> is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby
Definitely not, it's pressure from the anti-gun lobby that keeps pushing "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!"
These bills are being introduced in the states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime. But the lobby groups and candidates campaign and fundraise on the issue so they have to keep the boogeyman alive rather than admit that the policies have been a failure.
I have three guns. One I inherited, two I bought right before California turned up gun restrictions. Possibly the greatest time for gun makers was when Hilary Clinton had a clear lead in the race for president.
A democratic governor/president is the greatest salesman for the gun industry. When a Dem is in office, the right wing comes out with all of the "they're coming for your guns" which is followed by a spike in gun sales.
The latter doesn't make the former untrue. There are plenty of people that want to eliminate all private gun ownership altogether, even if their public speech is more moderate.
I bought my three when I saw videos of the ATF under Biden start random "knock and talk" sessions for those who recently bought more than one firearm. They're all in a friend's gun safe as I have had bouts of depression, so I won't keep it in my home... I know it kind of defeats the purpose... but I'm very much a supporter of all of my civil rights, including and especially 2A.
No conspiracy required. There's a lot of money to be made lobbying against guns - in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year - regardless of efficacy.
There are dumb arguments on both sides of this debate, but "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!" is definitely one of the weaker arguments... pretty much all state-level gun control is worthless when there is no border control at state lines.
> states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime
The "most restrictive gun control" states in the US would still be generally by far the least restrictive gun control states in the rest of the developed world (you know, where gun-related deaths are a small fraction of here?).
Your answer smacks of "well, they tried and surprise surprise it doesn't work so why are we doing it?", i.e. "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".
It is hard to police guns when there is free travel between the US states, yet only individual states can be relied upon to pass any reform. A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes. States are often forced to recognize rights granted by other states because such an interstate jurisdictional question naturally bubbles up to the aforementioned dysfunctional federal system.
Similarly to how many (most?) guns used criminally in Mexico actually come from the United States.
Edit: I'm not surprised by the downvotes, but I am amused. These are objective facts. Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States. Americans love the boogeyman of dangerous Mexican cartels so much they never seem to ask themselves where these guns come from in the first place. Hint: look in the mirror.
The characterization of the federal government as "broken" (at least in this capacity) and "dysfunctional" is a normative judgment you're making based on your own subjective value preferences.
Some -- perhaps most -- Americans regard the federal constitution's ability to restrain states from enacting policies that transgress against generally accepted individual rights as desirable, and working as intended.
That wasn't the objective fact in question, and I think you know that. A humorous one to contest anyway, given it is well known most Americans take a dim view of federal politics, especially when their favored party is out of power. This is a country where national elections are routinely decided by roughly a percentage point.
Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States? That would be a question of fact, not characterization. And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states? Or are you going to invent some other strawman to attack in your defense of your "individual rights"?
> Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States?
No -- nor am I willing to assert the opposite, because I have no knowledge of the topic. I will ask, though: why is the place of manufacturer of guns used by criminals is Mexico something worth worrying about?
> And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states?
Well, yes, of course. But I assume that this will be the case regardless of any attempted policy at any level of government, because I do not believe suppressing the movement of firearms is an attainable goal at any scale in the first place.
> Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Yes, all of that is correct.
> Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily.
I could, but I could also spend my time learning about many other topics which would yield useful insights, develop skills, help me understand the world better in ways that actually matter, among many other things. Why would I then spend time studying something for which the outcome would be the same regardless?
> So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business.
Well, no, it's not just that I don't give a fuck, but rather that I think the entire line of inquiry is a waste of time in itself, in that all it will do is provide a rationalization for one normative position or another, and offers little utility to anyone beyond that. Arguing over it is like arguing over how many peanuts are in a particular jar -- yes, there's an objectively correct answer, but the question itself is of no importance, and not worth bothering to answer.
> A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes
So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?
> Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States
I couldn't give less of a fuck if this were true "research" or not: this isn't my problem, nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights.
Also, please: a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise can't build or buy a machine shop and enslave or hire some machinists? They can build submarines and drones, but just couldn't possibly operate without US firearms? What reality do you live in?
The 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2024 were: Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Maryland.
Not seeing this so much lower crime rate in red states here.
Until knife killings start to rise (UK). Beyond this, I've seen several interventions of armed citizens stopping a crime in progress, when the police are still in route. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
My dad was ex-army, retired PD (detective, undercover) and a heavy 2A advocate. I grew up with guns around so it wasn't some weird, scary thing to see. I have many friends who also are heavy 2A who also grew up with guns in the home. It's first a matter of familiarity and second a matter of civil defense. I'm not a fan of "must flea" laws, and not a fan of restricting gun rights at all.
And yeah, if you can afford a tank and the ammo for it, as far as I'm concerned, you should be able to own and operate it. I would draw the line at nuclear weapons and materials.
It is, in fact, legal (but very expensive) to own a tank ( https://www.drivetanks.com/ , yes, that's a company, but a rich enough motivated person could fill out the same paperwork). Apparently each exploding shell is a NFA taxed destructive device ( https://youtu.be/GW2U0qORdLE ).
Who do you think makes the tanks? It's typically corporations, but could just as easily be a person... It isn't a socialist/communist company doing the work.
It's pretty much already the case that people can have access to these weapons, I'm just being explicit.
I won't try to make as strong a claim as the person you are responding to, but unfortunately, the politicized nature of the topic makes research on gun violence, especially as it relates to gun laws in the US, extremely fraught. The vast majority of research articles are plagued with issues. One should not just blanket trust the research (in either direction, and there are definitely peer reviewed journal articles pointing in different directions).
The claim you responded to was too strong, but for similar reasons, yours is also far far too confident.
Same thing with anything in regards to drug use in the United States. Dr Carl Hart talks about how hard it is to get anything that doesn't show harm published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart
I'm responding to someone making assertions with zero cites, and I cite a source. If anyone has a cite showing that loose gun policies results in lower rates of gun deaths, they're free to present that.
I'm impugning the entire field of research, why would I then provide an opposing citation? My own claim should lead you to not trust it. I'm also not making any particular directional claim that would require such a citation.
I'm arguing that your statement, citation supported or otherwise, was stronger than I believe is warranted. You (correctly) criticized the original comment for making a stronger claim than they were able to support. You then technically did a better job in supporting your own claim (in the sense that you made any attempt to support it at all), but, in my opinion, you still made the same mistake of making a claim that was much stronger than warranted.
I didn't say it was strong evidence or that one should just accept my claim, but regardless you have to agree it would be weird for me to say "the entire field is untrustworthy....but here is a paper anyways".
Your entire position is weird. The claim that there isn't a single source worth citing strains credulity. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
"there isn't a single source worth citing" is not my claim. It's that the field has a very high amount of highly politicized dreck and it can't be _generally_ trusted. I'm sure there are good citations. But one can't know if any particular citation is a good one without diving into the details (probably while having some degree of subject matter expertise), and any randomly selected article is more likely than not to be bad. As such, most people should not take the existence of a citation as proof of very much since it is more likely than not to be borderline useless. Especially given that the worst, most politically motivated articles (again: in both directions) are likely to be the ones that tell the strongest stories and have the least nuance and are therefore likely to be the most often cited.
This is an area where lay people should stay out of it, and should _definitely_ not be making strong claims like "documented, empirical fact" based on a shallow reading of someone else's summary of the literature.
I would dispute your source just by look at my own state, which has incredibly open gun laws, including free open carry and having had these laws since before anyone here was born, and a massive hunting population, and yet is claimed to be in the top half of strong gun laws. It is ranked significantly above Texas, and yet I know for a fact that my state has way more permissible gun laws than Texas, both historically and currently.
So I already know they are fudging the numbers, presumably because my state usually votes democrat and they want us to look good.
Hell its got Vermont as #17, but it has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation.
Isn't the validity and credibility of the source critical to it being supportive of your argument? Seems like a reasonable counter-argument in my opinion.
I provided a source, and so far all those who’ve disagreed have only provided opinions. No one has cited anything that contradicts my source, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the validity and credibility of my source has been impeached. ‘I don’t like it’ is not a valid criticism of a source.
Not only the source, but the specific repoprting has been refuted already by others.
So you have failed to present an argument, and then continued to fail to support it. So all you have done is express an opinion. Those are fine and allowed, but of no significance to anyone else.
They do get included by anti-gun people who want to pump up the numbers. You can't trust anything but the government statistics broken out by type of death.
“Common sense” is a red flag for me. Obama (who I voted for twice, don’t come at me) pitched revoking second amendment rights for people on the Do Not Fly list as “common sense”. My common sense says we shouldn’t use a secret, extrajudicial government watch list with documented problems with false positives to revoke constitutional rights.
Yet another lie by ommision. Violent deaths by guns have no relation to strength of gun laws. What your link measures is the number of accidental deaths by guns. If gun owners want to kill themselves it's not my job to keep them safe.
> Suicidal people aren't a valid reason for my rights to be restricted, sorry.
You also have a right to travel around the country, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to drink and drive. There are plenty of valid, constitutional reasons for firearm ownership to be restricted to qualified individuals. When these restrictions are in place, many fewer people die. It is what it is.
According to the first militia act, every able bodied male over 18 is what defines a qualified individual. Beyond that, you're actually required to own a firearm in that case.
So are you advocating to outlaw alcohol? I mean, since people get depressed and drink which drives more depression and kill themselves... I guess you're suggesting that all depressants should be outlawed.
On the other hand, no one from the pro-gun camp is involved with or wants to involve themselves with drafting common-sense gun regulations to reduce the impact of mass shootings while respecting Constitutional rights. Everything from that side seems to revolve around arming schoolteachers and permitting more guns in more spaces.
So of course you're going to have wildly-overreaching proposals making it through committees and put to the vote, because no one from the other side is there to compromise with. Americans prefer to debate on the news circuit instead of the committee floor.
If somebody has a really stupid proposal -- such as "make all 3D printers refuse to print guns" -- I don't see why I have any obligation to "compromise" with them. Or to talk with them at all. Other than, perhaps, explain that they ought to learn about the things they want to regulate before they start making proposals. The fact that they have an incredibly long track record of bad proposals, and many strongly-held opinions based mostly in ignorance, is just entertaining.
You don't cooperate with abolitionists using compromise. You will never come to an agreement that satisfies both parties. By definition it is impossible.
Interests are also not always clear, any movement that wants to restrict activities using the law, is going to attract opportunistic power-seeking individuals. There's always crazy carve out exceptions in these proposals that allow the wealthy and the powerful to use and possess firearms that regular people cannot reasonably expect to have. It's laws to protect the powerful from the everyone else. Billionaires are creating armed doomsday compounds in countries like New Zealand, while supporting legislation that makes it harder to own a gun for self defense.
Also mass shootings are statistically the least likely cause of a gun related death. They are in the news because they are novel, not because they are likely to happen to most people.
I have an inalienable right to not be shot in public. So do my kids. The right to live should be paramount, far and above any excuses one might make about billionaires controlling all the guns.
Maybe we should enshrine that right in the Constitution as the Zeroth Amendment, because it is seriously being trampled as of late.
Unfortunately the constitution has never been the reason or means for protecting our rights. It is only an after the fact acknowledgement of them. It doesn't secure them, we do.
Define "common-sense gun regulations", because every time someone tries explaining what that means it is almost always the exact opposite of common sense. Is restricting suppressors common sense? Because some of the nations with the most restrictive gun laws advocate for the usage of suppressors. Or bans on the scary AR-15, which is less powerful than most 60 year rifles which nobody cares about, especially when the vast majority of gun crime is committed with handguns. How about bans on gun accessories like types of stocks, slings, or bayonet lugs? How about sawed off shotguns which are less powerful than many "pistols" that shoot rifle rounds? Or shotgun/rifle combinations which were once a popular hunting combination for small game.
Either we should be allowed whatever semi-auto gun, or we should be allowed zero. Everything in between is a complete waste of time and effort and just leads to fucking over poor people for judicial profit because they can't afford $10,000+ lawyer that gets everybody with any money off of such charges.
Calling anything about gun control laws "common sense" is disingenuous at best. I'm coming at this from the "you go left enough and you get your guns back" side of the whole debate, but it's extremely difficult to solve a problem that consists of "tool used for its intended purpose, but in the wrong context".
Guns kill things. That's their primary purpose, it's why they exist. The people who aren't interested in guns for that purpose are easy to please: they don't really care about gun laws except in so much as they stop them from buying fun toys. They'd probably be fine with wildly invasive processes (being put on lists, biometric safeties, whatever), so long as they were given something in return. Something like, "You can have machine guns, but they need to be kept locked up at a licensed gun range".
People who just want guns for hunting are likewise easy to please. I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
The problem is people who want guns because of their utility against people, whether that means self defense, community defense, or national defense, fundamentally need the same things ( a need that is very expressly protected by the second amendment) as the person who wants to shoot a bunch of innocents. The militia folk might be fine with restrictions on handguns, but handguns are bar none the best choice for the self defense folk. The self defense folk might be fine with the existing machine gun ban, or other restrictions on long guns, but the militia folk need those for their purposes. The self dense folk are probably fine with being put on a list, but the militia folk who are concerned about the holders of that list are rightfully opposed to that.
IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide. That's a good thing. Requiring sellers to not sell to people under 18, or those who are obviously a threat to themselves and others is also largely unobjectionable. Punishing parents who fail to secure their weapons from their children, also a good thing.
No one's in favor of mass shootings, but it's not anywhere as simple as saying "common sense gun regulations".
Regarding your statement about the guns used against animals being different than the ones used against people is just wrong. The AR-15 is about the perfect choice against wolves or wild boar, just as a single example.
As far as the waiting period, there's a perfectly valid reason against that as well... if you are under eminent threat of violence from someone and want to be able to defend yourself/family/home today... it stops you from being able to do so.
I am okay with the (relatively quick) background check... when I bought my first guns a few years ago, I had to wait about an hour in the store for the results to come back (Phoenix). Even then, I'm not okay with secondary offense restrictions (weed, etc) as a restriction.
> IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide
If I own many firearms already, what exactly does a waiting period do besides infringe upon my rights?
If you own many firearms already, how is a 30 day wait preventing you from bearing them?
But yeah, the benefit does mostly arise for first time gun buyers. But that would require a master list of all gun owners. I'd prefer the wait per gun.
Which "schoolchildren" died because of a firearm that was purchased inside of a 30 day window? None of the famous massacres would fit this bill; did you have an actual, documented event in mind or just feelings?
All of the gun grabbers I am aware of that are in favor of waiting periods try to make this infringement justified based on "crimes of passion" and other "heat-of-the-moment" nonsense - not "schoolchildren."
It's just an example, you're refusing any kind of gun regulation, doesn't matter what it is, dead kids is not a factor.
Casual gun ownership is the difference. In Europe you can get guns, but you do it for a purpose like hunting or sports, license and training is required.
In the US one of the best demographic predictor of homicide rates is skin color. For instance, super white places like New Hampshire with the ~loosest gun laws in the country have extremely low murder rates.
If you take a look at say a heat map of the US where homicide is[1], it tracks extremely closely to where the black population is (New Mexico an outlier despite having stronger gun laws than most the surrounding states besides Colorado).[2]
What's also fascinating is that this metric is consistent even when controlling for socioeconomic status - ruling out "unfair circumstances! less opportunities!" arguments.
Would you be okay with a 30 day waiting period for posing a news article, that included strict penalties for misinformation/disinformation? Since you have to wait to publish, you have less reason to get things wrong.
A 30-day waiting period on news articles _should_ meaningfully reduce misinformation. A lot of lives are ruined by misinformation/leaks in early news articles that are later disproven and those retractions are rarely covered as widely as the original false news.
> I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
If you talk to hunters, they'll give you a long list of annoying laws.
California requires a background check to buy ammunition and prohibits state residents from importing ammunition. If you are a non-resident, you can bring ammunition in, but you cannot give it to your hunting buddies and you cannot buy ammunition in California. This is such a common problem that many hunting organizations have guides explaining the issue.[1] When I lived in California, I was unable to buy ammunition despite legally buying several firearms. Around 1 in 6 legal gun owners in California are incorrectly denied when purchasing ammunition.
California (along with several other states) bans civilian ownership of silencers. Hunters need to be able to hear when searching for game, and they rarely have time to don hearing protection before taking a shot. So the net effect of this restriction is to give hunters hearing damage and create more noise pollution. It's also a problem for anyone in rural areas who wants to dispatch pests, as gunshots annoy neighbors and can even result in the police being called.
California requires that long guns be unloaded when transported, but the definition of "unloaded" states that ammunition be stored separately. If ammunition is readily available near the firearm, California counts that as loaded, and you are committing a crime. If you have cartridge holder loops on your rifle's stock, they must be empty during transport even if the firearm is in a locked case.
California requires that hunters use lead-free ammunition. Lead-free ammo is more expensive and less available than typical lead ammunition, especially if you're not hunting with a common caliber. Many hunters zero their rifle using leaded practice ammo, and are generally less experienced with their hunting ammo. This makes hunters more likely to miss an animal's vitals, prolonging its suffering. Lead-free birdshot makes sense, but considering how few rifle rounds are expended while hunting, and how it's legal to use leaded ammo for target shooting in the wilderness, the lead restriction on rifle ammo serves no useful purpose.
It's been years since I lived in California, so I'm probably forgetting some other laws that annoy hunters. But believe me: hunters are not happy with the current laws.
This is fair, but I would venture to guess 99% of people including software developers and even most IT professionals completely rely on the vendor pre-installed root CAs.
DOD Cyber Exchange, home of DISA STIGs among other resources, appears to be signed by a root CA "US DoD CCEB Interoperability Root CA 2" which does not appear to be in any browser list of trusted root CAs. This seems to have changed at some point, because public.cyber.mil used to be accessible without any browser warnings. Certificate chain:
$ gnutls-cli --print-cert public.cyber.mil 443 </dev/null
Processed 150 CA certificate(s).
Resolving 'public.cyber.mil:443'...
Connecting to '23.9.224.83:443'...
- Certificate type: X.509
- Got a certificate list of 2 certificates.
- Certificate[0] info:
- subject `CN=comm-cyber.mil,OU=DISA,OU=PKI,OU=DoD,O=U.S. Government,C=US', issuer `CN=DOD SW CA-74,OU=PKI,OU=DoD,O=U.S. Government,C=US', serial 0x087ef6, RSA key 2048 bits, signed using RSA-SHA256, activated `2025-08-11 17:51:06 UTC', expires `2026-09-12 17:51:06 UTC', pin-sha256="zqDELcwzXa0DHRYN6o+J5FGm2fSFXYb3O0knmjH3MrE="
Public Key ID:
sha1:2925dac566b06932f1995cc904f1e723e26d6f5d
sha256:cea0c42dcc335dad031d160dea8f89e451a6d9f4855d86f73b49279a31f732b1
Public Key PIN:
pin-sha256:zqDELcwzXa0DHRYN6o+J5FGm2fSFXYb3O0knmjH3MrE=
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...snip
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
- Certificate[1] info:
- subject `CN=DOD SW CA-74,OU=PKI,OU=DoD,O=U.S. Government,C=US', issuer `CN=DoD Root CA 6,OU=PKI,OU=DoD,O=U.S. Government,C=US', serial 0x4a, RSA key 2048 bits, signed using RSA-SHA384, activated `2023-05-16 16:05:29 UTC', expires `2029-05-15 16:05:29 UTC', pin-sha256="NJVFdvvbhMFMXyUHKDk1RLnMkkY5Qt9eP3Q0Q8QHPUk="
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...snip
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
- Status: The certificate is NOT trusted. The certificate issuer is unknown.
*** PKI verification of server certificate failed...
*** Fatal error: Error in the certificate.
From my anecdotal observation this is true. Gun sales are also growing among demographics not typically associated with gun ownership (non-white, non-conservative.)
Legal wishes to remind you that that statement always needs this accompanying statement.
The word "better" does not imply a commitment towards customers and/or investors.
*The word "do" should not be seen as referring to the taking of any specific course of action which may or may not yield tangible change.
*The word "can" does not signify a concrete ability and is not forward-looking.
*The word "We" should not be interpreted as Canonical Ltd. nor any of its subsidiaries or affiliated entities.
Except he had a perfectly legitimate point there, as far as I understand, he just utterly botched the explanation.
There's a big difference between "is" and "was". Which is what he should have said. There were no semantic games in that particular statement, in stark contrast to some of the other things he said.
> There's always the risk that the West might internally reject the scientific revolution.
In the US I am pretty sure we are already on the decline.
I think it has to do with, during the industrial revolution and post-war, huge scientific advancements and tech grew the economy, fed capitalism by means of providing new desirable goods to consumers (e.g. dishwashers, nicer cars, etc.)
I wonder if we've reached a "peak" of consumer comfort where advances in science/ tech/ medicine are no longer frequent/ impactful enough to meaningfully satisfy consumers, (why do we care about exploring Mars?) so it's easy for people to reject it and say "we don't need science."
I feel we're on decline, because "science, bitch" is used to harass people into doing something they don't want or not ready. And people generally don't like to be harassed, they begin to resist no matter how reasonable things you're talking about are.
I wish society could pick its battles more carefully.
As a European who have lived in the US, I have been of the opinion that the US have been in decline for several decades. I think there is a combination of over reliance of capitalism to solve problems which seemingly can’t be solved well that way: universal healthcare, environmental management, education, urban planning, crime (prisons) etc, and the culture buying into the “American way” which in fact doesn’t provide the social mobility it claims nor makes the population better off, if you remove the richest from the equation. If I wasn’t so busy with other stuff I would be interested in doing research around this.
Agree with sentiments of the parent comment. I believe the prestige and social standing of physics (and, in part, the academia as a whole) is founded in the truly transformational technological advances -- say, the transistor -- made in the past decades.
Problematically, to secure funding today, one is essentially expected to frame every condensed-matter experiment as the next transistor. Not only in grant applications, but increasingly also in the abstract and opening paragraphs of research articles. There's a marked contrast with older research articles in physics, which usually go straight to disseminating the results. (Needless to say that I prefer the old style.)
As a result, a great deal of funding and attention is allocated towards projects that simultaneously 1) Will not improve the quality of life of anyone, even in the long term. 2) Are "de-risked" to such extent that no new scientific insights can come out of them.
I studied physics because I liked it and the way it describes our world. I then went for a PhD and slowly realized that physics (except a few areas) is basically dead. Particle physics for instance deal with completely outwordly stuff, akin to planning a family trip to Jupiter. Sure, it may happen someday but there are more present things.
I got my PhD and left academia (because of this and petty politics around photocopier paper costs) and the only part I really miss is the teaching and the bright minds.
I agree, for a couple reasons. One, while you usually have to deal with a cross toolchain (usually intel-> ARM) it's easier to build and debug on a target board versus booting and rebooting your PC to see if you did everything right. Also the
I've used debootstrap to build a Debian distro for ARM with a custom kernel (for an Olimex board target or Beaglebone.) That's very hands-off and not nearly the same "depth" as LFS. The next step was taking the same kernel and building a busybox-based rootfs. Then I had to make my own PID 1 and do init work to bring up services such as networking on boot which was very educational, yet busybox provides most of the "lego bricks" that you're not left writing too much from scratch.
Building to an embedded target also allows one to punt on the most annoying and complex parts of a desktop linux distro, such as the desktop environment, audio/video drivers, UEFI bootloader, etc. Building a semi-custom (e.g. Arch or Debian/debootstrap, Buildroot or OpenEmbedded) headless distro was what I'd call a "shallow dive" or gentle introduction to more of Linux's inner workings without having to understand every bit in order to get a running system.
This sounds a bit like the custom bicycle frame builder phenomenon as well. Well-known builders/shops can have years-long wait lists and their builds will go for 2x, 5x or 10x the cost of a top of the line mainstream model - 10s of thousands of $$.
Granted each one is built by hand so the artisanal craft is easy to appreciate.
But exclusivity is there, because these shops are building less than a dozen bikes per year. If you got your hands on one, wow it will turn heads when you roll up to the bier garden at the CX race.
I was curious, and since the author of this answer provided links to what they called leaks [1], it's not difficult to download both the leak and ReactOS source [2] and look for similarities. So, out of curiosity, that's what I did.
I started poking at some source files at random in ntoskernel, and it only took a minute to get some "hits" from the ReactOS source:
Now that said, I have no idea what I'm looking for, or if this is significant. But since we have the source for both, it seems we can do better than speculate w/r/t how much code is similar between them. I know that does not prove copying but I think the author's point can't be blindly dismissed.
I do not wish to view the leaked copies of Windows source code, unfortunately. It does have potential legal ramifications, in the United States. If someone who doesn't care can attempt to audit it, that would be absolutely great.
That said, KiInitializeContextThread isn't 'secret' enough to not appear, it is a well-known bit of internals. Here you can find some docs about it on Microsoft's own website, albeit I have no idea if this is present anywhere on there anymore.
If Microsoft cared, they wouldn’t be hosting that on their very own servers.
GitHub belongs to Microsoft. They could pull that down at any time just because they feel like it. But they haven’t. That’s a pretty solid sign that there’s not any legal consequence to viewing it.
Well, my paranoid 99% says that they could keep it online on purpose so that all people viewing it fall in a legal disadvantage position. Removing that code would achieve nothing in secrecy today compared to the legal leverage they can get tomorrow by keeping it online.
For what it's worth, it's not just Microsoft who care. You're not allowed[1] to contribute to Wine if you've ever seen the leaked Windows source code. I think it's weird that they consider your mind to be "tainted" forever, but whatever. I guess they want to be cautious.
(You're also not allowed to contribute to the Wine CRT if you've ever seen the CRT source that's legally distributed with the Windows SDK.)
I don't think Microsoft cares that much, but I'm sure they view it for what it is: illegal, unauthorized usage of their intellectual property. (I'll hold off on my personal views of 'intellectual property' and whatnot; I'm not a lawyer, and those opinions are hardly relevant to the reality here.)
Still, even if Microsoft doesn't care, Wine Project and ReactOS care. My employer might care. There are unfortunately legal implications that exist, and if people want to play by the books they have to at least do the basic due diligence.
If you genuinely just don't care, you can lie to them and claim you never saw the original code, and attempt to cloak any code theft to make it indistinguishable from clean-room reverse engineering. Nothing stops you from doing that. Hell, the trouble is that it really can't be proven for sure. Even holding the positions I do on forums wouldn't prove my own innocence in such a situation, though maybe it helps build a case.
What stops someone from viewing that repo over Tor, on a different git server, or at a public library, unsecured WiFi network, etc and being considered tainted? At what point is someone considered untainted?
This seems like a grey area that slows the pace of R&D in countries that believe code is copyrightable & patentable (the US and select Western countries) compared to say New Zealand & China, where these aren't an issue.
Where did you get that idea about New Zealand copyright? Code is copyrightable here, see e.g. [1] or [2].
And it's not about belief, but definition. Copyright and patents are human inventions defined by countries' laws (which is why different countries have different rules: different definitions). In NZ, as in many countries, "Computer software follows the rules for literary work" ([2] again).
It was more that we clarified what was and wasn't patentable, as I don't think software was exactly patentable before that either; its patentability and the ability to enforce said patents were ambiguous. Patents on software are not quite completely banned, either, as, from your link's linked source, "Processes will still be patentable if the computer program is merely a way of implementing a patentable process."
I tried googling for KiInitializeContextThread and there are lot of search results for this name. For example, a presentation in Chinese dated 2005 year described process creating and mentions this function: [1]
The sequence of events that happens inside KeInitThread() can be obtained from reverse engineering. If you compare the code of this function in WRK [2] and in Reactos [3] code, you'll see that while they do similar things, the code is not the same.
Regarding NpxFrame, I don't know why this name is used in KiExitV86Mode, but if you compare functions KiInitializeContextThread in WRK and in Reactos, you'll see that in WRK the variable is named NpxFrame [4], and in Reactos a similar variable is named FxSaveArea (which matches structure FX_SAVE_AREA). The variable named NpxFrame in Reactos is used in other function, KiExitV86Mode.
I'm confused about those examples. Both symbols seem to be referenced in quite a few web resources that aren't dumps of that research kernel and either github search is a bit broken or I can't seem to find many of those in your [1] repository.
Definitely not, it's pressure from the anti-gun lobby that keeps pushing "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!"
These bills are being introduced in the states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime. But the lobby groups and candidates campaign and fundraise on the issue so they have to keep the boogeyman alive rather than admit that the policies have been a failure.