[undecisive]

This is bizarre. I wonder how many of us saw that title, thought "That's a really simple problem, surely?" came up with a solution and then were shocked when their coffee-lacking brain actually came up with the patented solution?

I mean... ignoring the bitwise arithmentic (which this only obvious to people used to doing binary operations) this is the kind of maths that an 11yo could do.

That said, the patented solution is a little more complex. But not by much.

Which makes me curious: what other patents have we violated in our day-to-day without even knowing it?

[mschuster91]

> Which makes me curious: what other patents have we violated in our day-to-day without even knowing it?

Patents are like the criminal code - always remember "Three Felonies a Day" [1]. The system is set up so that if you are one of the 99%, the 1% can come in and bust you at will if you become too much of an annoyance/threat. They will find something if they just keep digging deep enough (not to mention that they can have your entire company's activity combed through with a microscope if they find a sympathetic court), and blast you with enough charges and threaten sequential jail time so that you cannot reasonably do anything other than plead guilty and forfeit your right to a fair trial [2].

And for what it's worth, that "play by the rules as we want or we will destroy you" tactic can even hit multi-billion dollar companies like Epic Games. It's one thing if society decides to regulate business practices by the democratic process of lawmaking... but the fact that Apple can get away banning perfectly legal activities such as adult content, vaping [3] or using a non-Apple payment processor from hundreds of millions of people is just insane, not to mention incredibly damaging to the concept of democracy.

[1]: https://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day

[2]: https://innocenceproject.org/guilty-pleas-on-the-rise-crimin...

[3]: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/01/pax-vape-management-web...

[Retric]

Freedom means some people will do stuff you don’t like.

[lukifer]

It also means you are not necessarily entitled to rents for your “discoveries”.

[mschuster91]

And democracy means, at its core, to restrict the freedom of people committing actions that society has decided to be unlawful.

[Retric]

Except society hasn’t decided that such action is unlawful even if some people, such as yourself, wish it was. I am sure at least a few vegans would like to outlaw eating meat, but democracy also works the other way ensuring such extremely unpopular laws never get passed.

[mschuster91]

> I am sure at least a few vegans would like to outlaw eating meat, but democracy also works the other way ensuring such extremely unpopular laws never get passed.

I would not be so certain about that one.

Many countries are thinking of outright "meat taxes", health scores (similar to smoking warnings in the desired nudging effect) or extending CO² taxes onto agriculture: meat production causes about 14% of global CO² emissions [1], and outlawing/disincentivizing meat consumption is a very easy, very fast and incredibly effective way of cutting down on CO², methane and dung emissions. Not to mention the indirect emissions from land burning (especially in Brazil) or the societal cost of overconsumption of meat (e.g. obesity and heart issues).

Personally, I'm in the "omnivore" camp but recognize that the way how we deal with meat products has to be massively reformed. We need to cut waste and curb consumption, the sooner the better.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-gre...

[Retric]

That’s the more popular view, but there is still a group of hard core “meat is murder” vegans. Personally I would say get rid of all farm subsidies, but politics makes strange bedfellows and democracy means accepting compromises up to a point.

[pchangr]

This will for now on be my preferred quote against “freedom at all cost” arguments.

[scotty79]

We should end legal protection of ideas as soon as possible.