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> The action taken by the user is still "buying"

technically correct, sure. letter vs spirit of the law.


yep, I've actually thought about this.

I think it should be a finable offense for a company to use verbiage that implies ownership when in fact it's licensing.


That would kill the small labels, but not the big labels because they have a way to connect with their customers that google does not control, namely radio.

That said, I agree with the principle of what you're saying. Google put a LOT of things in place on youtube specifically so the large publishers wouldn't go after them, and that has extended to everything else.

Google absolutely has a large responsibility in this, but it's also true they're not the only party with responsibility for it.


you're free to interpret it that way, but that certainly wasn't my interpretation.

I wonder if it's a generational thing where those of us who are old enough to remember when streaming wasn't a thing don't find it acceptable because companies didn't used to be able to treat us this way. Once the physical media was in our hands it was ours and if it randomly stopped working it was generally duo to a physical problem we had a hand in.


I remember that and still advocate for it. I'm just surprised that the issue was directed at Google and not DRM in general.


It's the law in the US.

You can RIP copyrighted content of physical media you own for backup purposes, but you cannot share it.

This is why ripping a music CD you own is perfectly legal, but if you upload it that is not legal, nor is downloading it from someone elses upload.

Some people in the emulation community do actually adhere to this, but the vast majority do not, as you noted.


Not sure about other content, but for games (and other programs) in particular this isn't quite true in the US (Copyright Act -- Section 117). You're explicitly able to authorize another individual to do the ripping on your behalf, and they can transfer to you the result. Websites offering those for download are problematic because they usually don't verify ownership or take any steps to ensure copies are destroyed or transferred when the underlying media is transferred.

Also, IANAL, but I suspect the order of events might get somebody into hot water. Although the effect on the creator would be the same, I'm not sure it's legal to (1) make a backup, (2) be authorized to make a backup by a media owner, and (3) transfer it -- as opposed to (2,1,3). I.e., hosting the content perpetually might be illegal regardless of your access controls. That isn't a problem with upload/download/sharing per se, but it does potentially make doing so more complicated.


I don't buy games from online unless there's no other alternative and I don't care. Usually it's some small, silly game I'm playing with my gf. But for everything _I_ want, it's physical medium, only. If sony or nintendo ever release a console that has no ability to use physical media, I will not purchase it. I say this because I believe nintendo has a version of the switch that has no ability to play physical media. I'm ok with different versions like that, I'm not ok with not being able to purchase a version that uses physical media.

Same with music, I have a huge music collection. A lot of them are pirated, many of them are FLAC rips from physical discs.

The _ONE_ exception I have to this is movies on Amazon. I'm not a huge movie/television guy but I _DO_ consume most of that type of media via Amazon Prime and Netflix. If something goes away I generally don't care, and if I _DO_ care I either already have physical copies or I know I can purchase them. So I will sometimes purchase this type of media on Amazon because I find the convenience acceptable considering the risk. Sometimes I'll repurchase on Amazon for things I physically own just for the convenience of it.

---

But yeah, pirating is going to become rampant again due to the behavior of these companies. I certainly have no qualms about doing it.

Generally speaking, if I want to watch a show and it's been pulled off of netflix or prime for some other service (HBO, CBS, etc) I just pirate it and move on.

I haven't watched past the last season of Survivor that's available on Amazon because I don't care enough to pirate it, but when I do decide I want to watch through the rest of it, that's how I'll consume it.

And fuck'em. You can't even _BUY_ the latest seasons on Amazon (my gf was purchasing them as she watched through them until they stopped offering it at all).

You don't want my money, then you don't want my money.


When I was young I could give myself a time to wake up and wake up at that time. As I've gotten older I've lost the ability.

But I would use it to get up 30 minutes early to play NES before school. My mother would make me go to bed at a specific time, but if I was working on a particularly hard spot in a game I'd tell myself to get up 30 minutes earlier and spend that time playing.

I also used to lucid dream very frequently. I'd recognize it as lucid dreaming and actually start manipulating the dream. What's always been interesting to me is that dreams have rules to them, so even manipulating them there are limits. Sometimes I could fly freely, sometimes I could barely get off the ground.

Also, past a certain point in my life I completely stopped having nightmares. A nightmare has a "feel" to it. Even if it starts off pleasant I recognize that feel and simply step out of it.

---

So, we may not have an explanation for, but it absolutely happens.


I do that even now, rather than sleeping to the last minute and struggling to get ready and out the door in time, I'll allow myself time to wake up and get going by: poking at the game du jour (Currently STALKER Gamma and Dwarf Fortress) for a half hour or so while drinking coffee, a short workout, and a shower. Then I'm off. No grogginess, no dragging ass, no rush.

As opposed to my old morning past time of doomscrolling, I much prefer this. Plus, if the GF and I had a rowdy night out, I can forego all of the above and sleep in for another hour or so.

All that said, I do often wake up up to 10 minutes before my alarm actually goes off, and I prefer waking naturally than to the noise of my alarm.


I have all three of these experiences/abilities as well. And similarly, I think that as I get older my wake up timing is not functioning so well as it did. Possibly because my life changed so that I didn't really need it for many years. But now when I try, I tend to wake up two or three times, the first well before my intended target. And the later sleep is notably shallower and less restful.


We'll never know, honestly.

And if I'm being truthful, I struggle with evolution a bit. It's a bit like life. I understand how life could have eventually evolved to where we're at. But how did life _start_?

Any specific mechanism is explained as having evolved, but if so, how did it _start_?

For example, there's an HN thread explaining why bees die after they sting and why it's acceptable from a colony perspective. What put bee's on _that_ specific evolutionary track? How did it _start_?

I think a lot of people are like myself, there's a level of blind faith put into evolution. We obviously have witnessed it happening so we know it does happen, but there are so many things we can't explain for sure that forces us to have blind faith it happened via _purely_ evolutionary forces. like ... what if we find out some super advanced alien civilization seeded earth with life and managed it in some way, helping shape things. It would kind of explain a lot.

And so I continue to have blind faith that even if we don't have a concrete explanation for many of the things we see it happened via evolution, but I also understand the skepticism some people have for evolution being the sole explanation.


> I understand how life could have eventually evolved to where we're at. But how did life _start_?

Evolution doesn't explain how life started (or attempt to explain), just how it changes over time. How it started is obviously a really interesting question, but not one you can use evolution to understand. Evolution explains a specific thing, not everything.


> there's a level of blind faith put into evolution

I'd call it common sense, more than blind faith. You see a person dead on the floor with a bullet wound, and a handgun laying next to the body. Concluding that the victim was shot to death is common sense, not blind faith. In that sense, evolution is more like playing detective, all the evidence is pointing to it.


Sure, if you find the phrase "common sense" to be less offensive than "blind faith", but in this case they mean the same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFIYKmos3-s


> in this case they mean the same thing

Blind faith implies both lack of evidence ("blind"), and rigid loyalty to a specific idea ("faith"). Common sense implies neither of them.


I see you didn't watch the youtube video I linked

https://search.brave.com/search?q=definition+of+faith&source...

> Faith

> 1. The assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition or statement for which there is not complete evidence; belief in general.

> 2. Specifically Firm belief based upon confidence in the authority and veracity of another, rather than upon one's own knowledge, reason, or judgment; earnest and trustful confidence: as, to have faith in the testimony of a witness; to have faith in a friend.

...

> 5. Intuitive belief.

We have a hypothesis that the penis _evolved_ due to it's ability to scoop out semen. A part of that hypothesis is that this is why longer penises evolved, to place semen in places that cannot be scooped out by other men.

But another explanation for larger penises is that women find them more attractive and pleasurable and therefore it increased your chance of mating.

Another would be that larger penises are statistically more likely to get a woman pregnant in general, with or without a bulbous head.

But here's one for you. The original hypothesis about the penis head came from an experiment in which they found that a single thrust could potentially pull out 90% of a competitors semen. We won't discuss the logistics (they didn't use real people), we'll have _blind faith_ that the experimenters ensured it was realistic.

Men ejaculate in spurts over a time period that is larger than what it takes to thrust a single time. This would imply the penis head also removes it's own sperm quite often.

---

The point here is that

1. We don't know, and 2. We can't know without actually documenting the process.

This sub-thread was brought about by someone saying "how do we know this is true", and the answer is, we can't know, therefore we take it on blind faith.

If you're offended by the phrase blind faith, use whatever phrase you like. But while you're doing that, please watch that youtube video. It will help you better understand why it's more useful to discuss the underlying idea than to discuss if we should be using word X or word Y.


> by someone saying "how do we know this is true", and the answer is, we can't know, therefore we take it on blind faith.

If you're talking about evolution in general, then it makes a large number of predictions about the way things are, that have borne out.

If you're talking about penises scooping out semen, the answer is we can't know, therefore we take it on faith—the answer is we don't know, and so it's one of several hypotheses—none of which are mutually exclusive. Nobody is (or should be, at least) taking it on faith, because nobody should be asserting it as definitely true.


I'm stepping out of this conversation. You insist on arguing about words despite my repeated requests for you to watch the video.


It is very telling that you repeatedly use the phrase "blind faith", but you left off the "blind" when presenting definitions.


I would be interested to see how you think this short video supports the claim you are making here, as it does not mention evolution, common sense or faith, and is ostensibly about how little knowledge one gains just by learning the name of a thing.


You don't understand how pointing out the names of things isn't the important property of a thing would be relevant in a discussion with someone who is arguing it should be called X instead of Y?

That's on you, brother.


No, the claims made in the video you linked to do not show that, as you put it, "in this case, 'common sense' and 'blind faith' mean the same thing." Nor does your reply to mcphage.


correct, the video is pointing out the name you call something isn't important.

I choose to call it blind faith and the other poster prefers to call it common sense. If a 3rd person wanted to call it guacamole I'd be onboard.

The other poster insists on arguing about the name rather than discussing the interesting part, which is underlying idea. They want to do this based upon the whole "science vs religion" thing that was boring even back in the 90's when it was raging.

I have no interest in it and so I've stepped out of that conversation. Let someone else take up a stupid, useless, argument.


> The video is pointing out the name you call something isn't important.

Firstly, this is a misreading of the video. The absurdity of this position can be seen from extending your example through replacing every noun in your comments by "guacamole".

Secondly, "blind" is an adjective, and one that you use at every opportunity (except where you are looking up definitions - by the way, isn't looking up definitions an odd preoccupation for someone who doesn't see anything of importance in what you call something?) It is well-known that you cannot outright prove anything about the natural world by induction, but to lump everything that is not proven into the category of specifically blind faith ignores the epistemic value of evidence and just leads to what you call a stupid, useless, argument.


> The absurdity of this position can be seen from extending your example through replacing every noun in your comments by "guacamole".

Ouch. Funny though.


It's a complete misunderstanding of what's being said.


[flagged]


We've banned this account for repeatedly (and indeed mostly) posting flamewar comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.


I told you earlier you were planning on banning me :)


I don't track such things. You kept breaking the site guidelines - this is just standard practice, nothing personal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


don't track ... kept breaking ...

does not compute.


I don't track people's claims about when they expect to be banned or for what. Such claims have no connection to moderation practice.

I do track whether accounts have been breaking the site guidelines. That's what moderation is concerned with.

I hope that's clearer!


> what if we find out some super advanced alien civilization seeded earth with life and managed it in some way, helping shape things. It would kind of explain a lot

It really wouldn't!


The alien origin hypothesis is just kicking the can down the road.


how so?

A simple explanation would be that the aliens are much simpler than we are in makeup because it happened purely by evolution, and that part of our complexity came through planning.

There's just too many possibilities to so confidently claim it's kicking the can down the road.


Simplicity would be more likely to imply creation than complexity.

Simplicity implies understanding and intent.

No one would design the absolute spaghetti code mess that underlies our existence.

Look at the computers we build. Neat little rows and friendly little abstractions.

Life isn't. It's billions of years of good enough hacks layered one atop the other, and sometimes transitioned sideways from other forks of the code base.

Near half our DNA is just viral cruft that got mixed up and passed along for untold generations.

>Eight percent of our DNA consists of remnants of ancient viruses, and another 40 percent is made up of repetitive strings of genetic letters that is also thought to have a viral origin

https://www.cshl.edu/the-non-human-living-inside-of-you/


none of that obviates that there could have been a design at some point.

It's just fun to think about.


Suppose living matter came to earth on an asteroid. That still doesn't explain how living things emerge from non-living matter.

> the aliens are much simpler than we are in makeup because it happened purely by evolution, and that part of our complexity came through planning.

That looks like argument from complexity. And it seems that complexity through planning would require an even more complex creator, not a simpler one.

> There's just too many possibilities

I don't think it makes a difference either way. If we can figure out one way of making life from non-living matter, we've cracked the code, we don't need to know how exactly it happened.


I think you need to read back over what I said and consider that you've _completely_ misunderstood it.


It is assumed that life started by chance events surrounding chemicals which possess attributes of self-replication.


I'm aware.


In addition, they've started collecting data _around_ gmail. You cannot sign up without a phone number now. They can absolutely do what they want with that phone number without breaking their promise to use your email for advertising.

I think the article has a point, but is overselling it as bigger than it actually is.


> You cannot sign up without a phone number now.

I've found this varies. I've had to make a few new gmail accounts lately for various reasons, and only once was forced to add a phone number.


No vim emulator is "good enough" if you actually know vim, although jetbrains is probably the closest due to the configurability of it's plugin.

there are almost always quirks, but the biggest issue tends to be when bridging the gap between vim and the GUI itself, particularly around the modality of vim vs graphical autocomplete.

If you're less experienced as a vim user these emulators are probably perfectly fine, but as someone who has been using vim for something like 20+ years, they _always_ feel just off enough that I either just go back to vim or edit the way the editor originally intended.


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