skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is precisely my point though, "stock photography" isn't an individual work. Copyright law doesn't apply because you can't infringe on the copyright of "stock photography" as a whole any more than you can infringe on the copyright of "rap" or "rock and roll" or "oil paintings".

Further, just because a new tech can substitute for a class of old tech doesn't (often, barring protectionist laws) mean the old tech gets to impose legal restrictions on new tech. To trot out an obligatory car analogy, the rise of the automobile was not legally hampered by the fact that it substituted for the products of buggy and whip makers. More relevantly, the rise of photography and cameras was not legally hampered by the fact that it substituted for many painters products. The rise of stock photography itself wasn't legally hampered by the fact it substituted for the work of corporate artists. The rise of point and shoot cameras wasn't legally hampered because it substituted for the work of professional photographers.

Lastly if the argument is about that the tech makes it "possible to fully or substantially recreate any given existing work" using deliberate and specific inputs, well we've had plenty of legal precedent on that too. The same arguments were made about Xerox machines, about cassette tapes, about VCRs, about CD-Rs. The copyright holders pretty much lost in every case. At the point you are taking specific and deliberate actions to knowingly infringe on copyright is the point where the technology used is no longer relevant. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyright of Star Wars at any typewriter or computer keyboard in the world. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyrights of The Beatles at virtually any instrument. It is the act of infringing, not the technology, which is relevant here.

I believe in some companies, the copyright holders won a concession in the form of a tax levied against each CD-R and cassette tape sold to be distributed to the recording industy. One wonders how the authors of those countries felt about not getting a cut of every Xerox machine sold.
And none of us here have ever worked under incompetent management or engineering leadership...

(Hell, I've _been_ that incompetent management and engineering leadership at various times over the last few decades...)
Almost 1/4 (biomass) is a huge scam (cofiring freshly chopped trees in coal plants)
I think I agree with this comment[1] from the other thread; never previously thought that a process being transformative means input and output datatypes do not coincide, but maybe that is it.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240681
What do you use as mass storage?
If you find this interesting, there's a very long, very good episode of the Omega Tau podcast about how seafloor mapping is done in practice. The host goes aboard the HMS Enterprise - a Royal Navy survey ship - and interviews a bunch of different officers and crewmen about the process.

https://omegataupodcast.net/277-life-and-work-on-hms-enterpr...
> What doctors LIKE are the ones they get used to in their residency, fellowships, and first years in practice.

"Like" is too strong a word here. People simply get used to these terrible systems. They learn how to work around the annoyances. They come to tolerate them as facts of life that they have no control over.
One of the issues is the documentation required to get one - the most obvious is a birth certificate, because of course everyone born in the US would have one, right?

1) Many people who were born in the US didn’t actually ever get one! This is more likely to affect people who were not born in hospitals, particularly older, poorer people.

2) Where is it? The state you were born in, and probably* the county. If you’re now in a different state, the procedure for getting it sent to you could be tricky.

3) How do you get a copy? For Texas, that used to be up to the county where you were born, with all the variability that implies (Harris Co: 4 million. Loving Co: 100.) Now that’s “state records office”… with a catch. For any of you here, it’s marvelously simple and not that spendy. If you don’t have a credit/debit card and/or don’t use the internet… that’ll be $80 and “up to” an 8 week wait. No idea about any other state.

So what if you don’t have/can’t get a copy of your birth certificate? Every state is different, but they all accept some defined set of alternative documentation: school records, military records, medical records, attestation from the doctor/midwife that delivered you… all things that someone who is having a hard time laying hands on their birth certificate is sure to have to hand.
The Australia Card. This was a unique identifier for residents of Australia, for which the legislation did not proceed after nationwide protests. Protests marches featured depictions of government ministers in Nazi Gestapo dress, a reference to a government minister's agreement with a question asking if Australians might choose to tattoo the number on their wrists.

The government refused to bend. The public reaction lead to sufficient numbers in the Senate to disallow the enabling regulations (the very body which has previously passed the bill).
I've moved a few of my repos over to Codeberg, but I'm not entirely happy with their reliability, having had at least two outages in the last few months where I couldn't browse repositories on the web interface.
> Arguably, Microsoft is cre­at­ing a new walled gar­den that will inhibit pro­gram­mers from dis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tional open-source com­mu­ni­ties. Or at the very least, remove any incen­tive to do so.

The walled garden bit I get. But I'm lost making the leap to "remove any incentive to do so." Is Butterick suggesting that someone is going to put aside their code and do a deep dive on GitHub looking for a snippet that might not exist?

I'm not trolling. I'm sincerely trying to grasp the argument being made.
Okay, so Copilot isn't illegal, it's just an engine for doing illegal things? That's... not better?
because Microsoft is known to be extremely protective of their code. there is just no way they would expose their internal code to being straight up decoded from the model, while they can just train the model on the huge public data of GitHub
The licenses in question in this issue make it explicitly illegal for Copilot to reproduce their code.
Lots of distance between small monetary fines and a death penalty. I would settle for executives and board members going to jail when they do crimes.
i'm a weird privacy nut. i dont do apps except a few small ones from f-droid that get no internet access. if i need Uber, i use https://m.uber.com/.

an app to submit an order instead of a proper mobile site? no thanks, i dont need to swallow those twitter and facebook sdks, and god knows what else. the APK is 80MB :D

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/mcdonalds-apps/mcdonalds-2/

EDIT: i just extracted it. spoiler: the overwhelming majority of it isn't image assets. it does contain QuickJS, though!
I routinely write a simple implementation with tests, then a fast implementation that passes the same tests, then check the two did the same thing on every call in a debug/contracts build.

Mix it with design by contact as the sibling post suggests and you get 'postcondition: did same thing as the simple implementation', which combined with tests to check said thing was broadly sensible, seems to suffice.
The things that seem largely missing from such articles:

1. Walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods.

2. Passive solar design.

We have created a world highly dependent on various energy inputs. It has gone a long way towards killing off walking, cycling and vernacular architecture (where passive solar is a historic default).

Those technologies still exist. They can be brought back into more mainstream use.
So, if you are not compliant with the posted license, you are in violation of copyright.

This is no different whether you are honkler or Microsoft (other than in how vigorously or not someone may enforce it).

If you really believe that anything posted to the internet ‘belongs to all’ then I don’t know what to tell you other than you live in a fantasy land where Oracle Corporation does not exist. We might all prefer it if things were that way, but they simply aren’t, and that’s just tough.
At the current level of technology, this is quite optimistic... Yes, if the new drug is quite similar to existing ones, the model will probably predict its performance and risks. Truly novel drugs, however, require testing as the model's prediction might be random (outside the training set).

There is a small but active drug design software business and a small but active quantum chemical software business. The iron is there, so we need to be lucky and have the physics permit good, solid calculations rather than being blocked by entropy.

Note: If you're tired of pushing ads and harvesting data, both of these niche specialities would profit from highly-skilled developers. It would be a big win to get the large, somewhat old codes into modern environments and languages such that large-scale clusters can be efficiently used.
No, sorry. I never meant to say that, tho I guess I could argue that by their very nature CoCs are exclusionary, and the longer they are the most exclusionary they are being, at least in general, that is the entire point of them.

I was trying to explain what I saw in my experience in their discord community. I don't remember the rules, or any specific interactions, it was just a overall leftist dog-whistling aura of if you are not like us you don't belong here. I never encountered anyone who was not friendly and accommodating, so while the server made me feel uncomfortable I was and remain ostentatiously a member because of being a big fan of the software product which I have used extensively for about 7 months now.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. You perpetuated this one badly and that's not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Iterating on Hubble would certainly be a bit more realistic, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope - due to go up later this decade - can be considered somewhat of an iteration on Hubble in that it is also based on the same chassis with modernized optics, although IIRC it focuses on a different part of the spectrum.

Similarly, many proposed successors to JWST also iterate on the basic design and technology for JWST to include more mirror segments.

However, I suppose you're referring more to a silicon valley style iteration, which I think isn't worthwhile yet since ground based telescopes are already close to parity with Hubble and are cheaper to iterate on.
This tweet has been deleted... I should have checked sooner, had too much trust that it'd still be working... I feel like there is a joke in there somewhere
Same happens, or used to happen, if you add millions of commits to repo, each one referencing a different GitHub user number in the email address. It times out while building the contributor list to be displayed on the side column.
Is 2x2=7.21 an opinion or a simple absurd? I don't insist the lies I mentioned are as easy to identify. I understand they are easier for some people to believe. But the nature of the difference (as compared to complex, discussable philosophical ideas like "capitalism is a problem") seems to be the same. While abstract philosophical questions of the "life, universe and everything" category can be discussed infinitely and there is no simple right answer, there also are questions to which a simple answer exists, discoverable by any person who would care to exercise some logic (preferably alone, without being afraid to loose an argument).
> What's with the default to "if it's not explicitly legal, it must be illegal"?

That's not how I interpret what's happening.

People who produce things have rights over their products. Be it artists, craftsmen, inventors, entrepreneurs or coders. There is a legitimate question here as to whether CoPilot has infringed upon those rights. I don't see it being about "making something illegal." I see it about answering a valid question as to whether CoPilot is liable for measurable damages caused to creators under existing laws.
Replying to myself about the authentication tokens: on the PlaceholderMC discord channel, one of the former PolyMC developers mentioned that the Microsoft authentication stuff was not under control of the compromised/rogue developer. My interpretation of that is that the authentication tokens are safe (unless an auto-update or the code delivered through the meta server is used to exfiltrate them).
Free/libre software ≠ free as beer.
They're treated with an email to the mailing list? Was there C&D or lawsuit? You make it sound like the ReactOS devs were thrown into prison.
The Curse of the Conqueror
>> that gives the impression of a deep understanding of the human psyche when in reality it shows at best the ability to memorize the criteria around a few invented categories and give a horoscope based off of them.

This is ad hominem. You are ignoring what is said and making a personal attack. That is what ad hominem is, ignoring the argument and attacking the man.

> Do you apply this...

This is ad hominem.

> I don't need to catalogue the fallacies to point out why this is not a good idea.

This is invincible ignorance fallacy.
> Mostly works great!

60% of the time it works every time!
Of course it is cherry picked. The idea is that it allows you to INTENTIONALLY void any copyright you want.

So let's say I obtain an illegal copy of microsoft windows' source code. Under this precedent, what stops me from just (overfitting) training a neural network to produce the source code verbatim, sans any license notice?

But it doesn't end there. What stops me from making a neural network that exactly reproduces the bytes of Illegally_Ripped_Disney_Movie.mp4 that I obtain from the pirate bay? Copyright need not apply.

At what point can the neural network I've described (which is intentionally designed to violate copyright) distinguishable from a neural network like Copilot and others which violate copyright extrinsically?
IDK how generative models can really be used for surveillance?

Certainly facial recognition models etc, can be, but those would seem to be appropriately covered by the Google Books ruling dealing with discriminitive models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,.... They've also been a thing for quite a while, so I think that cat escaped the bag a long time ago.

Remember clip art in Microsoft Word back in the day? Now there is an infinite supply of that. Stock images? Infinite supply. Solo filmmakers are going to have a much easier time creating their own films that can rival the best movie studios in the world. Any text anywhere will be read to you in any voice or voices you like, with tone and setting appropriate sound-effects. Smaller things will just be better too, noise cancellation on microphones? Easy and free. Image editing? Trivial to remove, relight, reposition, etc, etc, etc.

So many other things too. It's going to be magnificent. If you're not into then I guess to each their own, but I do think we are looking at something that can be a net good for everyone in the world, so long as it's available and cheap for everyone in the world.
I’m working on it! Most Windows devs have this strange aversion to “old confusing command lines”.
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to HN. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also discriminates against folks that would like a semblance of privacy as well. Been trying to get rid of my smartphone while every service and product around is trying to make it the only option.

Related, last night I started watching this B-movie on Netflix, called "Johnny Mnemonic." (Had never seen it despite being a Bill and Ted fan.)
From the 90s but set in 2021. In it there is a criminal underbelly consisting of folks who reject oppressive technology called the "Lo-Teks" ... and I thought wait a minute, that's me! That's my gang. Even get to hang out with Ice-T. :-D
Have you ever used GitHub or GitLab? They go down pretty frequently too.
CC0 or unlicense, probably. Although I concede that it's hard to do in all jurisdictions globally.
Disagreement? A norm? Hahahaha.
> Even if it is a copyright violation, that is one out of, IDK, millions, maybe billions already of Copilot completions?

If you, only once, steal lines of code that you don't have license to do so and use them to make money, that's the same exact thing. "Trusting the algo" and saying "whoops I'm sorry" doesn't make a strong legal defense.

In a company of 1000 programmers, what are the odds that copilot increases the risk of using improperly licensed code because "well because microsoft gave it to us it has to be legit!"

And sure, stackoverflow copying is a thing, but they clearly tell you the license by which you can use said code: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

If copilot gives you CC-by-sa code, will it tell you so you can properly credit?
That's the trade off. As an employee, you get more protection against firing for no reason and in exchange, the company get the same protection.

So yeah, when you get a new job you either tell your new employer to wait or you get them to pay off your current contract.
Its anticompetitive and illegal (if the government ever decides to start prosecuting people under those laws again).
caveat: the server only has a single user.

Performance wise, pushing and pulling work as fast as any other git server (Though I don't have any hooks). The UI is snappy, though it can be sluggish when initially importing large projects.

Out of the 2-dozen projects its handling, the only issue I encountered was the Pi choking while migrating a large project (github.com/huggingface/transformers): I suspect it was hitting an internal timeout when importing large LFS files (ML models). Fortunately, since it uses bare repos and a simple db schema, I performed the git clone operation manually and updated the SQLite db to enable the "mirror" flag & it's been happily syncing since.
I'll make an edit to make this clearer, but I was a full voting member.
I haven't seen a single case where it doesn't go off the rails.

One problem with tests is that benefits are immediate, but costs are delayed. When you're writing tests it feels like you're creating nothing but value.

By the time you realize that tests made your architecture stiff as a board, they have already spread everywhere.

I've seen numerous cases where teams were not able to refactor because too many tests were failing. Quite ironic, given that tests are supposed to help refactoring.
Alright, then every piece of music you've ever heard is also a derived work. Unless the composer grew up in a void.
It's been a few years; has anyone had a contrary experience? E.g., a system with parallelism/concurrency that was reliable and faster than one built in Erlang?
That's not the problem. If you want to license your work in a way that allows that, you are free to do so. The issue is that Microsoft did that with code that was published under licenses that either did not grant that right, or which explicitly forbade them from doing so.
Being a useful tool doesn't make it legal.
Penalties that scale off the offender's income/revenues work a lot better. They're common in some countries.
Agree. Having far out views, even a lot of them, doesn’t make you crazy. I’m especially hesitant to judge sanity by conformity with popular political opinions. I get the sense that many are reveling in the opportunity to call a political opponent crazy with the safety of numbers.

Believing in a lot of conspiracy theories, in isolation, also doesn’t make someone “crazy”.

I don’t know the man, neither does anyone here so far.

My interest is in seeing more social media migrate to open, federated protocols.
It's always an interesting time reaching the front page of HN.

As might be expected, Notado saw a huge surge in registrations, saved content and large batches of comment imports today; I'm happy to report that this "hug of death" was handled without breaking a sweat.

Thanks to all of you who provided your feedback, thoughts and engaged in good-spirited critical discussion with me here today. I don't take your time or your words for granted.

Unfortunately I'm starting to reach that "had enough internet for today" point[1] so I'm going to be signing off now.

I have already received a number of emails from people interested in specific parts of the Notado stack and how things work. If you would like to email me to ask about something specific, I'd be very happy to receive a mail from you: hello at notado dot app. I hope I can respond to your messages either bilaterally where possible or in further technical articles where appropriate.

De khuday p'aman!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240534
Haha that’s cool, I do use vs code often but our myriad code bases sometimes I want to search EVERY repo we’ve got at once.
Yeah, regulation is definitely the only reason Europe is behind. /s
Microsoft Copilot is easily the greatest theft of intellectual property in the history of man.

You want to use my code, without ever knowing I wrote it? You want to use my hard work, regurgitated anonymously, stripped of all credit, stripped of all attribution, stripped of all identity and ancestry and citation? FUCK YOU

There's no need to defend something so obviously harmful, so why do you do it?

The law should be amended to make this kind of theft illegal.

It's not ambiguous.
I think he is using theft because currently piracy(which is basically copying files) is legally considered theft.
What kind of app? I'm planning on releasing a developer API soon so people can integrate it into their own bots/services.
> Does it take them as many practice problems to learn to differentiate polynomials or are they able to skip over much of the drudgery somehow? If so, how?

Why would it take everyone the same amount? It isn't like there is a natural law that you need to drill the same problem 20 times to understand it, why wouldn't someone's brain be able to process it and understand it after doing it the first time or even just looking at someone else doing it?
That's an interesting take, the whole level of indirection thing between Microsoft-OpenAI and StabilityAI and that research group is certainly another dimension to this that sort of muddies the waters.
Computers are not the problem. Forced to become a customer of Apple, Google, and a mobile company is another story.
I would hesitate before being so quick to say "worse". Robodebt resulted in suicides and primarily targeted the vulnerable. I would suggest that both schemes just be labelled unconscionable.
You could probably get 2W from a wide over-ear band in direct sunlight. Maybe that's 2-4 hours per day, with indirect light scattered around the day.

If you get say, 2W*6h=12Wh/day, you could afford about 15mA/hr @3.3V. That might be able to power a set of wireless headphones with a reasonably-sized battery, if you left them on a windowsill in direct sunlight when you weren't using them.

Modern designs will probably use monocrystalline cells, but old solar-powered calculators used amorphous cells. Those are less efficient, but they can recover a trickle of energy from weaker light sources such as indoors or cloudy days.

I also wonder what sort of materials they'll use. Plastics don't usually handle excessive UV exposure well.
I’m stealing this for use on both sides of the pond.

I’ve run into, for real, the issue of “essential” apps in Germany not being available in the US App Store, like public parking for the commuter lot in a town on the other side of the country.