johnofthesea (u/johnofthesea)

johnofthesea commented on Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft writings.hongminhee.org/2... · Posted by u/dahlia

ordu · a day ago

I believe it is a narrow view of the situation. If we take a look into the history, into the reasons for inventing GPL, we'll see that it was an attempt to fight copyrights with copyrights. The very name 'copyleft' is trying to convey the idea.

What AI are eroding is copyright. You can re-implement not just a GPL program, but to reverse engineer and re-implement a closed source program too, people have demonstrated it already, there were stories here on HN about it.

AI is eroding copyright, so there may no longer be a need for the GPL. GNU should stop and rethink its stance, chuck away the GPL as the main tool to fight evil software corporations and embrace LLM as the main weapon.

johnofthesea · a day ago

> AI is eroding copyright, so there may no longer be a need for the GPL. GNU should stop and rethink its stance, chuck away the GPL as the main tool to fight evil software corporations and embrace LLM as the main weapon.

Is this LLM thing freely available or is it owned and controlled by these companies? Are we going to rent the tools to fight "evil software corporations"?

johnofthesea commented on Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption github.com/LadybirdBrowse... · Posted by u/thewavelength

rvz · 20 days ago

I think we have seen enough since the best example of a Rust browser that is Servo, has taken them 14 years to reach v0.0.1.

So the approach of having a new language that requires a full rewrite (even with an LLM) is still a bad approach.

Fil-C likely can do the job without a massive rewrite and achieving safety for C and C++.

Job done.

EDIT: The authors of Ladybird have already dismissed using Rust, and with Servo progressing at a slow pace it clearly shows that Ladybird authors do not want something like that to happen to the project.

johnofthesea · 15 days ago

This comment needs another 'EDIT'.

johnofthesea commented on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities programmablesearchengine.... · Posted by u/01jonny01

blell · 2 months ago

They can build whatever they want with lots of #hashtags and public money, but that doesn't mean they'll get 30% of French people to use it.

But of course they managed to cut themselves a nice salary with EU funds, paid in part by me and you, so that's all that matters.

johnofthesea · 2 months ago

> with lots of #hashtags

I missed this one. What was it about?

johnofthesea commented on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities programmablesearchengine.... · Posted by u/01jonny01

saltysalt · 2 months ago

I built my own web search index on bare metal, index now up to 34m docs: https://greppr.org/

People rely too much on other people's infra and services, which can be decommissioned anytime. The Google Graveyard is real.

johnofthesea · 2 months ago

I tested it using a local keyword, as I normally do, and it took me to a Wikipedia page I didn’t know existed. So thanks for that.

johnofthesea commented on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities programmablesearchengine.... · Posted by u/01jonny01

tweetle_beetle · 2 months ago

It's a noble effort, but they're so late to the game that it's hard to see them making a significant dent. I hope I'm wrong.

They were:

> aiming to serve 30% of French search queries [by end of 2025]

https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

johnofthesea · 2 months ago

Better late than never.

> The French index is at an advanced stage of completion, we have started creating the German language index, and the English one should start shortly. All progress is quickly integrated into the Qwant STAAN API.

https://noc.social/@327ppm/115934198650900394

johnofthesea commented on Ask HN: Is RSS Still Alive? · Posted by u/militanz

johnofthesea · 3 months ago

> So, I looked for them as well but few websites have them.

This is a bit surprising for me. I've just randomly checked news: BBC, Guardian, Norwegian NRK - all had RSS. But I'm not checking news that much so not sure about others. Mastodon and BlueSky are also providing RSS. I guess walled garden ones like Instagram/Twitter don't?

My RSS reader is subscribed to:

- one Youtube channel

- several blogs (most blogs do have RSS, for example Wordpress provide it by default)

- Hacker News (few keyword-based feeds)

- Gitlab and Codeberg projects (Github provides RSS, but I'm not currently subscribed to any, because I need to be logged there anyway)

- podcasts (podcasts are basically just RSS)

- few Mobilizon sites for events

- OpenStreetMap QA tool that checks my edits

- two subreddits

Maybe in general, you are right. I know just my bubble and even there are few sites without RSS (like Bandcamp).

johnofthesea commented on TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps? noyb.eu/en/tiktok-unlawfu... · Posted by u/doener

mc3301 · 3 months ago

Youtube: There are a few long-form creators I watch, maybe 4 hours a month of content. Besides that, viewing history is off, no apps, browser extensions block mostly everything (comments, suggestions, etc.)

Instagram: I have a 15 minute daily timer, because I sometimes post, and I sometimes receive DMs.

Reddit: Fully blocked, I think I ublocked everything.

Tiktok: I won't even download it ever again. It has an algorithm like no other for sucking me in. Dangerously addictive.

Facebook? Deleted it completely around 2013, so no idea what's going on there.

johnofthesea · 3 months ago

For those that are subscribed to Youtube channels: no need to have account. Youtube has RSS.

johnofthesea commented on The Rust Performance Book (2020) nnethercote.github.io/per... · Posted by u/vinhnx

echelon · 3 months ago

This is a great resource!

Some TILs:

Hashing

> The default hashing algorithm is not specified, but at the time of writing the default is an algorithm called SipHash 1-3. This algorithm is high quality—it provides high protection against collisions—but is relatively slow, particularly for short keys such as integers.

> An attempt to switch from fxhash back to the default hasher resulted in slowdowns ranging from 4-84%!

I/O

> Rust’s print! and println! macros lock stdout on every call. If you have repeated calls to these macros it may be better to lock stdout manually.

Build times

> If you use dev builds but don’t often use a debugger, consider disabling debuginfo. This can improve dev build times significantly, by as much as 20-40%.

Interesting std library alternatives

> If you have many short vectors, you can use the SmallVec type from the smallvec crate. SmallVec<[T; N]> is a drop-in replacement for Vec that can store N elements within the SmallVec itself, and then switches to a heap allocation if the number of elements exceeds that.

> If you have many short vectors and you precisely know their maximum length, ArrayVec from the arrayvec crate is a better choice than SmallVec. It does not require the fallback to heap allocation, which makes it a little faster.

> The SmallString type from the smallstr crate is similar to the SmallVec type.

I doubt I'll change my use of the standard types often, but this is good information to know for cases where this might be applicable.

Advice on enums

> If an enum has an outsized variant, consider boxing one or more fields.

I'm surprised I didn't see any advice about skipping proc macros or Serde for faster compile times.

johnofthesea · 3 months ago

> > If an enum has an outsized variant, consider boxing one or more fields.

Clippy (at least pedantic one) will suggest this if needed.

johnofthesea commented on Norway reviews cybersecurity after remote-access feature found in Chinese buses scandasia.com/norway-revi... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

TrainedMonkey · 4 months ago

Maybe not so surprising as Norway summer temp averages get into mid 60s F (18C) at the warmest.

johnofthesea · 4 months ago

Ruter operates in and around Oslo where temperatures higher than average. Anyway some of old (diesel?) buses had broken heating and were heating even if it was warm outside. These are still improvement.

johnofthesea commented on Typst 0.14 typst.app/blog/2025/typst... · Posted by u/optionalsquid

tapia · 4 months ago

If you make a lot of slides with latex, then it is definitely worth it to try typst. I have a lot of presentations in latex for lectures and such things, with many animated tikz figures. But the compilation times are huge. At some point it is very time consuming to iterate. With typst, it compiles so fast that you don't have to fear to start a compilation. I finish my presentations much faster now.

Cetz has been working very good for me. I was really unsure that it could replace tikz for my applications. But apparently, as long as you have good geometrical primitives (lines, rectangle, circles, etc) you can do a lot. Also it is much nicer to program and make real functions with typst. It is true, the typst options to replace beamer are still not quite there in comparison, but they are definitely in a very useful state. See for example typst-presentate [1].

[1] https://github.com/pacaunt/typst-presentate

johnofthesea · 4 months ago

> [1]

There is one example with Fletcher... I find these also nice: https://typst.app/universe/package/fletcher