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Happy Public Domain Day 2026 (publicdomainreview.org)
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I've always been curious about what it means for a movie to enter the public domain. A few years ago I sent a mail to Planet Money in what I thought would be an interesting hook but never got a response: "Hi Planet Money, today is public domain day. I see that Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis is now in the "public domain." I was curious what that meant at a practical level for a German language silent film. If Planet Money Movies wanted to release their own version of Metropolis, how would they do it? Can you just go to Amazon, buy the Blu Ray, and somehow release your own? What about the anti-piracy measures on the Blu Ray? What about the work that Transit Film did in restoring the film from the original negative? Does that count as some sort of newly original work? It's a silent film and a foreign film. How does the soundtrack and translation work? If you have to make a new copy from the original reels, what if someone is hoarding them? Does that mean you could buy all the copies and prevent someone from releasing a public domain version?"
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Related: What will enter the public domain in 2026? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46117112
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How does copyright work with recorded music? The article mentions that Charlie (Bird) Parker's music is now public domain in most of the world (life + 70 years), but most of his records are collaborations with other artists like Dizzy Gillespie who died much later, less than 50 years ago. I also wonder if that even matters if the records are owned by corporations. In those cases, how would I know if a record is public domain or not?
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You don't. It's all nonsense so unless you are planning on doing something official with the material just pirate it. Copyright went far beyond lunacy decades ago and should be ignored if possible.
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There's a copyright for the music itself, but then each recording has its own copyright. Fun, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_copyright_symbol
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Sort of like how the movie Charade staring Carry Grant and Audrey Hepburn is public domain (due to failure to file back when that was required in the 1970's) but the soundtrack is not. So the music is in the pubic domain only when played in the movie but played separately the music is still protected.
↙ time adjusted for second-chance
Show HN: Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt (enroll.sh)
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Very cool idea and kudos for building and making the idea into a reality.
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I wonder if Nix has similar tools, as it is famous for declarative system management, which is quite suitable for server provisioning.
Indeed! I'm showing my age, but I do remember using this with Puppet and it was one of my inspirations :D (no commits in nearly 13 years, ouch) https://github.com/devstructure/blueprint
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Yes! I always thought that was a very clever project, and was sad when it ceased development. Very excited to try this out, and glad to have stayed on Debian all these years.
Straussian Memes (lesswrong.com)
Unrelated to the topic, I’m a bit at a loss as to what to make of this website. There was a link to a really cool analysis of artificial intelligence research. And I guess they are a nonprofit and are raising $2M for “infrastructure“ but I think they mean infrastructure in the sense of software they like, and not the kind of infrastructure normal people think of like plumbing, electricity, and roads. I spent a few minutes browsing, and I can’t even tell what charitable purpose or educational purpose they could be serving. There’s just no clear statement of purpose anywhere other than I suppose being really rational. Who are these dudes?
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Dude, seriously, walk away. You have stumbled upon the website of a cult that ensnares smart people and eats their brains. No level of exposure is safe.
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> Who are these dudes? Top right in this picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GgTm194WIAEqak3?format=jpg&name=medium
What is the difference between a Straussian meme and a double entendre?
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Allegedly a Straussian meme is "self stabilizing" because it imposes some sort of cost to buying into the lower or higher meaning. So it's a multiple entendre that has ideological or epistemic implications. (I'm not convinced this is a thing, the examples were pretty contrived.) Whereas in the example here, acting on that advice is costly (it means losing friends) but believing it is free. And there aren't different layers of meaning accessible to different parties. It's straightforwardly a play on words.
Did I miss something, or are none of the examples both Straussian and memetic/memes? I feel like if this were a real thing, one could imagine one example. Also, that's not how churches generally work.
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I wish atheist would just stop writing about Christian practices. Particularly screenwriters. It’s better that your audience assumes you are ignorant than to open your mouth and prove them right.
A website to destroy all websites (henry.codes)
I think the comments here are a great example of why this idea always sounds better in nostalgic reminiscence than in practice: As I write this, nearly half of the comments here are complaining about this website. There are complaints about requiring JavaScript, the font size, the design, the color choices, the animations. Complaints about everything the designer did to make this site unique and personal, which was the entire point of the exercise. This is coming from a site that supposedly attracts the target audience for this type of page.
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I don't know when this retcon happened, but this was never actually a site for hackers. People here complain because they like the modern web, because it pays their salaries. They get fabulously rich because of the steady enshittification of the web.
I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remind ourselves to be more critical to the content we consume, regardless where it comes from.
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I too think it’s a beautiful website and really refreshing in its simplicity. Too often “good design” means “needlessly complex.” The design of the site also nicely fits the argument being made in the text.
The site indeed is trying to be an artistic treatise, as opposed to being a clear, easy-to-read manifesto. It touches many themes I have read about many times, so I skimmed most of the content. It came to the expected indie-web conclusions and recommendations. Indie Web, while nice and fascinating, lacks the large audience. You write things down, and nobody cares. Well, maybe a few friends who keep an eye, and a hiring manager when your candidacy is considered for another job. Some people are fine with that, and just enjoy the process of producing content, and seeing it published. They are a minority. Most people come to consume more than to produce, and to get quick feedback. The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the current Web, like Reddit, or Xitter, or, well, HN. A few dozen people will bookmark it, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Sites that are true works of art and craft, like https://ciechanow.ski/ , will get remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare. It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small indie sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also benefit from a thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of the modern Web.
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> It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small indie sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also benefit from a thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of the modern Web. That’s exactly what the article says. Seems like you made assumptions about the argument based on the design instead of actually reading it.
Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad.
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Lmao sure. Every comment I make about unions gets downvoted, and every comment about "maybe it's okay to destroy the planet for one more solid quarter" shoots into the stratosphere. More projection here than a drive-in movie theatre... This website sucks, but not because of any (incorrectly) perceived leftwing bias.
I promise you Hacker News was exactly like this back in 2011. > It has become political (toward the left) I wonder what you're talking about - your definition of 'political' or 'left'. Tech and politics are so deeply intrenched. More than just "is DEI evil and there's no such thing as algorithmic bias". Should Apple be restricted from collecting its Apple Tax and locking down its devices?? Should the EU be able to regulate American companies? Should governments demand encryption back doors in devices? Should Australia ban teens from social network? Should there be a Right to Repair for our devices? Honestly one of my biggest gripes with HN is that it does seem to be a place where pretty regressive social viewpoints seem to flourish.
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It would be informative if, when someone complains that XYZ is "to the left" they define exactly what they mean. Is the person they are complaining about really advocating for the proletariat to seize the means of production?
HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.
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1. Delete your account. 2. Block the website. 3. Critically evaluate your goals, and whether or not your actions align with those goals.
Haven’t people been saying that since the late 2000’s?
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It's still really early 2000's! We have over 900 years left :) --- On topic: discussions like these are as old as human discussion forums and communities. I think that the participants each grow and change on an individual level just as much as the community and platform does. I think humans have a hard time identifying how much of their feelings of nostalgia are based in reality. Maybe the platform has not actually changed in the ways people fear, and instead, peoples' opinions on what is interesting, important, or valuable has changed? Since this thread has been discussing politics-adjacent things, let's consider Senator John Fetterman from the United States. Mr. Fetterman is notably different today from when he first started his campaign, regarding what he believes is important and valuable. (Mr. Fetterman suffered a stroke, which is suspected to have brought about personality changes and shifts in political ideology.) --- I think we, as individuals, should always be focusing our first line of questioning on how _we're_ changing, rather than trying to figure out how the world, or the zeitgeist, or Hacker News, etc. is changing. Sometimes we outgrow things that we hold dear, and instead of accepting that it's not really the place for us anymore and moving on to a different environment, we try to shape our current environment around our new personality by instituting new rules or adding new features.
It's useless without describing concrete, practical solutions to those problems. What do the voters want? Zero taxes, no crime, world peace and infinite benefits. It's easy to identify things as shitty because the above doesn't describe the world yet and thus it's a banal observation. Implementing real, practical improvements is really hard and requires much more thought and consideration and introduces the possibility of failure. Which is why that part isn't discussed as much.
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Not every complaint needs to have a goddamn essay attached describing some utopia. Sometimes you just need to kvetch, and I'm sick of getting tone policed otherwise about it.
Why don't people that perpetuate the current system defend its existence? Why is the onus on us to develop a new realm of government when the current system never had to do this? Your comment is "but you live in society too!" Society acknowledging the shitty things is the first action in rectifying them.
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God did not create the current system of government on the seventh day of creation. The current system had to defend its existence (or rather, creation) at the time of its origin. The thing about criticism is, we're a long way from "the worst possible outcome". That is, there is a lot that the current system gets right. That's why the burden of proof gets put on the one proposing changes. The wrong change could make things worse rather than better, and we really don't want that. So it's not enough to note that society is broken in some ways. Yes, it is. Yes, we notice too. Now, what are you proposing? Let's take a hard look at your concrete proposal, and see whether it's an improvement or not. Oh, you don't have one? Yes, it's still valid to point out that there are problems. It's valid to demand that we not become complacent with the current problems. That's not wrong.
This is one of the most difficult articles my eyes could read. The font is so small and my eyes jumped all over the place. The web I want: One that's easy to read.
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Let me guess, you want a site that is just a singular column of text, plenty of space for ad breaks, and 3/4 of your monitor is just whitespace on the left and right?
Linux is good now (pcgamer.com)
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The only thing that still makes me maintain a Windows installation is playing League of Legends. Everything else (I mean, real work) is done on Linux
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All I want for Christmas is a M4 MacBook Air with Linux that works with perfectly with all the hardware.
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Adobe keeps me on macOS, otherwise I’d love to use something like Ubuntu as a daily driver.
"window positions not restoring at application start" Well you see, you are actually just silly for wanting this or asking for this, because it's actually just a security flaw...or something. I will not elaborate further.
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--geometry is an exploit that will end in your financial ruin. Spend your weekend figuring out which tiling manager and dbus commands will come close to approximating a replacement before giving up and realizing you can manually move windows for the rest of your life. Two plus two is five.
I've observed that most "enthusiasts" are really just brand ambassadors. They've been captured by some proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux, and that's the problem of Linux. The day their set of products runs perfectly on Linux is the day Linux will be ready for them.
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I think that if affinity chooses to make it work well on linux that would be a game changer for a lot of people. daVinci resolve works on linux for video so having a proper photo editor/illustrator tool that is not gimp would open up the option for most people to daily drive it. that's really the missing piece.
Can I run Solidworks on Linux yet? Excel? Labview? Vivado? Adobe products? Altium Designer? (Matlab is mostly yes) Not everybody is just writing Javascript and PHP. Can I get a laptop to sleep after closing the lid yet? Not that long ago the answer to these questions was mostly no (or sort of yes... but very painfully) On Windows all of this just works.
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I hear you, and also value Excel and a few other products, but I hit my perosnal limit with Windows enshittificatoion early last year and changed my daily driver at home to Linux. I added a couple VMs running windows, linux, and whatever else I need in proxmox w/ xrdp/rdp and remina, and it's really the best of both worlds. I travel a good deal and being able to remotely connect and pick up where I left off while also not dealing with windows nagware has been great.
But what about laptops? I don’t use desktop machines anymore (last time was in 2012). Apple laptops are top notch. I use ubuntu as vm (headless) for software development tho
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I do almost everything non-gaming on an MBA M1. Use Sunshine server on a Windows gaming laptop. Moonlight client on the Mac. Gaming machine does all the work but the output shows up on my Mac. Works perfectly. It's the perfect setup for me. Can command+tab in and out of the gaming environment as needed. Since the games are running on their own machine, there's nothing encumbering the Mac side. Have instant access to the preferred MacOS environment if I want to stop gaming and do something. One side benefit is how fast Moonlight + Sunshine is for using a remote desktop. Much smoother than RDP. On those rare times I need to do work in Windows, I just tab into Moonlight. If you were interested in PC gaming, this could be a great setup for you. Put a Windows or Linux box at the corner of your desk or in a closet. Never have to think of the hardware again after the initial setup.
I'm surprised to hear you are having trouble with wheels / pedals, we should be there already! https://github.com/JacKeTUs/linux-steering-wheels Hopefully vr headset support will get better
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Funnily enough the most annoying things on my system at the moment is RGB and keyboard/mouse customisation. I haven’t found a tool that can access all the extra settings of my Logitech mouse, not my Logitech speakers. OpenRGB is amazing but I’m stuck on a version that constantly crashes; this should be fixed in the recent versions but nixpkgs doesn’t seem to have it (last I checked). On the other hand I did manage to get SteamVR somewhat working with ALVR on the Quest 3, but performance wasn’t great or consistent at all from what I remember (RTX 3070, Wayland KDE).
Aren't there some hardware dongles to translate from DP to HDMI?
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Last I checked, even the best ones that are high quality don't support VRR.
Anticheat is one of those things where I probably sound really old, but man it’s just a game. If you hate cheating, don’t play on pub servers with randoms or find a group of people you can play with, like how real life works. For competitive gaming, I think attested hardware & software actually is the right way to go. Don’t force kernel-level malware on everyone.
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You clearly don’t play competitive shooters and thus aren’t qualified to opine on the matter. Competition vs other human beings is the entire point of that genre, and the intensity when you’re in the top .1% of the playerbase in Overwatch/Valorant/CSGO is really unmatched.
Sorry but you're just old IMO :) PUBG or Arc Raiders have over 100 players in a game. Even Valorant or League have 10 players in a match. It's definitely not easy to find 9 friends to play the same game at the same time as you. And playing any of these games with a cheater can completely wreck the match. If the cheaters go unchecked, over time they start to dominate games where like 30% might be cheaters who can see through walls and insta headshot you and the entire multiplayer mode of the game is ruined. Even worse some cheaters are sneaky, they might have a wallhack or a map showing all players but use it cautiously and it can be quite hard to prove they're cheating but they build up a huge advantage nonetheless. Most of us are happy to have effective anti-cheat, and it's not forced upon us. I understand the tradeoff to having mostly cheater-free games is having to trust the game maker more and am fine with that. Riot for example is quite transparent about what their anti-cheat does, how it works and I don't consider it "malware" anymore than I consider a driver for my graphics card to be "malware" even if they do operate in kernel mode.
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I play a lot of dota 2 and never really notice anything that is obvious cheat wise. IMO league would probably be fine to do valve level anti cheat, it's even a less twitchy of a game than dota. FPSs can just say 'the console is the competitive ranked' machine, add mouse + keyboard support and call it a day. But in those games cheaters can really ruin things with aimbots, so maybe it is necessary for the ecosystem, I dunno.
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> Most of us are happy to have effective anti-cheat I could almost get on board with the idea of invasive kernel anti-cheat software if it actually was effective, but these games still have cheaters. So you get the worst of both worlds--you have to accept the security and portability problems as a condition for playing the game AND there are still cheaters!
What if the kernel module is only run in a separate VM than your main one?
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Games that require kernel-level anticheat will probably try to detect VMs and refuse to run.
> This is one of the reasons you see Linux everywhere, and *BSD, rarely. I doubt it's a large reason. I'd put more weight on eg Linus being a great project lead and he happens to work on Linux. And a lot of other historical contingencies.
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BSD does a few things right, hence it's used by Netflix (who share back some of their work), userland of macOS (because Apple don't like GPL, I assume), PS4 and PS5 (IDK if anything seeps back upstream from there).
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