It baffles the mind that Microsoftware - known for decades for being unreliable shit - is allowed on space missions at all, no matter how uncritical the role. The potential for malware alone is ludicrous. "Hey, pay us 2500 bitcoins if you want your space capsule back".

Then again, I figure the days when NASA did the right stuff are long past.

U.S. Patent No. 10,855,990
This is old technology, but was used extensively in JPEG and JPEG2000. All these patents are and have been long expired. There is no novel approach in U.S. Patent No. 10,855,990. More specifically, all the claims they're making in terms of the specific violations of this patent were covered in ITU-13818-2. Though ITU-https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263-200501-I/en hammers the last nails in the coffin. I have read and reviewed the claim and the patent and the technologies presented in 10,855,990 are just reiterations of earlier work with scrambled wording to try and give a new name for variable sized macroblocks. They novel approach implemented in H.264, H.265 and H.266 was the method of selecting which specific pattern of "coding units" to apply. I have not checked for reuse of this, but this is neither in 10,855,990 or the claim. So, I believe they checked and found out that there was no violation. Oh and to be clear, they're completely fixated on the sharing coding parameters between blocks. Their approach is almost, barely, kinda novel, but the fact is, I'd make a strong argument that this is obvious, it's basically just macroblock grouping which has been part of standard video coding as far back as MPEG-1 and ASF. And the method applied could easily be argued to be an almost direct copy of LZW compression.

U.S. Patent No. 9,924,193
I couldn't find a copy of the original text (not wearing my glasses) and frankly their description was so TL;DR that they just started making things up. Ok... here's the argument against this. This has been a core features of all DWT based compression methods since the start. It was even the reason we used DWT. JPEG2000 is almost entirely based on what they're claiming here. If I spent an hour on this one, I could tear it to pieces without even trying. And skip mode... what in the world do you think something like Google Earth is?

U.S. Patent No. 9,596,469
Encoding data in a way that would allow independent parallel decoding of different portions, bands, blocks whatever of the image ... blah blah. Back to JPEG-2000 and Google Earth and stuff like that. The first time I saw this personally was at Disney Epcot Center when there was a Cray Supercomputer on display showing off a google earth like experience. The computer was streaming data at different spatial representations in parallel to hundreds of CPU cores who were all decoding and texturizing. The number of patents filed and expired on this one tech is immense. I haven't dug up specifics, but I can guarantee that the JPEG2000 patent pool clearly invalidates this

I just doom scrolled through the rest of this. I highly doubt I'm the only signal processing and video/image compression historian out there. I'm guessing that the LLMs could easily tear this crap apart too. But I'd be willing to make a few bucks as an advisor on this. I've either worked with, against, for, on, etc... on every technology being claimed here and I did this 15-20 years ago... and the tech was already old.

JavaScript is actually a pretty interesting, powerful language, but one with quite a few problems. (I recommend the book JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford if you want to learn more about that.) TypeScript solves some, but by no means all, of those problems. From what I've heard, it's increasingly popular.

This is so true, so true.

And it's not even US specific. In the wake of the Ukraine war, German parliament voted to give itself 100 billion of additional taxpayer money (i.e. debt) to spend on defense. Recently a report came out of all the money spent so far, 90% did not go towards the intended purpose.

Why any of the jokers in charge of our governments are still not in jail baffles me more and more every year. Oh yes, it's because they make the rules, sorry, my bad.

That's what campaign donations get you, if they are large enough.

This is why congress occasionally bullies the big tech companies. We all think they might want to have some regulation or to punish them. Oh sweetie... they're saying "nice company you have there... would be a shame if something happened to it..."

The best time to leave github was when the evil empire bought it. The second best time is now.

Seriously. Anyone who thought MS wouldn't fuck it up in the same way they fuck up everything they touch can't be helped. It's Microsoft for crying out loud.

Don't care. If your shit shows me ads, it's not getting into my kitchen. Note to self: Don't buy appliances from Samsung anymore.

Yes, I am vocal in how much I hate ads. I believe the CEOs of advertising companies should get one hit with a stick for every time their ad bothered someone even in the slightest.

Exactly what I'm saying.

The fact that users and enterprise customers are not demanding better software from Microsoft with the same fervor their ancestors demanded that the witch be burnt speaks volumes.

And I'm specifically talking about operating systems here. Software can crash for all I care. I'm fine software quality being all over the place, the market can sort that out. But operating systems are natural monopolies and the foundation for everything else. We should not accept shoddy quality there.

Users should never be able to do things that cause crashes in the same way that drivers should not ever be able to press any button or press any pedal that causes the engine to spontaneously burst into flames.

I'm also a Mac user, but let's not boast here, shall we?

My personal guess would have been at least 10x. Did Microsoft bribe the study authors?

Dude, are you living under a rock?

These bands are creating new music. But the money that allows them to do so comes from their old music. I have bands in my collection that have been making music for 30 years.

No they don't. They don't even make ok money. Tours are expensive and a lot of people, from road crew to venue security, take their cut before the musicians. The big guys, they make a killing on tours. But the small ones sometimes don't even break even.

In fact, a common wisdom in the industry is that touring is worth it not because the tour itself makes profits, but because it builds a fanbase and drives what is called "catalog discovery" - both old and new fans looking buying the albums with the songs they liked (and for the old fans, didn't know).

This study: https://www.giarts.org/article... says that 28% of income across all the musicians surveyed comes from tours. The share is larger for the rock/pop sector where it nears 40% but even that isn't easy money. And if you consider that only 20% of the rock/pop musicians make more than $50,000 a year, then it becomes a hollow statement.

Plus, it goes directly against your first statement - while on tour the band is not creating new music. So if you want to drive musicians more towards constantly creating (which most of them already do), then you can't make live performances the main income source.

There is more than one study and more than one way to look at it. Especially for streaming, having a catalog matters, especially for the smaller artists who will never have a charts-level hit:

"In 2024, nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify aloneâ"likely translating to over $4 million across all recorded revenue sources. What's remarkable is that 80% of these million-dollar earners didn't have a single song reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart. This reveals a fundamental shift from hit-driven success to sustainable catalog-based income, where consistent engagement from devoted audiences matters more than viral moments or radio dominance."

https://cord-cutters.gadgethac...

Also don't forget that many studies such as DiCola's "Money from Music" focus on the superstars and the big hits. That is true, the charts pop music generates 80% or so of its income within the few weeks it stays in the charts and then drops of sharply.

Honestly, I don't care about the charts and superstars. They wouldn't starve if we cut copyright terms to six weeks. I do care about the indie artists that I enjoy. Who after ten years get the band back together for another tour through clubs with 200 or 500 people capacity. I'm fairly sure they would suffer if the revenue from those albums disappeared. And disappear it would. Maybe fans would still buy the CDs from the merch booth, but Spotify would certainly not pay them if it didn't have to.

He's basically a newborn :-)

Yes, but there is an important difference: TV had to appeal to an average audience member. Meanwhile the social media algorithms are intentionally working against you, trying to specifically find and use your triggers.

That's quite a different intent there.

On the TV, parents could also check the program for what they thought was suitable for their kid or not. They could watch the same program, even if not in the same room. Social media is a lot more personal and a lot harder to track and filter.

Hard disagree.

Not everything is subject to hype cycles. A lot of especially the SMALLER musicians, for example, basically live off their back catalog. I routinely buy the entire collection of artists that I freshly discover and fall in love with. And I totally feel that it is right that I pay them for music they made, no matter when they made it.

What is an abomination is copyright terms of DEATH + 70 years. Or whatever Disney pushed it to by now. I'm ok with inheritance of creative work, but it should not put the children into "never have to work in their entire life" territory.

Then again, there are two aspects: Creative control and money. I think that the Tolkien estate did a generally good job of protecting the integrity of JRR's works. Well, if we ignore Rings of Power, I have no idea what lies Amazon told them to get the approval for that shitshow.

And let's not forget that coypright law is also what protects GPL software.