How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-education-opportunity/richard-v-reeves-dream-hoarders-how-americas-top-20-percent <comment><USER2> I never understood that about USA.

Free (or at least affordable) university education is one of the most cost- effective investments a state can make. I've seen it work wonders in Poland in the last 25 years. And I don't mean "education to become academic scientists" \- that part sucks in Poland. I mean "education to become globally competitive in high-margin areas of economy". It's cheap, it benefits economy in many ways, and it lowers the inequality. If Poland can afford it (and could afford it when it had GDP per capita under 10 000 USD) - USA can too.

Also - economy is not zero-sum. Yes, top 20% is always 20%, but if the division between incomes of top 20% and top 30% is negligible - why should we care about top 20%?

And if your country has 20% of people that can compete on global market, but other countries have 40% or 60% - you're screwed. Well, I guess you can just import them instead of teaching your own, but what to do with these non- competitives you're left with?

</comment><comment><USER3> The article says top 20 percent consists of the households making $112,000 or more.

Many of those families live in places like New York or California where $112,000 is not much.

The families I know in New York City making around $2-300,000 live paycheck to paycheck in tiny, old rented apartments. Both parents work until 6-8 PM, they barely see their kids except in weekends. They spent the first decade or so after college paying off student debt and now they have five figure credit card debt. Their life is void of luxury. No cars, no fancy vacations, no real estate, no savings, no shares, often no pensions savings either. Everything is spent on kindergartens, nannies, schools, rent etc.

You may be upper middle class if your family makes $112,000 in Oklahoma. But it simply doesn't make sense to regard people in New York City or the Bay area with such salaries as upper middle class.

<comment><USER4> Families making $200,000-300,000 lives paycheck to paycheck?

Sorry, but just what in the everliving fuck are they doing with that money? Burning it for warmth?

<comment><USER5> FWIW here is my (rough) monthly spending for a family of 3 (husband, wife, 2yo son) in NYC. My income is in that range, but I've always been a saver (and I've had more than my fair share of lucky breaks) so I do not live paycheck to paycheck.

[https://gist.github.com/harryh/970743e082bc7c9857ac9149997cc...](https://gist.github.com/harryh/970743e082bc7c9857ac9149997cceeb)

(I'm going to delete this gist later. Maybe silly but I don't feel 100% comfortable posting this data on the internet forever).

I live a nice life and have nothing to complain about. Last year 40% of my AGI went to taxes (fed, state, local + fica). There are plenty of good reasons to think that number should be higher.

<comment><USER6> don't forget massive taxes for anyone in that tax bracket. so yeah, 200-300 can go VERY quickly in places like NY or SF. It's not rich at all and lumping everyone under one scale across the entire country makes ZERO sense.

<comment><USER5> I disagree that lumping everyone in the entire country into the same tax brackets makes zero sense. Living in NY or SF is a luxury good. Just because I choose to partake in a luxury good doesn't mean that I should get a break on my taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you define a class by the top 20% of income earners, then you can never have a "classless" society. You'll always have a mathematically top 20%. That's an entirely different idea than say nobles versus peasants or racial apartheid.

I liked much of what the author had to say, but claiming that America has a more rigid class structure than a nation with a hereditary monarchy seems like a stretch.

<comment><USER8> Why should I not deserve to be in the top 20%? I worked hard, studied diligently, and obtained rare and pragmatic skills so that I may live my life to a greater degree of contentedness than 80% of people.

Why should I not I want my kids to grow up with the privileges of the top 20%? I worked the hours of 3 standard people over my lifetime to accumulate the wealth I want to pass onto my offspring to secure my genetic legacy. Aren't I just fulfilling what biology deems as life's most imperative mission?

Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips on a successful venture that would have failed 9 out of 10 other times? Starting a business already has negative expected value, so why is it on the 1 out of 10 times that I succeed, 40% of what I win gets taken away?

Why should I want to live my life to the same degree of effort and reward as every else? What is the point of living life in such a manner, as governed by some impenetrable limiter of success and reward, it would be like being stuck for the rest of your life on tutorial island in Runescape, where you can't burn your shrimp on the campfire and you can't die to monsters, as that is where 100% of accounts begin their lives and where 80% of accounts never log back in.

<comment><USER9> > Why should I not I want my kids to grow up with the privileges of the top > 20%?

 _You_ might deserve whatever you've worked for, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether _your children_ deserve more or less than others. I'll let you look up John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" thought experiment for yourself.

> Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips ... 40% of what I win gets > taken away?

The system does enough to incentivize gambling already. The results are already non-linear, and if you were truly one of those lucky ones then you're still richer than the other nine even with 40% taken away. To the extent that incentives for gambling and arbitrage displace incentives for more beneficial or sustainable kinds of effort, that's bad both morally and economically. Almost nobody's suggesting that everyone should be kept absolutely level. The question is to what extent we should attenuate the accumulation of riches (especially inter-generational riches) to balance out the various "rich get richer" amplifying effects that already occur.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not a bad article, but it makes the same observations about opportunity we've read about a thousand times before. The article mostly describes the status quo, but doesn't say much about the root causes or about possible solutions. Maybe the full book is better, but I doubt it. The author doesn't strike me as a person with deep insights.

One sentence from the article really sticks out: "The American ideal of a classless society is, to me, a deeply attractive one. It has been disheartening to learn that the class structure of my new homeland is, if anything, more rigid than the one I left behind and especially so at the top."

The author, a highly educated middle aged British guy who works at a think tank, needs years to figure out that the United States isn't the bastion of opportunity it purports to be? Come on! Literally the moment your plane lands at the airport you notice food is prepared by immigrants, and taxi drivers have missing teeth. The inequality is visible everywhere, and it stares you in the face. The author only barely recognizes the contradiction between his wish for equal opportunity for all and his desire to give his children a leg up.

Ultimately he concludes that hoarding opportunity by the top 20% "results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society". In other words, he's _still_ arguing that the top 20% should be in favor of equal opportunity out of self interest, because it builds a better society for all. This is in direct contradiction with his earlier observations about the zero-sum nature of opportunity. Efforts to redistribute wealth and opportunity from the rich to the rest does not benefit the rich: it's called class conflict for a reason. Maybe in another decade or so the author will figure this out.

<comment> aaron-lebo He may (or may not) be contradicting himself, but the argument isn't wrong.

By hoarding wealth, the richest prevent their own wealth from growing (out of risk aversion and greed), and they end up either voluntarily transferring wealth or it's taken from them by an angry underclass. You can see why (after the fact), they would've preferred the former. Posted this yesterday but Acemoglu and Robinson's Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy goes into this in depth.

[http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_rev...](http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_review_eco.html)

Besides, it's really nice to be wealthy, but wealth can't protect the wealthiest from getting murdered by someone lacking mental healthcare or getting radicalized because they have no other option. Thus spreading the wealth does help everyone.

Also, you are misrepresenting what he said re Britain and the US.

 _I am British by birth, but I have lived in the United States since 2012 and became a citizen in late 2016. There are lots of reasons I have made America my home, but one of them is the American ideal of opportunity. I always hated the walls created by social class distinctions in the United Kingdom. The American ideal of a classless society is, to me, a deeply attractive one. It has been disheartening to learn that the class structure of my new homeland is, if anything, more rigid than the one I left behind and especially so at the top._

The only thing he's saying is that while Britain has a society with obvious class differences, the US has those differences hidden. It's not that it took years for him to figure out cause he's a clueless dummy.

<comment><USER11> While I would love to live in a more equal society, history shows time and again that government efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it. We should try to devise systems that prevent power from centralizing in the first place.

<comment><USER12> > efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it

Not sure what you mean by this. Isn't the goal here to destroy a lot of wealth? Wealth is a relative term - someone with $1B is not rich because 1B is an inherently big number, they are rich because $1B is orders of magnitudes greater than what most people will make in their lifetimes. Making people all have about the same in the bank other would destroy wealth.

<comment><USER13> While relative wealth definitely has value (mostly because it enables you to afford the labor of others), wealth itself is not fundamentally relative.

\- Almost everyone today (in western, developed nations) has more purchasing power than almost everyone did 100 years ago. Doesn't that mean that everyone is more wealthy?

\- As new technology is developed, Alice's wealth depends less on Bob's poverty, because she can rely more on automation and less on Bob's labor. This might cause tremendous problems for Bob, but that's besides the point. Bob can now (if he manages to prosper) become immeasurably wealthy without reducing Alice's wealth in the least.

\- You could make millions of dollars selling farm equipment. It seems clear that, in doing this, you are accumulating wealth. But it is not clear that your success needs to be at anyone's expense. Presumably your customers are buying your wares because your product helps them build wealth too. If the market is saturated, your success might come at the expense of your competitor's, but that seems like a different phenomenon from the idea of relative wealth that you've described above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > the top fifth of the income distribution—broadly, households with incomes > above the $112,000

These are not rich oligarch industrialists at all.

If your total household income, husband and wife together, is $112k, you're middle class in most of the country. In some areas like the Bay and Manhattan, you're lower middle class. You generally don't have access to subsidized rent and you don't get subsidies for health care.

Making people at this level earn less so everyone will be more equal just means more fall into poverty.

A better solution is to focus on returning skilled high pay jobs to the US in order to get more people into higher brackets.

> Income growth has not been uniform within the top fifth, of course: a third > of the income rise went to the top 1 percent alone. But that still left $2.7 > trillion for the 19 percent just beneath them.

2.7e12/326.e6*.19 = $1574 increase each on average. For the income range discussed, this is just barely keeping up with the rate of inflation.

<comment><USER15> Have you properly accounted for households vs people in your final calculation and comparison?

<comment><USER14> Yes I did and that was clear in my post. Much more interesting is "a third of the income rise went to the top 1 percent alone". Don't you think that is relevant? These folks received vastly more earned income raise than the rate of inflation. Should we consider unearned income as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I always get a little annoyed when people talk about benefits of some tax deduction accruing to the "rich". It's not that it's technically wrong but, but rather a sort of a truism - if you can take the max deduction and have a high marginal tax rate you will accrue more benefit (whether it's 529 or mortgage interest deduction).

That being said, you also are likely to pay more taxes both nominally and proportionally if you are benefiting from a 529 deduction - so when you take the revenue side of the equation into account the proposition looks a lot less lopsided...

<comment><USER17> "deduction", perhaps, but what about "reductions"?

The AHCA had a provision to eliminate a 2% additional tax on dividend income (IIRC) for people earning over $200k. Removing that is, as far as I can tell, _only_ a benefit to "the rich" (by some definition, maybe not yours).

<comment><USER18> A very small segment of the rich who rely on dividend payments for cashflow and are not financially savvy enough to hold dividend-producing stocks in a trust or tax-shielded accounts.

Special provision for higher tax on dividend income after a certain threshold (a) complicates the tax code (b) increases the cost of tax preparation, therefore removing disposable income that would be spent elsewhere from those sectors of the economy and (c) encourages companies to favor stock buybacks over dividend payments, which introduces its own distortions into the economy.

And oh, by the way, it's completely avoidable if you suspect your income will exceed $200k and are willing to spend 10 minutes to rebalance your taxable accounts in favor of growth stocks, real estate and municipal bonds.

Other than that it's an excellent provision in the tax code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure I agree with the author's policy prescriptions, but the figures on income growth among different segments are interesting. As much as we might be falling behind the top 1%, we 2-20% folks are still pulling away from the rest and that has important implications. A thought-provoking read overall.

<comment><USER19> What I found most interesting is his point about licenses and degrees etc. Most doctors need to start over that are licensed in other counties. Try getting a professional license if your a felon(even a drug charge).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The top 20% certainly do support problematic policies, and they do need to look at how their preferred policies are harmful to most Americans.

But the real problem is still the 1% (or the 0.1%). It just hasn't caught up with the top 20% yet. Unless the arc of US politics changes radically, and I've seen no indication that it will, over the next 30 years, these people are going to be proletarianized the way the rest of us have been over the last 30. You can see it already in the decline of private medical practices as doctors become employees of hospitals and chain clinics. In the decline of tenured faculty at universities. The zottas are not going to tolerate that share of _their_ wealth going to their high-skilled servants for any longer than they have to.

</comment><comment><USER21> It is only natural that the people in possession of resources are reluctant to share them; that is also the case in most countries, in my experience. The weird thing about the U.S. is that so many below-median-income folks are right-wing -- the very ones that would benefit from increased wealth distribution. I guess part of the explanation comes from the mirage that is The American Dream. In some sense a lot of us Top 20 percenters are Dream _Sellers_ \-- if you just buy the right shoes, food, anything, you too will be successful and get social status. (Yes I am one of those Scandinavian socialists)

<comment><USER22> > I guess part of the explanation comes from the mirage that is The American > Dream

No, it's much simpler than that: blacks, gays, guns, abortion.

<comment><USER23> I would beg you to look for a much more nuanced understanding of the people whom you oppose politically.

Attempting to reduce all the of the great Conservative/Libertarian arguments for not wanting top-down tyrannical centralized high-tax government that takes away liberty to instead being single-mindedly rooted in racism, homophobia, etc. may make you feel better that your opponents are irrational emotionally- driven zealots -- but you've so missed the mark on comprehending the people who oppose you that you're only helping to further the enormous divide of understanding that we have in politics today.

<comment><USER22> I would beg you to try to understand that the whole 'Conservative/Democrat' divide as far as I can see from some distance is utterly ridiculous in the eyes of a good chunk of the world.

If gays/guns/racism and abortion were not hot political buttons in the United States the Republicans would likely never win an election.

Libertarians have to all practical intents and purposes no representation in congress that is able to move the needle so can be safely ignored. It's just the rich making themselves richer, one group going about that slightly more nuanced than the other.

And if the libertarians would be represented in congress in numbers that could move the needle the rich would be making themselves richer even quicker.

<comment><USER23> _utterly ridiculous in the eyes of a good chunk of the world_

I normally find that people outside of the US are not so nearly informed as they think they are about the driving dynamics of US politics, especially when it comes to things like "why do people vote the way they do".

For the most part, people outside of the US start with their non-American cultural biases which makes them extraordinarily susceptible to what are also the loudest voices: Hollywood, the news media, and the most outrageous politicians - while being almost completely ignorant of the undercurrents that actually drive dinner table conversations.

Although libertarians aren't very represented, if you don't see the heavy strain of libertarianism in modern Conservatism - I'd say that's another indicator that you don't know much about the politics of the people you're overly simplifying.

<comment><USER22> > I normally find that people outside of the US are not so nearly informed as > they think they are about the driving dynamics of US politics, especially > when it comes to things like "why do people vote the way they do".

I'd be more than happy to bet that they are typically a lot better informed than you'd guess and that the reverse (Americans being informed about the dynamics of politics in other countries) would be dramatic.

Keep in mind that whatever the US does the world is affected so American presidential and mid-term elections are followed the world over by people who have absolutely no way to influence (well, that's the theory at least) but who will very much be on the receiving side of whatever the outcome is.

<comment><USER23> I didn't claim that Americans understand politics in other countries that well at all.

 _I 'd be more than happy to bet that they are typically a lot better informed than you'd guess_

And yet every person I've talked to who has an outside-looking-in view of US politics was positively stunned that Trump won the election. Their left- leaning news sources and celebrities absolutely convinced them that there was no way that America would elect Trump. Once again, they didn't understand American politics as well as they thought they did. Rather than admitting their ignorance, they tend to rationalize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A and B decide what C has to pay for D, while some of that tax money happens to fell into A and B pockets.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why would you want to live your life like so many other people are forced to live. If you are at the very top that means privilege. Those are the only people left with privilege, everyone else works for a living and works harder than everyone else for a better living.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just on the funding level..... the top 20% pay 84% of federal income taxes .... So, maybe they should pay 100%, and 'feel' guilt free for the income tax category...

</comment><comment><USER27> ... likely to run into the solid wall of upper middle-class resistance, even those that simply require a slightly higher tax bill...

What are the unintended consequences of this slightly higher tax bill? Does this writer not know of the Laffer Curve? The top 20% already pay the vast majority of income taxes in the United States And now he suggests they should pay more? Why not instead reprioritize spending, including cuts to programs that are proven not to work?

The "War on Poverty" has not resulted in any significant change to US poverty rates yet money is still spent on those programs. Farm subsidies, social security and Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse and the defense department's propensity to bleed money-- there are many areas that can and should be addressed before simply raising taxes.

And what about college cost inflation? College expenses have risen more dramatically than health costs. Could the influx of easy public money and loans have something to do with it? Look at the cartel's controlling textbooks and scientific journals! We lose our collective minds over Uber surge pricing but say nothing about $200 textbooks that were often written by professors working for public institutions. In universities you have countless Provosts and vice Provosts who pretty much add no value. You have administrators who simply administer other administrators. It's a racket of which the mafia could be proud. Adjunct professors barely scrape by while the "Director of Residental Student Diverisity Affairs" makes six figures. Many on the left like to complain about CEO pay yet let academia have a free pass to hand out titles and six figure non-teaching jobs out like candy -- all on the backs of students and indirectly, the taxpayer. If we want to expand educational access then the universities ought to start with themselves: cut the waste, lower the price. But they won't do that; the "liberals" in charge of universities actually perpetuate the educational inequality they purport to oppose. It certainly isn't conservatives in the Ivy League that maintain legacy based admissions or $80,000 per year price tags.

The problem isn't that taxes are too low, it's that government does a bad job when it comes to budgeting and fiscal policy.

I am not opposed to "left wing" proposals as much as I am opposed to "raising taxes and redistributing wealth" as the only means presented as the way to accomplish those proposals.

Zero-based budgeting would be a good start. Then every year the government can better allocate money rather than just continually adding to whatever the previous year's expenditures happen to have been.

<comment><USER15> The Laffer curve is a fantastic rhetorical device.

Where's your data showing what the slope of it is for the current US tax regime? Oh, you don't have one? Why not? Afraid it might undermine the rhetoric?

The fraud in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid isn't that high. If you want to bitch about those programs, bitch that they don't pay market rates for the services they mandate, hiding a tax in the payments other people make for medical services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the top 50 percent are really responsible for income and wealth inequality. Why should they have more than the bottom half?

</comment><comment><USER29> and once again he defines the problem so that it has to be a zero sum issue.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Race played a significant role here, with whites reacting (almost entirely incorrectly) to a sense that Americans of color were overtaking them."

I suppose that 'almost' is there to exclude population numbers, what with whites projected to become a minority by 2050 (in the US - the white population is pretty small on a global scale, at ~8%).

<comment><USER31> To Europeans the whole US "white" thing is ludicrous. Americans count Hispanics as non-White, and while a good percentage of them are probably mixed, a big group are definitely what we'd call "white". You guys would go to Spain and Italy and call locals "Hispanics", based on your definition, while no German (for example) would ever do that.

<comment><USER32> I think it's a class/culture thing, not a skin color thing. Hispanic implies you speak Spanish at home, likely to be an immigrant, maybe 1st or 2nd generation to be born in America, and your food/holiday/overall culture is different from the old "white" American one depicted in old TV shows and movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For households without kids it wouldn't be egregious to have the ability to make 529 size contributions to Roth-IRA.

<comment><USER34> "529 type contributions to Roth-IRA" \-- They do, it's called a Roth IRA

<comment><USER33> mmm perhaps lack of clarity on my comment. I was referring to the size of the maximum contribution. $14000 for 529 vs 5500 for ROTH and there's an income limit for ROTH. ~190k

<comment><USER35> For that, we have the Roth 401k. Certainly 401ks aren't limited to the 20%, but the 20% can certainly contribute more easily and get more nominal matching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

...

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Now replace the socialist, trade unionist, and Jews from this famous quote and insert your income percentile to see what's going on here.

I said this during the occupy movement. It's not the 1%, not the 2%, not the 10%, not even the 20% that need to be worried. For they will not satisfy those who have not achieved what they desire.

What people who promote class warfare desire is financial results without work or risk because that's how they perceive those with money attained it.

Expect to see articles about the top 25% and 30% next.

<comment><USER37> "What people who promote class warfare desire is financial results without work or risk because that's how they perceive those with money attained it."

Which also happens to be the truth.

Sure, hard work and risk were involved, but generally not on the part of the people who ended up with the money.

<comment><USER38> As another commenter pointed out, to be in the top 20% a household only needs to earn $112k a year. That's like 2 teachers getting married, or 2 nurses, or 2 mid level office workers/government workers.

And this college fund implies there are kids involved. So a household with $112k/year and kids should be taxed heavily as possible because they didn't earn it? If they live in a high cost area or have any debt/medical problems they'll be in even more trouble.

It sounds to me like you want to tax and burden families such as that to move them back down into the income strata where there is uncertainty for housing/medicine/food/education/transportation. Why don't you like the idea of people working and earning an income in order to remove those uncertainties? That's all I want to do with my life. Is that such a terrible desire that when I finally get there I should have it taken away? By the way, I'm a recent medical graduate with 250k in debt from a lower-middle class family. If all goes well I'll be one of those evil 20% people after residency.

<comment><USER37> No, I simply want there to be progressive taxation with a relatively high marginal tax rate, and for people to actually pay the taxes they owe, instead of hiding them in tax shelters.

My income is comfortably in the region where I have to pay the marginal tax rate in my country (56%), and I pay it happily because I know it pays for valuable services and welfare for everyone.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chester Bennington: Linkin Park vocalist 'took his own life' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40676530 <comment><USER2> Rest in peace. I regret never going out to see them live because I wasn't a fan of their albums past Minutes to Midnight :(

</comment><comment><USER3> This is heartbreaking. Couldn't sleep much today.</comment>


In Shanghai, a prototype of a new 24-hour convenience store (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40429419/this-tiny-grocery-store-is-mobile-self-driving-and-run-by-ai <comment><USER2> There are several startups in China doing that. BingoBox has a very similar setup.[1] Wheels, too. Bodega had a similar concept for the US, but at vending machine size, not shipping container size. The optimum size for these things isn't clear yet. It does make possible a convenience store too small to justify a full time employee.

Amazon will probably combine these with Amazon lockers and take over the industry in the US. If the convenience store doesn't have it, you'll be able to order anything Amazon stocks delivered to a locker.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYN3gozk4fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYN3gozk4fo)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oddly, Brazil doesn't have 24-hour convenience stores[1]. Labor is very cheap and there are plenty of 24-hour gasoline stations, restaurants, bars, and pharmacies. But if you want a large bag of nuts or microwave popcorn or a banana at midnight in Sao Paulo, in an urban area of 12,000,000 people, you won't find it. (Well, unless you drive a long way to one of the few 24-hour hypermarkets, but that's not convenience.)

I can't think of any business or cultural reason why it doesn't exist there. Maybe it's chicken-and-egg -- the public desire for convenience stores and the availability of lots of convenience stores -- have to co-evolve.

[1] [http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Common_in_the_USA_and...](http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Common_in_the_USA_and_Canada_but_rare_in_Brazil)

<comment><USER4> I guess is cultural, maybe people dont need microwave popcorn or a banana at midnight!

Having grown up in a rather small city and moved to bigger cities later on, I found it kind of funny how people go almost religously to the 7eleven to buy late night nuts and a can of coke (or something else). When I lived in Japan even sad... you have convenience stores everywhere, and people just go there because they get trapped in a habbit of buying a "melon bread" and a "vitamin drink" on the way back home daily fully replacing a real dinner

I think convenience stores create a need rather than solving something en many cases... they just sell junk food that make people addicted to come back again and again to get those flavors...

<comment><USER5> The food sold in Japanese convinience stores is head and shoulders above those of most countries though: you can get bento boxes, salads, onigiri rice balls, basic sushi, etc. Not exactly gourmet fare, and there's junk if you want that too, but way less than in the average US or European convenience store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"The biggest costs to have a store are the place itself to rent in a central city–it's ultra-expensive–and then staff is really expensive, and we're removing both of these at the same time"_

Isn't parking for long hours already about as expensive as renting a store and/or parking commercial vehicles to run a shop illegal in Shanghai? If not, I would find it fair if the government would tax people for taking up that much parking space for long hours. It also is likely they will, or all parking space in city centers would be taken over by vendors.

</comment><comment><USER7> The title is misleading. The store is not self-driving:

 _The system is also designed to restock itself automatically. In a city, one Moby could self-drive to a warehouse to replenish itself while another takes its place (the current model can be controlled remotely or driven by a human; the designers are still finalizing the autonomous technology, and it's not yet legal for it to drive itself on Chinese roads)._

<comment><USER8> That entire title seems unsalvageable, so we replaced it with the first part of the first sentence, in keeping with the HN guideline to change the title if it's misleading or linkbait.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> AKA a vending machine on wheels.

<comment><USER10> * A vending machine the size of a small convenience store, on wheels

<comment><USER9> Have you seen the vending machines in Japan?

<comment><USER10> No I have not. Do they have a similar form factor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Michigan I could see this being quite successful in rural towns, quite a few lack a convenience store and might be a fifteen mile drive or longer from a full supermarket.

I am doubtful this would work in inner city Detroit at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have only skimmed the article but I'm confident it's riddled with catches.

I bet it's not actually driving itself through traffic on public roads and it isn't actually managed by AI.

<comment><USER13> The key line is _" When autonomous vehicles are allowed on roads"_. There's no actual self-driving store out on the streets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I could see someone like a Postmates making an investment in building one of these types of products

</comment><comment><USER15> Hm, reminds me of Bodega.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cyberpunk</comment>


Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54191058 <comment><USER5> The 3DS, in particular the "New" models, I think are really recommended to pick up cheap. They are well built devices that are supremely hackable with access to lots of fun games.

The 3DS library is good despite somewhat lacking in diversity. But the 3DS also has native compatibility with the entire excellent DS library, and after hacking it can _also_ run the entire great GBA library without emulation (like Matroshka dolls, the 3DS hardware includes the complete DSi hardware which in turn includes GBA hardware, and it has firmware support to access them both).

The old models emulate a lot of 8 and 16 bit consoles well, whereas the New models have nearly complete compatibility for 8 and 16 bit consoles and additionally can emulate some Playstation 1. Moreover, hacking the 3DS has become even more accessible due to recent newly found exploits. Still getting a lot of fun out of mine.

<comment><USER6> Yes! Don't forget you also get GameBoy Color and GameBoy games. IMO this massive library (N3DS, 3DS, DSi, DS, GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, NES) has at least 10 "must play before death" games in them (for people that care a lot about videogames, anyway).

Of course all of this can also be achieved on a PC with a simple 10$ amazon controller and free emulators, if you're comfortable pirating games.

<comment><USER6> Edit: You're right, that was rude of me lmao. This is an UNORDERED LIST:

1\. Super Mario Bros 3

2\. The Legend of Zelda (1986)

3\. Super Metroid (1994)

4\. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

5\. Super Castlevania

6\. Pokemon: Silver/Gold

7\. Advance Wars: Dual Strike

8\. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (tecccchnically an n64 game though) (Majora's Mask would make this list if the DS version wasn't a butchered shadow of the original)

9\. Metroid: Fusion

10\. Like... ANY of the billion Final Fantasies available between NES and N3DS

edit: 11. Mario 64 baybbeeeeeeeee

<comment><USER7> So many questions. Like, do you really need pokemon to live?

And why specifically Super Castlevania, which is regarded as kind of a garbage castlevania (the player sprite is bigger so you get less of a heads up on whats ahead, and it's not part of the "metrovania" pantheon).

Why Fusion and Super Metroid?

Does the original LoZ hold up as well as say Link's Awakening?

Why are there only 3 companies represented on this list? Did Capcom run over your pet dog?

<comment><USER8> Metroid Fusion in my opinion was the king of Metroidvanias for a really long time. It achieved perfection.

<comment><USER7> I think there's a number of people upset it doesn't have any sequence breaks, is super linear, and much of the exploration is of the "guess and check" variety. [https://youtu.be/FsZ9Bb4IW5s?t=1315](https://youtu.be/FsZ9Bb4IW5s?t=1315)

<comment><USER8> > doesn't have any sequence breaks

I would never hate on a game for this.

> super linear

point taken, but speedrunners would say otherwise.

> much of the exploration is of the "guess and check" variety.

I finished the game as a 10 year old so I think it wasn't too easy or too hard.

To each his own !

<comment><USER7> >I would never hate on a game for this.

I think "achieved perfection" was the bar you set =) And Super Metroid set the bar quite high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always try to imagine what the final production run looks like at a factory for one of these. Is there usually some sort of ceremony for the very last unit rolling off the line? Or does it just run towards the end of the shift as normal, everything gets boxed up and shipped to retailers as normal, there just....isn't another shift after that? What happens with all the manufacturing hardrware?

<comment><USER10> It's not the same, but 'Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu' (you can find it easily online) is a documentary about the last day that the New York Times used linotypes and hot metal typesetting before they switched to electronic/optical typesetting.

I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt, and technologically fascinating documentary. I recommend it when you have a half hour to spare.

<comment><USER11> here it is

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU)

great video

<comment><USER12> Voice over sounds like George Carlin, but the accent is slightly heavier. He did a lot of voice over work though (e.g. thomas the tank engine).

It's hard to tell, but that room seem really loud

Edit: I'm always more amazed at old mechanical technology than modern technology. Thanks for sharing

Last edit: "Sign language is used, among the many deaf printers". HA!

<comment><USER13> > Last edit: "Sign language is used, among the many deaf printers". HA!

People with disabilities historically had very few job opportunities. Printing was latched onto in the late 20th century as the major trade career for the deaf--essentially every deaf trade school was teaching it. The noise of the printing machinery making spoken conversation difficult was probably a motivating factor, but it also appears that there was generally little issue with printers not being able to listen ([1] lists that most deaf printers in 1923 used written communication for tasks and their employees generally found deafness no handicap).

[1] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/44462325?seq=4#metadata_info_ta...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/44462325?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm nearly blind in one eye.

The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D.

 _In my life._

I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in movies or a game console."

It was the first time I ever saw in three dimensions ever. As a human being.

It's a little bit hard to describe my typical experience with you, since I've never had "normal" version and I don't know what it's like. I would compare my life to playing a video game with a first-person perspective. You know how when you play one of those games, you're _thinking_ in three dimensions, even though you're _seeing_ the game on a flat two-dimensional television?

Well, that's my life. I see the world in two dimensions, even though I'm thinking about it in three dimensions.

But playing Zelda on a 3DS XL? Wow. I mean, it took my breath away. THAT'S HOW NORMAL PEOPLE SEE THE WORLD? You can just look at things and immediately know how far away they are? You don't have to move your head around to see a parallax effect to help your brain compute the distance? WOW. AMAZING.

I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure _why_ the 3D system on the 3DS worked for me when nothing else had ever worked for me before, such as 1950s-style red/blue glasses. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. It seems to me that it shouldn't work. But it did.

(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech)

Regardless, I had never ever experienced three-dimensional vision until the 3DS XL showed it to me. Thanks, little dude.

<comment><USER15> > I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure why the 3D system on the 3DS works > for me when nothing else does. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the > 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. > Maybe the newer VR headsets would work for me as well; I don't know.

Not a brainologist either, just a guy with a maths/physics degree who works in IT. My first thought is that the 3DS was close enough to your face that the parallax might have been apparent just from your one good eye looking at different places on the screen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax)

<comment><USER14> For folks missing an eye, "manual" parallax is one of the primary ways we do depth perception in real life - you get it for free by having two eyes; we have to move our heads around sometimes. =)

That's an interesting theory but I _think_ that's not what's happening.

For those unfamiliar, the 3DS uses a lenticular screen. It renders two separate images: the "right" and "left" image. The one you see depends on your viewing angle. If my good eye was seeing both images, I believe I'd experience a sort of double vision or as least discontinuities.

Perhaps more to the point, the 3D effect disappears if I close my "bad" eye! So my "bad" eye is contributing... somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My first job coming out of college was working on a multi-platform game engine, and my first task was assembling a 3DS prototype board[1] and porting the engine over.

It was horrible and fantastic at the same time. The debugging tools were poor, most of the documentation hadn't been translated to english yet, and testing the dual-camera rendering pipeline required hunching over the desk to be in the sweet spot for the parallax to work.

I still love that kind of low-level development, but these days python and shell scripts pay the bills. RIP 3DS, and thanks for the memories.

1: [https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-17-is-this-a-prototype- of-t...](https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-17-is-this-a-prototype-of-the- nintendo-3ds.html)

<comment><USER17> The docs were probably better than they were for the NES. Nintendo's were poor translations from the already sparse Japanese version (think of an entire book full of the Engrish found in early NES games). Australian developer Beam Software did good business writing their own NES docs that were much more user-friendly.

Dominic Arsenault goes into why this was something of a deliberate strategy for Nintendo in his book on the SNES, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what the game plan is for offering these games in the future. The dual-screen setup obviously doesn't map to the Switch, so it's not just a simple eShop port like you'd have for an old SNES game.

I am mostly thinking about Pokémon. They've got this rich new Pokémon Home system to transfer between generations, but that's reliant on having functioning older hardware. Now, there's a massive pool of functional 3DS systems out there, so it's not a pressing issue, but eventually, some poor Ash Greninja will be trapped on a 3DS cartridge. _(I suppose the answer is: port all the Pokémon games, profit, swim in giant Scrooge McDuck moneybin of coins.)_

<comment><USER19> I'm honestly surprised Pokemon is still around. The first one came out in like 1996, and it was initially addictive because there were a fixed number of pokemon to try to collect (150). But each iteration was basically a carbon copy of the previous gen with some map and monster changes. 7(?) gens later and now there are what 500? 600? More? I just don't understand the motivation to collect something now that you can no longer "catch em all". Is it like Hearthstone or Magic where you just collect what you can knowing certain cards will forever be beyond your reach?

<comment><USER20> > I'm honestly surprised Pokemon is still around.

I'm honestly surprised chess is still around. It's basically the same game with the same rules from centuries ago.

<comment><USER21> Chess is not a game based around collecting a fixed number of items.

<comment><USER20> Pokemon isn't based around collecting a fixed number of items.

There's strategy to pick an ideal team. To ev/iv farm if you're really into it.

There's a story, you can battle friends, you can make trades.

Pokemon isn't pog collecting.

<comment><USER22> Can you understand how one might believe that the franchise with the slogan "Gotta Catch 'Em All" might be about collecting a fixed number of items?

<comment><USER23> It's understandable, though not accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks like it's finally time to grab all those games I held off on grabbing because my backlog was already extraordinary, lest I have to find them in a couple years on eBay at wildly inflated prices.

<comment><USER25> Most in-demand 3DS games have not been cheap in years. They've been pretty expensive due to low printing (Bravely Default, DQ remakes, most Atlus RPGs) for years now. I'm guessing Nintendo games are OK due to so many people owning them though.

3DS eShop might be a safe bet but aside from the usual downsides of digital, the games are tied to the system, not your eShop account.

<comment><USER24> There are some that remained _in print_ , however, and so I held off on taking the plunge because I didn't feel like dropping $40 for Fire Emblem Echoes (for example), knowing it would probably be a year before I played it.

But knowing that the console and likely all first-party games will soon be OOP certainly lights a fire under me, as I'd much rather pay $40 for a new, sealed copy of the game than $70 for a cart-only copy of the game off eBay in a year's time.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology evidently went OOP while I wasn't looking, and the Ebay price has already skyrocketed. Argh!

EDIT: And yes, I've got a couple from the eShop (Devil Survivor's 1 & 2 and Soul Hackers), but I prefer carts since they're not locked to my system/account. And who knows when Nintendo will decide to shut down the eShop, just like they did for the Wii shop?

<comment><USER26> You can dump your own carts or eshop titles to ROM files with custom firmware, which you can then install on another system. Technically piracy, but it's not something I personally have moral qualms about, especially when the clock is ticking on the store's own existence.

<comment><USER27> If you were to go a step further, the eShop actually trusts the client and you can download the entire 3ds library direct from Nintendo with the right hack. Google "freeshop" and read their FAQ if you're curious. I won't link it here in case it offends anyone.

<comment><USER28> Nintendo fixed that loophole back in August 2018, didn't they?

<comment><USER27> Oops, you are correct. I didn't think they'd be able to fix it. Thanks for the update, it's been a while :)

<comment><USER29> Funny story, this loophole existed for both the Wii U and 3DS eShops. While 3DS got it patched, the Wii U is still vulnerable.

<comment><USER27> Do you happen to know how they patched it? I thought the idea was that it was bad encryption and once the license generation was broken, eShop couldn't tell if it was a real license or a fake one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 3DS is an excellent platform to learn Japanese games. I fully recommend it.

I think it's an amazing time, and the games will stand the test of time just like the original mario series because the content is rich and great vs having to fall back on pushing systems & I/O to the max.

Nothing recently has given me as much joy as to replay N64 classics on the 3DS with better graphics, added gameplay and 100% solely in Japanese after originally growing up with them as they were released in the USA/English.

The context and general idea helped alot to drive me to replay the games and relearn vocabulary in a different language. And how the games are targeted at a young audience makes full kana or furigana available, with settings to use _just_ Kanji if you want is fantastic.

It's something that every other learning app doesn't have for Japanese - <USER2> then again when you learn more languages you don't really go for the cultural angle, you do it to communicate and use culture as a reference point.

<comment><USER31> Can you make some recommendations? I've tried my luck with the Japanese DS Zelda games because they have furigana (either above characters or when tapping), but I couldn't get far since there has been too much dialect. In Pokemon B/W there overall has been too much text. I didn't try playing something I knew by heart yet tho. Are you referring to something like the N64 Zelda 3DS remakes (which are excellent)?

<comment><USER30> As with learning any language, immersion is key.

This is very late intermediate stage - to put yourself into having to read "Japanese."

I would only do it after knowing and writing/speaking Hiragana and Katakana outloud, several times, written it over and over and listening to songs (or any text, but songs have lyrics and it's easy) over and over and doing the lyrics over and over to kick in the muscle memory.

My secret, really, was learning the kana via Kyary Paymu Paymu songs. I enjoyed them, but, after doing that, over and over, the alure was lost and it took me about 3 years before I could listen to Pon Pon Pon again. But - <USER3> repetition in the song drilled down the kana for me.

If you already know Kana, then basic vocabulary/grammar. There's a great app on the Android App Store called "Kanji Study"

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwiste...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en_US)

It's been further tweaked and is more refined then what it used to be, but the memory games are super useful for both kana and N5/N4 Kanji - the basic of the basics.

As for playing with a game/any game, it all falls together after a while - <USER4> see the pattern, you "get" the idea, but I would use a dictionary such as Akebi on Android or Jisho.org (Jisho literally means dictionary.) or even translate.google.com and each word you don't know, add it to a unique list and study/drill those over and over.

Soon it will come together. It's very slow at first, and painful, even though I could read Kana and had N5, I suffered reading the "warning" screens on the 3ds even though they're for kids, some of the words did not make sense, but the context was implied.

That's it, as for the games:

Pokemon is great, Zelda is also great, but if you really want to excel -

Karaoke.

You can go to youtube, and find karaoke songs to listen too - the 3dS joysound app stopped/died, but it's still on the WiiU and on the Switch and it is excellent, it offers near 100% furigana (except for very very simple kanji) and being forced to sing along makes you vocal quick.

You can also youtube "karaoke battle" or general karaoke after songs.

"カラオケバテル"

"カラオケ"

I personally enjoy lots of J-pop (which made learning the language much more easily/motivated) so I used songs I knew such as Tatsuhiro Yamashita

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzBvkcHUz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzBvkcHUz4)

山下達郎 RIDE ON TIME (カラオケ)

And then just drilled on that as if it was memory cards or study drilling.

Pokemon games are good, zelda is great. Mario isn't per se as there isn't much "text" The inkling for a bit of puzzle makes it more that you need to "understand" what the meaning is, as it's different in English.

Context is much more inferred then stated in Japanese.

Phoenix Wright Professor Layton Animal Crossing

Then you can go onto some normal plain jane ds games, final fantasy and Square Enix titles are great once you're nearing the end of intermediate understanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS began.

Something tells me this is Nintendo hedging bets

<comment><USER33> Nintendo has never really wanted to discontinue a platform. Their vision was always that developers could support old and new platforms together through funky cross-compact measures.

• Did you know that the SNES's CPU starts up in a "NES 6502 compatibility" mode, sort of like x86-64 processors starting up in 16-bit real mode? It's fully possible to design and build a game entirely for the NES as a 6502-assembler codebase; and then to "port" the game to the SNES, by taking that very same 6502-assembler codebase, and just adding a few minor SNES-level "enhancements" that temporarily switch to 65c816 mode, do something, then switch back to 6502 mode. Since the market penetration of the NES was so high, many games in the early 90s _were_ "dual-released" this way.

• Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully- fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have "progressive enhancement" logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs.

But, well, third-party devs just seemingly have no interest in releasing for old platforms. They want to "be where the action is." And Nintendo can't carry the momentum of a platform all by itself. (Plus, Nintendo's software dev-teams are too busy acting as stewards and shepherds for how to make use of the newest-gen hardware capabilities — by making games for them, and by interfacing with third-parties — to have any labor left over for making games for older consoles.)

That being said, Nintendo _did_ try to keep the gameboy line going after the DS. They released the GB Micro. It was its whole own thing, with its own product code (OXY) that signalled that they had likely built up separate factories just to build it. But basically nobody bought it.

(But really, I think Nintendo was speaking to developers there, not to gamers. They meant that there'd still be a point, as a game studio, in _producing GBA games_ , because the DS would also play them.)

<comment><USER34> > Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully- > fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into > a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have "progressive enhancement" logic > in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a > Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not > even demoscene devs.

One game did! Space Invaders, of all things. Jeremy Parish did a video about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c)

<comment><USER33> _Fully_ exploited. Space Invaders was a partial exploitation at best. It was just a tiny stateless SNES ROM-image, that got loaded _from_ the GB cart's ROM _into_ the SNES's tiny work RAM, and then executed from there (leaving approximately zero WRAM for actual gameplay state. Good thing it was Space Invaders!)

A full exploitation, IMHO, would look more like the thing Pokemon Stadium did with Pokemon RBY — but done purely in-cart in the GBC game. A SNES game that "interacts with" a GBC game through the SRAM, such that you're playing the same game, two different ways, when you put it in your SNES vs. when you put it in your Gameboy. (Pretty much like Dragon Quest XI Definitive Edition's ability to reboot the game between 3D and 16-bit mode.)

Of course, to do that, you'd need actual separate ROM chips in the GBC cart for the SNES game, so that the SNES ROM-image could be larger than WRAM yet still fast. All that ROM would be untenable to fit into a GBC-cart sized cartridge even in 2003, the last year of the GBC's lifetime. It'd be perfectly doable _now_ , though!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been playing games all my life on many different platforms, but some of the best fun I've ever had has been on handhelds.

Even when I also have the PC or console version, some games just feel more at home on a handheld, and more appealing when you don't have to _commit_ to a whole session of playing them.

On one hand, handhelds take less focus than sitting in one place staring in one direction, so you can play on them in bite-sized breaks, putting them away at any time and instantly resuming where you left off.

But on the other hand, something so close to your face, that you can snuggle with in any position anywhere, also has a level of intimacy not found in bigger screens and bulkier controls.

Nothing can compare to dozing off in bed while engrossed in a game with a captivating story, mechanics, and music..

Laptops are too bulky, and phones or tablets don't have built-in physical controls.

Which is why I'm a bit concerned about there being only one handheld left. The Vita was amazing and I still love it but Sony did everything they could to kill it off, and the Switch's success hasn't inspired them to try again.

If anyone feels like making a new handheld that anyone can develop for, my money is yours. :)

<comment><USER36> There are a whole bunch of those OGA-derived handhelds (see [https://obscurehandhelds.com/](https://obscurehandhelds.com/)). I have an RGB10 on its way to me right now. Unfortunately, the library of native titles is very, very small, basically just Tux Kart and whatever open source engine recreations have been packaged for the particular distro you're running on it. So it's mostly about emulation, which means that what you're seeing is a pretty far cry from the "real" capabilities of what that processor could do on a 480x320 display. For my part, I'm hoping to get the toolchain set up enough to try compiling OpenJazz for it.

On the other side of things are deliberately wacky low-powered, lo-fi devices with novel distribution mechanisms, like Playdate: [https://play.date/](https://play.date/)

<comment><USER35> Ah thanks, some of these look pretty cool, like the Retroid 2 and the RG350, and I love Panic so of course I know about the Playdate. :)

The problem as you say is the lack of native titles, and an uncertainty about how long the devices will be supported for. In this day and age an official distribution channel like the App Store/eShop is important too, even if it's just a website you can download from onto an SD card.

But I'll try one of these out!

<comment><USER36> The whole value proposition of emulation handhelds pretty much assumes rampant piracy of old titles, which gets especially murky when you have, say, a SNES game which is abandonware, clearly unavailable except at collector prices, whatever, but then it got remastered for the GBA or DS, and is definitely still available for purchase in the 3DS online store (alarm bells).

Besides that the population of these devices is relatively small, it seems there are a lot of subtle incompatibilities between them too, in terms of button quantity and layout, number of analog sticks (ranges from zero to two), etc.

So yeah, I'm sure someone will try it at some point, but it's not hard to see that this isn't a super appealing target for trying to stand up a paid app store. The best-case scenario I could imagine would be an all-you-can-eat Netflix-style affair where you pay $10/mo for access to a rotating catalogue of titles that are a mix of native ports, emulation under legal license, etc. On the other hand, if legal emulation was part of the pitch, it's hard to imagine it going anywhere without classic NES and SNES titles, and Nintendo would have basically zero incentive to legitimize such an effort by playing ball with it, when they're actively selling those titles under emulation on their own storefronts for their own hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can't believe it's been a decade! I bought one on launch day - $250 and barely a 3 hour battery life. I later bought a New 3DS XL (or whatever the crazy naming scheme was) and it was wild how much better the newer hardware was than launch day.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hopefully Nintendo releases the SDK? It's been a decently active platform for indie titles and homebrew games. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the 3DS is covered by the same NDA as the Switch in terms of toolchain/docs/etc. I believe you can find those after signing up for a developer account at [https://developer.nintendo.com/](https://developer.nintendo.com/)

<comment><USER39> I can promise you Nintendo won't do this.

<comment><USER40> The way things are going lately they're probably already leaked.

<comment><USER41> The kernel source code was leaked too

<comment> toper-centage The 3ds has so much homebrew stuff right now. At this point Nintendo stopping to release updates is a relief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The small New 3DS is the last portable console I can actually fit in my pocket, and for that I still take it out with me instead of the Switch on some days. So much easier to whip out of my pocket.

<comment><USER42> I do still play on my PS Vita, and I'm still sad that Sony abandoned it quite quickly after it was released, for me it's a perfect portable "Risk of Rain" machine (although I've played other games on it too!), it's also cool that they've ported some PS1 games to it like Metal Gear Solid, I wrote about my experience here: [http://kaspergrubbe.com/i-bought-a-ps-vita-in-2016-first- imp...](http://kaspergrubbe.com/i-bought-a-ps-vita-in-2016-first-impressions)

<comment><USER14> The PS Vita _really_ deserved better. It really did so many things right.

The OLED screen is still unmatched by portable consoles IMO. Sure, somewhat higher resolution or higher refresh rates would be nice, but those infinitely deep black levels? Just amazing.

There are a few multiplatform games like Undertale for which I consider the PS Vita the best version.

<comment><USER43> The PS Vita is an awesome console for homebrew and game development. I've been working on a small cross-platform game, and used my Vita to both implement cross-compiling in my build system (to port to other systems later), and develop the game for both a touch screen and physical controller. Why bother carrying around a controller, android/ios device, and cables to develop a game when a single Vita will do!

If Sony and Nintendo would release their official SDKs for these dead consoles, maybe people would have less reasons throw them away. I don't understand why they're so defensive about it anyways.

<comment><USER14> God, if I can ever get some free time, I really want to get into that. Thank you for sharing that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The nice thing about the 3DS is that the emulator (Citra) is pretty good. I've used it to play "undubs" of games I own, where fans have taken the audio from the Japanese version of a game and put it into the US or EU version.

It's not perfect, but tons of games are fully playable and development is still very active.

</comment><comment><USER45> At long last it can rest, one of the best consoles ever and kept the legacy of the DS going im glad i was able to experience it first hand!

</comment><comment><USER46> This is like when someone like Gerald Ford dies and I say, "Wow. I could have sworn Gerald Ford died 8 years ago."

<comment><USER47> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tX6jdoruH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tX6jdoruH8)

<comment><USER48> I'm glad you linked this, so I didn't have to dig it up :-) An excellent sketch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I sort of wonder if there's going to be a barrage of exploits held until end- of-life that's going to be released now.

EDIT: I'm already aware that the system has been exploited to death and back, so I'm mostly curious if people haven't already dumped everything.

<comment><USER50> There's actually quite a large community of 3DS hackers: [https://old.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/](https://old.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/)

I was able to hack mine(though I don't use it much anyway) fairly easily. My brother did it to his so he could dump DS carts onto the SD card for better portability.

<comment><USER51> There are some cool homebrews still made: [https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip- wumiibo-amiibo-emulation-for...](https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-wumiibo- amiibo-emulation-for-3ds.572442/)

I suspect 3DS hacking community will stay active for long time as it's the only cheap (second hand 2DS), wide spreaded, hacked portable console available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Doing some Marie-Kondo style cleaning, found a 12 year old Nintendo DS with Advance Wars 2 cartridge.

Hadn't been plugged in for years (I don't have a charger). Turned on and played a game. Amazing.

<comment><USER53> It's a shame how many people didn't get to experience the Advance Wars series since they were only released on the GBA/DS. I think a Switch version would do really well.

<comment><USER54> There's a PC game similar to Advance Wars called War Groove. I haven't played it yet, but I've heard it's decent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Ever since the 3DS launch I found myself hoping for an upgraded version that would render at a higher resolution. 400x240 has always looked terrible to me for 3D graphics.

</comment><comment><USER56> Finally portable gaming console platform is dead now. Why portable-only form factor isn't accepted well nowadays? (Switch is the replacement with hybrid design)

<comment><USER57> Phones have replaced it for the majority of people. The same way they killed mp3 players and point-and-shoot cameras by being good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Are there any other programs like SmileBasic? Maybe Squeak, APL/J/K, Lisp?

Or maybe are there any better ways to input text into a 3DS?

</comment><comment> m-p-3 So it's a great time to run homebrews and emulators on it, as it's unlikely to be patched or updated.

</comment><comment><USER59> Coming soon--All your favorite 3DS classics on the Nintendo Switch for $20 each!

</comment><comment><USER60> seriously?! I just bought one now after putting it off for years

<comment><USER61> Personally I wouldn't be mad, the homebrew and hacking community will probably stay strong for years. I'd be surprised if you bought it think you'd be playing brand new games?

<comment><USER62> Right? There is a tremendous game library on the 3Ds, with several well known titles being exclusive to the console. Thousands of hours of gameplay on native games, let alone the emulated ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Sorry about this, as it's an old argument that everyone here knows, but I wish Nintendo would stop making systems and just focus on their games on competing platforms. They do it for the money. So if I want to have the next Zelda, Mario/MK, DK I have to pay the 300 cost for the system first, then the price of the game ($60 on release day?) I mean, I get it from their perspective. Every Nintendo I purchase the number of games I buy for it seem to drip closer and closer to Nintendo only titles, essentially making it so my favorites really cost about $135 each. (Z/M/MK/DK + 299). I suppose that price is still worth it - not really - but what's killing me is this new thing they're doing where they just kinda stretch a title out for 9 years between the AAA releases. I don't consider a bunch of ports from DS style Zelda games as one of the titles I would buy.

<comment><USER64> Nintendo has a long history of taking hardware risks that are targeted at actually making interesting new types of gameplay possible.

The richness of games available would not be possible if Nintendo was not in the picture as a hardware manufacturer and had to target all their games at MS/Sony hardware.

Sony & MS have almost never tried any novel hardware and been able to tie it to unique gameplay that was actually successful. They've only tried to copy Nintendo's ideas, mostly failed, and then cancelled the hardware. See Kinect, Playstation Move controllers for PS3, etc.. it was all just copying the Wii.

A lot of the games on DS and 3DS would never have seen the light of day with their unique gameplay elements without Nintendo doing the experimental hardware required.

<comment><USER56> I want to defend Kinect. I suspect that it's made by tech driven rather than copying idea from Nintendo.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Facebook Lying To Page Owners? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pigsdontfly.com/2014/08/why-is-facebook-lying-to-page-owners.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with his general point that those notifications are just there to sell ads to page owners, not help the page owner.

That said, I don't think his allegation that the stats are fake is likely to be true. He names one stat that doesn't match up, but doesn't even say the time period he used. The notifications may be for post performance the last hour or something and he checked total post performance, for instance.

I think his post would have more weight if he just said these constant notifications trying to sell me ads are annoying and intrusive, not made up an unlikely story about fake stats.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I don't know how it works and it's not working as I assumed, they must be lying"

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually: "There's no reasonable metric that adds up and they aren't transparent about it, that's enough to write a click-bait headline."

<comment><USER4> Actually: "None of the 3 metrics over the one particular time period I checked adds up and they aren't transparent about it, that's enough to write a click- bait headline claiming they're lying."</comment></comment></comment>


I was forcibly deported from the UK like a terrorist, restrained and under guard - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/02/irene-clennell-deported-uk-terrorist <comment><USER3> Some more backstory from another article: "The government's spousal visa system requires the British partner to prove earnings of at least £18,600 and the couple being able to show long stretches of uninterrupted time living in the UK.

Clennell lost her leave to remain as the time she spent out of the country when her parents were dying was too long. She has made repeated attempts – in Singapore and back in the UK – to reapply for permission to live with her husband."[0]

Has this been a big story over there? It seems excessively cruel to deport a woman who recently lost her parents and has a sick husband.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2017/feb/26/grandmother-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2017/feb/26/grandmother-deported-from-uk-despite-being-married-to-briton- for-27-years)

<comment><USER4> > It seems excessively cruel ...

And does not benefit the public in any way, but in fact harms it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the BBC article lists the facts, which the Guardian chose to omit:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39099574](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39099574)

\- given indefinite leave in 1992 to remain in the UK after her marriage - <USER2> this lapsed because she lived outside the UK for more than two years

\- came back to the UK several times for short visits. She lived in the UK in 2003 until January 2005 and says that during this time she made numerous applications for leave to remain, which were all rejected [overstay]

\- Mrs Clennell eventually entered the UK in 2013 and made two applications for leave to remain - both were rejected, as was her final application in 2016 [overstay]

\- "... speaking to the BBC's Fiona Walker from the Scottish detention centre, she said: "I knew that when I got indefinite leave to remain I can't stay outside of the country for more than two years. "But then my husband was with me, he came to live with me for five years in Singapore."

this is a textbook case of someone playing the system, including overstaying on a tourist visa several times

<comment><USER6> >this is a textbook case of someone playing the system, including overstaying on a tourist visa several times

Sure, but what civilized nation requires someone with a spouse and children who are citizens to get a visa in the first place? Surely that should automatically qualify one for at least permanent resident status.

<comment><USER7> >Sure, but what civilized nation requires someone with a spouse and children who are citizens to get a visa in the first place?

The US?

Reminds me of the Syrian American guy I met. He was a US citizen who moved to Syria in the early 2000's. Got married there and had kids. Then when the civil war occurred, he returned to the US, but could not bring his family.

His kids were US citizens, but he had never done the paperwork. So he set about doing it. Before too long they could enter the US.

But his wife? That's not "automatic". Even though her husband and kids were US citizens, she had to go through the whole motions of applying, etc. Not allowed to come visit the US in the interim. As a result, his kids did not come to the US - they couldn't leave her alone.

<comment><USER8> _but he had never done the paperwork_

Sounds like he dropped the ball.

<comment><USER9> A bit of compassion for someone fleeing the war would be appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Deporting someone does not have to involve sadism. But clearly the immigration people in both the US and UK seem to be sadists. You can treat people like human beings no matter who they are.

</comment><comment><USER11> The USA rules are interesting for this. If you marry a non-US spouse you will not have these problems. You cannot BRING a spouse or fiancé to the US without the minimum financial requirements. But once they are in the country one (like if you married a tourist), you would not have these problems nor are they being proposed. It is relatively easy to bring your spouse or fiance to the USA.

I know someone whose spousal visa was under processing and the spouse was out of the country. He suffered a stroke and her visa was expedited with the doctor's note to help him in his healing. I think the US system is quite reasonable. The UK system does not seem like that.

In the UK they wanted to deport a spouse because the husband did not make enough money.

<comment><USER12> "It is relatively easy to bring your spouse or fiance to the USA."

Maybe too easy. [http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2017/03/03/lauren...](http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2017/03/03/laurens- man-pleads-guilty-sham-marriage-money/98692284/)

<comment><USER13> Actually, it seems pretty great that such scamsters are being caught. The system ought to be as simple as it is for family reunions. There will always be scamsters trying to game the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _The authorities have shown their willingness to treat foreign-born people > as second-class citizens, no matter how integrated we are_

To be clear, since I didn't get this from the article: is she a citizen?

Treating a non-citizen like a "second class citizen" seems to me to be the prerogative of the state. Treating foreign born _citizens_ differently from natives is a travesty.

The way it's phrased makes it seem like the latter but I have a suspicion it's the former.

</comment><comment><USER15> I throw up when I read the arguments used by some of the commenters here how it is ok to deport a mother from her British kids and her husband after a 27 years marriage.</comment>


Wikipedia Instant - Just another instant search tool - <AUTHOR> http://delarubia.org/instantwiki/

<comment><USER2> if i type something too fast the results sometimes get muddled and stuck on the first letter i type. for it to work sometimes i have to be typing slowly. i also sometimes get some bizarre top results while i am looking for the second-to-most result. other uses show it entirely effective though.

<comment><AUTHOR> i will have a look onto that

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mmm why not use <http://WikInstant.com> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> can't there be more than one instant wikipedia? yours loads the article directly, whilst mine loads related articles when typing, with a snippet of what they are about.

mine is faster in case you just want to know what something is and not everything about that. and mine also shows related results that may be of interest, or not.

<comment><USER3> I prefer the direct load because the 1st hit is almost everytime the page I would like to read. For example I use <http://WikInstant.com> for college (i.e. quickly looking up diseases), WikInstant.com is perfect for that doesn't require me to use the mouse (compared to other wiki instant sites).</comment></comment></comment>


French application of international rules to cyberwarfare - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/french-application-of-international-rules-to-cyberwarfare/ <comment><USER2> How difficult is it for small groups to create cyber weapons?

I guess it's in the interest of countries to make cybersecurity a difficult job to learn and master, and to hire any security researcher doing freelance so that cybersecurity expertise doesn't spread outside of the hand of big countries.

It reminds me of cryptography. Except cybersecurity seems a little more complex that cryptography, since finding holes in software is much more hairy than proving math theorems involving cryptography.

<comment><USER3> > Except cybersecurity seems a little more complex that cryptography, since > finding holes in software is much more hairy than proving math theorems > involving cryptography.

Then you have never truly studied cryptography, this sounds like what someone who only studied things like the proofs that the decryption of the encryption is the plaintext would say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a medium-sized power, France is more sensitive to international law than the US, China or Russia. She will also not hesitate to prosecute generals for war crimes, as with the Firmin Mahé case, something unthinkable in the US or even the UK.

<comment><USER5> France is sensitive to international law mainly when it works in their own interests.

For example, go and read about France's attitude towards the French agents who sabotaged the Rainbow Warrior.

<comment><USER6> So, like anyone else? That's how international law works actually. And it works well we're still here and not even pillaged or raped every year as we citizens used to be some centuries years ago. Progress

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My view of the state-level (golden) rule for cyberwarefare:

(1) Thou shalt not publish the goods on another country's elite else they shalt do the same to you.</comment>


Tesla to Double Size of Fremont Factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecountrycaller.com/66754-tesla-motors-inc-tsla-submits-new-plan-to-double-fremont-factorys-size/ <comment><USER2> Also [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla- factory-20161011...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla- factory-20161011-snap-story.html)

I'd be interested to see how well their proposal fits in with the Warm Springs area master plan.</comment>


Singapore Just Sentenced a Drug Trafficker to Death via Zoom - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8xvz/singapore-just-sentenced-a-drug-trafficker-to-death-via-zoom <comment><USER2> I gotta be honest, delivering a sentence over Zoom isn't an issue for me. Amnesty International is right (IMHO) in arguing that a death sentence for a drug offense is extreme, but let's not pretend that the judge being in a different room somehow changes the nature of the sentence. It's not like the judge put on a clown costume or told jokes during the sentencing.

 _Maybe_ there is an argument that a trial conducted remotely loses some human emotion and makes a court more likely to find someone guilty of a crime, but the act of delivering a sentence after all that could just as easily be done via a letter in the post.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. However:

>Maybe there is an argument that a trial conducted remotely loses some human emotion

This argument not only exists, it is entirely why we face a jury of our peers in person. Otherwise, there would be no reason not to avoid the more obvious problem of negative bias by hiding the defendant entirely (justice is supposed to be blind, after all).

<comment><USER2> While that's similar, the distinction here is that conducting a trial over Zoom doesn't hide the defendant; you can still see them. Zoom is admittedly lower fidelity, but does it actually matter? Zoom certainly degrades the experience when timing matters, such as telling a joke. But with testimony and legal arguments, timing isn't as important (as long as people aren't talking over each other). Also, with Zoom you could dedicate an portion of your screen to watching the defendant; in person you would have to move your gaze around the room, with Zoom you could see a defendant react to a witness' testimony without looking away from either of them.

So the question remains whether the net effect of Zoom's differences changes the court in a positive or negative way. I don't think that you can say Zoom is bad just because hiding the defendant is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would think the closest analogy would be to the death penalty in the USA surrounding lethal injections.

Every company that is knowingly being used for the cocktail to kill someone has made the supply gone. They refuse to supply to any state that diverts to executions. Sure, the executions are 'legal' (removing jurors who are ethically against death penalty is a whole different issue).... But the companies manufacturing these chemicals don't want anything to do.

I wonder how Zoom is going to handle this in the future? Even though they obviously had 0 input for Singapore executing a citizen, the article makes it sound like Zoom was somehow, peripherally complicit with state sanctioned murder.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am constantly in awe that we live in a society which has no clue what consciousness is or when it begins in a human and despite that we've made abortion legal while at the same time making getting high and putting what you want into your own body illegal to the point of executing offenders.

How (and why) is it that almost the entire world is dancing to the same tune with regards to the War on Drugs?

I'm convinced that the people who keep drugs illegal are profiting immensely from these policies. Otherwise, why wouldn't we arrest people only when they commit a victim-ful crime or potentially victim-ful crime, e.g. arresting people for drunk driving rather than just for drinking...

<comment><USER6> Legalize drugs and let people do what they want and be responsible for their own actions.

-or-

Have a welfare state

Pick one.

You can't have a welfare state and at the same time let people do whatever they want with their bodies, because the cost will be borne by everyone.

<comment><USER7> I would expect the financial costs of providing a welfare state to _decrease_ if you offered drug addicts their choice of addiction treatment or free drugs. Right now addicts are pushed toward treatment even if they don't want it. Common street drugs are inexpensive to manufacture. Treatment services are subject to Baumol's cost disease. Treatments are also unlikely to permanently alter behaviors of people who are being _pushed_ toward behavioral changes rather than spontaneously seeking to change.

The state could buy an addict a 40 year supply of opiates (wholesale) at the same cost as 3 months of outpatient rehab. Incarceration is even more expensive than outpatient treatment.

<comment><USER6> That is your choice of what the state's treatment ought to be. You see how drug dependence leads to dependence on the state? How the state becomes a drug dealer? And the family of that addict will still suffer. That requires yet more state support.

This ends up with a system where drug dependence is subsidized by the state and taxpayers. Things that are subsidized tend to increase.

But the mechanism by which the state will intervene may very well be different once the cost of that approach becomes known, and people who are working and paying taxes decide they want the mechanism to be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are signs on the border with Malaysia that say drug smuggling is punishable by death with minimal prosecution.

</comment><comment><USER9> \-- Death by Zoom -- I can't think of a more inhumane and painful way to die.</comment>


Hacking into the Indian Education System - <AUTHOR> https://deedy.quora.com/Hacking-into-the-Indian-Education-System

<comment> alok-g Duplicate of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5819959>

<comment><USER2> but I think its okay if this stays, since 14 hours ago and time in-between was the night in India. So not many HN users from India saw it, as it should interest them ofcourse.

Its 11 am now, this should do well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TIL schools from countries like Dubai, Singapore and Indonesia also come under ICSE. I typed a few roll numbers and all schools came from foreign countries.

</comment><comment><USER2> okay, I must say.. I have seen quite horrible coding, and I knew data mining was possible, with not just ICSE/ISC but also with CBSE. Though I differ on the issue, that people should be able to see marks of their friends who are travelling, and have no immediate internet access to quench there anxiety.

I pretty much know the grace/speed marking of overburdened Indian teachers, so I'm not as much surprised as you to see the missing numbers.</comment>


3 Al Jazeera journalists arrested in Paris for flying a drone - <AUTHOR> http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/323211/3-al-jazeera-journalists-arrested-in-paris-for-flying-a-drone-filming-it-and-watching/ <comment><USER2> Wow, what were they doing? It's illegal to fly anything in Paris without authorization from the city. [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-31619099](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31619099)</comment>