Blurblogs
Global
Popular
Log in
jepler's blurblog
6736 stories
·
156 followers

Python Software Foundation: Notice of Python Software Foundation Bylaws change, effective 10 August 2024
Friday July 26th, 2024 at 9:33 PM

Planet Python
1 Comment
There has been a lot of attention directed at our Bylaws over the last few weeks, and as a result of that conversation, the Board was alerted to a defect in our Bylaws that exposes the Foundation to an unbounded financial liability.

Specifically, Bylaws Article XIII as originally written compels the Python Software Foundation to extend indemnity coverage to individual Members (including our thousands of “Basic Members”) in certain cases, and to advance legal defense expenses to individual Members with surprisingly few restrictions.

Further, the Bylaws compel the Foundation to take out insurance to cover these requirements, however, insurance of this nature is not actually available to 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations such as the Python Software Foundation to purchase, and thus it is impossible in practice to comply with this requirement.

In the unlikely but not impossible event of the Foundation being called upon to advance such expenses, the potential financial burden would be virtually unlimited, and there would be no recourse to insurance.

As this is an existential threat to the Foundation, the Board has agreed that it must immediately reduce the Foundation’s exposure, and has opted to exercise its ability to amend the Bylaws by a majority vote of the Board directors, rather than by putting it to a vote of the membership, as allowed by Bylaws Article XI.

Acting on legal advice, the full Board has voted unanimously to amend its Bylaws to no longer extend an offer to indemnify, advance legal expenses, or insure Members when they are not serving at the request of the Foundation. The amended Bylaws still allow for indemnification of a much smaller set of individuals acting on behalf of the PSF such as Board Members and officers, which is in line with standard nonprofit governance practices and for which we already hold appropriate insurance.

The full text of the changes can be viewed at https://github.com/python/psf-bylaws/compare/a35a607...298843b

These changes shall become effective on Saturday 10 August 2024, 15 days from the date of this notice.

Any questions about these changes may be sent to psf@python.org. We gladly welcome further suggestions or recommendations for future Bylaws amendments.

Thank you,

The PSF Board of Directors
Read the whole story
jepler
4 hours ago
reply
ooo-ooo-oooops
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete

CrowdStrike Offers a $10 Apology Gift Card To Say Sorry For Outage
Wednesday July 24th, 2024 at 5:33 PM

Slashdot
1 Comment
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for TechCrunch: CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that crashed millions of computers with a botched update all over the world last week, is offering its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology, according to several people who say they received the gift card, as well as a source who also received one. On Tuesday, a source told TechCrunch that they received an email from CrowdStrike offering them the gift card because the company recognizes "the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused."

"And for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience," the email read, according to a screenshot shared by the source. The same email was also posted on X by someone else. "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" The report adds that some people are having trouble redeeming the card. Some are seeing the error that says the gift card "has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid."
Read the whole story
jepler
2 days ago
reply
is there a school to go to, if I want to learn to be this tone deaf?
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete

Apple Moves Forward With Foldable iPhone
Tuesday July 23rd, 2024 at 2:58 PM

Slashdot
1 Comment
Apple is advancing its plans for a foldable iPhone, with potential release as early as 2026, The Information reported Tuesday. The iPhone-maker has begun engaging with Asian suppliers for component production, the report added. The proposed device is said to feature a clamshell design, reminiscent of Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip series.

The company faces considerable technical hurdles, including display crease issues and achieving optimal device thickness. Despite these challenges, the assignment of an internal codename, V68, suggests the project has progressed beyond the conceptual stage, the report added.
Read the whole story
jepler
3 days ago
reply
on the one hand foldable phones are still dumb

on the other hand apple will surely be lauded for leading on this when it drops in '26 or '27
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete

Paramount+ Documentary: an Origin Story For Music Piracy - and Its Human Side
Monday July 22nd, 2024 at 10:19 AM

Slashdot
1 Comment
Re-visiting the Napster era, Stephen Witt's book How Music Got Free has been adapted into a two-part documentary on Paramount+. But the documentary's director believes "The real innovative minds here were a bunch of rogue teenagers and a guy working a blue-collar factory job in the tiny town of Shelby, North Carolina," according to this article in the Guardian: By day, [Glover] worked at Universal Music's CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina, from which he smuggled out hot albums by stars like Mary J Blige and 50 Cent before they were even released. For the documentary, Glover spoke openly, and largely without regret, as did others who worked at that plant who did their own share of stealing. Part of their incentive was class revenge: while they were paid piddling wages by the hour, the industry used the products they manufactured to mint millions. To maximize profits on his end, Glover set up a subscription service to let those in his circle know what CDs and movies were coming. "He was doing what Netflix would later do," Stapleton said...

In the meantime, the record companies and their lobbying arm, the RIAA, focused their wrath on the most public face of file-sharing: Napster. In truth, all Fanning's company did was make more accessible the work the pirates innovated and first distributed... For its part, the music industry reacted in the worst way possible, PR-wise. They sued the kids who made up their strongest fanbase. "One of the key lessons we learned from this era is that you can't sue your way out of a situation like this," Witt said. "You have to build a new technology that supersedes what the pirates did."

Eventually, that's what happened, though the first attempts in that direction made things worse than ever for the labels and stars. When Apple first created the iPod in 2001, there wasn't yet an Apple store where listeners could purchase music legally. "It was just a place to put your stolen MP3s," said Witt. Labels couldn't sue Apple because of a ruling dictating that the manufacturer of a device couldn't be held responsible for piracy enacted by its users. While Steve Jobs later modified his approach, creating a way for fans to buy individual songs for the iPod, "that did more damage to the industry than anything", Witt said. "Whereas, before they could sell a $15 CD to fans who really just wanted one song, now those fans could get that song for just a dollar...."

Eventually, the collective efforts of the streaming companies returned the music industry to massive profitability, though often at the expense of its artists, who often receive a meager slice of the proceeds.... Things ended less favorably for the pirates, some of whom now have criminal records. Likewise, Glover served a short prison sentence though, today, he is chief maintenance technician at the Ryder Truck manufacturing plant in his home town.
A Forbes senior contributor (and director Alexandria Stapleton) believe that for the younger generation it may be "their first introduction to why the music industry is the way that they're used to."

And Stapleton says their sympathies are with those factory workers. Stapleton: They were completely underpaid. They were making literally nothing. It's important for people to understand that while the industry was charging $20 for a CD, it cost like 20 cents to make. That's a big profit margin. And to have a factory that was paying barely enough for people to put food on the table, I think there's something wrong with that...

Witt: It's amazing to think about what they were really doing, which was essentially filling the technological vacuum that the record industry was refusing to fill, right? The record industry was not building out the successor technology to the compact disc because the compact disc was just too profitable for them. Instead, a bunch of random teenagers built the next generation of technology for them, and yeah, it caused a lot of damage. But I don't think that teenagers were necessarily trying to hurt anyone... They weren't malicious. They just were fascinated by how this stuff worked. And of course, they were also completely entranced by the celebrity of the musicians themselves.
In the interview Witt adds that a lot of those teenagers "were really kind of traumatized by their experience with the FBI I would say, and they wanted to get that story out there."

The documentary was produced by LeBron James and Eminem, "who rode the tail end of the CD boom to stratospheric heights," remembers a Fast Company opinion columnist. (And 25 years later, that columnist has gone back to listening to vinyl records, which "reignited for me a long-missing air of full engagement... Technology marches forward, except when it occasionally lurches backward...")
Read the whole story
jepler
4 days ago
reply
I remember the first time someone DCC'd me an MP3. I think that person went on to create gnome or something.
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete

UK First European Country To Approve Lab-grown Meat, Starting With Pet Food
Wednesday July 17th, 2024 at 5:22 PM

Slashdot
1 Comment
Lab-grown pet food is to hit UK shelves as Britain becomes the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat. From a report: The Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have approved the product from the company Meatly. It is thought there will be demand for cultivated pet food, as animal lovers face a dilemma about feeding their pets meat from slaughtered livestock.

Research suggests the pet food industry has a climate impact similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world. A study by the University of Winchester found that 50% of surveyed pet owners would feed their pets cultivated meat, while 32% would eat it themselves. The Meatly product is cultivated chicken. It is made by taking a small sample from a chicken egg, cultivating it with vitamins and amino acids in a lab, then growing cells in a container similar to those in which beer is fermented. The result is a pate-like paste.
Read the whole story
jepler
9 days ago
reply
"a pate-like paste"
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete

84% of PC Users Unwilling To Pay Extra For AI-enhanced Hardware, Survey Says
Wednesday July 17th, 2024 at 3:55 PM

Slashdot
1 Comment
An anonymous reader shares a report: A recent poll on TechPowerUp revealed that an overwhelming majority of PC users are not interested in paying extra for hardware with AI capabilities. According to the survey, 84% of respondents would not spend more for AI features, while only 7% said they would, and 9% were unsure. The poll data was already contributed by over 26K responders. This indicates that despite the PC market's shift toward integrating AI, most enthusiasts remain skeptical of its value. This suggests that hardware companies should pay attention to the preferences of their core user base. Currently, enthusiasts, who no doubt represent the majority of users on TechPowerUP, show little interest in AI features.
Read the whole story
jepler
9 days ago
reply
I'm not an expert but broadly speaking if you spend mere hundreds of dollars on a GPU you still don't get gpt-4o/dall-e levels of speed & quality. As an occasional home user of text & image generation **and leaving aside the risks of not keeping data on my local network** I'm better off on the pay-as-you-go APIs than buying a top notch GPU or AI accelerator.

And since I gotta assume that the AI that's being recklessly integrated into newer versions of various commercial OSes is going to phone home all your personal data even if they moving the site where the heat is emitted from a datacenter to your lap.

Suppose we put gpt-4 levels of transistors in all our phones, tablets, laptops, etc., and then use each one a small fraction of the time. It should be a lot cheaper overall to put a smaller number of transistors in a datacenter and share them. Or, buy 1 $4K GPU in a datacenter instead of 10 $400 GPUs in 10 home PCs and run a better model. The amount of data transmitted (input/output of the models) is laughably small even once you do images & audio.

So, what's the point of an AI accelerator in the end-user device?

(I say this as someone who did spend $hundreds on a GPU just to run LLMs and image generators on my own HW)
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm
Share this story
Delete
Next Page of Stories