sbx320

Yeah, the linked article is very shallow. Heise [0] goes a bit more into detail, sadly the actual ruling isn't available yet.

Quick Summary from the Heise article: Axel Springer tried to claim that the website itself is a copyrighted work and therefore an adblocker would not be allowed to modify it. However the court decided:

1) Removing elements (ads) from being displayed does not modify the originally transferred HTML, but only the data structures as generated by the browser, which is allowed to be modified by the user. Otherwise using a browser without images would also be in breach of copyright.

2) The website in itself is not a copyrighted work, as there's no original creative effort involved in generating the HTML.

[0] (in German) https://www.heise.de/news/Landgericht-Hamburg-Adblocker-vers...

Most of the prior GPL cases ruled on (including the one you linked) were about redistribution of modified works without providing source and about who actually has standing to sue regarding GPL violations.

This case however brings two new (as far as I'm aware) questions to the table:

- Whether the permanent license revocation clause holds up

- Whether the neural networks is considered a part of the covered work (and must therefore be provided in "source" form, rather than just a trained network)

The second one is especially interesting, since the court will likely have to go into how far the GPLs coverage extends into other parts of a covered work.

Can’t access with VPN? How?

Your account is unable to access _any_ private repository after being flagged as being from a sanctioned country. That's regardless of where you're actually accessing your account from.

While you could create a new account, you still couldn't grant that new account access (since you can no longer access private repositories from your primary account). Also a new account still runs the risk of getting flagged if you accidentally access the account without a VPN enabled just once.

Screen captures aren't too common since they would incur an additional re-encoding step (losing a minor bit of fidelity), so for the more "professional" rippers it isn't a proper option. Instead they use the raw data stream from the streaming platform, strip the DRM and reassemble the video file. Of course the DRM stripping is the hard part with not much public knowledge being available.

As you mentioned, the quality of those rips is a bit worse than a blu-ray rip, but if the blu-ray isn't available there's not much you can do. People will just enjoy a slightly worse quality version (just like they did with shaky cam rips).

Personally I haven't been hit with spam to truly random addresses with my catchall. Is that a common issue people run into?

The spam I've received on my catchall is either based on previously breached sites (which I once signed up to) or to very common mailbox names (e.g. postmaster@, info@). I just add those to an auto-reject postfix filter based on the intended recipient, which keeps my inbox very clean.

Now that graphics cards have Type C ports for VR (apparently)

Had. The VirtualLink standard (for which the ports were supposed to be used), was never wildly adopted and is pretty much dead. AMD never introduced Type C ports and Nvidia removed them from their newer graphics cards as well.

Sadly this also means there's practically no direct support for the DisplayPort alternate mode on Desktops anymore, assuming you want a dedicated GPU.

The TS80P also supports Quick Charge in addition to USB-PD, although QC3 limits you to around 18W (versus 30W for USB-PD).

I wonder how the ergonomics on the production Pinecil will end up. I never ended up liking the TS100s feel for soldering, which made the TS80 my go-to iron. The wide tip availability is great, but I'd rather take a limited tip selection and better ergonomics.

Aside from the other mentioned issues, a significant part is also the lack of retesting. WD Red drives aren't a fancy new thing and have been on the market for years now. As a result a test of the same drives is unlikely to give you a whole lot of revenue, since it's a known old product. People don't usually care a lot about yet another test with the same results. As a result retesting isn't really worth your time _unless_ you find something significantly changed (like in this case). Also running a useful test is non-trival as you'd need to source a significant amount of platforms, comparision products and setup a testing environment for it. Testing a brand new (CPU|GPU|SSD) instead would be much more likely to attract new readers and increase revenue.

Manufacturers have slowly started realizing this circumstance and are obviously able to exploit it by making products cheaper to manufacture down the line.

One approach would be to hold social media platforms to the same standard as the government in terms of user rights like freedom of speech - regardless of their terms of service.

There have been a few court rulings in Germany that go into that direction. Facebook for example was disallowed to delete some posts/sites which violated Facebooks "standards", but were permissible under the freedom of speech clause of the German basic law. However thus far courts haven't really formed a consistent opinion and also ruled the opposite. As Facebook didn't appeal the courts rulings, it hasn't gone to the federal or constitutional court level yet.

Also doesn't gas cost a lot in Germany? Wouldn't that make the total cost of ownership even more compelling for EVs?

Electricity also costs a lot in Germany (for consumers at least), which offsets the savings on gas. Currently I'm paying about 30ct/kWh (Euro, so about 33.5ct/kWh in $) plus a 15€ monthly base fee. Gas is at 1.45€/l (or ~$6.14 per Gallon) right now. Last time I ran the numbers I ended up with a slightly higher cost per km with an EV compared to a normal car - before even factoring in the purchase price.

If you want to charge at a public charging prices sometimes go up 55ct/kwH, due to them having rather significant fixed costs for measuring power (each station needs to have a certified meter). This gets even more significant if you consider the fact that most people in urban environments won't have a house with a garage, which forces them to use public chargers.

This seems like a bit of a misconception in the article. The university website [1] states:

For security reasons and in accordance with the legal requirements of the German National Research and Education Network (DFN), there is no alternative to this procedure.

I'd assume the DFN requires all users to be personally identifiable for liability reasons. Although requiring all users to show up in person is still a bit odd. I just received a letter with a one time password by regular old mail back when I entered university.

[1] https://www.uni-giessen.de - English version of the second article is available by scrolling down a bit.

Even if the ISP does everything right, there are a lot of small sites with broken IPv6 setups caused by incorrect server and DNS configurations. While my ISP appears to provide a solid IPv6 setup, I've ran into quite a few issues with sites either:

- Serving different content on IPv4 vs. IPv6, e.g. just showing Apache2's "It Works" page

- Serving some subresources behind a reverse proxy on IPv4 only (and 404ing on IPv6)

- Forgetting IPv6 AAAA Records after a server change

Trying to debug this as a user is annoying and even if I identified the issue before leaving the site, working with sites to get it fixed has been an issue. I quickly ran into the "Works for me" issue, when the administrators (and a majority of their users) ran on IPv4 only networks.

Ultimately I just disabled IPv6 on all my systems because it ends being more trouble than it's worth.

There have been arguments (e.g. by Bruce Perens [1]) that this kind of behavior violating the GPLv2 section which prohibits the addition of further restrictions to the license, when the grsecurity team started doing similar things with their Linux patches. However this isn't really something that has been explored too far beyond that (at least to my knowledge). I'd personally tend towards this being more of a gap in the GPL's protections though, as forcing continued access to further updates would open a massive can of worms. Because then you'd need to figure out what is and what isn't a disallowed punishment for sharing GPL'd source code for any future contract between the two parties.

[1] https://perens.com/2017/06/28/warning-grsecurity-potential-c...

Yes, Tesla would continue to be bound by the GPL for the new versions as well. However the GPL does not require you to offer the source to the public or any third parties at all that did not aquire the software legitimately. If I'd sell a custom Linux kernel to Microsoft, I'd not be required to give you the source for it, if you ask for it. Your Windows example doesn't really apply here, as Windows isn't GPL licensed.

The big question is whether punishing users by no longer providing any updates after asking for sources is a GPL violation in itself.

From the GPL FAQ [1]:

If I distribute GPLed software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?

No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLRequi...

I think the question is rather if Tesla is allowed to provide source for current version you have (therefore complying with the GPL), but also refuse to ship any further updates to you as well.

As you'd no longer receive the new binaries, you'd also no longer be entitled to the new sources per the GPL. This would leave Tesla with a large deterrent against people asking for sources.

Axel Springer AG (who were the primary lobbyist for the law) actually attempted to use the law against Google in late 2014 for four of their biggest sites. It took two weeks for them to give Google a free license again. They cited a 40% loss of clicks from Google and a 80% loss from Google News as the reason.

They were showing enough information no one was clicking the links.

Were they? From the data I found for a very similar law in Germany the opposite seems to be true.

Axel Springer AG (biggest publisher, also primary lobbyist for the law) gave Google a free license two weeks after Google removed the snippets for all their sites. They noted a 40% drop in clicks coming from Google and an 80% drop from Google News. With estimates from statistics collectors putting users coming from Google anywhere between 15% and 35% (depending on the individual site) that's a massive reduction in users and ad revenue.

Google did the same thing in Germany after a similar national version was introduced. News sites quickly noticed a significant decrease in visitors coming from Google. They then attempted to sue Google to force them to list results with snippets AND also pay for it. Courts quickly ruled against that, so news sites just decided to allow Google to list the full results again.

The end result is that the law meant to work against Google actually benefited them. News sites cannot afford to not give Google a free license, but smaller search engines face a big issue.

I highly expect it to pan out the same way again.

The usual approach would be to define requirements in a way that are unsuitable for the specific vendor you want to get rid of.

This is more common the other way around, where a government wants a specific company to do a job, but is required to issue a public call for bids. In that case the requirements are just written exactly for that specific company.

It allows a reduction of (useless) merge commits. Assume you have 8 different branches (without conflicts) that you need to merge. Then you can either have 8 merge commits (merged $number into master), or a single one (merged 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 into master).

If you have no conflicts, it makes the history much cleaner without losing relevant history.

Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose.

You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots.

Germany for example. The legal argument for it is quite simple. Once a software is sold (in the "buy a license" sense), the manufacturer has no further right to limit your use of the software if they didn't include these terms into the sale contract. Therefore a manufacturer cannot force you to agree to a contract after you've already bought something. That includes click-through agreements if you need to "agree" to them in order to use the software.

The only way to get a EULA to work in Germany would be to include it into the sale contract between the consumer and the vendor at the point of sale.