litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re describing district heating, which works great in places that planned ahead and buried the necessary plumbing so that the waste heat from nearby industrial processes can be beneficially used to heat nearby homes and offices.

  The detail, however, is that those industrial processes are diverting the heat to the district plumbing, but if nobody needs heating (eg 40 C summer weather), then they will vent the heat using air cooling to the atmosphere. That is to say, the demand for heating will vary at times, and this is fine because the industrial process can just go back to dumping the heat into the air.

  This doesn’t work for AI data centers because the amount of “waste” heat (eg 100+ megawatts) is well in excess of any nearby demand for heating. To quantify demand, I looked to the district heating system of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, home to 1.67 million people, and the coldest capital city in the world by average annual temperature:

  the Ulaanbaatar District Heating Company, encompassing 13,500 buildings with a total connected capacity of 3924 MW

  The system serves 60% of the population, so about 1 million people. Where in the mostly-temperate USA could a 4 gigawatt AI data center be located so that it’s right next to 1 million people that need 24/7 heating as though they lived in Mongolia?

  Scaling down to a 100 megawatt data center, the demand would be for a population of 25,000 living in essentially arctic conditions. Such places already have district heating, such as in Alaska. So if a smaller AI data center shows up, it just means the existing non-AJ heat source would fall back to dumping heat into the air.

  In the end, there are very few places that need heating all year round, but AI datacenters would be producing heat all year round. Even if the heat were used for something outlandish, like heating every square meter of public roadway, that still might not be enough demand to quench these behemoth AI datacenters. And that’s before the cost of building out the district heating system.

  We should definitely build district heating systems where they make sense, but building them so AI data centers can exist would be doing the right thing for the most terrible of reasons

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  While not strictly biofouling, the marine environment can definitely be affected by introducing hotter water where it didn’t exist prior, in and around the outflow pipe. Seaside nuclear power stations that use seawater cooling need to be mindful to diffuse the heated water over a large area, to minimize the ecological impact. Citation: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/…/abstract

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Very similar problems arise with desalination plants, which I wrote about here: sh.itjust.works/comment/14613302

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There is almost certainly an impact somewhere, but I don’t have the data to know where it is. My conjecture is that a localized mass of steam would cause convection currents and drive microweather phenomena, especially downwind of such an air cooled facility. I’m not sure rain is necessarily the result, unless there’s a sizable mountain downwind, since although hot air will rise, it might run out of steam (pun intended) before cooling down enough to fully condense out. So it might just be adding a layer of humidity that floats a few hundred meters above the surface.

  But even that could be devastating, if said layer blocks natural convection currents over a downwind town or city. It could act as a thermal cap, making that town warmer at night, because heat rising from the city would meet that humid layer and get absorbed by the water. The thermal capacity of water comes into play again, but this time against the city.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Air cooling is feasible, as evidenced by existing power stations that use air cooling. A lot of newer nuclear generation use water cooling, being sited along the ocean and in the multi gigawatt range. But we can also find examples of inland power stations that have no water connection, and therefore need some massive cooling towers. Here is one in Germany that has a 2.2 GW rating and a 200 meter tall tower: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederaussem_Power_Station

  This is, as you can imagine, rather expensive to build, but it’s doable. Cooling a coal fire is not substantially different than cooling compute loads in a data center, as it’s all just a matter of moving heat around. Will there be differences due to the base temperature of coal versus GPUs? Yes, since the ratio of input to ambient temperature matters. But on the flip side, this should make it easier to construct, as the plumbing for lower temperatures is simpler.

  Mechanical engineers can chime in on feasibility for AI data centers, but seeing as it hasn’t been done, its probably still cost related.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Darn, you’re right, the hours fell off in my dimensional analysis. Corrected, although 6.9 hours for a pool isn’t much time for swimming at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Other commenters correctly describe the cost analysis for using evaporative cooling, but I’ll add one more reason why it’s the preferred method when water is available: evaporating water can dissipate truly outlandish amounts of heat with very few moving parts.

  Harkening back to high school physics class, water – like all other substances – has a certain thermal capacity, meaning the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree C. The specific thermal capacity of water is already quite high, at 4184 J/(kg*C), besting all the common metals and only losing to lithium, hydrogen, and ammonia. In nature, this means that large bodies of water are natural moderators of temperature, because water can absorb an entire day’s worth of sunlight energy but not substantially change the water temperature.

  But where water really trounces the competition is its “heat of vaporization”. This is the extra energy needed for liquid water to become vapor; simply bringing water to 100 C is not sufficient to make it airborne. Water has a value of 2146 kJ/kg. Simplifying to where 1 kg of water is 1 liter of water, we can convert this unit into something more familiar: 0.596 kWh/L.

  What these two physical properties of water tell us is that if our city water comes out of the pipe at 20 C, then to get it to 100 C to boil, we need the difference (80) times the thermal capacity (4184 J/kg*C), which is 334,720 J/kg . Using the same simplification from earlier, that comes out to be 0.093 kWh/L. And then to actual make the boiling liquid become a vapor (so that it’ll float away), we then need 0.596 kWh/L on top of that.

  Let that sink in for a moment: the energy to turn water into vapor (0.596 kWh/L) is six times higher than the energy (0.093 kWh/L) to raise liquid water from 20 C to 100 C. That’s truly incredible, for a non-toxic, life-compatible substance that we can (but should we?) safely dump into the environment. If you total the two values, one liter of water can dissipate 0.69 kWh of energy per liter. Nice!

  In the context of a 100 megawatt data center (which apparently is what the industry considers as the smallest “hyperscale data center”), if that facility used only evaporative cooling, the water requirement would be 144,927 L/hour. That is an Olympic-size swimming pool every 6.9 seconds. Not nice!

  And AI datacenters are only getting larger, with some reaching into the low single-digits of gigawatts. But what is the alternative to cooling the more-modest data center from earlier? The reality is that the universe only provides for three forms of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. The heat from data centers cannot be concentrated into a laser and radiated into space, and we don’t have some sort of underground granite mountain that the data centers can conduct their heat into. Convection is precisely the idea of storing the heat into a substance (eg water, air) and then jettisoning the substance.

  So if we don’t want to use water, then we have to use air. But for the two qualities of water that make it an excellent substance for evaporative cooling, air doesn’t come close – 1003 J/(kg*C) and no heat of vaporization, because air is already gaseous. That means we need to move ungodly amounts of air to dissipate 100 megawatts. But humanity has already invented the means to do this, by a clever structure that naturally encourages air to flow through it.

  The only caveat is that the clever structure is a cooling tower, and is characteristic of nuclear power stations. It’s also used for non-nuclear power station cooling, but it’s most famous in the nuclear context, where generators are well into the gigawatt range. Should AI datacenters use nuclear-sized air cooling towers instead of water evaporation? It would work, but even as someone that’s not anti-nuclear, the optics of raising a cooling tower in rural America just to cool a datacenter would be untenable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  License is the legal instrument which makes open source software/hardware/silicon possible, describing precisely what rights are granted or retained. The term “open source” usually means the definition propounded by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) but sometimes not in certain contexts. At the very minimum, an OSI-compliant open source license will allow any distribution of the software without having to seek additional permission from the author, must be accompanied with access to the source code, and the software does not come with provisos outright prohibiting its use for certain endeavors.

  That last point is about the “use” of the software, and is a crucial distinction between “open source” and “source available”. To have source available means the source code can be examined, but usually cannot be compiled. An open source license explicitly allows all uses, but possibly with additional obligations. For example, the AGPL license allows software to be used to run a server, but creates an obligation to provide the server source code to all users that connect. Whereas something like the MIT 0-clause license has zero additional obligations, while allowing the broadest use.

  The exact verbiage of a license are the domain of lawyers, being a legal document. But the choice of license is down to the software author or corporate owner, and is a multifaceted consideration, including marketability, compatibility with other software, and whether it’s more important that the code gets used or that it forever remains available.

  The latter is the major battleground for advocates of permissive versus copyleft licenses. Some software (eg reference cryptographic algorithms) have the priority that the absolute most number of people should use them, so a permissive license makes sense. While other software (eg desktop 3D rendering suite Blender) have a priority that nobody can ever take it private by adding proprietary-only features.

  Choosing open source is easy, but choosing a license to effect that choice can get tricky. For authors publishing their software, the choice may very well change the course of history (ie Linux GPL-2). For consumers or businesses using software, the license dictates how changes can be distributed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if programmers rewrote the English language?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Oxford comma would be mandatory.

• How prevalent are cash transactions in the USA?
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩ | ⁨27⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s the difference between communism and socialism?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes: en.wikipedia.org/…/Mandatory_referendums_in_Switz…

  Switzerland is also a rarity where there isn’t quite a separate head of state (eg UK Monarch, German President) but also the head of government role is done by a council of seven, where the majority decision is what happens. So the legislative body writes the law and the council of seven is tasked with executive power to carry out the law.

  The modern Swiss constitution (1848) took inspiration from the American constitution (1789), but rather than a consolidate head of state/government like the American President, they wanted to hew even closer to the long-standing ideals of democracy amongst the Cantons. Even though the Swiss Federal Council rotates the title of president every year in turn, it confers zero extra powers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s the difference between communism and socialism?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Like with all things, it’s a matter of degree. Democracy and socialism are not inherently incompatible, but can be mixed together at different ratios. For example, a democratic socialist society could follow in the Swiss model of direct democracy, meaning everyone has a say in the policy decisions. Such policy decisions include the law but also how to utilize the means of production, which the state owns entirely.

  Whereas another democratic socialist society could realize their democracy through a representative model, where citizens elect a local representative that goes to the capital and votes in a state committee on how to amend the law or utilize the means of production, which the state owns entirely.

  Yet another democratic socialist society could be much softer on the state ownership of all the means of production. The state might own the utilities, roads, schools, and all land, but may permit certain collectives to privately own businesses that generate value and to distribute those earnings equally amongst themselves. This could be considered a transitional step, since it allows for a controlled amount of capitalist-style development to occur, while avoiding huge concentrations of private capital. But it could also be a step backwards if the state already fully-owned the means of production but then voted to release some of it to small co-ops.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Even if we found a feasible way through physics to travel through time, wouldn't it still be impossible due to the evolution of bacteria and our immune systems?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We are all currently traveling through time, though at a forward rate of 1 second per second (within your stationary frame of reference, since time dilation is a thing). But I take that you mean “time travel” as in advancing into the future at a faster rate, or going into the past.

  In both cases, we do currently have the means of hermetically-sealed transportation. This is how, I believe, moon samples were collected in the mid 20th Century, since there was a possibility that alien life would be contagious to humans or that humans would destroy any samples of alien life. I think Tom Scott or someone did a video on the topic.

  So while the biological risk would complicate time travel and visiting other humans, that alone doesn’t make time travel “impossible” because we could just have the travelers stay in their TARDIS or whatever. Like how people signed wills in 2020 atop automobile hoods.

  There are plenty of other reasons why time travel is impossible though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there seach engines that dont depend Google and Bing, if not what are the barriers to entry of new search engines?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve not used it, but have heard decent things about Kagi, a paid search engine. Supposedly, it finds things like how old Yahoo or old Google worked, without AI (but is optionally available?), and no ads.

  I would think the major barrier to entry is the business model: ad revenue goes to those that can deliver results. Google AdSense has dominated that realm for years, so it would take a major upfront investment to challenge them on that. No much different than how it’s hard to compete with established airlines to a particular airport that they already serve. Economies of scale tend towards consolidation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good etiquette to show you are doing a U turn in a left turn, so the cars behind you know?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In California, a U turn is considered a left turn that keeps going. As a result, a U turn is legal anywhere that a left turn is legal, except when signs are posted otherwise. So in a left-turn pocket/lane, it is both reasonable and expected that people will make left turns, some of which will continue into a full 180 degree turn. People who do U turns are doing what is allowed, and they have every right to do so. If this seems like a problem, then talk to your transportation department to restrict U turns.

  I’m not aware of any aspect of a U turn procedure that would be any different than than a standard 90 degree turn: use turn signals, look for oncoming traffic, look for pedestrians, turn slowly as required by the radius, roll out of the turn with careful acceleration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are they asking about the serial number?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  American English speaker here. While I would understand what “to auction away” means, I’m not aware of anyone here in California that would say it like that. Usually, I would say “to auction off”, which follows in a long series of other “X off” verbs, like “to bake off” or “to shake off”, all of which usually involve some sort of adversary or competition.

  Note that we do use the verb “to give away” but that would mean a gift without compensation, which is definitely not an auction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do airports place a cap on 10,000 USD for undeclared cash?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Civil forfeiture and DEA is a separate problem unto itself, and you’ve always hit on the key points: DEA operates within the country, whereas customs is at port of entries. DEA’s corruption and geographic reach mean they have caused far more problems than any customs agent, in pursuit of a 1990s zeal that “drugs are bad” and expanding that into a parallel law enforcement system, despite already having a federal law enforcement department: the FBI. Civil forfeiture should be abolished as unconstitutional, violating due process, equal protection, and property law.

  So yes, once you’re in the country, there is a risk to carry around large sums of cash. But that’s hardly connected to the customs declaration requirement, and certainly cannot be connected to the declaration requirement on the way out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do airports place a cap on 10,000 USD for undeclared cash?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When entering or exiting the USA, the rule is that cash or financial instruments need to be declared above $10,000, but you can bring as much as you want. So bringing a literal suit case of Swiss francs worth $5 million USD is perfectly fine, provided you tell the customs agent.

  While I can’t really advise going to the USA right now, it’s not like they will confiscate cash above $10,000. The particular phrase used in most places is “freedom of capital”, meaning that money can flow into or out of the country without significant impediment. The entire USA financial sector relies upon freedom of capital.

  Declaring cash helps prevent money laundering, since people intending to secretly move money would not want to declare to customs. The threshold is intentionally set so that normal people going on holiday with cash or travelers checks (yes, I’m aware it’s 2026) won’t be burdened by the rule.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory XKCD: xkcd.com/3138/

  Please let such a thing never exist!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are prop, non functioning guns way more expensive than airsoft guns?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the market for each is quite a bit different. Prop guns, whether functioning or not, are often regulated in law as “replica firearms” because while they may (or not) be functional, the issue is that they are intentionally similar to the real thing. Hence, some jurisdictions have limits on who can sell replica firearms and who can buy them.

  One rank below firearms and replica firearms, air/pellet guns and BB guns propel small balls or shuttlecocks (?) made of metal using compressed air or spring power. These could still be harmful to people, but aren’t usually fatal, which makes them effective for pest control or target practice, in lieu of live firearms. Accordingly, these are often regulated like how knives are: don’t just hand a pellet gun to a child without supervision, and don’t assault people. Otherwise, do as thou whilst.

  Meanwhile, airsoft guns propels small plastic balls using springs, compressed air, or electro-pneumatic pressure. By sheer virtue of having less density, a plastic airsoft projectile carries less energy than a BB pellet, and certainly a lot less than a live-fire bullet. Also, whereas firearms can attain supersonic velocities, the speed of sound puts a firm cap on what a plastic, ball-shaped projectile can achieve, when not using chemical-based propulsion (ie gunpowder).

  Only 8 US States regulate airsoft guns, and even those that do are not restricting them as heavily as firearms (except New Jersey?). That means a majority of Americans are potential customers for airsoft, and that means an environment will form that host matches, competitions, and so on.

  Whereas, what’s the market for replica firearms? Hollywood? Gun enthusiasts?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do I almost never see people flying drones?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even when something is fairly inexpensive and readily available, the nature of the thing may preclude it from being well-noticed in public, even if it’s not being intentionally obscured at all. Things that move are an especially good example, because most people don’t really pay significant attention to passing traffic or stuff moving approximately 3-5x faster than their own walking pace, with the exceptions of when they themselves are in motion too (eg seeing another train while riding a train), or if the object is coming straight at them.

  An example suited for fellow Americans: seeing the same color and model of your car, parked in public, is very easy to spot, because that’s how you’re accustomed to seeing your own car: stationary. Whereas seeing your own car in motion (while you’re stationary) is slightly harder because: 1) it’s whizzing by for only a few seconds, and 2) you’re not used to seeing your own car drive away from you. Confirmation bias then means that you rarely see that same model of car in motion.

  Drones have the same perceptional bias, but compounded by the fact that humans aren’t in the habit of scanning the skies overhead for drones. And even if they do, identifying a hovering drone means to spot a small dot that’s hanging dozens of meters in the air, or being within earshot (inverse-square law limits this distance). And if the drone is moving, then spotting it is even more difficult, although it does have a moving audible footprint now.

  Finally, there’s the operator, which in almost all circumstances is stationary. Yet, for similar reasons, why should anyone notice if someone is standing in a forest, looking at a screen with a set of controls? If nobody is around, is a drone operator even there? As a fairly solitary activity, it’s no surprise that few have ever seen a drone actually being operated, much the same that loads of people know of Pokemon cards and yet few have actually seen the TCG played out on a tabletop (this fediverse audience excepted).

  TL;DR: the general public only perceives things that are easily perceivable

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can a company stop operating in a country to avoid paying a lawsuit?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The short answer is that it depends. Some countries have treaties where civil court judgements (ie money compensation) from overseas are honored domestically, meaning the domestic court would not have to relitigate the facts but would just be to re-issue the local equivalent of an order to pay up.

  Seeing as this is a lawsuit in the UK, Valve does not appear to have a dedicated business location in the UK or EU, and that Valve has not already stopped offering services, I would guess that they don’t intend to skip town. The appeals process in British courts is similar to how it is in the USA, so there would be room for any award to be adjusted downward, before being forced to pay it.

  Also, to not pay a lawful judgement in one jurisdiction would cause potential issues in other jurisdictions, such as the massive EU market next door. This is precisely because Valve doesn’t operate a subsidiary but is doing business under their USA corporation. So the EU authorities would be within their rights to curtail the same corporation that skipped on a lawsuit in the UK, even when the UK isn’t part of the EU anymore.

  Note: some lawsuit judgements are explicitly disallowed from being “repatriated”, such as lawsuits regarding free speech in the USA. Under the SPEECH Act, an overseas judgement for speech that would have been legal if said in the USA. Thus, that judgement cannot be collected on USA territory or against USA bank accounts. It would have to be collected against the person when they’re traveling, or from their non-USA bank accounts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What impact is the whole vegetarian/vegan diet having on the price of meat?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If a lot of people suddenly stopped consuming anything there would be a drop in price. The producers don’t have time to adapt.

  This is generally correct, but with a somewhat-rare caveat. If the product was priced as the sum of variable costs (eg unit cost of fuel to yield 1 kWh of electricity) and of fixed costs (eg price to build a power generating station that will last for 20 years), then a reduction in consumption can actually cause an increase in per-unit costs for the remaining consumers.

  This is precisely what is playing out in California with the incumbent electricity provider, PG&E. For arcane reasons, their regulated monopoly allows them to undertake large-scale construction projects, with a guaranteed rate of return (aka fixed cost) passed onto consumers. But since solar installations have smashed even the most optimistic expectations, demand for fossil fuels generation is slowing. But because a power plant running at 50% output still needs to pay off 100% of its loan payments, PG&E is using the situation to try to hike consumer rates even more. You know, to pay for those large projects that PG&E owns…

  At the end of the day, non-solar consumers are being asked to shoulder more of the burden despite falling electricity demand (pre AI), but it’s not caused by solar early-adopters, but due to PG&E’s own greed and desire for guaranteed profit.

  TL;DR: prices will usually go down when consumption goes down, unless a monopoly is trying to save their own skin. PG&E should be dissolved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Which Pipes to choose (Newpipe, Pipepipe, Piped Invidious...etc)?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had the opposite experience, where NewPipe lagged behind PipePipe in terms of adapting to YouTube-related changes. It had something to do with updating the subscription feed (not that that function is totally reliable on either app).

  I also observed this strange issue with NewPipe where if a notification sound interrupts a background-playing video, the audio would stay reduced in volume until the app was brought back to the foreground. A cursory search suggested it was specific to Samsung phones, but when I switched to PipePipe, the issue simply didn’t appear.

  Grain of salt: I haven’t used NewPipe since switching in November.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Distro for upgrading a 15 year old Mac?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, but since OP doesn’t have the machine to immediately check the model number, and 2010 is within spitting distatof 2012, I figured I’d provide some additional info, just in case.

  That said, a 2010 machine would be fairly ancient. But then again, it’s 2026 and DDR3 is somehow relevant again…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Distro for upgrading a 15 year old Mac?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If that MacBook is old enough that it’s part of the first generation of Intel Mac products, you may have to do a few extra things to account for the 32-bit EFI – not UEFI; that would come later – that those machines used. I recall dealing with this myself, back when older versions of Ubuntu provided the ISO for specifically this scenario. Instead, you might want to review this page which describes the problem and how to address it: ctrl-alt-rees.com/2024-08-13-operating-system-opt…

  Note that a 32-bit EFI does not prevent you from installing a modern 64-bit OS. The complexity is just with getting the system to boot from the installer disc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is a video streaming co-op a useful idea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Insofar as USA law might apply, it may be useful for you to review the legal case involving Internet Archive’s CDL program: en.wikipedia.org/…/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

  Since the realm of copyright law is inextricably tied to the question, I’m going to try to clarify some points. Firstly, “theft” has never been the correct legal analogy for copyright infringement. That misconception comes from a false equivalency in the late 20th Century to warn would-be infringers of the steep penalties; many Americans will remember the phrase “you wouldn’t steal a car”, even though the feds cannot charge copyright infringement as theft (which requires a tangible, non-duplicable item, like car theft or wage theft).

  In the US at least, it’s illegal to stream movies you don’t own or don’t have the license to stream.

  Only the second part is correct: all copyrighted works are used per the license granted from the owner. Such a license may restrict the format that the work is delivered, but not always. The license that accompanies physical media is: 1) irrevocable, and 2) follows the disc’s owner (recognized in USA law as the “doctrine of first sale”). So long as the disc is owned and intact, the license is good. Furthermore, under “fair use”, it is allowed to make copies of works for either: a) time shifting (ie recording a live broadcast to watch it later) or b) to change the format, aka compatibility. The latter is why it’s allowable to rip a DVD into a personal Jellyfin server. It’s valid so long as the license is still good, which applies so long as you still own/possess the disc.

  By participating in the co-op, when you stream a movie, ownership of that physical media and the digital copy is temporarily transferred to you.

  Two counterexamples come to mind, the first being the Internet Archive case that I linked earlier. The second is a Supreme Court ruling against a company that rented miniature TV receivers located in metro areas across the country. In that case, SCOTUS found that although it’s fine to rent out a TV receiver, the license for the over-the-air transmission was only valid within physical range of the signal. So conveying the TV content beyond the metro area created a copyright infringement, and the company was actively facilitating that.

  They are expensive for the library and don’t have great selection

  Most libraries are funded from a budget, and negotiate e-book and e-movie access based on an approximate estimate of concurrent users, not on a per-user basis. Otherwise, those libraries would have uncontrolled costs if everyone decides to stream Die Hard (1988) at the same time on Christmas Day; it’s definitely a Christmas film. Quite frankly, most libraries would be thrilled if more people obtained library cards and used the services, because it justified the budget for the library and proves its value to the community.

  If you aren’t finding the content you want at your library, the best thing to do is to request what you want. Libraries are always buying new materials or access to more services. But unless library cardholders voice an opinion, the librarians will just choose generically. Be the change you want to see.

  Technologically, creating a co-op is always an opportunity. But always remember that the very concept of a public library is “grandfathered” and if we had to reintroduce it, the establishment would never allow it. Cherish libraries as the crucial community resources that they are. The precise form might change, but the library role must always endure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most confusing false friends from your language to another that are spelt exactly the same?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In American English (AmE) and British English (BrE), the verb “to table” is used in legislative debates. But the meaning is diametrically opposite: AmE uses the verb to mean the abandonment of a bill, analogized as though leaving it on the bargaining table to rot. Whereas the BrE verb means to introduce legislation, as in “bringing a bill to the table”.

  Both clearly share the same origin – a piece of furniture – and yet diverged as to what act is described by the word.

  Other confusion arises from the verb “to sanction” which can mean “to allow” but coildn also “to prohibit” or “make punishable”.

  And a more modern addition in slang vernacular: “to drop”. In the context of artists, “dropping a mix tape” would mean to introduce new music. But “dropping a vocalist” means that the band has fired their singer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you rate your country's constitution?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No constitution, no hard checks and balances

  I’m an American, but IIRC, the UK does have an unwritten constitution, one that incorporates all the landmark legislation over a millennium. That is to say, rather than a dedicated, singular document that “constitutes” the boundary of the law, the British look to their still-active laws to ascertain what core rights and responsibilities must exist, and extrapolate from there. If this sounds wishy-washy, it’s remarkably no different to how the USA Constitution is interpreted, under the “living document” doctrine. That doctrine in American law simultaneous recognizes that: 1) the exact text of the constitutional provisions must be adhered to (this is a basic tenant of “rule of law”, and 2) those provisions may extend to analogous situations. Right-wing conservatives over here attempt to ignore the second, adopting the so-called doctrine of “textualism” (which would only recognize strictly the first aspect) but this “doctrine” only seems to be cited out when it’s convenient, and hand-waved away when it’s not. Hardly a doctrinal approach.

  As an example of what is universally understood as being part of the British constitution, see the Magna Carta. Many of its provisions might no longer be part of the formal British body of law, but were translated into formal statute law, with its lineage acknowledged when it comes up in civil rights litigation. The current status makes the Magna Carta more akin to the US Declaration of Independence, which formally grants or recognizes zero rights but is still important in American constitutional jurisprudence. In that sense, the Declaration of Independence is a part of the unwritten body of the American constitution.

  As for checks and balances, since the UK adopts the notion of parliamentary supremacy – and still does, even after the creation of the UK Supreme Court in the 21st Century – the checks exist within the Westminster parliamentary system. As currently formulated, the UK Parliament is composed of a lower and upper house, with the former seating representatives of the people and the latter seating representatives of … nobility? The church? I’ll just say that the House of Lords represents the “establishment”. Not like “deep state capital-E Establishment” but just the institutions at-large. In that sense, the check-and-balance is one where the populist will is anchored by institutional momentum.

  Is this alright? Personally – and again, I’m an American, not a UK citizen – it does seem rather backwards that the PM can advise the Monarch to create and appoint more hereditary peers in the House of Lords, which could stack parliament against the interest of the citizenry. I think the existence of bicameral legislative bodies to be an anachronism, especially in the USA where both end up being population-based (because prior court rulings ruled that land-based representation was unconstitutional, except the US Senate). The Nebraska unicameral legislature shows what can be done when the law-making process (committees, 1st reading, 2nd reading, floor vote, etc…) is consolidated, where testimony doesn’t have to be taken twice and citizens need only voice public comment at one committee.

  But I digress.

  No guarantee of stability, a new govt can repeal any of the previous govt’s laws

  Yes, and no. The UK has a very rich tradition of inking out their party platforms, to the point that when a new government and party are in power, it’s not at all a surprise what laws they will change. Indeed, it would have been obvious for months to years, since the minority party forms the “shadow government”, which is basically a demo to the citizens about what the government would look like if they were in power. Note to fellow Americans: “shadow” in this case does not mean nefarious, but rather that each designated person from the minority will “shadow” the actual minister (eg Dept for Transport) and thus go on TV to give interviews about how the minority party would have done things differently. If a journalist needs to fill airtime with multiple points-of-view, going to the shadow minister on that topic is a quick way to get an opposing perspective.

  The only question then, in terms of stability, is which party prevails after an election. In this sense, while there may not be absolute continuity, there is still practical continuity: businesses and individuals can make plans in advance when they learn what’s in the platform of the minority party, can start actioning those plans if the party has a likelihood of winning an election, can brace for change if a close election is called, and ultimately be ready for when the new party takes power and implements their changes. It’s a pragmatic approach: change is the only constant, so might as well give sufficient notice when things do change.

  As for repealing “any” prior law, technically yes. But the institutional inertia is partially what blunts this power. Public advocacy organizations are – to this American – seemingly more transparent in their operations, and astroturfing is less an issue because of open-transparency when it comes to forming a legal company at Companies House. Likewise, the interests of businesses, the Church of England, the universities, workers unions, etc all find representation somewhere. So it’s much harder than, say in the USA, to ignore whole segments of the population to make sweeping changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you also do this with languages that use the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In English, the example I would prefer is “attorney general”, which as-written refers to the chief lawyer that advises a state (sometimes exceedingly badly). But if reversed, “general attorney” could plausibly refer to a lawyer that can take on any type of legal work, not self-limited to ones within a particular specialty (eg divorce law, personal injury, copyright, etc).

  This is in the realm of postnominal adjectives, although not all reversals will yield recognizable phrases, and some will be nonsensical, like “the incarnate devil”.