door. The headlines wave goodbye: Last telegram office in the US shut down.

Last phone booth in New York is decommissioned. The latest: AOL to shut off its landline customers.

You’d think this would be news on the level of “homing pigeon trainer employment hits record lows”.

Who uses dialup? Yahoo, which now owns the AOL brand, says that the user base is in the “low thousands”, which suggests that some people forgot to turn off autopay in 2005. What does AOL do today? The usual basket of dross and chum. A website that offers “trending videos” — gosh, don’t know where else you’d find those — and a lot of news stories, supplied by Yahoo, and its … numberless army of journalists, I guess.

It’s a legacy brand for people who want to slide into the internet like comfy slippers they left under the desk. And that’s fine. Facebook serves the same function. It’s a place to start, a home base. A familiar window out which we gaze daily We all have them. But let us not get nostalgic for AOL and the early days of the internet. Some people, of course, love to talk about the pioneer days, and how it required some technical know-how:

    Well, we didn’t have those fancy little pre-made modems like you got in the 90s, so we had to get a little matchbox and fill it up with a certain kind of specially-bred insect that sang a note at a particular pitch when exposed to electrical current. So you’d crank up the generator and put the little alligator clips on the box and hold the box up to the phone while you entered your user name in Morse code by pushing on the hang-up buttons, and then you had to shake the box so the insect singing would modulate. Took about an hour, but then you’d be “On the Line”, as we said, and you could go to a Usenet group and call people Nazis. Kids today, they can call someone a Nazi without lifting a finger.

Negev 7: Israeli Scales up to a 7.62 NATO Machine Gun

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 31 Mar 2025

The Israeli Negev machine gun had a rather long development cycle, beginning in 1985 but not seeing final completion and issue until 1997. Once on the market, it proved to be a pretty successful weapon, used by the Israeli military and also a number of export client around the world. In 2012, IMI released an improved newer version, the Negev 7. This was made exclusively as a 7.62mm NATO caliber gun, as opposed to the original Negev which was only made in 5.56mm NATO.
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QotD: Rick Wakeman – “I was Spinal Tap for real”

Filed under: Britain, Business, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One afternoon [Wakeman] dropped by a local recording studio, where he spotted an odd little keyboard in the corner. The manager of the studio, Tony Visconti, told him it was a Mellotron, the spooky-sounding, electro-mechanical instrument made famous by the Beatles on “Strawberry Fields”. But it was so difficult to play that nobody in the studio could figure out how to use it. “Mind if I have a go?” asked Wakeman. Visconti and his recording crew watched in awe as the gawky kid made the mellotron sing.

“How’d you do that?” an engineer asked.

“Don’t tell him,” Visconti told Wakeman. “It’ll make you a fortune!”

Visconti asked Wakeman if he could come back to play mellotron for one of his artist’s recording sessions. After getting dropped off at the studio by his mother, Wakeman was greeted at the studio by a precocious young rocker whose eyes appeared to be two different colors. His name was David Bowie, and he wanted Wakeman to play mellotron on “Space Oddity”, the title track of his second album. “This will be a piece of cake for you,” he reassured Wakeman.

“Oh, okay,” Wakeman stammered.

“I take it you have played a piece of cake before?” Bowie replied. Wakeman, confused and nervous, offered no reply.

“Well,” Bowie went on, “maybe not then.”

The song launched a lifelong friendship with Bowie, and Wakeman’s career. He became rock’s go-to keyboardist, playing in countless sessions. In 1970, Melody Maker, at the time England’s most influential music publication, featured Wakeman on a cover story that anointed him “Tomorrow’s Superstar”. Bowie offered him a few key pieces of advice: get your own band, play with musicians who understand you, and, when it comes time to perform, “do what you want onstage, especially if you’re using your own money. Don’t let a promoter, agent, or manager tell you otherwise — they don’t have the imagination.”

Wakeman put the advice to use in the brashest of ways: He turned down Bowie’s offer to play in his sideband, the Spiders From Mars, and instead became the keyboardist for Yes. With its mystical lyrics, orchestral productions, Tolkienseque album art, and long, multipart songs, Yes exemplified progressive rock in all its technical breadth and portentous glory. Wakeman, who surrounded himself with keyboards and wore a cape to hide his arms after a critic said he moved like “a demented spider”, became prog rock’s most iconic star. “Here comes Rick, the caped crusader!” the band’s lead singer, Jon Anderson, recalls with a laugh. “He had a great sort of stance onstage, and very powerful energy. It really put him apart from any other keyboard player.” Or, as Wakeman deadpans, “I was Spinal Tap for real”.

David Kushner, “The Stranger-Than-Fiction Secret History of Prog-Rock Icon Rick Wakeman”, Vanity Fair, 2020-06-25.

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