riskable
@riskable@programming.dev
- Comment on Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating 2 days ago:
The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP.
The data in that video is (probably) accurate but your statement is completely wrong: In that list only Intel makes anything but trivial amounts of money from patents. In fact, Microsoft, Google, and Docker have famously lost shittons of money thanks to patents. They basically siphoned money out of those companies into the pockets of lawyers and provided absolutely no benefit to society.
For fuck’s sake: Features were removed from Android because of software patents!
Not only that but Google makes almost all of its money from advertising, not “IP”. Same for Meta which is oddly missing from the graph (even though they contribute to and maintain a ton of FOSS stuff).
Then let’s talk about #1: Redhat. They absolutely would be 1000% behind banning software patents. It’s nothing but trouble for them.
I’d also like to note that Microsoft has been very much in favor of software patents since they were invented by the courts (remember: no legislation added software as a category of patentable subject matter: They exist as a result of court rulings!) because they thought they would put an end to open source software (see: Halloween documents). However, software patents have actually cost Microsoft more than they ever helped the company! In short: They’re idiots. They opened a can of worms that’s kept them constantly under attack but because those worms also hurt their perceived enemies they’ve doubled down on their decision.
- Comment on Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating 2 days ago:
Software existed for decades without (software) patents and has innovated and evolved vastly more quickly than any other science. Then we created software patents and things actually started to slow down (because lawsuits take time and threaten to end great software before it even exists).
Software is already covered by copyright which is all that was necessary for some of the richest companies in the world to come into existence (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle). Software patents shouldn’t exist!
- Comment on Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating 2 days ago:
Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.
You’re describing the entire mobile games industry. You think all those top apps in the app stores are 100% original? No. They copied other games.
Also, patents have nothing to do with that. Software is covered by copyright.
Furthermore, “back in the day” manufacturing was expensive and required huge factories to build stuff (in quantity). The barrier to entry was enormous! People were mostly uneducated and there was not much in the way of “shared engineering knowledge”. Ten thousand people could look at a car engine and have no friggin clue how it worked. That’s why patents were necessary: Disclosure
These days disclosure has become irrelevant. Any engineer can look at an invention or product and figure out both how it works and how it was made. At the very least, they can figure out a way to make it. Just look at all the Youtube channels where every day people are making complicated machines, parts, and electronics! The mysteries are gone. Disclosure is unnecessary.
Since the entire point of patents was disclosure why do we still need them?
- Comment on Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating 5 days ago:
Software patents shouldn’t exist!
- Comment on America's fractured trust in science, explained in 3 charts 1 week ago:
It’s because right wingers are authoritarian and their authority told them science is bad.
- Comment on AI tool that sounds like elderly grandmother created to waste scammers' time 1 week ago:
After replacing writers and artists it is now replacing the entire category of, “old people”. AI has reached the, “final solution” faster than I thought possible!
- Comment on One Piece Girls (by Oekakiboya) 1 week ago:
Bah! No Rebecca? No Camie?
- Comment on When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female? 3 weeks ago:
It takes effort but you have to milk it for all its worth!
- Comment on When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female? 3 weeks ago:
Not true! The female nipple is actually useful.
- Comment on Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 3 weeks ago:
Meh. This is but a fraction of what the big media companies think the world owes them for piracy.
- Comment on Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’ 3 weeks ago:
As another (local) AI enthusiast I think the point where AI goes from “great” to “just hype” is when it’s expected to generate the correct response, image, etc on the first try.
For example, telling an AI to generate a dozen images from a prompt then picking a good one or re-working the prompt a few times to get what you want. That works fantastically well 90% of the time (assuming you’re generating something it has been trained on).
Expecting AI to respond with the correct answer when given a query > 50% of the time or expecting it not to get it dangerously wing? Hype. 100% hype.
It’ll be a number of years before AI is trustworthy enough not to hallucinate bullshit or generate the exact image you want on the first try.
- Comment on Diego Garcia: What is on the secretive UK-US island in the Indian Ocean? 1 month ago:
Anyone care to guess how long before that island is completely submerged due to rising seas?
Doesn’t exactly seem like a long-term base.
- Comment on How do I avoid enshitification of my keyboard and mouse 1 month ago:
Building your own keyboard is supposed to be fun. You do some research to figure out what you want. Maybe order some sample switches to try out, pick out a keycap set you like, and eventually settle on a kit.
When you order your kit it’ll include a case, a top plate, and a circuit board. If you get one with hot swap sockets you will not have to solder anything. You can literally just press the switches in.
Then when you’re done you screw everything together, put your keycaps on, and you have a working keyboard. Sometimes you have to flash the firmware as a final step but that’s not rocket science. You do not have to know how to program.
- Comment on How do I avoid enshitification of my keyboard and mouse 1 month ago:
You don’t have to solder if you use hot swap sockets for your switches. Even if you never plan to swap the switches the hot swap sockets mean you’ll never have to solder a thing 👍
- Comment on How do I avoid enshitification of my keyboard and mouse 1 month ago:
Just build your own keyboard. That’s what I did (and it turned out fantastic) 🤷
Mice are much easier to deal with since there’s 500 million of them to choose from. Just pick a generic, no-name brand that doesn’t need drivers and you’re all set.
Aside: Building a keyboard isn’t rocket science. It’s just a bit tedious (buy a kit). Unless you invent your own 3D printable keyboard switch and stabilizers from scratch then design an analog circuit board to work with them (also from scratch). Then it’s a bit more like rocket science 🤣
- Comment on Oxygen 1 month ago:
God’s keyboard
- Comment on Be more specific 2 months ago:
Astronomers: The Sun is a recent development
- Comment on Men: What sequence do you fellow to dry your body off after showering or bathing? 2 months ago:
I just shake myself off like a dog.
- Comment on “Fascists”: Elon Musk responds to proposed fines for disinformation on X 2 months ago:
It’d be one thing if X didn’t actively promote disinformation but they are doing that. They’re picking what and who to promote via their algorithm.
If they had a hands-off approach to free speech (like any given Mastodon instance) I’d agree with you. Since that’s not the case I can’t see how it’s a, “slippery slope”. They’re actively promoting disinformation in order to push a political agenda that actively hurts the Australian people.
It’s basic liability, not really related to freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want but there can also be legal consequences for what you say. It’s always been like that. Even in the US.
- Comment on Swedish church leaders seek to ban fathers giving the bride away 2 months ago:
Of all the insignificant, immaterial, inconsequential things to be bitching about.
- Comment on Why is Kamala Harris being held at such a higher standard than Trump this election? 2 months ago:
Rich people believe that no matter how rough the world gets they will be fine as long as they remain rich. History has shown repeatedly that this is a false assumption, demonstrating that the rich in America really are just as dumb as poor conservatives who get suckered into voting against their own interests every election.
Also many of the absurdly wealthy are sociopaths and narcissists (because our economic system allows people like that to succeed by stepping on everyone else). To them, all that matters is how they look among their “in group.” So if they think they’ll look better by being a few billion richer they do whatever it takes to get there… No matter the long term consequences. Either to them or anyone else.
- Comment on How different would the world be if school never ended but you could leave anytime you elect to? 2 months ago:
It’s already like that except the funding part. There’s free online learning for basically anything available to everyone in the world, 24/7. And people do take advantage of it.
You can learn whatever TF you want from reliable, trusted sources it’s just that all you get from it is the knowledge. You don’t normally get a degree or a certificate or anything like that. Because those things are for traditional institutions (and how they make money).
If you really want to learn something, go learn it. What’s stopping you?
- Comment on How different would the world be if school never ended but you could leave anytime you elect to? 2 months ago:
It’s already like that except the funding part. There’s free online learning for basically anything available to everyone in the world, 24/7. And people do take advantage of it.
You can learn whatever TF you want from reliable, trusted sources it’s just that all you get from it is the knowledge. You don’t normally get a degree or a certificate or anything like that. Because those things are for traditional institutions (and how they make money).
If you really want to learn something, go learn it. What’s stopping you?
- Comment on You Should Show Grave of the Fireflies to Your Kids 2 months ago:
its not meant for children, German fairytales aren’t either
Woah there! German fairy tales were meant for children! That’s explicitly their target audience.
The whole point was to scare the children into behaving a certain way. Like, “don’t go wandering off alone. Bad things can happen!”
If you just tell your kid that they won’t listen. However, if you tell them a story about how kids that wandered off alone into a forest got cooked eaten by a witch then maybe they’ll stick to the village (and be wary of strangers).
- Comment on You Should Show Grave of the Fireflies to Your Kids 2 months ago:
Even though it’s a fictional, animated depiction of what happened near the end of the WW2 it’s depicting something that actually happened. I don’t think there’s going to be any problems in regards to separating fiction from reality with this movie.
If anything, the movie is tame in comparison to the actual, real-world devastation of nuclear war.
- Comment on You Should Show Grave of the Fireflies to Your Kids 2 months ago:
Depends on how old your kids are… Are they old enough to understand suffering and loss? Then it’s time to make your kids suffer and lose some of their free time in order to learn something important; like any good parent!
- Comment on Microsoft donates the Mono Project to the Wine team 2 months ago:
They officially don’t care about running .NET applications on Linux anymore. They never really did before but so few people fell for that trap Microsoft is finally ready to turn in the towel
- Comment on Majority of antisemitic incidents committed by leftists, not Islamists or neo-Nazis, research find 2 months ago:
The source they “cite” is the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CSM) which is a far-right group founded by a rich, Republican donor, Adam Beren. It started out innocuous enough… With no history whatsoever it asked a whole lot of companies to sign a very boring pledge to not support antisemitism. These companies signed it because, “Why not? Antisemitism is bad. Sure.”
Now CSM is running around claiming “over 700 companies” support it and making videos blaming “woke” ideologies for… Antisemitism (I kid you not):
forward.com/…/combat-antisemitism-movement-woke-a…
You can learn more about CSM here:
- Comment on What's the oldest game anyone here has played in 2024? 2 months ago:
Chess. It’s over 1500 years old!
- Comment on Google’s head of Pixel 9 design won’t apologize for its big, beautiful camera bump 2 months ago:
Who are the people that care about these things? Everyone’s going to put a case on it anyway.
If I were in charge of product design we’d have two phones:
- A tiny one for people who like tiny things
- A big honkin chonker with a 30-day battery life that could jump start a car that would fit in a man’s pocket no problem