From a quick glance Don Ho looks to be based in France, and a search of their trademark registry gives a current result for Notepad++: https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202
On closer look, I think you’re right. I also tried searching the USPTO trademark database by author and by product name and couldn’t find anything. I don’t know why I thought he had trademarked it. Maybe it could qualify as a common law trademark, but I’m really not sure as this is well outside my area of expertise.
The part that would violate guarantees in JavaScript is not function objects being kept alive longer, but function objects which should be distinct not being so.
function foo() {
return function() { };
}
console.log(foo() === foo()); // This must log `false` in a compliant implementation
This is also a problem, IMO, in having this optimization in PHP. Anonymous functions are instances of a Closure class, which means that the `===` operator should return false for `foo() === foo()` just like it would for `new MyClass() === new MyClass()`.
But, since when has PHP ever prioritized correctness or consistency over trivial convenience? (I know it's anti-cool these days to hate on PHP, but I work with PHP all the time and it's still a terrible language even in 2026)
I never understood why people think somehow PHP is fine now, and I've had that opinion expressed several times on HN. The best I can make out is that people's expectations are so dismal now that they're like "Well new versions fixed 2 of the 5 worst problems I noticed, so that's good right?"
Because PHP is a amazing backed language for making CRUD apps. Always has been.
It has great web frameworks, a good gradual typing story and is the easiest language to deploy.
You can start with simple shared hosting, copy your files into the server and you are done. No docker, nothing.
Sure it has warts but so have all mainstream programming languages. I find it more pleasant than TypeScript which suffers from long compile times and a crazy complex type system.
The only downside is that PHP as a job means lots of legacy code. It a solid career but you will rarely if ever have interesting programming projects.
It’s a “terrible” language? That’s news to me. What’s “terrible” about it?
> `new MyClass() === new MyClass()`
Does that look like the code you’re writing for some reason? Because I’ve seen 100k loc enterprise PHP apps that not once ran into that as an issue. The closest would be entities in an ORM for which there were other features for this anyway.
>We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request.
The post states that his lawyer has reviewed the subpoena, but doesn't mention whether or not it contained a non-disclosure order. That's an important detail to address if the claim is that Google acted against its own policy.
Google acknowledges that they should have given notice per their own policy and that they violated it. In this case, they said that they violated it because they had failed to respond to the subpoena within ICE's 10-day deadline:
> On November 20, 2025, Google, through outside counsel, explained to the undersigned why Google did not give Thomas-Johnson advanced notice as promised. Google’s explanation shows the problem is systematic: Sometimes when Google does not fulfill a subpoena by the government’s artificial deadline, Google fulfills the subpoena and provides notice to a user on the same day to minimize delay for an overdue production. Google calls this “simultaneous notice.” But this kind of simultaneous notice strips users of their ability to challenge the validity of the subpoena before it is fulfilled.
At what point does Google’s incompetence imply organizations that use its services are liable for negligence?
What if this were a bogus subpoena for a lawyer’s privileged conversations with a client? A doctor’s communications about reproductive health with a patient? A political consultant working for the democrats?
A gag order would be from a judge. There would be severe penalties if a party breaks a gag order. A request not to notify is just a request; it has zero legal standing and there would be zero repercussions to ignoring it.
Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
So what's going on? Did a Google employee simply mess up? Is the reporting not accurate or missing key details, e.g. Google truly is legally prohibited? Or is there some evidence that the Trump administration was putting pressure on Google, e.g. threatening to withhold some contract if this particular person were notified, or if Google continued notifying users belonging to some particular category of subpoenas?
Because Google isn't breaking its own terms just for funsies. There's more to this story, but unfortunately it's not clear what.
> Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
It is also not in Google’s interest to resist this administration. I would not be surprised if they decided to kiss the ring and be by internal policy more cooperative than what the law strictly says.
I guess we’ll get a better idea if more cases show up.
Previous administrations weren't easier to resist. Look up Joseph Nacchio's story. Short version: refuse to install https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAINWAY without a warrant, go to jail.
>Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Do Google users care about their privacy? I'd expect not, given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements.
And, as I mentioned, Google hasn't been shy about saying that's exactly what they do (prioritizing their ad revenue over their users' privacy), so I have to assume that Google users don't care about their privacy.
If they did care about their privacy, they'd self-host their email on hardware they physically control.
That's orthogonal to Google giving up data to the government, with or without notifying the user(s) in question, except that the above makes clear what we already know: Google doesn't respect the privacy of their users.
> given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements.
That hasn't been the case since 2017. Nearly a decade ago. They stopped precisely because Google users do care about privacy -- and tracking is one thing, but scanning the content of your e-mails is another.
And what you're linking to is NOT what you described, "in order to provide more targeted advertisements".
Your links are describing Gemini integration. If you ask Gemini a question about your e-mails, obviously it needs to look at them. If Google is suggesting a smart reply, obviously it needs to process your e-mail to do so. But these are features designed to benefit the user.
You were talking about target advertising. That's not what your links have anything to do with.
[0]: "Google publicly announced in 2017 it would stop using Gmail content for ad targeting but continued to scan emails for spam, malware, and other non-ad functionality, which leaves room for ambiguity about downstream uses of metadata or other signals"
Who cares why Google is reading your emails? Not me.
Oh, it's just for non-ad functionality? In that case, go right ahead!
> Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Does it know? And do users really care? Popularity on HN isn't popularity everywhere.
I'd wager most people don't care enough to move away from Gmail.
But even if they did, unfortunately this isn't the only variable a business is solving for. Corporations will generally just pick between the least unprofitable of two evils, not the lesser of.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration
administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
It's relevant if you follow their legal advice and the government decides to pursue a case against you.
Even if you're in the right, defending yourself in a legal proceeding is expensive. You need a checkbook that can back up your confidence in what they're telling you.
And sure, Google has that money, but they're also fighting off half of congress trying to break up their business.
It's in their best interests to do whatever the DoJ asks of them.
Administrative subpoenas are tenuous at best, but in the absence of an actual court order, words from ICE attorneys or officers saying "You are ordered not to disclose the details of this subpoena" have no actual weight in law.
This exactly. It's like everyone is assuming whatever ICE ordered Google to do was completely lawful. Even if this administration was a tightly run ship, when an agency gets a massive funding increase and daily quotas to hit like ICE did, all bets are off and you should never give them the benefit of the doubt. Obviously when the DHS secretary is calling American protesters domestic terrorists, cosplaying as a cop, and spending $200M+ on ads that feature herself, then you definitely give maximum scrutiny to everything that agency is doing/did.
> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative
subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.
They don't want a ruling against them.
> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”
I’m really hoping this leads to criminal convictions once these clowns are voted out of office.
Congress needs to retroactively eliminate the presidential pardon, or (more realistically) states need to pass laws allowing them to prosecute members of the federal government (the federal government already did this to the states; the result would be symmetric, and likely survive legal challenges.)
The underlying problem is that the presidency is just a non-hereditary elected monarch. If you make a "CEO of the military", you have made a king. We need to get rid of or neuter the presidency.
The reason why we have this defective executive structure is because the Founders wanted separation of powers and thought Parliaments were inherently corrupt. In a Parliament, the executive is fundamentally a creature of the legislature and cannot disobey it. The Founders wanted an independent executive that couldn't be overruled by normal legislative actions, because the executive is supposed to be calling out the legislature when they do a tyranny. And since that executive executes the law, they also need control over the military. Congratulations, you have made a king.
Separation of powers failed the moment America got a party system: why would a Republican Congress check the power of a Republican President? Likewise, the process for removing a rogue President is laughably difficult to execute. In almost every party system in America, impeachment and conviction would require a complete collapse of party support for their own President. This rarely happens, because Congress is reliant on the Presidency to send votes downballot[0]. Voters do not reward political traitors for saving the voter's asses.
So in my mind, the only ways to fix this would be to either:
1. Replace the President and Vice President with an Executive Council (ala the EU Commission) where there is one member per department and every member is a separate elected position.
2. Make impeachment convictions a 50% majority matter.
3. Abolish the executive branch entirely and have Congress elect its own to do executive functions (i.e. become a Parliament).
I can see problems with all three, but they seem less problematic than just letting one guy run everything with term limits as the only check on their power.
[0] In general, there is a problem with Congressional and local elections not getting as much attention as they should be. I've found that mail-in ballots actually make it a lot easier to vote downballot. Even if I don't recognize the name off the top of my head, I can look them up and have a decent idea of what I'm voting for. If you have to do this in a ballot box, you aren't going to have a lot of time (there's a lot of people behind you) and will just skip the downballot races.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
Weird take. When it comes to trying to compel tech companies to not be evil, trying to use legal precedent for crimes you can charge them with is usually difficult and turns into a semantic debate. I think what's more important is that we recognize when people and companies abuse power to do evil things, regardless of what legal precedent or written corporate policy is relevant. These companies act exactly as evil as they can possibly get away with without pushing us to other products and services.
Frankly I trust the EFF more than anyone else in this situation/conversation. So I will assume there is a very clear basis.
I don’t know what you mean by “activism narrative” but the EFF has been fighting for your digital rights for many, many years. It reads like you consider their work disingenuous, but I can tell you from firsthand experience it is not. They deserve less skepticism than you’re giving them.
John Perry Barlow‘S EFF surely did, but are you sure you can trust Nicole Orze’s EFF to fight for your rights if one of your sympathies doesn’t align with current California’s sensibilities?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleozer
I love them both too but that might not be the best metric unless you’re planning to run lots of little read queries. If you’re doing CRUD, simulating that workflow may favor Postgres given the transactional read/write work that needs to take place across multiple concurrent connections.
Not sure that’s always right either though. For example Mapbox used to use an SQLite database as the disk cache for map tile info. You cannot possibly store that amount of data in memory, so it’s a great use case.
This is mostly about thread communication. With SQLite you can guarantee no context switching. Postgres running on the same box gets you close but not all the way. It's still in a different process.
The original claim being discussed is about the overhead of an in-process database vs. a database server in a separate process, not about whether SQLite or PostgreSQL have a faster database engine.
You appear to have benchmarked how quickly Python can access memory vs how quickly Python can open and close a socket. I'm not sure the DBs were required in any way.
A very long time ago, I had the idea to set up a joke site advertising "SpamZero, the world's best spam filter", with a bunch of hype about how it never, ever misses spam. When you clicked the download link, the joke would be revealed: you would get a file consisting of `function isSpam(msg) { return true; }`.
Huh. I was going to say, last time I saw this was 20+ years ago, and I forgot it exists - but I must be remembering something else. It seems `edit` is a new thing, if I'm to believe https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/edit/
I can confirm it exists on my Windows 11 machine, and I didn't install it specifically, though it's definitely not a base install (upgraded from Windows 10, and plenty of dev tooling installed over the years). Still, it fits the bill (+/- GUI, but I didn't consider TUI at all). Thanks!
The documentation doesn't make this entirely clear, but I think these are two separate things: the original `edit` command which is built into Windows 11 (and has been built into prior Windows releases), and a replacement written in Rust that can optionally be installed.
The old EDIT never shipped with any 64-bit Windows IIRC, since it was a 16-bit MS-DOS application. I believe 32-bit Windows 10 has it..?
As someone who (mercifully) only occasionally has to touch Windows machines, I keep forgetting this, and then when I try to do stuff I’m flabbergasted that the operating system does not include a terminal text editor. (In a fit of pure desperation I even typed EDLIN into the Command Prompt — no go ;)
That was the case with Win11 about a year ago; if they finally started shipping EDIT64 then hey, that’s one positive recent change in Windows I suppose.
Well, there was a workaround (that I only learned today) for creating new files:
copy con file_to_edit.txt
Type text, end with CTRL+Z. Don't make any typos.
That's what web search told me, but then looking at the remarks in docs for `copy`[0], I have to wonder if this works now, and if it would've worked back then:
copy prefix.txt+con+suffix.txt output.txt
If it does, then combined with some clever use of `find`, `findstr` or `for` (whichever was available back then), you could probably get something that's half-way between EDIT.COM and a line editor.
(`more` would come in handy here, but AIUI, there's no way to run it non-interactively in cmd.exe? Don't have a Windows machine handy to check it right now.)
Thanks, this explains the mystery, and now the timelines add up.
So it turns out, EDIT.COM was one of the first - if not the first - computer programs I ever saw and used, back when the first PC showed up in the house. For some reason, someone in the family guessed that 9yo me will be interested in DOS and QBasic. A few years later, I used it from Windows for some time, when I was learning X86 assembly (I wanted to learn how to make a video game, so I went to the local library looking for some "intro to programming" book, and mistakes were made).
Afterwards, it was Borland C++ 3.1 (another TUI classic) and vim/Emacs, and I forgot about EDIT.com entirely. This new Microsoft Edit is something new, and something else, but similar enough that it brought those memories back.
Here are the results I got with slight variations to the prompt to ChatGPT 5.2. Small changes can make a big difference: https://i.imgur.com/kFIeJy1.png
95% of cases are settled before reaching jury trial. Usually a plea bargain for criminal cases. Settlement for civil cases. Or dismissal. The other 5% are expensive.
Generally speaking, there are two levels of crime in the US; misdemeanors and felonies. Both will land you with a criminal record, but a misdemeanor-only record will not show up on some standard background checks and does not remove your right to bear arms or vote, for example. Felonies are much more serious, and generally mandate a minimum prison sentence of 1 year unless plead down, while the sentencing for misdemeanors generally caps out at a year and typically just gets reduced to fines and community service, or a short stint (e.g. a couple weeks) in the local jail instead of a prison.
In some states, first offense non-violent felony convictions (e.g. exceeding the speed limit while fleeing police in a vehicle) can be expunged from your record when you turn 21 (if you were convicted and served out your sentence before turning 21). Otherwise felonies generally stay with you for life.
We have civil offenses, the most common example would be minor traffic offense (speeding but not recklessly, etc). These were criminal at one time, but arresting people for minor speeding was deemed inappropriate.
Then we have misdemeanors - everything from reckless driving through basic assault (no injuries, no weapon). Usually/always <1 year in prison as the max punishment. Some financial crimes. Usually don't appear on basic background checks, but might on details checks (like when working for a bank or the government).
Then there are felonies - assault with a weapon, major financial crimes, etc. Typically >1 year prison sentences. As noted, these can impact your rights as a citizen and they will appear on most background checks.
As I mentioned in another comment, district attorneys frequently charge as many individual crimes as possible as a tactic to get cooperation/plea from the accused.
For example, you get pulled over for DUI/drink-driving. You're blotto, and you get out of your car and try to walk away. Police tackle you. The chargeable offenses would be at least...
- whatever initial infraction caused the traffic stop (speeding, swerving, whatever) - that was probably civil.
- The DUI - a misdemeanor unless it was excessive or a repeat offense
- "Fleeing and eluding" or equivalent for walking away - misdemeanor, usually.
- Assaulting a law enforcement officer (by forcing the police to tackle you) - automatic felony in many states.
The DA will often accept a guilty plea on everything up to the felony assault, or reduce the assault from "against a LEO" to normal assault (non-felony) to clear their plate.
No idea if this is common in the rest of the anglo-sphere, or anywhere else.
Unfortunately in the US we do in fact go so far as to criminalize urinating in public. It's weird to me that speeding (up to some limit) in a school zone is ranked below pissing in a shrub along the road.
Is it? I can't find a trademark registration on the USPTO site.
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