I have a bad feeling about this - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this <comment><USER4> The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand". Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist.

I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with their distaste of market regulation, could consider extremely long copyright protection to be a net benefit to the market/country. Is Disney going to stop producing movies if their copyright was only 20 years? Drug companies only receive 20 years protection and their products are ridiculously expensive to produce yet they're still very viable businesses.

I wish we could turn the argument against long copyrights to be one of the damage they do to the economy.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16914367>

<comment><USER5> Your mistake is thinking about brands like Charles Dickens and Disney. Of _course_ they make money, and _of course_ they would continue producing work if copyright was only 20 years.

What you have to think about is the author who is _not_ famous, but who makes his living off of selling books. Not the millionaires, the ones with a regular salary. They often sell old stories to short-story collections, for example, for a few thousand dollars. If this happens often enough, they can continue the life of book-writing. If not, we'll have less authors.

At the end of the day, if less money goes into writing books, we're going to lose some authors who _won't be able to afford writing._ Some great authors will also never be discovered, because they couldn't afford to keep writing for long enough.

It's a balance, and I'm not saying that the balance is right at the moment. But it's very disingenuous to say "Disney will still make movies", because they're not the only ones around.

Note: I talk about books, but the same is true for indie bands, indie software developers, etc.

<comment><USER6> Do you really think it makes difference for a poor unknown author, whether he has exclusive rights for his book for 20 or 70 years? He can still sell his book after 20 years, after all. And regular people are not evil for the sake of it, if they want to buy a book, they would prefer to buy it from author, than from some opressive company.

BTW new economy makes it easy to extract value from the long tail. How much does author earn on each book? 10 % of final price? Probably less.

With if he self-publish an e-book, he can earn 100% of the price. Think about price difference for customer. Would you be more eager to buy book that is 1/10 the price? Would you be more eager to buy 21 years old book from author, or from some huge distributor?

Cutting out the middle man is the way to support more content producers with the same amount of customers. Copyright protects distributors, not producers.

Is it better for you to sell 10000 e-books, and know that for each book sold 10 more were pirated, or to sell 1000 e-books, and know nobody pirates them? I'd prefer the former.

<comment><USER7> > 10 % of final price? Probably less

The only two people I know personally who have published books make more money from the amazon affiliate link on their blog/website to their book than they get from the publisher. I think it's standard to get 10% of the net per book which works out to between 0% and 5% of final price depending on the publisher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost > in Armonk.

Actually, IBM and its mainframes/midrange have continued to prosper along with all of the newer growth markets in business computing. That's not just a correction about IBM, it's fundamental to noticing that job growth in these sectors was not "created by the decline of" anything. It was created by a huge expansion in the total amount of computing value that businesses found needs to consume in the marketplace.

 _When zero-sum your ideology is, 900 years-old you will not reach._

And not stray too far OT, but this is what I dislike about the "kill hollywood" meme. There isn't anything inherently hollywood-killing about the project of expanding the meaning of media production and delivery to include new (and great!) films that aren't produced by traditional studios... _and there probably shouldn't be._

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry, but this post is based on a false notion that intellectual property is a beneficial crutch propping up only corporations and piggybacks on the idea that destruction of entrenched interests is always regenerative. That second point is likely so - but the battle isn't about finding new corporate captains to pay creative individuals - it's about how not to pay creative individuals.

I find the irony very sad that we are supposed to move from an industrial to a post-industrial knowledge-based economy - one presumably underpinned by the ability and right of individuals to monetize their knowledge . . . but people have had their free lunch and prefer it instead, perhaps as some salve.

I've said it 1000 times - if you don't like how corporations conduct their business, set something up yourself and if you have a better solution, you'll eventually find yourself a real market. The willy-nilly urge to destroy intellectual property rights for individuals and corporations alike is nothing more than a selfish catharsis - without any sense - neither common-sense, nor business-sense, nor a sense of history. When you take power away, it hurts the weakest first and the strongest last - all the while preserving the existing power structure. That's not a smart solution for anything.

<comment><USER10> You're saying that we should play by the rules. Part of the game, though, is that we can change the rules.

Intellectual property is more or less dead. This is not a willy-nilly urge, nor a selfish catharsis. It's the outcome of a generation growing up with instant access to their culture, and once such freedom is granted it is not easily revoked.

<comment><USER9> Go ahead - look through all my comments I've written on IP. When you know what I am saying, you'll know I am not saying one should play by the rules - <USER2> never have in my life, that's for sure.

And yes - the current urge is selfish - as you point out it grows out of having taken a freedom - not having worked to be 'granted' anything - and then had that freedom 'revoked'.

There is always a greater good. I am 100% for us building one that benefits us as individuals rather than corporate entities. But the desire to wipe out IP does nothing to put economic power into the hands of creative individuals - what it empowers by a much greater factor is consumption. Last I checked we had enough of that as it was - and this is empty-calorie consumption that flows upward to the new corporate entities that can withstand the pennies to be made on it. It will never devolve power to the individual level.

A better system of IP exists - I have several detailed ideas of how it would function - and it basically revolves around treating the work of corporations differently from that of the individuals - separating ownership and monetization. A system built like this could work as an opt-in model to gradually replace current copyright - but it NEVER will without consumers playing by the much fairer rules. Yes - there are still rules - no system works without them.

If one can't meet the most basic burden of civil society by playing a game, however new, by mutually accepted rules, then there is no recourse - is there? And one can't, won't and shouldn't be taken seriously as a partner for change.

<comment><USER10> >And yes - the current urge is selfish - as you point out it grows out of having taken a freedom - not having worked to be 'granted' anything - and then had that freedom 'revoked'.

I suppose that is accurate as far as it goes, but labeling that "selfish" seems to be a point of view connotation rather than a necessary one. That is to say, whether or not a thing is a right or an overzealous demand is in the eye of the beholder.

And I unequivocally support the right of people to their culture, and I'm part of a world where that culture is increasingly free.

>But the desire to wipe out IP does nothing to put economic power into the hands of creative individuals

_Exactly._ It removes economic concern from the art. No more rock stars selected and groomed by the establishment; instead hard-working touring musicians.

The fear that seems to drive any continuation of copyright seems to be that artists will stop making art. The fear that seems to drive patents is similar; that our engineers will stop building things.

You can never stop humans from constructing beautiful things! It's in our nature!

I as an artist and an engineer _don't want my output to be property._

<comment><USER9> In my eyes, your take on things is very far from the live-and-let-live stance that you appear to want to adopt. It's more like social engineering.

You continue to be free to do your art for free and without concern for profit; in no way does someone else doing their art for profit affect your ability to make your choice. So what gives you the right to champion something that 'removes economic concern from the art'? How does your desire not to have your output be property - totally your choice - square with your desire to deny choice to others?

Another point oft-heard is that 'people won't stop making art' - which is a selfish, parasitic argument if I have every heard one. For years I worked producing independent musicians - you might not pay for art that you experience, but I assure you someone does - there is no free lunch.

I have seen indie musicians burn tens of thousands trying to monetize their art; have seen marriages and relationships end - and careers end. My point here isn't about piracy - a much more important point is for consumers to respect the work that goes into the content they consume. The art you consume 'freely' may appeal to your idealistic side, as though you are removing commerce from art - but all you are actually doing is turning a blind eye to the cost. There is always someone paying a price so that you might have it for 'free'.

Once upon a time, people grew their own foods, hunted them - people worked with their hands -people had an intrinsic sense of the burden of production. I think one bad side-effect of the internet is that it has removed people so far from the means of production that they are incapable of appreciating the work that goes into what appears in front of them.

I am not trying to be too pejorative, but it really is like a child who is used to just stating their urge - whether for food, drink, or sleep - <USER3> having a benevolent force [parents] provide those things on-demand.

We have fair-trade products from a to z and yet the work of artists isn't worth .01. Really??

<comment><USER10> >In my eyes, your take on things is very far from the live-and-let-live stance that you appear to want to adopt.

That's because I want to kill. I want to throw away copyright, I want those musicians that sign up to work with greedy suits--not to cast aspersion on your (former?) line of work which seems to be good-faith and productive--to have to find other ways to express themselves, I want the systems that were _once_ our best effort at promoting artistic expression to die.

I want these things dead because after they're dead the absurd but somehow sometimes true accusations of "selling out" won't have any weight.

I _actually don't care_ that people will lose jobs because copyright is dead.

>I think one bad side-effect of the internet is that it has removed people so far from the means of production that they are incapable of appreciating the work that goes into what appears in front of them.

I think this is the most insightful sentence of your post. It attacks the central barrier to removing copyright with a few swift words.

Thus I think it important to describe the manner in which I find that it misses the mark. The Internet is bringing people into contact with the arts of gardening, cooking, woodworking, electronics as never before.

Absurdly the disconnect between production of food and appreciation for food has grown _so large_ that food production is looked at as an art--that is, just another mode of human expression!

And I couldn't be happier about that. Appreciation of art is the act of appreciating the work that goes into it.

\---

The problem, of course, is that our economic woes _far_ overshadow our cultural ones. You speak from the side of "There is no free lunch," and we may well be on a course where that is alarmingly and devastatingly true. If the Euro collapses, if America can't afford to keep its carrier fleet's Pax Americana running, it may turn out that the debate over copyright was not important at all.

<comment><USER10> This is a test post to see if HN auto-downvotes old threads.

Edit: Huh. Well, someone downvoted that post ridiculously fast I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This artical is dead on. With this as motivation, we should all be more like Stallman and un-marginalize his point of view. His point of view is also mostly dead on, and always has been ... We can not let the mighty few rule the majority, it is not the way the internet was envisioned to be, and we should fight for it to remain as envisioned.

In response to tnicola, $10 a month, max, if I do not get that much out of an internet service, it should be free. Unlike Stallman, I do believe in a bit of capitalism, but a majority of freedom.

<comment><USER12> And if I lived in the US, where my daily internet activity would be considered a felony, I would consider it a grave injustice that I had to pay more than companies' cost +10% for the internet service.

As it stands, I don't pay for the TV service, so I have no problem paying going rates. (I'll let you deduct the rest and plead the 5th).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The new technology will always replace the old despite the attempts to safeguard the latter by those with vested interests. It happened to the scribes when the printing press arrived; To the telegraph when the phone came along; to radio, records, and even television. Big companies with a lot at stake tried their best to prevent new technology from invading their markets and putting them out of business.

The only one that I think is different is the development of the mobile phone and tablet computers. These are devices that are sold with locks on them and legislation that discourages tampering. I don't think we've seen this kind of thing happen before and it sets a bad precedent. I've got a Kindle and I don't really believe that I own it -- Amazon can remotely remove content from it and brick it if they wanted to. I've got a phone that that has the capability to spy on me. If I modify any of these devices to serve my interests I risk "bricking" them and voiding any warranties that they came with.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but afaik that's a first for us.

</comment><comment><USER14> This, very much so.

"At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy has been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies."

I would extrapolate this to progress in free societies at any given point in history.

Oddly, this evokes a strange feeling of comfort in the inevitability of disruption.

</comment><comment><USER15> Every business likes to buy from perfect competition and sell as a monopoly. This keeps input prices low and output prices high. This model is so profitable that companies bribe politicians to maintain it. Donating to a SuperPAC is more cost effective than R and D and has anshoeter payback.

I see 2 ways of fighting this:

1) Civil disobedience - Pirate everything and share while willingly accepting the consequences. 2) Shine lights on the evil doers. Support wiki leaks. Publicize. Organize voting drives.

I have bills to pay so I support number two. Great social change requires number 1.

<comment><USER16> > Great social change requires number 1.

Movie studios and the recording industry can, at best, delay the inevitable. Artificial scarcities are against the laws of thermodynamics.

Of all the money these industries make, only the tiniest fraction of it goes to the people who actually produced the good. Most of it is inefficiently applied in side operations such as promoting sales, manufacturing the physical support for the art, moving and storing it and selling it. All these operations can be reduced to a download and, perhaps, a payment.

<comment><USER15> Fair points though the Internet delivery model won't make advertising or sales promortion go away. More efficient, yes, but not gone.

<comment><USER16> Any quantitative change of a couple orders of magnitude brings along a qualitative change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great post. But, like all good rebels, I do believe that the cooler heads will prevail and that we will not have to surrender.

For the past year, I have been touting that the future of business is benevolence. We are too smart and too savvy to be able to carry on indefinitely in a malevolent way.

Google started it with the whole _don't be evil_ philosophy and whether or not they are still following it, is largely irrelevant. It is, however, infectious. Facebook is following suit and (I hope) it won't be long before we all realize that the doze of benevolence will get you far. And by that I don't mean philantropy.

1) Don't charge people more than you have to. Make money, by all means, even get rich, but don't overcharge just bacause you don't have a lot of competition.

2) Pay your employees well and create positive work environments. Happy people remain working hard and make you more money at a nice and organic rate.

3) Loyalty is no longer a virtue of an employee. It is a privilege earned by an employer. Don't be a DB and expect people to stick around and work hard for your just cause you are putting bread on their families tables. That worked in the 50's. Get on with the program.

4) Share the profits with your employees, share the innovation with your customers and don't be afraid to try new things even if they appear to hurt your bottom line. You will never know until you try it.

5) Vote for a party that will better the world, not the one that will serve your selfish desires (I intentionally did not use a word _needs_ here. (This is where I will exit on this one.)

I could go on. Perhaps I am naive in my thinking, but something (my gut) tells me that if we are in Act III, the good will win in the end. Doesn't it always?

It's either that, or this rebel will need all the force I can get.

<comment><USER17> > Vote for a party that will better the world, not the one that will serve > your selfish desires

Good luck finding one of those.

More generally, it's like this. You can argue all day about "good" and "evil", but what people respond to are incentives.

If you have a system in which businesses which do good and not evil are the businesses that thrive, then people will create businesses which do good. If your economic system rewards "evil" practices, that's what you're going to get.

If you allow these "evil" companies to continue to _re-design_ the system to reward patent trolling, snuffing out competitors with lawsuits, spying on Internet users, etc etc etc etc etc, then -- you will get a system in which the more that a company does these things, the more they thrive.

If your political system allows companies that thrive to pay to bend the rules of the game in their favor, then they will not only continue to thrive but actively _accelerate_ their success, to the detriment of the rest of the world.

<comment><USER12> > More generally, it's like this. You can argue all day about "good" and > "evil", but what people respond to are incentives.

100% agree, but incentives and benevolence are not necessarily exclusive of each other.

An acquaitance wrote a trillogy. She posted all three books on Amazon for a standard price of 4.99 per e-book. She worked hard on this trillogy and deemed that it was a fair price. She sold ~10 copies of each book a month and generated revenue of $150.00 a month.

Then she made the first book free and dropped the price of second two books to $2.99 each (minimum Amazon will allow). The next month she sold 10,000 copies of second and third book generating a revenue of $60,000.

Had she stuck to her guns that she should get paid a fair price for all three books, she would still be the starving artist indefinitely.

Benevolence will not come from a political system or from the top down. I believe that it will come from the ground up. Because the revolution (much like the rebels) are not organized, but they will hopefully sway the trends for the better.

<comment><USER17> I agree to a point, but I'm not so sure about this.

> Benevolence will not come from a political system or from the top down.

Here, you seem to be implying that incentives and benevolence _are_ exclusive. The political (and economic) system can be set up so that it rewards benevolence, or it can punish benevolence. To get more benevolence, I think we must also work on changing the rules to encourage it. (As well as voting with our wallets for benevolent companies/authors/etc.)

<comment><USER12> > I think we must also work on changing the rules to encourage it.

You hit the nail on the head here. What I meant by not come from the top down, I meant that it will come incrementally from the people who will reward it with their support. It cannot be ordered, it has to be desired, recognized and rewarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think things like a serious implementation of the Laws of Identity ([http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/PrivacybyDesign%20Book...](http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/PrivacybyDesign%20Book- ch14.pdf)) are one of the missing pieces in giving back control to the people.

It's funny because the biggest players lately (Zynga, Facebook, Google etc) are building up these walled gardens like a bunch of wannabe imperialists.

Who exactly is leading the Rebel forces?

<comment><USER19> Mozilla has good creds as a stalwart member of the Rebel Alliance and the work on <https://browserid.org/> does in fact lay some of the needed groundwork for a changing the ground of debate when it comes to identity on the internet.

That said. Corruption, like rust, never sleeps; and we must be careful to not fall to the lure of the dark side ourselves.

<comment><USER20> The relationship between the Empire, I mean, Google and Mozilla is disturbing the force.

<comment><USER21> Reminds me of the Confederacy from the prequels.

Oh yeah, those are forbidden.

Regardless, the Republic and Confederacy were both toys of the Emperor, so I guess Google and Firefox...

Ok I'll just leave.

Star Wars should be public domain though (the original 3 movies). Fuck infinite copyright.

<comment><USER22> I have to disagree here. George Lucas is still alive, and he wrote it.

<comment><USER23> Why should copyright be tied to the life of the author (serious question)? When I discuss copyright with friends I typically argue for a fixed copyright term regardless of when the author dies. What are the arguments to the contrary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> TL;DR: As I enter my twilight years, I know that Star Wars will continue to comfort me long into my dotage.

raganwald: 50's nothing, get back in the game.

America: The Cold War is over. There is no Death Star to blow up. You can't fight for freedom anymore. You can only create it.

\---

To be clear: I don't mean to ridicule the point of the post. Bad laws are bad. But the status quo cannot last forever. It is a peculiar feature of the current discourse around IP law that it is the so-called entrenched interests (e.g. holders of large copyright portfolios) that are disrupting _us_ and the way of life we hold to be normal, natural and good. It is our failure as a populace to get over the shininess of our new technological toys and actively build the futures we want, that allows these people to portray us as reckless children in need of a firm hand.

Hackers are, by definition, exempt from this generalisation. We know the world is messy. We like it that way. We want what doesn't exist yet, so we make it. Vague appeals to stale, simplistic and belligerent pop culture allegory should be beneath us.

<comment><USER10> That's a nice horse you have.

<comment><USER24> Feel free to say something that could actually be responded to whenever you get bored with trolling.

<comment><USER10> Well, editing as response to a child comment makes this comment a useless space.

Cheater :(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> On a tangential note, I'm wary of relying on the job creation argument to validate new technology. The reason being that new technology _can_ kill jobs. Particularly as programmers, one of our main goals is to automate things that previously required warm bodies. I don't feel guilty about this because I would never want to do those jobs, but on the same token, not everyone wants to be a programmer. And in the long term if we ever achieve AI then we're on the path to making programmers obsolete as well, which is a bit scary on a personal level (though I'm not really worried about this happening in my lifetime). At a societal level this is not necessarily good or bad, it's just the direction we are currently moving in. I do worry that our biology is not well-suited to an automated environment, but there's nothing to do but confront the problem when we come to it I guess.

<comment><USER26> > And in the long term if we ever achieve AI then we're on the path to making > programmers obsolete as well ... At a societal level this is not necessarily > good or bad, it's just the direction we are currently moving in.

I agree and I'd like to provoke further discussion on a related matter. (Please note that I haven't yet decided whether or not I agree with the following two statements.)

1\. Jobs don't matter as much in a GMI[1] system.

2\. Working doesn't have to be the focus of one's life.

I'd appreciate it if someone were to play devil's advocate.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't worry. Once China and India have a sufficient manufacturing, services and consumer base, I fully expect them to formally declare IP to be a nonsense and an impediment to growth.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. GOod luck enforcing IP rules in China. Your only choice is to out- innovate, not out-sue

<comment><USER29> Actually your more likely choice is to copy ([http://blog.foundrs.com/2012/01/02/apple-vs-samsung-the- trol...](http://blog.foundrs.com/2012/01/02/apple-vs-samsung-the-trolls- win/)). We won't be necessarily better off in a world with no IP protection.

<comment><USER27> It's fascinating to imagine what the tech world might look like with no (or radically different) IP laws. I doubt it would be anywhere near as simple as the blog author makes out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good story, but the only sense in which the heroes are sure to win is that whoever wins will be deemed the heroes.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a bad feeling too...but for different reasons. I fear society just doesn't give a damn anymore. I fear all our warnings will steadily fall on deaf ears and we will eventually become ostracized into oblivion. I fear humanity will embrace a system which pushes profits before people, ego over empathy, and lust above love. I fear elitists will eliminate innovation and erase the integrity of the internet and information. I fear for our future, but I have some hope in knowing their future fears us. Game on.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sadly, I'm more incline to think we're at the beginning of Act II.

</comment><comment><USER33> To continue the Star Wars analogy, the great thing about technological advancement is that as sooner or later some unknown farm boy shows up out of nowhere and bulls-eyes the fucking exhaust port and then, sha-boom, everything changes. And the powers that be never see it coming.

Now please excuse me, I have a movie to watch.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a beautiful, haunting essay brimming with sobering insights:

"At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies."

</comment><comment><USER35> ...that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously. - Ben Franklin

</comment><comment><USER36> Excellent article, but I found this paragraph unclear: " And that's just how they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to political innovation speed. "

</comment><comment><USER37> "If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1."

</comment><comment><USER38> _> > ... recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s ..._

And I recall still using/seeing them in the early 1980s here in UK!

They were still heavily used at that time in the Market Research industry for recording data entry (of surveys). In fact the term _punching_ is still used in the industry to this day in reference to data entry.

<comment><USER39> They still are used, but just in a digital form. We interface with some unnamed software that requires you to recode data into 80 columns, 12 possible values per word (encoded as 12 usable bits within 2 8-bit bytes -- and only one bit can be set per word).

That turns some fixed-width layout into 80-column groups, with e.g. the requirement that the last 2 columns contain the card number, and the first 4 some record ID.

There isn't even any meta-data for that file, so someone out there must be sitting connected to a mainframe and punching in what card 1, position 5-7 contains US State ID or somesuch, before running the cards.

<comment><USER38> In the Market Research industry (here) this is still pretty much the _de- facto_ standard for sending digital data between agencies!

This continues to remain unchanged by time because the leading Market Research tool [1] still prefers to use data with 80 columns, 12 multiple values per col (0-9, & and -) with optional multi cards (card numbers can be in any columns and any length).

[1] Software is called _Quantum_. Originally developed in the 1970s !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have only one question.

Who are the ewoks in this analogy?

<comment><USER41> Anonymous? o.0 I've always seen them as being "script kiddies" but they are always able to do more than I thought. Who knew they could free one of them from a drug cartel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> But the focus is rarely on the inventors themselves. This is the hardest job of all! Consumers tend to get what they want, and eat what they're given. If we're not supporting "starving artists" what's the point in having a more open copyright regime?

</comment><comment><USER43> Update: This is now the newest post in the Uncensored ebook (<http://leanpub.com/uncensored>) which we are producing to benefit the EFF. Thanks Reg!

</comment><comment><USER44> There's also the problem that IP law is premised on what amounts to folk psychology.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hate this kind of titles, unclear about what you're going to read, it looks like Reddit but without the fun.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's always curious when someone rails about a big government and its encroachment on freedom. Then in the same statement, talks about the use of big government to target specific companies to damage them instead.

As though you can really have your cake and eat it too when it comes to a big government. Big enough to break up AT&T, regulate IBM and Intel and Microsoft - big enough to take your freedom, silence your speech, regulate your Internet. Good luck getting something that big and power hungry to not keep getting bigger and more powerful and eventually wiping out your liberty. You give a government system $7 trillion dollars to spend regulating and growing itself, what do you think is going to happen? They're just going to be selectively hands off? You think you can negotiate with that?

<comment><USER47> There's nothing about the size of the government that limits or enhances it's power to act in the best interest of its citizenry. (You've thrown a red herring in there.) What we clearly see is that government's determination that it's simply more efficient to deal with significant (read corporate) power structures than feebly citizenly ones. This is where the limit comes from.

So perhaps I'm wrong: Perhaps a larger government is more able to engage with diverse and fine-grained interests while a small government is more likely to be trapped leveraging corporate power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> You are wrong and I am 'insulted.' My name is C3pio- the descendant of the famous - infamous Chinese poet. My model is chinese-american, duty lifetime 55+, similar environment.

Of course, I have worked for wall street, nuke plants and dot com or dot boombs, but aint rich.

1.on the final rocketship ride the robot sacrifices himself in the position of 'rear gunner.' The death star is stopped.

2.diverse, strange discussion is helpful. 3.Confucious saying I meet three class of persons: one I learn from as role model one I learn as ANTI-model, to avoid his bad character one I learn from to be amused and just happy - that is C3Pio

4.of course, my character is resurrected in the MATRIX

5.unlike the droids that lack COURAGE, COURAGE is the universal PROTOCOL. Call it faith, hope, being a small bit player on the SHAKESPEAREAN stage of life.

Shame on you! Without your early pathetic experiences with phone MODEMS and secretly reading '2600' and MEETING CAPTAIN CRUNCH at the germany rave you would not be the DROID...errror MAN or human that you are.

My the BUDDHA be with you! and may you be re-incarnated as a small insect flying droid. One that takes down the preadator drones. The battle of empire continues.

afterword: thats to my Czech cousins. RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots. Many think C3pio is talking in modem. WRONG again. He talks in protocol-hybrid-neo- Czech.</comment>


Shutterstock shares pop after $76.5 million IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-10-11/shutterstock-raises-76-dot-5-million-in-its-ipo

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a related article about the SSTK debut:

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/916861-ipo-preview- shutterst...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/916861-ipo-preview-shutterstock)</comment>


Betty Crocker's Absurd, Gorgeous Atomic-Age Creations - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/betty-crockers-absurd-gorgeous-atomic-age-creations.html <comment><USER2> > This proxy war probably also accounts for some of the box's aggressive > cheeriness, its implicit insistence that you should always be hosting.

> Maybe because I was born too late

You were just born too late. Home parties were more common before. And the kids were allowed to play _alone_ outside and nobody _knew_ exactly where they were until they came home. I can go forever pointing the obvious to us old enough...</comment>


Software Carpentry - <AUTHOR> http://www.software-carpentry.org/ <comment><USER2> Posted regularly, for example

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=802480>

but still, as always, very good.</comment>


Show HN: Nametag - Social Domains - <AUTHOR> http://www.nametagup.com/

<comment><USER2> So you capture our domains and list them out. Feature Request: 1\. Public View of all domains 2\. Set Price Temp/Contact -> Build a landing page for each domain and allow us to contact and/or showcase a price - look at <http://domai.nr/> and have "Make Offer" 3\. Recently Sold -> Showcase these URLs and Price 4\. Project Name - Allow users to describe a project and let users submit names/domains they own and price

Just a thought

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant. Thanks for your input. Mind if I add you to a "thanks" page of sorts?

<comment><USER2> Thanks :) Sure, why not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I also could really use some community input on features you'd like from a product like this. Sort of a mashup of registrar + hosting + management + social.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are you supposed to do exactly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. The very basic idea is that you follow friends + domains, and you can see all of the domains your friends own/have access to.

I'm going to grow the discovery process a bit more next, and add some other features.

I'd like this to eventually become a very fun and developer friendly way of managing domains.</comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos Interview -- Academy of Achievement - <AUTHOR> http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0int-1 <comment><USER2> 1 page print version: <http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/bez0int-1>

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like Jeff Bezos, I didn't know he was such a modest, smart, and capable guy. Reading this interview has made him an inspiration to me. I like how he was so honest. From this interview, I imagine he's a great guy to work for and with.

</comment><comment><USER4> > We needed to build the technology that would run the store, and found the > person who turned out to be the most important person ever in the history of > Amazon.com on that trip. A guy named Shel Kaphan, who built all of our early > systems. He had help from others, but he was the architect, he engineered > them, and just did a fantastic job.

I believe that many successful technical companies have a great technical wizard early on. Thomas Knoll (Adobe Photoshop), Jeffrey Dean (Google), Len Bosack (Cisco), of course, Steve Wozniak (Apple), Jim Clark (SGI - though he's gone way beyond pure technical to mogul), Parker Harris (Salesforce.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Still reading through this interview but this is fast becoming one of my favorites. I love this tidbit:

Bezos: We were packing these things, everybody in the company and I had this brainstorm as I said to the person next to me, "This packing is killing me! My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor" and this person said, "Yeah, I know what you mean." And I said, "You know what we need?" my brilliant insight, "We need knee pads!'" I was very serious, and this person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they'd ever seen. I'm working for this person? This is great. "What we need is packing tables."

</comment><comment><USER6> The part I like about Bezos most is his uncompromising dedication to doing what's best for the customer, no matter what. There was this story when book publishers got angry at him for publishing all book reviews - good and bad. "Jeff, in this business you make money when you _sell_ books", they told him. He insisted on publishing reviews because it was right for the customers and as we know now it was the right thing. This is really the only thing I need to know about Jeff Bezos. A true role model.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the bit about stress. Jeff says it's not caused by a lot of work but about feelings of uncertainty, and unaddressed things in your consciousness.

<comment><USER8> would love some elaboration

<comment><USER7> An example from today: I knocked two items of my internal todo list. Tasks I kept putting off you see. Now they've exited my brain where they stink up my thought process and idle moments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Liked this part about decision making.

"It really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called -- which only a nerd would call -- a "regret minimization framework." So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, "Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have." I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that's very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, "What will I think at that time?" it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That's the kind of thing that in the short- term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won't regret later."

<comment><USER10> Given my life expectancy as a male, there's a 50% chance I won't regret anything by then.</comment></comment>


Linux Foundation launches badge program to boost open source security - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-foundation-launches-badge-program-to-boost-open-source-security/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am a co-creator of this program, and we very much had the HN crowd in mind for it. Please consider adding a badge for all of the open source projects you contribute to. Here's the badging app [0] and the open source project [1] where you can review and comment on the criteria.

[0] [https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/) [1] [https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices- badge/](https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices-badge/)</comment>


Apple Is Said to Discuss an Investment in Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/technology/apple-is-said-to-discuss-an-investment-in-twitter.html?_r=1&ref=technology <comment><USER2> A lot of people are probably going to blow this out of proportion as Apple looking to buy Twitter and lock everyone out but here's what I think:

Tim Cook knows a lot of his users use FB and Twitter as their primary e-communication channels and that that's where they spend a lot of their time and is the primary use of the mobile devices he sells them.

Deals like this then have a single aim: to ensure the optimal consumer experience. Tim wants the Twitter app on iOS to be the best in breed. Not just today but in 5 years. When Twitter introduces a new feature, Tim wants that thing to be working smoothly on iOS on day 1. When Tim launches his search engine with iOS 7 or 8 he wants to have Twitter search built in.

That costs money and as it turns out Apple has a metric crapton of it.

<comment><USER3> I think Apple just doesn't want Twitter screwing it over like Google did and Facebook will.

The fact that Google wouldn't provide turn by turn navigation, 3D and other features to iOS was a hard and expensive lesson for Apple. And with Facebook also getting into apps and phones it needs a third party.

<comment><USER4> Google didn't provide turn by turn but we don't know why. Apple gets a cut of Google's search revenues on iPhone; android vendors don't get as large of a cut (or any cut in some cases).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Apple, which has stumbled in its efforts to get into social media, has talked with Twitter in recent months about making a strategic investment in it, _according to people briefed on the matter_."

Every bit of substance that this article has, is stated in this first sentence. Anonymous sources like this, with no real corroborating facts, are usually indicative of PR people testing the waters for things that _might_ happen. We already know that Twitter and Apple have a relationship, what _new_ facts does this article have that indicate that anything worthy of discussion is happening? I doubt anything of substance will come of this.

<comment><USER6> Also, Apple has a track record of paving their own path the last 10 years. If this were true, Apple doesn't feel like Apple anymore. It would feel like the future is in someone else rather than theirs.

This would be the end of Apple as a culture, though they would still succeed as a company.

I'm not ready to subscribe to this. I don't think Apple will either. Too soon.

<comment><USER7> Apple, i.e. Steve Jobs, stated multiple times that they don't have to build everything themselves, that they aren't good at everything, and that strategic partnerships with outside companies is important. If my memory is correct, Jobs even said that one of his biggest mistakes in his early career was not realizing this.

<comment><USER6> This is true; and within Apple's success. I guess I see them having an incredible ability to meld things into their own.

A strategic and public investment, like Twitter, feels unlike them. Twitter seems to be the news, not Apple.

The AuthenTec acquisition, however, feels very Apple. They have a vision, they found a partner (and for some reason, acquired them). If it weren't for the purchase, AuthenTec would still be unknown to me.

The biometric integration will be, bar none, an Apple event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh no... flash forward a year or 2, and Apple will buy all of Twitter! It's their knight in a white horse coming to bail them out! Now I'll never get to see how Twitter will make serious revenue to sustain itself.

<comment><USER9> Apparently, the owners of Twitter will make most of their revenue selling computers and other consumer electronics :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who has a significant stake in Apple (as a part of my personal investments), this concerns me.

Steve used to say that it's what you don't do that matters most.

He has also said that Apple's mission is to simply make great products. That's its identity. Make great products.

I don't see how investing/partnering with Twitter fits that.

As a customer and shareholder I want Apple to stay true to its identity and mission. An identity that cost a significant amount of pain and time to discover.

Maybe Tim wants to change Apple's core identity. I'm not sure.

I fear he may make strategic decisions mainly because he wants to distinguish himself from Steve.

Steve even told him not to play the "what would Steve do?" game.

But I think Steve always asked, in the end, what's best for Apple and its customer.

And I hope Tim does the same.

I hope he focuses on product. Make great products.

I recently signed up for iTunes Match and I've just had problems with it. It hasn't "just worked".

I hope that's not a sign of what's to come.

\- - -

I want to add that I think it's still very early in the game when it comes to social.

I think it's entirely possible that Twitter is the RIMM of social.

It might not be, but I think it's possible.

Apple, please stay away from social networks; especially right now.

<comment><USER11> > Maybe Tim wants to change Apple's core identity.

The Wall Street Journal has its own article on this[1], and it reports that "Apple Inc. held discussions with Twitter Inc. more than a year ago about taking a strategic investment in the short-messaging service." Steve was still alive more than a year ago.

1: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044334370457755...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577553953443264394.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple missed on e-mail by making Mobile Me a paid service. This may be their way of making up for that, and having a solid foot hold in a consumer social network without that needing to be baked into their DNA.

Makes me wonder why Microsoft didn't turn its 2% of Facebook into a larger integration which both companies could have touted as value-added on both platforms.

</comment><comment><USER13> I disagree with the statement that Twitter has problems finding a monetization model. What do you think about the following idea:

Many people use Twitter to link to apps they like (Apple App Store, Android Store etc) or to products (links to Amazon) etc. Twitter already detects that. If you post a link to an app Twitter automatically shows the icon and screenshots - at least in the web version. All Twitter has to do now is to add their own "affiliate token" to the URL and then they would profit: 2-3% for each and every thing you buy on the App Store and up to 10% for things on Amazon. People do click links on Twitter all the time so their cookie would always be "refreshed".

I have an application in the App Store ( <http://store-news-app.com/> ) that is free and links to the best deals in the Mac/iOS app store. I can tell you: With just a couple of thousands requests / day I make good money from it. Imagine what Twitter could do just by adding a few bytes to every Amazon/App Store URL posted on Twitter...

</comment><comment><USER14> Ugh, I'm really opposed, as an OSX and iOS user, to Apple having this direct of a tie to any social networking company. It would be awful if they avoided adding more sharing options and OS integration for 3rd-party applications like Facebook because they could be a competitor to Twitter or any other investment. I'd rather they stay as relatively neutral as they can.

<comment><USER15> I'm opposed too, but for a different reason. I'm opposed to any sort of social network integration into my OS.

<comment><USER16> Does it matter, if you are not forced to use it?

<comment><USER17> I'm not forced to use the Facebook app on my smartphone but it sure pisses me off that I can't remove it without rooting it.

<comment><USER18> Vote with your money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Down the road, social engagement may dictate how consumers spend," Mr. Hilwa said.

I doubt it. Social is pretty overrated. While sharing is still important to many people, it seems that great software and the ability to access quality content is far more important than what my casual aquaintences are up to. Anecdotally, my 'friends' seem to be less social online and less willing to share every little life detail despite the increases ease of doing so.

The analysts are wrong. It's like saying the Mac needs to be more social to be successful in the future. Besides, how much more social Cana smartphone get? It's a phone and a pocket computer already. Besides, Apple is primarily a hardware company and secondarily a content agency. Their revenues don't depend on advertising, which is really the only business model social currently has. The last thing Apple wants to do is be an advertising company.

Still, I am happy with Apple getting friendly with Twitter. I find Twitter to be much less obnoxious than Facebook. API and infrastructure debacles aside, Twitter seems a lot less arrogant and threatening than Zuck and Co. Twitter, for example doesn't suddenly make your direct messages public or change privacy settings in onerous and unexpected ways.

<comment><USER20> I have to admit that my perception towards Twitter is very similar to yours. In comparison to Facebook or Google they have been very transparent about Government activities - for example by fighting government subpoenas of the Occupy protesters or by not shutting down most accounts of Anonymous. In so far it seems to me that Twitter has been one of the good guys who still care about free speech and refrain from the overanxious self-censoring so eagerly practiced by Facebook and alikes.

<comment><USER21> "Respect the user's voice."

As far as I can tell, it's not an empty platitude, Twitter puts their money where their mouth is. I admire them for it.

Disclosure: I work there. I see those words on laptop cases and screen savers every day at the Twitplex.

<comment><USER19> Can you disclose me some Twitter stickers? This user's voice is saying, "stickers please!" In all seriousness, respecting the user is paramount. Facebook tends to respect themselves often at the expense of the user which is counterproductive: an engaged and trusting user base will lead to higher revenues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Many times (here and elsewhere) I've stated my opinion that I believe Twitter to be ultimately doomed. It is being relegated to infrastructure (and thus will be commoditized in time) and (IMHO) it is floundering in finding a monetization model.

Don't get me wrong: they have an exceptionally long runway so this won't happen anytime soon but I think it will end up being acquired by the likes of Facebook, Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) or Apple.

I don't see a compelling reason for Facebook to buy Twitter other than to deny it to the other two (which could be compelling but given the direction of their stock price this seems like a hard sell to Twitter's investors and board).

Apple could marry its mobile ecosystem, particularly the messaging infrastructure, to Twitter and be a dominant player.

Google could do the same thing but I think Apple has the most to gain from picking up social assets (note: these opinions are strictly personal views).

Given that it makes sense for Apple to buy a stake in Twitter. Large(r) companies often do this. It's a poison pill. Take a large enough stake and you can make it more difficult for others to acquire that company and be int he box seat to be the acquirer if it should come to that.

I believe that if Twitter gives Apple, say a 10% or bigger stake, they are insuring an exit strategy if they can't continue to exist independently.

<comment><USER23> I beg to differ. Twitter is my primary source of real time information. In fact I go to find relevant information from people I follow from time to time. By the way, Twitter is very popular amongst younger generation.

Relegated to infrastructure? They have users and they have eye-balls. That's what matters. By the way, don't forget promoted tweets are really working for them.

<comment><USER24> Fully agree. I don't 'Google', I 'Twitter'. Primarily through my feed of course but I use also Twitter search for all the topics I'm interested in but that are not covered by the accounts I follow. Exaggerated, but Google Search is slow compared to Twitter.

What if Twitter also indexes the web pages that are/were referred to by the links in the tweets and builds a Google like search page for that index. For example, the number of re-tweets and clicks can be used as input for the sort relevance. The result is a search engine that is crowed sourced combined with a robotic one and in real time. Combine "AdSense" and there you have it.

<comment><USER25> as soon as twitter starts using tweets for ranking link relevance, there will come the army of people trying to seo the ranking and leaving relevance in dust.

I think twitter is better with focusing on their core competency of providing real time information rather then being side tracked into something very different.

Apple's stake makes good sense because offers both backups and decreases reliance on others. For Twitter it gurantees a medium/eyeballs and for Apple content.

<comment><USER24> Good point, but Google also has to counter bad seo practices.

Twitter already has good anti spam algorithms and for this case they should be able to determine the quality of accounts and the quality of the tweets as well: age of an account, diversity of the tweets, hash tags, verified accounts, account linking to 3rd parties, re-tweets by other 'good' accounts, etc.

I think that such an offering would only extend and enhance their current competency since I'm already using Twitter like I used to Google to search for real time info. But I like Twitter to become better, more advanced and more relevant in search. I want to find the information referred to in tweets (blogs, news articles, videos, charts, etc) not only sorted by time, but sorted by quality as option. Hundreds of 'opinion' tweets with no links are less valuable. I don't want to wade through them.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Twitter decided to end the availability of their feed through Google Search?

<comment><USER25> Certainly its achievable but it would be a massive undertaking, before that they need to focus on retrieving some of those aged tweets and stopping the whales from taking over.

I do agree with your point about generally in having a more realtime and relevant serach engine. But I think instead of twitter some one working across networks would be in a better position.

bit.ly is going in this direction with its redesign and rt.ly and social sharing widgets like Addthis and Sharethis would also have a very good view of realtime data. That they could use.

The only advantage I could see with twitter is if they do sentiment analysis of the tweet text and then understand relevance. The context they have available could be akin to how google bot uses link title and anchor text but with 140characters more focused.

Twitter ending availability I think had more to do with google clearing space to forthcoming integration of g+

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Almost a exactly a year ago I wrote this[1] - I've added contemporary notes in italics:

Apple should (and I think will) buy Twitter.

Here's why:

Apple needs a social layer. Facebook could provide it but Apple hate them. Apple could roll out a new version of iTunes in a couple of days, replacing the Ping sidebar with Twitter. Deeper integration into iTunes would follow. _More than a couple of days needed, but still holds true_

Various free messaging apps are doing quite well on the iPhone. Bringing Twitter in as a native app on iOS devices would both expand Twitter, and provide another differentiator for Apple products. Other platforms would continue to be supported, but Twitter could be plumbed into iOS at the OS level. Networks would bitch about their SMS revenue dropping, but Apple doesn't give a shit about that. _Apple launched iMessage and wiped out the network operators SMS revenue_

Twitter and Apple share a love of simplicity, both of concept and of design. Their users are from similar demographics. Twitter is heavily used by celebrities and musicians, their feeds could be linked in to their products on iTunes. Buying an album could offer you the chance to follow the artist on Twitter. If Jony Ive was designing a social network, it would look like Twitter. _This is definitely true and remains so. The only thing that Apple wouldn't like is ugly usernames like Sasha85_x_

Simple really. Apple could provide the missing revenue that Twitter needs. It might not make Twitter profitable, but it could bring it up to a level of lossmaking that was justifiable for the top-tier messaging service among handset manufacturers.

Twitter's most recent valuation was reportedly $8billion. Apple could probably buy them for $12billion (a $4bn profit over a matter of months). That's not much out of Apple's $76billion stockpile. _That stockpile is now $110bn_

6\. Twitter people would be happy to go to Apple. They're cool, Apple is cool – it works. _They_ think* they're cool*

7\. I can actually visualize Steve Jobs walking onto stage and announcing it. Talk of changing the world etc. etc. etc. _Sad._

You shouldn't follow me on Twitter because I don't use it. In fact it really pisses me off, but I can see that it works for millions of people. _I use it a bit more now, but it still riles me up._

[1] <http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/08/why-apple-will-buy-twitter/>

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe they should start with an official Apple account of some sort on Twitter. ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> Apple is currently in a bit of a pickle. Twitter is deeply integrated in the OS (both Mac and iOS). It makes sense that they invest a few days worth of profit to secure a more formal partnership.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure why, at least at this point — it seems like it'd be really weird for Twitter to turn off the ability to post statuses/photos/etc and have an OS-wide account sign-in feature, which is basically all Apple's OS integration does. Like, so weird that you'd think Twitter would probably be making themselves irrelevant, so you wouldn't really care anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ping is rolling over in its' grave. I guess if you can't build it, buy it.

<comment><USER31> I had completely forgotten about Ping until just now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hold your horses everyone, we still have time. Apple won't take over a technology until it can find a way to make it worthless without an iTunes account...

</comment><comment><USER33> Microsoft made a small strategic investment in facebook, I think if it keeps an open ecosystem an Apple investment in Twitter isn't a bad idea.

<comment><USER19> I wish Apple would have bought Skype instead of Microsoft, then Mac users wouldn't have to still contend with Skype's shit UI.

<comment><USER34> Use Facetime.

The rest of us use Skype because we can use it to talk to people that just happened to buy a computer from a different company than we did.

<comment><USER35> FaceTime still doesn't do Audio-only though. Or group conversations. Hardly a replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Apparently this news is from about a year ago, and currently there's no such talk of an investment: [http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINL2E8IS2GO20120728?i...](http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINL2E8IS2GO20120728?irpc=932)</comment>


Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.popbioethics.com/2012/02/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation/ <comment><USER2> > Despite writing at the turn of the last century, H.P. Lovecraft's Cosmicism > is something with which no major narrative of humanity's journey through the > stars has dealt.

Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_ tackled this very subject decades ago, and with far greater poise than Mass Effect did. (And I say this as a fan of the series.)

I suspect the author's reference pools are not as deep as they should be, and I say this because a lot of the topics that the author claims ME to be the first to address have in fact been bandied about in science fiction for a long time. Mass Effect is great in lots of ways; it brings together a lot of plot points and concepts from other series and synthesizes them together into a decently coherent whole. But the series is far from original thematically. (minor spoilers) In particular, the third game tries to address the idea of transhumanism in a way reminiscent of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, another game which came out a year before, but does it in a particularly cack-handed way. Even the ending choice in ME3 is thematically similar to the one from the earlier game.

<comment><USER3> +100. A Fire Upon The Deep totally predates this. Many of the main characters in the story aren't even humans, they're hive mind wolves and plants, and hyper intelligent AIs. And the Blight doesn't even have any goal, it's more or less a virus that wants to survive, other than that, we don't know it's motives, and the hyper-intelligences don't really care much about humans. The humans in the story are portrayed as fools who don't have the wisdom of the older races and end up digging up stuff they shouldn't be messing with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the others saying that the themes in Mass Effect have already been done many times in the past and that it brings nothing new to the table. Furthermore, in my opinion they are very mediocre as videogames (well, with the exception of the first one).

</comment><comment><USER3> "The reason is this: Mass Effect is the first blockbuster franchise in the postmodern era to directly confront a godless, meaningless universe indifferent to humanity."

Really? That seems like a bold claim. The story of insignificant humans who ultimately are controlled by eternal, hyper-advanced species, seems a repeated theme. I actually found that aspect of Mass Effect rather boring (this again?) Both 2001 and Babylon-5 featured completely alien cultures and insignificant humans, who were unwittingly guided to evolve the way the god-like races wanted.

A few years ago (2007-ish) I wrote up a space-game design that was like a combination of Minecraft and Elite in space. The main (hidden, exposed in glimpses) plotine was that the universe was actually being run by a vast, very old species called The Alphas, who actually had no interest in other species at all, but were committing mass genocides, based on a Frank Tipler's _Omega Point_ concept (which was the title of the game, OmegaPoint). The Alphas were doing Kardashev scale Type-V galactic engineering, moving stars, blackholes, and interstellar dust clouds around to permute the geometry of space so as to control the collapse of the Universe in order to extract infinite energy and computation from it.

In game, they would have ships the size of planets, which would disassemble and surround stars, creating photon rockets to move them over eons. Think of how in 2010, the monoliths overtook Jupiter. The younger races would try to stop them, but would be ineffectual in the face of self-replicating Von Neunmann probes.

Only by races banding together, and allying with the second oldest race in the Universe (the Gammas), could they hope to take down Alpha Ships.

But the gist of it is, the older race doesn't give a shit and has no goal with respect to other species. They see you as nothing more than bacteria or ants, and are only interested in manipulating stars, whether or not your have a civilization dependent on that star.

But God-like races who want to control evolution, or play "Order vs Chaos" games seem quite common in SF.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an aside, as far as (RPG) gameplay experiences go, few have topped Planescape: Torment in quality of storytelling.

If you include non-rpg's, The Thief series (1 and 2) are good contenders too.

</comment><comment><USER6> He claims to be speaking for all of sci-fi, but only mentions four written properties--Ender's Game, Dune, Starship Troopers, and the Cthulhu Mythos-- three of which have been big-budget motion pictures, and the last so deeply embedded in general pop culture that you can know all about it without ever cracking a book. He can't even _spell_ "Ender's Game" right after three tries. He's routinely flabbergasted by concepts that have been routine in written sci-fi for decades.

tl;dr: Yet another commentator who thinks that Gene Roddenberry invented science fiction. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR.

I kid, I kid!

On a serious note, has the Mass Effect trilogy led to any conversion of opinions by 'serious' 'art' critics that computer games aren't an art-form... as it seems plain to me that Mass Effect does indeed qualify but is oh so much more besides, as outlined by this excellent thesis. Is 'can computer games be art?' still a debate anymore? Was it ever a valid question or just intellectual snobbery?

<comment><USER5> I still hear many people say that games can't be art, but the debate seems to have subsided. Perhaps this is because games have become so ubiquitous there it's just not as interesting to discuss it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Choice in most computer games, the Mass Effect series included, is largely illusory. It is too costly and difficult to provide radically divergent branching experiences based on player choice. Choices that truly alter the plot result in exponentially increasing demands on development resources. Just one truly game-altering choice would halve the length of a game that a given budget could produce. No matter what choices you make in the Mass Effect games, Shepard always winds up in the same places doing the same things. It truly does not matter if your Shepard is the sort of person who holds all life sacred or a hardened killer who ruthlessly throws people off of highrises when mildly annoyed. You can overthrow the rulers of the galaxy and replace them with humans in the first game of the trilogy and, to Bioware's credit, that choice is reflected in the subsequent games, but in a way that has almost no impact. In the Mass Effect universe, what you do truly does not matter. However, the genius of Bioware is that the player feels their choices _do_ matter to a degree that is sometimes agonizing! Despite the lack of impact on the plot, there are enough minor details to make you deeply care about how you interact with the game's NPC's.

Bioware has been at the forefront of RPG's/adventure games for quite some time. While their combat mechanics are occasionally rather broken (e.g. Jade Empire), their plots are the gold-standard in the industry. The illusion of choice is a part of their craft that has been finely honed over the years. The Mass Effect universe is not the first impressively deep game-world Bioware has created. They breathed new life into both the D&D and Star Wars universes, and created the Dragon Age universe, which is a notable example of world-building. Consider Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games. This is a long series of games extending back into the nineties. The amount of reading material, in the form of in-game books, in this series of games is staggering, but the quality of that material ranges from mediocre to absolutely awful. In the first Dragon Age game, Bioware produced a similar amount of reading material, but every last word of it finely crafted and carefully designed to immerse you in a game-world far richer and larger than actually portrayed in the game. Even the title of the game, "Origins", suggested that this 80+ hour RPG was a mere introduction to a new world. Mass Effect used this approach as well, fleshing out the universe with a Codex that is truly impressive in terms of depth. This supplemental material is insanely cheap to produce relative to the time it takes for gamers to consumer. Hardcore fans will gobble every last word up, but even casual players will feel the depth of the universe that is present even if they just sample a few paragraphs here and there. The choices may be illusory, but the conceptual depth of the Mass Effect universe is not.

The biggest leap forward made by Mass Effect was the dialogue wheel system. Prior to Mass Effect, RPG's allowed players to choose exactly what their characters said. Players would be presented with several options and would read precisely what their characters would say in the process of selection. As a result, it was largely redundant to voice the protagonist. Players who had read what their character was about to say would probably be too impatient for their character to read that text aloud. As a result, games would often fully voice every role _but_ the protagonist, ostensibly so that the player could imagine him or herself speaking the protagonist's lines. The process of reading several (sometimes) lengthy responses also injected unnatural pauses into conversations. The Mass Effect dialogue wheel provides players with a rapid, shorthand way to select responses. Your choices are described by a few words at most, and often in terms of what your character is thinking instead of what he'll actually say. e.g. When faced with a prevaricating NPC, an older RPG might have offered one dialogue choice in which your character spots the lie and tries to draw the NPC into a self-incriminating trap. In Mass Effect, to do the same thing you might choose a response that simply says "He's lying!". The wheel usually provides you with your next choice while other characters are still speaking, so you can carry out a natural, flowing conversation just by making choices that reflect how you feel. The most crucial dialogue, that of the protagonist, is now fully voiced by an actor. The result is that players feel like they're in a movie. Not merely watching, but _starring_ in. They are frequently awed by the eloquence of Shepard's finely voiced responses and feel a tremendous boost due to simultaneously identifying themselves as Shepard. The Mass Effect dialogue wheel let's you feel like you're delivering dialogue like Pacino! It's an utterly ingenious system. To get an idea of how important the dialogue wheel is to Mass Effect, consider Dragon Age: Origins. Origins was released after Mass Effect but was in development for much longer, so it uses the old system with a voiceless protagonist. It feels astonishingly primitive when compared to Mass Effect as a Result.

Video Games are going to take fiction (sci-fi or otherwise) to new heights. The reasons are legion. I can't do them all justice, but consider just this one alone: Minds and time. Movies, like video games, are a collaborative art form that takes many minds to create, but the time they have to convey meaning is limited to just a couple of hours. Novels, on the other hand, can take tens of hours to consume, but are the product of a very small or, most typically, just one mind. Video games are the first art form to emerge in which many minds can engage their audience for an extended period of time. Mass Effect is notable for bringing an immense richness and variety of tropes together and synthesizing a truly meaningful universe that invites open interpretation. It is simultaneously big-budget, pop-culture space opera and a dozen different things, ranging from nihilism to humanism and everything in between. The Mass Effect universe is, perhaps, too complex for any single human mind to have created.

Now that I've spent enough time gushing, let me add one sour note of pessimism: Electronic Arts. EA is notorious for tainting the gaming universe with their sweat-shop productions. Bioware was bought by EA and, as far as anyone is willing to say, remains largely autonomous. The gargantuan size of EA's bank account should have offered Bioware the freedom to do truly brave things, but that is not how EA operates. They expect profits. Hints of cost- cutting and compromise have set into Bioware's latest games. Consider Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3. Where the previous games in these two Bioware properties included multiple cities/worlds to explore, the latest, EA influenced games did not. Practically all non-combat interaction in ME3 is confined to the Normandy and Citadel, while all of DA2 takes place in the same city. Both games could have opened up new areas as the game progressed, but instead relied on stocking the same old areas with a mixture of new NPC's and old, unaltered NPC's. DA2 is especially awful, recycling the same dungeons repeatedly even within the same chapter of the game. ME3 was epic enough for this to go largely unnoticed, and the end of the game was so ballsy that it overshadows EA's cost-cutting. However, DA2 was met with luke-warm reception, largely because so much of the game material was so excruciatingly recycled. One can only hope that EA doesn't continue driving Bioware into the ground.

<comment><USER9> It's also worth noting that EA basically cut a year off of ME3's original development time, which is why we got a series of endings to the whole series that made your choices matter a whole lot less. It's still one of the only series that sees you choosing whether or not to kill off one of the major characters (Wrex) and has many dialog and character choices open or close to you based on previous actions.</comment></comment>


How Termux saved my ass - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-termux-saved-my-ass-73db53b2dea1 <comment><USER2> Android phones have apt? Or is it just Termux?

<comment><AUTHOR> Termux has it. Tons of packages too. Klaus Weidner's 'Hacker's Keyboard' is indispensable as well.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Humans of Mechanical Turk - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/humansofmt <comment><USER2> At first, I didn't understand what this was from the twitter page. [Note: I've used Mechanical Turk before and thought it was an odd experience.] Then I went to the tumblr and it explained it as "These are the Humans of Mechanical Turk, one story at a time." So I got it.

The few people who've put up stories seem to be all in the U.S. I always assumed that the tiny payments for HITs would encourage people from lower wage countries to be the majority of turkers. Interesting to see. Good job.</comment>


How to become a better programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelathe.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/07/5-sure-fire-ways-to-become-better-at-programming/

<comment><USER2> Working with better programmers is very similar to working on great code. In fact, I would say that working with solid code is more important than working with great programmers.

I learnt a ton of stuff about programming when modifying the code of the linux kernel for an Operating Systems course. Fixing bugs in a huge code base requires inherent understanding of where things are in the code and how they are connected. And it's during that process that you gain an understanding of how to handle complex things : by making them simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. Usually when you work with great programmers, you will be exposed to great code as well.

But sometimes, I have also seen that even when exposed to great code, it might not be evident to someone that it is truly great, without the accompanying commentary by a programmer on why it is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So what if you are the only person in your location? I live in one state and all of our developers are in another.

Right now I do reporting (sql, vbscript and perl). I want to get in to database administration and C#. I am starting on my own, but there is nobody here to consult with or learn from. Am I lost?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the fact that you are motivated to learn by yourself counts a bit. If you have passion, you can make up for other stuff.

The other way is maybe to get into open source dev. You will interact with a lot of folks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, physical location doesn't matter that much. See if you can hold code reviews, look at other people's code, talk to other respected developers in your team. That will help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would add...

"Work in a shop that QA's the source code by people who know what they're doing." This would be in addition to User Acceptance Testing.

The first program I submitted in a shop like this was rejected for 38 reasons. Some were shop standards, but many requirements where I thought "I knew better". I didn't. And I've been a much better programmer ever since.

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition I would say, work where your code actually gets code reviewed. (is that a dying practice?) You will write better code.

<comment><USER5> This is a disaster if the senior programmers are less skilled than the junior programmers. It happens a lot in big corporations. "You have more than one return statement! Go change that."

Of course if you work in a shop like that, it's advisable to leave. And I did.

<comment><USER4> _You have more than one return statement! Go change that._

Yep, that's one of the 38 reasons for my original rejection. Violations of "single entry/single exit" were not promoted into production. I argued and lost. Now I'm glad I did.

<comment><USER5> Just curious: Are you now a true believer in the "single exit always" doctrine (as well as whatever the other 37 rules were) or are you just saying that the benefits of enforcing discipline on the developers' output outweighed the disadvantages of having cargo-culted and dogmatic code standards?

<comment><USER4> I became a true believer once I got past my personal prejudices and actually made an attempt to understand "why" some rules were the way they were. I wasn't as smart as I thought. Still not.

Enforcing discipline for the sake of enforcing discipline? See military.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> code - refactor - code - refactor - sleep - code - refactor - code....

</comment><comment><USER7> What about that practice of copy & paste good code?

<comment><USER6> copy & paste chunks of code is not necessary bad if you want to accomplish a specific task (for example, how to crop a square image, how to format date time into relative format, etc etc)

It will allow you to see if this chunk of codes work, and if it does, you can learn from it, improve it or give it back to others.</comment></comment>


Rust (a new systems lang from Mozilla) FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.github.com/graydon/rust/language-faq

<comment><USER2> It's missing the big "Why?" question. I can definitely see why a company like Google would try to create a new systems language, but Mozilla? Its code is already a convoluted mess of old-fashioned C++ code plus even more convoluted XML (last time I looked), rewriting that would be a ginormous project.

So is it more "from some people affiliated with Mozilla" or are they trying to write some new low-level stuff (servers, OS, JavaScript interpreters?)

<comment><USER3> It's the latter. Some mozilla people in their spare time. Now is a labs project.</comment></comment>


Abstract Algebra for developers - Cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://poincare101.blogspot.com/2012/01/hi-hopefully-you-read-last-post-and-if.html

<comment><USER2> The difficulty of the discrete log problem doesn't have anything to do with the modulus being prime, DLP is at least as hard for composite moduli. Its considered a hard problem because after 30 years a fast algorithm hasn't been found and a majority of experts think there isn't one. Also, a prime modulus is used for Diffie Hellman since the set {1,2...,p-1} mod p forms a cyclic group (under multiplication) which makes the method as simple as possible. However, a slightly more complicated variation of DH could be used for a composite modulus (where the group is not usually cyclic).

<comment><AUTHOR> If the modulus isn't prime, we can split it apart into two, much simpler modular equations, which is part of the reason WHY its so hard to come up with a good algorithm, and the other half is what you said.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> no comments? :(

<comment><USER3> It's a bit of a "holiday" in lots of places in the west. I imagine there's lots of people that aren't bothering with the internet right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's true. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Complementary to this article is a book on Abstract Algebra that is released under the GNU Free Document license.

<http://abstract.ups.edu/download/aata-original.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like that book.

Its not where I first learned abstract algebra, but, its an excellent resource.</comment></comment>