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Exclusive: After a two-year battle to get hold of them, notes from of a secret meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Matt Hancock reveal a UK government in thrall to Facebook and seemingly cowed by their threats:

 Zuckerberg told Hancock the UK's 'anti-tech' attitude meant it was 'the only country in the world he will not visit [redacted]
After Zuckerberg was reassured by Hancock the tone could shift from 'threatening regulation to encouraging collaborative working' the 'ambience' of the meeting shifted from 'guarded hostility to cautious optimism'
DCMS fought for for two years to withhold the minutes, breaching the FOI Act twice in the process, with its lawyers making a last ditch attempt to stop the release
The Information Commissioner's Office ordered DCMS to release the meeting minutes after describing them as 'the only available insight and understanding' into Zuckerberg’s position on UK tech legislation
Some interesting context courtesy of @jason_kint, Hancock was sat next to Facebook's Joel Kaplan and Michael Beckerman (chief exec of Internet Association, lobbyists for Facebook) at an exclusive New York dinner just three weeks prior to the meeting with Zuckerberg in Paris
The meeting between Zuckerberg and Hancock was brokered by Matthew Gould, who would later be appointed as chief exec of NHSX without interview when Hancock became health secretary
Our revelations come days before the Government is due to provide its full response to proposals to regulate tech giants. @julianknight15 has expressed fears the government has already rowed back on the scope of its online harms legislation
For those who have scrolled this far, here are the notes from the meeting: https://t.co/5nNmYHB1NX
It turns out Facebook was not the only company Hancock was fawning over at VivaTech, Uber also got the same treatment H/T @jtemperton https://t.co/4ts0tWXOqY
Another concerning element of the whole process was DCMS making the veiled threat to the ICO that releasing notes from this meeting would mean future meetings were held 'off the record'. cf point 95 in the ICO's decision notice: https://t.co/SRnFO1dzrG
Relationships between Matt Hancock and Mark Zuckerberg still very cosy, Hancock says he has been doing a lot of work with Nick Clegg, who he refers to as 'Mark Zuckerberg's representative on Earth' https://t.co/mtfYvZzHRt

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Suhas S. Hardutt
Suhas S. Hardutt
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THE BATTLE OF TALIKOTA and the destruction of Vijaynagar (Hampi)
26 January 1565

A tale of valor, deception and decimation.

A grim reminder that if we fail to protect our heritage, it will eventually crumble under the onslaught of "forces of anarchy".
(Elaborate thread)


This decisive battle was fought between the Vijayanagara empire and the Deccan sultanates resulting in a rout of Vijayanagara and ending the last major medieval era Hindu kingdom in south India.(1)

The seeds of 1565 encounter were sown more than 250 years earlier when the forces of the Delhi Sultanate, during the time of Alauddin Khilji and later Md Bin Tughlaq swept through southern India in an expansion spree.(2)

By middle of the 14th century, facing rebellions, Tughlaq withdrew to Delhi, leaving behind 2 empires, Bahmani, which ruled the Deccan from Kalaburagi, and Vijayanagara, which ruled most south India with its capital at Vijayanagar.(3)

The Raichur Doab, between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, existed as a natural boundary between these two kingdoms, with wars often breaking out over control of this territory.(4)
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Jim O'Shaughnessy
Jim O'Shaughnessy
@jposhaughnessy
I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
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Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major

Fun going down this list and thinking: "Hmm, plausible at a well-run modern software shop", "Hmm, possible, but requires implausible tradeoffs", "Literally disallowed by languages", and "If you were to attempt doing that our test suite wouldn't let you merge."

I think we as an industry celebrate (not quite the right word) failure too much and don't celebrate success nearly enough. There is no DailyWTF for competent execution, word of which generally stays pretty local to the source while incompetence passes into legend.

Alrighty let me try to thread the needle on being the change I want to see in the world while not giving away anything that will get me in trouble:

Ruby has wonderful developer ergonomics. Typed languages are easier for machines to guarantee the correctness of. We built a type checker for Ruby (and I believe it is slated for OSS release sometime).

c.f.
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antifa.drone
antifa.drone
@antifa_drone
Fake chats claiming to be from the Irish African community are being disseminated by the far right in order to suggest that violence is imminent from #BLM supporters. This is straight out of the QAnon and Proud Boys playbook. Spread the word. Protest safely. #georgenkencho


There is co-ordination across the far right in Ireland now to stir both left and right in the hopes of creating a race war. Think critically! Fascists see the tragic killing of #georgenkencho, the grief of his community and pending investigation as a flashpoint for action.


Across Telegram, Twitter and Facebook disinformation is being peddled on the back of these tragic events. From false photographs to the tactics ofwhite supremacy, the far right is clumsily trying to drive hate against minority groups and figureheads.


Declan Ganley’s Burkean group and the incel wing of National Party (Gearóid Murphy, Mick O’Keeffe & Co.) as well as all the usuals are concerted in their efforts to demonstrate their white supremacist cred. The quiet parts are today being said out loud.


The best thing you can do is challenge disinformation and report posts where engagement isn’t appropriate. Many of these are blatantly racist posts designed to drive recruitment to NP and other Nationalist groups. By all means protest but stay safe.
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Steve
Steve
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Ivor Cummins has been wrong (or lying) almost entirely throughout this pandemic and got paid handsomly for it.

He has been wrong (or lying) so often that it will be nearly impossible for me to track every grift, lie, deceit, manipulation he has pulled. I will use...


... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


Example #1: "Still not seeing Sweden signal versus Denmark really"... There it was (Images attached).
19 to 80 is an over 300% difference.

Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


Example #2 - "Yes, I'm comparing the Noridcs / No, you cannot compare the Nordics."

I wonder why...

Tweets: https://t.co/XLfoX4rpck / https://t.co/vjE1ctLU5x


Example #3 - "I'm only looking at what makes the data fit in my favour" a.k.a moving the goalposts.

Tweets: https://t.co/vcDpTu3qyj / https://t.co/CA3N6hC2Lq
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