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This isn't the kind of thing you can do with a license, as long as training a model doesn't require a license. Now, that's an open question legally in the US, and there are active lawsuits, but that does seem like the way it's most likely to play out.

jefftkon AI is a business model stress test

Why do you think there's was an implicit agreement that documentation was only intended for humans? I've written a lot of documentation, much of it open source, and I'm generally very excited that it has proved additionally useful via LLMs. If you had asked me in 2010 whether that was something I intended in writing docs I'm pretty sure I would have said something like "that's science fiction, but sure".

jefftkon You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

(author)

This absolutely depends on the frequency of UVC and the intensity of the lamp. The lamps this post links such as https://aerolamp.net are putting out 222-nm, which is much safer than longer UVC wavelengths and the intensity is well under TLV when placed 8.5ft up (or higher).

See https://www.faruvc.org for more on eye safety.

jefftkon Eat Real Food

> I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years.

Thats right. It was replaced 20 years ago by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPyramid

jefftkon Eat Real Food

> the first one was in 1982 or something

The first one came out in 1992, and was active until MyPyramid came out in 2005. Which was then active until MyPlate came out in 2011.

jefftkon Claude Code On-the-Go

> Port allocation is hash-based—deterministic from branch name, no conflicts:

> hash_val = sum(ord(c) for c in branch_name)

> django_port = 8001 + (hash_val % 99)

> Six agents, six features, one phone.

What do you mean, no conflicts? The probability of a collision with six branches and 99 ports slots is ~14% assuming optimal hashing (which this decidedly isn't).

jefftkon Adobe Photoshop 1.0 Source Code (1990)

It all depends on how much context the reader has. For some audiences a comment explaining bounding boxes would be helpful; for others your example comment adds nothing that isn't immediately apparent from the code.

Part of figuring out a reasonable level of commenting (and even variable naming) is a solid understanding of your audience. When in doubt aiming low is good practice, but keep in mind that this was 2D graphics software written at a 2D graphics software company.

jefftkon Adobe Photoshop 1.0 Source Code (1990)

This isn't that uncommon:

* If a country doesn't have "closed borders" then many foreigners can visit if they follow certain rules around visas, purpose, and length of stay. If instead anyone can enter and live there with minimal restrictions we say it has "open borders".

* If a journal isn't "closed access" it is free to read. If you additionally have permissions to redistribute, reuse, etc then it's "open access".

* If an organization doesn't practice "closed meetings" then outsiders can attend meetings to observe. If it additionally provides advance notice, allows public attendance without permission, and records or publishes minutes, then it has “open meetings.”

* A club that doesn't have "closed membership" is open to admitting members. Anyone can join provided they meet relevant criteria (if any) then it's "open membership".

EDIT: expanded this into a post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/open-source-is-a-normal-term

jefftkon Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

No, Google doesn't use deceptive means. They identify their crawler as GoogleBot, and obey robots.txt.

jefftkon Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

Whether you obey robots.txt (Google does, SerpApi doesn't) seems like an important distinction.

jefftkon The past was not that cute

Plywood can be extremely durable, in many cases more than whole boards.

jefftkon Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

I've done this many times, and it usually takes about 5min (which sounds short, but isn't really that short). There is social pressure, but it's even stronger on the store than it is on you as a customer.

jefftkon Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

I remember it from at least 2014, and wrote about it in 2019: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ma-price-accuracy-law

jefftkon Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

3. Point at the sign, which is posted at every register, and ask for your discount. If they say no you ask for the manager. I've done this several times, and never had an issue (but sometimes it takes a little while).

jefftkon Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

> Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50.

This very rarely happens in MA, because when it does the store has to give you the item for $10 off, including if that makes it free. And they have to post a sign at the register explaining the law, which means when you're invoking it all you need to do is point at the sign.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/consumer-pricing-accuracy-...

jefftkon The past was not that cute

> Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. Not so many composites that fall apart instead of wear ala wabi-sabi.

Composites are older than you think: putting thin layers of high quality wood over a lower quality wooden backing goes back at least to the Egyptians and Romans:

Pliny, Book 16: The principal woods for cutting into layers for using as a veneer to cover other kinds of wood are citrus, turpentine-tree, varieties of maple, box, palm, holly, holm-oak, the root of the elder, and poplar. Also the alder, as has been stated, supplies a tubcrosity that can be cut into layers, as do the citrus and the maple ; no other trees have tuberosities so much valued. The middle part of trees is more variegated, and the nearer the root the smaller and the more wavy are the markings. This first originated the luxury use of trees, covering up one with another and making an outside skin for a cheaper wood out of a more expensive one. In order that one tree might be sold several times over, even thin layers of wood have been invented. https://archive.org/details/naturalhistory04plinuoft/page/53...

jefftkon Court filings allege Meta downplayed risks to children and misled the public

> I think the best way to put it is, users with the same user picked settings should see the same things, in the same order. That's a given on HackerNews, as there's only one frontpage.

Are you sure? The algorithm isn't public, but putting a tiny fraction of "nearly ready for the frontpage" posts on the front page for randomly selected users would be a good way to get more votes on them without subjecting everyone to /new

jefftkon Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

What's wrong with hats?

jefftkon NTSB Preliminary Report – UPS Boeing MD-11F Crash [pdf]

> Incorrect. The KC-10 was based on the Boeing 707. No connection to the DC-10 at all other than having 10 in the name.

I think you're confused? It's nothing like the 707, and is a trijet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extend...

EDIT re your edit: it's still a military version, even if militaries have retired it.

jefftkon NTSB Preliminary Report – UPS Boeing MD-11F Crash [pdf]

> Though I suppose another possibility is that they all share an identical pylon design or something like that.

They're very closely related planes (MD-11 is an upgraded DC-10; KC-10A is a military version of the DC-10), so that wouldn't be surprising. Likely the KC-10A has the same pylon, and the MD-11 has one that's similar enough that it's worth being cautious.

jefftkon Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

That's right. Several times they sneakily reverted my preference, and I reset it. The most recent time I went to do that again and learned it's no longer possible.

jefftkon /dev/null is an ACID compliant database

The claim is not "it's a state machine" but about transitioning from one valid state "to another". That requires more than one state.

jefftkon /dev/null is an ACID compliant database

"The system transitions from one valid state to another" is clearly false: the system only has a single state.

jefftkon US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

This is another example of something where, at least if you want to get all the way to completely correct operation, it's easier for an driverless car than a human. A person can't memorize the schedules of every school district they might pass, but an automated system potentially could. Of course something like Google Maps could solve this too, for both humans and Waymo.

jefftkon US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

> You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way.

Waymo has been doing a lot of driving, without any blood. They seems to be using a combination of (a) learning a lot from close calls like this one where no one was hurt even through it still behaved incorrectly and (b) being cautious so that even when it does something it shouldn't the risk is very low because it's moving slowly.

jefftkon How to sequence your DNA for <$2k

> We are (still) firmly in the sequencing by synthesis era.

It really depends what your goals are. At the NAO we use Illumina with their biggest flow cell (25B) for wastewater because the things we're looking for (ex: respiratory viruses) are a small fraction of the total nucleic acids and we need the lowest cost per base pair. But when we sequence nasal swabs these viruses are a much higher fraction, and the longer reads and lower cost per run of Nanopore make it a better fit.

jefftkon Flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs

You might like "The Mountains of Sunset, The Mountains of Dawn?", a science fiction story about this kind of drift on a generation ship.

jefftkon Become unbannable from your email

The most common answer is to hire MarkMonitor to do this for you.

jefftkon Pasta Cooking Time

Different pasta shapes take very different amounts of time to cook, and the time estimates on the box are helpful for figuring out when to start tasting.