Hacker News: _stephan

New comment by _stephan in "Don’t sign a CLA"

_stephan — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 16:05:54 +0000

Is it a settled argument that the US statutory termination right applies to copyrights granted by the common open source licenses? Could you maybe point to a good legal discussion of this issue?

New comment by _stephan in "'The Expanse' Canceled at Syfy"

_stephan — Sun, 13 May 2018 11:50:04 +0000

People obtaining the show from other sources before it is released on Netflix might be a reason for the show not doing well enough on Netflix to be worth picking up. Plus the marketing probably was only half-hearted, since Netflix doesn't own the US streaming rights.

New comment by _stephan in "More details about mitigations for the CPU Speculative Execution issue"

_stephan — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 22:13:01 +0000

I'm curious whether the Retpoline mitigation will still be necessary/recommended for user applications (that don't operate as a JIT or interpreter) once the kernel and CPU mitigations for Spectre that are currently in the works have been applied.

China has deployed facial-recognition systems across the country

_stephan — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 20:51:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-all-seeing-surveillance-state-feared-in-the-west-is-a-reality-in-china-1498493020

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14640256

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by _stephan in "Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar"

_stephan — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 12:14:11 +0000

I just tried this again on the German Netflix website: Danish was listed and selectable for the audio track and subtitle of "Troll hunters" and "Tarzan and Jane" after switching the Kids profile language to Danish, but not when the profile language was set to German or English.

New comment by _stephan in "Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar"

_stephan — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 11:44:30 +0000

I suppose this is because they are afraid to upset certain segments of their users. In the German Netflix you'll often see angry comments in the review section of any show that isn't completely dubbed. Maybe they could avoid this by having a separate "original language only" section.

New comment by _stephan in "Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar"

_stephan — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 11:36:51 +0000

In Germany the Netflix app shows different available audio tracks and subtitles depending on the user profile language, at least for the "Netflix Originals". Have you tried setting the language of the kids profile to Danish (via the "Manage profiles" screen in the Netflix web app)?

New comment by _stephan in "I returned my 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar"

_stephan — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 14:11:49 +0000

The battery comparison with the 2015 MacBook Pro is not really fair, because he turns the brightness "all the way" up for his benchmark, even though the new models have screens with 500 nits brightness while the 2015 model only has 300 nits.

New comment by _stephan in "Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly"

_stephan — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 18:36:10 +0000

If I understand "if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models" correctly, Google does not allow handset-makers to sell models with custom Android versions (but without Google Play) if that maker also wants to sell any model with an approved Android version and Google Play.

Tizen is not an Android derivative. Do you know enough about Google's licensing terms to be able to contradict the accusation in the article?

Btw, I entirely understand and sympathize with the desire to prevent Android fragmentation.

New comment by _stephan in "Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly"

_stephan — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 18:24:14 +0000

The legal question is whether the exclusivity terms in the licensing deals are anti-competitive given Google's dominant market share in Europe.

"handset-makers that wish to pre-install Google Play must, among other apps, also add Google Search and make it the device’s default search service; if they want to share in Google’s ad revenues they have to exclusively pre-install Google Search; and if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models."

New comment by _stephan in "Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly"

_stephan — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:13:14 +0000

An alternate point of view by the Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21697193-european-com...

Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

_stephan — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 12:32:54 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/technology/yahoo-alibaba-spinoff.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703238

Points: 328

# Comments: 282

Safe Harbor Agreement Between U.S. And Europe Is Ruled Invalid

_stephan — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 08:42:15 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/technology/european-union-us-data-collection.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337495

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by _stephan in "Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem"

_stephan — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:28:49 +0000

* no one can sue

New comment by _stephan in "Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem"

_stephan — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:47:57 +0000

If you "change the names and wording" you're actually copying and making a modification. However, if by pure chance you came up with some say detective story that has a plot very similar to one of the existing billion other detective stories, no can sue you unless there is sufficient evidence that you actually infringed a copyright.

New comment by _stephan in "Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem"

_stephan — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:31:36 +0000

Copyright and patents are not "fundamentally the same thing". A copyright gives you the right to exclude others from copying a work. A patent gives you more than that right, it gives you a monopoly over an idea (or at least a more or less vaguely defined implementation of an idea). A patent gives you the right to exclude others from using that idea or implementation even if they discovered that idea on their own and didn't copy anything.

New comment by _stephan in "G is for Google"

_stephan — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 12:44:14 +0000

*can be commoditized

New comment by _stephan in "G is for Google"

_stephan — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 10:35:45 +0000

I'm less curious about infrastructure that be commoditized and more about things like shared source code and access to subject-matter experts working on various teams at Google.

New comment by _stephan in "G is for Google"

_stephan — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 22:22:43 +0000

Will the non-Google Alphabet companies still have access to Google's software engineering infrastructure?

New comment by _stephan in "Intel’s Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle"

_stephan — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 19:50:31 +0000

Not any more?