• 5 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Eh, if the structure as described (members list their interests and sit out where there is a conflict of interest) is working as intended then I don’t see why she can’t have a job giving opinions on the cancer risk of eggs or asbestos or whatever. She might even be positioned well to understand those risks.

    But it absolutely stretches credulity that an org focusing on cancer has not had a discussion she needed to sit out of in five years. Which means either the structure is not working as described (bad), she’s lying out of her arse (worse), or this org is simply not having these incredibly important discussions (catastrophic).


  • According to Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn’t, the HoL is the only place where high quality scrutiny of legislation actually takes place. It shouldn’t be that way, in theory that should be something MPs do. But MPs aren’t taught to scrutinise legislation, often are not lawyers, and have what is basically a full time job on top of that running constituencies and lobbying on behalf of their constituents. So actually the HoL is currently very necessary.






  • Current FOSS supported smartphones are mostly not really compatible with BIFL

    Firstly, Rooting/ flashing non-manufacturer firmware voids your warranty. A phone without manufacturer support is going to struggle to be BIFL. If you’re able to flash the original ROM back on that protects you some, but if a failure leaves you unable to flash firmware then you’re SOL.

    Also, the FOSS OS might be solid but many ports to specific phones are enabled by only a couple of developers doing it on a voluntary basis. You might well find multiple FOSS OS are being maintained by a single person who is really into keeping their phone compatible with multiple FOSS projects. Unless you’re going to be that person, you would want to check that’s not the case, because if that person upgrades you may find yourself without support which again is not BIFL.

    The closest you’re going to get is probably something like the Fairphone. They’re designed to be long-term repairable, ethically produced and running FOSS. But they are also far from the cutting edge. Pick your poison.