1. I hate the argument of "legal fiction" because the whole concept of law itself is a "fiction" invented that gives states more control. But I imagine you wouldn't want to live in a "lawless" society, would you?

2. Can you please explain how ownership of content gives states more control over creativity? There are so many way better methods of control a state can do (state-approved media, just banning books, propaganda) that this sounds like a stretch.

3. Alot of mainstream media is underdog rebels beating an Empire, and ownership of content definitely stops the spread of that idea.

But if you want to make money and do it from riding the brand name association of Harry Potter or Mario, they can.

Why wouldn't big corps win by default? They have the brand name, own the resources to make more polished version of any IP, and have better distribution channels than anyone else.

Can you tell me how this scenario won't play out?

1. Big corporation has people looking for new and trending IP.

2. Instead of buying the rights to it, they get their army of people to produce more polished versions of it.

3. Because they have branding and a better distribution channel, the money goes 100% to them.

> Ask why would people need protection from having their work stolen when the only ones welding weaponized copyright are the corporations.

People working in the field sell their copyright like Gravity Falls' Alex Hirsch: https://x.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1906915851720077617

Copyright can't legally stop you from making a movie about wizards fighting each other with laser swords in space.

> Additionally plenty of people making videos for YouTube have had their videos demonetized and their channels even removed because of the Content ID copyright detection scheme and their three strikes rule. In some cases to a ridiculous extent - some companies will claim ownership of music that isn't theirs and either get the video taken down or take a share of the revenue.

Let's take YouTube videos as an example. If the concept of copyright doesn't exist, there is nothing stopping a YouTuber with millions more subscribers from seeing a trending video you made and uploading it themselves. Since they're the one with the most subs, they will get the most views.

The winner of the rewards will always go to the brand that people know most rather than the video makers.

> This idea that they own the very idea of 'boy wizard who goes to school' is insane and plays right into this flawed and pernicious idea.

Copyright protects an expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. No one can legally stop you from writing your own story about a boy wizard who goes to school.

Nintendo fan games can be released (even sold) if they changed it up a bit so they're no longer associated with that IP.

> Copyright is important but does/should not extend to every time I want to print out a picture of a boy wizard for my kid.

You can. No one will sue you. No one will send you a cease and desist. It happens when you try to print Harry Potter and try to make a business out of it.

I agree with this, but why is your proposed solution to remove protections from everyone instead of giving everyone else protections? People who put in work should be rewarded.

Please tell me what you have against USAID.

Have you noticed that authors and artists love sharing their inspirations? Let's say you're an up-and-coming author. In an interview, you list your sources of inspiration.

Using your logic, why does the creative community celebrate you and your inspirations instead of crying foul like they are with LLMs?

Imagine debugging your own code (your code being your intellectual work) and this guy barges into your room and says "Why are you wasting your time? Why didn't you just pick a better 'number'?"

> At one point, we wanted a command that would print a hundred random lines from a dictionary file. I thought about the problem for a few minutes, and, when thinking failed, tried Googling.

...and I don't fault them for doing so and making the assumption that the author is not an experienced coder

1. Except, the millionth LISP interpreter is almost definitely a hobby project, so their claim that people are screwing around at work is bogus.

2. What drives people to work on problems (in industry) isn't "what the nerds find cool", it's money. That's a capitalism problem, not a "this industry isn't controlled enough by me" problem. The most lucrative jobs are in enterprise SaaS and ads companies, do you think engineers flock there because that sounds fun?

3. The software industry isn't uniform. Medical devices ARE regulated under the medical industry, commercial airplanes ARE regulated under the aviation industry.

Has there been recent disasters in those industries due to software? Yes, and regulation gets updated. Regulation gets written with blood.

You might argue that software feels like they're the most prominent, but I argue it's because:

1. Software is relatively new

2. We are software engineers, so we take notice of software more.

Mechanical and civil engineers are not immune to human-injuring mistakes. Think of the last car recall due to mechanical failure (heck, there's one this year due to brake manufacturing issues: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44475030/honda-acura-brak...). Or the O-ring failure in the space shuttle Challenger that caused it to explode mid-launch.

> Like I ranted recently here in HN, can we stop with the millionth LISP interpreter already?

Except, the millionth LISP interpreter is a hobby project, that people are making on their own time, not during work? I get it's annoying to see something you've seen before, but you know, you can ignore it.

Play is an important part in learning. The millionth LISP interpreter, game engine, whatever is fine. From my experience, the people building these things gain a lot more valuable experience than just doing college or even just having a prior job.

> We have people dying in hospitals because the software of the heart monitor glitched or misread a sensor. Can we get on those problems instead?

Do you have any idea how current problems actually get decided for in industry (not only software, but in general)? It's not "this problem gets tackled because it's cool", it's because of money. Do you think bright software engineers love working on Microsoft Word or better AdSense because they think it's fun?

Also, this sounds really stupid to say, but this seems to be what you're implying when you say "keep play out of work": do you really think the same people working on embedded systems for heart monitors are the ones writing LISP interpreters...somehow...at work?

There's also something that plagues HN and it's that they think the software industry is somehow uniform. Medical devices get regulated under the medical devices industry, commercial airplanes get regulated under the aviation industry. The pure software industry is not the only place that hires software engineers.

I have, and it was an awful experience. They had color pass through but faked it and it felt like a grayscale video that someone shoddily tried to paint over it. There was significant warping and text (like a poster on my friend's wall) was barely readable.

It "exists", but was completely useless in terms of usability. If Apple can get pass-through to actually work well, I would call that "new" in the sense that it's a feature that's usable.

0.1x engineer: one of my friends works at a certain government contractor. One of her coworkers had difficulty understanding short circuiting in evaluating boolean statements, everything he writes she needs to fix, he thinks XML is a programming language, and it's just a huge mess amongst a huge list of other complaints.

10x engineer: Actually, he's still in undergrad. I was his TA for a VR class and he made a pretty great clone of Beat Saber before it was released just from watching the trailer, and in under a week. He's never heard of Leetcode, yet is absolutely comfortable with interview questions (well, I decided he didn't need practice after asking a few questions...). He's had an internship at a FAANG and finished his project early and got bored. I introduced him to a few of my other friends in the industry and they are intimidated by him too. He's this rare combination where he has the theoretical knowledge of CS, but also excels at actual engineering work.

Both 0.1x engineers and 10x engineers just feel like they re on a "different level". I don't know how else to describe it .

As for whether or not looking for 10x engineers is practical, I don't think it is.

1) It took me way too long to confirm that feeling (i.e. I imagine interview questions alone aren't enough; you have to see the engineer working).

2) I imagine most companies don't even need a 10x engineer to build the product they need.

3) They're too rare. How do I know? Because (a) none of my friends have felt that before meeting him and (b)the whole industry is still debating on whether 10x engineers exist.

Why would you want to confine yourself to working on CRUD apps instead of working on cool tech?

That's such a weak justification in my opinion. Why would you want to work on CRUD apps over more interesting stuff?

Some people pick things up faster than others, but if you put more effort you can still catch up.

It also explains why even talented people still need to practice/learn/etc. to be at the top of their fields.