riskable

joined 1 year ago
[–] riskable 2 points 3 days ago

The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP.

The data in that video is (probably) accurate but your statement is completely wrong: In that list only Intel makes anything but trivial amounts of money from patents. In fact, Microsoft, Google, and Docker have famously lost shittons of money thanks to patents. They basically siphoned money out of those companies into the pockets of lawyers and provided absolutely no benefit to society.

For fuck's sake: Features were removed from Android because of software patents!

Not only that but Google makes almost all of its money from advertising, not "IP". Same for Meta which is oddly missing from the graph (even though they contribute to and maintain a ton of FOSS stuff).

Then let's talk about #1: Redhat. They absolutely would be 1000% behind banning software patents. It's nothing but trouble for them.

I'd also like to note that Microsoft has been very much in favor of software patents since they were invented by the courts (remember: no legislation added software as a category of patentable subject matter: They exist as a result of court rulings!) because they thought they would put an end to open source software (see: Halloween documents). However, software patents have actually cost Microsoft more than they ever helped the company! In short: They're idiots. They opened a can of worms that's kept them constantly under attack but because those worms also hurt their perceived enemies they've doubled down on their decision.

[–] riskable 2 points 3 days ago

Software existed for decades without (software) patents and has innovated and evolved vastly more quickly than any other science. Then we created software patents and things actually started to slow down (because lawsuits take time and threaten to end great software before it even exists).

Software is already covered by copyright which is all that was necessary for some of the richest companies in the world to come into existence (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle). Software patents shouldn't exist!

[–] riskable 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why? Software patents are already covered by copyright. Anyone can write software and they automatically get assigned the copyright for it. The barrier to entry is basically zero since everyone has a computer and nearly anyone can learn to program by simply taking the time to do so.

I mean, I also don't think patents should exist in general but there's a pretty clear difference between software and things in the physical world. Software is "just math". And I mean that literally: 100% of all software that exists can be reduced to math that you could--in theory--perform with a pencil and paper.

There's a lot of reasons why software patents shouldn't exist far beyond the scope of patents in general.

[–] riskable 3 points 3 days ago

Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.

You're describing the entire mobile games industry. You think all those top apps in the app stores are 100% original? No. They copied other games.

Also, patents have nothing to do with that. Software is covered by copyright.

Furthermore, "back in the day" manufacturing was expensive and required huge factories to build stuff (in quantity). The barrier to entry was enormous! People were mostly uneducated and there was not much in the way of "shared engineering knowledge". Ten thousand people could look at a car engine and have no friggin clue how it worked. That's why patents were necessary: Disclosure

These days disclosure has become irrelevant. Any engineer can look at an invention or product and figure out both how it works and how it was made. At the very least, they can figure out a way to make it. Just look at all the Youtube channels where every day people are making complicated machines, parts, and electronics! The mysteries are gone. Disclosure is unnecessary.

Since the entire point of patents was disclosure why do we still need them?

[–] riskable 87 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

Here's how it's going to go:

  • Pentagon will put up enormous resistance because of cost and impractically.
  • Pentagon officials will be fired left and right because, "they can't get stuff done."
  • Eventually enough competent people will be replaced with loyalists then they'll actually start kidnapping immigrants and placing them in facilities that were never meant for large amounts of people.
  • American citizens that look like the conservative enemy of the day will be kidnapped along with legal and illegal immigrants.
  • The US government will get sued over and over again for fucking up basic shit like "accidentally" kidnapping Black/Asian/Latino Americans and even simpler things like keeping people fed (because the Trump administration doesn't care about competency; only loyalty; or these people, for that matter).
  • Countries will refuse to accept the sheer number of people (same exact problem Hitler had!) leading the Trump administration trying to come up with "solutions".
  • They'll force the kidnapped people to do traditional prison work. Except there's not enough demand for that many license plates so they'll switch to literally selling their labor, allowing Trump's personal circle of rich friends to profit at their expense.
  • Due to unbelievable levels of sheer incompetentcy that won't work out so near the end of Trump's term--when he's panicking about having to face justice again--he'll attempt to implement a more, "final solution."
[–] riskable 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I hope his home gets destroyed by a climate-induced natural disaster.

[–] riskable 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

First "myth" is wrong. Loading CSS and JS with every click isn't about being "slow" it's about being efficient. CSS and JS requests add a non-trivial load to the server. So if you have 10,000 clients making requests for content they already have cached (they're just checking to see if these assets changed) then you're wasting server resources when you could've just kept the single page active and requested just what you needed over an AJAX call or even better: A WebSocket.

[–] riskable 2 points 6 days ago

Baldy looks like it might be General John Kelly... Even though most pictures of him have some hair.

[–] riskable 141 points 6 days ago (19 children)

Software patents shouldn't exist!

[–] riskable 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Learning how to ride a bike as an adult can be a bit scary and much more difficult than for a child. But it isn't rocket science! You can do it 👍

REI has an excellent guide on learning how to ride as an adult:

https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/how-to-learn-to-ride-a-bike-as-an-adult.html

As an experienced street and mountain rider, I read it and it makes perfect sense. Follow their advice but also:

  • Bring a first aid kit (for the large variety of bandages) and a great big tube of Neosporin/triple antibiotic ointment. There's a chance you'll get a scrape on your first try. It shouldn't be anything serious (barely any pain sort of scrape) but you don't want an infection 👍
  • Don't try to pedal right away! Just push with your feet on the ground and get used to balancing when coasting. Also remember: There's a threshold where you're going fast enough to easily balance or too slow where it's easy to fall to one side (instead of falling though, you're an adult and will simply place your foot down after stopping by holding the brake, right? 🤣).

Once you get used to pedaling to keep yourself going it'll be like a switch: Before that moment you didn't know how to ride a bike and now you do! I'm certain it's a great feeling because I still remember it when I learned to ride as a kid! It'll likely become a "core memory" 😁

Don't stop there though! Practice balancing on your bike while moving slower and slower. Get the hang of a rapid foot-down (or dismount, haha). Eventually you can get good enough to literally stand on your bike while not moving at all and that impresses other people vastly more than any other bike trick I've ever performed, haha. Even super experienced, professional riders will be like, "WTF! How do you even do that‽" Hahaha

Anyone can do it it just takes lots of practice and if you try it every single time you stop it'll eventually come naturally. Of course, you'll look super goofy/clumsy the first hundred times (haha) but eventually you'll have a biking superpower 😁👍

Edit: Once you've decided that biking is for you take some time to learn how to do basic bike maintenance. Even if your tires are fine deflate one and take it off then put it back on. You don't want to be figuring out how to do that in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road (and always travel with an extra tube... That's what tiny under-the-seat bags are for!).

Nobody likes having to change out a tube in the middle of a trail/out on the road but is inevitable if you bike a lot. Also, if you smash your wheel hard enough it can get bent enough that you can't ride. No big deal though! Just bend it back! I used to encounter so many people on trails carrying their bikes with bent tires and I was like, "oh! Let me fix that for you..." <WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!> against a log/curb and it would be straight enough to ride on again 😁👍

[–] riskable 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So... Russian economy is a barrel of laughs.

[–] riskable 14 points 1 week ago

Idiots. Exposing your connection is immodest!

 

I wasn't expecting to be joining a LotR meme community when I started this journey but I must say it does feel like you are my people. Maybe some day we will draw swords together.

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Reality sets in (programming.dev)
 
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