1. French court issues damages award for violation of GPL
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
A French court has ordered Orange, a major telecom provider, to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages for infringing the copyright of Entr’Ouvert’s Lasso software and violating the GPL. This case, which began in 2010, involved Orange using the Lasso software in a government portal without passing on the rights to its modifications or making the source code available. The Appeals Court initially rejected Entr’Ouvert’s claims for copyright infringement, but the decision was overturned by the Court of Cassation. The compensatory damages were based on lost profits and disgorgement of profits.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the 14-year legal battle between Entr’Ouvert and Orange, questioning the efficiency of the court system.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the need for two landmark cases in the context of licensing for software libraries. The first case should award damages to a pure GPL library that does not offer commercial licensing options. The second case should exonerate a company that is LGPL compliant but faces a lawsuit from another company seeking financial gain.
2. Claude 3 model family
Total comment counts : 94
Summary
The article announces the release of the Claude 3 model family, consisting of three models: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus. These models set industry benchmarks in cognitive tasks and offer increasing levels of performance. Opus is the most intelligent model, exhibiting near-human levels of comprehension and fluency. All models in the Claude 3 family have improved capabilities in analysis, forecasting, content creation, code generation, and conversing in non-English languages. They can power live customer chats, auto-completions, and data extraction tasks. Haiku is the fastest and most cost-effective model for its intelligence category. Sonnet is 2x faster than previous models and excels in tasks requiring rapid responses. Opus has similar speeds but with higher intelligence. The models also have sophisticated vision capabilities and can process various visual formats. They have improved contextual understanding and are less likely to refuse prompts. Opus demonstrates improved accuracy and reduced incorrect answers. The models offer a 200K context window upon launch and can accept inputs exceeding 1 million tokens. Opus achieved near-perfect recall and even identified limitations in the evaluation itself. The models are designed to be trustworthy and efforts are made to address risks and biases.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the release of a plugin for the LLM command-line tool that adds support for the new Claude 3 models. The plugin can be installed using pipx, and it requires setting an Anthropic API key. The article also provides example commands for using the plugin to generate text based on the Claude 3 models. The code for the plugin is available on GitHub, and more information about LLM can be found on the LLM website.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses how the Opus and prior Claude models fail to correctly answer the Sally question. The question asks how many sisters Sally has given that she has 3 brothers, each of whom has 2 sisters. The article explains that even though Sally is one of the sisters, there is no mention of any other sisters besides Sally. Therefore, the correct answer is that Sally has 0 sisters. The article also includes an image that supports this conclusion.
3. A woman named “Steve” – IT pioneer, entrepreneur, philanthropist (2019)
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
Dame Stephanie Shirley, also known as Steve Shirley, is a computing pioneer who built a $3 billion tech empire in 1960s England. She achieved this by establishing her own software company called “Freelance Programmers” that employed professionally qualified women who had left the workforce after getting married and having children. Shirley’s company promoted flexible work methods and job sharing, and it eventually employed over 8,500 people. The company was responsible for programming the black box for the Concorde and played a role in developing software standards adopted by NATO. Shirley escaped Nazi Europe as a child and had a passion for mathematics. She overcame discrimination and donated a fortune to autism research while raising an autistic son. Shirley’s strength in coping with change and her dedication to ongoing education were pivotal in her career success.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article mentions that someone donated money towards the purchase of premises for the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the reader’s curiosity about how people worked from home in the 1960s, which was before the era of personal computers and modems. The reader wonders if it was still the time of punch cards and suggests that people might have punched the code onto cards at home and then mailed them to the client.
4. Sampling: What Nyquist didn’t say, and what to do about it (2018) [pdf]
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a problem encountered with a codec chip. The output needed to be at 48 kHz, but there was not enough CPU power to process the input at the same frequency. The solution was to use a large FIR anti-aliasing filter on the codec chip. The author mentions the benefits of using FIR filters, such as a sharp cutoff and linear phase. They also reflect on their learning experience and mention that they would have tried Bessel filters if they had known about them at the time.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses several key points, including the preference for Bessel filters over Butterworth filters, the idea of lowering Fc (cutoff frequency) and increasing Fs (sampling frequency) instead of increasing filter order, and the importance of considering both time domain and frequency domain when choosing a filter. The article also mentions a dense interview question that assesses knowledge in this area, specifically asking about choosing the stopband attenuation of a filter. Stopband attenuation is seen as the most relevant factor in determining the magnitude of noise in the sampled signal and is an upper bound on the performance of downstream algorithms.
5. Motion blur all the way down (2022)
Total comment counts : 18
Summary
The article discusses the concept of motion blur and its application in animation. It explores the relationship between natural motion blur and artificial motion blur, and suggests a method for simulating the most natural-looking motion blur. The article also introduces the idea of a “shutter function” to minimize artifacts and improve the perceptual similarity between a video and a natural scene. The author then goes on to describe their attempt at creating an infinite motion blur animation using a realtime shader.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the tradeoff of incorporating motion blur in rendered or filmed content on screens with finite refresh rates. It highlights that when viewers move their eyes to track a moving object, it becomes sharp in real life. To accurately represent this in visuals, one would either need to track eye motion and blur accordingly or have no motion blur with an infinite refresh rate, but both options are currently impractical with existing technology. Therefore, achieving the correct look will always be a challenge. The article suggests that a skilled director or game designer should choose the shutter rate or render blur based on their understanding of how the audience’s eyes will move.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of this article expresses skepticism about the use of motion blur in video games. They argue that while motion blur can enhance realism in certain situations, such as fast or close movements, its excessive use in video games can make them appear like poorly edited movies. The author also mentions that when they turn their head or eyes, they don’t see a blurry image but rather a clear, new image, as their brain disregards the transitional phase. They suggest looking in a mirror to confirm this experience. The author concludes by stating that motion blur in video games is distracting and unrealistic, as it delays the presentation of the new view when the player moves their point of view.
6. Surrealism Is 100
Total comment counts : 13
Summary
I’m sorry, but without the actual article text, I’m unable to provide a summary.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) is a vibrant community interested in surrealism. They hold annual conferences and engage with living surrealists. The movement, which started 100 years ago, attracted artists up to and after World War II. The ISSS connects academics and artists globally, with a highly engaged community that actively participates in discussions during Zoom presentations, often involving 80-90 people for several hours.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses their appreciation for Surrealism and their admiration for early surrealists. However, they believe that Surrealism is based on a single idea and does not age well. They argue that there are limited new and interesting developments in surrealism, and that most contemporary surrealism is cashing in on an old idea, becoming a cliché. The author suggests that AI can generate surrealism with a click, which could disrupt the fake surrealism market.
7. Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotify case
Total comment counts : 42
Summary
I apologize, but I am unable to access or summarize the article as it appears to require JavaScript and disabling any ad blockers.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The European Commission has fined Apple a total of €1.84 billion, consisting of a €0.04 billion fine and a €1.8 billion deterrent against future anti-competitive behavior. The additional lump sum is meant to ensure that the overall fine is sufficient to deter Apple and other large firms from engaging in unfair practices. This warning serves as a message to all dominant firms in emerging technologies to compete fairly or face legal consequences.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author is comparing Microsoft’s situation in the 90s to Apple’s current situation and questioning why regulators are less strict against Apple. They mention that Microsoft faced criticism and calls for it to be broken up due to anti-competitive practices, but wonders why similar conversations are not happening today with Apple in major markets like China, the US, and the EU.
8. Singapore Airlines Concorde
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
The article discusses the history of Singapore Airlines’ operation of the Concorde supersonic passenger airliner. It highlights the joint venture between Singapore Airlines and British Airways, which aimed to reduce travel times between Singapore and London from 18 hours to under 10 hours. However, the service faced challenges due to waning demand and rising fuel costs, leading to heavy losses. The article also mentions the politics involved in securing permissions and routes for the Concorde flights, including negotiations with the Singapore government and India’s refusal to allow the aircraft to fly over its airspace. Ultimately, Singapore Airlines and British Airways agreed to a compromise, and the joint operation of the Concorde began in December 1977.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the possibility of reducing flight times between Singapore and London from 18 hours to 10 hours with the use of new aircraft. The author finds this interesting because current direct flights between the two cities are already around 13 hours. They express skepticism about paying high fares for a 3-hour reduction in flight time if it means traveling in a small and uncomfortable cabin with lower quality pressurization and ventilation compared to existing aircraft on the route.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the surprise of the author that Singapore Airlines (SQ) was the only third-party airline to have its livery on a Concorde aircraft. They mention seeing pictures of Concordes with Braniff livery on one side. The author recalls that the Concorde service operated from Dallas to either New York or Washington, but only at subsonic speeds due to regulations. The article also mentions the use of advertising drawings in depicting Braniff Airways’ Concorde operations.
9. Giant anaconda species in the Amazon of Ecuador is the largest to be documented
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
Scientists have captured images of the largest documented anaconda species ever found in the Amazon of Ecuador. The University of Queensland team, led by Professor Bryan Fry, discovered the nearly 10-million-year-old species with the help of the Huaorani people while filming a National Geographic series. The team encountered a 6.3-meter-long female anaconda and captured several specimens of the species, which they named the northern green anaconda. The newly discovered species resides in the smaller basin in the northern Amazon, while the larger basin in the south is home to the green anaconda. The two species differ genetically by 5.5%. The team hopes to study the reproduction of the northern green anaconda for insights into the ecosystem’s health. The findings have been published in the journal MDPI Diversity.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a case in Florida where an 18-foot Burmese python was found to have swallowed a 5-foot alligator in the Everglades. The incident involved a python, not an anaconda. The author also mentions that this is not the only case of a gator being found in a snake in Florida, with another incident where a gator burst out of the snake.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mistakenly states that the Orinoco basin is part of the Amazon. However, the Orinoco river is an independent river and one of the largest in the world. It is the third or fourth largest river in terms of water discharge. The Orinoco river’s discharge is only smaller than the Amazon and Congo rivers.
10. How to be a good listener
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
The article discusses the importance of listening and provides advice on how to be a good listener. The author emphasizes that being a good listener is not just about remaining silent, but also involves knowing what to say. They suggest not dismissing someone’s emotions or telling them not to feel a certain way. Instead, they recommend acknowledging the person’s feelings and offering support. The article also touches on the significance of engaging in meaningful conversations and encouraging children to express their thoughts and feelings.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author shares their perspective on the best way to learn how to be a good listener. They believe that simply reading about it is not enough and that it is more effective to observe someone demonstrate good listening skills and engage in discussions about it. The author mentions specific techniques like reflective listening, clean language, and the approach used by Eugene Gendlin that have helped them improve their listening abilities. They also mention the concept of “holding space” as a way to create a safe and non-judgmental environment for people. The author emphasizes the power of listening and how it can deeply impact others. They provide links to more information on the mentioned techniques.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article questions the recommendation of not relating to others. The author admits to relating to others and finding it helpful when others relate to them. They question whether relating can be useful if it is not used to shift the focus onto the person relating.