An Unbelievable Demo • Hacker News Board

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#311

Post by sleepydog » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

knolan wrote: post #196

My stories are very minor. I did my PhD in a reasonably well regarded mechanical engineering lab. My area is experimental fluid mechanics. I ended up writing a lot of Matlab code while there and even worked with a spin out company from the lab in the biotech sector for a while. I'd get a lot of other students coming to me for coding help. Most just wanted me to do their job for them and I was too naive to say no. One…

I think it is very common for code to outlast its authors in academia for non-CS/EE fields, where programming is seen more as a means to an end rather than its own pursuit. For example, my wife in her Psych PhD inherited a giant hairball of Matlab code for interfacing with an eye tracker and scripting various experiments. She made her own modifications, and I helped too. The last we heard, the code is still being used. There are likely dozens of copies of it under various names, with sections commented out or added to the end.

I'm sorry to hear about you not getting credit, that's inexcusable, in the same way that not accrediting the researchers who did the work in a paper or book (I have heard this story too often) is inexcusable.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#312

Post by dvlsg » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

cromulent wrote: post #305

nix23 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some places only require one party (you the recorder) to consent Some places...nord Korea? You the recorder have to consent?? I consent to myself that i record others without their knowledge?

Most of Australia, for example. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/is-it-legal-to...

The majority of the states in the US have one-party consent too, I believe.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#313

Post by elric » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

It's a small world. Many, many years ago, I wrote a little help desk application for a one man ISP. The only requirement? "I have to be able to respond to support requests using WAP". This was, of course, before smart phones were a thing. Typing long replies on a phone with only a numpad was not pleasant. So I built something with a lot of prehashed replies and parts of replies, which could be accessed by entering a couple of digits (with some very rudimentary context awareness).

Fast forward 10 years or so, I'm consulting at a company. When I see one of their support engineers using a tool that looked vaguely familiar. Turns out the company had acquired the one-man ISP and had continued developing the little helpdesk application I'd made for WAP all those years ago.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#314

Post by cge » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

nix23 wrote: post #292

steego wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the laws first. Some places only require one party (you the recorder) to consent.

>Some places only require one party (you the recorder) to consent Some places...nord Korea? You the recorder have to consent?? I consent to myself that i record others without their knowledge?

Laws around recording typically also cover cases where an outside person, who isn't a party in the conversation, is recording. The idea is that there are three possibilities: all parties in the conversation consent to recording, one of the parties consents (almost certainly the person who wants the recording), and none of the parties consent (ie, someone is spying on the conversation). One-party consent is legal in a variety of countries and regions of countries, while zero-party consent is illegal pretty much everywhere I know.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#315

Post by steelframe » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

greyhair wrote: post #234

I had a similar, smaller scale of that happen, in a sort of reverse direction a few years ago. My director dropped a resume on my desk for someone coming from a company I had worked at ten years prior, thinking I might have met them (it was a small organization). I didn't recognize the name, but skimmed through the resume quickly, and their primary claim on their work history was something I invented just six months…

Having conducted technical interviews at FAANG companies for over 10 years, I've gotten to the point where I never believe anything anyone claims on their resumes unless I can independently verify them. I also make it a point to ask probing questions about where they got the idea of "inventing" what they did and what alternatives to "making a brand new thing" they considered at the time.

However one of my favorite questions to ask is, "What don't you like about what you invented?" A true creator of something is always acutely aware of its flaws. They're unsettled about its shortcomings and wants to do better. In describing the flaws they demonstrate deep insight into the problem space, and they explain expertly how things don't go perfectly in certain corner cases or how the code could have been better organized.

The poser will almost always struggle to come up with criticisms of what they "invented" and try to pass it off as a spectacular feat of engineering brilliance.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#316

Post by Riverheart » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

OldTimeCoffee wrote: post #255

throwaway3699 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implementing software updates where you don't want to ship entire binaries again (and only the diff) would be one. In some video games the assets are also packed into massive binaries, so you don't want to ship gigabytes of data because you replaced one icon. Sadly many games do this anyway nowadays.

There are other solutions to this problem that the game industry uses. Binary diff patching is slow, incremental, involves large diffs and has the possibility of corruption. It was used back in the mid 90's (RTPatch was the big name), but really isn't used anymore because of the drawbacks. Games frequently use an override directory or file. The patch contains only the files that have changed and is loaded after the m…

That's how Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) supports modding

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#317

Post by technofiend » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

knolan wrote: post #196

My stories are very minor. I did my PhD in a reasonably well regarded mechanical engineering lab. My area is experimental fluid mechanics. I ended up writing a lot of Matlab code while there and even worked with a spin out company from the lab in the biotech sector for a while. I'd get a lot of other students coming to me for coding help. Most just wanted me to do their job for them and I was too naive to say no. One…

I had a friend who worked at Compaq on tools that did desktop imaging. There was one tool he used that had a big splash screen when it started naming the author. Everyone was in awe of that guy so he used the cachet of people knowing his name to move on to bigger and better roles. My friend decided to see if he could replicate that success and when he wrote the next version of the tool he too had a big splash screen with his name up front. Sure enough it worked and for a certain subset of everyone, everyone at Compaq knew his name and he too was able to move on to what he considered a better role.

There were a couple of downsides; he got calls for years after asking for help with the tool, and one boss seemed envious which led to other issues.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#318

Post by satysin » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #298

fifilura wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognition - yes, but money - why? It was open source. This meeting does not sound at all awkward to me if I was the sales person. To me this sounds like how lots of companies work with open source to make a business. They take some open source tools (maybe they built it themselves, maybe not), package then and maybe sell some cloud service around it or simply just support. If I was the sales person I would be delig…

Honestly, it sounds like they might have been willing to purchase a license from you to redistribute the code. Had you reached out, you may have received a few bucks and proper attribution for your work (and your work would have reached a broader audience).

Possibly. Of course they could have contacted me first rather than modifying my program to pass it off as theirs.

I mean it was GPL2 so they could have just used it as is.

Of course this was the early 2000s where many people saw "open source" and felt like it meant they could just do whatever they want. I bet they never entertained the idea I would ever find out let alone be sitting in a sales pitch :)

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#319

Post by bredren » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #310

bredren wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tldr; In 2007, an academic argues with PG and others. After long exchange, academic defensively states their own achievements. Another user challenges academic with GP question, to which academic provides unexpected affirmative response.

I think you missed the point. Scroll up, it's the same guy :)

Haha. I did. That’s wonderful.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#320

Post by micimize » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

Wait but what happened? Did he do something about it after, like contact Sun saying "Stop! You have violated the law!" or whatever? If not, why on earth not?

What's the point of publishing with a copyleft license if you aren't going to do anything when someone literally walks into your office and says "we at Big Corp are selling your work without any attribution?"