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Cake day: Jun 13, 2023

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Edit: wait… return ! 0 ; wtf

I mean, returning non-zero exit status on error is just good practice. It even managed to evaluate to the same numerical value as EXIT_FAILURE when I tested it on my machine (gcc 11.4.0 linux x86-64), although I’m not sure if that’s always the case or if it’s undefined behavior.

This cursed code is quite well-written.



Yes, as are n and i. Do they not deserve ‘fleekness?’


Pro tip: the arguments to main() don’t have to be named argc and argv.

Also, you forgot to #define an alias for atoi, and number, n, and i could’ve been named something more on fleek.



It keeps track of which files you’ve played (e.g. to automatically pick the next episode in a series), it automatically downloads metadata and cover art so you have a nice browsing interface, it manages multiple profiles so that e.g. you can limit your kids’ access to only G and TV-Y or filter out genres a user doesn’t like, it lets you set parental controls to limit the amount of time watched in a day (or disable it at certain times of day), etc.


Trust me, you don’t want to be trying to maintain legacy Jython code at this point, let alone use it for anything new. All the “normal” Python infrastructure like Pip etc. has moved on and broken compatibility, so you’d have to find and maintain locally the last working compatible version of every single package you use. I suppose you could use Java libraries, but the impedance mismatch trying to use LBYL explicitly typed stuff in EAFP python is terrible. It’s just a horrible mess.


is Jython still a thing?

No. (Source: I had to try to keep its zombie corpse shuffling along at my last job.)


My text editor doesn’t access shit on my drive (unless I ask it to) because it’s Free Software and my Linux distro package maintainers audit it to make sure it doesn’t contain malware like that.

You’re praising a pathological solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist to begin with.


What do you mean, “most?” Electron apps are the vast minority of desktop apps.


Haha teletype goes clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick


Dark mode just doesn’t make sense for professionals.

What, you don’t skateboard down the hallway to the server room?





You can still view the source code. That’s what open source is.

No, it’s not. It only counts if it provides the four freedoms listed here:

  • The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

And before you say “but that’s the definition of ‘Free Software’, not ‘Open Source’,” even the latter, misguided as it is, at least still requires freedom 0!


There is no such thing as “conditionally open source.” The license terms you describe are just “not open source.”

If they actually gave a shit about commercial entities contributing back, they should’ve gone AGPL3. This is just a money grab and yet another example of how permissive licensing isn’t good enough and everything should be copyleft.


Or, specifically, should be required to be opt-in only.

Yes, in the same way that folks should be allowed to sell themselves into slavery.

Oh wait.

(In other words, some things are so inherently exploitative they should be prohibited even with “consent.”)


“Eastman Commits More Sedition”

Fixed your headline, Talking Points Memo.


(Nobody tell him about the Cobol batch jobs that still run overnight.)




At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

Speak for yourself, CNN! Your enlightened centrist dipshit asses might’ve been fooled, but that does not mean those of us who aren’t brainless were!


Yeah, but for all we know you went to college thousands of years in the future, Time Lord.



The most sustainable option would also always be the cheapest option, if regulations were properly designed to correct for externalized costs. We should strive for that.


All hardware is “disposable” in the sense that it becomes obsolete after a few years, and the electricity to keep using it costs more than replacing it with new hardware with better performance per watt.

Maybe once Moore’s law is finally dead and buried that’ll stop being the case, but it hasn’t happened quite yet.

This certainly isn’t “green” in terms of disposal, but I’m not sure it’s any worse than the status quo alternative of a landfill, either.


At the limit, it could depend on the extent to which adding heat to the ocean has different/worse effects than adding it to the atmosphere. E.g. maybe ocean heat is worse for wildlife or disrupts currents or doesn’t radiate away into space as fast, or something like that.

Definitely not a problem to worry about in the short-term, of course. But then again, the same was said about lots of other problems back in the day that we do have to worry about now, so…


I doubt they’d be able to stop it from becoming one, especially if they don’t want to spend the server downtime to haul it out for repainting.


You’re correct in your description of what a derivative work is, but this part is mistaken:

The intent is so that artists can make a living for their innovation.

The intent is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” so that, in the long run, the Public Domain is enriched with more works than would otherwise exist if no incentive were given. Allowing artists to make a living is nothing more than a means to that end.


By the same token, a human can easily be deemed to have infringed copyright even without cutting and pasting, if the result is excessively inspired by some other existing work.


Additionally, “copyright infringement is a moral right” seems fairly wrong. Copyright laws currently are too steep and I can agree with that but if I make a piece of art like a book, video game, or movie, do I not deserve to protect it in order to get money? I’d argue that because we live in a capitalistic society so, yes, I deserve to get paid for the work I did.

No. And it’s not just me saying that; the folks who wrote the Copyright Clause (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson) would disagree with you, too.

The natural state of a creative work is for it to be part of a Public Domain. Ideas are fundamentally different from property in the sense that property’s value comes from its exclusive use by its owner, wheras an idea’s value comes from spreading it, i.e., giving it away to others.

Here’s how Jefferson described it:

stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. it would be curious then if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility. but this may, or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

Thus we see the basis for the rationale given in the Copyright Clause itself: “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” which is very different from creating some kind of entitlement to creators because they “deserve” it.

The true basis for copyright law in the United States is as a utilitarian incentive to encourage the creation of more works - a bounty for creating. Ownership of property is a natural right which the Constitution pledges to protect (see also the 4th and 5th Amendments), but the temporary monopoly called copyright is merely a privilege granted at the pleasure of Congress. Essentially, it’s a lease from the Public Domain, for the benefit of the Public. It is not an entitlement; what the creator of the work “deserves” doesn’t enter into it.

And if the copyright holder abuses his privilege such that the Public no longer benefits enough to be worth it, it’s perfectly just and reasonable for the privilege to be revoked.

At the end of the day, the artists just want to be able to afford to eat, play games, and have shelter. Why in the world is that a bad thing in our current society? You can’t remove copyright law without first removing capitalism.

This is a bizarre, backwards argument. First of all, a government-granted monopoly is the antethesis of the “free market” upon which capitalism is supposedly based. Second, granting of monopolies is hardly the only way to accomplish either goal of “promoting the progress of science and the useful arts” or of helping creators make a living!


Edit: …copyright infringement is a moral right, it’s a good thing. copyright is theft.

Except when it’s being used to enforce copyleft.


That’s true, but only in the sense that theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different things.

Generating stuff from ML training datasets that included works without permissive licenses is copyright infringement though, just as much as simply copying and pasting parts of those works in would be. The legal definition of a derivative work doesn’t care about the techological details.

(For me, the most important consequence of this sort of argument is that everything produced by Github Copilot must be GPL.)


Yet another bad consequence of building our cities wrong. If we fixed the zoning code to make them walkable, we wouldn’t “need” traffic stops in the first place.

It’s amazing how car dependency is an underlying causal factor in nearly every problem in the US, from climate change, to obesity, to the housing crisis, to apparently even police misconduct.


The Java hate is not about wanting to type fewer characters; it’s about FactoryFactory-type boilerplate nonsense adding conceptual bloat that obscures what the unit of code is actually trying to accomplish.


It’s almost fine. It needs to include units for the measurements.