That’s exactly the reason the research and development funded by government grants is rarely done in the private sector: It isn’t immediately profitable, and we don’t know for sure if it ever will. It’s important to put man-hours behind even theories that will seemingly never be useful (“trash”), both because it is impossible to know for sure, and because that is the underpinning of science.
Exploration for exploration’s sake, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Not everything learned by the human race needs to be immediately useful; it all contributes to a vast tapestry.
Not to mention that if we focus solely on profitability and utility, we do bad science: Why do you think we have a reproduction crisis? Because reproducing experiments isn’t sexy nor profitable, so no one is incentivized to do it.
> Any modified versions, derivative works, or software that incorporates any portion of this Software must be released under this same license (HOPL) or a compatible license that maintains equivalent or stronger human-only restrictions.
That’s not what copyleft means, that’s just a share-alike provision. A copyleft provision would require you to share the source-code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the author misunderstood…
(Despite all the valid critique being offered ITT, I applaud the author for trying. The underlying viewpoint is valid and deserves some form of representation at law.)
> A copyleft provision would require you to share the source-code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the author misunderstood…
This license doesn't require the original author to provide source code in the first place. But then, neither does MIT, AFAICT.
But also AFAICT, this is not even a conforming open-source license, and the author's goals are incompatible.
> ...by natural human persons exercising meaningful creative judgment and control, without the involvement of artificial intelligence systems, machine learning models, or autonomous agents at any point in the chain of use.
> Specifically prohibited uses include, but are not limited to: ...
From the OSI definition:
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Linux distros aren't going to package things like this because it would be a nightmare even for end users trying to run local models for personal use.
> I applaud the author for trying. The underlying viewpoint is valid
Is it valid? I’m not really convinced. I’m not particularly a fan of copyright to begin with, and this looks like yet another abuse of it. I consider myself a creative person, and I fundamentally do not believe it is ethical to try to prevent people from employing tools to manipulate the creative works one gives to them.
The HOPL wouldn't stop the end user from running an LLM, but it would prevent the LLM from incorporating information or code from a HOPL-licensed source. Do I have that right?
Unfortunately, sometimes our judges, juries, and officers are also biased or incorrect; pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive.
> pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive
If you look at a slew of the recent pardons, the beneficiaries had already pleaded guilty. In those cases, the pardons should be ineligible. I think the most a President could do - should be - give defendants the ability to appeal the case to a new judge or jury. It's wrong and should be corrected! Added it to my todo list
Unfortunately, very often the best thing to do is just let them have their way and walk away with a lot less of a punishment than would be the case should you dare to fight them.
Financially and personally, it's what they do to pressure you into submission. It happens from criminal cases all the way down to fucking family court. It's absurd and it's broken.
I truly believe that almost every single attorney should have to lose sleep at night over how their actions impact others.
Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.Having one individual with strong incentives to enable their team stay in power as much as possible retain the power is shocking.
Judges and juries are at least superficially removed from that sort of corrupt incentive system.
> Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.
It is clear that they don't only do that, as that has not been their principal (or even a common) use for most of the history of the pardon power.
It is equally clear, however, that they do allow that; the check on that, like on most discretionary Presidential powers, is the Congressional power of impeachment; obviously, that is not a meaningful constraint when the Congress and the President are aligned on abuses, but the entire point of having separately elected bodies is to make it less likely that things that the public would see as abuses are supported by both political branches simultaneously. (Obviously, the fact that one whole house of Congress and 1/3 of the other are elected at the same time as the President, and that the weighting of the electoral college for the President are a blend of the apportionment to the House and Senate makes those elections less independent than one might want, even before considering the way the electoral structure contributors to partisan duopoly, though.)
Shooting the messenger won't fix or prevent a code quality problem.
Edit: Let me explain why I am of this opinion. Of late my life is being made miserable by poor quality software. There seems to be an entire generation of programmers that are skipping the whole part of the design process where one explores the problem space a given piece of software is meant to fit into. In doing so, they are willfully ignoring how the user will experience their software.
This includes networking products that have no means of recovery when the cloud credentials are lost. When the owner of the product loses their credentials and no longer has access to the email address they originally signed up for, the only solution is a manual reset of every single device in the network. Have you every had to spend hours taking a ladder into a building to rip down a dozen access points that are paperweights because there's no way to recover from this?
Take LLMs. They're great at filling in reams of boilerplate code where the structure is generally the same as everything else. So much of the software industry is about building CRUD apps for your favourite corporation, and there's not a lot of thinking throughout the process. But what happens when you're building a complex application that involves careful performance optimization on many core CPUs and numerous race conditions with complex failure modes? Not so good. And the person driving the LLM isn't going to patch the security holes in the "vibe code" they submitted to the Linux kernel because they don't even know how it works.
Or LLMs that skip off the guard rails and feed desperate individuals information on how to kill themselves?
What about the Full Self Driving vehicles that drive at full speed into emergency vehicles parked on a road with lights flashing that the most naive of drivers would instinctively slow down for while approaching?
What about search engines that have prematurely deployed "AI" features that hallucinate search results for straightforward queries?
How about the world's largest e-commerce website that can't perform a simple keyword search for an attribute of a product (like the size of an SSD)? When I specify 8TB, I mean products that are 8TB, not 512GB!!!
How about CPUs that lose 10-20% of their touted performance gains at launch because of bugs that are "fixed" by software and microcode updates after launch?
What about the email service that blocks emails that are virtually identical to every other email sent to a mailing list because it wasn't delivered using TLS? Oh, but the spammers that have SPF + DKIM + ARC + whatever validation get to have their messages delivered because they have put an Unsubscribe link in the headers.
How about the online advertising platforms that push scams on the elderly with ads that are ephemeral to prevent anyone from sharing a link to what they just saw and report it?
So if I say there is a problem with a software developer being clueless about features they have implemented, it is a valid criticism that is based in facts about the way their software was designed and how it functions.
There are still people who value their reputation enough to put in the effort to explore the problem space and anticipate the user's needs to avoid issues like this, but I fear that they are going to be pushed out of the industry because they're not fast enough in the race to foist the "next big thing" onto an unsuspecting public.
We need simple, reliable, functional software that meets the needs of its users. And we're losing that.
It's a sad state of affairs that we have to deal with in 2025. We have truly entered the age of "Fuck you" software that ignores what it does to its users and actively harms them.
For tuned, I don't need the bug fixed, as I simply don't want it changing any kernel settings at all. Uninstalling it achieves the result that I want.
The rest of the rant is valid and the issues are virtually impossible to get fixed.
Please enlighten me: how does one file a bug against spam filtering on gmail.com or get rid of broken AI summaries on google.com that will garner an acknowledgement and get the underlying issue fixed?
> Congratulations on being lucky enough to not be afflicted by a bad enough mental health disorder! All you have to do is to "get out there and do stuff" to achieve fulfillment.
It’s true that mentally ill folk (including yours truly) fall prey to these dopamine sinks more easily as an escape or coping mechanism — and they’re even more vulnerable to the predation of marketers and UX engineers trying to maximize ad-views. It is important to have these talks about society and social structures. But ultimately, on an individual level, it very literally is about just “getting out there and doing stuff.” That isn’t dismissive or discounting hardships, that’s just how it is.
Getting out there and doing things is the answer, for those with mental illnesses and those without. Upping your willpower and your ability to cope is paramount. How you do it differs from person to person: It might be tweaks to routine, taking medication, or getting therapy. But this is a universal human thing. The goal is the same, the steps is the same — but some of us have more intermediate steps than others.
I get that permissive licenses are popular now, but “freedom to make sure other people don’t have freedom” still doesn’t feel like a compelling argument.
In specific cases, they make sense purely practically; but generally? It feels like a huge error for the whole world to leave copyleft and the GPL behind. The reason we can run Linux on everything is because Torvalds chose the GPL, and so vendors are forced to share their drivers if they use the kernel. And that is a truly magnificent achievement.
GPL makes sense in a context where that sort of vendor compatibility creates existential conflicts for the product. For an operating system and associated toolset, it is clearly an excellent license and does great work encouraging the necessary cooperation from otherwise unwilling partners.
Games are a different beast. For one, the dominant revenue model for videogames continues to be to sell copies of the software, and most digital platforms want (understandably) to apply some sort of DRM to those purchases. If I license my game library for GPL it means that, among other things, users are not free to use it in their iOS, Android, Nintendo, PS4, Xbox, or Steam* releases. That makes the library dead on arrival for almost all of the compelling distribution channels. As a result, all of my game libraries are MIT. I want users to be able to sell software that is built using my library, and that means I want to use the most permissive library possible.
There is a place to fight philosophical grounds, and then separately there is wanting to make sure that my actual users (game developers) aren't restricted by my personal philosophies. Thankfully, MIT is itself perfectly copyleft compatible. You can very well include it in your GPL games, and I'd love to hear if you do! But if you are the much more typical developer trying to make a living with your craft, then I want to support the practical realities of your available storefront options, and let you get on with that.
(*Someone much better versed in license legalese informed me that Steam games can be released under GPL so long as they avoid the Steam SDK. I am not lawyer-y enough to confirm this or speak to the details.)
If I make a game with SDL then I am not the user of SDL, I am an intermediary between the people who develop SDL and the player who eventually uses SDL in interacting with the game. Calling people who distribute libraries with their programs users instead of reserving that term for the people who actually use the programs with the included libraries is just wrong. If a farmer sells oranges to a supermarket and the supermarket then puts those oranges in baskets together with other fruits and then sells those fruit baskets you wouldn't call the supermarket the consumer of those oranges.
Does it make sense to release everything as GPL, while simultaneously offering a non-gpl option for like $$?
Developers get an unlimited free use trial to try your code, up until release. At which point they can decide to either contribute back with either their code or their money.
> It feels like a huge error for the whole world to leave copyleft and the GPL behind.
I think GPL is great for certain projects and goals.
There are many times where my goal isn’t to retain control, though. I just want to help and have other people use some of my code some times. I don’t really care if it’s an individual working on a hobby project or a giant corporation putting it in their product. My little 1-person open source contribution isn’t going to be the make or break thing to some megacorp’s success or failure.
I think it’s great for Linux. Doesn’t need to be applied to everything though.
> AnkiMobile is the official iOS app and all purchases help fund Anki's development.[1]
You could always use the web UI in your phone browser, Ankiweb[2], which is very kindly hosted for free by the developers.
You could also write your cards as CSV, HTML, or really any format you want and import them, if the interface isn’t to your liking. Shoot, you can even use an Emacs package[3] if you want to.
One is made by AnkiApp Inc. (28€-99€ IAP subscription)
One by Ankitects Pty Ltd (30€)
Which one is the official one?
The problem isn't the format of the source, I COULD write it in windows .ini -files. The point is that I want to learn the language, not spend time writing the book about the language first. How do I know what words to add to the deck? Should I add different inflections? How about pronouns, does the language use gendered pronouns? What's the best way to study them, are there rules for it?
I'm willing to pay money for a properly researched and made Anki deck for a language rather than spend time building it word by word.
> What's the best way to study them, are there rules for it?
The best way to study is to make a basic card and just start doing it immediately. A lot of this is individual so using other people's tips isn't going to work (although if you really wanted to do this, you would have very quickly learned by now that there's a whole industry of blog posts and youtube videos and Opinions on how to optimize your deck if you really need that, and there's a whole industry trying to sell you on things to buy to Optimize your Learning Experience). The thing is, overthinking isn't going to work here.
Just make a 2 field note, like the default, and start adding words and doing reviews. You'll very quickly find out what information you find yourself wanting to remember when you're sat there writing sentences in the language, you'll also find out what you find interesting to learn that helps you learn. After the point that you are actually learning, it's really easy to add fields to a note or to switch note types.
Not only are there literally a ton of docs that come with Anki that go over the best way to deal with Anki for learning, but making the deck as you go is ideal for your situation because you're building memory. Inputting sentences and words or whatever you find meaningful to remember into the deck is also building that memory. Spending hours reading blog posts and figuring out which service to pay for, uh, is the opposite of learning.
This might sound harsh, but it literally comes down to "you have to walk to learn how to walk, you have to pedal to learn how to ride a bike". Spending hours or weeks or months deciding if you want to do training wheels or not, what height you want the bike seat, route planning, finding the best bike and the best seat — none of that is riding the bike, all of it is based on preferences that you won't have until you've ridden your first bike, and every inch of it is overthinking and procrastination. Nobody can tell you, beforehand, what the best way to ride a bike is, and that information is meaningless to you until you are physically riding the bike. Nobody can tell you what riding a bike is like and there is no way to learn outside of you physically sitting down on the bike, and pushing off, and pedalling — which is something you can do with a 20$ bike that you found at goodwill. You can, however, find yourself wasting hours or weeks or months thinking about riding a bike and never doing it.
> I'd rather just buy a pre-made bike from a store.
Right, but if you were going to do that... you would have done it already, if you catch my drift. Like I said, there's no shortage of blog posts, youtube videos, literal documentation on the Anki website, pre-made decks, etc. available. It's a bit like trying to optimize before you've even started writing code — you don't know what the hot paths are yet, and nobody can tell you without a profiler. You don't know what your preferences are in learning are yet, and nobody can tell you until you try. When you have a solid idea of what you prefer, then people can start giving you recommendations :)
Inputting words is part of using Anki, and a big part of solidifying your knowledge. Why should you listen? Well, even though I haven't reviewed mandarin in literally a decade now, and I've had essentially no IRL use for it, there's still words and phrases I can recall at a moment's notice. The software is unbelievably powerful.
As others have mentioned, there are premade decks but most of the practice of using Anki comes down to preference, so the premade decks may not fit your style of learning at all.
Oh this makes me quite happy! I’ve been using an awful hack to do horizontal-mirroring (that sometimes borks), I’m so glad to find there’ll be a better way. Massive props to the author!
Exploration for exploration’s sake, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Not everything learned by the human race needs to be immediately useful; it all contributes to a vast tapestry.
Not to mention that if we focus solely on profitability and utility, we do bad science: Why do you think we have a reproduction crisis? Because reproducing experiments isn’t sexy nor profitable, so no one is incentivized to do it.
We need more arrows, full-stop.