AWS is built for production. It’s complex because it’s designed to create robust environments that can scale almost infinitely, that’s why half of the internet runs on AWS. But to make the most of it, you need to understand how it works and why it’s built that way. That’s why being an “AWS expert” is practically a job description on its own, thats why cloud engineering teams exists, platforms, SRE, etc.
For quick and dirty app deployments, though, other vendors like Heroku probably do a better job.
I think the larger reason being an "AWS expert" is a job description is lock in. If you've hired people who have spent years grokking the AWS names, terminology, and options then your likelihood of switching to anything else is much lower.
Not that AWS doesn't also enable scaling or something, it just (conveniently) doesn't give an option to deploy anything but scalable services you'll train your staff on. A lot of the time AWS interfaces/offerings are copied not because they were ideal, but because it's an easier way to break past that barrier with your offering.
And that’s true if you base your tech stack on VMWare, colo’s, GCP, Azure, etc.
No one can be an expert on everything. Even if you base your expertise on Kubernetes, someone still needs to know the underlying cloud infrastructure. Kubernetes is just an abstraction that maps to underlying infrastructure.
It's true in that any technology is going to require some jargon and understanding, it isn't true in that this does not imply each offering seeks to minimize that instead of maximize that. AWS is far from the only one, but they are definitely one of the worst in the latter regard.
You can’t both have versatility and simplicity and the entire leaky abstractions thing. Give me AWS with a bunch of primitives for anything that is moderately complicated over something like Vercel, AWS Amplify. Elastic Beanstalk etc.
This isn’t rah rah AWS, it’s just the one I know from an architectural level - I was pure developer before I got into AWS seven years ago and before then I hadn’t had to manage architecture since 2003. I would say the same that I prefer the raw primitives of GCP, Azure, or on prem Kubernetes more than the equivalent leaky “easy to use” alternative.
It's not about whether abstractions exist, it's about whether the jargon for them requires remembering long lists of services from index cards so you equate "AWS Fargate" with "AWS Serverless Containers" and having the certification training teach you to say the whole stack that way so nobody but AWS certified people know what the hell you've proposed or built is.
I've built plenty of things with AWS and a lot of the technology is quite good, but it's not about that.
We’re 100% on Azure but so far there’s no impact for us.
Luckily, we moved off Azure Front Door about a year ago. We’d had three major incidents tied to Front Door and stopped treating it as a reliable CDN.
They weren’t global outages, more like issues triggered by new deployments. In one case, our homepage suddenly showed a huge Microsoft banner about a “post-quantum encryption algorithm” or something along those lines.
Kinda wild that a company that big can be so shaky on a CDN, which should be rock solid.
We battled https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1331370/... for over a year, and finally decided to move off since there was no any resolution. Unfortunately our API servers were still behind AFD so they were affected by today's stuff...
Quitting coffee was a really bad experience for me.
I had what felt like withdrawal symptoms: a strong headache, muscle aches, and I was really cold. It lasted for two days, until I took a minuscule sip and everything went away within five minutes.
That made me realize the extent to which I was actually addicted, and how dependent my body was on it.
I managed to quit and stayed caffeine-free for about a year.
But one day I said, “Just one cup won’t hurt,” and oh boy... it was like having superpowers. I was so focused, so wide awake. Of course, I’m an addict again. :(
An important point is that caffeine is a drug, and like any drug should be used for a desired purpose. If you’re going to need that extra focus, then use it. Other days you might not. Make a conscious choice about it.
Some people reading this (systems engineers with a career) could probably retire, or at least downshift. Work just enough to pay for groceries, and spend your days doing what you actually want.
Today we can access, easily and cheaply (often free), almost every song ever recorded, every book ever written, every movie ever filmed, every video game ever made. You can write and reach thousands. You can film and reach millions. Twenty years ago, that was a millionaire’s life.
It’s the need for more and more and more that alienates us. Do you really need that shiny new car? Do you really need to take a vacation? Do you really need that promotion?
For some, work (and the status that comes with it) became their identity. Take it away and there’s nothing left. Others keep constant noise and stress around just to avoid hearing themselves think.
My exact thoughts, reading this headline. What an interesting legacy to leave behind! I never thought about the person behind DoA but reading the twitter thread from his rival, he seems to have been a very interesting character.
Great find! and I don’t want to underestimate the discovery by any means, but...
We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in things. I understand why that could be interpreted as a face, but at the same time, it could just be a random shape. It’s just a “T” shape. Sure, it could look like a nose and a pair of eyes, but it could also just be... something.
The T-obelisk things, with their long skinny arms, do seem to represent figures. I wonder why they have to be that stupid oblong shape at all. Dual purpose as roof supports? Or just tradition, tradition causes wacky things. Looking around the various carvings from related sites, it's also evident that they were greatly interested in penises.
The translated article provides some backing to the claim that it's a face in a style that matches other finds in the area:
"The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped standing stones found in Göbeklitepe and its surroundings have long strengthened the idea that these stones symbolize humans. This new find, which was unearthed in Karahantepe, is described as a new turning point in Neolithic period research with the fact that the human face was carved on a T-shaped standing stone for the first time."
"With its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt nose, it carries a style similar to the human statues found before in Karahantepe."
My first introduction to Linux was through Knoppix, the first “live CD” if I recall correctly. Maybe there was something before it, but I remember it as something new and magical at the time: being able to test a full Linux desktop directly from a CD.
From there, as I was learning Linux (I was 16 years old), I used KDE a lot. It was such a cool experience. I especially loved how easy it was to create custom themes, the desktop widgets, and Amarok! the big “killer app” back then. A music player that could show you song lyrics, album art, and even the band’s history by pulling data from Wikipedia and other APIs. It felt futuristic.
Later on, I switched to GNOME as it became more popular in the mid 2000s, but I’ve always had a soft spot for KDE. It’s been part of my Linux journey for nearly three decades.
I’ve been thinking about the impact of LLMs on software engineering through a Marxist lens. Marx described one of capitalism’s recurring problems as the crisis of overproduction: the economy becomes capable of producing far more goods than the market can absorb profitably. This contradiction (between productive capacity and limited demand) leads to bankruptcies, layoffs, and recessions until value and capital are destroyed, paving the way for the next cycle.
Something similar might be happening in software. LLMs allow us to produce more software, faster and cheaper, than companies can realistically absorb. In the short term this looks amazing: there’s always some backlog of features and technical debt to address, so everyone’s happy.
But a year or two from now, we may reach saturation. Businesses won’t be able to use or even need all the software we’re capable of producing. At that point, wages may fall, unemployment among engineers may grow, and some companies could collapse.
In other words, the bottleneck in software production is shifting from labor capacity to market absorption. And that could trigger something very much like an overproduction crisis. Only this time, not for physical goods, but for code.
> Marx described one of capitalism’s recurring problems as the crisis of overproduction: the economy becomes capable of producing far more goods than the market can absorb profitably
Is that capability a problem? We don't tend to do this unless the state subsidises things or labour unions protect things that don't have customers.
In my experience, LLM-generated code is only as good (or as bad) as the software engineering skills of the “vibe coder.” A seasoned engineer will not only craft clear, detailed prompts that specify how something should be implemented, but will also review the AI’s output on the fly, correcting major derailments—things like: “Don’t create a new function for that; just modify X to add support for this case.” They’ll even do an initial review of the code before opening a PR.
The real problem arises when non-technical people use an LLM to generate a full project from scratch. The code may work, but it’s often unmaintainable. These people sometimes believe they’re geniuses and view software engineers as blockers, dismissing their concerns as mere technical “mumbo jumbo.”
It’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre.
It’s like in literature if someone could patent the idea of a detective investigating a murder.
How could the "pokemon-like" genre even exist if you couldn’t create a game that uses “summoning and battling characters”?
Even worse, that description alone applies to multiple genres... JRPGs, or even fighting games with multiple characters (something like Marvel vs. Capcom) could fit that description.
I can understand intellectual property rights for very specific technical implementations (for example, the raycasting technique used in Wolfenstein 3D) but you shouldn’t be able to patent the concept of the first person shooter itself. That feels more like restricting freedom of expression.
The actual patent goes into specifics about the covered mechanic they are patenting and it focuses much more on the pokeball/swapping mechanics.
That being said, if they ever tried to hit anyone with the entirety of that, other than in a case of 1:1 replication of Pokemon, it would be a spurious weapon at best. There's too much prior art + alternative implementations in existence to argue for a unique and inventive mechanic.
It would be a powerful enough weapon if the target of the patent infringement case did not have crazy deep pockets. The costs of defending a winning case can be more than small game developer could hope to afford.
You got it. Copyright is about defending monopolization, not just about creative rights and ensuring attribution.
Copyright is an artificial system propping up huge sections of the economy/whole industries. It's internal protectionism at best and hindering progress at worse. Nothing "free market" about it.
A 1:1 replication of the original Pokemon (1995) would be safe from all patent claims as it is obvious prior art and patents filed during that time would be expired. Copyright would be another story though.
It looks like here, they picked minor game mechanics introduced in a later games that Palworld also used (possibly as a coincidence) and then applied for patents. Some of them passed.
Clearly using the term “Pokémon” on its own refers to the series in general. If not from the obvious context, but from the sheer fact that there was never a game in the series titled simply “Pokémon”.
If they did come up with it and spent significant R&D on it only to be copied by another, they probably should have applied for the patent before they released it?
I don't pay much attention to Nintendo news these days, aside from the occasional exciting game I see (my wife is crazy about Fire Emblem, so today's a good day!), but I was under the impression this was kinda specifically aimed at making life hard for Palworld, a game which is (as far as I know - I've not tried it) nearly identical to Pokemon, but with some more mature themes and more a more mature technical environment.
As far as gameplay goes, palworld is nothing like Pokemon. Sure, you capture monsters in an open field, but its combat is not turn based and it has a large base building emphasis, for instance.
Now, the monster design in pal world is (I think intentionally) very close to Pokemon’s, while also giving them guns, which I suspect is what triggered Nintendo’s action. You can find plenty of Pokemon likes that match its gameplay much closer (cassette beast, tented) that haven’t caused Nintendo’s ire.
Hmm, maybe, but somehow Marvin Gaye's estate still pulled it off. Yes it was a copyright case, not a patent case, but Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams had a well-funded defense. Seems like Nintendo could easily bully an indie game out of existence if they wanted to.
You can't, with board games. I'm not sure why you can with video games. (maybe it's one of those things where you "can't" but actually you can, if you have enough money to keep anyone from successfully challenging it because they can't afford to)
You very much can with board and card games. Monopoly was patented and so was Magic: the Gathering.
My question is whether this patent only covers specific game mechanics introduced in the most recent Pokemon game or whether it's broad enough to monopolize the entire genre. Because if a clone of the original Pokemon from 30 years ago (has it really been that long? I feel old) is infringing, then the patent is clearly invalid due to Nintendo's own prior art.
IANAL, but I think you're misunderstanding their point. MtG did not patent the genre/game type. There are countless other cards games that are essentially MtG, just not called that. Same with monopoly and any other established board game.
It's mostly trademarks with physical games, not patents.
But video games are ultimately software, and that's easy to patent...
Obviously there have been lots of other TCGs, but up until that patent expired in 2014, they had to either be sufficiently different from MtG to avoid the patent, or pay royalties to WOTC.
There were also cases that just invalidated it in place. It was a dead patent. You still can't call turning cards to indicate use "tapping" though.
edit: to be clear, anyone can copy every single element of any board game, as long as they don't infringe on the game's copyrights or trademarks i.e. the art and the text, including the names of things. This is absolutely true in the US, but not necessarily true in other countries, and I'm pretty sure false in Germany. Also, there is a European alliance of board game designers who will blacklist retailers that sell your copied game, and the sites that promote it.
Monopoly harassed the game "Anti-Monopoly" forever over this, but eventually when the law became clear, realized they would lose, so settled by paying the designer and giving him a perpetual license to any IP involved in the mechanics of Monopoly so there wouldn't actually be a court decision recorded that officially invalidated their patents (I'm not sure if it was still Parker Brothers by the conclusion.) They could theoretically go after people still, and probably have sent letters (everybody who was going to get rich off the next big board game in the 60s and 70s made a Monopoly clone.) But after the Anti-Monopoly guy published about the experience, everybody knows that any threats are toothless.
> maybe it's one of those things where you "can't" but actually you can
Like how you "can't" patent stuff with prior art but then, somehow, big companies seem to be granted patents for things with plenty of prior art all the time?
Some of it is that "getting a patent" isn't always a high bar, and the real bar is "successfully using a patent in a lawsuit". Patent examiners don't have the time and resources to thoroughly vet every application, so there are a lot of patents granted that are pretty much worthless.
In this specific case I don't know. I would have to ask.
> Some of it is that "getting a patent" isn't always a high bar
Which is a big fucking problem, to be honest. I would not want to enter a lawsuit with Nintendo to try to convince a judge that the patent I'm clearly violating is invalid.
If I was making a game with capture/summon mechanics and got a call from Nintendo, I would probably take capture/summon mechanics out of my game if their lawyers were threatening enough. That's the value in unenforceable patents.
Yup. The patent system has been gutted and rigged in favor of whoever has the most money. Pretty much our entire legal system (and government for that matter) simply comes down to having more money than the other guy.
I mean yea, you're not exactly wrong, but the cost to fully investigate every application would be incredibly high. Maybe the answer is to make patents cost $20k (fee) + $20k (your patent lawyer's fee) instead of $1k (fee) + $20k (your patent lawyer's fee). But that's gonna be a lot of extra cost to file.
> If I was making a game with capture/summon mechanics and got a call from Nintendo, I would probably take capture/summon mechanics out of my game if their lawyers were threatening enough. That's the value in unenforceable patents.
It really depends? If you could hire a good patent lawyer for say $5k-$10k to dig up a reasonably correct answer for you, and that answer was "lol this patent is a joke, Nintendo will get quickly smacked out of court and all your attorney fees will get paid for by Nintendo", then maybe that would be sufficient if the cost to you to rework the mechanic would be order(s) of magnitude higher than $5k.
You're definitely right in that before you actually call their bluff and enter litigation, you'd want to be damn sure what you're getting in to.
It doesn't seem like such a bad idea for a patent grant to be a long and expensive process... Why should Nintendo getting a 20 year state-mandated monopoly on an idea be treated lightly? Why is it a goal to make that process go quickly and cheaply?
It's probably a nonstarter for the current year, given that you'd need to pay for substantially more patent examiners, and better trained patent examiners (even if it does ultimately come a lot from increased fees). Or maybe fewer patent examiners but much more highly trained ones? I'm not sure how that would pan out.
But it would be very cool if the gap between "granted patent" and "proven useful patent" was closed substantially.
> It’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre.
I had thought there was case law along the lines of games have no utility and thus can't have utility patents. Although, perhaps that case was too old, and the rules have changed.
Assuming that games are subject to utility patents, I don't see why you couldn't hold a patent on a genre defining mechanic... But genere defining mechanics for a Pokemon game probably were in the first games from 1996, and afaik the patent backlog isn't that long that they'd be getting a patent today from an application from back then.
Who is "they"? Nintendo doesn't want it, sure. But why should we let Nintendo decide whether or not they want competitors? Why should the patent office not want a pokemon-like genre to exist?
It's not surprising that Nintendo wants to patent "summon creatures to fight for you" as a game mechanic, the surprising part is that the patent was granted.
how would a summon monster spell compare ? strict interpretation seems to include this prior, and i thought thats not supposed to happen.
when a dungeons and dragon magic user, uses summon monster, they may engage with these same described mechanics of summon and battle. [orb of monster summoning would be way out ]
For quick and dirty app deployments, though, other vendors like Heroku probably do a better job.