Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | hkt's commentslogin

Not before handing over an enormous cache of NHS patient data to them during the pandemic. If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.

Yes whoever decided to let them do this has a lot of explaining to do. This data should never have left the UK.

Grab them by the balls and make sure they are never able to make a political decision with such an impact again.

If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.

Does anyone have a verifiable source for that? It would be extremely controversial if true and even among the big civil liberties and privacy advocacy groups in the UK I have never seen anyone make that claim.

The defence to using Palantir by British government departments and public services has typically been that Palantir only provides the technology and the data itself is still held and processed in the UK under the native organisation's control. Even this is still controversial because of issues like the CLOUD Act and the general reputation of Palantir.

But that is a long way from allowing the mass export of sensitive personal data to a US firm without the data subjects' knowledge or consent. That looks just plain illegal under our existing data protection legislation. Green lighting it - even in the panic phase during COVID - would probably be controversial enough to end a few political careers at least. It might even leave enough of a cloud over the party in government at the time to affect a future election.


You said it better than I could have.

"if memory serves" is an interesting way to phrase "I'm just making shit up"

That was me, sorry, I just love KitKats.

(So as to avoid being like the Robin Hood Airport guy, I'd like to say the above was a joke)


They're not old enough to remember the start of the war in Iraq, I imagine. For those who aren't: it was a barrage of justifications which were found to be untrue, especially the 45 minute claim which said Iraq could strike European targets within 45 minutes with chemical or biological weapons. The UN weapons inspector said this was nonsense, and so it proved to be - after the invasion.

Iran will go the same way, one way or another.


Honestly, pick one of the well known distros at random. Personally I use Manjaro with GNOME: up to date software and a polished out of the box experience. I never have to go to the terminal unless I want to.

SailfishOS / Jolla are unlikely to do this. Time to switch. Google's monopoly power over android is showing, badly.

Maybe if the Jolla folks were serious about making inroads in the market for personal mobile devices that they're ostensibly trying to compete in. But they're just as deluded and as doomed as their Meego/Maemo/Moblin predecessors about the value proposition that the SDKs and system software they ship has with the market segment they're targeting.

Press reader is basically this, although it lacks some of the better titles.

It is annoying, but bookshop.org is a good alternative to both Abe and Amazon, presenting a single shop front to lots of bookshops.


Betterworldbooks.com is my go to. They usually have everything for decent prices. And you can buy used or new for most things.


I checked all of the sites above in the comment tree here and the used books are either 60% of the price of new or 150% the price of new, but used (not including shipping on the latter, oof) so this may be where buying books used online is now awful. Gone are the days you can pickup a book for a few bucks including shipping from USPS and it'd arrive in pretty good to excellent condition I fear

Pokémon can probably have it's immense (and insane) secondary market attributed to its gambling-esque qualities. It'd be perfectly fine if people could play with decks they chose and cards were sold at a uniform price, provided the game itself is balanced - which is to say gambling elements in these things are probably by design.


I did it too and found it to be the same. It was years until I realised we had actually been doing rather good stuff.


As a regular glasses wearer, I really do dread the years ahead when I get mistaken for a glasshole. I suspect it won't be pretty.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: