While this seems like a convincing case, at what point is it morally acceptable to produce new art derived from existing work?
Would it have been fine if Capcom had re-created near identical patterns without use of the book's original digital files? It's a reference book after all.
Not saying Capcom should profit without crediting the original artist. But visual art remixing textures feels more grey area to me than copy/pasting code or someone's writing.
> But visual art remixing textures feels more grey area to me than copy/pasting code or someone's writing.
Artists use reference material all the time, and as long as the new work is the product of the new artist, it's all good. But directly copying art and then modifying it is still copying copyrighted material.
My understanding is in the music remix world, if you want to feature a song in your remix, you should get a license.
Similarly, my brother makes AMV videos and as I understand from him, the music rights-holders (not the anime rights-holders, interestingly...) will then claim all the monetization on those videos.
> But directly copying art and then modifying it is still copying copyrighted material.
As my uncle comment suggests ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27426639 ) it's not clear cut. Just because you hit ctrl-c then ctrl-v on an asset doesn't mean what you're doing is automatically copyright infringement, it might be fair use assuming you changed something to a point where it's a derivative work based on the original work.
> the music rights-holders (not the anime rights-holders, interestingly...) will then claim all the monetization on those videos.
This is a Content ID Claim, and it's a system YouTube themselves made up so that companies can automatically start garnishing monetization earnings on videos that use their work in any capacity without having to do DMCAs themselves. In no way is this tied to copyright or fair use.
> In no way is this tied to copyright or fair use.
Contenting ID it _totally_ about copyright. The only reason Google built it is to reduce the exposure they have to claims of copyright infringement, by easily (way too easily it turns out) allowing rights holders (or anyone claiming to be one) to post-fact claim earnings from infringing use of copyright material. Just because Google demonetises your video and sends a share of ad revenue to Sony/Warner/whoever, that doesn't mean you _didn't_ infringe copyright.
>Just because Google demonetises your video and sends a share of ad revenue to Sony/Warner/whoever, that doesn't mean you _didn't_ infringe copyright.
Nor does it mean you did infringe copyright. There's no direct correlation between one and the other. You can't use the function of Content ID to infer things about how Copyright works.
Content ID may be ABOUT copyright, but in no way is it TIED to copyright.
As an artist I frankly wonder what's the point of these texture books if you can't re-use the textures in your own works. It's like an audio sample pack where you can't use the samples, or an algorithmic book where you can't reuse the algorithms ...
You can re-use the textures in your own works. You can even create a new original work, using the textures as a reference, and pay nothing. The only thing you can't do is use the reference textures directly in a new work without securing an additional license.
I'm pretty sure that, by volume, most art is not sold in a commercial environment and its creators could use the book without concern.
Different audio sample packs have different licensing terms - some confer full rights to use them in an audio production, some only in non-commercial productions with commercial requiring a license to be purchased.
Similarly, in this case, it's a reference book - and there just so happens to be verbiage that says "for commercial use of any of these, contact the author".
What kind of artist are you? As a painter, I can tell you there's use in having textures to reference while you draw things yourself. It's more like buying an image off getty to get the watermark off but not paying the extra 20 dollars for commercial use.
> Not saying Capcom should profit without crediting the original artist.
Capcom "crediting the original artist" would have made this even worse for them, it'd then be a slam dunk admission of copyright infringement.
You cannot use a copyright work for free then "credit the original artist" to shirk your legal responsibility to negotiate a license to use the work.
There is no "grey area" here. (Arguably there _should_ be, and the hardline copyright stance the actual law takes is mostly Mickey Mouse's lawyers and lobbyists fault, but that's the world we live in...)
I think the answer to your questions and thoughts can be responded to with "It depends." Truly, these cases and their outcomes can not be predicted, no matter how clear cut they appear to be.
Here's a great summary of some of the best appropriation cases involving art, and their outcomes:
We should encourage PL experimentation and welcome new languages!
But keep in mind that cost of entry for production usage these days is a full suite of tooling (package manager, code formatter, language server for IDEs, etc).
I didn't see a standout feature in this article on Grain that made me think the manpower investment in developing the language and tooling is worth it, but I could be wrong!
At first it's really more attractive something for smaller teams building side projects. Maybe also small sub-components.
When dealing with TypeScript and the usual suspects like React + Redux, or AngularJS and its ilk, what bothers me is all the boilerplate and complexity. TypeScript contains a lot of baggage from Javascript.
A functional, well featured language that doesn't require a humongous runtime as a download (like Python on WASM, which works, but like 40mb to get you started...) might be an attractive solution there.
Exactly, and with Wasm the barrier to adopt the new language is also way lower as it can be readily combined with modules written in other languages and shares the entire ecosystem.
Firmware isn't necessarily more difficult than other areas, every domain has serious challenges. But firmware programming has the kind of challenges that require a very deep technical background, something almost impossible to build in an X-week boot camp:
- Insane debugging: you have to debug extremely low-level failures with very limited visibility (e.g. no operating system to catch your segfaults) and proprietary or complex tools.
- A hard language made harder: C is difficult to get right, but embedded C (no dynamic memory, lots of bitwise operations for MMIO register writes, targeting exotic architectures, etc) is even more difficult.
- Extreme constraints: The products you work can have constraints like safety certification, minimal power utilization, or ultra low latency response. Meeting those constrains often means having to deeply understand hardware.
Nope. But you should check out Embedded Artistry[1], its the single best resource I've seen on a field that's mysterious even to most professional programmers.
Have you spent any time doing Arduino projects? While not representative of real-world firmware work, Arduino is very accessible/cheap and will teach your transferable skills (e.g. C programming for interfacing with HW). I'd encourage you to really put some time in before you commit to anything embedded - because the amount of jobs and the range of companies you can work at is much, much lower than "mainstream" development (say, building web applications).
Hmm...I think a lot of this discussion is missing two important points:
1. Regardless of whether or not C++ is going away, your team needs help now. You have an opportunity to get up to speed and add value in the present. That could pay off in social capital, promotion, or just plain old appreciation of your efforts.
2. Say you don't care about your team's needs at all (for the sake of argument, I'm sure you do!). Learning C++ will teach you concepts and patterns that can help you be a better engineer, even if you move on to Rust later (which IMO will be C++'s replacement for new projects eventually). Growth happens outside your comfort zone, this could be a good growth opportunity.
Love the idea of a minimal retro VM, had a chuckle at the single-byte program counter. Hope this catches on and there's a software ecosystem.
Does anyone know of a list of quirky VMs like this one?
The Pico-8 comes to mind since it's also a fantasy console, but wondering if there are other esoteric emulators - maybe even ones that had real-world use at some point.
The program counter says single short, which normally means two bytes. The VM is cute but I don't understand its purpose: it doesn't gain much from its minimalism. I don't see much reason to emulate it in software if the host can run something better. Look instead at something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16 or Forth.
Given Ghidra's [1] decompilation support, emulation (CPU via PCODE IR, not whole-system) support, headless analysis scripting API, and the active open-source contribution/issue community - I find it hard to justify other static RE tooling.
Any thoughts on why I would choose Rizin over Ghidra?
Well, I would say that the tool to really beat here is IDA Pro, with radare2 largely feeling like a poor man's attempt at IDA from my limited trials of it. In the past decade, Binary Ninja and Ghidra came out to also compete in this space, and the cutter project came out to give a sorely-needed GUI for radare2. Of the new tools, the only one I've tried is Ghidra.
Personally, were cost not an issue, I would just stick with IDA. However, IDA Pro is obscenely expensive, with the cheapest version "only" $365/yr and a full version costing into the tens of thousands, and it's not clear to me that the cost is worth it. I've had a lot of paper-cuts with Ghidra, but it still feels far better to me than radare2.
OT: I thought I had an idea of what it is you do, but now it's clear I don't, and I'd love to hear more about why it is you've evaluated all the mainstream reversing tools. :)
Reverse engineering is mostly a side interest of mine, but I do have a bad habit of overestimating the complexity of the bugs I encounter and launch into reverse engineering software to figure out why it's not working properly.
I actually work on compilers, so training myself on reverse engineering isn't totally useless, especially since a lot of what I like is about the pattern recognition of more advanced compiler features. And if you're trying to retrofit high-level optimizations in a low-level backend, reverse engineering the high-level structures is exactly what you need.
Radare (and Im guessing by extension Rizin) is terminal based. This means you can integrate it with custom tooling a lot easier than with Ghidra, which can be useful if you are doing RE with the aim of translation to a different arch or doing automated analysis.
Ghidra is a more all in one solution when you are doing more in depth vulnerability analysis. We used to use it back at my previous job when it was still proprietary and provided to subcontractors only to run in SCIFs, and it generally is better if you are looking for vulnerabilities.
A mature take, I applaud the author for overcoming "commitment bias" and being willing to make a change. The lack of a cloud SDK for thier provider seems crippling in hindsight.
Wish them well with whatever the replacement language becomes!
Nice high-level breakdown without pushing one moral stance or another, just focusing on the business-side facts.
I always wonder about the employee-side of the equation - since the pool of job candidates that can hold a government security clearance is small realative to the pool of skilled engineers, what are the implications for hiring/retention/culture for teams that do defense work?
My experience is pretty dated but back when I did some work with DARPA retention was a mess at the two defense companies I interacted with. Management wanted to minimize getting security clearance for employees since it involved a substantial amount of money/effort to get and then it was almost guaranteed that the employee would immediately jump ship to another better paying job requiring clearance elsewhere.
The other disturbing trend I learned about was how even if a company lost a contract, they would almost inevitably still work on it as a subcontractor for whoever the new contractor was. Part of that makes sense but it gave me the impression that no one ever really loses a contract.
Did you read the same post I read? One of the harassers asserted that she must have traded sexual favors for a CS degree. Do you seriously believe that a male engineer would be sexualized and discredited that aggressively?
Please take some time to reflect. Look up statistics on sexual assault and violence against women. This is not an attempt to bait clicks, its an attempt to stand up against systemic attack.
> Look up statistics on sexual assault and violence against women
Why do I need to limit myself to women? You are claiming that men cannot be victims? Here is what I found:
As of 1998, 2.78 million men in the U.S. had been victims of attempted or completed rape.
About 3% of American men—or 1 in 33—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.
1 out of every 10 rape victims are male.
So yes, please stop your sexist arguments: both women and men can be victims. Maybe you should be the one who needs to take some time to reflect.
I'm one of those people who really doesn't give a shit about gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, etc. But it seems nowadays you have take all of these attributes and divide them into "victims" and "predators". I'm really sick of that, and I'm really sick of media playing out that part.
So yeah, there is my reflection on this whole narrative.
Would it have been fine if Capcom had re-created near identical patterns without use of the book's original digital files? It's a reference book after all.
Not saying Capcom should profit without crediting the original artist. But visual art remixing textures feels more grey area to me than copy/pasting code or someone's writing.