Posted by speckx 5 hours ago
Does UK patent law somehow work differently?
[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-pe...
Little did they know how much bigger that pyre would get lmao
If one guy can reverse-engineer everything with an LLM and some free time, I'm pretty sure their competitors can as well, and they won't be doing it out in the open like this guy was...
Some questions that come to mind are:
Do you actually own the hardware?
Do you stop owning the hardware, meaning you're not allowed or able to use it once the company that's sold it to you stops providing or updating hardware?
Does every piece of hardware come with a guarantee that it will work on every piece of hardware that it's attached to forever?
These are just a few of the really troubling questions when people forget that software has to run on hardware. And the closer the software is to the core operation of a piece of hardware and equipment, the more topics like right to repair or right to maintain or right to optimize come up.
I never thought that a video card replacement driver would make me think of companies that are limiting Farmers from repairing and updating their own tractors.
The closest you can get is something like the Raptor Talos II, although parts of the hardware are still under patent.
https://static.lwn.net/images/pdf/Cease_and_Desist_Notice_Mi...
Fuck you, Synaptics.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
Which is made funnier by the lawyer's name being Bateman. Sorry, could not resist that one.
What I find more ridiculous is the timing:
> You are to provide Synaptics, no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 11, 2026
The letter is dated "October 5, 2026". WTF are these lawyers smoking that they think 5 days is any reasonable time frame.
They just try to keep the pressure up so that the other entity gives up before they have time to estimate whether any of the claims are valid. One person against big corporation, which is threatening with big penalties. A common tactic.
Unbelievable mafia tactics from those clowns.
OCuLink doesn't even use drivers. It's literally just a PCIE passthrough. All usual tools apply, whereas DisplayLink encrypts all data, so a big fuckyou for getting logs.
Quit giving trash companies pounds of money for abuse at scale.