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_stephan

951 karma · joined October 18, 2010

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_stephan··on Don’t sign a CLA
Is it a settled argument that the US statutory termination right applies to copyrights granted by the common open source licenses? Could you maybe point to a good legal discussion of this issue?
_stephan··on 'The Expanse' Canceled at Syfy
People obtaining the show from other sources before it is released on Netflix might be a reason for the show not doing well enough on Netflix to be worth picking up. Plus the marketing probably was only half-hearted, since Netflix doesn't own the US streaming rights.
_stephan··on More details about mitigations for the CPU Speculative Execution issue
I'm curious whether the Retpoline mitigation will still be necessary/recommended for user applications (that don't operate as a JIT or interpreter) once the kernel and CPU mitigations for Spectre that are currently in the works have been applied.
_stephan··on Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar
I just tried this again on the German Netflix website: Danish was listed and selectable for the audio track and subtitle of "Troll hunters" and "Tarzan and Jane" after switching the Kids profile language to Danish, but not when the profile language was set to German or English.
_stephan··on Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar
I suppose this is because they are afraid to upset certain segments of their users. In the German Netflix you'll often see angry comments in the review section of any show that isn't completely dubbed. Maybe they could avoid this by having a separate "original language only" section.
_stephan··on Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar
In Germany the Netflix app shows different available audio tracks and subtitles depending on the user profile language, at least for the "Netflix Originals". Have you tried setting the language of the kids profile to Danish (via the "Manage profiles" screen in the Netflix web app)?
_stephan··on I returned my 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
The battery comparison with the 2015 MacBook Pro is not really fair, because he turns the brightness "all the way" up for his benchmark, even though the new models have screens with 500 nits brightness while the 2015 model only has 300 nits.
_stephan··on Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly
If I understand "if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models" correctly, Google does not allow handset-makers to sell models with custom Android versions (but without Google Play) if that maker also wants to sell any model with an approved Android version and Google Play.

Tizen is not an Android derivative. Do you know enough about Google's licensing terms to be able to contradict the accusation in the article?

Btw, I entirely understand and sympathize with the desire to prevent Android fragmentation.

_stephan··on Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly
The legal question is whether the exclusivity terms in the licensing deals are anti-competitive given Google's dominant market share in Europe.

"handset-makers that wish to pre-install Google Play must, among other apps, also add Google Search and make it the device’s default search service; if they want to share in Google’s ad revenues they have to exclusively pre-install Google Search; and if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models."

_stephan··on Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly
An alternate point of view by the Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21697193-european-com...
_stephan··on Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem
* no one can sue
_stephan··on Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem
If you "change the names and wording" you're actually copying and making a modification. However, if by pure chance you came up with some say detective story that has a plot very similar to one of the existing billion other detective stories, no can sue you unless there is sufficient evidence that you actually infringed a copyright.
_stephan··on Users to USTR: Don't Sign Away Our Ability to Fix the Orphan Works Problem
Copyright and patents are not "fundamentally the same thing". A copyright gives you the right to exclude others from copying a work. A patent gives you more than that right, it gives you a monopoly over an idea (or at least a more or less vaguely defined implementation of an idea). A patent gives you the right to exclude others from using that idea or implementation even if they discovered that idea on their own and didn't copy anything.
_stephan··on G is for Google
*can be commoditized
_stephan··on G is for Google
I'm less curious about infrastructure that be commoditized and more about things like shared source code and access to subject-matter experts working on various teams at Google.
_stephan··on G is for Google
Will the non-Google Alphabet companies still have access to Google's software engineering infrastructure?
_stephan··on Intel’s Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle
Not any more?
_stephan··on Intel’s Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle
It's a pity that the new AVX-512 SIMD instructions will only be available on Xeon Skylake chips.
_stephan··on Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth
What's the motivation behind this? It can't really be bandwidth cost savings for distributing updates, right? At least, I can't imagine that the savings outweigh the predictably bad press and the additionally required customer support.
_stephan··on “Suspicion of treason”: German attorney general investigates journalists
See §94 of the German Criminal Code: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg...

"§94 Treason

(1) Whosoever

1. communicates a state secret to a foreign power or one of its intermediaries; or

2. otherwise allows a state secret to come to the attention of an unauthorised person or to become known to the public in order to prejudice the Federal Republic of Germany or benefit a foreign power and thereby creates a danger of serious prejudice to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany, shall be liable to imprisonment of not less than one year.

(2) ..."

_stephan··on “Suspicion of treason”: German attorney general investigates journalists
Currently netzpolitik.org doesn't seem to be able to cope with the traffic. The text of the page can also be read here: http://pastebin.com/kwUyafqi
_stephan··on Iceland makes blasphemy legal
In Germany we have this law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Germany
_stephan··on Supreme Court denies review of Google v. Oracle API copyright case [pdf]
As long as they serve as judges? Why should SCOTUS judges engage in stock picking?
_stephan··on Building Nuclide, a unified developer experience
Remote development sounds very interesting. If the IDE supports this directly, the user experience could be much better than the one you get when running an IDE over a remote desktop connection.
_stephan··on Jump – Experiences like you're actually there
I suppose you're talking about the "Roboto" font in #737373. It's also hard to read with Chrome on Windows 7 and a standard 1920x1200 monitor. The same thing happened when Google Fi launched. Either they don't test enough on certain platforms or it's just that corporate design takes precedence over good readability on certain platforms.
_stephan··on Apple Releases new MacBook Pros with Force Touch Trackpad
They probably jump straight to Skylake. Maybe in Q4.
_stephan··on Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Code, a Free Cross-Platform Code Editor
Cross platform IDEs for C++ like Qt Creator and JetBrains Clion already made huge progress over the past years.

There's a good chance that we'll see the emergence of a high quality reusable open source C++ language service component for editors over the next three years or so. Google in particular seems to be putting a lot effort into Clang, LLDB, Kythe and other developer tools. Facebook is also working on a web-based IDE and presumably has interest in good C++ support. Modules in C++17 (which Microsoft intends to adopt quickly) will probably make things easier.

_stephan··on Project Fi by Google
The body font ("RoboDraft", #757575) is somewhat unreadable (not enough contrast) on a Chrome/Windows 7 machine with a 1920x1200 display.
_stephan··on Netflix begins audio description for visually impaired
I suppose they save a few cents licensing costs per DVD this way.
_stephan··on A QUIC update on Google’s experimental transport
The Chromium implementation of QUIC is released as Open Source, so I'm not sure how "proprietary" the protocol actually is.
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