elyobo

Wow, that was hard to read (so much so that I couldn't read much of it, had to skim). Horrific.

AFAIK they're not a problem here in Australia either, and the language here could (charitably) be called English. I've never received one of these calls.

It's a somewhat self fulfilling prophecy though, isn't it? The point of splitting kids out is that it will push them forward academically; by being held back because of their performance at one point, it makes it that much harder to excel further down the line to jump in to an accelerated class.

Ah, I misunderstood your comment sorry - I thought you meant recommendations for installing _PHP_ + some web server in general, not nextcloud specifically!

I didn't realise that the recommendation had gone back the other way again; any good resources discussing current recommendations and the whys?

We have a fair bit of legacy stuff hanging around, all nginx+php, none of which appear to be vulnerable due to consistent use of try_files.

> Would the reset request not have come to an email account, presumably a well-protected one?

Not in this case (and not in many); verifying access to a phone number is also common and apparently was an option for this bank.

Strangely it turns out that rebinding variables is a really uncommon need, so there's pretty much zero game playing.

Understood. Yes, it will probably get there eventually.

Crypto seems like it's (at the moment) neither low cost nor low friction; did I misunderstand you?

Massive. Wifi only goes on when it's needed for something.

I sort of agree; I solve this by never using let and never rebinding :) No need to think about it at all.

Why have you stopped using a linter?

The popular airbnb eslint rules[1] require the use of const where a variable is not reassigned, which I've occasionally found handy.

[1] https://github.com/airbnb/javascript#references--prefer-cons...

Neither of those rebind the `const x`, which will continue to hold the value it was given.

> There are bugs caused by mutatable state.

> There has never been a bug caused by reassigning a function local variable while leaving it mutable.

The latter _is_ mutable state. const doesn't prevent all mutations, but it does prevent some, while let prevents none. I'll take the limited protections of const (with awareness of its limitations; many examples of let are of confused devs trying to avoid making their objects immutable).

I don't think I'd call any of those reasons good; the main thrust of them is "const doesn't do everything, so don't let it do anything". If that line of reasoning is appealing, then one might as well continue using var.

Correct. Example doesn't show modification of the variables later, better to use const.

Mine all tend to look like

  (async () => {
    // code
  })().catch(console.error)

What's with the `let` though?

Really? It seems like one of the most insane parts of the Australian voting system. Forcing people that don't know enough to vote under their own motivation doesn't suddenly impart them knowledge or wisdom, it just introduces a huge number of low information voters into the system.

NZ's approach seems safer; compulsory enrolment, so that come voting day everyone should be able to vote if they so choose. Voter turnout is still very high.

The mind might be largely collocated with the brain, but I did specifically say mind :D Where the device goes is irrelevant to my concern; what it might be reading, and what I'd trust them to do with it, is not.

To be fair this concern is not only about Facebook, I'd have similar concerns now about anyone, but Facebook have already shown themselves to be bad actors. Fool me once, etc.

Forgot the * - by winning an electorate seat, you end up getting at least that seat, and any seats in parliament proportionate to your party vote, even if you would otherwise have been cut by the 5% threshold.

The referendum does seem to have been seriously flawed though; it didn't ask "should we become a republic", but "should we become a republic in this specific way" and many that were fine with the republic were not fine with the specific way.

The Brexit referendum had the opposite problem; they only asked whether to leave, and not the way in which it should be done (not that they really could have, lacking a specific deal at the time) and now they can't agree on the way.

The system here does need some serious reform though (and you might as well bin the Queen while you're at it).

The STV approach at electorate level is good, but the electorates then being combined FPTP style to form a government retains most of the downsides of an FPTP system anyway. Safe seats are largely ignored and minor parties have far fewer seats than their support would warrant.

NZ's approach (a vote for your electorate MP, and a vote for your preferred party, with the government formed in line with the percentages in the party vote) is more representative and would be a big improvement to the system.

NZ's could be improved in a couple of ways though; the vote for the electorate MP is still really FPTP, we should copy the AU STV system for that part. And we retain an unrepresentative 5% minimum for representation at the party vote level*, this should be dropped entirely, or if not then votes should also be transferred from any party falling under that line to preferences above it.

Kiwi living in Australia if any of the we/you/here/there is confused :D

I don't really see any value in that. We can all agree that the sun rises in the East as well, but so what?

That said, while providing little benefit, the monarchy also causes little harm and there are more important things to be done than toppling figureheads.

Fair enough, that was very recent. Perhaps a vote between a more representative system than AV vs FPTP would have been different but it does seem too early to bring it up again.

That argument would apply equally well to discarding FPTP and retaining a monarch (or a dictator) at the top. A strong leader is definitely stable, so if that's the key metric an FPTP system is still not a winner.

PR certainly increases the power of minorities (but only in proportion to their support among voters) vs a FPTP system in which those voters are not represented at all; this can be both positive or negative (if NZ's system was implemented here in Australia, both the Greens and One Nation would have far more representation here, and the two major parties would be far weaker).

I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. Where there is no representation people may justifiably resort to other means and that's hardly stable either. NZ's experience with MMP has been largely positive.

> It is truly bizarre that this is always one of the things that people recommend when it is well understood it would have the opposite effect from intended.

It may be that it's often recommended because this is not necessarily the case at all; however, I don't know the specifics of the UK setup and so whether it would be helpful _now_.

I think it's hard to argue that a less representative system is not also less democratic, so hopefully whatever is holding you back over there can be sorted out somewhere down the line.

> I think we can all agree the referendum was not “I want to leave the EU in the most chaotic and economically dangerous way possible, preferably with no plan for what to do next”

> In fact it was. It was a simple vote between leaving and remaining

So... do you mean "In fact it was", or do you mean "It was a simple vote between leaving and remaining"?

The system over there does seem to be terribly unrepresentative; NZ managed to switch away from a FPTP system a bit over 20 years ago, which was a huge improvement (and vastly better than the Aussie system I'm currently living in - which is still better than a traditional FPTP approach).

Hopefully this mess will provide some impetus to improve on it.

Letting something owned by Facebook anywhere near my mind is the last thing I'd want to do.

I have a similar concern with my daughter; I have a Kindle and have had for years, have more or less ceased reading physical books, and do most of my reading before sleeping - so while I read daily, my daughter sees very little of it and almost never something that looks like a book!

I find that writing _something_ can help me to get a feel for a problem. Start, then sitting back and thinking about it, helps me to move towards a better solution faster.

Of course, I don't always do the stopping and thinking part...