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Comment Re:No thank you. (Score 1) 38

You're absolutely right, and it sucks that I fell for that trap.

In regard to long-haul trucking, I think there's some merit to the idea of having swappable batteries, since presumably the capacities are larger than in consumer vehicles. But since truckers are already spending stretches of time at rest stops, the benefit is incremental, as you noted.

Along those lines, there might be applications for taxi fleets--short range personal transit where the vehicles are all uniformly the same and operated out of a central hub. But again, if the capacity is big enough that a car could just be charged every night, why build these complicated stations?

Totally agreed.

Comment Re:No thank you. (Score 3, Insightful) 38

This idea has always smelled like a scam--a bad faith argument pushed by EV proponents to try to convince people to buy or invest in EVs now.

I disagree with the bold bit. This has never been a thing people serious about EVs have pushed. This is a thing that folks that hate the idea of EVs have pushed as "if they did this, then I'd suddenly be interested." The companies that have (claimed to) make an attempt at it were always scam artists pandering to that crowd, not the people who like EVs and understand them.

That all said, if there was a major manufacturer of fleet trucks and they designed their vehicles for this and had a division rolling it out, that'd be a different thing. A monoculture of hardware, the ability to track inputs and outputs (the "my brand new battery just got replaced with one that's nearly EoL!") and tooling... along with massive battery packs meant for long hauls... that could potentially make sense. But given drivers have limited road-hours per day by law... I'm skeptical even there.

Comment Re:Who's fault? Big Tech or the Graduates? (Score 1) 111

Nor is living when you are working for free.

AFAICT, approximately all software development internships are paid, most of them reasonably well. I have two insights into this, the first is as working SWE. My employers and all of the others around them pay interns pretty well. The second is as a member of the industry advisors board for my alma mater, a non-prestigious four-year state university. Talking to other industry reps and to professors and university job placement support staff, I've yet to encounter anyone who knows of any unpaid internships. The internships in the area where I live (Utah) are much less well-compensated than internships in the area where I work (Silicon Valley), but even the Utah internships are $15-30 per hour. Not great money, but not terrible for someone who doesn't have a degree or any work experience.

The closest thing to an unpaid internship I've seen in software is that my university has a grant program that will pay students to do internships at local companies, so the intern is free to the company they're doing work for, but the student is still getting paid $15/hour. This program exists mostly because it's been found that giving companies free interns helps them realize that hiring interns is a good idea, and nearly all of them go on to set up their own internship programs (funded by them, not the grant).

Other industries have unpaid internships, and it's certainly possible that as the software industry scales back its hiring of entry-level engineers, unpaid internships may become a thing, but AFAICT, this hasn't happened.

Comment Re:Another part of the story. (Score 5, Informative) 247

Without a doubt, but the editors at NOAA are also. Adjusting the start dates of graphs can make them show what you want. If you compare graphs from the NOAA data, going back to the advent of satellite data, and compare those graphs to those most recently on the NOAA website. The recently edited graphs all start at the lowest point (temp) in the last 30 years when data with the same validity but doesn't show what they want to show.

Debunked.

https://science.feedback.org/r...

Comment Re:Not Loudness War Redux. (Score 1) 52

The Loudness Wars were compression of dynamic range- reduction. Increasing display brightness is the literal exact opposite- allowing for larger dynamic range. Where the Loudness Wars sought to increase the loudness of a medium with a fixed dynamic range, TVs are increasing the dynamic range so that a TV-equivalent Loudness War doesn't need to happen. Article was written by an idiot.

I don't disagree, at least based on the summary. How is "there's new technology this year and next that is brighter than ever before" somehow either an end of escalating brightness or an inflection point? That's not what either of those mean.

Comment Re:"All your accounts are belong to us." (Score 1) 28

My assumption here, and I know what they say about assumptions, but I'm assuming this is about making sure they can collect fees on those apps that are sold in other parts of the world where they've been forced to allow apps loaded from outside the app store.

And that is the assumption you made. The article specifically mentions "affiliates, parents, or subsidiaries” accounts. The way I read it, if you owe Apple money, Apple is not asking Epic Game Store for the money. If you have multiple accounts, Apple is not limiting withdrawing from the main account. Banks have done this where overdrafts on checking gets pulled from savings or other accounts. I would assume if the amount owed exceeds money in all accounts, then Apple would use a third party debt collector.

Comment Re:"All your accounts are belong to us." (Score 1) 28

So, this is Apple saying that they can arbitrarily make up a number that they believe is a developer's income from an app, then charge them fees based on that vapor-based number, rather than charging based on actual revenue generated?

Where in the world did you read that Apple "can arbitrarily make up a number"? The article says that IF a developer owes Apple money, Apple can pull the funds not from the developer's primary account but other accounts the developer might have. For example if a developer has a separate account for two apps and one of them is in the red, Apple can withdraw money from the other account.

Comment A very loose interpretation of "debt collector" (Score 0) 28

If I read the article correctly, Apple will go after debt that a developer owes them by withdrawing from other accounts that developer might have. If the developer has "affiliates, parents, or subsidiaries" accounts, then Apple will get the money from them. How is that a debt collector again which is normally someone recovering debts for a third party?

Comment Re:Not worried about the court striking down GPL (Score 1) 38

Follow-up:

I asked claude.ai about this question and it agreed with the position that the GPL not only doesn't impose any obligation on the seller to the buyer, but actively disclaims any obligation (except the obligation to offer source code).

Claude was more thorough than I was, though, and actually looked up the details of the judge's tentative opinion and found that SFC's theory isn't that the obligation arises under the GPL, but that an implicit contract under California law was formed when Vizio's TV's License menu option offered the source code, and Paul Visscher accepted that offer through live chat with Vizio's tech support.

SFC's theory is that this offer and acceptance constitutes the formation of an enforceable contract under California law, and that the court can, therefore, order equitable relief, i.e. order Vizio to provide the source code.

This means the ruling isn't about the GPL at all, and also seems like a really reasonable argument that Vizio needs to cough up the source code to everything their license menu offered. The GPL's only role here is that it motivated Vizio to make the offer through the license menu.

Comment Re:Not worried about the court striking down GPL (Score 1) 38

That accords with my understanding, and undermines dskoll's argument that the buyer has standing. The SFC probably needs to pull a copyright owner into the suit to have standing. Unless the SFC is a copyright owner, which is entirely possible. I know they've asked owners of GPL'd code to assign copyrights. I assume some have.

Comment Re:Not worried about the court striking down GPL (Score 1) 38

By selling binary code to consumers, though, there's a contract between Vizio and the purchaser because the GPL says that the purchaser gains the same rights under the GPL as the seller, and that the seller is responsible for fulfilling those rights.

I don't see anything in the text of GPLv2 that says the seller is responsible for ensuring the buyer can exercise/fulfill those rights. It says the buyer has the rights, and it obligates the seller to distribute source code to the buyer, and it says if the seller is under some restriction that prevents them from complying with the terms of the license they may not distribute, but I don't see any obligation to ensure the buyer can exercise the rights separate from the obligation to distribute code to them. But I think that obligation is to the copyright holder, not to the buyer, which means we still have the issue that only the copyright holder has standing to sue.

Your suggestion that the seller be responsible for "fulfilling" the rights might have been a nice improvement to the GPL if it could be written so it achieved your goal of giving the buyer standing, and without creating unacceptably-broad obligations on the seller (a stupid and contrived example: What if the buyer were unable to exercise their right to modify the software because they don't know how to program? Is the seller obligated to train them, or make modifications for them?). I think this might be possible... but in any case it doesn't seem to be present.

If there's some part of the license text I'm missing or misunderstanding, please point it out.

Comment Re:Not worried about the court striking down GPL (Score 1) 38

What if you forked it and it is an exact copy of what they used, would that change your standing? Just theoretical for me.

That would have no effect on the fact that the owner of the copyright (which is the original author) is generally the only person that has standing to sue for infringement of that copyright. You would own whatever code you contributed, but since you're saying the result would be an exact duplicate, you apparently didn't contribute anything.

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