Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports - <AUTHOR> https://nintendosmash.com/over-three-billion-people-worldwide-now-play-video-games-study-reports/ <comment><USER2> _Ghosts of Tsushima_ may be the best Playstation game I have played EVER. It's a testament to how late in the console release cycle, developers are just now mastering internals. It's the ideal video game: open world, 13-century feudal Japan, Age of the Samurai. High contrast "Kurosawa" mode, 4K HDR is cinematically photoreal. I really hope it remains a Major IP for many years to come ;)

[https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2020-shading- cours...](https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2020-shading-course/)

<comment><USER3> I just finished playing through Horizon Zero Dawn which had been untouched, collecting dust on the shelf for a couple years. Found more time in the pandemic and I'm wondering what else I've missed out on! The only other titles I've played with great acclaim are God of War and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

From a brief wiki search, it seems outside of Nintendo, studios only tend to have one-hit wonders. I never played the Infamous games, but will take you on your word on Ghosts of Tsushima.

<comment><USER4> Since you liked Horizon Zero Dawn:

\- Witcher 3 brought me back to gaming after a 10+ year hiatus. While not perfect, it's the best/most immersive game I have ever played. Thanks to truly incredible writing, an interesting, engaging world where small side quests are some of the best content, good graphics that still hold up very well (especially with mods on PC, but just fine on console). All built on a foundation of very solid combat and gameplay.

\- "Nier Automata" is an unusual experience that smoothly blends very different combat styles and has a mind-boggling, thought-provoking story.

<comment><USER5> Do you need to play Witcher 1 & 2?

<comment><USER6> I watched the TV series first, and Witcher 3 has a much better and coherent story than the TV show even though the game picks up after the events of Witcher 1/2\. I finished the game mostly for the stories.

<comment><USER7> tbf the TV show was pretty convoluted with time jumping all over the place

<comment><USER8> That's because it's based on the books which are a collections of shorter stories (at least the first one iirc).

<comment><USER9> They could've very easily had text on the screen saying what time period the current scene was in. It seems like they left it out deliberately for artistic reasons and many people have been confused as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

<comment><USER11> I still do play solitaire. I taught a few variations to my kids early on when the pandemic locked us at home. I don't judge either style of game as better or worse than the other... just different. Video games are clearly richer games, but the conversations I had with my family growing up were often while sitting around a table playing card games.

<comment><USER12> > Video games are clearly richer games

I don't know, if you include Magic the Gathering in the card games pile it's definitely competitive on the "richness"[0] spectrum against most video games.

Though in the current apocalypse, there's been an uptick in video game forms of Magic, and even a sharp rise in people playing over the internet by pointing a webcam at their table.

[0]: Pun not intended, but it's undeniably also expensive...

<comment><USER13> Several versions of traditional solitaire are extremely deep games when you try and maximize your odds of winning. Video games can be mindless or mind bending puzzles.

Which is why I think lumping all video games into a single category is meaningless. Beat Saber and Minecraft have little in common.

<comment><USER12> > _Beat Saber and Minecraft have little in common._

They're both high profile VR games.

<comment><USER14> Missing the point. Minecraft started as a creative style game that hit massive popularity in all age groups, and encouraged players to build to their heart's content without much of a goal. It didn't start in VR as well.

Beat Sabor is one of the first "killer app" VR games, with a clear goal with emphasis on reaction time and immersion using the VR tech behind it.

Both are played very differently, the former a game you come back to to refine your work over and over in a creative way, the other using reaction time to score better.

<comment><USER15> > using reaction time to score better

Having never heard of Beat Sabor, this made me think it sounds like Guitar Hero. YouTube confirms. I really did not ever get the appeal of GH, but BS looks pretty fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Analysts point out that almost half of the accounted three billion are those > who play only on smartphones or mobile devices. This segment is also ahead > of all others in terms of growth.

This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are happening in a high growth market.

<comment><USER17> It is so very depressing. Nearly every game released by those companies is an ad riddled garbage fire.

It's an affront to what makes gaming fun. They are "games" in the same sense that slot machines are "games". They aren't games in the sense that non-mobile gamers talk about.

<comment><USER18> At least those games don't take over your complete life the way big online games. And don't lead to those playing often overnight, am addicted, am sleep deprived raging gamer situations.

<comment><USER19> Have you seen the hours some people put into farmville and farmville-like games?

Overnight play? Checked.

Addicted? Checked.

Sleep deprived? Checked.

Physical pain from holding the phone and looking at a small screen? Checked.

Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social aspect has a negative turn.

<comment><USER18> I know farmville, candy crush and the like playing people. I also know AAA online pubg, world of warcraft etc games playing people. The worst behavior I have seen definitely did not came from farmville candy crush crowd.

Also, overall, steam sales seems to cost way more money I have ever seen being spent on games. And not just that, spending a lot of money on steam sales is point of pride for gamers - who ten turn around and act all superior over causual player ... spending less money (or no money) overall.

> Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social > aspect has a negative turn.

Rage and affected mood are two different things. But again, the level of anger or irritability in relation with farmville are super mild compared to what I have seen in pc/console gamers.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

The most irritable to me is the level of hypocrisy pc/console gamers display when they complain about causual games.

<comment><USER19> Personally I have observed a person with worse farmville addiction than any pc related addiction I have personally seen. Two accounts on farmville, one on a farmville-clone, each three played at the same time competitive for top ranking, with guilds and guild drama, and candy-crush games on the side.

If we are talking about spending, thankfully the above person did at least restrict themselves to <$100 per months on boosters (or at least that what they told me), but you should be aware that in-store revenue outnumber sales revenue in basically ever game regardless if its on phone or pc (not sure about console but my guess is that the same is true). There is a reason why almost every game company has shifted focus away from game sales and into in- game item sales.

> Rage and affected mood are two different things.

No. Mood swings because of a game is the same regardless if its short bursts or long and moody. If a person allow a game (and the social groups in it) to have lasting negative effect on their mood then that is a problem regardless what kind of game it is.

<comment><USER18> Rage as in yelling, hitting table with fist, swearing, throwing cell phone accross the room because someone called and he lost match on pc. It is absolutely different then "mood swing" which is used for range of things including mild irritability.

The people I had observed having issues basically played to the point of failing school classes due to chronic sleep deprivation, had atrocious performance in work post gaming session (he talked about playi by game till morning openly) or basically checked out of family life entirely making partner basically single. Let's say that formely gaming friendly wife build up huge aversion toward games.

I knew multiple of these and none of them played farmvile nor anything like that.

I believe people like your friend exist, the farmville top cant be composed of people having healthy relationships and jobs. But they are not around me. Around me the worst were among pc/console players, usually people who self identified as gamers and took it as point of pride.

<comment><USER19> Maybe rage is a symptom of poorly management of stress and negative emotions? Cars do not cause road rage. People who throw childish temper tantrums is not controlled by the activity, be that driving, gameing, cooking, gambling, fishing, cleaning, sports, constructing, knitting, (so far all places where I have seen rage) or what have you. Childish temper tantrums occurs in all places where people are, and especially places where people who struggle emotionally may go to, and where they might be stressed or be impacted by a negative event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That 3 billion people play some sort of games (particularly on mobile) is not at all surprising to me.

I would guess that number correlates to "90% of people under a certain age (50??) who have access to a device".

That 1.5 billion play games on PC is shocking to me.

<comment><USER21> I think's that number is reasonable considering any PC can be used for gaming with a small investment. Just adding a $100-$150 GPU can make any old PC from the last decade capable of playing games. That's how gaming has usually worked in third world countries at least.

<comment><USER22> And people usually already have pc for activities outside of gaming. And it's very easy to play any games on pc, and some are free such as open source games and abandonwares (CMIIW).

<comment><USER20> A quick google says there are 1.5 billion pcs in the world (in 2015). I'm guessing they're pretty much assuming most people who have a PC have played some form of game on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a trend that will continue to accelerate. And I think we grossly underestimated how much time and money people are willing to spend on video games. Although, I think production has somewhat plateau'd in the past five years. There's VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.

<comment><USER24> > There's VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the > next five years that will change the gaming landscape.

I have been dreaming of better interfaces (controllers) for games for decades. The Wii, despite it's limited power, was a huge leap forward in how we played games. Unfortunately Nintendo is the only gaming company taking risks while Microsoft and Sony keep doubling down on graphics with the same controllers from 30 years ago. If someone made a non-VR console with VR-style controllers it would be a huge leap. Instead we keep getting the same old immersion- killing 4-button-mashing consoles and games with upgraded graphics cards.

<comment><USER25> Keep in mind that 1/3 of the population suffer from motion sickness, so for them (I'm in this group) VR isn't an option for the most part.

Of course if this is a solvable problem - those who otherwise suffer from motion sickness are symptom-free in any VR application - then I agree VR could have a bright future.

<comment><USER26> I get quite motion-sick. Boat rides are - at best - mildly unpleasant.

After trying the oculus dk1 roller coaster demo, I was incapable of doing anything for 4-5 hours and still felt sick days later.

I play beat saber regularly; taking off the vive after an hour I feel mildly disoriented for about half a minute and then I am fine. The tech has progressed tremendously and no longer gives me any trouble (which may not hold true for everyone but it's definitely been fine for me)!

<comment> squeaky-clean A big part of it is does your ingame motion match your real world motion. In games like Beat Saber the only movements are from you physically moving. I've had a VR headset for maybe 4 years now and can still only play racing games for about an hour before motion sickness starts to settle in. I bet the roller coaster demo would be much less disorienting if one sat in a motion simulator. I'd love to own one eventually for my sim-racing setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Everyone I know plays something: DoTA, candy crush, Codenames, Jackbox, online cards, Skyrim, Zelda, Witcher, DnD on Foundry, even my old relatives play various games on mobile and iPad. Whereas, the younger, especially male, people I know almost all have a gaming system of one kind or another.

I am very into Starcraft myself. It is a wonderful combination of speed, strategy, economics, deception, and accuracy.

<comment><USER28> Most of the friends I have don't play video games. There are both bubbles where everybody plays as well as bubbles where playing video games as an adult is a very foreign concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone who doesn't play any games _at all_ and looking for a new hobby, would you recommend picking this up as one? if so, which platform/games would you recommend? (something light/fun)

some background:

I'm 45, I don't think I can handle anything too intense (even watching TV gets my heart pounding, I get too immersed and don't exactly enjoy too much adrenaline); I used to enjoy the Atari console in the 80s and then later played games on my Apple IIc and then PC, up to around year 2000 or so. Now I own an iPhone SE and Macbook air 2015, so nothing too powerful. I don't have a TV (but a decent computer screen).

EDIT: so many great suggestions for things I didn't know existed. Thank you so much!

<comment><USER30> There are tons of non-intense video games! It's not all shooters, thankfully. Especially building/management style games, turn-based games, and role-playing games can be calm.

Personal favorites: FTL: Faster Than Light. Not turn-based, so can get a little heated every now and then but generally pretty calm ime. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Li...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Light/)

The Civilization series is all turn based and as long as you play against the computer you get to take as long as you like for each turn. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/Sid_Meiers_Civiliz...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_VI/)

Cities: Skylines! Love trying my hand at infrastructure design. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710](https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710)

Prison Architect [https://store.steampowered.com/app/233450](https://store.steampowered.com/app/233450)

I've heard good things about Factorio. If you want to dip your toes into first person games you should try the Portal series, which has a bit more action but not too much imo.

These all will work fine on your Macbook Air!

<comment><USER22> I don't think Factorio is good recommendation here. It's kinda intense with biter on, and trains.

Stardew Valley should be the alternative.

<comment><USER30> Ohh how could I forget Stardew Valley! That game is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is always this disconnect when I read stuff like this

3 billion people is 30% or of 3 people. Ok, we go on OkCupid, we find the question "Do you enjoy playing video games" and we set that as a criteria for matches. Your matches will drop to > 1% of the population, at least as a male looking for female.

Checking another dating site that has things people like. The site claims 10 million users, only 200k have selected "like games" or 2%, vastly different than the article's claimed 30%

I get some of the reasons for the difference like not considering yourself a gamer yet plays Covet Fashion an hour a day.

Still, in daily life the number of people I meet who would claim to like games in any form doesn't match that 30% number.

<comment><USER32> Likely because they count mobile games in these figures but people don't count them when talking about gaming on a dating profile.

Virtually everyone you know probably tried Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, or flappy bird. Most of them probably have at least one game like that installed on their phone today that they play on the toilet or whatever. But they don't consider themselves gamers.

<comment><USER33> My 75 years old mother plays bubble shooters, dots & other games of that sort probably as much or more than I play _any_ games - and I'm a game developer.

<comment><USER34> So out of curiosity, given the above discussion, would she consider herself a gamer? Would you consider her a gamer?

<comment><USER35> She is clearly a gamer if words have meaning.

<comment><USER32> Words only have meaning because of the way people use them. See how the meaning of "literally" has changed in the last decade for an example.

To most people the term gamer does not precisely mean "one who plays games." The type of games and immersion in gaming culture are factors that people consider when labeling themselves and others "gamers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The bit many people are not realizing is that e-sports will overtake current sports within the next few decades.

For now, e-sports is at that sweet spot of good production value and a reasonable amount of advertising. I predict we'll be back to sitting through 3-5 minutes of commercials for every 15 minutes of gameplay within the next decade as advertisers realize how willing gamers are to spend money on virtual stuff.

<comment><USER37> There will be too much competition from "casts". While the top 1% can be seen between commercials, the top 5% are cast on Twitch, commercial free, by a sole caster surviving on Twitch and Patreon. The level of competition will be very similar, possibly with more variety in the top 5%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Even so, society still stereotype video games and video gamers as juvenile and waste of time.

This is apparent especially in dating circles, where more often than not, listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex.

<comment><USER39> Gaming IS a waste of time, as are a number of hobbies. The question is really if you care that you're wasting your time.

<comment><USER40> According to your definition, when is time not wasted?

<comment><USER41> I think he means waste as in "doing something that carries no real benefit to yourself", and if that's the case then you're probably grinding instead of actually enjoying a game.

FF VII teaches you real values. LoL teaches you absolutely nothing besides resilience when getting bashed for going 0/1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I remember being a college freshman in 2001 and playing PC games, namely Rogue Spear and Counter-Strike online with friends in my dorm room. I talked with them on a headset with a microphone using Roger Wilco and Battlecom. A lot of the guys I lived with in the dorm thought it was really weird that I talked to people online playing video games. Some would make fun of me.

Then Halo came out in November, and in the spring semester, when everyone returned to school after the holidays, and a lot of people had new XBoxes with Halo, nobody thought it was weird anymore. Almost overnight, online video games became normalized, at least to college age dudes.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think the greatest video game to be played is life. Unfortunately not many people can afford to play it the fun way and things start to get boring and time start to fly by and people get drawn into simulations of some subset of it, which begs the question, shouldn't life simply be a "simulation" of some subset of something?

What is interesting is that an affirmative to this question often makes life more "game-like" and in terms more open to the notion of it capable of being "fun to play" (and vice versa). Though once again not many people would wholeheartedly appreciate this Insight. Very unfortunately life is often filled with suffering and miseries and most (including myself) would often get blinded and overlook the nice things, as well as its game-like nature.

Perhaps getting into one of these man-made simulators is not that bad of a thing, especially if it engages the social module and in some way enriches the overall gameplay of life.

I think many progresses in science & technologies are often hindered by our tendencies to not appreciate games. As a (post)modern civilisation we often take things too seriously. Probably a feature not a bug! But on a more individual level I think taking things more lightly (while still being a responsible human being) would improve the overall quality of life. That is something I'm still trying to learn.

<comment><USER35> Liked this comment more than an upvote could say.

I am trying to be less serious as well. It's easy to fall into the trap of be highly critical, highly methodical and just overall taking everything at serious face value, but where is the joy in that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This doesn't surprise me at all, I spend 5x times more money on video games per year than dev education and I don't even game that much, maybe once a month. Video game markets just gonna keep getting bigger.

</comment><comment><USER44> I talked to an executive at Skillz a few years ago and she told me that one of their main growth strategies was actually to target prospective women that could be gamers. The way it worked was that a few of Skillz executives were in this market, women who loved video gaming but businesses at the time refused to recognize it.

Imagine a woman who plays mobile games just to kill time at the bus stop, etc. Exec told me that she had friends like this and she has really easily gotten them to adopt all sorts of gaming and knew how easy it was to do this.

So when they looked at it like that, the market for people who were ignored was massive and that's one of the reasons why they grew so fast.

I think another underserved video game niche is our elderly... but maybe that's a separate discussion

<comment><USER45> So, back in the day I worked with a lot of gaming companies on their advertising. They would point blank refuse to target women because "women don't play games". Even when we demonstrated that women made up a really sizable proportion of their audience, they wouldn't budge.

Really brought it home to me that so much bias is reproduced through the biases of advertisers, rather than the platforms.

<comment><USER44> They'll pay for it when more startups catch on and grow like mad and compete with them

<comment><USER45> In my experience, the startups were the worst for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My PS4 pro has been a trusted companion through the pandemic.. I have cherished playing Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us 2

<comment><USER44> I see we have similar taste, might I recommend assasin's creed? Amazing graphics and the story mode is pretty phenomenal, kind of a greek mythology nerd so that's why I'm so drawn to it.

<comment><USER47> In normal times I would travel to Greece multiple times a year. I acquired a 4k projector so I could fill a wall with the game. It's been a nice substitute.

<comment><USER44> Ah man Greece sounds so nice right now... big images are the way to go with that game, so much granular detail that you can't catch without them

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> When The AI creates itself, it will control humans by creating video games.

</comment><comment><USER49> Anything good on Linux these days?

<comment><USER16> [https://store.steampowered.com/linux](https://store.steampowered.com/linux)

If a game is going to support Windows + macOS than it isn't much more work to also support Linux these days. There are many games released on Linux every year.

<comment><USER50> That's right, Proton is amazing. I've been playing classics like Rome Total War on my Linux setup

<comment><USER51> Beyond that, most game devs today use established engines like Unity or Unreal, which typically have one-click build buttons for all major platforms. The level of abstraction has been raised, which affects not only game logic but even things like graphics APIs (DirectX vs Vulkan vs Metal) and packaging (installer, icons, etc). The bar has never been lower to throw in Linux support, even if you don't expect a huge market.

<comment><USER52> I've seen it argued that releasing a Linux version (even using Unity/Unreal) is worse than releasing a Windows version that runs on Proton, because the Windows API is stabler and the Linux version will inevitably bitrot without continual updates.

<comment><USER53> There's a serious rumor that this is what actually killed rocket league on Linux. Why maintain a fork if proton is better anyway?

<comment><USER54> Proton is good, but in no measure 'better'. Linux isn't as unstable as everyone makes it out to be. Quite the opposite. Proton still has to work on linux, afterall. If Linux support bitrots quickly, then so does everyone dependent on proton.

<comment><USER55> While Linux might not be as unstable as everyone makes it out to be, your argument doesn't support that at all. The point is Valve maintains Proton so that everyone and their mum doesn't need to maintain their own Linux fork that'll bitrot. Without an entity maintaining Proton it could stop working in a few months for all we know.

<comment><USER54> Yes, and nobody knew how to deploy or use Linux applications until Docker came along and saved us all.

<comment><USER55> I for one knew how to deploy Linux applications long before Docker but know nothing about the GPU/graphics stack on Linux which is crucial to game devs, and FWIW I ran into graphics problems when I tried Ubuntu Desktop (yeah, just the vanilla Desktop, not gaming) on my Nvidia GPU last year, so again your snarky response contains no relevant info at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> My father still does crosswords daily. Much of this amounts to digitised Soduku, Crosswords, Solitaire etc.. - passing time on light fare.

A new Netflix special on games 'High Score' touches on the gender issues and how some games for whatever reason have entirely different demographic appeal: Pac Man and Tetris were (still in the later case) disproportionately popular among women.

The medium obviously allows for much more, but we can't ignore the social parallels.

</comment><comment><USER57> > However, only about 250 million people are active console users who > regularly buy new games for them. Although they represent only 8% of the > total number of gamers, this is the group with the highest revenue per > person.

Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?

<comment><USER58> PCs are more expensive than consoles, so one might be led to think that PC gamers have more money than console gamers and thus spend more on games than their console brethrens.

<comment><USER12> PCs are definitely not more expensive than consoles when you compare the TCO over a year or two, and that gulf keeps getting wider the longer you're on PC.

This was true even before Steam sales and Humble Bundle and free games on the Epic Store and and and...

<comment><USER59> Notwithstanding PCs are not locked down platforms, which can make gaming much cheaper for.. reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I wish there was a better way to preserve the history of video games, as operating systems become incompatible, emulators become obsolete, and some things just can't be emulated accurately or faithfully anyway (like the 3DS).

Ironically, YouTube is probably the best archive of video games that we have.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've become a big player of board games online, mostly terraforming Mars. Given how fast this is spreading I wouldn't be surprised if we found that gaming overtakes every entertainment option around.

</comment><comment><USER62> The a only significant when you factor in time played and frequency.

</comment><comment><USER63> I was just going through the entire mame archive for hours.

Are there any fun games?

</comment><comment><USER64> The only thing I play nowadays are mobile versions of board games, to sharpen my skills for the moment we get together again

</comment><comment><USER65> I think more will play if quickly trying out games was easy. E.g. I wanted to try out Doom Eternal yesterday without having to buy it first in case I didn't like it; couldn't find how to do that and gave up after 20 mins.

<comment><USER66> Xbox Game Pass is like Netflix for games, you pay a small subscription each month and get to essentially rent hundreds of games. Sounds like it might be what you're after.

<comment><USER65> Unfortunately I don't have an xbox (kids at home so worried of addiction) and play very occasionally. I wouldn't mind for a service that allows to rent a game short-term e.g. 5 hours for a dollar - cheap and long enough to try a game without any extra hardware/commitment.

<comment><USER66> In classic Microsoft terrible-at-naming-things fashion, you can get Xbox Game Pass for PC. I'm using it to play the new flight sim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> With so many gamers what does the word even mean anymore?

<comment><USER68> I think that's a very interesting question. "Gamer" has always been a bit of a niche tag but with games now becoming more and more mainstream it will be like calling people that watch movies "moviers", which we don't do since we assume most people enjoy a movie every once in a while.

<comment><USER9> Gamer would be similar to "film buff" in this context, someone who enjoys it much more than normal or makes it part of their identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I mean... what else are we supposed to do all day lol

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks like an addiction getting out of control.

<comment><USER35> What is the difference between video game addiction and other screen related addiction?

<comment><USER71> One is more fun than the others?

<comment><USER35> Maybe they are all the same problem, screens are more compelling than life and this statement is only becoming more true each day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> ... wasting their lives.

<comment><USER73> A wise man once said, "Don't play games, write them"

<comment><USER32> Ah yes. All those game devs with their lofty salaries and excellent working conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> If you count Candy Crush then sure

<comment><USER75> This is such a weird attitude. If someone was to say (figures made up) "over two billion people worldwide now drink beer" then "if you count Budweiser then sure", would be a bizarre response. Candy Crush is clearly a game; this isn't really ambiguous. It's a mass market game that game connoisseurs sneer at, sure, but it's a game.

<comment><USER76> I get your point, but I think it's more accurately framed like so:

"Over three billion people are now drinkers"

        "If you count having a glass of wine once a week then sure"

The perceived snobbery is less about whether these people are playing games and more about whether they can be accurately described as "gamers", a term which has meaning beyond simply "players of any game(s)" due to its many (largely negative) connotations.

<comment><USER77> Adding onto this, imagine how you would feel if someone said

"There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide"

But then you learned that only 500 million were really fluent, and the rest ranged from broken Spanish that was enough to get by in a Spanish speaking country to people who were forced to take a Spanish class in highschool and never used it again.

I think this concept of "fluency" in games is probably a more useful metric. The question is, if I dump you in front of a game that you've never played before, but it conforms to the language of video game design, how quickly can you beat it? I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example.[1]

You could extend the metaphor further, for example Spanish is spoken in many different ways around the globe, and therefore some people who speak one dialect of Spanish can't understand another dialect of Spanish. The same could be true for games, and we would need to classify and understand these dialects.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw) Interesting video talking about what games are like for a non-gamer, shows an example of not understanding how to move the camera and the player at the same time.

<comment><USER75> > I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not > understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example

Now would someone who only played NES games, or Civilization VI, or Papers Please. Are we defining 'games' as meaning '3D walk-y about-y games', here?

<comment><USER78> Given the notion of "fluency" proposed by the GP, the idea would be that a "fluent" gamer would not be described with "played only X games". You would be fluent if you could "communicate" in multiple genres -- having a sufficiently thorough vocabulary.

<comment><USER79> But this is just weird gatekeeping. You could for example be extremely fluent in a single genre but uninterested in others. For example I've been playing games for over 30 years and don't really know the genre conventions of match-3 games beyond the obvious. Similarly I know very little about MOBAs or gacha style games or visual novels. And I'm a game designer!

IMO one of the worst aspects of modern "gamer" culture is this insistence on purity tests particularly when they're aimed at games that are extremely popular with women.

Even in terms of market segmentation I don't think the distinction of "overall gaming fluency" is very measurable or meaningful.

<comment><USER78> No its a question of categorization.

You can't have the same conversation between someone who plays only candy crush, and someone who plays a wide variety of games. Its like saying that 8 billion people read books -- but 7.9 billion of that only read harry potter. Suddenly that 8 billion readers is far less notable.

There's a scale to your level of hobbyism -- a lot of people only play games as long as their friends do, because its simply a social tool (replacing the mall). The current flavor just happens to fall under video games, but theres no stickiness -- if the next popular thing is laser tag, they'll shift out and never think about games again.

The notion of trying to define this scale as a problem is also largely unique to gaming -- it exists elsewhere without issue. Painting, movies, programming, literature, music, engineering etc there's no issue saying that someone is dipping their toes into the subject, or has purely commercial interest in it (eg I only watch best selling movies, or only marvel) or has an actual interest in it (a -phile, a hacker, etc)

I think the key difference is the prevailing belief that there is no depth to this subject, so the only difference between a casual entrant and a hobbyist and a professional is an arbitrary checklist.

Obviously I disagree -- there is depth, and therefore, there is a difference between "gamers", as they fall between the ranks in understanding that depth. Ofc theres no great metric, and you can't define it in detail, but the difference between a candy-crush-only "gamer" and a genre-agnostic "gamer" and a genre-loving "gamer" and a read-the-literature (what little exists) "gamer" in recognizing and communicating about that depth is readily apparent

<comment><USER79> Yes you can create a taxonomy but is it interesting or useful? If 7.9 billion people only read Harry Potter that's very very significant. If we say "well they're not _real_ readers" that's just being ignorant and gate keeping.

The problem mostly comes from people who define their hobby as their life. I play games a lot and make them professionally but wouldn't call myself a gamer. I don't see my wife playing Match-3 games on her phone as lesser than my wife playing Baldurs Gate. Likewise I can enjoy Sage Solitaire and Escape from Tarkov.

Gaming is mainstream now and people who feel threatened by that need to grow up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> That has to be hella broad in terms of definition.

I'd guess playing a cutting edge PC game at reasonable spec puts you into the top 1% income wise? (gut feel guess)

So 3 billion is presumably anything that has a screen and a game?

Games are big but near half of humanity is a pretty bold claim.

<comment><USER35> This seems more a proxy on how much of humanity is connected by smart phones now. The implication is similarly staggering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Next in news: over 6.5 trillion cigarettes are sold per year.

 _shrug_

I wonder what the public health perception on videogames will be like in 100 years.

<comment><USER82> Healthy, fit people will just continue becoming more and more rare and ascendant in our society.

Though in 100 years we'll have VR that's as seamless as unlocking your phone. Maybe games will be the healthy jacked guys in school through all the incidental exercise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do when someone else executes your idea? - <AUTHOR>

A couple of weeks ago I had an idea for my next app. It was very exciting for me because I usually have trouble coming up with ideas. After a couple weeks, another company released an app that is strikingly similar to what my idea was. And they executed it quite well. That's not to say that I don't think I could do a better job, I do. And I think this could motivate me to make my app even better than it was going to be. But I feel that the worth of my idea has gone down now that somebody else has already make it.
Should I still make my idea, or should I abandon it now that somebody else did it?<p>Thanks for reading, <comment><USER2> Do it anyway.

1) Creating the app is half the battle - executing on distribution is the main thing you'll have to fight.

2) You don't know what their end game for the app is - they might be creating it with a totally different function in mind. So even though up front you may think they've created something identical to what you are, that might not be true.

3) The fact that there's another app out there that does what you are planning on doing further validates that you have a great idea.

4) Don't be concerned with competitors. Phil Libin from Evernote said it best - on the list of top threats to your app's ability to succeed, a competitor's success doesn't even register.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is great advice. You really changed the way I look at it and I now have even more enthusiasm towards making the app!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spent almost 2 years trying to find investors for what some others guys in Cali launched as Gigwalk last May. Major bummer. But nobody executes "your idea" EXACTLY as you envision it so do it anyway. I have had the luxury of watching Gigwalk for almost a year - and it is a lot easier to describe what I'm doing now that I can point to another app and say, "like this, only with features x, y and z that it doesn't have". Also it's a lot easier to know how much capital you might need based on what a competitor has raised. Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, Good to hear from someone who has had something similar happen. Good luck with your project!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I created an app which competes against a ton of others. I'm sort of late to the game but I did one thing better than MOST of them. I made it dead simple to use. My customers love using it and it feels great since I was able to turn a simple idea and made it very easy to use. I went from being on page 6 to being on page 1 (number 3 in Google results).

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with many of the other encouragements said here but I also want to add, think of a new, original idea. The photo space really IS way over saturated. Build something that makes a difference and improve peoples' lives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and I agree with you. The photo space is over saturated. But my app isn't a photo app. My app will have an element of nostalgia to it. It will let people remember important events and moments in there lives. It will trigger one of the strongest human emotions. So I don't like to think of my app as a photo app, it provides a token, a window into someone's past. Do you see what I am saying? It will be a very tough app to make, and will only work if I do it right. But that is my goal, and hopefully I can achieve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a very similar idea to, been working on it for a while. We pivoted a little. t

This seems to be a very popular genera right now, maybe it has to do with how easy it is to create a photo app?

</comment><comment><USER7> You are a creator. Think about next idea. I share a lot of new app ideas using #appIdea

</comment><comment><USER8> Just curious, what's the app? Just want to know whether it's well known or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> The app that is very similar to my idea is sharypic: [http://gigaom.com/2012/02/29/with-new-app-sharypic-aims- to-b...](http://gigaom.com/2012/02/29/with-new-app-sharypic-aims-to-be- instagram-for-events/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Simple. Execute better.

</comment><comment><USER10> If nothing else, make the app as practice for taking your ideas from concept to reality.

Besides, you can always compete on metrics other than execution, i.e., price or features.</comment>


PayPal Goes In-Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/15/paypal-here/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> Yeah, sure. I'll let someone use a smart phone to take a picture of my credit card. That has to be the dumbest idea ever.

<comment><USER3> Eliminating the merchant account is the stroke of genius. The benefits will outweigh the drawbacks for many people, sellers and buyers alike.

And if you don't want to give someone an imprint of your credit card, you can pay with PayPal, and you are protected against fraud up-front (as opposed to after the fact, as with credit cards). That is an improvement.

<comment><USER4> >And if you don't want to give someone an imprint of your credit card, you can pay with PayPal, and you are protected against fraud up-front

Does the process for doing that involve typing my PayPal password into a device I don't control?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This may be the first serious competitor that Square has had. Paypal knows the payment space very well, has a brand that everybody recognizes, has relations with a lot of merchants, and the Paypal dongle looks better for heavy usage, because of its shape and size (based on the first picture).

<comment><USER6> Paypal does bring with them a strong reputation for enjoying fucking their customers. I and my gf refuse to have anything to do with them, and if they're the only option offered, I simply won't buy.

<comment><USER7> I would argue that this reputation only really applies within the tech echo chamber and that the vast majority of wider society isn't aware of this reputation, and has never heard of Square.

But these same people probably do have a PayPal account, and given that these onerous policies of PayPals are actually in place to protect the consumer I think they stand a good chance making it much more difficult for Square in this market.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I was listening to a morning talk show that was discussing PayPal, and they only said great things about PayPal. I think most of the population likes PayPal, except for the very small percentage which happened to get screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Triangle has always been square's worst enemy.

<comment><USER10> So we're going through the basic shapes for payment companies?

      Square = obvious
      Paypal = Triangle
      Stripe = Rectangle

Extrapolating, the next payment-company-cum-dongle is going to be circular. Some kind of NFC rig perhaps?

<comment><USER11> It looks like a whole dongle-shape industry is brewing. Waiting for the first dongle in the shape of Lady Gaga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I cant wait for paypal to go broke...theres only so long you can dick around the entire market before it comes back to bite you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why couldn't PayPal become more of a innovation company and stop taking ideas from entrepreneurial folks. Errr

</comment><comment><USER14> I saw a "pay with paypal" button on the self checkout at CVS the other day. Has this been around for a while?

<comment><USER3> CVS is still a pilot program, and the technology is pretty recent. PayPal at the POS (with phone number+PIN, not email+password) has been in full release at all Home Depot stores for the last month or two, after an earlier pilot program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one of the very few moments that I wish a company (in this case, obviously Square) has a patent - PayPal sucks!</comment>


Thoughts on Google+: I fucked up. So has Google - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chrismessina/thoughts-on-google-8883844a9ca4

<comment> chestnut-tree This article fills me with horror. I completely disagree with the ideas about privacy. I don't want companies to track me. I don't want a single digital identity. I don't want a future where online tracking is an unquestioned norm.

We need to be more critical of companies that track us. We should be scrutinising their practices more closely, and yet the author asks us to drop our objections and consider the benefits of tracking. These companies aren't open about their data collection practices, so why should we be more open or trustworthy towards them? The information they collect about us gives them far, far more than just an advertising profile about our likes and interests, but they're not going to mention that are they?

Let's consider Google for example. If you have a Google account, Google has your name, date-of-birth, gender, and (possibly) mobile phone number. Couple that with the searches and sites you visit and that is some very personal and private information about you.

Yet, in their privacy policy [1], Google fails to mention:

\- whether the data they collect about you is anonymised (and what they anonymise)

\- how long they keep your data for

\- whether the data they collect about you is disasscociated from your identity. This is important when you consider how personal and revealing your online activity can be when it's tied to your identity.

\- who sees your data at Google. GMail automates scanning of your emails. Does this hold true for all the other data they hold about you? After all, your activity across the web is arguably just as personal and private.

Why does Google not provide this information in their privacy policy? Why are people ok with this? I challenge anyone to explain why, if you were collecting personal information from your users, you would purposely omit the information above from your privacy policy.

Google seems to view privacy in one dimension only: security. Yes, you can't have privacy without security, but security does not equal privacy.

Let's not forget that Google can track you across smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Their tracking reach now even extends to school kids with the introduction of Google Classroom. They are collecting an absolutely gargantuan volume of data.

 _WAKE UP!_ shouts Chris Messina in his article. Yes, let's wake up and stop giving these companies a free pass when it comes to matters of privacy and data collection.

[1] [https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/policies/privacy/](https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/policies/privacy/)

<comment><USER2> Hmm, you clearly didn't catch my drift, which I'll accept blame for — my piece rambles on a bit uncontrollably.

My point was to rethink privacy from the perspective of what we as individuals stand to gain by gathering this data. I then asked: who would you trust to gather and store this information, _on your behalf_? For most people, they wouldn't be able to answer that question — for others, especially technologically privileged individuals / open source libertarians — the answer would be "myself".

Aside from logging in with your username and password, you have few if any opportunities when using apps today to stream your data exhaust into a data vault of your choosing. Rare is the app maker that allows you to export a dump of your data, rarer still is one that openly shares the data it has _about_ you _with_ you.

Curiously, Facebook actually a lot of functionality in this regard through its App Settings page ([https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications)). Google Takeout ([https://www.google.com/settings/takeout](https://www.google.com/settings/takeout)) provides a lot of your data for export, but no one seems to have really built any tools for the individual to take advantage of this trove of information for personal benefit.

What I hear you arguing for is the end of user tracking. Indeed, there are plenty of tools that you can outfit yourself with to that end (Tor, Ghostery, Adblock, Do-not-track, Incognito Mode, and many more). But ultimately you as representative of a class of internet consumer are an outlier. There are for more people on the internet and in the world who unknowingly consent to data collection and then have little upside in the collection of that data. It is those people that Google cares the most about as customers (perhaps in addition to advertisers), and those who are most in the dark about "the privacy boogey man" about which you know plenty, but about which they know nothing but confusion and fear.

My question is how we enfranchise those individuals with the choice — either to not be tracked, be tracked by a party of their choosing, or to somehow do it for themselves so that they reap some of the gains of the data capital they are producing.

<comment> chestnut-tree Thanks for responding.

I can see the value of interrogating your personal analytics. I guess how valuable that is depends on how much activity and content you have invested in these online services. And of course, some companies, as you say, would love for their online services to be your principal digital identity. (Which raises another question: do people want a single digital identity? Or do they prefer multiple, unconnected identities? Or even a single identity that isn't joined up with everthing they do online?)

 _" My question is how we enfranchise those individuals with the choice..."_

A good question and I agree. For me, it's also about giving users the information to understand the implications of making that choice. This is particularly important (in my view) when your personal data is involved. That's one reason why I'm critical of Google. Privacy is important to me and they omit basic and (in my view) essential information about privacy in their privacy policy. This makes the privacy implications of using their services unclear. (And, yes, I realise this all comes down to levels of trust, the interpretation of privacy, the value of the service provided, and how much importance someone ascribes to privacy in the first place.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chris's point seems basically undisputable: tons of engineering talent but not enough vision to gain escape velocity from the massive gravitational pull of Google's wide-ranging needs across all its products.

Remember before you could be signed in with multiple accounts across all google services? Those were the (sucky) days.

I wish G+ were either exclusively focused on utilities (personalized search across services, unified privacy permissions, etc) OR useful/fun social features that could be developed outside the borg's massive scale expectations. Trying to do both seems impossible.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the things that is at least implicit in Chris' post is that software isn't what it used to be. The idea that "identity is the platform" can either be terrifying or empowering (maybe even both), but it is an idea that most people do not understand at all.

Today in order to get most software to work at all you need to agree to an impenetrable Terms of Service agreement and/or bargain away information and data that it is nearly impossible to understand the consequences of at the outset.

We do these things "freely", on the one hand, but we are more often than not very naive when we strike what have become almost daily Faustian bargains.

What's wrong with this picture is not simply that Google (or any other company) is unreliable or conflicted in their duties to be clear, transparent or good willed in their policies. The truth is, eve if they were, most of us aren't paying attention.

More and more, because of the growth and ubiquity of the always-on Internet and the pervasiveness of computing (and sensing), we live in a world in which the environment is made up of software.

The paradox of also living within legal regimes that are mostly still quite naive about the realities of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive computation is that we are constantly being forced to enter into contracts, and make covenants and agreements that are literally impossible to understand.

Again, the bizarro world this has created is one in which software doesn't work unless you enter into a contract that there is every likelihood you will not even notice, let alone comprehend.

What to do?

There's not an easy answer to that question. We need to ask more questions for a start. We need to think about and create alternatives. We need to figure out how to protect ourselves and others from abuses of power. We need to acknowledge that software has become political, whether we like it or not.

<comment><USER5> Articulate and thought provoking. #SDH

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, the only interaction with G+ I've had lately is wondering why the HECK it's ruining google cal.

"Why are events showing up on google cal that I've never heard of?" Turns out anyone who's in your circles on G+ can invite you to events and they who up on your google cal by default.

I was asked to upgrade google cal yesterday. I did, and all of a sudden there was a new calendar with TONS of birthdays spammed everyplace. Turns out now the birthdays on every person in your circles on G+ now show up in a calendar on G cal. You can't seem to delete it either only turn it off.

</comment><comment><USER7> By its very definition, "Google Plus" is all about Google first, and whatever else after. The truth is that Google+ is essentially community support and interests for Google products and services.

When you live Google as Googlers do, it seems like a real social network. But outside that tiny box it's just a slightly over-designed forum.

<comment><USER8> Or a massively over-designed BBS ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This guy curses too much in his post. Lame.

<comment><USER2> And thus my points aren't worth considering? Lame. :P

<comment><USER9> Yeah feel free to clean up your language. It comes off as unprofessional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People on iOS don't use G+ much and this is the evidence :D

~60+ % of wolrds traffic still goes through PC</comment>


Ask YC: Please recommend me an alternative to Google - <AUTHOR>

I've tried others but Google seems to wipe the floor with them all for accuracy. Can anyone recommend a search engine as good as Google that isn't Google? <comment><USER2> I have occasionally found clusty (<http://www.clusty.com/>) to be useful. It needs some more help tuning its direct search results, but the clustering stuff it does is pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.ask.com/> is very fast. Text auto-completing option saves time. Rolling over the binoculars in each result shows a miniature preview of the web page! Image results have zooming roll-overs. Video playback uses JavaScript mini-windows to avoid changing the page.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.altavista.com/> \- Now run by Yahoo but with less clutter than the Yahoo domain.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's this one out called Yahoo.com.

Up and comers. Lots of eyeballs. About to be acquired.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have never found Yahoo to be accurate enough though, that's why I'm asking (see op).

<comment><USER5> Can you provide queries where yahoo.com, google.com, and live.com are differentiable to a significant degree? Just out of curiousity, moreso than critique.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=disception+forum](http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=disception+forum)

[http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=disception+forum&fr=...](http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=disception+forum&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8&rd=r1)

[http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=disception+forum&g...](http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=disception+forum&go=Search&mkt=en- gb&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP)

A little forum I frequent... Direct link to the actual domain in the first result on Google.

<comment><USER5> Yahoo says: "We have included deception forum results - Show only disception forum" (link to the latter is [http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&rd=r1&p=%...](http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&rd=r1&p=%2Bdisception+forum)).

No defense for live.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Lucene in our apps for indexing files and and other usefull things. It is a java based indexing lib. if you are not happy with google or anyone else and have a specific thing in mind, you can use it to create your own search engine.

</comment><comment><USER7> use metasearch if you're not satisfied with google.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think that Google have a great product but I have a natural aversion to using the biggest, most popular of anything...

<comment><USER8> 1) Yet you're posting on YC? 2) That's silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, because this place is bigger than Digg, Reddit and Slashdot combined :eyeroll:

<comment><USER8> Yeah, because this site does the same thing that Digg, Reddit, and /. do...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see your point. I don't think you have one. Back under your bridge now.

<comment><USER9> This place, if you haven't noticed, is nothing like Digg, Reddit or Slashdot. This is for serious people. That's his point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Call for Blogs - <AUTHOR> http://khanlou.com/2016/01/a-call-for-blogs/ <comment><USER2> I found myself in the same position of thinking. When I read twitter I get just a quick emotional response.

I spend lots of efforts not to follow wrong kind of person in the twitter, but it does not help much.

Blogs contain more information and often they provokes more resultative thinking in me.

</comment><comment><USER3> stiobhart.net</comment>


How the pandemic is changing shopping - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/21/pandemic-is-changing-every-aspect-shopping-store-layouts-how-jeans-are-folded/ <comment><USER2> somewhat related - restaurants where they have already got opened or getting soon to (photos, the text is in Russian and doesn't matter much)

[https://www.rbc.ru/photoreport/23/05/2020/5ec785159a794726b1...](https://www.rbc.ru/photoreport/23/05/2020/5ec785159a794726b165afc0?from=from_main)

I think it is a kind of preview of our future covid optimized open floor offices, especially that one [https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/6/87/7...](https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/6/87/755901356275876.jpg) while definitely not that one [https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/4/75/7...](https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/4/75/755901346602754.jpg) . Ultra cool startups would probably do [https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/2/48/7...](https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/590xH/media/img/2/48/755901344996482.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> >"Experience has shown us that loosening restrictions and shelter-in-place orders means a resurgence of disease," said Robert A. Bednarczyk

baseless claim, woven into the story as if it's a fact. This is a first of its kind situation, there's no "experience" and the global experiments are ongoing.

Washington Post is owned by Bezos, who's fortune is tied to Amazon's e-commerce dominance. This sort narrative should be expected from this media publication.</comment>


Apple is stuck in the 90s - <AUTHOR> http://www.ivy.fr/blog/index.php/2008/07/16/90-apple-is-stuck-in-the-90s

<comment><USER2> I wish this would happen. I'm hoping the suit against Psystar will see a ruling that Apple can't stop people from installing OS X on non-Apple machines.

However, part of Apple's OS is that it controls the hardware as well. The Windows and Linux world sometimes doesn't work 100% with the hardware you have from the start - partly because Microsoft and a hypothetical Linux owner don't control what you have in your PC.

I'm guessing that if there is a ruling against Apple, Apple will start licensing OS X to a select few manufacturers. Why would a manufacturer pay for this? Because it would mean getting to use the Apple/Mac trademarks (which Psystar is likely infringing on). Apple's market share could become huge (especially with a hardened Snow Leopard coming). Of course, it's also a risky course. Apple is doing quite well as a closed shop. While opening up has a lot of potential upsides, it also has potential downsides (no one buying iMacs anymore).

Here's to hoping a court will help Apple in a way Apple can't help itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> apple is never going to license macosx to other manufacturers. not so long as steve jobs is alive, anyway.

if they did that, they'd be in the same position as hp, dell, et al: nothing to differentiate their hardware but price, margins getting thinner and thinner every year, having to cut back on r&d, etc.</comment>


Steve Jobs Action Figure (with iPhone and Talk Balloons) - <AUTHOR> http://micgadget.com/9634/phenomenal-steve-jobs-figure-hands-on/

<comment><USER2> There should be an alternate version where he's pointing at something (such as what you're working on) and the speech bubble says "This is shit"

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, by the way, he's not supposed to hold the phone that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Irony in action. Wonder if it's intentional.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts on a simple business idea - <AUTHOR> I run a digital marketing company along with a bunch of other stuff. I saw an ad on Facebook for someone that will teach you to 'rent websites to businesses' even if you don't know how to build website. Of course, I didn't bother to sign up. I actually know how to build sites and have access to my own server.... Which gave me an idea: Rent websites to businesses. Yeah, not very original. I would scroll the yellow pages, find small businesses without a website and email them. Offer oculd be something like $40 a month, rent the site. I build it (super simple site!) and if they stop paying it goes off the internet! I host it on my server and just point a domain name to it. I could even have an upsell of like $10 or $15 per month for simple updates (such as updating a menu?) Thoughts? Is this oversaturated? I tried basic site design before but businesses were being inundated with requests to do this. Seems kind of dumb. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Things like this are done _all the time_ , especially in the medical & insurance fields. Companies will buy up domains like diseasename.com & service-city.com and create a site, do some inbound/"organic" marketing/SEO and then rent it out for the purposes of lead generation.

Some companies that do this in the medical & service field will control the customer communication chain and supply their call center and appointment setting, too.

It can be fairly lucrative if you can get the right niche (medical, malpractice, etc) and are good at inbound marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think doing a simple digital marketing checklist on top of just having a website would be worth while for a small business. My brother runs a small vape shop that helps people quit smoking.

He gets hassled all the time by people wanting to do his marketing for his website, and he cannot tell the difference between someone that is going to help his business and someone who is a snake oil salesman.

</comment><comment><USER4> Feels a little like extortion specially if you've acquired a suitable domain name, but yeah, for a lot of businesses that aren't savvy, seems like a good idea.</comment>


Court says Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/us-facebook-winklevoss-idUSTRE73A5DX20110411 <comment><USER3> If anyone still cares, this was the case that created such an uproar last May when it was widely reported that Mark Zuckerberg had been accused of committing "securities fraud," allegedly adding to his supposedly shady legal woes (prior HN discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1362379>).

In fact, the securities-fraud claim was merely some legal legerdemain by which the Winklevoss brothers sought to set aside the $65 million settlement they had struck with Facebook in their quest to obtain more. It is basically absurd to say that a party settling a legal case must comply with the disclosure laws for making a private placement in offering a stock component as part of a settlement package in a mediation context.

The Ninth Circuit panel here obviously agreed, and the writing was on the wall on this issue even after the oral argument held three months ago (see my comment here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096370>).

The case is not necessarily dead, at least in theory, since the Winklevoss brothers might petition to have it reconsidered _en banc_ by the full Ninth Circuit and can file for a writ to the Supreme Court. At this stage, though, such options are long-shot options at best.

I note one irony in passing. The ratio of the stock value to cash payment that made up the original settlement was not coincidental. The $65 million value consisted of 1.2 million Facebook shares originally valued at $45 million plus $20 million in cash. Receipt of such stock is a taxable transaction and, indeed, would constitute ordinary income to the Winklevoss brothers. Thus, they were to have received $65 million in taxable income, including $20 million in cash to help cover the tax. But that was then. Having chosen to fight the issue, they would not have realized any form of taxable income on this deal until they actually _received_ the stock. As a result, when they now receive the cash/stock package, they will realize an estimated $170 million in taxable income (the cash plus FB stock worth $150 million), with only $20 million to help defray taxes. That stock will not be immediately marketable, even on the secondary exchanges and will require FB's permission to be sold there. The net result, unless I mis-analyze, is that the Winklevoss brothers have by their choosing to fight managed to convert over $100 million in stock value from what would have been a long-term capital gain into ordinary income, will have to pay much higher taxes accordingly, and will (I would assume) be faced with a serious logistical problem in the form of a short-term cash squeeze in raising funds to cover the taxes. I am not a tax specialist and may be wrong on this, but I don't think so.

FB dodged a bullet on this one. Had the settlement been set aside, the liability overhang would very likely have messed up its IPO, among other serious consequences. That was the gamble apparently made by the Winklevoss brothers - that they would be able to exact a much larger settlement as a result of their leverage obtained from having the issues re-opened. It appears, though, that they gambled and lost and not without detriment to themselves. For its part, FB now seems to be in the clear.

<comment><USER4> _It is basically absurd to say that a party settling a legal case must comply with the disclosure laws for making a private placement in offering a stock component as part of a settlement package._

Why is it absurd? In particular, is it legal to lie about the value of the stock in a negotiation? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER3> Securities laws were obviously not intended for a mediation context. Innocent investors buying stock from an issuer presumably trust that the issuer will be truthful about the value of the stock and about the material facts that affect that value. No such trust exists in an adversarial context where it is presumed that, in negotiating deals, it is every man for himself. Moreover, if securities laws applied in this context, then parties would need to do Regulation D/blue sky compliance to ensure that they were not sued after-the- fact. This is wholly impractical and would basically negate the ability of parties to settle by offering stock or other forms of equity to one another. In all the many years since the U.S. securities laws were enacted back in the early 1930s, these laws have never been applied in the manner suggested by the Winklevoss brothers. Since the issue is one of what Congress intended in enacting those laws, the failure of anyone even to raise the issue for so long a time is a good indicator that Congress never intended them to apply to this context.

<comment><USER4> _No such trust exists in an adversarial context where it is presumed that, in negotiating deals, it is every man for himself._

This is what I was looking for. In these situations, misrepresenting the value is not considered fraud. Thank you for the warning. I was unaware of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They should think themselves lucky to get $65 million for essentially nothing. They are really no different from people who post on Craigslist that they have a great new startup idea and just need someone to code it for them. The only difference is that because they are rich and well-connected they were able to unjustifiably extract money from Zuckerberg, who unlike them made something people want.

<comment><USER6> I have no love for the twins, however I also cant agree with your statement.

There is a difference between posting on CL with an idea. and having an idea/site and plan laid out - recruiting a developer who decides to work with you who obviously would add value to the design/plan - and then him turning around _after_ agreeing to work with you and implementing his own version of it.

If, for example, he had read an ad on CL - which the ad alone ignited something inside him and he went and implemented it on his own - then I could agree. He was _recruited and agreed_ to work on the project _for/with_ them.

Then, he fucked them over in the negotiations as well.

Anyway this is looked at, Zuckerberg is a complete douchebag.

Successful? Yes. Within legal rights? Sure - but an amoral untrustworthy douchebag none-the-less.

I am not saying the twins should receive [whatever it was they were seeking] - but I am tired of people defending mark zuckerberg.

<comment><USER7> Sure, Zuckerberg acted unprofessionally, and so they do probably deserve something. But it's important to realize that they came out ahead by $65m. There's not a chance in hell that if Zuckerberg had simply delivered what they asked and then severed ties in an ethical manner that they would have created a company worth anywhere near that.

<comment><USER6> I agree with this statement, its just the altruist in me wants to beat people who act like zuck with a stick. The entrepreneur in me respects the company he has built and the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me refuses to participate in any facebook data harvesting site which commoditizes me and my personal relationships for profit.

(This is why I make a distinction for Linked-in. Linked-in serves my professional needs and I can financially/professionally benefit from it - <USER2> my personal relationships are just that - personal. If I must have a suite of digital tools to manage the personal relationships, then maybe there is something wrong.)

Though, in conclusion, I agree too that the court system should be done with the case when justice is served, not because its a tired story - or that the twins are just as douchey as mark.

I am in no position to make a judgment on what is just, however.

<comment><USER8> The altruist in you wants to beat a man who donated $100 million dollars with a stick?

<comment><USER9> $100 million is rather less than 1% of Zuckerberg's wealth. Little old ladies donate higher percentages than this.

Donations, particularly ones which smell an awful lot like quid pro quo, don't count for much in my book unless they truly hurt. When Zuckerberg donates all _but_ $100 million, I'll believe he's doing something other than buying his way out of hell. And when he donates all but $5 million, ideally anonymously, then I'll be impressed.

<comment><USER10> _And when he donates all but $5 million, ideally anonymously, then I'll be impressed._

Maybe he already has :)

<comment><USER9> Cute, but we can verify that he has not: stock holdings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "At some point, litigation must come to an end," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. "That point has now been reached."

<comment><USER12> Doesn't litigation come to an end when justice has been served? I don't know the details of the case, nor do I have a stake in this, but it seems odd to limit damages if one party illegally withheld information.

This coupled with the recent Supreme Court ruling that prosecutors effectively can't be held accountable for hiding evidence that would exonerate a defendent -- seems to be saying that your best strategy in the legal system is to illegally withhold information, because the legal system will eventually not care, even if the actors in the case still do.

<comment><USER13> Litigation ending only when justice is served is an impossible standard. The losing party (whichever side it is in that round) will obviously feel justice has not been served and appeal endlessly. If the two sides agreed on what constituted justice, there wouldn't be a court case.

<comment><USER14> > If the two sides agreed on what constituted justice, there wouldn't be a > court case.

And indeed this is the entire point of the common law: to provide independent decisions, according to rules, in order to settle disputes without violence.

Endless appeals don't always work either -- you actually need a legal reason to appeal beyond "I disliked the decision". You need something like "The judge was wrong on points of law X, Y and Z" _and_ you need the appellate court to agree that there _might_ be something to review.

Most appellate courts look pretty dimly on appealing for the sake of appealing. Plus their time is limited, so they will tend to pick cases with broader legal consequences that will impact more than the disputants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally I wonder why the IMs were not revealed until after the settlement.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me."

<comment><USER17> Maybe it is just me being the lowly I.T. Geek I am but I do have a difficult time feeling any sympathy for the "Wonder Twins". They were set for life before pursuing this litigation and will still be set even with this ruling. I guess since I was not lucky enough to be born in the "Silver Spoon" way of living it makes my care threshold for them set very low :)</comment></comment>


Proof by storytelling - <AUTHOR> http://chalkdustmagazine.com/features/proof-by-storytelling/ <comment><USER2> You can also learn more about this kind of proof in statistics 110 class from Harvard: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbB0FjPg0mw&list=PL2SOU6wwxB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbB0FjPg0mw&list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6ht66KWxbzTIo)

<comment><USER3> Are all courses in this course avail? How

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth pointing out that the conventional formula for N choose K has a "story proof" as well, and it helps introductory students who can't necessarily keep straight whether, in these groups, order matters.

"There are N people in a room. Place a line of tape across the room dividing it into two halves; we'll say this tape goes North-South. Now ask K of them (politely, but also uniformly-at-random) to be on the East side of the tape and the N-K remainder are on the West side of the tape. We know from the definition that there are N choose K ways to do this.

"Now we ask the people on the East side to stand along the East wall and the people on the West side to stand along the West wall; along the way we will have to choose among the K! and (N-K)! different orderings for each set. So we have a uniform distribution of these people chosen from K! (N-K)! (N choose K) different possibilities.

"Now kindly ask them to walk in the order they're in to the North wall, but to remain on their side of the tape. You suddenly see that this result must be the same as simply asking the N people to line up uniformly-at-random along the North wall and you then place a piece of tape that divides them into the two groups. Every possibility in the one story comes from exactly one configuration in the other story and vice versa, therefore N! = (N choose K) K! (N - K)! no matter what N or K were."

<comment><USER5> That explanation leaves me more confused than when I started -- there's too much to try to follow and visualize. Maybe it works in person.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. I think it works when you take three fingers from your left hand and mash them together with all five from your right, representing a set of 8 elements. Now to perform 8-choose-3 and choose a set of 3 out of the 8 elements, you separate your hands and you've "chosen" (albeit in advance by the topology of your hands) a group of 3 out of the 8, but your fingers are still bunched up because these are sets and you haven't ordered everyone yet. Now we ask for both sides to line up, you "order" them by flattening out your hands facing each other palm-to-palm, as if you were holding a box on its sides: the 3 and 5 fingers on either side are now lined up. Now if you've been following the math you have (8 choose 3) * 3! * 5! ways that you could have done those steps.

Now you take these 2 hands facing each other and turn them palms-down so that they form one line of 8 fingers, a permutation of the original set-of-8 which happens to have a piece of tape (or other division) separating the first 3 from the last 5. Ignoring this division you have just the permutation of 8.

With a little reasoning you get the one-to-one and onto properties of this mapping: if you got to some permutation of the 8 this way, there was only one choice of the 3 out of the 8, and only one ordering of the left, and only one ordering of the right, that generates that permutation of the 8. Furthermore every permutation can be generated by those very steps of choosing the first 3 of the permutation in the 8-choose-3 step and then ordering the two groups appropriately. Since this process is one-to-one and onto, it must be the case that (N choose K) K! (N - K)! = N!, the total number of possibilities for each must be the same.

Does that help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are fun. There's another similar technique, which proves that a function f(n) maps positive integers to other positive integers by describing the set that the function counts.

</comment><comment><USER5> any ideas on the last one? It's totally different structure from all the others -- it doesn't involve combinations at all. It seems totally out of place.

</comment><comment><USER7> neat</comment>


NYPD detective allegedly hacked 40 email accounts to spy on ex-girlfriend - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/21/nypd-detective-allegedly-hacked-40-email-accounts-to-spy-on-ex-girlfriend/

<comment><USER2> Where's Carmen Ortiz when you need her, to put this guy in prison for 30 years?</comment>


President Obama Signs "Anti-Protest" Bill H.R. 347 - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/206017/president-obama-signs-anti-protest-bill-h-r-347/

<comment><USER2> Hope.

Hope we get to maintain our constitutional right to assemble.

Downvotes expected but not welcome. (I really can't afford the Karma loss)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would anyone want to protest against He Who Can Do No Wrong?</comment>