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I am not planning any nuclear attacks

henrysmith.org

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Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#91

Post by omh »

switch007 wrote: post #67
omh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK you almost certainly have an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (even if the agent says you don't). This gives you a lot of strong rights which you can use if you know how. In practice the agent or landlord has a lot of leverage but you can often win if you use the law to your advantage. In particular there is a very specific set of steps they have to follow to evict you.

Licenses/contracts are quite popular in place of ASTs in student/shared/bed sit accommodation. Even in housing association properties, you can have a 2 year "trial" period. You only have to lightly scratch below the surface these days to find rights eroded left and right. EDIT: I said "in place of ASTs", but ASTs aren't always appropriate.

My understanding was that, roughly, if you pay a regular payment as rent for a property then you have an AST - whether the contract says so or not.

This is mainly in the context of house/flat rentals though; I realise that perhaps per-room rentals may have special cases.

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#92

Post by teh_klev »

jon-wood wrote: post #75
kjjw wrote: post #2

Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.

You're doing well to be charged £100. We just renewed our tenancy, and got charged £120 by the letting agents to process us signing the same agreement we signed 12 months ago, and update their records to show we're not due to do so again for another year.

Fortunately that kind of thing has been outlawed in Scotland. Letting agents can no longer charge supplementary fees to tenants.

"As a result of this consultation, we will make it crystal clear to tenants, landlords and their agents that all premium fees, over and above rent and a deposit, are unlawful." - Housing Minister, Keith Brown

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-1937...

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#93

Post by kps »

crazypyro wrote: post #18
mattmaroon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. At all. I mean, a rational person might make the assumption that this guy is not actually whiteboarding an ICBM launch from a rented apartment. But there's nothing about it indicating to a non-technical person that it's a game.

Uhhh? The "mouse click" was a dead give away. Also, Occam's Razor. Is this guy programming a game in his apartment or is he programming a ICBM with 0 related hardware plus probably no other corroborating evidence. No reason to act like it takes more than a couple minutes of investigation to figure this shit out. Edit: for the guy below me, since I can't reply directly, find me a nuclear missile guidance system that i…

Well, there's this:

“A left mouse push fires it. Kinda crazy really. We actually asked for a great big red button, but they wouldn't give us one.” ¹

Though that's in reference to submarine-launched non-nuclear cruise missiles, not ICBMs. ICBMs might still rate a great big red button.

Not that OP's experience is any less silly.

¹ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3078097.stm

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#94

Post by BrandonMarc »

Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these people "if you see something, say something", then you're going to get a ridiculous amount of false positives.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th...

Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a terrorist! Can't be a photographer and aviation enthusiast, no!

As Bruce says, the CYA angle is also horrific. Landlord sees something, thinks it might be nothing, but just in case, tells the local cops. Cops figure it might be nothing, but just in case, calls the FBI. Branch office figure it might be nothing, but just in case, gets regional / national HQ involved. Somewhere in the chain someone inadvertently gets word to the other 3-letter agencies, and the effect is magnified.

... and every time it's escalated, people figure "well, the people below me wouldn't have escalated unless they had reason to" ... while at the same time thinking, "well, I'm not sure, but I'm also not going to be the scapegoat if I fail to neutralize a potential attack and something does happen."

Everyone in the chain has plenty to lose and little to gain for not escalating to the next level -- nobody wants to be the guy who missed an opportunity to stop / neutralize a threat, especially in the unlikely-but-possible scenario that an attack does occur.

Regarding "if you see something, say something", Rick Moranis had an intelligent take on that at the beginning of his guest column in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=...

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#96

Post by kjjw »

DanBC wrote: post #39
kjjw wrote: post #2

Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.

> Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements To be fair using the property for work changes the insurance and tax situation.

Insurance maybe. But I doubt it changes buildings insurance (which is the only insurance a landlord will take out.) Tax not really - only if one wanted to claim back the income tax one pays on a percentage of their rent, a percentage in line with the percentage of the property used for solely work. That has nothing to do with the agent / landlord.

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#97

Post by kjjw »

jon-wood wrote: post #75
kjjw wrote: post #2

Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.

You're doing well to be charged £100. We just renewed our tenancy, and got charged £120 by the letting agents to process us signing the same agreement we signed 12 months ago, and update their records to show we're not due to do so again for another year.

To update the date on the contract (renew)! You've been had! I only paid £80 for that!

Never actually saw a version of the contract with an updated date, mind you. I am trusting them that it exists.

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#98

Post by chimeracoder »

BrandonMarc wrote: post #94

Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these people "if you see something, say something", then you're going to get a ridiculous amount of false positives. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th... Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a…

This is exactly the problem, as I have myself experienced firsthand.

The 'problem' is that all of us - everyone - has a number of ways in which their life is 'unusual'. Aberrant (deviating from the norm) is not inherently suspicious, because everyone is aberrant in some aspects of their life. Nobody is truly 'normal'. In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal'[0] in some way, that would be suspicious!

Most people's individual personalities and quirks aren't suspicious if you look at the whole picture, but when someone's entire job is to find evidence of 'abnormal' or 'suspicious' things about someone it means that they can construct a suspicious narrative about anyone, as long as they have the motivation or interest to[1].

In other words, it simply becomes a game of finding evidence that confirms one's own (or an organization's own) cognitive or systemic biases.

[0] More than 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the mean, etc.

[1] CYA is a common 'motivation' in this sense.

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#99

Post by crazypyro »

Zikes wrote: post #79
crazypyro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh? The "mouse click" was a dead give away. Also, Occam's Razor. Is this guy programming a game in his apartment or is he programming a ICBM with 0 related hardware plus probably no other corroborating evidence. No reason to act like it takes more than a couple minutes of investigation to figure this shit out. Edit: for the guy below me, since I can't reply directly, find me a nuclear missile guidance system that i…

I don't need to find a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse click, because that is not what is being argued. What is being argued is that it is not out of the question to expect that such a system may or could exist. It's not unreasonable to think that it could. Occam's Razor. Are all of our nukes controlled solely by systems that do not involve a mouse, or might there be…

We are arguing whether it is out of the question to expect that such a system's TARGETING is based on clicking a point on a imprecise map (per the rest of the whiteboard). It is completely out of the question to expect ICBM to be targeted with a mouse. You are (incorrectly) extrapolating the mouse click to mean that there is a mouse click somewhere in the process and NOT at the exact point drawn on the board. If you follow the flow chart, it says mouse click and then gets the target location based on that imprecise click.

Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks

#100

Post by aetherson »

samspot wrote: post #42

Devil's Advocate: You are a nontechnical person and stumble upon what appear to be plans for a terrorist attack. You talk to the person about it and they say "Don't worry. is computer game". A great exploration of this is the 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey reports her neighbor for what ends up being a plan to get on the show 'The Amazing Race'. The problem is, not knowing any better, you feel obligated to report the…

No particular technical sophistication should be required to understand that terrorists do not launch intercontinental missiles.
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