4dpuzzle @ tesseract @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

You're right. The 'open source' android phones are the perfect example. But FOSS needs to stop relying on these fascist hardware stack and opt for better open modular platforms. We have examples for such things - like the framework laptops or fairphones. It's somewhat tolerable for laptops. But we are still too far behind in terms of mobiles and desk boxes needed for these sorts of projects.

Articles like these are the proof - Americans wouldn't know fascism if it hit them in the face. And they need reminders that water is wet. After all that has happened and is going on, does anybody need to be told that the US is under serious threat from an exceptionally out-of-control domestic terrorism problem?

Hundreds of cops have immunity over crimes as bad as murder. Meanwhile one loses his life trying to stop a literal coup attempt and the law is indifferent towards him. Are they training the cops to be bad?

In addition, I'm appalled by the light sentences these mutineers get away with, in a country that keeps people locked up for life as a slave for even small misdemeanors. What exactly is this?

Of course you wouldn't. I'm talking about the mob that would. A mob with no more than a few neurons collectively is a danger to everyone else.

I’m part of that group. If OSI and FSF want to control the definition of something, they should make new and unique terms, not just attempt to take over a concept that predates both of them.

Call it OSI-Approved Zero-Restriction Licensing or something.

Whether that term existed before it or not, that's what people understand now. When talking about FOSS software, those definitions are what people expect - by a humongous wide margin. Calling those terms 'generic' is the weakest argument I have heard to dismiss the rigorous meaning people attach to it. Standards are centralized for a reason - so that everyone is on the same page. There's nothing wrong with it. Claiming otherwise isn't anarchy - it's an intent to cause confusion*.

Trying to subvert those definitions and trying to pass of non-commercial as either Free software or Open source software are in my opinion, rather malevolent distortion of an existing paradigm meant to help only the companies that I mentioned before - those that want to exploit the FOSS ecosystem, but without making the necessary compromises. It's an attempt to exploit a widely-held belief based on a rather vague and frankly misguided technicality.

Non-commercial sources already have an appropriate term - 'source available'. It's another generic term with a well-defined meaning. Hijacking the meaning of 'open source' and 'free software', instead of using this one is the perfect indication of the misleading nature of the hijack. And looking at the prevalence of this, I'm starting to suspect a widespread astroturfing/misinformation campaign.

Funny, that’s how I feel about OSI stepping in to claim control of that term.

Funny, they just used a generic term to mean something, while the exploiters use the term that means something to hide their true intentions and profiteer.

You could have the same privileges if you just work hard enough! /s

There are still people around who believe that he's the tech messiah sent to deliver them to Mars.

I felt like I was going crazy sometimes with how often people in the FOSS community insist that nothing is wrong when large companies are massively profiting off of unpaid labor that is meant to help people

Starting a project as just source-available or with noncommercial clause is just fine. But the definition of free software and open source are pretty unambiguous - software with noncommercial clause can't be either. The problem really happens when certain companies/projects want the advantages of the FOSS label, but don't want to make the compromises associated. Any FOSS project has certain advantages that comes with the label - promotion by individuals and industries, widespread training and external contributions. Some companies/projects start off as FOSS (almost always with CLA) and take advantage of all those. Then when they're popular, they switch to non-commercial, citing competition. Hashicorp and Redis are examples of these. When they cite unfair competition, they're outright denying the contributions of external players like contributors and industry that popularized it. It's basically a rug pull.

Another form of this is a recent trend of people claiming that non-commercial clauses count as FOSS. I've heard weird claims like the FSF and OSI don't a monopoly on the definition of what's FS or OSS. Yet others simply ignore these definitions. Any project that wants to be source-available should compete on their own merit, rather than riding and exploiting the world's preference for FOSS.

I think that non-commercial-use clauses are a good way forward for certain projects, and commercial licenses for others.

Just want to reiterate - it's ok as long as it starts as such, instead of doing a bait and switch. But another method is to use AGPL or similar license for all your code. The corporations that exploit FOSS code hate this license. And that's why they widely promote the idea that copyleft licenses are less-free compared to permissive licenses (less free for them to exploit, perhaps). Unfortunately, many FOSS developers have bought this BS.

by turning it into part of their closed-source product

Corporations convert a lot of FOSS code into part of their closed source products. Using copyleft instead of permissive license is a good way to prevent that. But that aside, there is one class of software whose exploitation can't be solved with copyleft licenses - cloud software. Many companies that switched licenses were offering cloud services. And then AWS of GCP comes and offers their cloud version, forcing the smaller companies to go source-available. The main problem I see is, why are they cloud software? The main goal of free software is freedom - especially the freedom to privacy, to own the data and to decide on the computation. That's much better served on local machines than on the 'cloud'. That's much easier today with machines that are magnitudes of order more advanced than a decade old ones in terms of computational power and storage. Yet, we see companies wanting to turn all that computing power and storage into mere thin clients with everything from note-taking tool to entire operating systems offered as SaaS. This entire problem happened because the 'freedom' part of 'FOSS' got de-emphasized in-lieu of profiteering.

It feels like news agencies run these stories just to rub it in his face.

Surprisingly, my guess was C too. And for some reason (which I'm trying to recollect), my mental model was almost exactly the same as in the parallel paths experiment - I was expecting the currents to 'slosh around'. So it wasn't a big surprise when the initial probe showed multiple steps after switching.

I guess there are multiple ideas at play here. The first is that it's not very accurate to model current as the flow of electrons. Current is more like a wave in a sea of electrons. Meaning that though current moves at speeds approaching the speed of light, the electrons themselves are much slower. This is what makes the water channel model in the video so appropriate.

The second is about characteristic impedance. It isn't just another impedance. It's a point property of the transmission line. It's also fundamentally related to wave propagation. It comes up anywhere wave propagation is involved - for example mediums that carry sound waves have acoustic characteristic impedance. An intuitive explanation of the concept...may take a few pages. I just don't have the energy to do it now. I will just say that it's a really really important property. It's well worth it to go back to it, study and iron out all the misconceptions, even if it takes you hours to do it.

A lot of stupid techno wannabes will think that this is cool and ruin it for everyone else. We need that laughing man tech from Ghost in a Shell.

The police use it more like an excuse to harass people of color.

Looks like they did a skip at 4:00 with a bit of aerobraking before the actual reentry. That would make sense, since the velocity is incredible (11 kmps), coming straight from the moon. Velocities are lesser in case or reentry from LEO. Two-phase entry might reduce the load on the reentry shield and its occupants.

22:58 - attitude control kick in again while under shuts. Why ??

Just speculating. There isn't much of an attitude change except in the initial few seconds, considering the amount of firing it does. It's probably intended to consume the propellants and render the capsule safe. If that's indeed what happened, they were likely firing opposing thrusters (in combo or alternatively), cancelling it out. There is such an operation in space tech - called passivation. It's the space equivalent of a fuel dump.

PS: If anybody is wondering - this isn't a pure ballistic reentry. Modern spacecrafts, even the capsule shaped ones, can change their trajectory by rolling on their axis of symmetry (the axis that passes through the center of the heat shield and top of the spacecraft). This may sound counterintuitive, but it has been used so many times already - like in case of the Mars rovers. They offset the C.G of the spacecraft a little bit away from the axis and uses it asymmetry to achieve guidance.

Slightly brighter and shinier. The enamel gives it a slightly darker matte finish. More importantly though, the peeled/burned enamel looks different from copper.

To add, enameled wires are also used in motor windings and old CRT monitors (deflector windings). The easiest way to identify it is to scratch with a knife or burn a small portion of the wire to see if the enamel separates.

Universal health care? Regulation on medical insurance and pharma industries? Perhaps your bank balance shouldn't dictate your chance of survival against cuts and bruises?

How about the right to education? Education is the most important weapon against poverty. But what if poverty prevents educational opportunities? How about some control on academic publishers and journals?

Or how about cheap or free and reliable public transport? What if you could skip hours of hellish drives?

I'm not the one who believes in karma. But if recent events are any indication, the birds may be coming home to roost.

Why are you surprised? I've lost count of how many times this has happened all over the world. Just recently, the democratically elected government of Pakistan fell to its military under pressure from the US. Honestly, the most powerful democracy in the world is also the biggest threat to democracy in the world.

You could lend a hand or donate some money, you know! I mean, they do provide it to you for free after putting up with all the shit that Google throws at them. You don't have to be grateful. But the least you could do is not insult someone's charity they pay with their personal time.

Either the Americans have very weird ideas about transportation or they're completely controlled by auto companies. I don't understand how they think that cars or this stupidloop is better than high speed rail. Traveling by train is far more relaxing, way less infuriating and leaves time for you to do something else meaningful. US is probably the only country that went back on rail transport. Every other country is taking it as far as they possibly can.