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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

> Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.

It is possible that these things are related.

Everything is so efficient because rent-seeking on "intellectual property" is not an option. You have to execute well or somebody else will do it better.

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it reminds me of the early / glory days of piracy. I've seen a lot of kids just torrenting software for their needs and just getting started with video game programming, music, or other fields. What I liked about it, is that you could just get started with something right away, with the right tools without having to think about the financial aspect of things.

Last time I check unreal engine works a bit like that, it is free to download and use as long as you don't make more than x amount of money per year, when you start making decent money you'll give a percentage to Epic. I wish more things would work this way.

Autodesk finally wisened up to this and has fully featured educational licenses for free

Autodesk's actions are most probably a response to feeling the heat from stable, multi-faceted & open source Modelling, Animation and Sculpting tool, Blender which is completely free, receiving considerable attention from industry recently (after v2.8)

It's great for operations but precludes major investment in new inventions.

Unless the major investments are government funded. Last I heard, china was doing really well with quantum technology and maglev trains.

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