The four essential freedoms of the Free Software movement are ...
1. The freedom to run the program as you wish
2. The freedom to study how it works and modify it (which requires access to source code)
3. The freedom to redistribute copies to help others
4. The freedom to distribute modified versions, so the whole community benefits from your improvements
To my mind ... GenAI coding make all of these far more realizable, especially for "normal people", than CopyLeft ever has. Let's go through them ...
Want to run a program as you wish? Great! It's easier than ever to build a replacement. Proprietary or non-free software is just as vulnerable to reimplementation as Copyleft is.
Want to study a how a program works and to modify it? This is now much more achievable.
Want the freedom to redistribute copies to help others? Build your own version! It may not even be copyrightable if it's 100% generated (IANAL).
Want to distribute modified versions? yes! see previous.
I dunno; seems like generative coding can be as much a liberator as any kind of problem.
Unless your idea of software is reduced to the set of todo app, I don’t see how your points hold. AI won’t give you Blender, Inkscape, Kicad, Emacs,… And the algorithms behind those are not secrets, it’s the cohesive vision behind the whole system that is hard.
People will still pay for Matlab, SolidWorks, and Maya because no one who need those will vibe-code a solution. And there’s plenty of good OSS versions for the others.
Sorry, but this seems to be so off-base (as well as naively optimistic) that I am having difficulty responding to this.
But I'll try nevertheless.
- >Want to run a program as you wish? Great! It's easier than ever to build a replacement.
Non-sequitur. Building a replacement does nothing for being able to run a program as you wish.
Nobody else is able to run your program as they wish unless you release it with a Copyleft license.
- >Want to study a how a program works and to modify it? This is now much more achievable.
Reverse engineering is more achievable.
Modifying a program, without having its source code, documentation, and a legal right to do so guaranteed by the license is (and always be) easier compared to not having those things.
- >Want the freedom to redistribute copies to help others? Build your own version! It may not even be copyrightable if it's 100% generated (IANAL).
So, that's not about redistributing copies. That's about building an alternative option.
I can download an Ubuntu image and get Libre Office on it with a click.
Go vibe-code me a Microsoft Excel running on Windows 11, please, and tell me it's easier.
- >Want to distribute modified versions? yes! see previous.
You're not even trying here.
One can't legally modify and redistribute copyrighted works without explicit permission to do so.
You keep saying "...but vibe coding allows anyone to create something else entirely instead and do whatever with it!" as if that is a substitute for checking out a repo, or simply downloading FOSS software to use as you wish.
- >I dunno; seems like generative coding can be as much a liberator as any kind of problem.
Now, that statement I fully agree with.
Generative coding is a liberator as much as any kind of problem is.
Headache, for example, is generally a problem. It's not a great liberator.
Neither is generative coding.
Now, you probably didn't intend to say what you wrote. And that's exactly why generative coding is not a panacea: the only way to say things that you mean to say is to write precisely what you mean to say.
Vibe-coding (like any vibe-writing) simply can't accomplish that, by design.
EC only works if parents are the sole carers, and every success story I've heard had one main parent doing 90% of the care-taking. No daycare would do it, and if you can find a nanny, au-pair, grand-parent or other carer who is up for it ... small kids still just behave differently around different people. If they have a different level of comfort, anxiety, or reluctance with a person it breaks down.
Our two year old is potty training right now, and this was definitely a factor for us. We had to wait until it could be explained. Another factor is that diapers are now so absorbent that the kid feels no real discomfort from a pee or a poop. His main motivation is peer pressure and to be a bigger kid; concepts he's only recently caught.
Native Irish Speaker and Sci-Fi fan here. What an unexpected delight. For those who might not pick it up , the author name "Máiréad Ní Ghráda" is that of an unmarried (that's the "Ní") woman ("Máiréad" which is like a variation of Mary).
Here's my Translations of the Chapter titles. I'm pretty sure many of these have old-Irish style séimhiú (a dot above a consonant denotes what would now be a h after the consonant) in the originals that have not been translated by the OCR, so there are several missing h letters. If I weren't on a plane over Afghanistan, I'd download the PDF to check. Will update the repo when I can!
Pláinéid na feaca Súil Duine riamh = A planet no person's eyes have ever seen
An Radarc, tríd an gCiandracán = the view throughout the [Ciandracan] (this is a compound proper noun, "Cian" is "head" or "brain" and "racán" could be visor or rocket)
An Turas go Manannán = the Trip to Manannán
Manannán = Manannán (it's a noun, which is very similar to the Irish term for the Manx and the Isle of Mann).
Muintear Manannáin = the people of Manannán
na 'Cráidmí' = the Craidmi (I think it's just a plural noun)
An tÁrd-Máigistir = the high Magistrate, or possibly the supreme magistry
An Priorún = the Priory
Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest
An tinneall = the fire
Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson
Lug Lám-fada = the long-armed lug
An Tróid leis na 'Cráidmí' = The war with the Craidmi
Diogaltas = Revenge
An téalod = not sure about this one
> Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest
> Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson
I suspect these are actually mistranscribed by the project. That looks more like it should be "Oiḋċe sa Coill" or "Oidhche sa Choill" without the ponc séimhithe, and in modern spelling "Oíche sa Choill" - "A Night in the Forest". Comparing the transcription of the first chapter with the source in the PDF they're missing a fada (an acute accent for non-Irish speakers) in "ná".
Similarly, I'd probably render the second one as "Night upon Nights".
Not a native speaker myself, just a former gaelscoil student who's done their best to undo the gaelscoilis tendencies. Probably closer to a "heritage speaker" in the linguistic sense in some aspects.
Sadly out of practice these days, since I've been living in Denmark nearly three years. It's strange to lose competency in a language that you spoke every day for about 13 years.
I hope the project can upload a full scan at some point. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and there's definitely a dearth of Irish language books in that genre.
Not an Irish speaker, but I've seen some of the names and terms while reading folklore. Is it possible that Lug Lám-fada is a proper name/epithet for "Long-armed Lug" (alluding to the god Lug) instead of a descriptor of a "long-armed lug" object?
Yes, she's making a lot of allusions of Irish mythology, and that's definitely a reference to the god Lug Lámhfhada. Also, the word 'lámh' in Irish isn't quite arm. It's your arm below the elbow, including your hand. He has that epithet because for a bunch of reason, not least because of how skilled he is in all things.
The line between folklore and mythology is fuzzy, but this definitely falls on the mythology side of the line.
It's probably an téaloḋ (an tÉalodh without the ponc, t-Éalú in modern orthography) in the original, which lines up with the other missing poncs I mentioned above.
Grafton St buskers at their best are really really good, but there are also some very average buskers there every day too. New Orleans is a stand-out in the US where you can find world-class jazz bands playing on the streets.
Nashville has plenty in the evenings, and then you can find hot spots in some cities. I've seen regular buskers in Boston, Seattle, Sarasota, and Boulder - usually in pedestrianized touristy quarters.
Guess it's Dublin's bar culture and vibe that really stood out to me. I've been to the French Quarter yet don't recall almost everyone in each bar there singing along to their local musicians. Musicians who are really good to great like in Dublin's bars I experienced in December.
Lesser known but possibly more relevant to most HN readers are Feynman's lectures on computation - https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Gentoomen%20Library/Extra/Richard... . There's some really great explanations in there of computability, information theory, entropy, thermodynamics, and more. Very little of it is now out-dated.
“For our first seminar he invited John Hopfield, a friend of his from CalTech, to give us a talk on his scheme for building neural networks. In 1983, studying neural networks was about as fashionable as studying ESP, so some people considered John Hopfield a little bit crazy. Richard was certain he would fit right in at Thinking Machines Corporation.”
Interesting, he also talks about quantum computing (a first?): p. 191, "We now go on to consider how such a computer can also be built using the laws of quantum mechanics. We are going to write a Hamiltonian, for a system of interacting parts, which will behave in the same way as a large system in serving as a universal computer."
p. 196: "In general, in quantum mechanics, the outgoing state at time t is
eⁱᴴᵗ Ψᵢₙ where Ψᵢₙ is the input state, for a system with Hamiltonian H. To try to find, for a given special time t, the Hamiltonian which will produce M = eⁱᴴᵗ when M is such a product of non-commuting matrices, from some simple property of the matrices themselves, appears to be very difficult.
We realize, however, that at any particular time, if we expand eⁱᴴᵗ out (as 1 + iHt − H²t²⁄2 + …) we'll find the operator H operating an innumerable arbitrary number of times — once, twice, three times, and so forth — and the total state is generated by a superposition of these possibilities. This suggests that we can solve this problem of the composition of these A’s in the following way..."
Feynman is indeed often quoted among the first people to propose the idea of a quantum computer! This talk he gave in ‘81 is among the earliest discussion of why a quantum universe requires a quantum computer to be simulated [1]:
> Can a quantum system be probabilisticaUy simulated by a classical (probabilistic, I'd assume) universal computer? In other words, a computer which will give the same probabilities as the quantum system
does. If you take the computer to be the classical kind I've described so far, (not the quantum kind described in the last section) and there're no changes in any laws, and there's no hocus-pocus, the answer is certainly, No! This is called the hidden-variable problem: it is impossible to represent the results of quantum mechanics with a classical universal device.
Another unique lecture is a 1959 one [2] about the potential of nanotechnology (not even a real thing back then). He speaks of directly manipulating atoms and building angstrom-scale engines and microscope with a highly unusual perspective, extremely fascinating for anyone curious about these things and the historical perspective. Even for Feynman’s standards, this was a unique mix of topics and terminology. For context, the structure of DNA has been discovered about 5 years prior, and the first instruments capable of atomic imaging and manipulation are from at least the 80’s.
If you’re captivated by this last one as I was, I can also recommend Greg Bear’s novel “Blood Music”. It doesn’t explore the nanotechnology side much, but the main hook is biological cells as computers. Gets very crazy from there on.
If you're into atomic physics and getting a feel for the intricate structure of the basic processes, the best find I had recently is this MIT course by Wolfgang Ketterle. The first lecture is an informal overview, and he gives vivid and detailed descriptions of the phenomena they can create and control now, like why we see different kinds of thing happening at very low temperatures: the atoms are moving past each other so slowly that it gives their wavefunctions time to overlap and interact, using intersecting lasers to create arrays of dimples in the electromagnetic field to draw in and hold single atoms, this kind of thing. It gives a more tangible insight into the quantum aspects of matter that can otherwise seem inscrutable
The quote is not suggesting a quantum computer can’t be simulated classically, it can in fact, just slowly, by keeping track of the quantum state where n qubits is 2^n complex amplitudes.
It relates more to the Bell results, that there doesn’t exist a hidden variable system that’s equivalent to QM.
“There’s plenty of space at the bottom” only really took off in popularity decades later. Feynman’s accomplishments are undeniable, Nobel prize and all, but his celebrity status is given by other aspects of his personality. No Feynman equivalent I can think of is alive today. Perhaps Geoffrey Hinton and his views on the risk of AGI? He’s far from the only one of course.
The Feynman lectures are obviously brilliant but think the computation lectures are probably a better display of Feynman's brilliance. It's quite stunning how up to date they are.
Although that being said the rough outline of a field is usually worked out almost immediately after a consensus forms that it's "real" so to speak.
The theory of computation hasn't changed a whole lot since those times - and feynman explains it very well to a laymen audience (which is what makes it great, as it's not filled with jargon).
I feel like the section on primality testing with Fermat's test should at least make a shout out to Carmichael numbers and that for some inputs the probability you get a false positive result is 1.
I don't support this kind of detention, but the case reads like he overstayed his original conditions of entry.
According to the court order, he entered the US on the Visa Waiver Program in 2009. He may have a work permit now because anyone can file for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) through an I-765 while they are applying for a green card through marriage, but there's no indication that he had work permits before that. I've encountered Irish people throughout the US in similar situations.
Whether he did really have valid work permits, or not, I have no idea. You seem knowledgeable. But I am just generally mildly frustrated by people online jumping to conclusions assuming malice or criminal intent, while knowing nothing about the US immigration process. It is not surprising that people don't know how US immigration works. Why would one need to unless it is something you have to work with? There are so many misunderstands about H1B, GC, etc.
I do agree that really that the core issue is not with this one particular case, but broadly a pattern of how people are treated, and a failure of due process. People make mistakes. Governments are made up of people who also make mistakes. Process is how you catch mistakes and minimize its occurrence. A failure of due process reduces trust that even fully legal aboveboard immigrants will be treated reasonably and fairly. And that is reducing my confidence that I will be staying in this country long term.
> You seem knowledgeable. But I am just generally mildly frustrated by people online jumping to conclusions assuming malice or criminal intent, while knowing nothing about the US immigration process
The other side of the coin is that outlets like the Guardian have been intentionally omitting details and writing misleading headlines and stories in order to exaggerate things in a partisan manner. If the person's immigration status from 2010 to mid 2025 was legal, they would've posted that. They have been literally quoting his lawyer in the article. There's been several dozens of such intentionally misleading articles.
This article is about a man whose human rights are being violated. When you argue about whether or not he should have been arrested based of parsing the facts and the law, you are putting yourself on the same side as Stephen Miller. There is no ethical basis to afflict this treatment on anyone, so everything in your post after the first comma shouldn't be there.
I am very petty about this one bug and have a very old axe to grind that this reminded me of! Way back in 2011 CloudFlare launched an incredibly poorly researched feature to just return CNAME records at a domain apex ... RFCs be damned.
The problem? CNAMEs are name level aliases, not record level, so this "feature" would break the caching of NS, MX, and SOA records that exist at domain apexes. Many of us warned them at the time that this would result in a non-deterministic issue. At EC2 and Route 53 we weren't supporting this just to be mean! If a user's DNS resolver got an MX query before an A query, things might work ... but the other way around, they might not. An absolute nightmare to deal with. But move fast and break things, so hey :)
In earnest though ... it's great to see how now CloudFare are handling CNAME chains and A record ordering issues in this kind of detail. I never would have thought of this implicit contract they've discovered, and it makes sense!
You just caused flashbacks of error messages from BIND of the sort "cannot have CNAME and other data", from this proximate cause, and having to explain the problem many, many times. Confusion and ambiguity of understandings have also existed since forever by people creating domain RR's (editing files) or the automated or more machined equivalents.
Related, the phrase "CNAME chains" causes vague memories of confusion surrounding the concepts of "CNAME" and casual usage of the term "alias". Without re-reading RFC1034 today, I recall that my understanding back in the day was that the "C" was for "canonical", and that the host record the CNAME itself resolved to must itself have an A record, and not be another CNAME, and I acknowledge the already discussed topic that my "must" is doing a lot of lifting there, since the RFC in question predates a normative language standard RFC itself.
So, I don't remember exactly the initial point I was trying to get at with my second paragraph; maybe there has always been some various failure modes due to varying interpretations which have only compounded with age, new blood, non-standard language being used in self-serve DNS interfaces by providers, etc which I suppose only strengthens the "ambiguity" claim. That doesn't excuse such a large critical service provider though, at all.
I've always considered that Tim Jennison quote to be a reference to C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" lecture. Steve Jobs' ambition for Apple to be "where the Liberal Arts and Technology meet" also seemed similarly influenced. If you haven't read Snow's lecture, it's well worth the quick read.
There is a great meditation in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about the differences between riding and driving. Being open to the elements, in and a part of nature, is visceral. Bubbled in a car, our surroundings are observed more than experienced. That's always resonated for me.
That’s a book I’ve been taking my time with. Read a bit every few weeks. Found the part about visual memory mechanics resonated: I have to spread everything out and see it when doing mechanic work.
No to doing books via audiobook because I see the words in my head and it’s massively distracting. Cool if it works for others I guess but like the mechanic excerpt above… not for me.
1. The freedom to run the program as you wish 2. The freedom to study how it works and modify it (which requires access to source code) 3. The freedom to redistribute copies to help others 4. The freedom to distribute modified versions, so the whole community benefits from your improvements
To my mind ... GenAI coding make all of these far more realizable, especially for "normal people", than CopyLeft ever has. Let's go through them ...
Want to run a program as you wish? Great! It's easier than ever to build a replacement. Proprietary or non-free software is just as vulnerable to reimplementation as Copyleft is.
Want to study a how a program works and to modify it? This is now much more achievable.
Want the freedom to redistribute copies to help others? Build your own version! It may not even be copyrightable if it's 100% generated (IANAL).
Want to distribute modified versions? yes! see previous.
I dunno; seems like generative coding can be as much a liberator as any kind of problem.
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