As a former software developer, now turned student (studying theology while I train to become a pastor), Typst has been great for writing my dissertation with one notable exception: it really doesn't handle footnotes well. Specifically, see:
Discursive footnotes do not really work when including bibliography references. I've also hit other issues, like footnotes appearing a page before the text they are linked from.
It's a real shame, as otherwise it's great software. I suspect footnotes are currently buggy because most users are currently from the science world and use inline referencing instead.
I'm really hoping this is fixed soon. (And once I hit my current deadline this week, I'll take a look at it myself.)
But at the moment, a big caveat for anyone working in the humanities / who uses e.g. Chicago-style footnotes.
Rust needs to be careful that it doesn't invite the type-programming crowd in too much. Even if individual features are helpful, the cultural effect on the programming language in terms of the community (i.e. libraries and idioms) can really fragment and destroy a language. Scala, which I programmed in for many years, is a good example -- lots of great features but ultimately overwhelmed by typesafe abstractions that held theoretical appeal but hampered readability and fragmented the community. (Lack of backwards compatibility and poor tooling also hurt Scala no doubt about it, just as slow compile times hurt Rust.)
I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
> Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
> I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West.
Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
Just to correct slightly, I suspect most people who write Go WebAssembly are using https://tinygo.org/, which also achieves starting binaries in the 10kb range.
The brigades are out, but most people in the UK have a high level of trust in the BBC (https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45744-which-media-out...). This whole incident is a storm in a teacup; yes the program was edited badly, but it is a single incident. It is ridiculous that the DG and News CEO have resigned.