Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645460

Points: 1

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48079458

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Timeless, be it human or machine

On the licensing point, here's my wildest imagination: what if those permissive licenses had one small condition — companies profiting from the project must contribute a tiny fraction toward social good? No profit, no obligation.

I think this actually matches what most maintainers originally wanted. They go open-source for influence and respect, trying to make the world better, making their work freely usable by anyone, even competitors. Given that, it's quite reasonable to ask those who profit from it to share a tiny fraction back with the world.

Open source projects may die, but the love and spirit behind them doesn't — and a profit-sharing clause like this could make that spirit more explicit and more undeniable.

Couldn't agree more. The more we know, the more susceptible we are to bias and division.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47900140

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

That's literally what the I Ching calls "good fortune."

Competition, when no single dragon monopolizes the sky, brings fortune for all.

Great point. It all comes down to trust.

Some are masters at setting attention traps. They manipulate all these cheap metrics that normal people naturally pay attention to, confusing potential deal parties, serving self-interest while increasing risk and causing harm to the other side.

> It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub star for VCs

Yes. It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub stars for VCs — even more so if the 'interactions' are naturally deal-based.

Imagine a metric for proof of work named DUKI-ALM. If you give away $100 to the world, you gain 100 DUKI-ALM — absolutely equal to the cost.

Think of it as tips contributed jointly by the taker and maker of a deal, paid out to the world. The DUKI-ALM signal is the sum of all tips. They tipped $10? The metric value is 10.

Products that have the ability to make more deals and generate more surplus will naturally contribute more — and gain more signal of trust. Sybil attacks are prevented by design, since what's the point of attacking if you still need to tip the world 100 USDT to gain 100?

I'd love to hear if you see a hole in this — the cost of the signal matches exactly what it claims to represent.

I've been thinking about this a lot. These metrics are all just marketing signals to draw people's attention, trying to make some kind of deals. So the fix should be: make the cost of the signal match what it claims to represent. I'm obsessed with something called DUKI /djuːki/ (Decentralized Universal Kindness Income, a form of UBI) — the idea is that instead of stars or reviews, trust comes from deals pledging real money to the world for all as the deal happens. You can't fake that cheaply.

So the metric becomes the money itself — if you fake X amount, it costs you X, and the world will thank you by paying attention...

Imagine if GitHub let you back a star with real money — the more you put in, the more credible the star. And that money goes out as UBI for everyone. For attention makers, star anything you want, as much as you want. For attention takers, just follow the money to filter through all the noise that's so easy to manipulate...

But positive-sum is easy to claim and hard to prove. So here's my test, and the core premise of DUKI: if a community can consistently contribute 1% of its surplus to everyone else, and do it transparently on-chain, then that's not just talk. That's proof.

Duker News is my very first attempt to manifest this. It's early, but it's real, and it's all on-chain. Let's see where this goes.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47578019

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Feeling sad I am 'the reason'. But that's ok.

> asking for a policy

It is always the same sad story. Someone learns a new name, gets trapped inside, and tries to escalate conflict. I will not call that 'open mind'.

The deeper reason is that there is no kindness — many really don't care about others who seem alien to them. They just hide that behind all kinds of names.

Same here. And sometimes, I got downvoted and treated as an LLM — in the name of valuing the human.

To me, what matters is the will behind the words. Ideas and words themselves are cheap (this becomes clearer every day in the AI age) — they're almost nothing until they're executed and actually help someone.

> "The Dao can be told, but what is told is not the eternal Dao. The Name can be named, but what is named is not the true Name." — Laozi, Dao De Jing

Like code we write — it's dead text on a screen until it's running. And what we really care about is the running effect — and that is exactly the reason, the will, behind why we write the code in the first place.

And without that comment, we wouldn't have talked this much. LLM is the friend.

I like HN, and I'm not a native speaker.

I do use LLMs to refine my wording, but I am not an LLM.

Kind of. And as a guy with a solid science background, I just don't buy into that kind of interpretation.

But if it is numerology, I believe I CHING divination is more like a commit-and-reveal scheme — you can't infer the future from the proof alone. You might only get to verify it once the future actually plays out. Kind of like a zero-knowledge proof — it gives you a proof/advice based on a possible future, but you gain nothing from it since the underlying computation is NP-hard. So better to treat it as a kind of thinking framework — like SWOT or scenario planning, but from a different cultural tradition.

100% agree with geohot's point on creating value for others and playing the positive-sum game. It is the way. Just a small reminder that sometimes we could worry about the return a tiny bit, as we need returns to verify positive-sum value creation and to scale it.

Fair point — updated to "most of the time."

> the opposite is the literal definition of rent-seeking behavior, which produces gobs of money, but provides no (or very little, at best) new value to others.

Rent-seeking is real, and you're right that it can be very profitable — while creating very little value for others. But even so, it remains the best available option when nobody else steps up to offer something better in free markets.

There are always two sides to any deal — the deal maker and the taker. The more competition on the maker side, the more value the taker can get. And the more takers demand real value, the less room rent-seeking behavior has to survive.

Sorry, I don't know the full story behind Hyperloop. But I really doubt he is trying to play a zero-sum or negative-sum game as the article hinted.

Setting aside all the disputes — the deals he made with people are positive-sum. Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, or invest in, or work for SpaceX.

And in my personal view, all the article brings is deconstructive criticism — which does not fit my tastes. Maybe because I believe the world doesn't owe anyone anything. In fact, to make money, most of the time you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others. There is no shame in seeking profit — there is glory in it, if it comes through a positive-sum game.

Those who complain — they can always reject the deal and choose something else. And even better, go offer or support better products in the market and help the best one win.