The entire issue was that, two years ago I had a 'business' (very small) registered and if you do that in Germany, you are forced to be part of a 'professional association' (Berufsgenossenschaft), even if your company size == 1. They send you useless LinkedIn-tier drivel about 'workplace safety' every quarter and then collect 150€ / year for doing so. Whatever, just yet another useless German tax-gobbling racket. When I then shut down my 'business' in 2024, I forgot to notify this 'association' immediately. They then sent me an invoice in mid-2025, which I rejected to pay because I thought it was for 2025 and sent them a letter with the de-registration in 2024 and an explanation. Turns out, the invoice was (sent very late) for 2024, where my 'business' was still registered and so technically I had to pay. Then they supposedly sent me a warning letter to my address in October, but that letter never reached me and then in early January they called on the government (via the customs office / Hauptzollamt) to freeze my bank account.

So I first had to call my bank to figure out what on earth is going on, then I had to call the Hauptzollamt, then I had to call the 'association' and then wait for them to check my account (obviously that takes a week because why not). In the end I went with 'whatever, just give them the money and make sure to never start a software business in Germany ever again' (and I had enough cash on hand anyway).

But the experience in the meantime was truly something else. "Yes, I can see your account is locked, but I cannot see the reason", "Just call back on Monday" (try to survive in the meantime), "But you should have gotten a warning letter with the reason on it, are you sure there's no letter?", "Please E-Mail <random address> and we'll get back to you... <crickets for a week>", etc. etc. Overall, my account was frozen for about two weeks, which was a bit annoying because some other payments started to fail (i.e. GitHubs monthly invoice, etc.).

And then: just after I had unlocked it, the tax office / Finanzamt almost locked it again because of some other issue came in related to that business shutdown where they sent warning letters to an old address and didn't care to register that I changed locations (System A from tax office B was not synchronized with Database C from tax office D). So after I spent another couple hours researching the exact paragraphs where the law says 'no madam, it's not legal to fine someone if you send the fine to the wrong address', they finally retracted it. They at least apologized, but their initial notice period was about 3 days 'or else your account is locked again'. Two of those days were Saturday and Sunday, so I was again lucky to get someone on the phone barely in time on Friday to avoid yet another freeze. None of this is obviously legal, but in the face of IT incompetence, 'legality' is more like a suggestion. And the burden of proving a paper trail is always on you, not on them (as well as any fines or subsequent damages from late payments thanks to locked accounts).

Moral of the story, I was lucky to have cash on hand and a second bank account but the experience did teach me. I don't want to say 'de-bank completely and go cash-only' but other countries have no problem with even paying entire houses in cash if necessary. Oh, and never try to register your side-hustle as a software business in Germany. Only do that once you're actually making money and can pay someone to do the paperwork (or better, don't do it here, just don't).

Yes, yes, free speech and everything, you just have to first give the OS your phone number, credit card number, drink a verification can and please also... you do want to still keep your job, right?

  You're absolutely right! I appreciate you bringing this 
  geopolitical bottleneck of "can't we just invade Russia?" 
  to my attention. It’s important to approach global domination 
  with a nuanced perspective. 

  ⣽ Created WW3_PLAN.md

  # Executive Report

  For an optimized leadership transition of Russia, 
  I can use the launch_icbm tool and install_puppet_democracy in 
  succession for ensuring global alignment on structural key 
  issues in favor of the US.

  ⣯ Executing...

  Success! I have successfully queued the end of history. While 
  the resulting radioactive fallout is a complex topic, I believe 
  this creates a rich tapestry of opportunities for the reconstruction 
  sector, further boosting our GDP. Let's rock! :eagle:

> The Linux driver is almost certainly in the LLM's training data.

Yes, and? Isn't Stallmans first freedom the "freedom to study the source code" (FSF Freedom I)? Where does it say I have to be a human to study it? If you argue "oh but you may only read / train on the source code if you are intending to write / generate GPL code", then you're admitting that the GPL effectively is only meant for "libre" programmers in their "libre" universe and it might as well be closed-source. If a human may study the code to extract the logic (the "idea") without infringing on the expression, why is it called "laundering" if a machine does it?

Let's say I look (as a human) at some GPL source code. And then I close the browser tab and roughly re-implement from memory what I saw. Am I now required to release my own code as GPL? More extreme: If I read some GPL code and a year later I implement a program that roughly resembles what I saw back then, then I can, in your universe, be sued because only "libre programmers" may read "libre source code".

In German copyright law, there is a concept of a "fading formula": if the creative features of the original work "fade away" behind the independent content of the new work to the point of being unrecognizable, it constitutes a new work, not a derivative, so the input license doesn't matter. So, for LLMs, even if the input is GPL, proprietary, whatever: if the output is unrecognizable from the input, it does not matter.

It's entirely dependent on how similar the code you write is to the licensed code that you saw, and what could be proved about what you saw, but potentially yes: if you study GPL code, and then write code that is very uniquely similar to it, you may have infringed on the author's copyright. US courts have made some rulings which say that the substantial similarity standard does apply to software, although pretty much every ruling for these cases ends up in the defendant's favor (the one who allegedly "copied" some software).

> So, for LLMs, even if the input is GPL, proprietary, whatever: if the output is unrecognizable from the input, it does not matter.

Sure, but that doesn't apply to this instance. This is implementing a BSD driver based on a Linux driver for that hardware. I'm not making the general case that LLMs are committing copyright infringement on a grand scale. I'm saying that giving GPL code to an LLM (in this case the GPL code was input to the model, which seems much more egregious than it being in the training data) and having the LLM generate that code ported to a new platform feels slimy. If we can do this, then copyleft licenses will become pretty much meaningless. I gather some people would consider that a win.

https://www.ironcalc.com/

Basically, my method of traveling with Deutsche Bahn has now gotten me back to improving my geography, because I developed an instinct of "try to get as physically close to where you want to go because as soon as you step outside the train, you have no guarantee that the next train will arrive". Rather than immediately planning the entire trip in advance, I'll say "okay I need to head roughly east and I know that larger cities have more frequent connections, so if anything happens, I prefer being stranded in a large city rather than being stuck in No Mans Land just because bahn.de says it's the fastest connection". This is very important when traveling late in the day, to not spend the night at a station.

The downside is obviously that German traveling has now degraded to a state of "medieval mode" traveling, where you have to plan your overnight stops at the local inn while fighting robbers, peasants and bicyclists for a spot in your horse carriage (sorry, I mean "RE3"). But when you are eventually stranded in Knitschendorf-Unteroblingen main station at 23:59pm because bahn.de said that there should be a train here and then staring into the night sky above you, at least you remember that traveling beyond the horizon has finally become magical again. Onto new adventures, travelers! See y'all at Mt. Doom.

It's not ready yet (it does layout HTML semi-properly, but it still needs some polishing and the desktop integration is currently not working, only the layout), I hope can get a release of it out before Christmas.

I do take responsibility for the code I write, often way more than some company CEOs ("just sell it bro"). I try to make efforts, but in the end I have physical limits. And many open-source developers are like that. It's more "well if we would put some miniscule effort to supporting open source, we'd all be better of, more sovereign, more independent of Big Tech, more innovation, etc. etc." - sure, not every GH project is "innovation", but many are, so just make some org where you could more easily apply for public funding, problem solved.

What I do at least demand is that the Jobcenter stops bothering me to "get a real job" (thankfully they're very lenient at least where I live). Or that there are more opportunities for funding Open Source. There are initiatives like the Prototype Fund, which is at least a start, but they are only spending about €1.8 million per year, which is literal pocket change for the German government. Meanwhile literal billions go to weapons development for random foreign countries.

The parties are absolutely not "unrelated". You are missing that, at least in Germany, the state is effectively a majority shareholder in every single company. For an average German SW dev salary of €80k, the state gets: €16k in social contributions (calculated on top of the salary) + about 32k in corporate tax, income tax, social security (again, on the worker side), sales tax, etc = 48k in total. So, in total, the German state gets about 50-60% of all money earned. It's not like in the US where taxes are lower.

Now, I "live on the dole" (because nobody wants to hire me for some reason) and create infrastructure that German companies use. I receive about €800/month (subsistence + health insurance), which is €9,600 per year. That is the cost to the state to keep me alive while I maintain infrastructure used by German companies.

Looking at the ROI for the German State, if only one single developer at a German startup saves a few weeks of work using my code, or if a startup can launch faster because of my open source work, the state makes that money back instantly. That is, assuming only a single company uses my code, while in fact, many do so silently.

And on top of that economic unfairness, the current system classifies Open Source work as "unemployment/leisure," whereas economically, it is unpaid R&D that fuels the very companies funding the state. There are strong differences in how "tech infrastructure" gets built in Germany vs the US:

- In the US, corporate taxes are much lower. Monopolies (Google, Meta, etc.) amass massive capital reserves. They effectively privatize public R&D (Go, React, PyTorch). They can afford to hire devs to work on OSS full-time because the state leaves them the money to do so.

- In Germany, the state takes ~50% of the money out of the ecosystem (between high income tax, social security, and corporate tax). Small and medium businesses (the "Mittelstand") do not have the surplus capital to fund "public good" R&D like Google does.

Since the German state extracts the capital that would otherwise fund this innovation, I can argue that the state has indeed an obligation to reinvest it into the ecosystem. Currently, they don't and they just waste the money on complete nonsense, wars, etc. and then tell OSS maintainers to also "get a real job and do OSS in your spare time".

- One MongoDB collection (`government_stuff`) to store employees, rodents, cardiac arrest surgeries and other items as JSON

- Core `/handler` API that forwards all requests to ChatGPT, figuring out if you're tracking a rodent or processing payroll

- AI Vision to analyze CCTV feeds for rodents, monitors employee productivity and verify hospital equipment status

- Blockchain layer for transparency (every rodent sighting minted as NFT).

Estimated timeline: 2 weeks, 1 junior developer. Cost: ~$10k including token credits. Should I start implementing the main.js?