fncypants

Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars. [1]

In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."

“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.

“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]

[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/120547/presumption-regularity-t...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-...

[3] https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/statement-from-the-lawyers-...

What does that mean, "adjusted for poverty"? Reading level is an absolute. You're either at a third grade level or not. This adjustment seems to have no purpose other than completing a narrative that does not help solve the problem.

It's important to keep in mind what the government is saying here. Set aside the specifics of who this individual is or where they originally came from and grasp what Trump is trying to argue here.

Although the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legalgrounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal. Nor does any evidence suggest thatAbrego Garcia is being held in CECOT at the behest of Salvadoran authorities to answer for crimesin that country. _Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless._

In short, they kidnapped someone--I'm using that word precisely because it was "lawless" and that's what elevates a detention to a kidnapping--and flew them to a foreign prison without notice, without hearing. From the street, transported hooded to a plan, and imprisoned in medieval conditions.

It was a mistake they concede. Oh well. Can't do anything about it now.

Do not argue that this individual should not have received a chance to have a court recognize the mistake. There is nothing separating your position from his. If they can kidnap him they can kidnap you. The government's position is, simply put, no one can stop them if they do.

Do not both sides any of this. One cannot claim that both sides present misinformation and then not acknowledge that one side is doing so intentionally and the other is not.

Elon tweeted that there was a lot of 150-year-old recipients. That's all he said. [1] So there was a rush to point out why, if this 150 year old number is the only information he's providing of fraud, it is not a prima facie case of fraud. That was a good faith response to a bad faith, selective release of information.

[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-ol...

So then Musk provides more data, but again, not enough data to provide all the context. What he leaves out is that there have been multiple, prior good faith attempts to investigate these data entries, identify whether there's any fraud, and address any problems. This was the work of inspectors general whose job is to work in good faith to try to resolve these issues.

There is one side acting only in bad faith. If they were acting in good faith, they would raise these issues through legal channels (inspectors general) and then have an orderly, legal process to address them. That is how it has always been done, for a reason. They are not operating legally because they know that what they are doing is in bad faith and would be found out as such.

What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the rule of law. It's important to recognize that and to not to be complicit in it.

So let's tear everything down good and bad because in an organization at a scale of trillions of dollars, we found $50 million we don't like.

"Even though I don't know everything, and especially everything about how an organization like a federal government works, I personally haven't heard about these things, and therefore it must be unnecessary and stupid."

And what happens when they're successful even in part and we dump a lot of unemployed workers all at once into the job market in the private sector? Measured and calculated reform is one things. Smashing things without addressing what happens next is just kindergarten level stupidity.

But then again, maybe crashing the job market with masses of unemployed, which will drive down wages and labor bargaining power, is exactly their strategy.

I think this is the best takeaway. This case and its outcome is restricted to its facts. Most of the LLM activity today is very different than what happened here.

The current actively-developed VSCode extension is Tinymist. Its workflow is great and addresses all your issues (to the extent they are even relevant to Typst):

Well, the feature you mentioned of clicking the PDF and redirecting to the source.

Tinymist does this. Click on text and it redirects the document buffer to the corresponding source text.

Preview in the same buffer (window) as the code

Tinymist previews in a separate tab for side-by-side real-time writing with a preview.

It uses other regexps to recognize the enabled packages, and then adds the package's macros and environments to its list, so with a command you can open an environment or macro, and it recognizes which packages you are using, if you are in a math environment, etc. and shows only the ones you can use in the context. It's like a super-intelligent set of macros.

This sounds like an artifact of Tex. The standard Typst library is very thorough. And for everything else, Typst has automatic retrieval of community packages. Just add an #import and it just works:

    #import "@preview/example:0.1.0": add
    #add(2, 7)

This just works with Typst in-the-box for bibliographies, and with the glossarium package for glossaries (just add with: #import "@preview/glossarium:0.4.2": *). But one thing a Typst IDE like Tinymist or the web service adds to the writing environment is an autocomplete for labels and citations. Just start typing the reference and get autocomplete options.

Automatic, intelligent, labeling.

Not sure what this means, but you can add a label to headings, figures, etc. and quickly reference them with @label, and the current IDEs

The article gives several examples, including a lawsuit against GNOME Foundation.

It also links to a study that backs up the figures in the title:

The recent UnifiedPatents, Defending Open Source: An 2022 Litigation Update, report shows patent troll attacks on open-source projects are on track for a 100% increase over 2021.[1]

The report shows its trend graph, and explains its findings:

Looking specifically at all kinds of NPEs, open-source patent litigation has reached 617 cases, and is on track for over 1,200 cases. This would nearly double the total amount of cases brought in 721 against open source technologies.

[1] https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2022/6/9/defending-o...

This is good public policy thinking. At a minimum, if you want to take our tax dollars, you need to do _at least_ the bare minimum to benefit the public.

Laws (usually) reflect ethics.

Keep in mind there is a balance where the "ask" for receiving government funding may prevent the creation of the work in the first place.

Sometimes, the right balance may be to require the work to contractually enter the public domain in return for receiving funding. Sometimes, the government could negotiate something less than in order to get a net benefit.

Yes, it's contractual because of copyright. If someone (and many parties in the process) created it back then, there is a web of copyrights that require royalties to the creators. Contracts would control who this obligation is owed to (if anyone) years later.

I rented a place during the summer that had a plasma TV in the master bedroom. I had to disconnect it, and never used it, because it generated so much heat that we could not sleep.

SMS spam is exploding for some.[1] A good 25% of my messages are from an address like 1a02341234e7@uyah23f.com.

[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2021/09/28/do...

Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Communication is key. Scientists and health professionals fail at it. Listing cold facts does not effectively communicate to the broad public, because they receive the message not by learning the new facts to change their word view, but by trying to fit it in their world view. Messaging is critical in public communication.

I'm not sure why the parent was downvoted. The trademark scheme was built to make marketplaces more efficient, by giving producers a carve out in the conversation--a word or phrase or logo--so that they and consumers and distributors can engage together confidently with some bright line rules to work with.

The alternative is anarchy, and much more expensive then filing for a trademark if you want to sell in the marketplace. Like insurance, everyone that wants to be in the market pays a little, so that it makes it easier to avoid something like this.

Absolutely do not take any of this advice of the parent. I am an IP litigator. I kill patents as my day job.

The parent’s advice assumes the players are reasonable people acting in good faith. In the case of patent trolls, they are often not acting in good faith. Most of the allegations are not good faith interpretations of the patent. There is no “perception of infringement” to begin with. They just want a quick payout and found a cost-efficient way to state a claim against a widely used technology so that they can threaten and file lawsuits in volume. Instead, find a good patent lawyer or a pro bono resource (like EFF or a colleague with experience) that can give you resources or advice to quickly dispose of it cheaply (or even for free), if you cannot afford fight it. Sometimes, it can even be cheaper to hire an excellent patent lawyer that can win the case early than it would be to pay off the patent troll. I have written many a response to a patent licensing demand letter, knowing exactly what to say for much less than settling, where they disappear and never sue. And if they have sued, sometimes they disappear as soon as lawyers they do not want to be up against show up in the case.

In the instance of a good faith claim by a patent owner (even if wrong), there will be enough money at stake that it would be worth the cost to consult a good patent lawyer before doing a single thing.

Its almost as if health care is not something that would ever be accepted by any stakeholder as a truly free market. So why does America pretend that it should be treated like one?

Brought to mind Yeti coolers. Unnecessarily expensive, but that's why you have/want them.

Well, the price, for one thing. Yetis work like a Veblen good, which are luxury items that turn the laws of supply and demand upside down. Take Swiss watches: “A guy who buys Rolex watches doesn’t want a cheap Rolex,” Williams says. “Part of the prestige of that brand is when you wear it, everyone knows they cost at least $8,000 and up. If Rolex brought out a low-end model, it would kill their brand.” It’s why the iPhone 5C — a low-priced iPhone — flopped. [0]

[0] https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/why-are-coolers-so-expen...

If what you are feeling is that scraping for commercial purposes feels "unfair," that is because if it is not allowed it traditionally falls within a legal cause of action commonly called "unfair competition." In the same vein as trade secret theft. So the law does square that circle, but the line drawn is a fuzzy gray one. Its unfair to free ride off a competitor, but yet some kinds of actions that look like free riding are in fact allowed.

Secretary of State / corporate information is often sold in bulk without any need for scraping without authorization.

Daily Filing Update – a file that includes all of the database updates for a specific day. Customers frequently begin by purchasing a Master Unload in order to create a database, and then subscribe to the Daily Filing Update so that they can download and update their databases on a daily basis to keep their data current with that maintained on the SOS BEST database.[0]

[0] https://direct.sos.state.tx.us/help/help-corp.asp?pg=bulk

The 1990s Microsoft issues were antitrust. They tried "embrace-extend-extinguish" because they were in a monopolistic position, and this tactic was viewed as anticompetitive.

But Google (at least with respect to phone OS) was in the position of the startup, and Sun was the big market player. Now, Google had with ridiculous resources at its disposal, of course, but at the time not using a monopoly position to twist arms of carriers, for example. It's not anti-competitive to spend a lot of money to win.

Of course, things change....

You are absolutely correct. Patent law is a specialized legal field and having experienced judges is a plus for everyone, because it creates certainty that the parties can rely on when making business decisions. This judge has implemented some interesting local rules that are aimed at decreasing litigation costs at the outset of the case. There is nothing here that says this judge is biased towards patent owners or accused infringers (and I can attest to that, knowing Judge Albright personally). I would have no trouble advising my client sued in this district that they will get a fair shake if the case has no merit.

There is a downside though, where this differs from SDNY and bankruptcy. Patent law could benefit from major reform to eliminate abusive lawsuits and decrease transactional costs of enforcement and defense. Because patent owners can still shop around for some lawsuits, a judge trying to build a docket like this does not have an incentive to implement that major reform from the ground up. Any reform would only be tweaks, not paradigm shifts (like the local rules mentioned above). The problem is akin to regulatory capture.

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Shoulan_v._Peng_Y

Not in any way. That is a debate over Good Samaritans helping vs not getting involved. This is about vigilantes showing up with assault rifles when the police are already there.

My favorite response to this circulating right now is a photograph of Ted Bundy doing dishes.

That was not his business or property. He was a vigilante.

This is not how to look at this if you want to find a way to solve our society’s ills. The gunman was the instigator because he travelled to riots and not to protect anyone he knows or his own property. He brought an assault rifle and walked the streets. Why would anyone not looking for trouble do that? That’s vigilantism. The police are there to deal with it. Not untrained teenagers. Remember, the second amendment is because we want a “well regulated” militia not randos with guns. When you do what this person did, you make it inevitable that gun violence will be the result. That’s why self defense laws do not protect you if you unnecessarily created the situation that led to you having to defend yourself.

The problem with police violence is an extension of this. Police training is directed at control and overwhelming force. Even when there is an alternative path to de-escalate. When you are being attacked, even if you just committed a crime and the attacker is a police officer, your instinct is to fight back. The result is continued escalation until someone is dead.

I’m sorry, but someone carrying around an AR-15 on American streets is not a “kid.”

But aren't the IP laws in this case evidence of motivation for the creative mind? An incentive of being rewarded and not ripped off? We've had power tools without this feature for 100 years. What's a few more years to give the inventor exclusivity and a chance to profit, and then it becomes public domain?

Volvo's donation of safety patents is nice, but it is a major manufacturer. The inventor of SawStop was not.

Chick-Fil-A’s app is extremely well done. Just this morning I ordered breakfast from a store, but drove to the wrong one and parked. The app noticed this automatically, asked if I wanted to move my pending order to this store, and after pressing “Yes” my food was walked out to my car < 5 mins later.