An Unbelievable Demo • Hacker News Board

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#331

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

As an American, I found this and the other cultural anecdotes very interesting. We definitely do a lot of obnoxious things, or at least things that can seem obnoxious to other cultures. No arguments there. We should be better. =)

    To an Australian, introductions in the US can sound 
    boastful, but they can also be useful as a quick 
    way to share one's specialties.

But this one puzzles me a bit. Typically, we talk up the people we're introducing - I'm not sure I've ever heard anybody talk themselves up during an introduction!

"Sally, this is Bob. Bob's been doing some really cool stuff with XYZ lately. Sally, I know you have too!"

(At which point Sally and Bob often politely insist that no, they're nothing special at XYZ)

I've always thought of this as gracious and not boastful. I definitely agree it would be obnoxious to talk one's self up!

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#332

Post by busyant » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

Just to throw in an analogous story.

I was hosting a research talk given by quasi-famous professor at a biotech startup that I worked at.

Quasi-famous prof was describing a gene (gene "xyz") being used as a tool in his lab, "but the specifics of what gene xyz is and what it does are not important. It's just a gene we use in these assays...."

Me: Do you know who has 2 thumbs and discovered xyz? This guy.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#333

Post by perlpimp » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

Once I worked at company X, while there I have seen a said Library for universally accessing things in OS. It was written by our senior architect. Year later I worked at another company, there was this high strung developer boasting about his own library. He even put it up on a webpage - was before GitHub. It was same library at company listed above, so I ratted to the developer who wrote that library. I usually feel queasy about ratting, for some reason I did not feel a slight bit of dissonance.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#334

Post by marcan_42 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #307

OldTimeCoffee wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Different things. Games are directories/packfiles containing many individual files, mostly binary art assets, plus one executable that takes up a negligible proportion of the total size. When binary art assets in the directory/packfile are updated between versions, they don't really "change" in the sense that a source-code file might be changed a git commit; instead, they get replaced. (I.e. every file change is esse…

XOR+RLE is almost useless for binaries, because almost any change will cause instructions to be added or deleted, offsetting the entire binary after the first change, making the xor fail to converge. On top of that, these changes cause changes in addresses in the first part of the binary, so you end up with a zillion similar-looking xor deltas in the first part of the file that won't compress well with RLE.

In fact, if you use smarter compression than RLE, I wouldn't be surprised if the update was larger than the original binaries after the xor, as an offset xor will likely increase chaos (entropy) in the file, making it compresss worse than the original.

bsdiff was specifically designed to intelligently handle these situations, which is why it works.

Just tested it on Chromium from my package server (90.0.4430.72 vs 90.0.4430.212):

- Original binary: 266MB

- Gzipped binary: 106MB

- Gzipped XOR "patch": 228MB

- bsdiff patch: 47MB

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#335

Post by axiosgunnar » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #328

dhosek wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the copyright was registered before the infraction can you file for punitive damages. Otherwise you’re only eligible for actual damages.

Isn't anything you write automatically copyright?

Yes, and you can get actual damages without registering. It‘s for the punitive damages that you register.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#336

Post by axiom92 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

Hah. Reminds me of this incident: https://newatlas.com/ai-art-auction-obvious-belamy/56984/

Someone downloaded the code for GANs (generative adversarial networks) from Github, generated (sampled) a painting using it, slapped the GAN objective function as a signature, and sold the painting for over $400k!

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#337

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #55

> a heavy American accent Any non-Americans want to chime in on what is a heavy American accent? I’m imagining heavy southern accent, but maybe this is something that can only be heard by non-Americans?

Americans can identify accents from within the US. Any such accent would be identified by foreigners at least as American and probably as coming from a coast, the central US and the south.

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#338

Post by nwsm » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #3

I did not see that coming, well worth the read if you just came here for the comments. I won't spoil it for you.

I was expecting something Theranos-esque

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#339

Post by bostonsre » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

bostonsre wrote: post #276

brendangregg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. There was a time when many observability products were adding latency heat maps, and at one conference expo floor there were three companies with latency heat maps on their screen at the same time, pitching them as a flagship feature. If I walked near them they'd start trying to explain them to me, and I never figured out an appropriate response. If I said "hey, great to see you added them, I invented these b…

Thank you for sharing some of what you've learned with everyone in everything that you've published. I've been reading the latest addition of your systems performance book the past few weeks and it is amazing. You're work is pretty awe inspiring.

s/'re/r/g

Re: An Unbelievable Demo

#340

Post by Aachen » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

Twirrim wrote: post #330

Aachen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having to rapidly re-architect the tool around a non-GPLv3 licensed library ... or just go with it and have it be open source? The old version is already open and free for anyone to request the code of. No rush at that point, you can withhold updates for a little while while you rearchitect this or take the situation as it is and have the next few bugfix releases also fall under GPL until you get around to replacin…

> ... or just go with it and have it be open source? They didn't have the legal right to do so.

How is that? The company added code to a GPL project, that means it is a derivative work and also comes with software freedoms, or at least that's how the story reads to me since there is no mention of other claims or parties to the mix. That means the company owns the copyright to the added code and is free to comply with the contract (license).