throwaway277432 (u/throwaway277432)

throwaway277432 commented on Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship kerrick.blog/articles/202... · Posted by u/Kerrick

QuercusMax · 15 days ago

I got a minor reprimand in a performed review for having a slightly heated conversation in a public channel. In the past that company had been very open about communicating about negative stuff (our CEO emailed the entire company when he visited one of the hardware labs that was a mess), but the upper management started tamping down on anything negative, and one of the things that suffered was any sort of honest communication.

Kind of a ship of theseus situation culture wise - when the original leaders are all gone, did they pick good successors to fill their spots? Very often not.

throwaway277432 · 15 days ago

I got a major reprimand because I answered too many questions posted in the public channel. All in my area of expertise, mostly after hours.

At first they said it was "great". But it soon turned sour and resulted in "it seems like you spend too much time answering questions", and I should "focus" and "free up" that time to work on my assigned tasks.

Well, I don't answer anything anymore. In fact nobody does. It used to be that you got precise technical answers from someone directly working on the tool or problem you asked about. The previous CEO would sometime even answer themself. Not anymore.

Now people ask, but nobody answers. The rest has devolved into LinkedIn style self-promotions and announcements.

throwaway277432 commented on How I configure BorgBackup and borgmatic (2023) justus.pw/garden/borgback... · Posted by u/justusw

vjvjvjvjghv · 4 months ago

I know Borg has a good reputation but two years ago I experimented with a Linux laptop. I set up Borg and within 6 months my backups were corrupted twice and not recoverable. Not sure if this common but I personally wouldn’t use it again.

throwaway277432 · 4 months ago

Lots of people haven't had to actually restore their data. Somehow it has good marketing. I used it for a while and was not impressed. Random Python errors, requires too much scripting, and at least on my data terrible restore speed.

I followed development on Github and what I saw in terms of fixes and commits gave me pause. Not how I like my critical backup software written.

I now use restic and sleep much better.

throwaway277432 commented on Apple bans entire dev account, no reason given twitter.com/rameerez/stat... · Posted by u/eecc

bn-l · 5 months ago

If you're logging in from a country that historically has had a lot of fraud coming from it, this might be the reason why.

When travelling in Hungary my AWS account was banned the moment I tried to log in. I got basically no reason. I was able to call support but the guy very polite fobbed me off and I got the idea that they weren't even able to disclose the reason why they banned me.

throwaway277432 · 5 months ago

Don't ever travel, never change anything related to billing except to update your cards before they expire. Don't change your name, email adresses or lose access to your phone number, and as we know now also don't ask support.

Then don't use any uncommon tools, e.g. ones associated with 'hacking', or store any copyrighted files in their cloud.

If there's any issue or error with logins etc., don't retry too quickly or too often or that in itself will be suspicious. Wait a day between requests, and double-check everything before retrying. Do not retry from a different IP or worse a VPN, or that will also be suspicious.

That should just about cover the bases for most providers.

Yes, it's insane and obviously you still need a backup of all your stuff just in case.

throwaway277432 commented on Show HN: Chat with 19 years of HN app.camelai.com/log-in?ne... · Posted by u/vercantez

MichaelMoser123 · 7 months ago

"What do you think about user XYZ?" or "What do you think about the comments of user XYZ?"

It starts a whole lot of SQL queries that find and aggregate data & statistics

It must have a very interesting and well written system prompt for this type of questions.

(gives me second thoughts about my personal approach to privacy)

throwaway277432 · 7 months ago

> "What do you think about the comments of user XYZ"

Wow that is really scary. Never did I ever think someone would actually go through all my old comments, analyze them in detail and then judge me based on them (my real account, not this throwaway).

Yes I knew it would be theoretically possible, but you'd have to be a total stalker and real creep to actually do it. Now anyone with an LLM can just do it without a second thought.

And it'll only get worse from here on. I'm sure there is at least 1 comment somewhere on the internet by me where I wasn't too nice, or a like / upvote on a questionable opinion or something.

If it's in any way connectable to me future AI tech is going to find it. Probably even across accounts, matching writing styles and whatnot.

I seriously think I'm going to stop posting on the internet for good.

throwaway277432 commented on Getting forked by Microsoft philiplaine.com/posts/get... · Posted by u/phillebaba

ryao · 8 months ago

The commit histories for the LICENSE files in the two repositories are rather interesting. The original author placed a single copyright notice in that file. Microsoft on the other hand published it with their copyright notice and a Apache 2.0 license in place of the original copyright notice and MIT license. They also put copyright Microsoft and license apache 2.0 headers on all files. They then changed the Apache 2.0 license to MIT, but left their copyright notice in place of the original copyright notice in LICENSE:

https://github.com/Azure/peerd/commit/473a26c808907f2d9f7b7f...

Unless they forked a very early version that did not even have the LICENSE file, such that they never removed the original notice, this looks like copyright infringement to me. That said, I am not a lawyer.

throwaway277432 · 8 months ago

>chore: change to MIT license

What does "chore" mean in this context? Is the license just leftover from some MS open source template? If so there is perhaps some leeway, and the author maybe just didn't realize he needed to use the original MIT license file including the notices and not just a template one grabbed from the internet.

Any other explanation for such a "relicensing" would be extremely worrisome.

throwaway277432 commented on Getting forked by Microsoft philiplaine.com/posts/get... · Posted by u/phillebaba

bayindirh · 8 months ago

> I'm seriously flabbergasted at how bad reading comprehension seems to be among coders.

Sorry to deflate your amazement, but I made the remark because I have never seen a permissively licensed repository which changed hands and had multiple copyright lines in the last 20 years or so.

Maybe it's not my reading comprehension (and English is not my native language to begin with), but the behaviors of other coders to begin with.

Maybe we shouldn't point fingers to others and not forget that three are pointing towards ourselves. Eh?

throwaway277432 · 8 months ago

I've seen plenty of both. I've added one good example in my other comment. But it certainly depends on the community and programming language as to how serious licensing is treated.

But yes, many people are not complying with the license literally, and it's frustrating to see. I know it basically doesn't matter unless you go to court over it, but still it irks me and screams a sort of carelessness about the rules and social contract.

Sorry for criticising your reading comprehension, I did not mean it as a personal insult.

It's just that I see these types of responses so often, basically every time any licensing question comes up. Twice in this thread. And all that's required is to just read the very short and basic MIT license text itself, no lawyering required.

I can understand the native speaker part, but just know that I myself am not a native speaker either. But I understand that's a huge barrier.

But even native speakers on HN with serious software engineering jobs and skill don't understand it, or don't want to understand. I think it's a bit like when people see math proofs, they mentally just skip over it.

That's the part that continues to amaze me.

throwaway277432 commented on Getting forked by Microsoft philiplaine.com/posts/get... · Posted by u/phillebaba

bayindirh · 8 months ago

Can you give me a couple examples how this is done? I mean, in terms of actual repositories.

throwaway277432 · 8 months ago

The easiest way to do it is to add your own copyright line above the original LICENSE copyright line.

That way anyone touching the project can just add their own line on top.

Done.

EDIT: Example: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/LICENSE

A more complicated way to do it is to add a folder that contains the original LICENSE file or files. Sometimes there is more than one license, or the license texts differ. In that case, you must preserve all the different variants, even if they all call themselves MIT.

Then, you can optionally add your additional own LICENSE file * only iff* it is compatible with all existing LICENSES. In the case of the MIT license, you may relicense, sublicense, or use a different license in addition, provided it is MIT-compatible. With e.g. GPL you can't. Note that you still have to preserve all the original LICENSE files in the repo.

throwaway277432 commented on Getting forked by Microsoft philiplaine.com/posts/get... · Posted by u/phillebaba

bayindirh · 8 months ago

There's no writing in that license which I can't change the copyright after forking the code.

There's a copyright line, check. There's the permission notice, check.

The rest is just goodwill and ethics, which is not a very valuable currency in software in these days.

throwaway277432 · 8 months ago

No!

Once you change the copyright line, you no longer include "the above copyright notice". At that point you're violating the license.

You are also not allowed to change the copyright notice or license text in any way (you may however add to the license, which is a loophole other licenses such as GPL fix.)

Substantial is subject to (legal) debate as the Oracle vs. MS case has shown. Whole functions or large parts of files however should always be considered substantial, as the software would otherwise not work.

I'm seriously flabbergasted at how bad reading comprehension seems to be among coders.