Librem 5 general development report - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-17/ <comment><USER2> The cell modem chosen [0] is a bit disappointing. With support for only 4 LTE bands (2/4/5/17), its going to work less-than-ideally on every US carrier. Zero sub-GHz bands are supported, meaning lousy indoor and rural coverage.

Good LTE band support is something you might take for granted if you are used to using flagship Android or iOS devices.

[0] [http://simcomm2m.com/En/module/detail.aspx?id=84](http://simcomm2m.com/En/module/detail.aspx?id=84)

<comment><USER3> This sounds to be just for the development board, right? My understanding was that they were aiming to use a USB interface or something for the radio connectivity so that you could get a radio that suited your needs hopefully, and was certified and approved independent of the phone itself.

<comment><USER4> This would be kind of interesting do you have any more info on this?

<comment><USER3> The original crowdfunding page specified "We aim to support 3G and 4G for the most common international frequency bands and carriers, with an interchangeable module. Exact specifications will follow as we are evaluating the data+voice modems that will be used." and "Separate mobile baseband" as a key tech spec on [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

I know that, for instance, Verizon has certified a variety of modules to work on it's network, and a phone (or laptop) that uses that module need not be certified by Verizon to work on their network, for instance. Every Verizon compatible laptop doesn't get certified, it just tends to use one of a handful of Sierra Wireless LTE modems which are. Similarly, my understanding (and hope) is that Purism is going to support dropping in various LTE modems so that people can get support for the networks they need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just ordered one of these last week. I'm stoked to have a phone that I control. It will be amazing as a dev to just write an application, scp it over, and have it draining my battery in no time.

<comment><USER6> It's the closest thing out there to what the N900 was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We're still working with our potential manufacturer of the development > boards to review the schematic developed by the Librem 5 hardware engineers > and make suggested changes.

Last update we had was that the boards would ship August 2018. I'm wondering if they're still aiming to ship them this month.

<comment><USER8> Since the beginning, they have been rather heavily underestimating delays and potential problems for each step on the hardware side.

In this case, if we consider that it is still the 1st half of August, so a lot of companies are closed or on reduced activity with reduced personnel; that after the schematic is finished, the PCB has to be drawn, the PCB has to be built (that's quick), the PCB has to be populated with chips (it can be quick... if everything is in order, otherwise add a small delay); that the first boards have to undergo some minimal amount of testing before the full run is produced and shipped to customers to ensure that at least its major parts are working kind of OK ; that there was no prototype board before this run (IIRC) ; that if this testing does not go well, major issues will have to be found and corrected before shipping, possibly implying ditching the existing PCBs, correcting the schematics, rerouting the corresponding PCB parts, and starting a new batch of boards... I bet there is very little hope they keep their promise.

And globally, considering that their reports are always 95% about software and 5% about hardware which seems to be more and more outsourced, we can say it is one more time the case of a bunch of software developers and software designers underestimating the amount of work (people, time, and the cost of iterations in hardware compared to software) and the amount of experience needed to produce the hardware side. As it has already happened many, many times in similar projects, with similar goals, with similar people involved.

<comment><USER9> Definitely share your opinion. Every picture of every piece of hardware they have shared thus far has been off the shelf consumer boards and screens. I was at least expecting a phone prototype main board at this point.

I expect them to ship some 'development boards' eventually, but my hopes for an actual phone are seriously diminished.

I don't say this to put them down, I hope they succeed, but I am 100% skeptical of any crowd funded hardware device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The UI of Calls has made some strides to look like the mockups from the > design team. Below you can see the implementation (left) next to the mockup > (right).

Is there a reason the programmers couldn't just implement the design as given? They added a bunch of useless borders and gradients, and removed all the labels. This looks exactly like the Parable of the Concept Car: [https://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/12/concept- cars](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/12/concept-cars)

<comment><USER11> The outer border and shadow appears to be from the default window decorations, which I expect they'll remove in some non-app-specific method. The top bar is the standard window headerbar, which they'll probably remove as well, at least for the dialer screen. The gradients are part of the default GTK theme. Not sure about the button labels, as it's been a while since I touched GTK development - there may not be an easy way to add labels under an image in a button.

EDIT: designs almost always look nicer than the first pass at implementing them, as designers can put pixels wherever they want to make things look pretty, while developers are constrained by the technical restrictions of the frameworks being used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm concerned about the combination of size and resolution:

        Display: an LCD display that is 5.7″ at 720×1440 pixels

The size should be smaller, while the resolution should be probably higher.

They mention, that such resolution is caused by heat dissipation issues[1] (since they by design don't use integrated SoC). May be size is also caused by separate chips?

Regarding the browser, it would be nice to have something based on Servo, rather than Epiphany. Are there good mobile browsers that use Servo embedding and can work on normal Linux?

1\. [https://developer.puri.sm/FAQ.html#what- resolution](https://developer.puri.sm/FAQ.html#what-resolution)

<comment><USER13> About a Servo based browser: I plan to get my in progress-but-really-unusable- so-far Servo based phone UI ([https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk](https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk)) working on the Librem 5. But honestly it's frustrating to see how little general web compat work is happening in Servo right now, where most of the team effort is directed to VR/AR use cases. I'm not blaming the team, but it's hard to believe in Servo outside of niche use cases right now.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the link, that's very interesting and I hope it will be usable!

Why is Servo team not focused on general Web compatibility? That sounds like a major must do before anything else. Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in Firefox with WebRender from Servo anyway, so how can they achieve it without good Web compatibility?

<comment><USER14> > Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in Firefox with WebRender from Servo > anyway...?

No they don't, they're replacing pieces of firefox with pieces developed from servo but there are no plans to ever replace it wholesale.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)

That's probably why they're focusing on the VR/AR stuff, to put that into firefox once it's ready since it'll be a new set of features entirely and not have any legacy version they need to maintain bug compatibility with too.

<comment><USER15> >> Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in Firefox with WebRender from Servo anyway...?

> No they don't

It's in progress and due for Firefox 64 later this year (if projections below are current):

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap)

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at- maximum-f...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps- how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/)

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum- era...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era- continues/)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render)

<comment><USER16> WebRender is not a replacement for Gecko, it is replacement for the rendering subsystem of Gecko. As GP said they are replacing individual subsystems of FF/Gecko one at a time from Servo components. So the fact that Servo as a whole has major compatibility problems has no relevance to using Servo's rendering code in Firefox, as long as the rendering code itself works properly (which has obviously been a major focus of Mozilla for the past year or so).

<comment><USER14> All this being said, I won't be shocked if the end result of all of this work leads to Gecko being entirely replaced in a Ship of Theseus manner eventually. It'd let them get almost all the benefit of actually wholesale replacing it (they'll still end up with technical debt from the legacy interfaces) but they'll be able to get the benefits from it sooner than having to wait and essentially halt all other development to be able to bring it into place.

<comment><USER15> They do slash technical debt; for example, they did it with the add-on subsystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Purism has always seemed a bit to me like snake oil. Isn't the baseband still totally opaque? Aren't there going to be blobs? Looks like they're going to be using a loophole to get the RYF certification:

[https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf- hurd...](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurdle/)

<comment><USER18> I don't think we share the same definition of loophole. The co-processor is something the RYF certification allows _exactly because_ binary blobs are often necessary. It's voluntary. The librem isn't shady for using it, that's what the exception is for! It allows running the blob in a jailed environment, thus ensuring the user's privacy is respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know if there is a way to run Android apps on GNU/Linux right now? If so, would the librem be able to run that?

<comment><USER18> It's possible with anbox, but it requires building the kernel with a non- standard config to enable the Binder protocol. Other than that, it works great though! Take a look: [https://anbox.io/](https://anbox.io/)

<comment><USER20> They did actually include this as a stretch goal, bit it was something silly like a 6 times multiple of the funding point. Would something like this be difficult to adapt to different devices?

<comment><USER18> Making it work is pretty easy. Got some friends who got it to work on a GNU/Linux running on the Nintendo Switch. The trouble is to properly integrate it into your device. You'd want android apps to access your contacts, things like that. Those are certainly complicated to setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder when their laptops will use 8th gen intel CPUs vs the 6th gen they are selling now.

</comment><comment><USER15> > some research was done on TrustZone, TPM and other related topics. There > have also been some internal discussions about tamper-resistant boot, Heads, > and alternate USB modes for video output. So we're really starting to think > hard about implementing security measures for the Librem 5.

Isn't it very late to _start_ researching and thinking about those things? My general instinct is that security needs to be designed and built in from the start - what about the components they've already developed, and how they integrate with each other? - including as part of the development process and even as part of the culture.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've thought that getting Xamarin Forms working on this thing could be interesting for jump-starting app development. There's already GTK support for XF[0][1].

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin- forms/platf...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin- forms/platform/gtk?tabs=vswin)

[1] [https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/forms-gtk- progress#gallery](https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/forms-gtk-progress#gallery)

</comment><comment><USER22> What about the laptops? What happened to their ambition to free the entire chipset? They seem to have switched focus to phones; that's all they post about now.

<comment><USER23> They are the only ones that were able to free much if it .

[https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely- disab...](https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely-disable- intel-management-engine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I saw the mention in the post about video out. I really do hope they can do something with this, as I plan on ultimately replacing my carplay headunit with something homegrown to able utilize the phone as much as I can.

<comment><USER25> I hope they do! My old Nokia N8 from 2010 had HDMI output :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > [...] E2EE of XMPP messages via OMEMO from day 1 [...]

Thats how I like it :-)</comment>


Why Technology Favors Tyranny - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > Currently, humans risk becoming similar to domesticated animals. We have > bred docile cows that produce enormous amounts of milk but are otherwise far > inferior to their wild ancestors. They are less agile, less curious, and > less resourceful.

I have a problem with this premise. Anyone that knows history knows that humans were as tame, if not tamer, in the past. Plus uneducated.

Most of humanity has never been agile, curious and resourceful. Historically a handful of people were, and they tried to steer everyone around them.

I'd say we are less cow-like than we've ever been. A ton more people have access to education than they ever did. The only thing the new technologies (like the internet) are exposing is the depth of the veneer of education the vast majority of people had, and that depth was very shallow.

I'd say that in some regards this is actually better. Transparency tends to help and now a lot more people can see through the covers. It will just take time to adjust.

Nota bene: I still believe that most people, most of the time, are passive. Being active is a lot of work and truly active people will be always the outliers. It's just that we can increase the percentage of active people by making it easier for them to be active.

<comment> village-idiot You do realize that modern humans are weaker and have a smaller brain than their hunter gatherer ancestors, right? And not by a trivial amount, but by like 10% or so.

<comment><USER3> Homo-sapiens were weaker and had a smaller brain, and less advanced culture and technology then Neanderthals. But we're here and they are not (except in like 4% of European DNA).

What matters is how adaptable we are. And we certainly are the most adaptable we have ever been. It might be thought that people use all of the technology as a crutch and would not be able to survive if they were transported to a world without it. But, after a couple of days, modern people would get used to what they have, make do, and be creative in solving problems. It would be hard and painful, but that's the nature of adapting.

<comment> village-idiot Yes, although some of the theories about Neanderthal extinction involve climate change, not intelligence.

The point is that our ancestors up until 10,000 years ago would make us look like complete and utter wimps, which contradicts your "most people were inactive" premise.

And based on what happens to a modern human even with survival gear who gets lost in the wilderness, typically death within a week or two sans rescue, I genuinely doubt that modern humans would adapt quickly enough to a hunter gatherer world.

<comment><USER3> "Yes, although some of the theories about Neanderthal extinction involve climate change, not intelligence."

My point was that they were less adaptable. For example, the climate changed and they were unable to adapt. I stated that they had bigger brains and more advanced technology. Neanderthals were more intelligent than Sapiens.

I had no premise that "most people were inactive". I honestly have no idea where you think I said this.

A single human alone would probably die no matter when they were from. We have always been a social species. A group of humans would be fine anywhere that was not a massive extreme (desert, tundra) unless they had experience in these locales.

<comment> village-idiot > Anyone that knows history knows that humans were as tame, if not tamer, in > the past. Plus uneducated. Most of humanity has never been agile, curious > and resourceful.

Anthropologists know that ancient hunter gatherers were stronger, fitter, and typically had lower rates of morbidity than us. Which kind of undermines your "agile" and "tame" bit.

I'd also say going from nothing to stone tools counts as quite resourceful, if you ask me. Given that our ancestors had the same basic wiring and larger brains, I'd actually wager on them being more curious and clever than modern humans.

<comment><USER3> Who ever you're quoting wasn't me, please look at the author name. It seems you are arguing another person with another opinion.

<comment> village-idiot Oops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently I saw a comment that the real "hostile AI" threat was not something like Skynet, but more like Youtube algorithmic video recommendations and their fondness for conspiracy and far-right material.

The perceived threats of "irrelevance" and "uselessness" get easily diverted against other humans, especially through "othering". As jobs are taken by automation or offshoring it's easy to blame "immigrants". Keep up the social division for long enough and this can escalate to actual violence.

Amartya Sen's Nobel-prize-winning work on famine was to demonstrate that it was rarely due to an absolute shortage of food, but a deficiency in "entitlement" to it: both purely economic (not having the cash) and political (not being able to secure famine relief). That's the potential worse case of being "irrelevant and useless": starving to death because you can't get food from the "system" somehow.

<comment><USER5> It is interesting.

The thing that makes Americans so very weird is that they are intensely paranoid. They're the most powerful and wealthiest civilization the world as ever known and yet virtually all of them are profoundly _afraid_. They're not just afraid of foreigners, either -- they're extremely afraid of each other. It's gotten to a point where "Stand Your Ground" laws encourage armed civilians to shoot each other the moment they feel threatened. It's difficult for outsiders to grasp. (I've even spoken to South Africans about this and even they react with disbelief.)

The paranoid style [1] at work here is well documented but I don't think people appreciate the logical conclusion. As the world grows more and more connected Americans will grow more and more paranoid. You'll quickly reach a point where America has no allies: everybody is a threat, everybody is a competitor, everybody is an enemy conspiring against them. Nobody can be trusted. America becomes supremely hostile -- to new ideas, to trade, to dissent, to _change_. The result, as Nietzsche explained, is a kind of supreme decadence. People withdraw from the world, they retreat into paranoid fantasy, they embrace all manner of nonsense and conspiracy, they despise knowledge, isolation and delusion feed on each other and become all consuming.

In the end it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The paranoiac develops paranoid technologies. Technologies designed to exclude, filter, hide, deceive, surveil, punish and divide (or "decentralize"). Technologies that are all- consuming, like his own delusions, they must provide rapid and never-ending alerts about new threats and plots, the more the better. Technologies that induce paralysis by leading people deeper and deeper into simulations of reality. Technologies that primarily walls or weapons, ideally both, to protect against the greatest threat of all -- other people.

[1] [https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in- am...](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american- politics/)

<comment><USER6> Have you ever met an American? We're not as wealthy as you might think. Income is offset by cost of living, we're not exactly bathing in gold-plated rose petals. Quality of life for the average citizen is not that different from any other civilized country.

Xenophobia (which is not shared by the entire population) is not specific to the states either. Do you watch European news? What's happening in China with the Uighurs? In fact, I would argue that most countries are more xenophobic if anything, they just don't have to deal with as many foreigners who want to move there and people here are actually more used to immigrants than in other places where everyone is 'the same'. In Latin America, xenophobia is gaining ground as well with the Venezuelan crisis and this is an instance where the immigrants are people of the same race/culture.

> as Nietzsche explained..

Are you sure he wasn't talking about himself?

<comment><USER5> > Xenophobia (which is not shared by the entire population) is not specific to > the states either.

I think the investment hypothesis is a bit more subtle than that. It goes beyond mere xenophobia into a kind of devout isolationism. What we're interested in are technologies and trends that promote loneliness. Facebook can be pressed into service for classical xenophobia, but you need Twitter -- pure rapid-fire alerts, shorn of all social context -- to really draw in the paranoiac. Youtube with its never ending flood of videos about new threats, new dangers, and new outrages, all packaged neatly into 30-minute videos. Reddit is another prime example of "anonymous networks" that provide unity through division. When evaluating technologies that might appeal to the paranoiac we're looking for whatever helps people throw up walls, makes them more mobile, lets them hide, lets them engage in only very limited contact on their own terms. We really like robots of all sorts -- not just physical bots that deliver food but highly customized algorithms that can deliver fake news and sex bots that can deliver fake love... anything that reduces or eliminates daily contact with the dreaded Other (human beings).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we look closely, we will soon realize that everything favors tyranny. Religious institutions, political institutions, educational institutions...

The problem is humanity has a tendency to pick or gravitate to morally weak specimens for leadership. We also have a tendency to "believe" authority which often leads us astray. Would a wolf pack pick a weak leader? Would a wolf pack let a weak leader remain in position once weaknesses are exposed?

<comment><USER8> > political institutions, educational institutions...

So democracy and schooling favors tyranny? I'd like to see your working.

<comment><USER9> They do. In fact schooling is a form of tyranny, being mandated by state and all.

<comment><USER8> The state mandates education, not that you have to go to school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm with Kasparov, that the best method of combining human and machine will always beat the best machine or the best human individually. I submit that Google's AI progress does not disprove this assertion, because (a) even if Google's AI is self-trained in chess or go, a human team is required to select a game and set up the training, as well as to update the algo or meta- algorithm in competition against the guys from IBM and Xinhua, etc; and (b) chess, although a very large and, for most purposes nearly infinite, game, ultimately is not open-ended or infinite in the way that nature life is, or human life decision-space is. Go is perhaps a better contender as a life simulation but I think still falls well short of the complexity of even a simple natural system.

One could counter that a meta training algorithm could define rulesets for a alpha-like AI to self-train-upon, and at sufficient generality this would take humans out of the equation. Well, if humans are entirely removed, then the problem is no longer interesting. If humans are involved at any point in the process, we could still view AI through the lens of a human-centered tool.

What if AGI does in fact evolve its own goals as primary and decides that humans and/or human self-determination are an impediment? Would humans eventually fall down the food chain, or outside of it, say as raccoons living on the city streets? Well, I don't view the world that way. But, even if non- human life forms gain supremacy of intellect and capabilities, I would note that even raccoons have a place -- and despite the fervent desires of many a suburban homeowner, the little pests are amazingly resilient to attempts at extermination or control.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article is much better than the headline suggests

</comment><comment><USER12> Hammers don't favor one kind of architecture over another. Hammers do what the people holding them make them do.

The way we use our technology is a reflection of our ideas. Since the 1990s I've watched the _ideas_ that are popular within the culture shift in an increasingly authoritarian direction on both the "right" and "left" of the conventional political spectrum. We are seeing the ascent of strong man rule and other types of authoritarianism around the world for democratic reasons: it's what people want, or what people think we need.

I think the largest single factor is push-back against globalization. Personally I think globalization in some form and to some degree is both desirable (to prevent war and increase wealth) and inevitable (due to travel and communication), but I also think it's been pushed perhaps a little too quickly and in ways that are profoundly insensitive to the needs of the middle classes in the developed world. That's created a massive anti-globalization backlash where people are elevating strongmen and demagogues to re-assert national borders and national independence.

There are other factors too. I think a similar kind of reaction is occurring against global social liberalization.

<comment><USER13> Hammers favors the kinds of architectures that one can create with nails.

Every technology have some inherent biases. Electricity favored decentralization about as much as steam power favored concentration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Lots of mysterious terms are bandied about excitedly in ted Talks, at > government think tanks, and at high-tech conferences—globalization, > blockchain, genetic engineering, AI, machine learning—and common people, > both men and women, may well suspect that none of these terms is about them.

globalization - by definition effects billions of people

genetic engineering - in 2016 GM crops, according to Wikipedia, make up 12% of global cropland

blockchain - digital time-stamping service that scales to the unfathomable rate of 7 transactions per second

It tells me the author is unable to separate wheat from chaff, as if writing this:

> Lots of mysterious terms are bandied about excitedly in ted Talks, at > government think tanks, and at high-tech conferences—globalization, _HDMI to > VGA adapters_ , genetic engineering, AI, machine learning—and common people, > both men and women, may well suspect that none of these terms is about them.

<comment><USER15> Except that you don't have meetups where people get all excited about the HDMI-enabled future. I completely agree with you about the current state of blockchain, but it has captured people's imaginations.

<comment><USER16> So it would make for some fun dated art in 30 or so years?

(since it hasn't captured much anything else)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps programming needs to become the new "literacy" standard. Writing human languages isn't enough any more. By learning to read and write computer code, people can become active users of technology rather than merely consumers bound to the creations of others.

<comment><USER18> Over the decades, every time I have heard some variant on 'everyone needs to learn to code' there is always a subtle unsettling feeling that arises in the back of my mind around the notion of linguistic imperialism, and that the promulgator instinctively believes or realizes, whether it actually exists or not, that the framing of any given, non-generalized technology inherently carries a ideological supposition that, as with all suppositions, the bearers want to spread to totality.

<comment><USER17> How about a comparison to modern education? Back before public education gave everyone the knowledge necessary to write for themselves, would it have been imperialist to advocate for that goal? If so, does it matter?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Articles like this often risk conflating many distinct concerns about tech in a way that makes the whole set feel alarmist rather than actionable. This author does a good job of cataloguing each risk separately. His closing prescription deserves a place in the article's tl;dr:

> ...if you dislike the idea of living in a digital dictatorship or some > similarly degraded form of society—then the most important contribution you > can make is to find ways to prevent too much data from being concentrated in > too few hands, and also find ways to keep distributed data processing more > efficient than centralized data processing. These will not be easy tasks. > But achieving them may be the best safeguard of democracy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yet another post about some frightening scenarios, imagined by people technologically illeterate, that has little chance to happen...

<comment><USER6> That are already happening

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Among dystopias, this one is remarkably well-argued...

It is rather frustrating to see how illiberality and strive have come back. In the nineties, the "End of History" made for a convincing hypothesis: Market economies in functioning democracies had proven that they were capable of providing decent quality of life for everyone. Competition had moved on from natural resources to human ingenuity, rendering the supposed motivation for all the wars of history irrelevant. Contrary to orthodox left-wing opinion, poorer countries were not exploited; instead, they had a standing invite to this future of plenty, and Asia took them up on it.

But China's economic rise didn't effect any democratic change. It seemed that democracy did not, after all, win the cold war. Communism merely lost it. Dictatorships can be as productive as open societies, as long as you don't saddle them with too much incompetence or self-defeating ideology.

So we are now in this new battle of the systems, and too often, we're loosing: China and Russia are obvious. But Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, and Poland are more recent converts to the prosperity gospel of strongman leadership. With Trump, Brexit, and several recent election results in Europe, the hits keep coming closer.

Maybe humans never actually liked democracy. They just enjoyed its spoils. Now that there's an option to both eat _and_ hate, they're overjoyed.

<comment> village-idiot While it's obvious that their Psyops worked in 2016, it's hard to argue that Russia's system is superior to our right now. Russia is deeply corrupt, incompetent, and basically a 3rd tier economy or lesser. Italy tosses out more GDP than Russia.

China is a far better case for your thesis. They're doing much better economically and the government is both totalitarian and largely accepted by the populace. This situation is also very new, since they accepted open markets at least, and it will be interesting to see how stable it really is.

<comment><USER4> China's situation is like someone trying to dilute acid with water: put in a few drops of freedom, wait for the fizzing to subside, put in a few more, all while hoping to avoid an explosion.

China is accepted by the _Han_ populace. The extremely non-Han parts (Tibet, Xinjiang) are having it imposed on them at gunpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you as a society ignore it and let it loose, why won't it?

See GDPR as a solid example of trend reversal.

<comment><USER23> The jury is still out on if GDPR will actually be beneficial to consumers and citizens in general or if it'll rather end up benefiting exactly those companies that don't respect user privacy it supposedly was targeted at.

The intent behind GDPR certainly is good. I'm worried about the implementation though. In that respect I don't really consider it a solid effort.

<comment><USER24> I've heard this argument a lot from startup people, but it rings of envy of being late to the gold rush. The only reason to be more worried about Google/Facebook is because of the power they have, small startups are not inherently more ethical, and I've met enough small SV founders to know that as a group they don't hold any kind of moral high ground.

Framing the conversation as tech company winners and losers is to totally miss the point. The real question is whether GDPR will actually help stem data abuses, and frankly I don't see how it can't be at least a marginal net positive.

<comment><USER23> I'm not worried at all about consumer-data-driven startups who are "late to the game".

I'm concerned about the impact GDPR has on small businesses. GDPR applies to every business regardless of size. This is how it should be in a state under the rule of law, after all.

For small businesses, however, the effort required for implementing GDPR is considerably larger in relative terms than it is for larger companies. Even if you don't process any data beyond what's necessary due to legitimate interest such as for accounting purposes the effort required for properly documenting your processes and third-party data processing can be quite considerable. Larger companies already do have lawyers to deal with this. As a small business owner you usually don't.

This in itself isn't all that bad. It's mostly a one-time effort and as an added benefit it allows you to rethink and streamline your processes.

However, some aspects of GDPR have been left rather open and ambiguous in terms of how to actually implement them (sometimes intentionally so to make the regulation somewhat future-proof). Please see this earlier comment on some issues that small business owners are faced with:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17099878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17099878)

Some of that ambiguity and uncertainty opens up new opportunities for the practice of sending a certain type of cease-and-desist letters that already incurs a fine at first notice (e.g. for supposedly not meeting legal requirements such as having a properly worded privacy statement on your website). This practice is rampant in some areas and industries. So far unfortunately, neither the EU nor the member states this applies to have undertaken significant steps to fight this.

What really irks me is that EU officials dismissed these concerns on several occasions. It's almost as if for them SMBs simply don't exist and the world is all about Google and Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article mentions a lot of things that "might" or "may" happen, without really any convincing arguments for why these predictions will come to fruition. It's true that dictators make use of centralized knowledge, but it's also true that many of the assumptions of market capitalism assume perfect knowledge and no transaction costs, two assumptions which have never been true in practice but today are much more applicable (knowledge is faster to attain, and transaction costs are smaller today and more directly measurable). So, it seems just as likely to me that markets could be on the verge of being more useful mechanisms than ever.

</comment><comment><USER26> As per the last time this was posted, here are my thoughts on this article and its premise:

Firstly, I feel everyone gets something wrong about AI and jobs, and I believe that makes things a little less dire on that front than you may otherwise believe. Namely, people are not purely 'rational' economic actors, and don't purely make decisions on 'quality' or 'price'.

For instance, art and media isn't all about what's the 'best' work out there, but the one with name recognition, sentimental value, an existing fandom, etc. It doesn't matter if an AI can create 'art', because whether that art sells depends on more than technical competence. Will Mario or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings be threatened by AI and technology? Probably not, the name sells regardless of whether a competitor product/brand may be objectively better.

So I believe artistic and creative fields may be the thing remaining after AI takes most other jobs, since your creativity can make a market that competitors legally can't compete in. If all fails, a personal brand can do much the same way. Sell yourself, not the 'product'.

There's also the fact many 'worse' businesses still do well either through word of mouth, location, advertising, etc. Not everything will be a one horse race ala Uber or Airbnb, and whether AI/tech/whatever can outperform humans won't really matter than much regardless. In that sense, things aren't quite as dire as some people would have you believe.

Secondly, while technology and AI may help those in power consolidate it further, it also democraticises power too, by making the means of getting it available to more people than ever before.

For example, for as much as emotional manipulation and fake news is pointed out as an issue online, the internet has also made it easier to verify anything, to get around government censorship and to make your own mind up about current events and the situation at hand. If the old school media got things wrong (or were told to shut up by those in power), what could you do? How could you disprove their claims?

With great difficulty that's how. But now we've got a world when anyone can call out anyone, where finding alternative viewpoints on major topics is trivial and where doing research on advanced topics is easier than ever. Narratives have been destroyed, official statements disproved by average Joes taking photos and recording videos, and pseudoscience has been debunked. Is that really worse than a world where publishing information is tightly controlled and regulated?

Technology can be used for the purposes of tyranny, but it can also be used to fight against it just as well. And that'll only get more true when more aspects of everyday life involve computers and networking.

So while technology may 'favour' tyranny, in some ways it also favours democracy and a more equal society too.

</comment><comment><USER27> "The growing fear of irrelevance"?

Well duh. First of all, get that out of the way. You _are_ irrelevant, the universe at a greater scale indeed doesn't even hint a proper damn about you. I'm more concerned with all those snowflakes out there losing touch with reality insisting that they are who is relevant when in fact any attention you give them whatsoever is a waste of time, and stolen from you and just not worth it.

I've about had it with this civilization, and phrasings like that... oh look, technology enables a new kind of totalitarianism. Yeah. Well. If that's what you make of it, fine. Of course it doesn't need to be that way, but now that you said it out loud, it'll become more true among your kin.

I'll just stay in my little bubble that thinks technology can help increasing the awesomeness in everyone's life, at least this 300 foot pole away from your orwellian dystopias - far enough for government work.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't personally want to help create tyranny powered by advanced technology, but I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it. I'm worried about what others will make of it, so I don't think we should be too idealistic about it.

<comment><USER27> If you have concerns, please add your concerns to the license and contracts around your product.

Also, for someone who says "I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it", you sure seem to take a liberal - maybe even a bit contradicting? - stance not wanting to be too idealistic about it.

<comment><USER28> English is not my first language, sorry, I think I didn't express myself well. I meant that we shouldn't be too naive when considering what other people might make of technology, just because we're idealistic.

<comment><USER27> But we're still idealistic because at the end of the day, we're not only responsible of what we do with technology ourselves, but when we create things we're always enabling others to use them; be it by giving them away freely, and maybe a bit more critically when selling.

There was a case once where a software project amended the GNU GPL with a no military use clause... On that note, you can never tell exactly who your customers are, and you shouldn't fit technology with a built-in kill switch or have it call home, which is just the worst of all options, as seen with several unpopular videogame companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


They Fixed the Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://ryanbigg.com/2019/11/they-fixed-the-keyboard <comment><USER2> 5 hours of use is not much time.</comment>


The Past, Present and Future of Competitive Magic The Gathering - <AUTHOR> https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-past-present-and-future-of-competitive-magic/ <comment><USER2> I play a fair bit of Magic, primarily at work. For years, I've used Magic Online for cheaply testing decks before deciding which cards to buy in paper.

I was very excited by Arena. It looks modern, feels a lot less clunky and allows one to just play a few games with very little hassle. It's all the good parts of the Hearthstone or Elder Scrolls Legends clients, but it's a fully- fledged Magic implementation!

However, I've found myself barely playing any Magic Arena.

\- As mentioned in the article, as much as I love paper Magic, it's not the best computer game. If I'm by a PC, there are other things I usually want to play.

-It's been great to test ideas for some Standard decks, but I usually prefer Modern.

-It's free, but I don't spend too much on Magic, anyway.

-It's quick, but it lacks all the interpersonal communication

That last point is probably one of the biggest things, for me. I love reading opponents, playing the mind games and chatting a bit while playing. You can't see each other and you don't even have a chat in Arena.

There's also the physical collectible aspect of it. I love picking up my folders with cards and flipping through them. Scrolling through them on a screen doesn't feel as satisfying.

<comment><USER3> > I play a fair bit of Magic, primarily at work.

Literally on the job? What did you do?

<comment><USER2> It's primarily over lunch, so at work but not on the job. We also hold drafts after work hours and used to have a magic league at work.

There's a fair number of magic players at work, which seems to be quite common at game studios.

<comment><USER3> That's awesome.

I've been interested in playing MTG, but sinking money into decks doesn't appeal to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Inviting streamers and video game celebrities to events with precious few slots is too aggravated an offense for entrenched players (those who give much of their free time and money to pursuit of competitive rewards) to forgive and forget, perhaps."

This has been happening more and more, and it really does get frustrating. Companies sell the idea that anyone who's good enough can compete, but tournaments will be filled with twitch streamers who aren't good at the game, but draw a large audience due to their personality. I've wonder if there could ever be a "pro wrestling" of esports, where the matches are all fixed and the winners and losers are based on what would create the best storyline.

<comment><USER5> The term "esport ready" is a marketing gimmick in the first place. It has more to do with whether a game is fun to watch, not whether it is competitive enough.

To give an example, PUBG players complained that the game wasn't "esports ready" because it was in third person, and therefore not competitive enough. They argued that by making it an FPS, it would become a more competitive game, and therefore a better esport. Too bad Fortnite is third person and blew PUBG away as an esport anyway, because it's more fun to watch.

The point is, I can totally see winners and losers being predetermined, since the esports scene is really about marketing games and not about competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how Arena can be a platform for _competitive_ constructed Magic when you can't guarantee what cards you have access to. In the old client and in paper Magic, if you needed a card, you could get it directly from someone. That's not the case in Arena. You have to hope to open it (or a wildcard of the right rarity) from a pack. This limits competitive play to mostly people who have the _time_ and _luck_ to collect every card they need.

Imagine a first baseman needing a new glove, but time after time, they are only given the chance to buy a catcher's mitt. You'll make it work if you're just having fun with friends, but if money is on the line, I would hope you can get the exact equipment you need...

<comment><USER7> The limiting factor on competitive deck building is Rare / Mythic Rare availability. Lower rarity cards simply aren't as powerful, and the availability is high enough for them that they're almost never an issue.

As you open random card packs, you are guaranteed to open one Rare or Mythic Rare per pack. Arena offers duplicate protection - you will never receive a Rare / Mythic Rare that you already have 4 copies of in a pack. Thus if you already have a complete-but-for-one-card collection, you're guaranteed to receive that one in your next pack. It also means that there is a maximum number of packs you could need to open to have a complete set of Rare / Mythic Rare cards.

In addition, sometimes your Rare (or Mythic Rare) is replaced with a Wildcard of the same rarity. These wildcards can be crafted 1:1 into any card of the same rarity. This does not increase the rate at which you grow your collection, but does increase the speed at which you can grow it in a particular direction. The drop rate of these is tuned with the intent of allowing a typical free-to-play user to obtain one competitive level deck per card set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My prediction, influenced by the article:

-The competitive part of MTG goes the way of online only.

-Niche or "player based" formats like Highlander or EDH stay within the realm of paper.

-Collecting cards remains worthwhile only in paper, online goes to more game play focus.

<comment><USER9> You lose wayyyyy to much of the competitive parts of the game online, online is statistics based only, you completely lose the skill part(bluffing, reading your opponent, fake-outs, etc) of the game online.

<comment><USER8> I don't think you lose bluffing, most of bluffing is simply chance and leaving a land or two untapped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't have enough MTG knowledge to plow through the article, so I hope not to appear lazy by asking this: is there a version of MTG that isn't pay to win?

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I don't think you can make a fair case for Magic being really pay to win.

There's always a sort of buy in depending on which format you play, but once you've spent a bit of money on some cards it's usually more skill in deck building and playing than money spent.

Personally, I play mostly Modern in a casual way, but even when people bring competitive magic decks and we swap decks the same players usually win.

<comment><USER11> I think you can _only_ make a case for the game being pay to win.

"Once you've spent a bit of money on some cards" means I can be the greatest player of all time, but if I haven't paid for the cards, I can't win. They don't just give you these cards for being good. You can't find them scattered around the environment. You have to buy them, somehow.

What is pay to win in your mind? The phrase generally means "no matter how good you are, if you are unable to buy a certain set of cards you can't truly compete in the meta". There are more or less expensive decks, but typically the cheapest of the best decks in any format cost $50+

Edit- This is for constructed formats. Obviously sealed is more of a pure skill, low cost format.

<comment><USER2> What you're saying is akin to saying Golf is pay to win because you can't play without clubs.

Yes, you need cards to play, but in my mind pay to win means the amount you've spent outweighs your skill at the game. There are plenty of games like that, and I'd argue Magic isn't one. You can do really well in Magic with a cheap deck and I have seen plenty of people lose hard after buying the most expensive popular deck that they didn't know how to play.

<comment><USER4> Sure, a highly skilled player can beat a less skilled player regardless of deck, but at similar skill levels, the player with the better cards is going to win. If cards couldn't give you an advantage, they'd all be the same price.

<comment><USER5> You can say the exact same thing about any sports equipment. But I don't think this is how most people define "pay-to-win."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The subscription model sounds pretty great as a player: pay some fee for each new set (up-front or monthly over the time it's legal in Modern), play with whatever sets you have access to in whichever format they're legal in.

<comment><USER13> The problem with that is it sort of invalidates their whole "booster pack" model. Magic is also a "family" of games, so they'd either need to do some sort of tiering:

\- pay fee for unlimited phantom drafts \- pay more fee for full sets (no drafting) \- pay most fee for unlimited drafts and full set

It does remove a bit of the gambling/addicting element, but it would get players like me to "support" them more.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately Mark Rosewater(lead designer for MTG) has said that the booster pack model is basically what provides enough money that the business side is comfortable with providing the size of the budget the design side receives. He seems to believe that moving away from the addiction/gambling element would mean less money, fewer designers and design resources, and fewer, worse, and more infrequent production of new cards.

<comment><USER15> Fantasy Flight makes "living" card games where new cards are periodically released and you can (supply chain permitting) buy (the pack containing) whatever card you need deterministically.

And it works out basically how you say. The games are popular and exciting when new, since you can buy all the cards for cheap(er than Magic) and balance / design doesn't have a huge card pool to think about.

Unfortunately once the competitive meta encompasses hundreds of dollars worth of product the dynamic flips on its head. The community is composed almost entirely of people who've "bought in" so the options for casual play are actually much more limited than they are for Magic, and organized play doesn't have the resources to address balance concerns or (more importantly) keep putting in enough events with good enough prizes to keep people involved in the scene.

And this isn't even touching the elephant in the room: the only reason there are spaces (i.e. game stores) in which to play is because Magic keeps the lights on for game stores.

<comment><USER11> While LCGs are great, they're only able to exist because of the money from CCGs. They're still super niche when compared to games like Pokemon, M:tG, or Yu-Gi-Oh. Those games get people in stores spending money.

Like you said, that's the elephant in the room. Magic is hugely profitable in its current form. There's no way they change that. They keep doing "known quantity" products like the Commander decks, or the other pre-cons, but we all know those aren't nearly as desirable.

As someone who works for a tabletop gaming company, and knows a little bit about how the sausage is made, you absolutely have to use things like blind boxes/boosters to pay the bills to make more "customer friendly" products that sell at 1/5th the rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just surprised (or not?) that MTG makes it to the front page of Hacker News

<comment><USER17> > What to Submit

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER18> The parent is just surprised it made it to the front page, not suggesting that it isn't an appropriate submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> This post apparently made the second chance pool; it received no upvotes on initial posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Damn, haven't heard of this game anymore since the last time it was proven to be Turing complete</comment>


The CDC waited 'it's entire existence for this moment.' What went wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/cdc-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> I can't help but think of the CDC (hear me out) as the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones. 1) Setup to protect against things that haven't happened in most people's lifetimes. 2) Reduced funding/personnel because nobody really believes it can happen (due to #1). 3) When something finally happens, ignored because it conflicts with the desired political narrative.

As the most watched TV show in history, it wouldn't be difficult to draw an easy parallel between to two in order to illustrate systemic failure to the public.

<comment><USER3> Similarly, I think of it as your point 1 plus no practice.

It's nearly impossible to prepare for something and get it right when it's never actually happened. Rockets for example get massive amounts of study and simulations and then still get things wrong.

Yes, sometimes you get lucky, but this is also dealing with human behavior and biology. Less predictable than say, computers.

<comment><USER2> The human behavior factor has changed dramatically with the introduction of social media. People react very differently to information when it's a constant unfiltered stream, when in the past it was more of a daily update of (somewhat) vetted information. Social science is still grappling with how social media has affected human behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They also lost a lot of credibility by making ridiculous announcements and fueling media fear mongering. Your dog can give you corona. No evidence of immunity. You can get it from touching things. You can't get it from touching things. The six foot rule with no real basis. Masks don't help. Masks do help. Now masks are symbolic. Etc.

<comment><USER5> All of those things were based on evidence of the time, and then they updated their stance as they got new evidence. How is that ridiculous or fear mongering? Blame the media for blowing things out of proportion if you want (only using the high values for model estimates which have been accurate for months for example) but don't blame scientists who are literally saying they're working with the best evidence they have at the time.

> No evidence of immunity.

Was actually the WHO and they said "There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection"

Which is an entirely accurate statement at the time. The intent was to make sure people who had tested positive and then negative post recovery did not decide they had a party pass when we simply don't know how long their immunity lasts.

> You can get it from touching things.

It lives on surfaces, including some for a long time. Wash your hand.

> You can't get it from touching things.

"This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about how this virus spreads"

> The six foot rule with no real basis.

Saliva and mucus typically travel 3-5 feet.

> Masks don't help.

We thought sick people are the only ones that need to wear masks.

> Masks do help

We learned a lot of people are asymptomatic spreaders.

There are many things that have gone wrong with the flow of communication during this crisis, but if you read what the CDC actually said instead of what the headline news source was, they've done a good job of

<comment><USER6> The problem was not that they changed recommendations based on the knowledge available at the time, it's that those recommendations were not given with a qualification and confidence level appropriate to the strength of the data.

There was too much desire to appear strong and knowledgeable, resulting in too many occasions where forceful, even morally-based recommendations needed to be not just modified, but _reversed_ based on updated data (see the Surgeon General's tweet from Feb 29 on the uselessness and social immorality of mask use -- hasn't aged well).

To be fair, this was not all the CDC -- the media amplification / simplification played a huge role here also -- but the fact remains that the CDC and other US health authorities promulgated recommendations that were flat out wrong and in some cases actively harmful by overindexing on poor data.

<comment><USER7> You're getting downvoted for strange reasons. The surgeon general literally said this:

"Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Typo in title (not in the actual article headline)- should be 'its', not 'it's'

</comment><comment><USER9> It could have been worse if it had not been for Congress:

> The damage would have been far worse had Congress not stood in the way of > repeated defunding attempts by the Trump administration. In its first two > years, the Trump budgets proposed to slash the CDC's appropriation by 18.2% > and then by 17.1% (accounting for inflation). Today, its FY 2021 budget > still seeks a cut of over 10%. Even when Republicans controlled both houses, > Congress roundly rejected these aggressive Executive-led cuts, to maintain > the agency's funding near the previous year's level.

[https://envirodatagov.org/an-embattled-landscape-series- part...](https://envirodatagov.org/an-embattled-landscape-series- part-2a-coronavirus-and-the-three-year-trump-quest-to-slash-science-at-the- cdc/)

<comment><USER10> What was the motivation for the cuts? Was it merely difficult to justify spending on a 100-year event that might never come? Or was there a conflict of interest?

<comment><USER11> Tax cuts at any cost. Since they can't make small cuts to the large programs (military, SS, Medicare) they make thousands of large cuts to the not so well known programs, CDC, forestry, NEA. Then they go back to their constituents about how many millions and billions in programs they've cut.

<comment> _-david-_ >Tax cuts at any cost.

The revenue brought in from taxes increased after the tax cuts.

[https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-11/55824-CBO-MBR- FY19....](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-11/55824-CBO-MBR-FY19.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Are you implying a direct causative link?

<comment> _-david-_ >Are you implying a direct causative link

No.

The person I was responding to was making the claim that budget cuts were made to make tax cuts possible. I was trying to say that the tax cuts did not lower the revenue so budget cuts were not needed to justify the tax cuts.

<comment><USER13> The per year deficit greatly increased though during that time. we reduced taxes, the economy grew a little more but the deficit really increased. the net is we borrowed from the future to make those tax cut (cause we'll have to back back the extra deficit over time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> *its entire existence

(I wonder if HN has ever considered pulling the headlines from the link directly as that could help with avoiding editorialization)

<comment><USER15> What should count as "the headline" for a link? The contents of the <title> element in the <head>? The contents of the first <h1> in the <body>? I asked this once [1].

Part of dang's response:

> What the rule means by "original title" can be any one of the candidate > titles that an article itself provides. That can be the main heading on the > page, but often that is misleading or baity, especially with media sites. > The HTML doc title, as you point out, is often a good alternative. Often a > subtitle is better than the main title. Other good places to look are the > URL, photo captions, and the opening paragraph.

After you figure out which of those should be "the headline", then you've got to deal with the possibility that it is too long. Try to shorten it? Try one of the alternative sources dang lists?

It also might not be plain text. The .innerText of the element you choose will usually be what you want, but I'm not sure that always will be right.

What might be reasonable would be to for the HN submission page to extract several candidate titles from the page and ask the submitter to choose one one of them, with an option to enter a headline manually if the submitter doesn't think any of those work as is.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22931845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22931845)

<comment><USER14> The title tag for this article seems correct, so that's probably the 1st choice. The <h1> is similar but the title has "\- The New York Times" added to it.

I believe the clickbait issue might be valid for less reputable sites, but in this case it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TL;DR:

\- the CDC leader is not charismatic

\- the CDC has 3,000 staff, but no mgmt.

\- the CDC dropped the ball on notifying local officials of who was getting off airplanes

\- the CDC has no data science coordination comparable to a random high school student

\- the CDC was slow to do anything involved with testing, and contaminated whatever it did make

\- the CDC appears to have gotten some information in Jan., but failed to execute until March (since the Wuhan corona lab is funded by the US, we should have known in mid-Dec. or sooner.)

\- the CDC is hapless.

This was all predictable had the GSA, or any senior leader, audited them. I don't see their failure as funding-related - they're just an aimless bureaucracy.</comment>


Ask HN: Isolation (from coronavirus) is only a temporary band-aid that will fail - <AUTHOR> One infected person infects 2 to 3 other people on average. This is exponential spread.  This will remain true until enough people have immunity that the chance of infecting someone new drops below 1.  This is the so called "herd immunity".  This requires 60-70% of a population to have immunity.
Immunity comes from a person having been exposed to the virus and getting better, or a vaccine.  To get to the 60-70% point in the US, roughly 220 million people need to be exposed and heal, or get vaccinated.
Getting 220 million people exposed, at a rate of 1 million per month (which will still overwhelm the health care system) would take almost 20 years.  Flattening the curve simply takes too long with such a large population.  Finding, creating, distributing and vaccinating 220 million people would take a number of years?  (guessing on that).
No government can afford to pump $1 trillion into the economy every quarter to prop it up, and do this for a number of years.  They will have to start printing money to do that, which leads directly to hyperinflation, which destroys countries and leads to starvation and death.
Isolation delays the inevitable but doesn't stop it.  Testing and tracing contacts to isolate the infected only works if it is perfect.   If we miss 1 person out of 330 million in the US, that 1 person will start the entire cycle again.  China is not out of the woods - if they missed 1 person the cycle will begin again.
Where is the hole in the above rationale?
(I wish the above wasn't true, but my wishes don't count for anything) <comment><USER2> IANAE, Some of the simulations featured on HN reaffirm the fact that the sweep through the population must happen, but the relative concentration of virus per individual can be minimized. This will help minimize deaths, because if any one immune system is overloaded it cannot cope. It is like a tsunami that everyone must ride, but the relative strength of that tsunami can be curbed by minimizing cross-contact that inadvertently increases virus concentrations per person.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. But how long will it take? I've not seen discussions on the length of time we'll need to hunker down to get the benefit.

<comment><USER2> Great question, don't know, right now the most vital thing is that hospitals are not overloaded with dramatic influxes of care-seekers, so whatever helps stem that tide.

<comment><AUTHOR> My concern is not overwhelming hospitals translates to 20 years of lockdown. It isn't feasible. But we might not figure it out until we've destroyed the economy. Then we end up with the same deaths from the virus we were trying to prevent, plus the suffering/deaths of a crippled nation/economy. This sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hospitals. If the hospitals get over run like in Italy, 1% goes to 2% or more. Remember roughly 10% of the population will need hospitalization and ~40% are 20-50. We're in very short supply of all kinds of vital hospital items.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true. But not overwhelming the hospitals means we spend 20-30 years in isolation. That's not realistic. The time element for our population size is the problem I can't find a way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Ask HN: Isolation (from coronavirus) is only a temporary band-aid that will > fail

This is not a question.

> (I wish the above wasn't true, but my wishes don't count for anything)

I grant your wish.

> Where is the hole in the above rationale?

The number of people an infected person infects is hopefully driven (far) below 1 through lock down.

If no vaccine will be available soon enough, the curve can be steepened again as far as people can be treated to achieve immunity more quickly.

It's a good time to be a maker of ventilators.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The number of people an infected person infects is hopefully driven (far) > below 1 through lock down.

That is only true for the period of time the lock down is in force. Once lock down ends we're back where we started. Lock down merely hits a pause button.

> as far as people can be treated to achieve immunity more quickly.

Do some calculations on how long that takes for 330 million people (or only 220 million people for herd immunity). Time is the problem.

> It's a good time to be a maker of ventilators.

Probably true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> edited> _Isolation is only a temporary band-aid_

Yep :(

> _Getting 220 million people exposed, at a rate of 1 million per month [...] > would take almost 20 years._

There are too many uncertain details, so it could be 10 or 30 or 5 o ... Also, there is hopefully some work to solve the bottlenecks (like ventilators, or soon the overworked nurses and doctors), so the number of ill people that don't overwhelm the health system can grow and reduce the duration of the problem.

> _Finding, creating, distributing and vaccinating 220 million people would > take a number of years?_

Probably two years if someone promise to pay the bill. There are some prototypes and some optimistic estimations say 18 month. Don't expect to see the vaccine in less than a year, but hopefully it will be finished in two years.

> _If we miss 1 person out of 330 million in the US, that 1 person will start > the entire cycle again._

The isolation can work at the state or county level, that is easier to control and you can move some extra resources to the area. If the number of ill people is small enough you can isolate the person, whoever meet her/him, and whoever meet the persons that meet her/him. This is used with other illness, but it's easier if you have a vaccine to create a few concentrically rings of immunized people.

</comment><comment><USER6> My amateur take:

1\. Drug therapy may enable the "severe" hispitalization required cases to drop into stay at home cases.

2\. It is not yet established at all that huge testing capacity + travel restrictions cant curb spread. See the Gates AMA.

However, it seems certain policies and travel restrictions will remain until an effective vaccine is available.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. My concern is how long/much we destroy the economy (and people's lives) while waiting/hoping for the drug therapy's discovery, production and distribution.

2\. If I am tested today, but get the virus tomorrow, the testing didn't help. Testing of everyone at once, and then immediate response would work, but I don't think that is realistic. This is the problem I see - that all the solutions out there don't scale to nation sizes. So the virus keeps spreading until we get herd immunity one way or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> eh, a vaccine becoming available in the next year or two?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the only hope in my mind. But the government can't pay for everyone to stay home all that time. Hyperinflation is a terrible thing and it comes when governments start printing money wildly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Managers and employees, your thoughts on stand up meetings? - <AUTHOR>

- Are you a manager or employee?<p>- Are you running it locally or remotely?<p>- How big's the team? Is it working for you?<p>- What are the most common issues you run into?<p>- Would you rather have them or not? <comment><USER2> Employee here. <10 members at the time.

Daily standup meetings in the morning are great. No more than 15 minutes, then done. Sets the course for the day. If there is nothing to discuss, then have the meeting to say that, then get on with the day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotcha, thanks for your input!</comment></comment>


How I Discovered a Security Vulnerability in Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://waynechang.com/2011/02/02/how-i-discovered-a-security-vulnerability-in-twitter/

<comment><USER2> Thank god i never leave my private info in the comments of support tickets. Lets hope all this funding twitter has will help patch this stuff up quick!

Thanks for making this known to the public!

<comment><AUTHOR> Once I got a hold of someone at Twitter, it was very easy to work with them to solve this issue. +1 for twitter staff

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've heard stories about companies being responsive re: feedback, but I had no clue that twitter was so awesome about it.

Neat exploit, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, it's crazy that twitter actually has staff to respond to all support tickets. 100-200 per hour gets submitted.</comment></comment>


Codex Seraphinianus - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus <comment><USER2> This is a purely personal point of view, but I wanted to ask: why do people find this so fascinating? It's been submitted so many times[0], and discussed a few, that I have to accept that there is a non-zero proportion of the HN community who find it interesting. I find that utterly incomprehensible.

I'd genuinely welcome someone who finds it of interest helping me discover what I'm missing out on here.

Thanks.

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Codex%20Seraphinianus&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Codex%20Seraphinianus&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> Crazy. I just downloaded this pdf off jwz.org less than 48 hours ago. spent all of yesterday looking through it. And now it's on HN. Bader-Meinhoff for the win.</comment>


Top JQuery Interview Questions in 2020 – You Must Know - <AUTHOR> https://morioh.com/p/ae893fa2218a <comment><USER2> Multiple problems here:

\- "jQuery interview questions"

\- Clickbait format

\- The fact that Morioh.com has been called out _repeatedly_ for stealing content from other sites without attribution (as in, entire articles)

</comment><comment><USER3> i dunno my friend, css3 and a lot of stuff jquery used to normalize is now first class from ie11 on. dont get me wrong, i sincerely appreciate all the money jquery made me a little more than a decade ago, but i cant help and wonder if its something of a fool's errand to strive for its mastery today, in 2020</comment>


Failure Mode And Effect Analysis For Software Operations - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesimplelogic.com/2010/03/25/failure-mode-and-effect-analysis-for-software-operations/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have some friends who should be doing failure mode and effect analysis on their lives.</comment>


Ask HN: Name of theory, people will not start something but will correct you? - <AUTHOR> Some months ago I followed a link on HN about a theory/philosophy which said that people in general will not contribute documentation/articles but will be the first to correct you should something be wrong. The article implied this was why Wikipedia was successful.<p>I am trying to get my team and the greater business to start documenting processes and procedures. I wanted to use this article/theory/principle to motivate my team to start documenting. Problem is I cannot find this article or name of the theory/principle and require your help with the name of the theory? <comment><USER2> Cunningham's Law: The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer.

Named after Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki.

<comment><USER3> Link: [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham's_Law](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham's_Law)

However, you lose points for not _actually_ posting a wrong answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lesson learned :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Might want to check if there's research into armchair theorizing. Maybe start with econometrics papers ;)</comment>


AWS DeepComposer - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/deepcomposer/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft Songsmith reborn!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now if I can use the same AWS keyboard to orchestrate my EKS clusters, that would be fantastic.

<comment><USER4> If it can be used just as a standard midi input device, you absolutely can make it orchestrate EKS clusters or do pretty much anything :^)

There are tons of really quirky and out there project that utilize midi keyboards. The one off the top of my head is controlling lights (more specifically, stage lights). On the more "out there" side, someone mapped their midi input to be able to play Overwatch[0].

0\. [https://kotaku.com/player-hacks-overwatch-to-play-in-game- pi...](https://kotaku.com/player-hacks-overwatch-to-play-in-game-piano-with-a- rea-1832370405)

<comment><USER5> sadly it seems to require a connection to an AWS account to do anything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be more interesting if the demo video wasn't such a blatant copy of Beethoven's 9th. Isn't the point to create unique original music?

Of course it is going to be able to create something if you feed it something that is already from its training set.

<comment><USER7> It didn't. There are multiple mistakes in that accompaniment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this require the Deep Composer keyboard? Or does it work with any MIDI keyboard?

Would be silly if you had to buy the AWS keyboard considering a lot of people who'd use this would already have a MIDI keyboard.

<comment><USER9> I kinda want the AWS keyboard just because I think it's funny.

<comment><USER8> Ya, could definitely see that being a cool vintage item in the future.

<comment><USER10> It would be also better if it will work in the future. Instead of becoming useless when amazon shuts the servers.

<comment><USER4> If this AWS keyboard can be used just as a simple midi input controller, it is already pretty good value in my book, regardless of all the "smart" features.

<comment><USER5> seems to require a connection to an AWS account, and even then, it doesn't seem to work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two of my greatest passions, with the result of learning more about ML. Sign me up!

</comment><comment><USER12> An AWS keyboard and it's not one with Cherry MX switches... fun timeline.</comment>


Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0 <comment><USER2> [Resubmitting this comment I made against a previous flagged article]

At first glance it Blue Oak seems like a decent license, and the points the author makes about MIT [0] seem valid.

My major issue with adopting a new license however is how well known it probably isn't, so there is not yet a clear legal consensus on it.

In all software companies I've worked in there is a clear list of licenses that have been pre-approved and I can just log the inclusion of any open source using those licenses and everything is fine.

However, if I want to use anything not already on the list it requires a manual approval process from the legal department, which is usually time consuming, and often just results in a 'no' because they are too risk averse to asses the licenses properly themselves, but are happy relying on the consensus that licenses like MIT and BSD are OK for commercial use.

Also, while a lot of the authors crtisisms of MIT seem valid points about uncertainty I think there is a lot to be said for the long length of time it has stood and the general consensus on it's intentions. If I see an MIT license, I can basically know I can do whatever I want with it, provided I give attribution, and there is no warrenty. I'm not going to worry about being sued over someone's interpretation of "deal in the software" because AFAIK, that has never happened in the 40+ years the license has been in use. I think I'd actually feel more at risk using Blue Oak just because of the lack of commentary and consensus on it's terms. The only really substantial point he makes is about variants under the same name, but the lesson here is to just do a diff on licenses to check it's in the standard form. And anyway, doesn't the same problem apply to Blue Oak and in fact all licenses, if you don't do a diff on the license text someone could easily produce and use a variant without you noticing.

[0] - [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License- Line-b...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by- Line.html)

<comment><USER3> > there is not yet a clear legal consensus on it.

Just curious, how did the MIT license (and similar) achieve legal consensus? Was it "bootstrapped"?

> However, if I want to use anything not already on the list it requires a > manual approval process from the legal department, which is usually time > consuming, and often just results in a 'no' because they are too risk averse > to asses the licenses properly themselves

Similarly, how do licenses get approved in the first place?

If MIT et al. overcame these hurdles, how do new licenses do it? Just by being used, and through the passage of time?

<comment><USER4> The MIT license goes back to 1988. A simpler time in so far as the open source community was significantly smaller. It was attached to an important piece of software, X11. It spread organically as more and more *nix systems were deployed over the decades. Compatibility with GPL didn't hurt.

<comment><USER5> I'd date what we now call "MIT" back further, to X10R3 in February of 1986. That's based on secondary sources. I'd love direct evidence if it's out there. Preferably a verified copy of the license to keep in my office. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IANAL, but I really dislike this license as a legal document. In the effort in making it clear it feels like there are more points to argue compared to what for instance the MIT license does which clearly defined what 'as is' entails. Contributor and everyone are not defined either, compared to the MIT license where it uses 'person' which has a clear legal idea behind it. To me I have a lot more confidence in the MIT license or the BSD license because the legal verbiage is precise. I know they had a mission but this seems to be nebulous and feels like there is too much room for creative interpretation.

<comment><USER5> > for instance the MIT license does which clearly defined what 'as is' entails

The Uniform Commercial Code defines what "as is" entails. I link the California Code section in the blog post:

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2316.&lawCode=COM)

> compared to the MIT license where it uses 'person' which has a clear legal > idea behind it

MIT uses "persons" for licensees, not licensors. "Person" is also ambiguous as used. I hope it includes legal entities!

> To me I have a lot more confidence in the MIT license or the BSD license > because the legal verbiage is precise.

Did you get to this part of the post?

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation- Notice...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation- Notice.html#mit-and-bsd-are-hard-to-read)

See also this part of my line-by-line analysis of MIT:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License- Line-b...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by- Line.html#license-grant)

<comment><USER6> I agreed. 'As is' is a well defined legal term, as well as person including legal entities (hence my use of the term legal idea). The same as person in the legal sense where a person can be an individual or corporation or other invention that can be assigned property.

> Did you get to this part of the post?

Why would I have read this? It is no way linked as part of the OP. If it was intended to or you are part of the team that helped resolve (in reading some of the links it appears you are) but there isn't reference to your reasoning within two obvious clicks of the license.

I agree with the conclusion of the line by line analysis and commentary you did, with the MIT/BSD x-clause being not what you wanted. I guess that leaves us with the obvious question: why isn't apache 2.0 what you wanted? or the CDDL? Is it just because it's 'hard to read' and people get it wrong? Where have you showed if an entity is releasing code to the wild and never intending to take on contributors that an MIT/BSD x-clause is the wrong thing to do?

I still don't feel like this is better than any of what's existing. This may be because while the license may be more sound for a contributor based arrangement this license site right now does not do a great job of showing a novice in the street how to do it right and any checklist to ensure that they haven't botched it. Where's the workflow to convert MIT/BSD x-clause to Blue Oak? If the only way to understand it is to dig into a bunch of random blog posts, I don't feel like that's such a large improvement. If more time is spent making a clear way to self serve a correct arrangement I would be more inclined to support this license if some of this supporting documentation existed to provide evidence on what the intent should be.

<comment><USER5> The magic words "as is" are defined by statute, but I'm not aware of any general rule of construction reading "person" as you describe. Contracts frequently define "Person" or "Entity" to cover both natural and legal entities/persons, because the law does not. See:

[https://www.adamsdrafting.com/person/](https://www.adamsdrafting.com/person/)

For how Blue Oak improves over existing terms, see my write-up:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation- Notice...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation-Notice.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My feeling is that if they're going for maximum clarity and minimum ambiguity it would have been better to use a descriptive name like "Maximally Permissive License" rather than "Blue Oak" which tells me nothing.

<comment><USER8> There's really nothing that names like "MIT License", "BSD License", "European Union Public License", "GNU General Public License", "Apache License, version 2.0",or "Mozilla Public License" tell me except the organization behind the license and the fact it's a license. "Blue Oak Model License" conveys about the same information.

Also, it's not maximally permissive per se. 0BSD, for one, permits you to distribute the software even if you, for some reason, do not want to include the original license text with it.

<comment><USER7> If these licenses weren't already well known I might hear "MIT License" and recognize MIT as a well established and prestigious institution and assume the license therefore has some legitimacy. I might also guess that as an academic institution the license won't be focused on protecting commercial interests as much as sharing knowledge, though I couldn't be certain about that. Similarly for the other established institutions. "General Public License" is quite general, but I could guess it's intended for general purpose use rather than a specific project and that it is public rather than private or commercial.

But these licenses are already well known so the fact that their names are not terrible explicit is less relevant today. A new license hoping to gain adoption should try and do better but "Blue Oak" is clearly worse. It is also not an institution that seems likely to establish a reputation for things beyond the license, unlike MIT, Mozilla or the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most open source licenses seem to be phrased based on US legal terms. The US legal system differs a lot from other parts of the world, such as civil law systems as practiced many others.

I wonder whether there are implications with other legal systems, such as law in countries of the european union, where also different legal traditions with regards to copyright exist.

I think I once saw an open source, copy-left license for the EU. But never one in the spirit of BSD/MIT/Apache.

<comment><USER10> > I think I once saw an open source, copy-left license for the EU.

Perhaps this was the EUPL¹. As someone who works for a company that has occasionally been forced to use it for a contract, I'm pretty sure people don't _choose_ it. Every time it has come up in a talk about a project, you have to answer basic questions about it :/

> But never one in the spirit of BSD/MIT/Apache

Nor me, but I've seen people mention the idea a few times in conversations about patents normally.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Public_Licence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Public_Licence)

<comment><USER11> The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence) is a permissive license designed and used by a country that is for at least two weeks more an EU member.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess my main question is... is this needed? Has there actually been a case where the MIT license was inadequate for it's purpose in a real-world scenario?

<comment><USER13> MIT doesn't have explicit patent grant clause.

<comment><USER12> I mean, explicitly, beyond "companies are upset about hypothetical problems". Has there ever _actually been a problem_? Say, has anyone ever been sued for patent infringement upon using MIT licensed software?

<comment><USER14> Fun fact: there is also no express patent license in GPLv2. There have been lawsuits on that. I know because I was the lawyer who filed one of them. So...yeah, this problem is not hypothetical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> has this been examined by a lawyer? Has this been tested in court? What's the stance of fsf and open source on this?

<comment><USER16> It has been written by lawyers.

It's been publicly announced 2 days ago, so court cases or in-depth review by other parties are unlikely to already have happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I addition to what other have said, how does it compare to more modern simple permissive licenses, such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license) ?

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks good (IANAL!), though I guess it will need "official" stamps of approval from OSI, DFSG, spdx etc. before people start taking a serious look at it.

</comment><comment><USER19> The attribution relaxation in this is a nice step forward for trivial bits of code. I've seen too many Javascript applications that use 100+ small MIT- licensed dependencies, so the copyright statements end up being a significant portion of the minified code!

<comment><USER20> I'm actually a little disturbed that attribution is removed. What's the point then? People generally don't write software for free so that they can't even get basic credit.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Writing code that is helpful to and/or maintained by other people. Attribution does seem like a rather low bar, but I would understand if not everybody cares.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _If anyone notifies you in writing that you have not complied with Notices, > you can keep your license by taking all practical steps_

Hah! As if "all practical steps" were some kind of clear and concrete legal measure.

<comment><USER5> What do you propose?

<comment><USER21> Something well defined for starters. Ideally something measurable without deferring to subjectivity.

The entire point of a license is to make it clear to both sides what things are allowed under what circumstances.

Who is the arbiter of practicality? Who makes that call? Which actions qualify needs to be completely clear to both sides because the rightsholder needs an assurance that your license has teeth and the other side needs an assurance that your license isn't capricious.

<comment><USER5> You've given me _qualities_ of an ideal proposal, but no actual proposal. I suspect because that level of perfection cannot exist. If there _were_ a superior alternative to drop in, we would drop it in!

More generally, I don't think violations will play out as you expect. We have experience with this kind of provision, under licenses like GPLv3, much more often under breach-termination provisions found in many kinds of contracts. Section 8 of GPLv3 may _sound_ more precise for using legal dialect, but that language, like "cure" and "cease all violation", isn't really more precise. For example, to "cease" violating GPLv3, do I have to go back and fix my past transgressions? How? If not, why does the following paragraph say "cure"? Does "cure" apply to future violations? Or does "cure" just point back to "cessation" in the previous paragraph?

All of this is actually quite alright, because by the time the licensor and licensee are in direct communication, it's within their power to settle the matter on their own terms, and not necessarily those of the license. Obviously, the licensor is the arbiter of practicality, up to the point where they decide to bring a claim or not. But the broad terms of the excuse provision give the licensee leverage and breathing room. The language does what we want, which is put the licensor and licensee in an interactive process toward resolution, and not in pre-litigation mode.

There is nothing capricious about paving a path back to compliance, despite breach, in a public open source software license. Quite the opposite. The effect of the term is to _prevent_ capricious claims for injunctions and money damages against licensees who may have unknowingly, or even perfectly innocently, violated it terms. That kind of mousetrap claim, and copyright trolling, are possible under MIT, BSD, and even Apache 2.0, which lack excuse rules for their attribution conditions.

This looks to me like a case of shooting the honest messenger. Blue Oak has made this kind of term more transparent, in plainer language, with less reliance on the (false) mystique of legalese. Now that you can read the term, and the clear expectation is that you can and will understand it for yourself, you see the actual mechanism. And it isn't perfect precision, total lack of ambiguity, or a quasi-mathematical formula. That doesn't exist in practical legal terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just use MIT/ISC/BSD for sanity, or Apache if you want to grant patent rights.

</comment><comment><USER23> So... how does one get BLUE OAK CERTIFIED? [https://blueoakcouncil.org/trademarks](https://blueoakcouncil.org/trademarks)

<comment><USER5> See [https://blueoakcouncil.org/list](https://blueoakcouncil.org/list)

> Only the licenses on this list are Blue Oak certified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> IANAL but doesn't unclear but known quantity count for much more than clear concise, but untested, in legal circles?

(previously submitted to an earlier flagged submission)</comment>


Global Rich List: Where your income/wealth sits against the rest of the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalrichlist.com/index.php

<comment><USER2> Eye opening.</comment>