lambertsimnel

> Imagine we had a versioned database with all the laws from all countries where one could compare them side by side. We could begin to understand the mood or spirit of each effort.

It would be good. There have been some attempts at source code style revision management for statutes (such as https://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr/ ). Are they a useful start? What should be the next step?

This is my understanding, too. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier comment.

However, I also believe that unenforceable parts of a contract have no effect, except in the minds of the parties to that contract. My suspicion is that contracts are sometimes drafted with this in mind.

You can withdraw consent later, but I don't see how that would affect data processed before the withdrawal (except that storage is processing and the data would have to be deleted). I don't imagine a reputable employer would have any other use for the data, so the withdrawal of your consent might not bother them much. If your application were successful and you took the job, I expect that would establish contract, rather than consent, as a legal basis for them to process your data.

In general, I'm not sure a company processing my data on the basis of consent would stop all processing of my data just because I withdraw my consent. Some processing of some of my data might have a different legal basis. Judging by some websites' privacy options, there's a distinction between consent (opt-in), legitimate interest (opt-out) and other legal bases (maybe neither). I'm confused about website forms that have separate reject and object options for each category of data processing and a reject-all button that closes the form. Does clicking "reject all" mean I have or haven't objected?

But if laws can override contracts (which presumably they can), then contracts can appear to establish permissions/restrictions that are illegal. At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable. Perhaps that helps to contain actual mistakes, but I assume employers use it to persuade employees that they're bound by illegal non-compete clauses, for example.

> But electronic 'equivalents' of neural nets is one area where analog might make sense.

That's an interesting idea, but could the weights be transferred to different hardware and still work? If not, that would be a significant limitation, even if it were preferable in some cases.

GluconScript looks cool, but this sounds too good to be true:

> as a bonus, since Rust takes care of all the ownership > and lifetimes, I don't need a garbage collector.

I can imagine GluconScript's memory handling comes at a cost, even if the tradeoff of using a borrow checker is well worth it. Was that your experience?

Relatedly, since you commented there has been submission about garbage collectors in Rust ("Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code"):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47821853

Or the Internet Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20260421123054/https://aphyr.com/...

It could have been that so much future growth was priced in that a reduction in the growth rate could have justified a reduction in the share price

It would be cool if you did make a torrent of it

The Anguilla summary has 2020 population data, but some of the data is indeed much older:

https://simonw.github.io/cia-world-factbook-2020/attachments...

Maybe some can be found in the Wayback Machine. This page says "view 71 photos" under "photos of France":

https://web.archive.org/web/20260103000011/https://www.cia.g...

Clicking the link seems to show 114 photos:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260103000011/https://www.cia.g...

I didn't see a way to get high-resolution versions.

Edit: This photo from Afghanistan is called "AF_006_large.jpg", but it's only 600x450:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/e926b79682b14c...

There's also World Bank population data (but it seems only to go up to 2016): https://databank.worldbank.org/source/subnational-population...

I share your enthusiasm about heat pumps, but I wonder what the efficiency of using waste heat is. Couldn't it be competitive with heat pumps? As it's a waste product, isn't it reasonable to also expect it to be more than 100% efficient?

> It is an overly broad definition of political to the point of uselessness and absurdity

I don't think it's useless or absurd, just not usually applicable. After all, each action has a specific political significance.

> It's also just tedious

Fair enough, but couldn't we say the same about many other things? For example, Brownian motion might not usually warrant our attention, but it's there for when we decide it is of interest.

I see. I disagree with them if they think everything really is political propaganda, but I think in a sense everything is political (in the wider sense) in its causes and consequences, so perhaps it might as well be propaganda, even if those involved don't think of it that way.

To return to your previous comment that "everything is political" is a tedious worldview, maybe there's a possible compromise. We could accept the idea that "non-political" everyday things have a (small) political significance, while never (or rarely) engaging with that political significance in any specific instance.

I wonder whether people who disagree about this are talking at crossed purposes. I think there's politics in a narrower sense (concerning partisanship and state intervention) and politics in a wider sense (concerning power relations and decision making). To depoliticise things in the former sense (by depolarising and deregulating) isn't to depoliticise them at all in the latter sense. In society, arguably everything is economic, legal, psychological, etc. Presumably, what people mean when they say "everything is political" is that politics in the wider sense is both important and on this list.

Perhaps these options aren't mutually exclusive. POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) could also be an option:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35636052

It's worrying. Assuming there's a risk of such fraud going undetected and harming a paying guest, I think a punishment more serious than a warning could easily be justified. Even if it isn't reasonable to prosecute, banning the host would help. Users of other online services are sometimes banned without warning or explanation, so the deference to Airbnb hosts is jarring.

Increasingly, browser-based online banking requires authentication with a proprietary smartphone app, where it used to accept other forms of 2FA

> For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists.

Why would the former pay obscure artists more? Are non-paying users more likely to listen to mainstream artists? Or do fans of obscure artists just play fewer songs each? Is ad revenue shared in the same proportions, but just lower per user? Is revenue really shared on the basis of plays, rather then playing time? If so, and if obscure artists make longer songs, does that contribute to their lack of revenue?

I wonder whether the QNX 4.25 source code will ever be released under a FOSS license, or at least a non-commercial license that allows distribution of modified versions. If so, it might be worth running on less capable hardware for educational purposes.

Could LibreLingo be a useful step in this direction?

Previously discussed in April (363 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43829035

And in 2022 (2 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34142852

The forthcoming Car Park Capital[0] looks like an interesting reflection of your sentiment (but it's about planning cities to make them more car centric).

[0] https://www.microprose.com/games/car-park-capital/

What I mean is that if no victim was present there couldn't have been the violence or threat of violence necessary to turn the theft/larceny into robbery:[0]

> Robbery, in turn, was simply a "compound" form of larceny. For Blackstone, "compound larciny is such as has all the properties of former, but is accompanied with one of, or both, the aggravations of a taking from one's house or person," id. at *240, and "[l]arciny from the person is either privately stealing; or by open and violent assault, which is usually called robbery,"

I'm not really making a judgement about the rights and wrongs of the actual case (because I'm not only not a lawyer, but also not a witness, juror, etc.), but as described it doesn't sound like robbery at all.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060903163713/http://docket.med...

IANAL, but my understanding is that breaking into an unoccupied car isn't robbery (but it might be theft and/or criminal damage). Wouldn't being convicted of armed robbery without committing a robbery be a serious injustice?

That was Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/28/oklahoma-superintende...

> It's much more accurate to say that Cloudflare is no longer acting as a host for pirate sites in the UK.

I understood from the article that it was for users in the UK, not for hosts in the UK.

In that case, can Signal users take advantage of this to export their own messages?

A YouTuber who exposes scams is trying to contact Google after his Google account was (presumably mistakenly) locked pending deletion. It sounds like a typo in the alternative email address he submitted for the appeal process might prevent him from proceeding with the appeal. Can anybody put him in contact with somebody at Google?

Indeed, but I'm speculating that they do that without owning the data or even claiming to. That's consistent with the article, but I haven't read the other relevant documents. Maybe they have a license to use the data. Maybe the license allows or requires them to try to restrict others' AI training, regardless of their non-ownership of it. Maybe that serves multiple purposes, in which case they could point to whichever shows them in the best light.