Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | elteto's commentslogin

I think this is the first article that truly gave me “slop nausea”. So many “It’s not X. It’s Y.” Do people not realize how awful this reads? It’s not a novel either, just a few thousand words, just fucking write it and edit it yourself.

I'm guessing they have a workflow for blog posts, with 100k workflows I was wondering something seems a bit weird.

About the same amount you had in your comment, to be honest.

I'd love to see where you think I was being passive aggressive and/or condescending... Like I said above it's hard to tell in text but what I read in my original comment is an overtly aggressive overview of my experience in academia. You my have a different experience and that's fine.

Attack the argument not the man. Whether he is set for life or not has nothing to do _in this context_, since, presumably, people who open source their code do not care about profit.

> people who open source their code do not care about profit

Not only are there businesses built around open-source work, but it used to be widely-accepted that publishing open-source software was a good way to land a paying gig as a junior.

I think that whether you need to continue working to afford to live is very relevant to discussions about AI.

Profits don't need to be direct - and licenses are chosen based on a user's particular open-source goals. AI does not respect code's original licensing.


> presumably, people who open source their code do not care about profit

That's not true. There are business models around open source, and many companies making money from open source work.

(I'm only reacting to this specific part of your comment)


I think you are splitting hairs. Yes those models “exist”, if by exist you mean they have dual-licensing setups with different tiers (community, professional, etc).

The point is that most individuals who open source their code do so without expecting financial returns from it. In that context, whether Carmack has a $1 or $1e9 doesn’t make a difference.


I'm not splitting hairs, it's a crucial aspect and a common misconception that it would be quite helpful to get rid of (hence my reaction). And no, it's not necessarily dual licensing (why not though) or different tiers, or fauxpensource or whatever, there are many projects which are completely open source. See for instance Nextcloud, XWiki, PostgreSQL, Linux...

Again, as I said, I was only reacting to that specific part of your comment, because it is obviously wrong.

(and thus the rest can't follow since you use it to draw a conclusion -- which doesn't mean you can't fix this, I don't know, actually I didn't get your point and I don't see how it counters what you replied to -- but I'm not really concerned about this part)


You're forgetting about Red Hat & friends, where the software is 100% open source and the for-profit product is actually the support contract.

> The point is that most individuals who open source their code do so without expecting financial returns from it. In that context, whether Carmack has a $1 or $1e9 doesn’t make a difference.

Bruh, there are thousands of projects, maybe tens of thousands, that survive solely on donations, hundreds thousands written by hungry students trying to land their first gig. Maybe you’re right in “free as in beer” sense, but you’re certainly, majorly wrong in general OSS definition.


Pointing out that a man who has achieved financial freedom decades ago may have different priorities than present and future wage slaves isn't attacking the man.

>Pointing out that a man who has achieved financial freedom decades ago may have different priorities than present and future wage slaves isn't attacking the man.

saying he has no empathy, and has never had empathy, on the other hand...


Says who?

GPL is transactional. The author's profit is in the up streaming of enhancements.

Those who release under GPL absolutely do care about profit, it's just that the profit is measured in contributions.


Open Sourcing software has _nothing_ to do with 'gratis'. Can't believe this still needs repeating in 2026.

It's not a requirement but it is so correlated that there's no need to react so strongly. I struggle to remember a single paid open source tool off the top of my head but could name dozens that you can just use for free.

> Attack the argument not the man.

But the man's argument is that since he sees something a given way then it's the truth. What people are doing in return is showing that he can only do so because of who he is.


> Whether he is set for life or not has nothing to do _in this context_, since, presumably, people who open source their code do not care about profit.

What's your point here? Because whether or not someone needs income to pay their bills is MASSIVELY relevant to whether or not they have to care about the profit on their work.

The bulk of Open Source maintainers aren't "set for life", and need to get a real job in order to not be homeless.


For a full understanding of any text, you always need to consider the context as well as the content and the author, in this case Carmack, is part of the context. You cant just separate them. This is especially true when it concerns contemporary issues.

> open source their code do not care about profit.

Ah, how naive. You're not squinting hard enough.


> Whether he is set for life or not has nothing to do _in this context_

Being a millionaire set for life, who doesn’t need to work a day if he wants to, has nothing to do _in this_ context of AI companies siphoning away all the open source code, profiting off it, and then threatening to automate away at least one cell of white collar jobs and potentially others too. Hmm.


The argument ignores the mans privilege

[flagged]


Privilege does matter, obviously, because your perspective and biases influence your opinion. When someone says something, we can't just analyze what they are saying, but why they are saying it. What is their motivation? What are their incentives? If they're right, who wins? Who loses? How much do they lose?

This is why politicians are able to lie through their teeth. There's enough people out there who refuse to, or can't, deeply analyze people's words. "Well, the government hasn't yet announced their plans to abuse X Y and Z, so obviously it's not gonna happen!"

Such an argument seems painfully poor, but, believe it or not, it's, like, the primary argument when these things come up.

At the end of the day, you and me have a lot to lose from AI. Carmack has less, perhaps he even stands to gain. Hm, that colors things, no?


They’re ought to take your whole profession away, threatening to leave you flipping burgers or on the street, but you’re busy protecting Carmack and his $100+ millions online.

No please, for the love of god, he's been an asshole for decades. He has set back gaming everywhere he's been in charge. The guy makes 1 kind of experience. He's the opposite of a good leader.

Elaborate on your points

How has he set back gaming?

1 kind of experience?


I guess they're talking about the Carmack-led id, which was much less successful & cohesive than the previous iteration of the company.

The "one kind of experience" is probably referring to Carmack's comparing story in a video game to story in an adult movie.


How very typical of non-Americans to misrepresent Americans!

You don't need to explain anything to the government, that's why we have the 5th amendment. It is the government's job to bring charges against you and prove them beyond reasonable doubt. The government is right to investigate and ask questions to accomplish that and I am right to refuse to answer anything.

It's basically "innocent until proven guilty". Red light cameras turn that assumption around since if your car gets ticketed it is assumed you are "guilty until proven innocent".


I think the argument is generally: nobody has a right to drive a car, it's something we permit by issuing a license and other regulations. One of the conditions is that the owner of a vehicle is ultimately responsible for it.

The judge in this case disagreed, because the red light infraction was not a simple civil fine but quasi-criminal, e.g. points on drivers license, possibly resulting in suspension, etc.


You can own a car and not drive it. It can be stolen from you, anything.

The structure of this whole thing is to avoid having to do an actual investigation. They could subpoena the car owner's phone records for instance. Instead they choose to hide behind bureaucracy and offer you an off ramp in the form of a lower payment to make it all go away.


If the owner is who is responsible for it, then make the ticket to the car and not an individual. State was attempting to play it both ways to tip the outcome in the states favor.

> I think the argument is generally: nobody has a right to drive a car, it's something we permit by issuing a license and other regulations. One of the conditions is that the owner of a vehicle is ultimately responsible for it.

Do you know you can be licensed to drive a vehicle without owning one, and similarly, own one without being licensed to drive it?

Why would the owner of the property be responsible for someone else's actions with that property?


Because they bought the most dangerous tool we have in common use, and society decided to make the law.

The owner isn't responsible for the drivers actions, but they are required to name the driver. (Or declare the car stolen etc.)

(At least in much of Europe.)


I would say they could be, but its needs to under strict circumstances. Easiest is with guns, I loan you my gun knowing your going to go and use it to commit a crime, but that is covered under being an accessory. With cars, the only situation I can think of is if you loaned your car to someone you knew was drunk and was going to drive. Or you loaned me the car knowing I was going to use it as a get away vehicle in a bank robbery. But I assume the second case would also be covered under being an accessory to the crime.

But for the purposes of traffic tickets, yea, its ridiculous. It also has a lot of faults. I got a traffic ticket from a red light camera for a car I owned when I was stationed in California. The ticket came to me in Oregon 5 years AFTER I traded that vehicle in (I traded it in right before moving to Oregon) and the traffic cam ticket was from Texas, a state I've never driven a vehicle in. My only presence in Texas has been being in the airport in Dallas. The ticket was also for a year prior to when I received it. So I hadn't owned it in 4 years when it ran a red light in Texas.


> You don't need to explain anything to the government, that's why we have the 5th amendment.

As someone else said, this only works against self-incrimination? If you say it wasn't you then you need to testify or get prosecuted?


First, you have the right to say nothing at all; there is no requirement to incriminate someone else to protect yourself.

Second, you can still generally invoke the 5th amendment during testimony even if you already claimed someone else did it. You aren't under oath until said testimony, so it still protects against you having to choose between committing perjury or self-incrimination, and doing so cannot be used as evidence of either.


No, you don't always have the right to say nothing at all. Courts can compel testimony and punish you if you don't.

And you plead the 5th after going under oath. And you can't just plead the 5th to any question. If the prosection puts you under oath and asks you your name, you can't plead the 5th to that


That's why I said generally - once testimony is compelled, it can no longer be used against you. And the definite exception for compelling your name is if the government already believes that you committed a crime and is trying to figure out who you are, and you cannot articulate specifically why your name could be incriminating.

5th amendment protections can include questions of identity, if the question of identity is relevant for incrimination. Like, if the government has a warrant for "Joe Smith", you're not required to testify whether that's you. It's usually a waste of time since could just prove it with the non-testimonial evidence that lead to your arrest, but the protection does exist.


The 5th amendment with regard to self-incrimination only applies to criminal cases. When I represented myself in court for a speeding ticket the judge threatened me under pain of contempt that I had to testify against myself.

Most camera tickets are either civil moving, or civil non-moving. Civil moving are against a person and civil non-moving are against the vehicle. Neither of which case does 5th amendment protect you from incriminating yourself, and neither of which does it require prove beyond a reasonable doubt.


Read the ruling. The judge says red light camera cases are quasi-criminal in the way they are handled even if nominally civil and thus can be subject to constitutional requirements including the protection of the 5th amendment.

That’s really cool. Scotch tape is just weird, peeling it also generates x-rays (in a vacuum):

https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/10/23/217918/x-rays-ma...


I think the main difference was political: for Apollo you had the most powerful nation in history throw their economic and political will into pushing a project forward.

NASA programs today are mainly about creating/maintaining jobs and keeping private industry contractors busy. They lost the political agency and freedom to move fast that they had in the 60s.


You don't test the nozzle on _launch day_, what kind of ridiculous statement is that? You think the Air Force is paying SpaceX so they can test things the day it flies?

All components go through several test campaigns on the ground, while iterating on the design to address issues. These campaigns take months/years. That's why changes are stacked into "blocks", which are the equivalent of rocket versions. Each block must be certified by the Air Force and NASA to be deemed worthy of flying their payloads.


A couple days before COTS-1[1] was to launch, a crack was discovered in the second stage nozzle. Rather than wait a month to fabricate and install a new one, SpaceX had a guy climb inside the rocket and use some shears to cut off the lower third of the nozzle. The rocket launched without issue.[2]

So while you're right that SpaceX doesn't typically do this sort of thing, NASA did pay them to fly an untested nozzle design.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_COTS_Demo_Flight_1

2. See the section titled "Snipping the nozzle" at https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/forget-dragon-the-fa...


It was a demo mission and that change was actually consulted and approved by NASA.


I think you're purposefully missing my point.


> When SpaceX launches a rocket, they think it will work. When NASA launches a rocket they know it will work.

That is such an ignorant thing to say. You think Falcon 9 has had 500+ successful launches because they _think_ it will work?

The difference is that SpaceX is a private company that has the ability to iterate fast. NASA is a jobs program and Artemis/SLS a barrel of pork, simple as that.


The Taking of Christ is absolutely stunning. The way light reflects off the dark armor is incredible.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: