Hacker News: mjg59

New comment by mjg59 in "How do I inform Windows that I'm writing a binary file?"

mjg59 — Thu, 07 May 2026 04:04:22 +0000

This is incorrect. The syscall ABI is the supported stable ABI for Linux, not the libc API - there's no single supported C library for Linux, and libc often lags behind the kernel in terms of providing syscall wrappers, so punting it to that level wouldn't work. This is in contrast to the BSDs that have libc tightly coupled to the kernel.

Of course, the Linux solution results in some weirdness, especially because specs like POSIX cover the C API, not the syscall ABI. setuid() at the libc layer is specced as changing the UID for all threads in a process. The Linux setuid() syscall only changes the current thread[1], and it's up to the C library to do some absolute magic to then propagate that to all other threads. Which made things difficult for things not using the C library, like Go (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/1435). But that's still not an argument that the supported interface is the C library - the kernel advertises the interface it exposes via the syscall ABI, and will retain that functionality, and if you want POSIX compatibility then you get it from somewhere else.

[1] In Linux, a thread is just a very slightly special case of a process

New comment by mjg59 in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:05:00 +0000

I'm kind of late to this but for some context - bonzini knows me from a long time ago when I was still a genetics student and the joke here is that given where I am now in my career I still get to occasionally answer questions based on that background

New comment by mjg59 in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:26:47 +0000

Some of the context here is that that at the time, Ubuntu was aiming to work on as close to 100% of existing PCs as possible to make it available to the largest number of users. Knoppix had a lot of great features and also was very opinionated, and that had an influence on the set of hardware it worked well on by default. I evaluated basically every decision made there in terms of whether Ubuntu should adopt the same ones, and there were several that were just not good choices in terms of supporting the widest set of hardware possible.

New comment by mjg59 in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:16:54 +0000

This is the era where I was the lead on Ubuntu laptop support, and I promise you that dmix was not a trivial option to make things work out of the box.

New comment by mjg59 in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 03:46:11 +0000

Doing audio mixing well is something that is, for a number of reasons, hard to do in kernel. And if you're still using pulseaudio, why? The rest of the world's moved to pipewire, which also provides a jack-compatible interface.

New comment by mjg59 in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:29:09 +0000

DMIX was typically not an out of the box default, and had multiple shortcomings.

New comment by mjg59 in "Fast16: High-precision software sabotage 5 years before Stuxnet"

mjg59 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:27:43 +0000

Subversion 1.0 was released in 2004, but it was already widely used before then.

New comment by mjg59 in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

mjg59 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:38:48 +0000

Nonsense - HDA systems were overwhelmingly the majority of Linux systems at that point, and didn't have any hardware support for multiple streams. OSS with software mixing was a commercial product that wasn't upstream. ALSA had userspace mixing but it was very much not an out of the box experience, and didn't take advantage of hardware capabilities in the way Pulseaudio did to reduce wakeups and power consumption.

New comment by mjg59 in "OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS"

mjg59 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:23:33 +0000

Yes - VHS had limited luma bandwidth that was about 50% of broadcast TV, and extremely limited chroma bandwidth (the equivalent of about 40 pixels per line). There's a reason laserdisc existed.

New comment by mjg59 in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

mjg59 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:50:41 +0000

Yes, but it's not limited to that case - there's two common variants of the green cone that respond to different wavelengths and people with two X chromosomes can have both, improving colour identification.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:39:25 +0000

There's three steps here:

1) Obtaining the copyrighted works used for training. Anthropic did this without asking for the copyright holders' permission, which would be a copyright violation for any work that isn't under a license that grants permission to duplicate. The GFDL does, so no issue here. 2) Training the model. The case held that this was fair use, so no issue here. 3) Whether the output is a derivative work. If so then you get to figure out how the GFDL applies to the output, but to the best of my knowledge the case didn't ask this question so we don't know.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:53:37 +0000

No. The GFDL grants you permission to copy the work.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:51:32 +0000

No harm under copyright law

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:29:33 +0000

The short answer is that we don't know. The longer answer based purely on this case is that there's an argument that training is fair use and so copyleft doesn't have any impact on the model, but this is one case in California and doesn't inherently set precedent in the US in general and has no impact at all on legal interpretations in other countries.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:25:13 +0000

If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway. The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either.

I used to be on the FSF board of directors. I have provided legal testimony regarding copyleft licenses. I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:21:53 +0000

No, it looks like the stance of the FSF is that models should be free as a matter of principle, the same as their stance when it comes to software. Nothing in the linked post contradicts the description that the judgement was that the training was fair use.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:17:44 +0000

Copyright infringement causes harm, so if there's no harm there's no infringement. You can freely duplicate GFDLed material, so downloading it isn't an infringement. If training a model on that downloaded material is fair use then there's no infringement.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:16:01 +0000

And the judgement said that the training was fair use, but that the duplication might be an infringement. The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication, only distribution, so if training on GFDLed material is fair use and not the creation of a derivative work then there's no damage.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:05:55 +0000

If it's pretty fucking simple, can you point to the statement in the linked post that supports this assertion? What it says is "According to the notice, the district court ruled that using the books to train LLMs was fair use", and while I accept that this doesn't mean the same would be true for software, I don't see anything in the FSF's post that contradicts the idea that training on GPLed software would also be fair use. I'm not passing a value judgement here, I'm a former board member of the FSF and I strongly believe in the value and effectiveness of copyleft licenses, I'm just asking how you get from what's in the post to such an absolute assertion.

New comment by mjg59 in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"

mjg59 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:01:51 +0000

Is it? The FSF's description of the judgement is that the training was fair use, but that the actual downloading of the material may have been a copyright infringement. What software does the FSF hold copyright to that can't be downloaded freely? Under what circumstances would the FSF be in a position to influence the nature of a settlement if they weren't harmed?