ferdek (u/ferdek) - Readit News

ferdek commented on Polish Hackers that repaired DRM trains threatened by train company 404media.co/polish-hacker... · Posted by u/NKosmatos

matkoniecz · 2 years ago

since when copyright does not exist in Europe?

ferdek · 2 years ago

For instance, in Poland (which is in Europe) you have all rights to create copies of software, music, movies, for your personal use after paying for the original copy. You cannot do this under copyright which strictly forbids you from creating copies of the original media. Copy-right, as a right to create copies.

In this meaning, copyright is not the same as authorship rights, which is a basis of intellectual property protection in Europe.

Similarly for software patents, they do not work in EU.

ferdek commented on Polish Hackers that repaired DRM trains threatened by train company 404media.co/polish-hacker... · Posted by u/NKosmatos

p_l · 2 years ago

The manufacturer is trying to evoke "murky status".

But both national law states it's OK, and there is a ruling by Court of Justice of the European Union stating that Reverse Engineering done by owner even of a program license (EULA style) to make it work or fix errors is legal.

ferdek · 2 years ago

Not only that, the article being from American media, even with the footnote, the commenters, miss the whole point about copyright being exclusively American concept and we don’t have this in EU. We have IP and authorship rights that work differently. See last part for explanation: https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...

ferdek commented on Europe drastically cut its energy consumption this winter economist.com/graphic-det... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

WeylandYutani · 3 years ago

https://www.knmi.nl/nederland-nu/klimatologie/geografische-o...

ferdek · 3 years ago

Which, if I read that right, indicates that for Netherlands, winter months in 2022-2023 had more sunlight than in 2021-2022?

EDIT: Another data point would be total solar energy production in winter divided by installed power, per month, in comparison to previous winter.

ferdek commented on Europe drastically cut its energy consumption this winter economist.com/graphic-det... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

gnat · 3 years ago

Interesting to see The Economist doing modeling. Curious that they see no problem in it being utterly unauditable. Unlike a research paper that would cite specific datasets and model parameters, this is just "here are some numbers we're taking as true because model". They don't even appear to have done any validation on their model (holding back a few years from the training set to see how well it predicted them).

> We trained our model to predict the daily average gas demand per person for 26 countries (Britain and all EU member states except Malta and Cyprus, which use little or no gas), for each winter month between January 2013 and February 2022. After the model had learned the relationship between temperatures and gas demand, we gave it real temperatures from this winter and asked it to predict how gas usage might have played out had Russia not sparked an energy crisis.

ferdek · 3 years ago

They also failed to grasp that outside temperature might not be the only factor affecting power consumed for heating, assuming we want to keep constant inside temperature. The most obvious is sunlight - when it's 0C outside, my home requires much less energy when the sun is shining through the windows and on the roof.

ferdek commented on Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API pirateweather.net/... · Posted by u/calebegg

jacurtis · 3 years ago

I agree, PirateWeather seems like a misbrand here. When I read it, i thought it was stealing weather data or something. On the web, the term "pirate" generally doesn't mean good things. This name almost implies that it is illegal or something.

I'm imagining designing a software product around this and presenting it to a C-Level, explaining that we use "PirateWeather" and I think I'm going to get grilled with lots of questions and concerns based on the name alone.

This is a good service and should be "branded" with a better name. Maybe a play on the whole DarkSky name like LightSky or "Sunset" which works exceptionally well since DarkSky was sunset by Apple. Maybe StarrySky, LateSky, NewSky.

I am usually someone who says that names don't matter as much as people think they do, but PirateWeather just seems like a huge hit in the wrong direction. But the product is solid so maybe it can survive despite the name.

ferdek · 3 years ago

Weatharrr!

ferdek commented on The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’ sanantonioreport.org/the-... · Posted by u/alt227

tdees40 · 3 years ago

I work in markets. No, you cannot just fail to deliver. I'm also not sure how the ETF thing would work. If it's 1% of the ETF you're going to hedge out the position using a giant notional. It doesn't work.

ferdek · 3 years ago

Official SEC document regarding regulation SHO describes both illegal and legal cases when you can "just" fail to deliver [0]. Market makers which also happen to have hedge-fund branches are having the most flexibility in this.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm

ferdek commented on The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’ sanantonioreport.org/the-... · Posted by u/alt227

kaashif · 3 years ago

I'm not sure I understand - to sell short you already need to borrow securities, can you actually take loans against a short position that becomes worth something? That's interesting.

ferdek · 3 years ago

You can Fail-to-deliver and never locate the stock that you are supposed to borrow. Or you can short ETF with this specific company in basket while going long on anything else in this ETF.

Everything you own, even your own debt, can be used as a collateral by creating and selling swaps.

ferdek commented on The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’ sanantonioreport.org/the-... · Posted by u/alt227

koolba · 3 years ago

Why would it be tax free? Until the position is closed out it'd be an unrealized gain but there's nothing special about shorting. Gains are not taxed until they're actually realized by closing out the position.

ferdek · 3 years ago

Maybe I misremembered something and cannot find a source now, but I think there was some way to avoid paying tax on short sales when company goes bankrupt and gets delisted.

EDIT: See sibling comment.

EDIT 2: Am I reading this right? almost 1,800,000 shares failed to deliver just in one day of Sep 22nd? [0]

[0] https://fintel.io/ss/us/rxt

ferdek commented on The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’ sanantonioreport.org/the-... · Posted by u/alt227

pcurve · 3 years ago

Apollo is the private equity giant that bought the company in 2016 in a $4.3 billion deal.

The latest market cap is less than $800 million on sale of more than $3 billion / year. Still losing money.

ferdek · 3 years ago

Officially, Rackspace is ~30% sold short. Someone is already making tax-free billions shorting it to death.

ferdek commented on MagSpoof: Wireless Magstrip Spoofer github.com/samyk/magspoof... · Posted by u/r3trohack3r

gambiting · 3 years ago

The american reliance on magstrips is crazy. Over here(Poland) I don't think I've seen a magstrip-compatible terminal for years, they just don't have the swipe part anymore, it's been removed from terminals and cash registers ages ago.

ferdek · 3 years ago

I have 2 gift cards and one additional "LunchPass" card issued this year in Poland, all three are magstrip only.

The magstrip readers are not removed from the terminals, even the newest smartphone-like have them, you just don't know where to look. Of course, sometimes cashiers are surprised that my card is magstrip-only and they are double-surprised when I show them where is the magstrip reader on the terminal they use :)