Sorry, this just doesn't sound realistic in any way, or really even make sense.

You say that as if you're surprised. You did see ESR in the headline, right?

And that's why Cook's statement is a red herring.

Antirust law is not only about monopolies. It's about abusing market power. Monopolies are one obvious way to do that, but there are many many more practices that antitrust regulates. Price fixing. Restraints of trade. Collusion. Price signaling. Tying or bundling arrangements. You don't have to have any kind of monopoly to run afoul of those rules.

Apple may have reason to be confident that their business practices will pass antitrust scrutiny. But "We don't have a monopoly" is not one of them. When a cop pulls you over for speeding, saying "But I used my turn signal!" doesn't cut it.

except for the requirement of systemd, making it near impossible to get it to run on other OSes or distros that don't have systemd

That's a feature not a bug. So anyone sane doesn't have to worry about either one infecting their systems.

Somehow the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact comes to mind...

Fair enough, but there's no law in PACER.

PACER is for district courts, which don't create binding precedent. Appellate courts do that, and their decisions are published through other channels. Findlaw is a free resource covering all federal and many state courts. Also see the excellent Legal Information Institute for US statutes, regulations, and other sources of law.

PACER is filled with trial court decisions. Lots of exhibits of evidence submitted during trial. Lots of motions filed during litigation. Less than 1% of PACER material is actual court decisions. And those aren't precedent, they only apply to the case at hand. Sure, they may give some indication how a district court views certain issues. But in no way are they binding on future cases. So they're not law in the sense you mean.

PACER is mostly a tool for lawyers and law students. The public rarely needs access to this material. That said, making it free is a good thing. 10 cents a page is extortion in this day and age, and contrary to popular belief most lawyers struggle to get by. Even though they generally don't pay PACER costs themselves but bill it to clients. Either way, it's a small but unnecessary barrier to litigation for the indigent.

The sad part is, I wasn't surprised by that...

The group is aware that patent licensing was an issue with h.265,

That's a massive understatement. H.265 had no less than 3 competing patent pools: groups of companies claiming their patents cover H.265 and demanding royalties. MPEG-LA, the official licensing body for MPEG/ISO video standards, licenses H.264 decoders (software playback) at $0.25 per unit. This with patents from several dozen major American and Asian companies and universities.

Other companies saw this and decided to get in on the action with H.265. So besides the official licensing body MPEG-LA, there's also the HEVC Advance group of mostly Japanese and Korean IP investment funds. Then there's another pool run by Velos Media that has patents from everyone's favorite failed mobile companies Ericsson, Blackberry, and Qualcomm. Predictably these other groups aren't transparent about their pricing.

You don't just need a license from one of those pools to use HEVC/H.265 without risk of patent infringement: you need all 3. Needless to say, adoption has been slow.

I haven't seen details on that yet, but it looks like the basic idea is that the manufacturer of your phone will pay a dime.

"Hey Bob, if we could extract ten cents from every mobile phone sale in the world, what would you call that?"
"Greed? Tax? Thuggery?"
"Intellectual property. Ain't capitalism grand?"

When will they regain there sanity and add support for {} instead of the "space" madness.

Space madness is unfortunately widespread. As every real programmer knows, the only proper way to indent lines is with tabs.

Fortunately we built this nice ark over here to take all you " " and "{}" heathens, er, kind souls to a better world. Just hop aboard. The rest of us will be right behind you...

The correct answer is: no.

The long answer is it entirely depends. Better for what and for whom? For reaching a large audience with technical presentations? Absolutely. For networking and side events? Complete rubbish. For making dedicated people feel like part of an exclusive club? Definitely not. For making money for conference organizers? Perhaps (virtual doesn't have to mean free).

You're asking what's better, milk or beer, without saying whether you want to celebrate with your friends or eat your morning cereal. It's a stupid pointless question with no answer.

It's not ADHD. Limits can be good things. Forces you to be concise, like haiku. Otherwise you'll drone on for ages before getting to the point.

Is it a forum for serious discussion / debate? No. It's not suited to those. But for quick nuggets of information it's great. Just have to filter the signal from the noise. Which is pretty easy by choosing your sources accordingly.

Twitter is great for: breaking news headlines; situational updates; on the ground reactions; and snarky commentary. Anything else, it's probably not the right tool.

TikTok and Shorts are similar. I can't tell you how many Youtube videos I closed because some guy decides to drone on and on before showing you the real content. Get to the point or GTFO. Time is a precious resource. Don't waste it.

Aren't they infringing on the copyright of, like, every other singer in existence, by releasing their tunes under CC-0 without proper authorization?

No. Independent creation is an absolute defense to copyright infringement. If you can prove you created the work independently, you're completely off the hook.

See e.g. https://www.vondranlegal.com/w...

In 2029, let's see how many people still care about Swiss watches.

Apple has a built-in customer base with regular repeat sales. Swiss watches have a dying customer base and no repeat sales.

I know which one I'd bank on for the future.

Why would you have considered it in the first place? The weather sucks, the food is awful, and they can't speak proper English.

Says someone who's clearly never been there.

UK weather is quite nice, with less rain and milder temps than many major American cities including NY.

But where you really messed up is the food. Food in UK is absolutely delicious. Better than Paris, NY, or anywhere outside of California (still hard to get good avocados). UK has cheap, readily available food on every street corner from all parts of the globe. They've taken the best of global cuisine and made it staples of their diet. No one under 60 eats boiled sausage and mash anymore.

As for language, yeah, you nailed that one. They can't say anything intelligible. But they sound so darn cute when they say it. :)

Every freedom has consequences.

Your right to freedom ends where my consequence begins.

That is not a "counter" to the claim of having a constitutional right. A counter would be some evidence that it isn't a constitutional right.

Free speech is a constitutional right. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is speech. Selling junk bonds as AAA+ securities is speech. Those must be constitutional right?

Every right has limits. There are well established legal tests for when speech limits are permissible (viewpoint neutral, serves an important public interest, could not be accomplished with less restrictive means). Their counterargument checks all those boxes. It's a completely valid counter. The trickier question is whether this triggers 2nd amendment rights, requiring analysis there too.

This is why you shouldn't pontificate on legal issues on slashdot. It's like asking a coal miner to code.