dredmorbius

This discussion was raised last time this story was discussed. I was among its advocates: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061890>.

Briefly: no.

Less briefly: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060780> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060716> (from the grapheneos HN account directly).

That's the part of my comment I was least comfortable with, particularly with regards to local / state jurisdictions. A judge, if involved, might request such a dismissal based on the Grand Jury's decision. Or perhaps not.

My point was to clarify (I hoped) the distinction between double jeopardy and jury nullification with Grand Jury dismissal, which ... seems to be a frequently-iterated confusion in comments.

What this isn't is jury nullification, whatever other win it represents for the anti-Flock crowd.

The US DoJ does not prosecute in county courts.

From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."

The more charitable interpretation would be "knowledge embodied in copyrighted works collected and duplicated without grant of rights".

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48821172>

Pretty much my thought: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49388777>.

Two years might be too short.

The overwhelming majority of works have an effective commercial life of less than ten years.

Present-value analysis further reduces the individual benefit of long-lived copyright. That is warrented in only a minuscule fraction of all works.

(There are roughly 1 million books published in English annually, of which ... ten make the top-ten best-seller list. The situation gets worse if we consider this a conservative estimate, or include all other copyrighted works created in a year ... every one of the billion or so items posted to social media accounts on a near-daily basis is protected by copyright. Few if any of those have any real commercial value. The fraction of works fostered vs. works encumbered by copyright is parlous small.)

The thought occurred a few days ago that presumed copyright assignment might be a further casualty of our Brave New World of Ubiquitous AI Content.

Under most Berne Convention nations, copyright exists in all works "of original authorship" without any further registration requirement. That copyright persists for extraordinarily extended periods of time, generally many decades beyond the death of the author (if known).

Such protections apply to any authorship, including the comments posted here to HN, a jotted grocery list, or an audio recording.

But the protection presumes authorship. Today, increasingly, ubiquitous AI tools take over the role of writing in many contexts: texts, emails, HN comments (somewhat frequently given mod comments: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>), and whole articles and books.

Absent some work-factor suggesting probable original authorship (say, an original, handwritten or typewritten draft), there seems at least a faint possibility that AI might server as an incentive to require some positive act (e.g., registration, with a sworn statement of authorship) for copyright protection to be applied. This might be a positive step back from the copyright absolutism of the past century or so.

Earlier: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/117069264529174644>

Quoted, and sourced, in the comment you're replying to.

Yes, I'm aware.

This is not a jury nullification (which is an emergent property of US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections), but a failure to indict, that is to bring criminal charges (a "bill of indictment") for potential criminal conduct.

In this instance, the case has been dismissed, but might conceivably be brought again.

Why grand juries make the decisions they do is hard to determine, as their operations are (usually) secret. This may have simply been a case of insufficient evidence of a crime, or identity of the suspect ("probable cause"), as appealing as a broader backlash theory might be.

Much of this article appears to be either speculation or unsourced information if there was in fact resistance to bringing a Flock case by this grand jury. The latter might indicate a violation of secrecy oaths by jury members or other court officers.

Specific practices vary by state, not all of which use grand juries. All federal criminal cases rely on a grand jury.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_Sta...>

This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.

This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:

- Bring the case directly to a judge.

- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)

In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.

What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.

Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]

________________________________

Notes:

1. Sol Wachtler: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>

2. On grand juries, generally: <https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-does-it-mean-when-a-gran...>

3. On dismissal of charges: <https://andrewalpert.com/blog/what-does-dismissed-with-preju...>

There's a very widespread confusion over the meaning of inalienable.

The word does not mean "cannot be refused". It is trivially possible to refuse someone the right to life (kill them), liberty (imprison them), or happiness (torture them).

What cannot be done, however, is to transfer those rights to another individual.

Chattel or real property rights by contrast are inherently alienable. Your property (objects, land) can be denied you and given to someone else.

That said, the argument that inalienability makes a right somehow privileged (I have an an inalienable right to pain, for example, which I might be quite happy to shed) is a curious one, and there's a longer discussion in philosophy and the rights discourse over just what constitutes fundamental rights and why.

Definitions: "That cannot be transferred to another or others. Incapable of being alienated or transferred to another; that cannot or should not be transferred or given up."

<https://www.wordnik.com/words/inalienable>

Sauce?

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360228>

Given the butt-emphasis, there's also a certain allusion to Sir Mix-a-Lot.

Complexity should be relative to the material covered.

Verbosity without substance is tiresome. But so is hand-waving and vagueness over complex topics (the hallmark of conspiracy theorists and absolutist fundamentalists).

Providing a rich exposition of a rich topic is indeed a divine sort of thickness.

The real value isn't in getting it at the time, it's having those seeds planted, among a population who will likely read very little after graduation, to find fertile ground later.

There's all manner of things I'd Studied in School (primary, secondary, uni) which only became clear to me many, many decades later.

I'm helping an older friend with their one remaining pastime, audiobooks, many of which are re-readings of works they'd first encountered as a teen or young adult (now in their 10th decade). As TFA notes, there's a thickness to many of these works, and even having read them several times already, there's a reward in hearing them again, 60 or 70 years after first encountering them.

I listen in on some of the books. They've covered over 2,000 titles, which is impressive for anyone. One aspect that stands out to me is that I now catch the references to many of them: Herman Hesse commenting on Dante Gabriel Rosetti's "Beata Beatrix" (at the Tate), several references to Erewhon, and numerous places, people, and historical events of which I now have far more context.

I've had a similar experience, with the same play, but in an absolutely minimalist setting. No sets, the only props were a few chairs, and costumes were the same white slacks and smock worn by all the players.

And it absolutely worked.

This wasn't long after my secondary education --- I'd just started uni. But enough had happened that I got it.

As I've commented recently, even as an excellent reader, there's something that hits quite differently from hearing fiction (or even nonfiction) not just read but acted. Selected Shorts is an excellent source for this. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163756>.

There are a number of other rememberances and obituaries online:

"Remembering Richard Heinberg: ‘One of my core mentors is gone’" <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-07-30/in-memoriam-ri...>

"Remembering Richard Heinberg: ‘Tribute to the man behind the legend’" <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-08-04/remembering-ri...>"

"In Memoriam: Recollections of Richard Heinberg" <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-07-29/in-memoriam-re...>'

Obituary: <https://everloved.com/life-of/richard-heinberg/obituary/?flo...>

Another substitution that passes almost unnoticed today was elevator operators.

Elevators were complicated equipment which could kill people (and still occasionally do).

Otis's Safety Brake (1850) made elevators possible, but it was automated controls (and scheduling systems) which made self-service elevators possible. Apparently stimulated by an elevator operators strike in 1945:

<https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/historical-event-pushed-eleva...>

Fully-automated self-service elevators still took about a decade to appear, but would have been fairly common by the late 1950s / 1960s.

1999, from some digging. Now noted in the title.

The podcast the article is based on runs only 3m38s, so the text length seems about right.

Public radio used to have spots for short features at the end of flagship programming, slots that are now almost universally filled by sponsorship slots.

(That's one of the things which has made listening to radio, even public radio, in the US, far more tedious to me.)

Right, 1999 per episode dates.

De-magafication / de-trumpification is a notion that's been floated.

Wikipedia has a pretty good overview, only a few days old:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Trumpification>.

What specifically it might entail isn't clear, though my suggestions would be very widespread impeachment followed by disqualification from any Federal office (an option but not requirement under US impeachment law), extensive civil prosecutions (not subject to Presidential pardon), as well as State criminal and perhaps ICC / CHR prosecutions (likewise, though not presently supported by the US).

Most of that would require a 60+1 seat majority in the US Senate, which would require support from GOP members even with a substantial normal opposition majority.

Several of the G-Shock models (lacking BT and pedometer) advertise up to 10 year life.

Either way, vastly more appealing than a charge-it-daily "smartwatch" IMO.

Every other surface ship in the task force, along with resupply vessels, also burns oil.

The US had nine nuclear cruisers, but retired the last one, the USS South Carolina in 1999.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_cruisers_of_th...>

Currently the US only operates nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (11 active, two under construction), and submarines (69 active).

All match or exceed my present capabilities.

What specific functionalities and/or apps are not supported in your experience?

Welcome back, BTW.

Definitely outside my realm of expertise, but I'd expect that particles have a range of energies, and that the most energetic, or most damaging (not necessarily the same) occur somewhat rarely.

But yes, generally, it's at the very least a constant background flux (with occasional peaks), and all of it high-energy enough to make lightweight shielding of limited use.

That long-distance transit vehicle has to change trajectory somehow. Orbital transfers may be cheap but they're not free, unless you're talking about a free-return trajectory in which case your specific transits are limited, and often fairly slow.

Though yes, that does make the option of providing a radiation-hardened shelter available with less concern as to total mass.

Mass requires reaction (generally: fuel) both to accelerate and decellerate. Absent alternative delta-V mechanisms (usually: aeroraking, as lithobraking is perceived as generally too extreme), this rapidly runs into the tyranny of the rocket equation.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation>

Even without earth-to-orbit costs, that mass has real costs, and reduces available payload.

If that shielding mass can be dual-use (e.g., water), reactive (e.g., electromagnets), or reduced to a very small amount (emergency shelters, wearable garments), it becomes more practicable. That still doesn't make it easy.

There's also a discontinuity in radiation exposure. Passing through radiation belts (e.g., Earth's van Allen belts, or those around Jupiter), and solar storms, are both predictable and special precautions can be taken. Cosmic ray radiation is unpredictable, high-energy, and is far harder to guard against. Some risk is inevitable.