Hacker News: bdowling

New comment by bdowling in "Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft"

bdowling — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:22:40 +0000

Powerful interests want it to be true.

New comment by bdowling in "Palisades Fire suspect's ChatGPT history to be used as evidence"

bdowling — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 14:00:23 +0000

Arson is also an inherently dangerous felony, which is why when someone dies because of arson, the arsonist can be charged with murder.

New comment by bdowling in "Implementing Forth in Go and C"

bdowling — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 02:42:52 +0000

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).

New comment by bdowling in "Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam"

bdowling — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 19:22:49 +0000

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.

New comment by bdowling in "Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US"

bdowling — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 01:21:48 +0000

Design patents expire, unlike trademarks.

New comment by bdowling in "New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder"

bdowling — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 03:27:42 +0000

A patent application is a constructive reduction to practice. MPEP 2138.05. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2138.html#:~:tex...

New comment by bdowling in "The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)"

bdowling — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 09:19:44 +0000

No one lives forever. You can’t take it with you. In the long run, we’re all renting.

New comment by bdowling in "Microsoft won't support Office apps on Windows 10 after October 14th"

bdowling — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:19:23 +0000

New machines with Windows 10 were sold in 2021.

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

New comment by bdowling in "Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)"

bdowling — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 07:06:25 +0000

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.

New comment by bdowling in "Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)"

bdowling — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 06:59:26 +0000

I agree. The affordable housing costs $1M per unit because that is the market price for constructing any housing in those areas.

New comment by bdowling in "Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)"

bdowling — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 03:45:32 +0000

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...

New comment by bdowling in "30% drop in O1-preview accuracy when Putnam problems are slightly variated"

bdowling — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:23:48 +0000

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.

New comment by bdowling in "Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]"

bdowling — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 01:27:41 +0000

https://xkcd.com/386/

New comment by bdowling in "A 10-Year Battery for AirTag"

bdowling — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 07:52:43 +0000

I'm curious too. I found a lot of skepticism of a similar claim.

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

New comment by bdowling in "DEA passenger searches halted after watchdog finds signs of rights violations"

bdowling — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 19:42:15 +0000

It's a shame, because school choice could be a rallying cry for "Tax the rich to pay for private schools for all kids."

New comment by bdowling in "DEA passenger searches halted after watchdog finds signs of rights violations"

bdowling — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 17:50:17 +0000

It’s a joke because most American schools are run by the government.

New comment by bdowling in "Tencent Hunyuan-Large"

bdowling — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 06:13:59 +0000

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.

New comment by bdowling in "Tencent Hunyuan-Large"

bdowling — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 23:00:02 +0000

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” .)

New comment by bdowling in "Tencent Hunyuan-Large"

bdowling — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:55:29 +0000

Half a century worth of reporters’ notes might be some valuable training data.

New comment by bdowling in "Sorry, Gas Companies – Parody Isn't Infringement (Even If It Creeps You Out)"

bdowling — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 16:03:21 +0000

Streisand effect bait?