Valve's company blog hosted posts by staff such as Michael Abrash and economist Yanis Varoufakis on AR/VR, game economies, and company culture.
HN commenters call Abrash's essay the best argument for why hard AR is difficult, and link Varoufakis's post on his work at Valve.
This really reminds me of how Yanis Varoufakis, Valve's economist, describes most firms:
> Interestingly, however, there is one last bastion of economic activity that proved remarkably resistant to the triumph of the market: firms, companies and, later, corporations. Think about it: market-societies, or capitalism, are synonymous with firms, companies, corporations. And yet, quite paradoxically, firms can be thought of as market-free zones. Within their realm, firms (like societies) allocate scarce resources (between different productive activities and processes). Nevertheless they do so by means of some non-price, more often than not hierarchical, mechanism!
The firm, in this view, operates outside the market; as an island within the market archipelago. Effectively, firms can be seen as oases of planning and command within the vast expanse of the market. In another sense, they are the last remaining vestiges of pre-capitalist organisation within… capitalism.
The image of a firm as an island of control within a greater see of capitalism really stuck with me. I think it's a pretty good image to support Valve's style of organization. (Of course, I'm also a bit biased: I prefer that philosophy for reasons of my own besides just increasing efficiency.)
The whole article ("Why Valve? Or, what do we needcorporations for and how does Valve’s management structure fit into today’s corporate world?"[1]) is well worth a read. I think it's a very constructive look at the issue that…
Finally, there is talk of economic models in software development!
Valve software is an example of a software developer’s “cooperative” though you’d probably call it anarcho-syndicalist, instead of socialist. They wrote a great blog about it:
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/
The Internet has disrupted many economic models and affected society and even democracy (journalism, social networks). Automation reduces the demand for human labor. We have to have conversations about better solutions.
At my own startup, we constantly explore the intersection of technology, sociology and economics. Years ago, we explored proper compensation models using the socialist (not communist) principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution”
https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributions/
And now, we are working on a utility token to power a decentralized “free market” of web software that emphasizes collaboration and re-use over competition and duplication. Would be happy to get feedback on the actual implementation and economics, as we will be going live with it soon. Here is the link:
https://qbix.com/whitepaper/whitepaper.html
PS: to the downvoters: The above is open to feedback and revision. Instead of simply downvoting, why not click the link and read it, and offer a scathing critique? Again, we are…
I agree that Microsoft would have push well beyond the established best of AR technology in order to darken things in the hololens, but I can't tell what's likelier: that they're totally lying in their demonstrations, or that they have kept some bit of truly state-of-the-art-advancing innovation a secret.
It would be very easy to lie, but it is also difficult to believe that Microsoft would bet so hard on selling this product as revolutionary when it provides a fundamentally weak experience.
So Animats, is there something concrete that you're basing this claim off of, or just a general knowledge of AR technology and its limitations? I genuinely want to know--I've spent a lot of time wondering about this, and I've seen good points on both sides.
For anyone curious, Abrash does a great job of explaining why darkening is so hard here[1] and this reddit-speculator[2] does a great job of highlighting some incidents where hands-on hololens reviewers specifically noted "dark projection" during their user tests.
I've heard that the field of view is smaller than videos make it appear, and also that the image it displays is not fully opaque, but nothing that suggests that they can't darken. If it turns out they can, it would be a pretty big deal, and if it turns out they can't, hololens may be a dud.
[1] - http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ (3.5 years old)
[2] -…
Nice! I also ran a company as a worker coop - but I structured it as an LLC, just because it was far easier. Coop practices like revenue sharing were defined through company bylaws, not its legal ownership structure.
Lots of people have done coops in tech. One decent list: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops
Yanis Varoufakis, before he was the finance minister of Greece(!), worked at Valve and wrote about the economic theory of why corporations are structured as centrally controlled fiefdoms instead of democracies, and why Valve was apparently more democratic (http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/). Great read.
I would sympathize with Valve if they didn't completely ignore Linux before acting like the Linux community's best friend when it became apparent that they had nowhere else to turn to [1]. Like many, I'm a fan of their games and their flat management, but they have a history of being as short-sighted and callous as EA and I wish more people would see that [2].
I have a lot more respect for the people behind Humble Bundle/Wolfire, who went out of their way to support Linux long before it was cool [3]. Plus they don't force DRM middleware on you.
[1] http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/
[2] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugaru
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/
Here the same person was much more positive about the system (easy to understand he is not, at least not to me), wonder were he was telling the truth.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/
Also Michael Abrash thinks it is a swell place to work for - I guess if you have something to say within such a company then the experience is way better.