Sorry wired just came to hand. You can find it referenced elsewhere.

But it did change from ‘have to’ to ‘have to, if possible’ which is a massive climb down. It’s basically not possible to have a backdoor in e2e encryption so I think it’s dead in the water. It may even make other companies shift to e2e to avoid this legislation, which would be ironic.

And I think the quote is from the minister in charge of the bill, so he/she would talk it up.

The bill is awful. But at least it’s weak(er) and awful.

Time will tell.

I think the bill words it as ‘if feasible’ or something similar. But that’s enough wiggle room to drive a bus full of lawyers through.

Sure. I’ve not read it either but here’s what I’ve found.

Removal of encryption backdoors - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/britain-admits-defeat-in-online-safety-bill-encryption

Removal of ‘harmful but legal’ - https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/29/uk-online-safety-bill-legal-but-harmful-edit/

Age verification isn’t so clear cut but there’s room for a lot of hope. What ‘age verification’ is going to be in the bill is yet to be determined by Ofcom.

… Which is law makers kicking the can down the road… or passing the buck. Probably because it’s unenforceable and a technical/ privacy nightmare. Maybe it will amount to something, in which case we should be afraid, but I think most likely it will amount to not much.

Full bill is here if you have a spare 3 days to read it all - https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/52368/documents/3841

After bouncing back and forth between the house of lord’s and the house of commons This bill is a shadow of it’s former self. I’m glad to say.

Three things that were massively damaging for privacy and security have, as far as I can see, been scrapped.

1. The bill no longer requires tech companies to control ‘harmful but legal’ content. A blurry, ill defined concept that would have been impossible to regulate.
2. The bill no longer requires all end to end encrypted communication channel’s (WhatsApp etc) to have a backdoor for governments and enforcement agencies to access unencrypted messages between people. Something that would have broken effective security in every way.
3. The bill no longer requires porn to only be accessible to UK citizens after they have proven they are an adult. This was by providing bank details or ID to porn websites (lol no thanks), possibly through a third party company that is supposed to assure some privacy ( lol still no thanks).

And what’s left in the bill is going to be regulated by Ofcom, a toothless underfunded shell of a regulatory body.

Unity is a game engine and a bunch of ancillary services, analytics and tracking and what not. It’s been free to use and publish games with as long as your company revenue was under a certain amount. Over that amount and you’d have to buy a license for I think about $1600 a year.

The brouhaha was because they changed their income model to charge people/companies who create their game using the unity engine to make games on a per install basis. Up to 20cents per install of your game ( but only if your revenue was over $200k AND installs was over 200k, raising to $1m AND 1m installs with the unity pro license) .

The changes would take place next January leaving developers with very little time to make any changes to their revenue model. Unity (the company) also changed the terms of use of Unity (the game engine software) so that it was retroactive across all previous versions of unity, ie. If you didn’t like the new terms you couldn’t just carry on using an older version of it.

If you were being charitable you’d call it a clumsy launch or even ill considered. But it went down like a bucket of cold sick with the game dev’ community who viewed it like a greedy shakedown.

Amen.

I think this is the journalists addition. The paper doesn’t mention it being unforeseen at all.

Do you mind? I’m trying to be righteously infuriated over here.

They think they’re onto a good thing after their suprise by-election victory, credited to the unpopularity of the expansion of London’s ultra low emission zone. Now watch as Rishi flyers with rolling back every single environmentally progressive policy of the last 50 years for a handful of votes.

Still, they’re onto a loser there. The environment and climate change is a big concern for voters these days, and frankly they’re already uncredible in that department. What little reputation they have will get easily be damaged.

Technical artist for real-time. Mainly vr. 9/10. I think it’s the most interesting job in the world, where art and tech meet, my two favourite things. Plus I get to work from home on cool stuff, and the turnover of new projects several times a year keeps it fresh. I think the worst part of the job is that it’s a bit niche so you can’t really talk about your work with anyone out of the industry. There’s no frame of reference. My friends and family don’t really know what I do.

Love it. Very far side.