Simon Riggs has died

> Computer systems have controlled the movement of elevators for 50+ years. They stop the elevator moving when the door isn't shut very effectively. They have certainly saved more lives compared to even a well trained elevator operator.

I thought you were talking about the elevators on a plane and was trying to figure out why whether a plane door was closed mattered for controlling the elevators.

What a brilliant idea! It certainly could never directly lead to the deaths of 346 people in two separate plane crashes or anything.

On a slightly less snarky note, what do you imagine an autopilot is?

I don't think that's something you can eyeball?

For one thing, planes infamously don't appear to be moving super fast even when moving at speeds that would raise eyebrows in a car. On normal final approach a Cirrus SR22 has an airspeed of around 80 knots (92 mph, 148 kph) and that looks like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/XZcW11zgWQE - the accident plane almost certainly had a higher velocity when it hit the ground

And for another, impact with the ground especially in a dive is very different from impact with another vehicle as is typical for road accidents. Instant deceleration is a whole other beast. Imagine driving straight into a thick concrete wall at over 90mph - there's nothing that seatbelts and airbags are going to do to save you from fatal injury (an example of such a test crash: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/what-happens-when-you-cras...)

Don't tell them you have always been and always will be open source, just until you're big and give the middle finger to OSS in order to get richer.

We say screw to fooling your users that you're an OSS adopter and supporter, just until your project is big and you can say screw OSS.

HN has monetary value to someone somewhere. Plus it’s cheap to run.

It’s also a good advertising and recruiting platform for YC.

There by the grace of VCs goes HN.

Besides that, there are still some points where the MySQL and/or the tooling around it simply performs better than Postgres. Anything to do with replication and big table migrations comes to mind.

1. easier to configure and manage

2. faster for read-heavy workloads

3. has pluggable storage engine (though, if you care about this, then 1. likely doesn't matter anymore)

Otherwise, why not? It’s basically a Chevy vs Ford decision.

On the other hand, usually that’s the intention when a project selects AGPL. There’s usually a commercial license you can buy instead (see iText for example).

1) companies that sell non oss commercial licenses for their AGPLed software that they own the copyright to and want you to buy those. A lot of those companies are now starting to prefer shared source type licenses.

2) open source advocates that don't like any commercial usage of their software and will actively want to prevent any form of intermingling of closed source and open source components like is common in many commercial projects. This is nominally to protect their freedom. But of course it has consequences in the context of commercial projects that don't want to opensource their proprietary stuff. Whether that is actually true or not for any particular use requires a bit of careful legal scrutiny.

Some places that do license audits (e.g. most banks, insurers, and other large companies that need to be alert to potential legal pitfals) would probably flag anything under this license. Three reasons for this: these licenses are only fine under very specific circumstances and certain combinations of licenses are not compatible. And finally of course these audits and lawyers are expensive. So, the easiest way to stay safe would be a blanket ban on anything with this license. Which is my general attitude towards this license.

Anyway, don't take your advice from random commenters (including me) on hacker news and consult a lawyer when in doubt. Yes that costs money. Alternatively, save some money and just steer clear of this mess.

Regarding why it has popularity beyond mySQL/mariaDB is still a confounding mystery as far as I'm concerned. The additional behaviors Postgres tends to encourage (I'm looking at you, publisher/subscriber and trigger functions) seems to lead to devs advocating it as 'easy' while those in my position are left to keep the damn thing running.

It's a free, solid foundational technology, guided by steady hands.

In a software economy full of profiteers, charlatans, and marketing babble, the project is providing real value to users.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect

My mind was blown and my life changed forever. Now I order french onion soup without the onions (high end steakhouses are happy to strain it), shrimp tempura rolls with no tails, whatever. I order my salmon nigiri with no skin. I’ll order sides of sauces from other menu items I didn’t get.

It’s rare they don’t accommodate me. (Before you ask, I always tip super well and don’t ever mind an upcharge for a special side sauce or whatever.)

While most would agree that fresh food tastes better (unless it's pizza, that jury is out on that one), that doesn't mean we're too posh for the looks of leftovers. A good portion of our food is also quite boring, and the most common takeaway comes pretty crudely presented and packaged. If we only ate food in fancy presentation, we'd all have starved to death by now.

The reason I don't eat half-eaten meals is because I never half-eat meals in the first place. I order the amount of food I want to/can eat, and should that plan fail, I share with my tablemate(s) - although I tend to be the recipient on that one. We don't do it because we fear taking a crime-scene with us home in the form of a haphazardly filled styrofoam box like poor people, but just because it seems polite and proper to both size your mail right and try finish it. That, and that we didn't know that taking it with us home was even an option in the first place.

Otherwise I think the rare occasion where someone requests it is when a younger child has hardly touched their meal.

Most, if not all, restaurants have something they can drop leftovers into if you ask for it.

As someone who lives in Spain but is Swedish, I've never had any restaurant tell me "we don't have takeaway boxes" or "no, we won't do that" when asking to take my leftovers with me, neither in Spain or Sweden or any other country I've visited.

So my elderly German in-laws would be horrified with how casually my Texan ones will buy and grill large, expensive slabs of beef, and end up throwing out a good deal of it because it was way more than the bunch could eat. I am, anyway, but have learned to bite my tongue.

It is an exception compared to the rest of the UK.

I only see it happen if someone falls ill, is called away or there was an error in the order e.g. you manage to order four entire chickens instead of four portions.