I agree with Prime on most things, but I think he’s getting this one wrong.

There are more options than just “light-hearted satire” and “earnest business idea”.

The FOSDEM talk is silly, and reads like a skit, but it has a gravely serious undertone.

The security guy has posted on Twitter “I still can’t believe he hooked it up to Stripe lol”.

Meanwhile the LinkedIn of the other guy describes him as a “researcher of political economy of FOSS” at Rochester Institute of Technology, and he runs a non-profit about FOSS for humanitarian aid.

He’s also been very active replying to people talking about the conference talk or the Malus site, asking whether they think this should be legal and what we can do to protect the future of open source.

I think these are people who take this threat very seriously, and are willing to expose themselves to litigation in order to force the issue into courts.

Only took them six paragraphs to pivot to the good ol “imagine the US is like your household…” fallacy.

Yeah no shit

Surprised to see so many objections in that HN thread. Or are those Meta bots?

I avoid the potential presence of ads.

I recall seeing some research that suggested “ignoring” ads makes you more susceptible to their content. I couldn’t find it after a couple searches though.

No, it was giant radioactive ants.

But now I am actually not sure if what I saw was Them! or Matinee (which features a film that very well may be based on Them!)

Saw “Them!” when I was like 6. That was pretty bad.

And then Starship Troopers when I was like 10. That one really got me.

Huh. Never thought about how they’re both bug movies.

Prediction market advocates said they would make the hidden knowledge of crowds more visible.

What they actually did was build a financial incentive for information asymmetry.

Idk if yall have noticed, but the last thing we need in 2026 is another thing trying to manipulate what people believe.

One box

That’s a high-quality essay.

Only 100 hours?

I feel ya. But the pendulum will probably swing back the other way soon and we’ll have a ton of companies hiring to undo/replace slop code. That’s how it has been for previous coding fads, anyway.

I’m happy for Godot’s commercial success here. But what’s this weird attempt at connecting open source to piracy? You can de-compile lots of Unity games too. Wtf.

“But it’s not AI’s fault”

Well, the purpose of a system is what it does

I’ve got some skepticism alarms going off on this one.

What exactly does “basically reverse engineered some assembly” mean here? Decompiled to C?

And what do you mean by “remake in assembly”? Like, literally writing assembly by hand? Or compiling C source?

I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is that binary-to-binary translation isn’t enough to strip the license, even if you’re making a pit stop in a higher-level language.

• Tool allows you to generate output without understanding or accountability
• Continue rewarding output only
• Extreme lack of understanding and accountability

shocked pikachu

Just to be clear: this is not about protecting people.

This is just another squeeze, wringing the next few drops of accountability out of their sector.

They’re not really employing the drivers, so they’re not responsible for vetting them. And they’re not really selling rides, so they’re not responsible for what happens during one.

So what’s next? “Oh, we told drivers to get interior cameras, we told riders to be careful, we gave them checkboxes!”

Anything at all that they can spin as a value-add to shareholders, rather than allowing for any amount of responsibility towards the well-being of people who interact with their systems.

This analysis is spot-on. I especially think you’re onto something with your reference to the commons. (Edit: The generative AI movement could be a seen as a modern reincarnation of enclosure)

These guys think of a commons in a sense of ownership: if I own something, I can do whatever I want with it.

But the real historical examples of a commons are more like a mutual obligation. It’s a relationship, not a delivery of inert goods. Yes, you get access to the benefits of the commons, but that comes hand-in-hand with accepting the duty to care for the commons as an ongoing entity.

That’s what really irks me about all of this. They didn’t “steal” something. They killed a collective organism.

Primeagen mentioned it here, noting that sqlite does this

As Cory Doctorow says:

This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out.