The article provides ancillary hyperlinks to nearly every topic mentioned, but fails to link the actual video of Kernighan speaking. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg
In reality the subject of the talk is Kernighan’s perspective of the history of Unix at Bell Labs. The questions covered in the article are the least interesting part, and make up about six minutes at the very end—a small fraction not just of the 70-minute video, but even of the 30-minute Q&A session.
In short, the headline and article are disappointing clickbait, but the video itself is worth watching for Kernighan’s relating of history and his theories about what confluence of factors made Unix successful (collegial environment, good management, overall mission…).
> If they think that UK law doesn't apply to them (which seems very credible) why react at all?
If I get a speeding ticket in the mail from another state I've never been to, I'm not going to ignore it, I'm going to explain to the court why it's invalid. Ignoring legal notices, even from other jurisdictions than one's own, is generally unwise (with some exceptions). So is responding with insults instead of concrete legal justification for why this is inapplicable.
Notice how I said “some exceptions,” precisely to head off a comment like that. Or did you read “some exceptions” and think your example wouldn’t qualify?
No, I don’t care what Pakistan thinks of me. But I've been to the UK, and I'll probably go there again. I live my life according to American law, without regard for UK law, but if UK law enforcement publicly announced an investigation of me, I'd find legal representation and respond. (Remotely.)
Not even the multiple cases of an individual doing nothing but call a politician a dick on social media?
> Last year, Andy Grote, a city senator responsible for public safety and the police in Hamburg, broke the local social distancing rules — which he was in charge of enforcing — by hosting a small election party in a downtown bar.
> After Mr. Grote later made remarks admonishing others for hosting parties during the pandemic, a Twitter user wrote: “Du bist so 1 Pimmel” (“You are such a penis”).
> Three months later, six police officers raided the house of the man who had posted the insult, looking for his electronic devices. The incident caused an uproar.
...
> In response to a message by [politician] Mr. Jurca criticizing Muslims, Mr. Mai posted a link to a picture of the mural [saying “Du bist so 1 Pimmel”].
> Several weeks later, four police officers pounded on Mr. Mai’s door at 6 a.m. with a warrant to confiscate his electronics. Mr. Jurca had filed a police report claiming the link to the photo was an insult.
in germany that is covered under insult against the honor and dignity of an individual. i don't know about this case, but this is generally only prosecuted when the insulted asks for it, and in most cases is a civil matter. that the incident caused an uproar shows that the response this case is an example of overreach, but overreach happens everywhere, and is an issue in itself. he question here is, is the risk for overreach more dangerous than removing the law/protection. this is certainly debatable.
> There was an expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should sacrifice to its god.
The Bible even has the example of Naaman the Aramean, who after being convinced of the might of Israel’s God, asked for a gift of two mule‐loads of Israeli earth so he could worship Him after returning home. (2 Kings 5:17)
> Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is.
This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.
Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”
Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]
Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”
Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.
“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”
> I don’t understand why people are ok with Google scraping their site (when it is called indexing), fine with users scraping their site (when it is called RSS reading), but suddenly not ok with AI startups scraping their site.
I’m pretty open‐minded about AI, and have no visceral objection to AI scraping in theory. However… the rise of AI scrapers is the first time in twenty years of running tiny websites that my servers—all my servers, consistently—hit CPU and bandwidth usage levels far above baseline, and even brush against my hosts’ monthly limits. When I check server logs, the traffic is largely bots repeatedly trawling infinite variations of version control history pages. Googlebot never crawled these enough to become a problem; Internet Archive never crawled these enough to become a problem. But the current scrapers are, and literally everyone I talk to who hosts their own VCS webservers is having the same problem right now. Many are choosing to reduce the problem by injecting Cloudflare or Anubis, which I as a user hate, and refuse to do myself—but what alternative can I propose to them? People running these servers are just users of Gitea and CGit and whatnot, they’re not capable of rewriting the underlying tools to reduce the CPU usage of diff generation.
Seems to me like standard dumb rate limiting (max 100r/min or like 250r/5min) per IP would solve the problem easily without affecting human users at all.
Surprised this isn’t a feature in Gitea already (even though it is better done in the reverse proxy web server).
Some scummy scrapers are snowshoeing their way through scads of (residential) IPs, just for one example.
Assuming that there are simple universal solutions, eg based on IP or UA, suggests that you have been lucky enough not to deal with many varieties of this misbehaviour.
I primarily source my copyrighted audiobooks from Libro.fm and Downpour. Both have large (though not universal) catalogues.
Librivox has free, public domain audiobooks. The narrators are volunteers, so performance and recording quality varies, but there are some very good ones there.
Some podcasts provide legitimate audiobooks of copyrighted works, generally with similar quality caveats to Librivox. For example, the blog “Readings from Under the Grapevine” has a free, legally licensed recording of the Narnia series (except for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
I never buy audiobooks with DRM, even if the DRM is trivial to break. Amazon has made clear their intentions to lock media down ever further. I shouldn’t have to put up with that, so I’m not going to support them financially.
If I can’t find a copyrighted audiobook at one of the DRM‐free shops, I get it from my library, either through Libby or by checking out a physical copy. Not that these would be helpful for someone using Audiobookshelf…
This is a straightforward consequence of how continents are defined by various cultures.
In Anglo cultures, there are seven continents, with a distinct North and South America, and Europe and Asia.
In Romance cultures, there are six continents, with a single America, and a distinct Europe and Asia.
In some eastern European cultures, there are six continents, with a distinct North and South America, and a single Eurasia.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It’s kind of meaningless; it’s not like these definitions are based on some semi‐objective characteristic like counting tectonic plates. In the Anglosphere, nobody is actually confused about whether “America” refers to the country or the continents. Canadians don’t appreciate being called Americans, and (in my experience) Mexicans don’t desire it either. If one wants to refer to North and South America together, there’s a perfectly normal way to do so: “the Americas.”
USian, aside from its lack of euphony and its general connotation of being used by know‐it‐all scolds, is particularly silly since the existence of two countries named “United States”—two North American countries named “United States”—means it’s just as ambiguous a country name as “America” is claimed to be.
Even though I consider estadounidense silly (why aren’t people of Estados Unidos Mexicanos considered estadounidense, exactly?), I use it when speaking Spanish, because that’s the way people say “American” in Spanish. I don’t explain to Spanish‐speaking people how ignorant they are for using such a silly, ambiguous word. One wishes the same courtesy were offered in the other direction!
The average American knows that Canada is in North America, as does the average Canadian, the average Englishman, and the average Australian.
The average non‐American is from outside the Anglosphere, and so may be from a culture that considers North America and South America to be a single continent. But continents don’t have an objective definition, only a cultural one, and in the language and culture of the Anglosphere the Americas are distinct continents, America is a country, and Americans are that country’s people.
I’ve never met a Canadian who clamored to be called an American. (Except naturalized citizens!)
In reality the subject of the talk is Kernighan’s perspective of the history of Unix at Bell Labs. The questions covered in the article are the least interesting part, and make up about six minutes at the very end—a small fraction not just of the 70-minute video, but even of the 30-minute Q&A session.
In short, the headline and article are disappointing clickbait, but the video itself is worth watching for Kernighan’s relating of history and his theories about what confluence of factors made Unix successful (collegial environment, good management, overall mission…).
Another worthwhile video from the same conference (in a different year) is Kernighan’s interview of Ken Thompson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o&pp=ygUSdmNmIGVhc...