ignirtoq

joined 8 months ago
[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Democratic candidates have raised far more than Republicans and can purchase ads at the cheaper rate offered to candidates. Republicans rely more heavily on independent expenditures from their campaign arm and allied super PACs, which have to pay much more per ad.

Gee, it's almost like Republicans aren't favored by a large proportion of the population who can donate up to the ~$3,300 federal limit directly to campaigns and have to rely on their wealthy benefactors donating much, much more per capita through side channels that shouldn't even exist in a functional democracy.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 3 points 1 month ago (10 children)

How would you scientifically measure a difference between those two definitions?

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 25 points 1 month ago

plus why the right keeps mispronouncing her name

I mean, it's just racism, right?

It serves as a racist dog whistle and a cowardly way to slight the vice president without resorting to overt name-calling.

Yeah, same as always. Important to keep pointing it out, but not exactly an earth-shattering revelation.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago

I don't see how this wouldn't be derivative work. I highly doubt a robust, commercial software solution using AI-generated code would not have modified that code. I use AI to generate boilerplate code for my side projects, and it's exceedingly rare that its product is 100% correct. Since that generated code is not copyrightable, it's public domain, and now I'm creating a derived work from it, so that derived work is mine.

As AI gets better at generating code and we can directly use it without modification, this may become an issue. Or maybe not. Maybe once the AI is that good, you no longer have software companies, since you can just generate the code you need, so software development as a business becomes obsolete, like the old human profession of "computer."

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This makes sense to me, and is in line with recent interpretations about AI-generated artwork. Basically, if a human directly creates something, it's protected by copyright. But if someone makes a thing that itself creates something, that secondary work is not protected by copyright. AI-generated artwork is an extreme example of this, but if that's the framework, applying it to data newly generated by any code seems reasonable.

This wouldn't/shouldn't apply to something like compression, where you start with a work directly created by someone, apply an algorithm to transform it into a compressed state, and then apply another algorithm to transform the data back into the original work. That original work was still created by someone and so should be protected by copyright. But a novel generation of data, like the game state in memory during the execution of the game's programming, was never directly created by someone, and so isn't protected.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago

If it's dangerous to repair it, it's dangerous to own. That's the domain for regulations by the government, not arbitrary software restrictions by software manufacturers.

They don't implement these to keep you safe. They do it purely to make more money.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Before my comment I want to make clear I agree with the conclusion that abortion bans are clearly killing women at statistically significant rates.

That said, the stats reporting here doesn't make sense:

Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after increased from 14.5% in 2019 to 18.9% in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled — from 20% to 39.1%. And Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6% to 43.6%.

There's no way 14.5% of Hispanic women in Texas who got pregnant died some time during pregnancy, during child birth, or soon after. That would be unprecedented for any time since the advent of modern medicine. And the chart above this paragraph does not agree with it either. It's a chart of deaths per hundred THOUSAND live births, and the numbers for all racial groups are all under 100, so less than 0.1%.

The way it's stated also doesn't suggest it's a percent increase because it says it rose from 14.5% to 18.9%. I can't figure out what they're trying to say, but they should definitely have been more careful with presenting the numbers.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 6 points 2 months ago

Quantum field theory conserves mass-energy, so the new mass is coming from the energy in the Higgs field itself. It settles to a lower energy state and basically transfers that energy as mass to all of the particles that couple with it. Since it's mass-energy and not just mass that generates gravitational distortions, the large-scale gravitational evolution of the universe probably won't change, as this just moves things around a bit. It's not creating energy out of nothing.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 9 points 2 months ago

If the pig option included immune suppression drugs for the rest of your life, or for like 10 years until it wore out and you had to have another major surgery to replace it, mechanical valve plus blood thinners and a yearly blood draw sounds like the much better deal. I know blood thinners come with their own long term effects, but nothing compared to immune suppression.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 114 points 2 months ago (5 children)

He and his allies have made the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan a central focus of their criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of national security and foreign policy.

What I consistently don't see brought up is the fact that the "chaotic withdrawal" was directly set up by Trump. He signed the agreement with Afghanistan that put a fixed date on the withdrawal squarely in the next President's term. This gave enemies a clear timetable of US actions beforehand, which gave them a significant advantage. So Biden was left with the choice of either fulfilling the US promise, despite it being in every way a bad construct, and executing an extremely difficult withdrawal, or harming the US image on the global stage by reneging on an already agreed upon deal.

I would go so far as to say this, like the expiration of the middle class portion of the Trump tax cuts, was specifically designed to make the next administration, which was always very likely to be Democrat, look bad regardless of the cost or collateral damage.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 105 points 2 months ago (5 children)

The judge also noted that the cited study itself mentions that GitHub Copilot “rarely emits memorised code in benign situations.”

"Rarely" is not zero. This looks like it's opening a loophole to copying open source code with strong copyleft licenses like the GPL:

  1. Find OSS code you want to copy
  2. Set up conditions for Copilot to reproduce code
  3. Copy code into your commercial product
  4. When sued, just claim Copilot generated the code

Depending on how good your lawyers are, 2 is optional. And bingo! All the OSS code you want without those pesky restrictive licenses.

In fact, I wonder if there's a way to automate step 2. Some way to analyze an OSS GitHub repo to generate inputs for Copilot that will then regurgitate that same repo.

[–] ignirtoq@fedia.io 46 points 3 months ago (2 children)

next year when the Trump tax cuts expire

It's worth repeating again that the middle class Trump tax cuts expire next year. The Trump tax cuts for the wealthy have no expiration date and are permanent.

Also, they're not "Trump" tax cuts but Republican tax cuts, but at this point the distinction doesn't really mean anything anymore since Trump has completely taken over the party.

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