sbuttgereit

[delayed]

To be fair, this isn't that different from things we'd do back in the day.

I use to write BBS software in BASIC on the C64, and one of the things we'd do is use a "compiler" that would do some optimizations. What this allowed was being able to write a program too big to actually run, but the optimized version of it could.

I wish I could share more details and be less hand-wavy... but it turns out the 80's were a long time ago and I just haven't given it much thought since then (at least until I saw your comment).

Hear, hear. Just because something -looks- like it has the qualities of a sequence, order, or other meaning outside of that one thing which it is: an identity, doesn't mean that you can reliably use it for that other purpose. I don't care if it's a UUIDv7 or am autoincremented-integer-of-some-sort: you're getting a record ID and nothing more. Mistaking and ID for something more is the best preparation for some poor soul's headache at some point in the (possibly distant) future.

I think the bigger lesson from what you say isn't so much about Waymo or this topic generally but to always remember that forums like HN are not reliable reporters of reality: they can only give you an indication of who was moved to say something and an indication of what they want you to believe... true or not.

I'm sure you were already aware of that, but its easy to forget that and think you're dealing with something more real.

In Git, but workflows in Jujutsu aren't necessarily the same as in Git.

Branches for example aren't named in Jujutsu. You can bookmark them which gives them a name in some sense... but that's an optional thing you can do, often as a concession to centralized Git interoperability.

So in this case the parent to your post isn't thinking about it wrong given the context and such workflows have their advantages I've found.

Many years ago, I found an image via Goggle that I used as a desktop image: an old copper stamp mill in Calumet MI[1]. That image had a ghost image in it and I got a little obsessed.

After more research than I should have ever put into this question, I found a copy of the photo responsible for the ghost image[2].

Not being able to leave things at that... I had to try and find where the photo had been taken in Google Maps and street view. And I did[3]!

Wandering around maps and street view I found a number of houses in the original photo that are still there, like [4]. The intersection that is front and center on the photo [2] is the current intersection of Oak St & Spruce St. The duplex home at the bend in that intersection, where the woman is walking in front, is still there, though clearly it's seen better days.

Definitely spent too much time, even if virtually, in Calumet, MI.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

[2] https://www.shorpy.com/node/11417

[3] http://goo.gl/maps/xYctZ

[4] http://goo.gl/maps/BSkFj

Perhaps... but is this all you found once you made it into the Ministry of Information? Perhaps this was a sort of Information Retrieval all its own?

Geologic systems are more complex than this. Analyzing something like this as though it were a single system is wrought with the dangers of miscalculation.

You could locally release stresses on an incremental, short term basis this way in a local system, while at the same time increasing stresses on nearby systems which could fail even more spectacularly, especially if the increasing stresses are being moved from a less dangerous system to a more dangerous system.

I'm not suggesting the above is true in this case, but that you need to cast a pretty wide net with increasingly unknown (and perhaps unknowable) variables as you start to inject real changes into a local system and try to predict what those changes will actually do.

In all honesty I think this is an unfair characterization. I've listened to his podcast for a fair number of years and I think you're exaggerating quite a bit.

Mostly the episodes are specific topics with a guest who's area of research/specialty is the topic and which stay pretty well on-topic.

Most of the AMA episodes are in the area's where Carroll specialize: physics and philosophy of science. It -occasionally- veers off into politics or basketball, but it's nowhere close to 51% politics and basketball. I think the most recent AMA did have more basketball than usual, and admittedly more than I like. And I am not a fan of his politics nor do I consider his political positions especially thoughtful or insightful. But those diversions are more occasional distractions than some majority of the AMA content. And in a 3+ hour Q&A format its not surprising that he's asked about those areas where his regular listeners know that he has a particular interest or position.

Or maybe Europe just thinks if you can't beat 'em, join 'em:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/world/europe/germany-afd-...

Right. The de facto/apparent case that many users encounter shouldn't be considered the correct mental model or implementation pattern... it just explains why some people see it that way.

Not long ago I designed an authentication system which had to be disconnected from authorization pretty fully. The authentication was global in a multi-tenanted system, but access to any tenant was authorized at the tenant level (as well as all other authorization concerns). To be fair, there was some global authorization concerns, but the vast majority of authorizing actions, including tenant access was governed at the tenant level after authentication.

I think you've got the right idea, though in practice the initial "authentication" question (you are who you say you are) is very closely linked to the initial "authorization" evaluation (can you enter).... because in most systems the only "can you enter" authorization required for access is in fact that you are who you say you are.

But not all systems work this way. There are some systems where you can log in successfully, but then are immediately escorted out because the "can you enter" question has secondary considerations or is decided once identity has been established based on a larger criteria. Expired accounts in some systems work exactly like this.

"Can do" and "can do easily" or "can do with minimal friction" aren't the same.

I use JJ locally and for those that call it a "porcelain" or a "git UI" are missing a lot. Sure you can use it that way, but what I've found is that it facilitates (and perhaps encourages) a pretty different workflow than I'd use with just plain Git. I could pull off what I do in JJ in just plain Git... but it wouldn't at all feel natural and you can really see this when you start using a JJ driven repository with Git tools (including just the Git command line tools).

Personally, and as a mere version control user, I prefer the JJ model of version control much more than Git's. The mechanics of the UI was very easy to get under my fingers (the essentials in about a day), but getting the ideas and really getting an understanding/appreciation for the conceptual differences and their ramifications on workflow took a month or two of regular working and trying things. For me, it was worth the effort.

Of course. But still it's not the same.

What's different is that I found the journey can be just as interesting and engaging as the destination. I read papers, books, and even spend time around here... not because the solutions require it, but because I care about the craft and the process itself.

So yes, the resulting solution is the prime mover, but the process of finding the solutions is no longer just a means to the end, it's part of the motivation of being involved in the profession at all.

I very first got into programming by trying to fix a graphic adventure game that somehow was released with a pretty clear syntax error. This was back in the VIC-20 days. Really, for the first while it was about the games ... tweaking them, altering them, and later writing them.

The actual programming was always a means to that gaming end back then and not the end in itself. So in that sense I can completely relate to where you're coming from.

Over a couple years of that, it started to dawn on me that the programming itself had a power and interest all its own worth pursuing.

But I think if it was dropped in front of me as something I ought to do, no matter how dressed up in "fun" it was, it would have set off my non-conformist predispositions a little too much.

I habitually complain about government... so let me help you out with this.

The original issue with the law was never that those poor open source developers were going to have to bear the burden of complying with the law, but that the law itself was a bald-faced invasion of privacy by an overbearing troupe of people in power (i.e., government) so shit-sure of their superiority over the simple common folk they govern (i.e., you and me) that they aren't even embarrassed by their own arrogance.

I would suggest that what "we wanted" is no such law at all. What would be weird, and worthy of comment, is if those of us that complain about government were actually satisfied by an exemption which only applies to pretty damn tiny slice of the market. If anything, that wasn't a victory for privacy or common sense, but rather a concession that they had foolishly created a law that they wouldn't have been able to enforce as broadly as they thought they could get away with... or if they tried to enforce it they'd have to contend with the optics of the big hand of government yet again crushing individuals whose only real crime was their altruism rather than just some giant corporation.

So it isn't weird at all that "we're" silent. This isn't a win. Pointing out that the law had unintended consequences, including with Linux, et al., wasn't a statement of objective but rather a simple show that the law was rife with thoughtless unintended, or perhaps simply unspoken, consequences. The legislature's act here didn't restore privacy nor did it remove bad outcomes: if anything it now just raises questions about equal protection under law, at least on some practical level. It raises the question why some users of computers need such protections as age verification and others don't, and why the licensing terms of the OS are a valid proxy for that need... taking for granted that the stated purposes of the law are the real ones, of course.

Yes and the burden of proof standard is typically lower in a civil case than it is in a criminal proceeding. So a prosecutor may very legitimately not bring a criminal case if they feel they can't meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, but the same evidence brought in civil court could very well win the day. So the civil suit path could still be a deterrent to bad behavior if not so severely throttled.

> Cops can still be prosecuted for behavior that is a constitutional violation and outside the scope of what a normal cop would consider reasonable.

[edit: I didn't correctly read the comment I was replying to, which was talking about prosecutions, not civil suits. But I do believe that qualified immunity is still largely an issue with Flock, so I'm not retracting the comment entirely.]

So long as there is already an established legal precedent for the rather specific circumstances at stake, then yes, that's true. But that has to be demonstrated in pre-trial motions because the default is qualified immunity is grounds for dismissal of the case prior to any judgement on the facts absent such a clear cut applicability of precedence. Sure, you could appeal the dismissals... but that's quite a barrier and burden just to get to having a case heard let alone then having to try the case in question.

Consider this quote from the 9th District Court of Appeals' opinion on a qualified immunity appeal:

"The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity. The panel reasoned that although the decision in Brewster v. Beck, 859 F.3d 1194 (9th Cir. 2017) was instructive on the question of whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to the warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment, Brewster’s facts varied in legally significant ways from those in this case. Moreover, the panel noted that the City Officers seized Appellants’ property in 2013, prior to the Brewster decision in 2017. The panel held that although the City Officers ought to have recognized that the alleged theft was morally wrong, they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment. The panel further held that the Fourth Circuit’s unpublished decision in Mom’s Inc. v. Willman, 109 F. App’x 629, 636– 37 (4th Cir. 2004)—the only case law that the time of the incident holding that the theft of property pursuant to a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment—did not put the “constitutional question beyond debate.”"

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/1...

Given that Flock cameras and the associated search technologies raise novel legal circumstances, qualified immunity is a real concern here.

> I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China.

Any police state can absolutely achieve a low rate of crime: both those crimes that even those of us that embrace individual rights want to see stopped but also those crimes that us liberal types would consider exercise of rights.... but are definitely crimes in China.

The problem is, you can't stop the real, mutually agreed crime with tools like this without endangering the elimination of legitimate individual rights.

In more liberal societies, this means we have real barriers for evidence collection and usage which absolutely let some universally recognized bad guys get away... because those barriers help ensure that the law doesn't become a tool against the merely politically inconvenient opposition members who properly should be able to speak out against the powerful.

If you had a perfectly objective government filled with dispassionate people dedicated to their legitimate role of protecting the rights of the citizenry... perhaps there wouldn't be any issue. But when you have people that decide to turn their opponents into criminals only because of their opposition or questionable loyalty.... No thank you... you can stay in China if that's the kind of society you're willing to accept.

From what I've seen... I think if I were writing business applications, I'd reach for Elixir... if I were writing something lower level like communication software, I'd reach for Erlang.

I have written a fair amount of Elixir (and targeting business applications) and I think Elixir's expressiveness lends itself well to making more abstract models of the business processes and data seen in solving business problems. However, writing Elixir I find you end up reading a lot of Erlang and in certain problem spaces I could imagine the appeal over Elixir. I could absolutely see where if I were writing more technically oriented programs.... programs closer to the hardware in some ways or programs designed to communicate with other programs (protocols, etc.) I could see Erlang as being a more clear and direct language in these circumstances.

All of this is very hand-wavy, but it's my impression.

At some level, we're talking past each other.

Your initial observation is correct so long as we're willing to limit the scope of our comments to the specific facts of the case being reported, similar to how a criminal jury would most likely be restricted in such a review of fact/law. In that sense you're right: nothing new here, this is simply a case of certain officers misusing policing tools, not unlike had they used police resources to wiretap their victims for their own personal interests.

But what many of us are commenting on isn't the specific, narrow details of this case, but the implications that this case carries more broadly. Many of us believe approaching this case with the narrowness of a jury misses the point that the barrier to these kinds of abuse are substantially lower with these new technologies than was true in decades past. New technologies dramatically reduce the cost (time, money, expertise) of perpetrating such violations of personal privacy and rights; it use to be that it was costly enough that surveilling a suspect had to be a directed effort... now we capture all the data and only direct the computer assisted analysis. That what was done here falls under "decades old" provisions of law meant to prevent such specific abuse is great, but that doesn't change that what is reported here has a substantial lower barrier for abuse than was true in decades past. And even then those decades old safeguards only apply when there is government will to apply them... in this case there appears to be... but that isn't always true and when the abuse is systematic abuse by the government itself all bets are off in regard to such safeguards. Many of us think that this case is another example of these new issues worthy of opening the broader discussion about the implications that this case raises rather than looking at with a clinically narrow examination of the facts of the case.

Qualified immunity and its mechanics specifically blocks one avenue for redress by implementing the default assumption that government officials are protected unless a previous finding of constitutional violation exists involving the specific details of the complaint. Given that these aren't decades old technologies and the violations wouldn't have been tested before, qualified immunity is much more likely to be blocked in a case like this than not: you'd very likely need to get the US Supreme Court to rule to establish such a precedent.

To answer your specific question: "What immunity applies here?" The answer is qualified immunity is almost certainly to be invoked if any of the victims chose to seek remedy for their denial of rights by these officers in a civil setting. In fact, one of my points is that it absolutely applies by default unless the plaintiffs in such a suit can demonstrate that prior case law settled the question that using something like Flock cameras for surveilling them without a warrant is a violation of their constitutional rights. Absent that applicable case law: qualified immunity would seem to apply by default. Do we know that it has been applied? No. In fact the article is silent about whether victims have even been notified that they were the target of such surveillance or if civil cases have been filed. Even if not filed, the very nature of qualified immunity, and its own decades long protections of such violations, may be sufficient discouragement to even file such a claim absent clear supporting case law.

The first sentence is correct insofar as the criminal proceedings are concerned, but assuming that the targets of the searches have had their rights violated they could very well be denied their ability to sue for restitution under Qualified Immunity.

The second sentence is just wrong. Qualified immunity is a shield from civil actions without regard to if the violation was/was not malicious or with/without intent.

This is from one of the IJ pages I linked:

"Does qualified immunity apply when government workers intentionally violate the law?

Yes. Qualified immunity applies even when officials intentionally or recklessly violate the law. The primary consideration in a qualified immunity analysis is whether there is an earlier court case specifically stating that the particular actions of an official are unconstitutional. So, for example, the Ninth Circuit U.S Court of Appeals held that police accused of stealing $225,000 while executing a search warrant were entitled to qualified immunity because that court had 'never addressed whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant…violates the Fourth Amendment.' It did not matter 'that virtually every human society teaches that theft generally is morally wrong.'"

-- (https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...)

Or more directly from the summary of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion:

"The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity."

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/1...

Theft requires criminality and intent and is arguably malicious. Yet, the court held that they couldn't even be sued on the basis of qualified immunity being applicable... that's not saying that the victims sued and lost... but that the suit was never heard on those grounds.

At least the court went on to say that the police should have known theft was morally wrong:

"The panel held that although the City Officers ought to have recognized that the alleged theft was morally wrong, they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment. The panel further held that the Fourth Circuit’s unpublished decision in Mom’s Inc. v. Willman, 109 F. App’x 629, 636–37 (4th Cir. 2004)—the only case law that the time of the incident holding that the theft of property pursuant to a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment—did not put the 'constitutional question beyond debate.'"

Because the question was not previously answered, the officers received the de facto protection of qualified immunity and not having to face the civil suit, criminality/intent/maliciousness notwithstanding.

> For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.

And those same officers, even when it has been found they violated the rights of those they're sworn and paid to serve, are all too often shielded from the consequences of their actions and from their victims seeking recourse. Qualified immunity is legal doctrine which prevents victims from seeking justice in cases where there is no previous precedent for such an action being allowed. I would expect that license plate readers, mass-surveillance assisted by AI technologies, etc. are sufficiently novel that the case would have to make the U.S. supreme court to survive a motion to dismiss under qualified immunity.

So if you believe in there being legal consequences for police officers and other government officials violating the rights of the governed, I would hope to see in your next comments you standing with me and demanding the elimination of the "qualified immunity" doctrine which today goes along way to protect the guilty from the legal recourse sought by the victims of such officers. This is especially needed in those cases where the officers, bureaucracy, and politicians fail to "act true", as you might suggest that they can, to prevent injustices with these police systems.

For those curious about what "qualified immunity" is in the US, take a look at:

https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...

and

https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...

All part of the Institute for Justice's work on immunity and accountability:

https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...

They use to be (along with Lyft). But it's been a very long time since that was clearly true.

In reality I think you can get better experiences than a taxi with a rideshare service (which they really aren't for a very long time), but it's very hit or miss.

So less consistently bad as a taxi service... but far from consistently good.

Glad to see this article.

Always hearing about the terrible MVCC in PostgreSQL and yet not hearing that any sort of versioning management is going to be about trade-offs. I spent over a decade managing Oracle databases and now 20 years managing PostgreSQL databases (with spatterings of MSSQL Server along the way). In the kinds of work loads I deal with which are admittedly quite small compared to what many here will deal with: the PostgreSQL MVCC approach is well worth never seeing ORA-01555 like error message.

Naturally, your trade-offs may be different and I completely acknowledge there are workloads where the PostgreSQL trade-offs will be a complete pain in the ass.

As for MS-SQL server? The last serious work I had where I dealt with MS-SQL server operations, the default configuration was not one where MVCC concepts were enabled and thus not in my databases. I'll take either PostgreSQL or Oracle's approach to MVCC over row/page/table locking and lock escalation any day and I can't think of a workload where I'd trade for that MS-SQL approach... hopefully that changed along the way (I simply never really looked back).