News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

bdowling

Re:IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video] on Saturday September 12, 2026 @12:42PM (#49674252)
According to the article, Starbucks chose not to sue in that case.
Re:Dr. Melvin Scheinman: 40th Anniversary of Catheter Ablation on Saturday September 05, 2026 @12:10PM (#49577939)
Thank you for telling your story. It is encouraging. I’m a candidate for the same surgery because of a high PVC burden, but I’ve been resisting doing it because of the risk of death and other life-altering complications.
Re:Making Peace with Your Unlived Dreams on Monday June 08, 2026 @09:05AM (#48444858)
Might as well post the full version, which adds context:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.

—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971

Powerful interests want it to be true.
Arson is also an inherently dangerous felony, which is why when someone dies because of arson, the arsonist can be charged with murder.
Re:Implementing Forth in Go and C on Wednesday August 27, 2025 @10:42PM (#45047752)
More trivia: OpenFirmware is descended from Sun Microsystems' firmware, OpenBoot. Add-on cards could contain Forth code that would initialize their own hardware and provide a device driver that could be used at boot time (e.g., a network card could initialize itself and provide commands to download and boot an OS off the network).
Re:Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam on Sunday August 24, 2025 @03:22PM (#45006896)
The article is about college-level education, which is primarily about ranking students in order of who should get the best entry-level jobs. If technology is disrupting the effectiveness of that ordering function, then something needs to change.
Re:Blood Oxygen Monitoring Returning to Apple Watch in the US on Thursday August 14, 2025 @09:21PM (#44907639)
Design patents expire, unlike trademarks.
A patent application is a constructive reduction to practice. MPEP 2138.05. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2138.html#:~:tex...
No one lives forever. You can’t take it with you. In the long run, we’re all renting.
New machines with Windows 10 were sold in 2021.

So, less than 4 years of support for those machines.

The answer is to just build a lot more housing. Increasing the housing stock by 10% everywhere would be a good start. If there is so much housing available that buyers don’t get into bidding wars and landlords have to struggle to find tenants, then prices will come down.

Why doesn’t this happen? Because developers will have to do more work for less money.

I agree. The affordable housing costs $1M per unit because that is the market price for constructing any housing in those areas.
Homeless people want to live in cities, for all the reasons other people want to live in cities. In cities, affordable housing is extremely expensive. For example, in Santa Monica, California, an affordable housing project can cost over $1 million per unit.

https://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/Ne...

Novelty (is it new) is the easy question because it’s just checking a database. Patentable inventions also have to be non-obvious, which is a more subtle question.
Re:A 10-Year Battery for AirTag on Friday December 20, 2024 @02:52AM (#42469122)
I'm curious too. I found a lot of skepticism of a similar claim.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47754/are-one-t...

It's a shame, because school choice could be a rallying cry for "Tax the rich to pay for private schools for all kids."
It’s a joke because most American schools are run by the government.
Re:Tencent Hunyuan-Large on Friday November 08, 2024 @01:13AM (#42084605)
I wrote "some exceptions apply" to try to avoid getting into the weeds, but yes, independent creation is an exception. Other exceptions include out-of-term works, public domain, Mise-en-scène (e.g., stock characters), fair use (a huge can of worms), etc.
Re:Tencent Hunyuan-Large on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @06:00PM (#42055951)
A work that is “substantially similar” to a copyrighted work infringes that work, under US law, no matter how it was produced. (Note: Some exceptions apply and you have to read a lot of cases to get an idea of what courts find “substantially similar” .)
Re:Tencent Hunyuan-Large on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @05:55PM (#42055920)
Half a century worth of reporters’ notes might be some valuable training data.
Streisand effect bait?
Why do they have to use actual companies’ exact names and logos to make their parody, which someone could confuse for a real product? Can’t they use slight variations (e.g., McDowels to parody McDonalds)? Wouldn’t everyone still know who they were referring to?

Edit: Yes, this is satire, not parody, and satire needs to clearly identify its target to work properly. Here, however, the target of the satire appears to be carbon offset sellers, as a farcical “life offset” seller. The companies in question are linked as mere “supporters” of the satirical service; they don’t appear to be the direct target of the satire.

Re:TwoSet Violin 'ends chapter' after eleven years on Thursday October 17, 2024 @09:13AM (#41869365)
When there’s a sudden, dramatic, never-going-back/burning-the-ships move, it’s a sign that it’s a personal, not business, decision.
Even a 1 person company has customers.
Re:PEP 760: No more bare excepts on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @02:53PM (#41791343)
Are you sure it didn't cry in `bytes()`?
Re:John Carmack on Inlined Code on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @02:35PM (#41791157)
You can do a lot with a program that looks like:

  while(1) {
    if (condition1)
      ...
    if (condition2)
      ...
    // etc
  }
Subroutine calls can be eliminated by inlining everything, using macros to make the code more manageable. Loops can be simulated using macros that expand to multiple copies of the code, one for each step.

One advantage is that the program will never get into an unbounded loop because the program counter will always advance towards the end of the main loop.

Re:California bans legacy admissions at private universities on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @11:58AM (#41710135)
I’ve seen religious schools accommodate some kids with certain disabilities, to the limited extent that they are able. Kids with serious disabilities will also often get supplemental special education provided by the public school system.

As for poor kids, the religious schools that I know about are priced lower than actual cost and they rely on donations to make up the difference. Scholarships are also available for really poor kids.

Where I live (California) there are no public vouchers or other public money for tuition at private schools.

Re:Amusing Ourselves to Death on Saturday September 28, 2024 @11:14AM (#41680761)
No, most people pretended to read Animal Farm and 1984 in middle school and haven’t thought about them since. They didn’t understand them at the time, and they don’t see the similar manipulations going on in today’s society.

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