Hacker News: Cassell

New comment by Cassell in "London Police Deploy Facial Recognition at Protest for First Time"

Cassell — Sat, 16 May 2026 06:26:23 +0000

No, I didn’t say police should ignore violence, I actually said that existing laws would be sufficient. I was referring to governments ‘ignoring’, i.e. not further restricting rights to protest, not the police ignoring protests.

To address it though, I think we are in a bad situation when widespread violence is even a risk; it indicates that civic pride has completely broken down.

I don’t know what the answer would be in that situation, and I’m not proposing a solution to it. (I’m not sure we’re there quite yet either)

More important than people trusting authority is authority trusting the people. The more trust in a society, the less ‘law and order’ needs to be handled by structures external to the social mass.

New comment by Cassell in "London Police Deploy Facial Recognition at Protest for First Time"

Cassell — Sat, 16 May 2026 06:05:11 +0000

I’m assuming here the government isn’t inherently altruistic, and that citizens have to fight for their rights rather than simply be handed them.

My question is, what is the reason that more restrictions on protest are being brought in now specifically (ever since the Extinction Rebellion protests); is there a deeper motive. If there is, I don’t know what it would be.

New comment by Cassell in "Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'"

Cassell — Fri, 15 May 2026 23:53:26 +0000

More often than not, constraints refine and focus a project, rather than restricting it. It’s best to start work with as few variables as possible, and only add new ones when absolutely necessary; You make a lot more progress that way.

For very complex things like AVs, it is critically important to keep the number of such variables down, since each acts on complexity & workload not as an addition but more like a quadratic, or worse—combinatorial explosion.

New comment by Cassell in "London Police Deploy Facial Recognition at Protest for First Time"

Cassell — Fri, 15 May 2026 23:25:40 +0000

Regarding the broader picture, it’s interesting that despite the ineffectiveness of even major protests over the past decades—Iraq being the prime example—governments are introducing more obstacles to disincentivise them. From the perspective of government, why not simply ignore such events, use existing (extensive) laws which cover them? It’s like states are unconsciously preparing for the large-scale disruption which may yet come to pass.