That's just restating #2.

Hoping the people at the bottom will act outside of their stated job assignment for the potential good of the overall company is... not very likely.

Basically, the way a company STOPS doing this is for them to experience a public backlash and have someone from the TOP change the low level people's goals.

Again, companies (especially large ones) do NOT act as a single entity that knows everything that's going on to/around them.

Another thing... if the lawyers have any kind of metrics on how many infringements they've found and dealt with... you may be asking the person to go against his own job performance metrics.

This could very reasonably be a job (trademark defense) farmed out to a law firm who might have a layer or two between the client liaison and the worker searching for instances of infringement. There's plenty of people in the chain who could quite reasonably say "No, our job is to enforce... there's a clear response within our mandate that we can perform. Don't bother the client with this." The link between the client liaison and the company contact in particular is not one they'll want to use too often for fear of annoying the client.

Sure, a one-time license would be better for everyone in this case... but granting a license is WAY more authority than whatever corporate lawyer that was tasked with protecting trademarks has. What's easier for the people actually tasked with protecting Nintendo's trademark here:
1) Find trademark infringement (their direct job), and address it directly within their authority (send cease and desist letter)
2) recognize this is a potential marketing win for Nintendo (marketing is not their job), run it up the organization to someone with that kind of authority (wow, really?), and track the progress of all that to make sure it doesn't get lost risking real damage to Nintendo's trademarks (can someone say HIGH RISK?).

The game fan modding community lives in a bubble. The corporate lawyers live in their own bubble. People tend to think of organizations as single entities that act as an individual, when in fact organizations are made up of a whole lot of different individuals all with their own groups, responsibilities, and goals. People will act within the scope of what their job is first.

NOBODY wants exclusive content except the subscription services themselves. Now that there's a ridiculous number of subscription services, and all the exclusive content is fragmenting what is available to the average consumer.

Screw this trend. I hate it. Especially screw Apple, who are doubling down on exclusivity. (our service & our hardware)

We don't appreciate your new offerings... we think you're all assholes. We might grudgingly subscribe to some things (well, not Apple anyway), but we hate you for playing these stupid games and hurting your customers in the process.

Our 6 year old is maybe similar to yours. He watches videos & plays roblox way more than you'd think he should be allowed to. He shows some addictive behavior (it seems like it's all he wants to do, occasional tantrums when he has to stop, talking about it all the time).

However... he's two years ahead of his peers in reading and possibly 3 in math. We try to direct his videos to "learning videos", which is at least somewhat successful (maybe 30% learning videos?).

The big thing for me is that he seems to be just fine at school and after-school activities ... it's just a free time thing (which he has a lot of currently). We're not getting any feedback that he's developing any issues... in fact he's generally doing great at school.

He doesn't play as much as I'd like with kids his age... but he does play with kids a couple years older. He has much more in common with the 8-9 year old age group than his own 6.

I've tried to remove most of the ways for him to launch an actual browser on his computer, so he can mostly only use that for roblox or minecraft. He uses his iPad for videos, so that it can be limited to Youtube Kids (not perfect, but better than the alternatives).

Maybe once a month he'll throw a big tantrum or cry when he has to get off the iPad... and if he can't get it under control we'll force a couple days break from it. He does fine on the break, and fine afterward.

So... I'm noticing some potential issues, but so far it really appears the benefits are outweighing the negatives.

The only thing wrong with SS is the lack of protection against the money being redirected. SS is YOUR money, and any redirection from that purpose is essentially theft.

That's the ONLY time that I'll actually agree with the crazy "taxes are theft" crowd. SS is a forced retirement account... one that I really don't have a problem with in concept apart from the way people find ways to steal your retirement money for some other purpose. Fix that, make it whole from past theft, and it'd work just fine.

Saying the government shouldn't be able to force people to save some minimal amount for their own future is missing the point of government. Government exists to fix societal problems that wouldn't otherwise be addressed. People won't always just behave themselves? Police, laws, jail. People's houses burn down occasionally? Fire department. Foreign countries attack us? Military. People end up destitute because they suck at planning for the future? SS. All this stuff has to be paid for? Taxes.

No, that's not the argument he's making. At least, not in most of the stuff I've seen. All the screwing up the earth stuff is the rationale for electric vehicles, cleaner power, etc. Personally, I'm not super concerned with that part. Sure, it might get ugly... but humanity will live through it. It'd be a lot nicer to get through the next hundred or so years without wiping out most of the ecology... but we'll almost certainly live either way.

Certainly, it's easier to "unfuck the earth". That doesn't save you from the next extinction-level asteroid. Moon, Mars, Asteroid belt... whatever. What the human race needs is a backup plan. It may not be highly likely in the near term, but it's almost guaranteed on a long enough timescale. We've got plenty of time to work on that problem, though... and it'll continue to get cheaper and easier to do so.

Personally, I'm really loving the progress in cheaper access to space. I really want to see a lot more going on there. Is an off-Earth colony absolutely imperative Right Now? Maybe not. I sure would love seeing that in my lifetime, though.

A trojaned version of the app is also a good possibility. They could have quietly taken control of the site, changed the app to push the keys back to them, etc. Sure that's beyond a typical police department but with any agency help it's totally doable.

You don't have to be incompetent to get a gag order and have your stuff compromised like that.

Just wait, China will claim it invented Bitcoin soon enough.

This is a big thing most on the employee end don't want to acknowledge.

There's a statistically significant concept (though by no means universal) that low-performers think they're performing at a higher level than they are... and high-performers that generally think they're doing worse than they are. That leads to a person applying very different levels of effort.

That said, probably a whole lot of it is as simple as squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease. Working hard hoping it will be noticed isn't enough. An employer is motivated to minimize pay and maximize productivity. If you seem content at a certain level, even if it's less than market wage, many won't see any reason to change that.

Huh. A bit troubling... What's the interval for these "tries"? Does this happen often?

What doesn't make sense is that TWO of the engines had this problem. Unless the relight fuel is somehow a shared resource... it was the fact that it was two engines in an unusual use case that contributed heavily to my hypothetical that it was a planning problem.

I guess the real question here is what's the fix? More fuel/attempt? More "charges" as you call them? Tweaking with the flow dynamics? Entirely new relight process?

I wonder if that was just a screw up... The center engine had enough to relight. They usually land with just the center engine. They had only just tested a 3 engine burn not so many days before with the previous F9 launch. Maybe someone forgot the ignition fuel for the additional engines?

I had to run out the door... I meant to add my attempt at useful suggestions/alternatives.

First, I want to back up on what I said a little bit concerning VC capital in certain situations. If you're success as a company REQUIRES lots of capital, then sure... having a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. There's nothing ignorant or stupid about that, if you've taken a clearheaded look at the situation and that's your call. However, I think many times there are simply better ways to do it.

The point of the article was that startups are avoiding investment money in order to grow themselves. I would imagine, if someone makes that decision, that it's almost certainly a better decision for them. If you CAN do it without selling too much of yourself to investors in the process, wow is that a whole lot better.

Sure, there are cases where you have to go big immediately or you can't even really play. However, they're far fewer than most seem to think. Google was FAR from the first search engine. If someone came up with a fully natural language super-AI search tomorrow, Google would be toast in a couple years if not months.
  Anyway, that's a tangent for my point here I guess.

You don't have to have the next big idea to be successful, to make a lot of money, to build a good company... whatever your goals are. There's WAY more smaller niche spots to build a company in that pay better than an executive position at a major corporation. You can grow at a sustainable pace, with WAY less stress and freaking out.

Heck, what I think a huge number of people seem to miss is that you don't even have to be NEW. Sure, there are a million AC repair shops, electricians, gas stations. You just have to be BETTER than MOST. My favorite gas station is absolutely killing it, with 4x the traffic of the spot across the street. The spot across the street is CHEAPER. This place is just cleaner, friendlier, and they work hard to stock good stuff you actually want. That's it. Limited growth potential? Err, not really. Maxxed out your first location? Open another. (CAREFULLY, that's a major killer right there.. the second location)

A lot of small companies still make millions of dollars. Many small companies are run by idiots... that's your competition. A smart person who doesn't make a habit of fooling themselves can do really well, if they can manage to get started. That is, really, the hardest part.

Please. From what I understand (and I am not that interested, so I haven't looked all that closely) VCs take even more than they used to. In return, they run companies into the ground by pushing them to grow too fast, where most fail. All for a 0.5-1% better return than responsible stewardship.

Anyone who actually wants to work like crazy for years in return for a 1% chance of success is either delusional concerning their own skills and destiny, bad at math, or just ignorant.

It is exactly the LACK of business finance savvy in startups that VCs take advantage of now. "If you're the next Google, this 0.005% stock will be worth millions!" They've dropped the percentages they give to owners to ridiculously low levels, and the dumb ones keep coming. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I seem to be hearing. It also makes complete sense, from a point of view that leads to the vulture capitalist label.

I've built my company slowly, mostly as it made sense. If I didn't have a ridiculously over-cautious wife, I'd probably be further along... but we're still doing rather well. (BTW, that's as much luck as skill/hard work) One of my major clients is WAY bigger than me, with like 4 subsidiaries and 20 locations around the US employing hundreds of people. With my 100% ownership of my company vs. the president of that company's current share of his, I'm actually worth more. It's almost embarrassing. He'll bitch about wasting his important time dealing with me, when I'm worth significantly more than him. Big man, indeed.

Sure, I guess taking a shot at greatness in your youth would be the time to do it.... it's just not a very good return on investment. Kind of like using the state lottery as your retirement plan.

I was out in the woods one day and sitting on a hill for a while. I thought I heard some noise from my pocket, so I checked my phone. I had a voicemail from 911 saying something to the effect of "This is the third time you've called 911! Please check your damn phone!"

I checked my phone and it had two outgoing calls to 911 in the list. I was pretty horrified.

They obviously were familiar with butt dials. However, what if I was injured and unable to speak? Hopefully they could tell the difference. At least I didn't get a helicopter flying over me or something.

The ease at which the phones can dial 911 is absolutely stupid... it's absolutely Google's fault. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make it harder to do accidentally, but still easy enough to do if you're injured/impaired.

To expand, maybe it's a problem in that people don't know what a good solution looks like.

I have a wired Swann camera system in the office, with a dedicated DVR unit. The software for it is buggy and remarkably hard to keep working over a tunnel... but functionally (when it's working) it's really good.

Features I consider extremely useful with Swann's system:

- continuous recording, with simple calendar/timeline bar navigation for viewing.
- motion recording done right... events display as highlights on the normal timeline navigation bar.. with sensible "prev" "next" buttons to navigate across events... SEAMLESS with the playback UI (jump to an event, back up 30 seconds if you want... etc)
- you can select regions of the screen to search for localized motion events AFTER THE FACT, and it's pretty quick in marking new sets of events on the day's navigation bar

Things that suck:

- the first camera has some odd trouble with "timeouts" 100% of the time when searching for motion events using the remote software (not locally on the DVR), which happens to be our front door camera
- trying to run the remote software over a tunnel or VPN of any sort will cause "timeouts" fairly often requiring restarts of the remote software or at least enable/disables of the camera views. (Must require a minimum latency, pretty boneheaded... usually okay if you stick with viewing cameras one at a time)
- the system for locating recordings and marking some to be saved (instead of the normal rolling oldest-first deletion mechanism) is pretty crappy... resulting in a long list of autonamed files to look through... there should be an easy timeline bar-based export function from the playback UI.

Writing something on my own is tempting (twenty years ago I surely would have), but at this point the "todo" list grows at least as fast as I work through it... and I'm always choosing tasks that improve my products and contribute to my business over hobby-style tasks.