1. Willingham sends Fables into the public domain
Total comment counts : 45
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
DC has released a response stating that the Fables comic books and graphic novels, along with their storylines, characters, and elements, are owned by DC and are protected under copyright laws. They assert that these works are not in the public domain and that they will take action to protect their intellectual property rights.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s opinion on how DC treats comic creators and expresses a desire to boycott their future publications. The author mentions that there are other publishers, like Image, that are perceived to operate more fairly.
2. Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source
Total comment counts : 57
Summary
The article discusses a pricing update announced by Unity, a game development platform, which changes the pricing model from pay per seat to pay per install. This change has significant consequences for mobile developers, as they would have to pay for every plain install of their app. Unity plans to charge $0.20 per install after the app has made $200,000 over the past year. This means that users would have to see at least 10 ads after installing the app to avoid incurring costs. The change will also be retroactively applied to existing applications. The article highlights the challenges faced by game developers in switching engines and suggests that open-source game engines, such as Godot engine, provide more protection and flexibility. The Ramatak mobile studio enhances the open-source Godot engine with mobile game-specific features and services, but users have the option to switch to the open-source version if they are not comfortable with any changes made by Ramatak. The article emphasizes the importance of offering something that users want and the advantages of using an open-source engine for game development.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article questions the logic of comparing Epic and Unreal Engine to Unity. It argues that Epic, being the operator of its own game store, is unlikely to risk upsetting developers for marginal profit gains. The article suggests that Unity only implemented a runtime fee because it wanted to avoid breaking its promise of no revenue share, and that this decision was actually worse for monetization. The author believes Unity’s problems stem from its growth after going public, while Epic and Valve, being privately held companies, have avoided similar issues.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses doubts about the future of game development using Unity. They believe that Unity’s recent terms and willingness to change them at any time will deter game companies from using the platform. As a result, the author predicts that Unity will become a liability for game companies and suggests that the company’s leadership will be replaced by shareholders.
3. FindMyCat – Open-Source Pet Tracker
Total comment counts : 66
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a project that the writer finds impressive, as it is a well-executed open-source hardware project. However, they mention that the size of the tracker is a problem, as their cat managed to remove the collar with their smaller tracker in just two minutes. This has inspired them to consider designing a more compact tracker that can be integrated into the collar itself. They plan to include a battery, GPS, LoRa with an antenna, and a microcontroller with power management, using a small Heltec LoRa+Bluetooth transceiver. Overall, the writer is inspired to revisit their own project thanks to this work.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article discusses their experiences with different pet trackers and their effectiveness for tracking cats. They mention that many trackers are too big for cats and primarily rely on Bluetooth, which is not useful for tracking cats that go far away. The author prefers trackers that have Bluetooth, wifi, LTE, and GPS capabilities. They note that trackers with more than just Bluetooth try to conserve power by enabling other radios only in certain situations, but they haven’t found one that does this well. The author expresses the need for better tracking for cats and lists two specific use cases they want to work well: knowing when the cat leaves home and finding the cat when it’s at home but hiding. The author finds the Tractive tracker useless and prefers the JioBit tracker, which connects to the user’s phone via Bluetooth when close to home and updates the GPS location over LTE when the cat is away from home. However, they find the GPS updates too infrequent and mention that GPS tracking is only enabled when the cat is too far from the home wifi, which can be problematic. The author expresses their desire for a tracker like JioBit but with better connectivity, including checking in with a server every few minutes using wifi or LTE, providing real-time tracking updates every 15 seconds, and the ability to ring the device over wifi or LTE. They don’t mind sacrificing battery life for better tracking and finding their cat.
4. B612 Font Family
Total comment counts : 28
Summary
B612 is an open source font family created for use on aircraft cockpit screens. The font was developed through a research collaboration between Airbus, ENAC, and Université de Toulouse III to improve legibility and reading comfort on cockpit displays. After working with Intactile DESIGN to design the eight typographic variants, Airbus decided to publish the font with an open source license. B612 was released on Google Fonts in December 2018 and the source code is available on Github. The font was designed by Nicolas Chauveau, Thomas Paillot, and Jonathan Favre-Lamarine, with support from Jean-Luc Vinot, Sylvie Athènes, and prior research by Jean-Luc Vinot and Sylvie Athènes.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article mentions that the background image on a website header displays a nice cockpit font, which differs from the actual B612 font used on the site. One notable difference is that the zeros in the B612 font do not have a line through them. However, it appears that the oxygen indicator on the site utilizes this font.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The Atkinson Hyperlegible font is mentioned as having a similar goal of balancing aesthetics and legibility. The author notices two differences with this font: the characters “0” and “I” are more difficult to distinguish.
5. Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
Unity has quietly removed its GitHub repository that tracked changes to its terms of service (ToS) following the update to its pricing plan. The repository allowed the public to monitor changes to license agreements, but it is now inaccessible except through a web archive. The deletion of the repository suggests that Unity may have removed it before July 16, 2022. In a blog post from 2019, Unity emphasized its commitment to transparency but has since removed a clause that allowed developers to use the terms from older versions of the game engine. The updated ToS now obligates users to follow any changes, including recent pricing updates that charge developers per game install.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article suggests that Unity could have handled their licensing changes in a better way in order to achieve their desired outcome of increasing income while maintaining trust and transparency with their community. Instead of making the changes retroactive on existing games, they could have implemented a per-installation fee for games built using new Unity versions going forward. The article also suggests adding new features and devices to the new versions to encourage users to upgrade voluntarily. By making the changes retroactive, Unity has upset existing customers who were not expecting the cost structure to change. The article also mentions the removal of a GitHub license archive repo that highlighted the potential unenforceability of the changes.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the frustration surrounding changes made by Unity, a software development company, to its terms of service. The main points of frustration are summarized as follows:
Unity has shown that they can change the terms of payment and there are concerns about the limits to these changes. If Unity is financially constrained, developers may face further demands. The risk of doing business with Unity is high due to unknown future exposure.
The monetization model chosen by Unity is based on installs rather than revenue. Initially, they claimed that re-installs would also count, but later clarified this to be a miscommunication. Unity has been ambiguous about how they plan to track this metric, making it difficult for developers to plan around.
The author argues against the misconception that people don’t want to pay Unity. Instead, the criticism is directed towards the unclear billing model applied to past games and future sales. The author uses the analogy of Microsoft charging a fee for every future install of software built with their programming language, C#.
6. Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? (2003)
Total comment counts : 58
Summary
The article discusses the challenge of distinguishing between different types of individuals based on their interests. It mentions examples such as distinguishing a coder from a cannibal, a mathematician from a murderer, and hacking corpses versus computers. The article also mentions various unrelated topics such as a British seaside simulator, a 17th-century death roulette, Voleflix free movies, a fake MP, a sleep animal test, and sound.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is about Rob Pike, a Canadian inventor of Golang, an imperative language that focuses on channel-based concurrency. The article also introduces him as a “serial” killer, but it is unclear what that term refers to.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article states that the author mistook the “dead eyes” of someone for a programming language inventor, but later realized it was a serial killer.
7. TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
TikTok has been fined €345 million for violating EU data law concerning the handling of children’s accounts. The Irish data regulator, which oversees TikTok in the EU, found multiple breaches of GDPR rules. These include placing child users’ accounts on a public setting by default, failure to provide transparent information to child users, allowing adults to access and enable direct messaging on children’s accounts, and not adequately considering the risks to underage users on the platform. Users aged 13 to 17 were guided through the sign-up process in a way that made their accounts public by default. The “family pairing” scheme did not verify if the adult accessing the child’s account was a parent or guardian. TikTok has made changes, such as setting all accounts for users aged 13 to 15 to private by default since 2021. The company disagrees with the decision and the level of the fine imposed.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the implementation of state identification for popular websites and remote attestation. The author mentions that there is support for this idea, citing a specific case as an example.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a finding that TikTok’s “family pairing” scheme, which allows an adult to control a child’s account settings, does not properly verify the adult’s parental or guardian status. The author questions how TikTok should verify parents and whether other tech companies are expected to do the same. The author also raises a point about other companies not receiving fines for similar issues.
8. My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank’s website
Total comment counts : 35
Summary
The article discusses the author’s favorite API, which is a zipfile on the European Central Bank’s website. The author explains how they use this API to calculate the highest value of the Dollar against the Euro, using a small program. The author describes the process of downloading the historical data, decompressing it, querying it with SQLite, and converting the data from wide format to long format using pandas. The author also addresses some issues with the data, such as trailing commas, and explains how they clean the data using pandas. The article highlights the simplicity and usefulness of the ECB’s zipfile as a data interchange format. The author also mentions the csvbase tool they have developed, which follows a similar format for data interchange and offers four main verbs: GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE. The article concludes by discussing the significance of the Euro’s value in 2000 and how it has changed over time.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a specific file that was highly popular and frequently downloaded from the European Central Bank (ECB) website about 15 years ago. Many financial institutions and individuals used this file to update their own systems. After the file was published daily, there was a significant increase in website traffic. The decision to make the file a simple CSV (Comma-Separated Values) format was intentional, as it allowed for reliable and fast serving of the file with minimal resources. The small team responsible for the ECB’s public website took pride in the technical decisions made to make this data easily accessible in a single static file.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the benefits of simple file downloads and CSV files for publishing data. The author expresses frustration with having to fill a “shopping cart” for downloading US government data. They suggest that more people should use simple formats like this. The article also mentions the availability of wrapper tools and a web view tool called Datasette for making the process easier and adding additional features.
9. A mathematical formalization of dimensional analysis (2012)
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
The article discusses the concept of dimension in mathematics and how it is applicable to physical quantities in physics. It explains that physical quantities are represented by a combination of a number and a unit, and that it is important to manipulate these quantities using dimensionally consistent operations. The article presents two approaches to formalizing units and dimensions in mathematics: the parametric approach, which models dimensionful objects as numbers or vectors depending on dimensional parameters, and the abstract approach, which models dimensionful objects in an abstract mathematical space where only dimensionally consistent operations are allowed. The article also discusses the advantages of retaining the limitation to dimensionally consistent operations, such as error correction and the ability to identify the form of physical laws. It concludes by explaining the trade-off between the freedom to vary units and the freedom to work with dimensionally inconsistent equations.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article emphasizes the importance of maintaining the spatial structure of units. It explains that energy and torque are both measured in Newton meters (N.m) in the SI units, but the difference lies in their vector properties. While energy is a scalar, torque is an axial vector.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author finds it amusing that there is a concern about using certain tools in physics and suggests that physicists are well-acquainted with dimensional analysis.
10. Show HN: Nue – A React/Vue/Vite/Astro Alternative
Total comment counts : 88
Summary
The article introduces Nue, a JavaScript library that serves as an alternative to React, Vue, Next.js, Vite, and Astro. The author has been working on Nue for the past year and is now releasing two things: Nue JS, a small JavaScript library for building user interfaces that supports server-side rendering and client-side reactive components, and the Nue ecosystem, which aims to be a serious alternative to existing systems like Vite, Next.js, and Astro. The author is not satisfied with the current state of web development and is building Nue from scratch, emphasizing concepts like progressive enhancement, separation of concerns, and semantic web design. All projects will be released under the MIT license.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article suggests that the “getting started” section should be the first thing people see on a homepage. It recommends replacing a size difference display with a snippet showing how easy it is to create a simple app, followed by a link to a more complex app. The author believes that most free developers are more concerned with their development experience rather than the bundle size, so the new tool should focus on demonstrating how it offers the same or better experience.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mentions that the Nue project is more of an alternative to Petite-Vue or Riot.js rather than a full-fledged Vue or React. Comparing Nue to headlessui-react/vue is like comparing apples to oranges/bananas, as the headless UI listbox is more complex. It suggests that creating a listbox in Vue using Nue is easy, with a similar amount of code. The article also points out that the “Getting Started” documentation lacks information on using Nue without a build step, for enhancing existing HTML websites like Petite Vue or Alpine.js. It suggests using a script tag with a specific source. The article also asks about the performance of Nue compared to other JS frameworks and suggests adding it to a benchmark test.