{"id":268,"date":"2009-07-28T09:03:19","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T09:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/archives\/268-shapeways-member-interviews-bram-cohen.html"},"modified":"2014-07-03T16:52:29","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T16:52:29","slug":"shapeways-member-interviews-bram-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/shapeways-member-interviews-bram-cohen","title":{"rendered":"Shapeways Member Interviews: Bram Cohen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bram Cohen<\/a> is not only the creator of BitTorrent<\/a>, the protocol responsible for between 25% and 55% of all internet traffic<\/a>, but also the creator and co-creator of a number of great puzzles<\/a> that he sells on his Shapeways Shop<\/a>. Intrigued by yet another Shapeways Community Member with their own wikipedia article<\/a> (5 and counting) and the obvious dichotomy between someone that has done more than almost anyone else to make Intellectual Property immediately and widely available for free while whilst now selling his own IP online, I decided to interview Bram. <\/p>\n

You can find out more about Bram by checking out his Livejournal(yes, replete with Evony ad)<\/a>, his website<\/a> or by following him on Twitter<\/a>(insightful and fun). <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bram is above with two of the puzzles he has created. The white one is called Looseness Burr<\/a> and can be found on his Shapeways Shop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joris: Bit Torrent makes it possible for anyone to download content from the web. People critical of it say that it is a tool for infringing Intellectual Property. At the same time you have a Shapeways Shop where you basically sell models based on your own intellectual property? Do you see the duality?<\/i><\/p>\n

Continued below. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nBram: I have a lot less interesting in the subject of intellectual property
\nthan most people seem to expect. I have an interest in networking
\nprotocols, and also one in puzzles, both of which happen to bring up
\nintellectual property issues, but I deal with such issues of necessity,
\nnot because I particularly care about them. There is the interesting
\nquestion of how to get puzzles produced, and also how to try to make
\nmoney off of their production, which ideally I’d like to do, but that’s
\na secondary issue, since obviously it’s impossible to make money off a
\npuzzle which people aren’t very interested in even if it’s free.<\/p>\n

I know you’re not really interested in the intellectual property issue but…How would you feel if there was a “The Shapeways Bay” that offered your designs as a free download?<\/i><\/p>\n

In some sense that already exists and I post my own stuff to it – the
\n‘Puzzle will be played’ burr site<\/a> has a huge collection of burr
\npuzzles, and most of my experience with burr puzzles comes from
\nrebuilding most of the puzzles from that site in Burrtools<\/a>. Only a tiny
\nfraction of all puzzles have any commercial value whatsoever, so piracy
\nisn’t really an issue for them. Among the puzzles with a little bit of
\ncommercial value, the few people and companies who make them are
\ngenerally quite strict about only producing things with permission,
\nbecause the community is small enough that there’s little gain and a
\nlot of potential ostracism from doing otherwise. For the rare puzzle
\nwhich has so much commercial potential that it might attract real
\nknockoffs, the two approaches are to either make a brand-based premium
\nversion, as the Rubik’s Cube does these days, or to ramp up supply
\nahead of the knockoffs while the fad moves along, as the Rubik’s Cube
\ncompletely failed to do when it was first introduced. Patents don’t in
\npractice help all that much. All of that is in the ‘good problem to
\nhave’ category though – most mechanical puzzles simply fail
\ncommercially, and it’s unusual for one to succeed enough for knockoffs
\nto be a concern.<\/p>\n

So how did you come to make a tool that is responsible for 35% of all the internet traffic in the world?<\/i><\/p>\n

BitTorrent is a tool for file distribution which I wrote. It’s allows
\npeople who are downloading something to automatically upload it at the
\nsame time, so a very large piece of content can be delivered to a lot
\nof people without costing a huge amount of money to whoever made it
\navailable initially. It works very well, so it’s wound up using a lot
\nof bandwidth.<\/p>\n

How did you get people to use it in the beginning?<\/i><\/p>\n

I made a useful tool and gave it away for free. It was handy enough to become popular.<\/p>\n

Make any money off of it?<\/i><\/p>\n

The company<\/a> raised some investment money, and I’m currently employed working there.<\/p>\n

How long have you been interested in puzzles?<\/i><\/p>\n

I got obsessed with the Rubik’s Cube when I was in high school, and
\nfigured out a solution to it on my own back then. It wasn’t a good
\nsolution, and it took me several months of constant playing with it to
\nfind, but for a pre-teen to find a solution without any help is pretty
\ngood.<\/p>\n

For the Rubik’s cube aficionado’s out there how does your solution work?<\/i><\/p>\n

I solve the bottom edges, then three of the bottom corners, then use
\nthe missing bottom corner to quickly solve three of the middle layer
\npieces, then do the last bottom corner, then use F-U2FU2RUR- to finish
\nthe middle layer. Then I orient the top edges using FURU-R-F-, then
\norient the top corners using RUR-URUUR-, then position the top edges
\nusing R2B-RL-U2R-LF2BR2 and finally position the top corners by
\nkeyholing using F-BF and its inverse. (When I teach people I show them
\nusing FB2F, because there’s no inverse and alternating to learn with
\nthat one).<\/p>\n

How fast can you solve a Rubik’s cube?<\/i><\/p>\n

A bit less than a minute and a half. I’m not particularly fast – I’m very bad at spotting the positions of pieces.<\/p>\n

Was it your fascination with mathematics that brought you to puzzles?<\/i><\/p>\n

Not really, I’d say the same thing which makes me interested in math
\nmakes me interested in puzzles, although they aren’t directly related.
\nMy familiarity with computational complexity gives some important
\ninsights into the fundamental nature of certain kinds of puzzles
\nthough, particularly burrs.<\/p>\n

What kind of puzzles do you make?<\/i><\/p>\n

My main interest started out being twisty puzzles<\/a>, loosely defined as
\n‘puzzles like the Rubik’s Cube’. It generally includes puzzles in which
\nthere are a bunch of identical pieces and several operations which
\npermute those pieces, and you scramble it and the puzzle is to
\nunscramble it. Puzzles of this form have a number of nice properties:
\nThey’re always physically one piece so parts don’t get lost, they’re
\nmuch easier to unsolve than to solve, and it’s possible to invent one
\nwithout knowing how to solve it. (You can see videos of twisty puzzles here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I’ve more recently gotten interested in burrs, since I learned how to
\nuse Burrtools<\/a>. I’m too lazy to work on burrs unaided. I generally try
\nto make my burrs be all identical pieces, for aesthetic reasons, and
\nbecause it’s a criterion which forces me to actually do some work on
\nthe puzzle myself instead of blindly giving Burrtools a set of
\nconstraints and using whatever result it spits out. (This is an example of a burr puzzle.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

My other strange puzzle interest is puzzle rings. (Here is an example of a puzzle ring)<\/a> Almost all puzzle
\nrings made for the last several hundred years have been the exact same
\ndesign, which is a very good design but there are lots of other
\npossibilities to explore. Puzzle rings turn out to be a very
\ndistinctive genre of puzzle, which most closely resemble packing
\npuzzles in that they come apart easily and are hard to put back
\ntogether again, but they don’t come apart completely and have subtle
\naspects of how the rings interlock which are most of the interest of
\nthe puzzle and which there really isn’t an analogue to in any other
\ntype of puzzle.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I’ll do a puzzle which is in a genre other than one of
\nthose, but my general approach is to take an interest in something and
\ngo very deep in studying that one thing.<\/p>\n

Most of my twisty puzzle inventions wind up being collaborations with
\nOskar van Deventer<\/a>, and he’s done a bunch of work on instantiating my
\npuzzle ring designs as well, which is why so many of my designs are on
\nOskar’s shapeways<\/a> shop. Burrtools is able to export directly to stl,
\nwhich is where all the files in my shop came from.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

When designing a puzzle do you start at the end? or at the beginning? Do you start with the solution or the problem?<\/p>\n

Your question presupposes a process where the puzzle inventor comes up
\nwith a secret which is then hidden from the solver. Most of my designs
\nare so simple that it would be impossible to follow such a process –
\nthe design constraints imposed by how it works make it challenging to
\ncome up with a puzzle at all, much less one which follows very
\npreconceived notions of how it should work. It’s an extreme version of
\nform following function.<\/p>\n

Explain the “form following function” issues behind puzzle design for us..<\/i><\/p>\n

A lot of my interest in puzzles is in trying to explain to people that
\neven very simple motions in 3-space are much more mathematically
\nobscure than people think they are. Even Cartesian coordinates are a
\nhack which happen to provide a simple construction of 3-space, but wind
\nup making most of 3-space’s fundamental properties appear to be spooky
\ncoincidences rather than being at the center of how it works. When I
\nsay this usually people have no idea what I’m talking about, but when
\npeople play with my puzzles the intuition gets across. Most of my
\npuzzle ideas are based on some notion of movement, and that function
\nalmost entirely dictates the form of the puzzles, because 3d movement
\nhas very strong mathematical underpinning which it’s impossible to make
\nsmall stylistic variants of.<\/p>\n

What software do you use to make your puzzles?<\/i><\/p>\n

I generally use Burrtools<\/a> for my burr puzzles. For our collaborations
\nOskar uses Solidworks, Rhino, and miscellaneous utilities. For
\nspecifying puzzle rings, I generally use ascii art<\/a> \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n

<\/pre>\n
Above is an image of the Ascii art, because our CMS is not equipped to handle it. <\/p>\n
Could you recommend any of the tools you use?<\/i> <\/p>\n
Burrtools<\/a> is an excellent tool for making burr puzzles, but it’s
\nextremely special purpose. Solidworks has a great history function,
\nwhich allows you to parametrize your model so that individual
\ndimensions can be altered and everything they interact with can be
\nautomatically adjusted to go along with it, which can make some changes
\nbe done in literally seconds which would otherwise require redoing the
\nwhole thing from scratch. Rhino is good for some transforms done on
\nfinished meshes which Solidworks is incapable of, like bending a helix.
\nAscii art I can’t recommend in general \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
What brought you to Shapeways?<\/i><\/p>\n
I think I first saw it when Oskar started posting things on it.<\/p>\n
Why are you interested in 3D fabrication?<\/i><\/p>\n
Many of my designs are so convoluted that it would be prohibitively
\ndifficult to make them with any process other than 3d printing, and
\neven for ones which can be made in other ways, the amount of work
\nnecessary to do multiple revisions or even sometimes to make a single
\nprototype is much less when done via 3d printing, and sometimes even
\ncost competitive if the pieces are made small.<\/p>\n
Do you think that 3D printing will become mainstream or be for a niche?<\/i><\/p>\n
3D printing as already fairly mainstream, in that it’s a common
\npractice to 3d print a master which is then cast afterwards for
\ncommercial parts. If prices get down to somewhere around a fifth to a
\ntenth where they are now you’ll start seeing 3d printed parts as a
\nnormal process for making consumer items, particularly if the Z axis
\nresolution is improved a lot.
<\/i><\/p>\n
The improvement of Z axis resolution(in layer resolution) is a good
\npoint. Do you see 3D printing moving forward with everyone having their
\nown printer? Or would limitations such as this hold back such a
\ndevelopment?<\/p>\n
3d printers are expensive enough that it doesn’t make sense for people
\nto own them individually, since they mostly sit around unused and the amortized expenses are going up in smoke in that case (this is actually
\ntrue of 2d printers as well – those things are a such a ripoff). Moving
\ntowards a person or company owning a printer and taking orders from
\nother people to do on it has been a huge improvement in how 3d printing
\nis done, so no, I don’t see anyone owning their own 3d printer any time
\nsoon. If anything we’ll see an extension to the outsource model, where
\ncompanies own geographically distributed printers and are able to print
\nsomething physically close to you to have it ship faster.

<\/p>\n
If 3D printing does become a process to make consumer items which items
\ndo you see it being used for? Do you see it changing society,
\nmanufacturing etc. or will the impact be more limited?<\/i><\/p>\n
I think 3d printing is likely to result in a wider variety of products,
\nmade in shorter runs than they have been to date. There might also
\nstart being customization of shapes as well as colors like we have
\ntoday, and possibly a lot of shapes in products which cause serious
\ndifficulties for traditional manufacturing processes, although the
\ntechnical limitations of traditional methods aren’t all that onerous,
\nso I expect that to be a smaller phenomenon than one might hope.<\/p>\n
Oskar informs me that you said the puzzle ring designs are all
\nprintable in metal<\/a>, and the price of the 6-banded design is about $20, which is
\ncomparable to the cheapest puzzle rings bade with traditional
\ntechniques and simpler designs, so it appears that there is now at
\nleast one product for which 3d printing is just plain better and
\ncheaper. Puzzle rings are a bit exceptional though, as they involve
\nvery little material, very precise workmanship, and have shapes which
\nare uniquely challenging. Any chance that white gold and platinum will
\nbecome available as printing materials? \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
Gold maybe, white gold less sure, platinum not in the near term.<\/p>\n
What do you think of Shapeways what should we change, what should stay the same? <\/i><\/p>\n
The process for people to order a piece  if they aren’t uploading
\nanything needs to be streamlined a lot. Individual sellers need more
\ncontrol over how their shops look and are organised, for example right
\nnow if Oskar were to upload multiple sizes of one of the ring designs
\nthey’d all be displayed on the top level and completely clutter up his
\nshop. There are also needs to be better SEO. For example, right now if
\nyou make an improved version of a model you have to upload it
\nseparately and take down the old version, completely breaking all
\nhyperlinks to the old one. Finally, Shapeways is currently very
\nunforgiving about requiring absolutely watertight models for printing,
\nand it would be nice if it did a reasonable job of accepting things
\nwhich were almost, but not quite, watertight.<\/p>\n
We should be providing you guys with significant improvements to the organization of Shops and the multiple sizes in two weeks or so. The “versioning” issue is rather complex for us to solve but we are working on it. The watertight issue is also something we’re trying to improve.<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You’ve said that “my general approach is to take an interest in
\nsomething and go very deep in studying that one thing.” Do you think
\nthat this way of doing things is typical of an inventor? a coder? A
\npuzzle person?<\/i><\/p>\n
I think you have to do that to some extent to come up with an original
\ninvention. It’s hard to come up with an original idea about something
\nif you just give it a cursory examination while other people have
\nthought about it deeply for a long time. The hardcore puzzle enthusiast
\ncommunity tends to have broader interests, but I suppose that’s a bit
\nmisleading since they’re vastly outnumbered by, for example, people who
\nare only interested in crosswords. Programmers used to all be widely
\ndiversified, but that’s becoming less so since we now have clear
\nspecialties in programming and languages which have meaningful
\ndifferences instead of just being worse versions of C.<\/p>\n
Why is no one implementing IPv6?<\/i><\/p>\n
There isn’t much clear benefit from it. What I’d really like to see is
\nfor wireless router manufacturers to have UPnP port forwarding turned
\non by default. Most of them have it built but turned off by default,
\nfor no apparent reason.<\/p>\n
With HTML5 will it be possible to use a code snippet that you can put
\non any web page to turn that page into its own tracker, magnet URI, p2p
\nclient, player the whole shebang?  <\/i><\/p>\n
\nTrackers need to have some persistent state, which I don’t think HTML5
\nprovides. The embedded video functionality is interesting though, I
\nguess will soon find out if flash is more than just a video-playing gimmick.                                                                                                                                                                                                            <\/p>\n