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In another article, it mentions that there is a buffer zone still owned by the city between the houses and the datacenter. They also mention that there is another park nearby (doesn't say how near).

There seems to be some missing details from the few sentences in this article. Does anyone have the full story? Why did the court dismiss the families lawsuit?

https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705,judge-rules-in-fav... has a bit more info.

I don't know how to pull the actual court documents without paying for them, but the article indicates the case was dismissed for lack of standing.

The plaintiffs tried to argue that as neighbours, they had an interest in the land usage being enforced. The court disagreed.

I presume the original family could bring a case? It doesn't seem like the 404 article or the Taylor Press article talked to them to see how _they_ feel about how their gift is being used.


Possibly... there is a lot of unknown details here. The article posted appears to be rage bait rather than a well researched article.

That's 404media for you. They are anti-tech-industry activists who exist to get people riled up against tech companies.

Yes, as we all know big tech absolutely follow the rules and don't skirt regulations. It's clearly the journalists causing the problems and not the government that has a history of ignoring contracts when it benefits them!

According to https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10664,blueprint-data-cen..., the restriction on the deed was gone by the time the property was transferred to the city of Taylor. That seems to have been in 2003.

Is the idea that "when it benefits them" was... 23 years ago, and then they just sat on the land waiting for big tech to come along and want to buy it?

As mundane as it may sound, it seems most likely this was a clerical error made a long time ago. Maybe it can get unwound, but maybe not. If the people of this town are being screwed, it's by incompetence on someone's part 23 years ago, not by big tech.


Yes, the old "well that's just the law" while ignoring the material effects of said law. They're just following orders after all right? Just ignore the playbook big tech has been using across development boards in America to somehow always get the outcomes they want while civilians suffer with little to no reprecaussions.

https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2025-09-26/taylor-tex...

This is closer to the time of the lawsuit and has some more details - they sold it to a trust who then sold it to the city some years later, and the city rezoned it in 2005. It's possible they missed the timing maybe?


Thanks, I actually just found that article- and it gives a completely different view of events than the posted article. For one, it says the suit was from a group of residents, not the family who donated the land.

To be fair the article never says that the family who donated the land was the one who was suing.

Okay, I can only see a few sentences and was going off what other commenters have said.

This may be a stupid question... do cities need to pay state property tax on properties they own?

Not the poster to whom you are questioning, but I would argue that inspiring and encouraging are much better than coercing, especially if the goal is to educate, as I am skeptical that coercion is ever going to work to get true learning.

But there is a difference in behaving ethically and behaving legally. While there may be consequences for behaving unethically (IE "I won't do business with them because I do not feel they are ethical"), society generally only overtly punishes those who do things that are illegal.

It is the other way around.

White collar crime might be illegal but most societies would definitely punish a murderer either legally or illegaly. Social stigma is a MUCH more serious thing than legality of action.


At that point, why wouldn't they just give their employees a corporate debit card and say "go and buy the subscription you want."? I suppose the enterprise plans come with additional controls and features? But are they worth it?

Well that is why it is open source. It doesn't matter how big the company is behind it, you can use it without the company that owns the name, and even use a different, small tech company for support.

Your recourse for Meta bricking your hardware is Small Claims Court, in the US anyway... other countries may have something similar.

The OSI definition is just fine for software licenses. It doesn't need to "mature". The BSL is not compatible with the principles and concept of open source software.


I disagree. Current posture makes it nearly impossible for European companies to build software centric open source businesses.


Why do you think the OSI should be concerned with European companies and their business models? Why would European companies have a more difficult time building software centric open source businesses than companies in other countries?


Why should European companies (or anyone else) be concerned with definitions made up by OSI?


Because the OSI is responsible for the creation of the term as a concept (Yes, I know you might be able to find one or two instances of some one saying "open source" in the context of software before the OSI came along, but the vast majority of usage and the ideas behind it came about because of the OSI).

More importantly than that- because the OSI definition is a darn good one and the BSL is a garbage license that restricts essential freedoms. The OSI definition ensures a standard set of minimum freedoms exist. Namely, the BSL makes it difficult for a fork to exist, brings additional restrictions that could need additional legal review, and prevents users from seeking alternative suppliers, locking them into an ecosystem that may not or may cease to meet their needs.


I don't think it was presented as an "vs". Both can be a form of violence, even if one is much worse than the other.


Grouping them together is the absurd part.

The unsolicited dick pic is gross, but not even in the same category as the other stuff.


And if the person has been traumatized by “dick pics” in the past and seeing one causes further distress, then what?

why are you defending unsolicited nude images so hard and who gave you the right to speak for everybody?


I take it you’ve never been punched in the face before?

No matter how hard someone has been traumatized by unsolicited dick pics, I guarantee they’ll be traumatized in an entirely different way by the same amount of unsolicited punches to the face.

Speaking from experience on both fronts.

You can have more than one category for shitty criminal behavior you know.


For most of the short simple documents I create, I don't want to redo the formating for every document. Simply writing it in something simple like Markdown ( possibly a markdown wysiwig editor) and having my software automatically apply appropriate standard formats to it is ideal.


Right, most people don't want to do that, they want the burden of applying styles to the couple headings or whatever.

Unfortunately, most people don't use paragraph styles, but if you do, it's a couple clicks.


Agreed. There is actually a lot better control in openoffice / libreoffice than most people know. You just have to set up your styles and be systematic about (virtually) never using direct formatting, instead always applying a pre-configured style. There is a distinct value in seeing your final product as you work, when the final product is visual.


And if you define shortcut keys for your styles it's as quick to type as markdown.


This is more of a utopia than expecting the average office drone to learn emacs.


This is what Word is to most people. They just use the default styles, or their company's template. No special formatting, styling etc.

Also if you do want to add a table or a figure, for most people Word will be much easier than doing the same in Markdown.


Having handled Word documents a few times in my years, oh, how I wish this was true.


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