'My son spent £3,160 in one game' - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48925623 <comment><AUTHOR> I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all day and all night, at the expense of one's social life, academic success and even career. That's not normal behavior; it's behavior indicative of addiction and dependency. And I'm referring to adults. For kids, who lack executive functions, this behavior can and is even worse, even more debilitating.

Now, regulating video games like alcohol may not be the best idea. We could end up in a similar state of binge drinking, except with binge playing. But perhaps some sort of preventative measure can be taken so that kids do not get sucked into these games that are, make no mistake, maliciously designed to addict and to steal money from the vulnerable. Even alcohol manufacturers don't dose their products with nicotine.

<comment><USER2> Anecdata:

I live this, I agree with you. An MMO was the only thing in my life I've stayed up all night for and then been able to set an alarm and wake up for after 2 hours of sleep. This was a game I committed to for 14 years. I've slept through finals, been tardy my entire life, yet for this MMO I could do anything. I was "sick" instead of seeing my girlfriend, I was otherwise occupied instead of working, or school.

I made the conscious decision years ago to never install WoW for exactly this reason. In the same way AA teaches that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic but can be sober, I choose to stay sober. I miss it. I think about it. But I have to make the active, conscious decision to 'choose life'.

<comment><USER3> Hear hear.

I'm madaxe. I'm an addict.

I wasted 18 months of university on an MMO, 15 years ago. Cost me my social life, my girlfriend, and I found myself on academic probation.

It was absolutely insidious. I only found my way out of it by becoming a GM and then banning my own account, because even though I'd made the decision I wanted to stop, I just kept finding myself downloading and installing the client, yet again. It worked, I completed my degree, rekindled friendships. I did relapse about four years later while working a shitty boring QA job, and decided to treat the root cause, which was the shitty job, and went and started a business - and then didn't game at all for nearly a decade.

Weirdly, my addiction and my physical running away from the environment that fostered it lead to much of the success that I have enjoyed since. It made things so intolerably bad that a ground change was mandatory.

I game again now, but it's now on the order of about 5 hours a week on average - I'll still occasionally spend a sleepless weekend playing something, but then I'll go a month without. I like finite games - some adventure with an enthralling plot, and when it's over, it's over - or grand strategy like civ, where you master the game and move on - and frankly I find a three day deity match gruelling enough that it'll be three months or more before I get the itch again.

I'll never touch an MMO again - they are almost perfect and infinite skinner boxes.

<comment><USER4> I'm scrubs, I'm an addict. Spent my youth programming, going from language to language.

I was learning and it led me to jobs and I'm grateful for that, but my memories of youth is me in a dark room in front of a big monitor and a buzzing light that never really worked right.

I have almost no other memories of it.

was it worth spending my youth so that I could be 15% more productive at some firm?

Even now I come home, kiss my gf and then sit in front of the computer to chase the next big thing, mostly because when I come home I am to tired to do anything else than just programming.

There was some research on HN where they found that programming (successful run/compilation) led to similar dopamine boosts as gambling.

My neck, back and hands all hurt, but I do what I always do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think an obvious solution here is simply to strengthen consumer protection laws and shift the burden of preventing this from the consumer to the vendor.

The common thread in all these stories was "a kid spends a bunch of money, parent asks for a refund, is told no". But consider if the law says that digital goods such as this _must_ be refunded on demand unless you can prove the purchaser wasn't a child. (If you want to really drive the point home, add a penalty clause for abuse, so you have to refund 150% of the total if there's evidence of any attempt to target minors, hide the charges, dark patterns, etc.)

If Apple becomes statutorily required to refund the money, they'll get very good very quickly at kicking bad actors off their platform.

This shouldn't be a system where parents try and protect themselves and their children and scummy vendors try and exploit them; it should be a shystem where _Apple_ (and the other platforms and market operators) try to protect themselves and scummy vendors try and exploit _them_. Leave liability with the people most able to protect themselves, not the least able.

I don't think bans or treating games like drugs is needed; if you remove the financial incentive of being abusive, you'll stop the abuse.

<comment><USER6> I think parents need to understand that you can't give children a credit card, or credit-card like power.

I was 14 before I was given access to a credit card.. and was given a dire warning about when it could and should be used.

If parents can't lock out purchases so they have to physically approve each purchase, then yes, they should be able to get refunds and penalties... But if they give their children the password to buy/download apps unsupervised, they need to understand the consequences (and really, how the heck do you not realize that unlimited purchasing power on an app store is a possibility?)

The first story in this article is about a kid with "the mental development of a 7 year old"... Well.... I wouldn't give MY 7 year old a credit card! Supervise your children! If it's too much work to monitor their purchases and approve each one, complain to the platform for more control. It would take Apple, Google, Steam, etc. <120 hours of work to implement a "Monthly budget" system if people demanded it.

Btw, how do you miss that 3,200 pounds is spent over 3-4 months, if that clears out your bank account? I'd agree that 14 days is a bit short for a refund period, but asking for 4 months to return digital goods that have been thoroughly used by that point..... might as well shut down all the game studios...

<comment><USER5> > It would take Apple, Google, Steam, etc. <120 hours of work to implement a > "Monthly budget" system if people demanded it.

Or if the legal system assigned liability to them until they did. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount of crap in the app stores that encourage this sort of behaviour is truly, truly shocking.

The gaming community often lambast companies like EA etc for loot boxes ("surprise mechanics"), which is definitely a problem that needs to go away, but from this article I suspect there's a lot of examples of absolute bottom of the barrel shovelware on the app stores that's raking it in from accidental purchases from children or vulnerable adults.

I remember Apple saying they were putting together some sort of curated program for high quality games, maybe with a subscription model. Which is cool and everything but creating a two-tier system doesn't solve the underlying problem.

Maybe any transaction should have a 2FA style system where the cardholder need to explicitly approve it through their phone. Or maybe a daily spending cap or something like that

<comment><USER8> > Maybe any transaction should have a 2FA style system

It does - at least on Apple devices, IAP need to be authenticated with a physical interaction, and Touch/Face ID.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more as in, sending the approval to a separate device, but obviously that wouldn't work if you just have one device that you let your kids play on.

<comment><USER9> I think Apple already (can) do that - but as you note it doesn't help with a shared device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mobile free to play games now make up the majority of money made in video games today.

It's strange then that most of these games aren't that interesting. Who are the players of these that make up the new class of gamers?

It would seem that the payers are the exploitable - those able to be swindled with casino mechanisms.

As an ex- free-to-play game developer and one who believes regulation often does more harm to consumers than good, I'd like to see something done. I'm just at a loss for what would work.

<comment><USER11> How about the app stores classifying them?

I've tried looking for games I could buy outright. Try finding a game without ads or in app purchases. It is extremely difficult to search by those criteria.

<comment><USER12> I've been trying to find such games for my kids (4 & 6) - there really are no search options to help.

Indiscriminate third party advertising and freemium games are going to cause significant long-term harm to mobile gaming, and possibly also to society as a whole.

There's still some games out there that use IAP in small doses (<10 total) to sell reasonably sized chunks of content, but they don't make the money that freemium games do.

(My own device operates on the same rules as my kids - no third party advertising, no freemium IAP stuff. There's really nothing to miss in that space anyway…)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every game should have to display a "Maximum cost of online play" on the cover with ESRB rating and on the app store listing. If not limited just show ($10,000+).

Would give parents a rough idea of how exploitive a game's online currency system is.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't they all say "$10,000+" in that case? Are there really any games out there that stop you before you make a purchase saying "You already spent $100 this month. Please don't give us any more of your money!"

<comment><USER15> For apps that have their own currency, it's of course possible to spend $10k+. But before every exploitative game hopped on the custom currency bandwagon, you used to be able to buy skins/guns/characters/etc. outright with real money. If my game allowed you to buy 5 characters each worth $10, then I could accurately claim the max IAP profit from each user for me would be $50.

<comment><USER16> But you're talking about one-time purchases, which is common for apps, but not so much for games. But even in apps you have monthly subscriptions that still _somewhat skew_ the way you perceive the price. What's the max IAP profit for Netflix or Spotify? (Subscriptions bought through the app still net a cut to the store provider.)

Virtual currencies are a scam on its own, but even games without them can be exploitative. The monetization of games has become so frequent, that's it's basically accepted as something ordinary. I've noticed that some developers don't even bother creating a currency anymore, you just get the Playstore € prompt for the item you want to buy.

Most free games are built on the premise that it's never-ending or always expanding. Either you can upgrade to infinity or keep playing, because they keep adding new content. I don't think I've ever stumbled upon a game where you have limited things to buy.

The only solution I see, which is just plain unrealistic, is to put IAP apps into a seperate category. I've started doing this, by not downloading apps that have the "Includes IAP" and I'm pretty satisfied. I don't think any game/app should be qualified as _FREE_ , if half of it is locked behind a paywall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm really confused why "maybe make it impossible for this to happen" is so controversial. People fuck up sometimes. Kids are tough. And as peddlers of technology the onus is on us to make people's lives better, not worse, which includes having the tiniest bit of compassion and maybe using some of those VC millions to prevent these kinds of things. Do y'all truly believe that everyone that this happens to was being careless? Is there no room for an honest mistake?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not sure how many people know this but you can use a service like privacy.com to get burner credit card numbers. For example, you can create a burner credit card number that only works one time or has a specific spend limit (like $20 per transaction or $20 total in transactions per month). Credit cards/debit cards are inherently insecure because the credit card number can be reused by anyone who has the code.

It is a free service. If the parents in the article used a service like that then all of their spending problems would be solved because junior couldn't charge the card any further. All additional transactions would simply be declined.

The article talks about government regulation, but the government honestly has better things to worry about than what junior is spending on apps. People simply need to use the existing services, like privacy.com, to control their spending.

<comment><USER19> Well, that's a thinly veiled advertisement, but hey, at least it's tangentially related to the topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> But how do you tell the difference between an adult and a kid with their parents password and bank card?

If you trust your kid with your bank account and get burned.. isn't that kind of on you?

<comment><USER21> Did you read the article at all? A game says it is for 3 years old and above and it uses trickery to manipulate a 5 year old into thinking that real money is just game coins. How are you supposed to control that?

<comment><USER22> By actually parenting your kid and what they do instead of just plopping them down in front of the app store?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another one of those oversensationalized outrage articles that can be boiled down to "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility." There is literally a setting on iOS for that specific specific scenario, which allows to prevent in-app purchases[0]. And it is very easy and intuitive to set up too, so it isn't like it is hidden behind millions of menus and dark patterns.

0\. [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204396](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT204396)

<comment><USER24> > "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I > will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility."

For centuries, it's been trivially possible for parents to manage their children's access to funds. Nineteenth century homesteaders could send their kids off to market with appropriate funds to buy what they needed. Now all of a sudden this doesn't work and kids by default have access to near infinite (at their scales) lines of credit because of internet purchasing.

Why is this burden suddenly on the parents? Why can't app vendors (and in particular their middlemen who manage the purchases) make even a minimal effort at not having this system be broken by default?

<comment><USER25> > Nineteenth century homesteaders could send their kids off to market with > appropriate funds to buy what they needed. Now all of a sudden this doesn't > work and kids by default have access to near infinite (at their scales) > lines of credit because of internet purchasing.

Huh? The old model is working just as well as ever. Why would you give your kid your credit card? Have them make their internet purchases with a gift card, the non-insane way.

<comment><USER26> Almost all major credit cards have a system to generate virtual card numbers with dollar limits on them. Generate a virtual card number with some limit, give to the kid or configure it on their device. Every time you need to increase the limit you have to login on a site that only the parent has access to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No child wakes up one morning and decides to do this, it's often a steady progression enabled by parents who have relegated their responsibilities to TV screens, video games and mobile phones. Casting blame on tech that they've let loose on their kids absolves the parents of any responsibility.

<comment><USER28> These games are literally designed to exploit vulnerable people, and they use every trick in the book to do it. Criticising parents for not being able to defend against the fruits of millions of hours of labour spent on marketing and r&d which exists solely to exploit is honestly shameful, as if parenting isn't difficult enough already. Do you really think gaming companies exploiting children by introducing them to gambling is the fault of the parents? What next, is the tobacco industry blameless too? Just a tiny bit of empathy on your part for people rather than capitalists would go a long way I think.

<comment><USER29> I agree with what you are saying, I really do, but it's still a really bad idea to give a child access to an store account connected to a credit or debit card.

This problem needs to be solved in both ends.

<comment><USER28> Indeed, but it's only such a truly awful idea exactly because there are a lot of predators out there with no morals looking to prey on children. If a kid went into a physical shop with a credit card and tried to buy something, he wouldn't get anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is disgusting. Yes parents should be aware of these things but shifting the burden of locking down every system a child uses when this could be handled at the app store or financial processor level is ridiculous. It seems that some of these people are claiming that the game is not distinguishing well between fake and real currency. There are definitely games I've played where this is ambiguous as well.

IMO there needs to be a more rigorous opt-in process for different types of apps. You can opt in for automatic purchases for utility type apps but not for game purchases for example and it needs to be off by default. There also needs to be ways for people to get their money back in certain situations. If a child has a cognitive disability of some kind then holding them accountable seems kind of exploitative. Parents can prove these things with documentation and if proven the money should be refunded.

<comment><USER8> But still though, they gave the kid their credit card. If you don't want your kid to spend £3000 then don't give it to them?

Not defending any particular app's behaviour. Without any first hand knowledge, I certainly believe that there are scummy games out there using dubious methods to get people to rack up IAP.

<comment><USER31> > they gave the kid their credit card

These systems are set up so you really don't have much choice, though. My son will come to me and say, "Dad, I have some money from Grandma, can I use it to buy willywhacker 2 for my iPod?" I'll say, "sure" - then he'll hand me the $5 he got from Grandma and I'll type my credit card number into wherever the game expects it to be and try to check the "don't remember this card for future use" check box (if it's there and if the game actually honors it). My kids are really good about asking before they make purchases, but a lot of these apps are designed to trick you - that's how they make profits.

<comment><USER32> This seems like a nice use case for virtual credit cards with a very strict limit (just create one with $5).

<comment><USER33> There is a lot you can do, but you shouldn't have to. This isn't someone burning down their school. This is the first world becoming the third world in digital.

In the third world you always to watch yourself so you don't hurt, scammed or abused with little recourse. So being curious, doing something different or challenging the status quo becomes a liability. Eventually there isn't much development at all, only corruption and people knowing their place.

When you buy something in a store with cash in person, after having it shown by an employee, you can still in most cases return the thing at your will. But when some clicks a button moving a few bytes with a digital payment that in reality costs nothing, there is of course nothing that can be done. This industry is just increasingly rubbish.

Don't click this, don't open that e-mail and don't answer the phone. You don't know who it is from or who it is going to. Don't have that password, don't type it there, don't have it too long and don't make it too short. We can automate your job, but not authentication. Don't publish that, don't vote like this and don't live here. Know your place.

(At least my banks haven't offered virtual cards for many years).

<comment><USER34> Well, then the USA was "third world" long before in-app purchases. When you give someone your debit/CC info, they can basically pull infinitely from your account at any point in the future thus you have to remain eternally vigilant because you once gave someone $5. Which you didn't even do. You gave them the key to your account and trusted them to only take $5, that's how crazy our system is.

Better financial tools/primitives would have gone a long way to prevent the issue in the article which most Americans don't have. I shouldn't need my bank to hopefully create a "virtual card" feature (it doesn't). It should've been ubiquitous 20+ years ago.

This is one reason I use Paypal: I can see a list of organizations authorized to take money out of my account. My bank account and credit cards? I have no fucking idea who might show up next month. Maybe that thing I "canceled" on their website four months ago?

Or I use bitcoin because it's basically cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Giving a smartphone to an underage person is also like giving them a credit card, a phone that can be used to call any tolled number, a way to access inappropriate content, etc, etc.

<comment><USER36> Any gaming console today has the exact same issues, just hidden by it being a "gaming console".

FIFA, specifically, is not a mobile phone game. It's a console game with gambling-alike microtransactions.

<comment><USER37> Madden, a cornerstone of gaming for a lot of people really, has it too with Ultimate Team or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In civil law countries it is outright illegal for purchases of children going through if parents disapprove.

For example art. 19 Swiss Civil Code ([https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified- compilation/19070042/...](https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified- compilation/19070042/index.html#a19)) says: «[...] may only enter into obligations [...] with the consent of their legal representative.»

In other words, children can only «buy» things if parents don't object.

However I can imagine that it is sometimes simply impossible to get the monay back. National law as empty words.

</comment><comment><USER39> I understand this isn't addressing the issue at hand, but having notifications sent to your phone whenever a purchase/swipe is made on a credit card is incredibly useful. It might be moot if the device receiving the notifications is being used by the person making the transaction, but I would recommend everyone to set up such a thing if their bank supports it. And, all banks should do this eventually!

I get instant purchase notifications on my bank cards; it's really good to know exactly when they get used.

<comment><USER40> Most banks in this world don't provide this service. This is why my "spending" debit card is Monzo because its all kicks ass!!! The second I spend £££, the Monzo app bleeps and shows me the amount and the store (with address, company logo etc.) I was shocked that big banks in the UK like Barclays, NatWest et al, don't bother alerting their clients immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> You have to be 21 to play the slots in Vegas. It's recognized as not a good idea to allow casinos and gaming rooms to extend access to addictive gambling games to children.

Gambling is also banned for everyone in many states, not just children, as the damage to society of allowing enterprises to prey on addictive personality types and create misery is recognized.

These laws need to be applied to online games as well.

</comment><comment><USER42> This seems to be the equivalent of buying digital scratch-off lottery tickets. So you could make the argument that in-app purchases should be regulated in the same way that gambling is.

However, you could also argue that it's the equivalent of buying a pack of Pokémon cards, baseball cards, etc. - which are not regulated.

My intuition tells me that given the addictiveness and how this disproportionately affects the most vulnerable members of society, the practice should be regulated much more tightly. Also, given that these are digital goods, a more relaxed "return" policy shouldn't harm any company that is offering in-app purchases in a good-faith / non-exploitative manner.

</comment><comment><USER43> What were these parents thinking? This isn't a new issue. People have been reading stories like this in the news for a decade and still they hand their kid their iPad and say "go play over there while dad watches the news..."

You can literally use your phone and google/apple account as a credit card nowadays. It's irresponsible to just hand that to a child. Ignorance is not an excuse. (that said, of course there should be consumer protections in place to limit the damage)

<comment><USER44> I disagree that it's as simple as just blaming the parents. As a technical community it is easy for us to assert that there are probably optional restrictions somewhere but many parents who are not technically-minded will not necessarily make that connection. Manufacturers/vendors of these devices simply don't do a good job of advertising to parents about these risks and the options available to restrict them.

iOS, as an example, does have the ability to disable in-app purchases using the "Content & Privacy Restrictions" settings, but unless you dig through the device settings and found them (under "Screen Time" no less) then you would not know that those options exist. Given the obscure naming reducing the chance of them ever being found, they had might as well not exist.

Apple could do things to improve this. They could clearly ask about parental controls up-front during the device initial setup, they could clearly place them at the top-level of the Settings app and label them "Parental Controls", they could even include a bit of paper in the box or some printed text on the packaging that explains where to find those options.

They do none of those things.

<comment><USER43> I'd argue it's the parents responsibility to educate themselves in this regard. Again, this isn't new news. If you can make a purchase on the device, your child can make that purchase too. Certainly, the OS can flag more warnings during the setup of the device etc. but I doubt the people getting into this situation will pay any more attention than they've evidently done so far (which is to say very little)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's astonishing that the developers of games like this can sleep at night. Do they lie to themselves and pretend all the kids spending thousands of dollars are the children of Saudi royals or something? They must know that they're exploiting people who can't afford it.

Edit: these developers know damn well if their target demo is children, and they know damn well that the phenomenon of children running up huge debts without the _informed_ consent of their parents is all too common. They know what they're doing; they can't plead ignorance. At best they are self-deluded, but it's more likely they are morally corrupt. Blinded by their love for money, totally indifferent to the suffering their business model causes.

It's absolutely revolting, and so is anybody defending it by implicitly asserting that it's okay for developers to exploit children if their parents happen to be careless or neglectful. _" The parents are to blame for allowing it"_ does _not_ absolve the developers who knowingly profit from it. Should it be legal for me to sell cigarettes to a child if their parents were foolish enough to give the child a credit card? Of course not, fuck off with that shit.

<comment><USER46> One would assume that children spending was authorized by their parents.

<comment><USER47> Who spends the price of an iPhone (per month, for months on end) on some stupid game?

One (game dev) would have to be very much full of it, to assume this is legit. And, that they never responded to the parents tells it all.

<comment><USER48> People who can buy an iPhone a month for months on end and not care. One of my friends is a whale, he just doesn't really care about the expense.

<comment><USER47> I doubt it's all that common, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am shocked, that it is legal to offer simple games which allow in-app purchases of this size. If you compare these games to any AAA title which goes for like $70 or less, this isn't ethical in the first place.

With the money spent by a child, there should be no way to enforce the bill. Here in Germany, children cannot do business transactions which exceed the range of typical pocket money, so we are talking a few dollars here. Any business larger than that would require the parents to agree to be valid. Invalid transactions can be reversed.

And when pointing out towards parents negligence: keep in mind that there are no multiple accounts on iOS devices and there are good reasons to spend money to buy apps on a device. Of course, with enough understanding of the technology, parents would set it up so that the password is required for every purchase. The question is, is this a reasonable request for non-tech parents?

So if Apple wants to be in a position of morale, as they pitch themselves, they should put reasonable limits to in-app purchases, especially towards these games.

</comment><comment><USER50> >he managed to download Clash of Clans through a Google Play account, enter his own children's bank card details and buy lots of in-game items.

Wait, why the fuck does a 12 year old child have a bank card?

<comment><USER51> Why not? How else are they going to learn how to handle money? Or do you believe children should receive every adult responsibility all at once on their 18th birthday?

Sadly these app publishers take advantage while these kids are still learning. The boy probably would never have spent £700 on the game if that had to be spent upfront. "Microtransactions" in games can't die soon enough.

<comment><USER52> > Why not? How else are they going to learn how to handle money?

Cash? You don't need a debit/credit card to pay for things. You can buy iTunes/Google gift cards with cash if you want funds for your account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Games can be an escape, just as book reading can be an escape. The problem lies in that the book ends, but the game goes on for months, years, or decades.

Many people bring up the positivity of quitting, or minimizing, social media. The same thing could be extended to gaming.

I have quit social media, only using twitter to follow my interests, and quit gaming back in high school. Both of which took many, many weeks away from my life.

I am amazed at how much time I have outside of work compared to my peers that are hooked on social media or gaming!

All that being said, neither are evil, and both can be fun, but for many people they silently rob you of precious time, and peace.

It helps to view things not on a micro, hours per day, scale, but on a lifetime scale. 2 hours gaming daily, 5 times a week, from age 10-30 is well over a YEAR of your life! Now consider the binge gaming phases of life and it certainly takes a lot shorter of a time to hit 1 year.

<comment><USER54> > I have quit social media

The comments section of Hacker News is social media.

<comment><USER53> I guess I have just replaced it then :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> One thing that I haven't used on my Switch (no kids), but I understand as a great feature, is that you can add funds available for games as a one-time purchase that can be used across the system.

The actual purchase of system currency can be controlled while allowing the dependent to make their own choices on how to spend it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I stopped buying FIFA/Madden/etc. games. The team building mode seems like it'd be fun, but oh damn, you only have x games you can use that specific player so you have to buy contracts which costs points and good luck trying to stack your team with various players by making good trades vs the spend funds approach.

Give me a game where I can play it and GM it in such a way that if I make Joe Blow look like a star, I can trade him for an actual star and repeat the process until I have the dream team I want or whatever without spending money, I'll buy the game again. The last Madden I bought was the one with Gronkowski in the opening animation and was just disgusted with the "fun" mode being weighted heavily against you just playing and having fun.

<comment><USER56> You are permanently limited on how many times you can make a team with a player unless you pay more??

As someone who's never touched the sports games who grew up on old non- internet consoles that you can't replay the same thing is utter madness. You can't use the same player over in another attempt??? Do you run out of players?

<comment><USER37> From my personal experience, I played for like 2-3 weeks. You get a starter set with mostly mediocre cards (card based UI) and then one decent and then a great card (defensive player for me and a few other people I know; don't know if it can be someone offensive).

From there, you can do little skill things for points which can be turned in for either more cards or contracts. These are mostly skill drill type things and not really "I'm playing a football game as my team vs the Bears" or something though there are some. Don't know if the events refresh so you can unlock more points as I only played a few weeks. So there's the no pay options of keeping things going as far as I could tell.

One week I got a Greg Olsen card as part of some event promo thing. Worked very well as a tight end in Ultimate Team. A week or two later it was around Super Bowl or something and received Dak Prescott. So solid passing tandem. Then, after a few games, contracts are coming up. At first it was Dak and it cost a lot to keep him. Then, I had burned so many on him that I didn't have many left for whoever it was that was my DE (it was a moderately good stats guy. Not great, but serviceable). So I lose him and the second string guy takes his spot. After a few more games, another boot falls and more attrition. Lost Greg Olsen because I was a few contracts short and just quit because it was basically a team of second string players by then.

Dunno, I'm all for a GM/player hybrid mode, but I'd rather feel like I'm gaining something when losing something on the GM end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> My daughter is playing several of those games such as Roblox on her iPad; she can't install new applications of buy credits without me entering the password in the apple store.

The cool part of doing that is that I ask her to convince me why she needs those credits, what she will use them for, doing that I can understand what she does in the game and see if it fit her. Another side of those games is that they have a social side and you can interact with other kids, so it's important to know that and make sure your kid understands that not everybody can be nice on a social network.

In the end, I don't understand a parent that gives that power to their children...

</comment><comment><USER58> Most parents do not spend time playing the games their children play (HN is an outlier here). I see parents giving their phones to their children with an active credit card on file. Its not really the parents fault, how could they know?

All the games start as fun and innocent. It's when the child get past level twenty that the difficulty kicks in. You have to pay to make any significant progress. Most kids don't know any better, all they do is press the button to progress. The parents don't know any better, all they did was give the phone to their restless child.

The game developer however, designed it specifically to trick both parent and child.

</comment><comment><USER59> Other posters point out something that I found to be unexpected: The ESRB does not rate mobile games.

Now, yes, the ESRB ratings are not anything to stake your life on, but they do give parents and organizations _something_ to go off. Does the ESRB have _massive_ problems? Yes, of course. Do mobile games need to have some sort of rating system? I'd think that most people would say _something_ would be really nice

Perhaps the ESRB, or an expanded board of a similar nature, should expand their mission to not only rate the content in a mobile game but also should give card-holders a better idea of what the gaming market's financial risks are?

<comment><USER60> ESRB is not a legal regulation and has zero authority. It is merely a privately held company that holds the copyrights to their system of rating video games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> The gambling industry got into the gaming industry. You are looking at the result: Children are gambling.

<comment><USER61> Although gambling consists of convincing the gambler they will get real money in return, while these games seem to be trying to convince the gamer that they aren't spending real money.

It's definitely similar but the difference could be important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Is there any way to link the games/play account/icloud accounts to a wallet with limited funds?

I feel like the real problem here is how these games link up to a payment method that isn't actually intended to be used for the game. Unlinking them from each other should go a long way to resolve these "my child spent a lot of money because I gave them access to all my money" problems.

</comment><comment><USER63> If you haven't seen it all ready just take a look at the infamous "Let's Go Whaling!" talk here [1]. They're not even hiding the fact the these are the type of people Free2Play/Pay2Win games prey on anymore.

[1]. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4)

</comment><comment><USER64> Growing up I was often nervous of accidentally purchasing something in an app store or other online accounts. Free trials will not always notify you when your free trial is up and your payments will automatically go through. Personally I believe regulations are necessary in order to avoid accidental payments for expensive applications.

</comment><comment><USER65> Every generation has problems like this. I remember my friend become addicted to calling premium phone numbers when when he was a teenager. When his parents went to work, he would have stayed home and just keep calling all day instead of going to school. Only when the bill came through post his parents went mad and started to blame everyone but themselves. Eventually they got premium numbers blocked, but his son was spending all the money he could get his hands on on call cards. It was a phase for him, he stopped doing that after few months. When he talked about it years later, he couldn't believe that he did this. He says he wishes his parents gave him more attention and explained to him what it is about and why it makes no sense to do something like this. Fascist love such stories, because they can use them to tell people how they should live and create more regulations.

</comment><comment><USER66> There's a bunch of people in this thread saying "but what about the parents", and a bunch of other people in this thread saying "but dark patterns", and they're both missing the point.

If you're in the industry and making money from IAPs, especially from lootbox IAPs, the one thing you need to know is that governments are coming for you.

If you're Apple or Google taking 30% of those IAPs (and also not paying much tax) then government is coming after that money.

If you're a publisher selling games for children, marketed to children, with hundreds or thousands of dollars of IAPs then governments are coming after you too.

Articles like this are a clear and simple warning: fix your shit, sort out sensible industry self-regulation, or face EU wide regulation.

We have plenty of examples to prove that the EU or individual governments are not afraid of bringing in fierce regulation.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm mostly surprised how there's still people not aware of in-app purchases in 2019.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is why we have IAP's disabled on all devices and avoid any pay-to-win games. Unfortunately an overwhelming number of game developers are focused around gamifying IAP's for max addiction to extract max revenue where I've basically lost trust in trying out any new games that aren't personally recommended.

I'm looking forward to Apple Arcade as we'll finally have a curated collection of trusted Games we can access with a single subscription so game developers are compensated and they can just focus on creating good content/game play instead of tweaking their games with Dark UX patterns to maximize IAP's.

</comment><comment> Paul-ish Perhaps games with in-app purchases should be required to be rated 18+ (thus inaccessible to children's accounts). The developer can make a two versions if they think the game could do with a lower rating.

</comment><comment><USER69> Seems to me that main problem here is that consumers have insufficient control about their payment card transactions. Why card transactions can be initiated by merchant without explicit authorization of each transaction by the customer?

If merchant-initiated transactions are desirable (e.g. for periodic payments), why there is no explicit confirmation for number and size of allowed transactions per time period for given merchant, like it is standard for regular direct debit bank transactions?

</comment><comment><USER70> In the UK there's tremendous lip-service by the gambling industry about keeping vulnerable people safe from becoming addicted to gambling apps.

However, they spend millions constantly promoting any number of gambling apps disguised as games to children. Not just on the Internet, but on daytime TV, where you get a commercial break every 5-10 minutes. I have no idea how they get away with it - the "Regulator" must be asleep.

</comment><comment><USER71> There is, without doubt, a lot of garbage out there in these games for purchase. There are also a lot of issues with the way they get people to spend money.

That said, if your kid steals your credit card and spends a bunch of money on it, the issue isn't the game, it's that your kid is stealing from you. If he/she stole your credit card and bought clothes at the mall, you wouldn't blame the clothing store...

</comment><comment><USER72> I don't understand why people don't learn the rules of the game called "business" at least a little bit. If you have the right to cancel something within 14 days there are rules to how to do this. Don't expect cooperation from the other side of the table. Just follow the rules.

I'm quite sure the rules say something like this, but I'm not a lawyer and have not looked it up again:

1\. Find out the business address of that company, preferably one in your country if there are multiple options.

2\. Write a letter in Word where you say you want to revert the orders <list of date, object, price>.

3\. Print, sign, then photograph that letter with your phone (which adds a date to the photo).

4\. Go to your town's post office and tell them you want to send this letter in a way that the receiver needs to sign for that and you want to get back that signature.

5\. Wait for the signature.

6\. If nothing happens besides the signature, write them an email adding all the details and the photos of the signature and the letter.

7\. If still nothing happens on your bank account, and the sum is over 500€ or similar go with all the documents to a court and request they help you get the money back. Not sure if other countries but in my country for 45€ they will send a specially colored letter to the company claiming the payment and threatening a lawsuit.

8\. Check the times here, but when they are up and nothing happened go with all these things to a lawyer and he will probably sue for you. In most countries losing such a lawsuit is path that might end up bringing the CEO into jail (not directly, but it certainly is on the table as possibility at this point), so the chances are super high that at this point they will send the money or declare bankruptcy. In case of bankruptcy your lawyer knows how to continue.

There's no need for reminders, warnings, etc. All that might end up you being behind your deadlines. Print a paper letter, sign it, and send it in a way that can prove reception.

A professional company with good intent will also not feel threatened by you doing the right thing according to law. So don't be afraid to be perceived as unfriendly. The only people who will claim unfriendliness here either have no idea what they are doing or are using your shame against you in the hopes that you do mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER73> We need all the help we can get here in SF with our rent! Every dollar we can get from the app helps! I just deployed a feature today that automatically charges the user's credit card when their virtual currency balance runs low and I do not feel the least bit guilty in doing it, either.

When the choice is either be out of business or homeless, what would you do?

</comment><comment><USER74> Kids shouldn't be armed with cards.

Prepaid cards maaaybbbee.

</comment><comment><USER75> I miss the old good time when you only need to purchase the game once and get everything. No micro transaction. No DLCs.

</comment><comment><USER76> Can't games by default send an sms/email to their parents asking for confirmation?

This could just be something you enable/disable in game with a PIN. I don't know, anything would be nice. With no protection, you get the idea this is exactly what publishers want to happen.

</comment><comment><USER77> As a previous employee of one of the biggest free to play game companies i felt pretty bad.

What parents aren't aware of is the fact that game companies except the developers employ professional PhD psychologists to take advantage of people - mostly kids.

</comment><comment><USER78> I find more fun in the older games. Unlike the IAP crap and all the ways of gamification, older games could be modded and had humongous modding communities.

Other than Minecraft, not so much these days. So I stick with older. Less to "gamify my wallet"

</comment><comment><USER79> Her is a useful overview on platform support to limit access to in game purchases [https://pegi.info/page/game-purchases](https://pegi.info/page/game- purchases)

</comment><comment><USER80> One very simple set of rules could be: 1. your app may not accept in-app purchases more than once per month, and 2. the in-app purchase cost must not exceed 10% of the original purchase price. And then 3., there should be a lifetime maximum on purchases, i.e. you can finally "pay enough".

Instead of these or really _any_ other sane constraints, we've somehow made it _worse_ by now preferring _subscriptions_!!! And even more offensive, these recurring charges are allowed to be very high. And as if that weren't rewarding enough for scammers, it can be far more frequent than one would normally expect (e.g. weekly instead of monthly). Like, _REALLY_!?!?

<comment> em-bee point 2 won't work. the whole reason for in-game purchases is that you can spend more than the initial cost of the game which is often free initially. (what's 10% of free?)

i'd go with a monthly limit. one that doesn't break the bank, but one that also isn't to low to make it not worth it for the game developer.

how about $10 per day and $50 per month?

then you can spend your weekends playing away and buying to your hearts content. and if you instead do that every day, well then, you are going to have to ask yourself: _home come that at the end of the money, there is so much month left over?_

another measure would be the cost of a pack of cigarettes. at what point does smoking affect you financially? i think there may be studies for that. that same number ought to apply to games.

now there is still the problem of multiple games. so maybe another cap for overall spending. but that is trickier. how does that cap distinguish game spending vs using an app to buy groceries online?

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> iOS should let you put value limits on in-app purchases.

Even just a setting or prompt when first opening an app:

"Dont allow in app purchases for this app to exceed $XXX (per day, per week, lifetime)"

</comment><comment><USER82> >learning difficulties and the approximate cognitive ability of a seven-year- old child.

so obviously I gave him full control over "his entire savings"

<comment><USER28> Parents can't be expected to get everything right all of the time. It's not unreasonable to ask that technology companies don't exploit vulnerable people, and in particular, children. Blaming the parents in this case is something I just don't understand. The companies could just like, not exploit children for profit. I've managed to go my whole life without exploiting children, it's actually very very not difficult and I have no sympathy for these companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> "Tighter regulation" how about 'tighter parenting'!?

Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER84> As someone who grew up on games during the GameBoy and N64 era, I have fond memories of gaming and want my son to grow up with gaming in his life.

But in my "old man yells at cloud" state of mind, I don't want him to grow up on gaming of today.

He's not yet old enough to play video games, but when he is I'm inspired to implement something similar to what's outlined here: [https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my- son-e5226ff0a7c3](https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3)

TL:DR Start his gaming journey at the beginning of the gaming industry (i.e. Pong, Pac-Man) in the hope that exposure to what gaming used to be like will "inoculate" him against what gaming is like today.

<comment><USER85> What you are talking about is a subset of games today - there are still _tons_ of great games out there with ethical monetization (more than there ever have been, in fact).

Yeah, you have to skip some of the big names and a lot of the mobile space, but that still leaves a lot of great stuff out there. While letting them experience a ton of classics certainly isn't a bad idea, it also isn't the only way to avoid predatory monetization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I'm addicted to the news, and especially if it makes me feel like i'm under attack by forces i have no control over. Thanyou BBC, you're my opium.

</comment><comment><USER87> 3160 is likely nothing compared to what he's being deprived of. I have massive regrets of the time wasted gaming through my teens.

<comment><USER88> What else would you have done with it?

What else would you _realistically_ have done with it? Everyone likes to imagine that the would have spent it on improving practices like learning a second language and a musical instrument, but would you really have done those things or found another distraction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> games. the dial-up scams of the twenty first century.

</comment><comment><USER90> TL;DR Don't give your children access to your credit / bank cards. Seriously...

</comment><comment><USER91> So:

1) You allowed your son with the cognitive ability of a 7 year old, access to £3 grand.. I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't think that was wise. I'm unable to even imagine "the correct" way you were wanting your son to use that money. Shorting Symantec?

2) Your 16 year old _stole_ £2k of your money (and then your daughter bailed you out?). Looking for a bright side, it wasn't opiates... and your student daughter already appears to have overcome genetics/environment to get her shit together.

3) "We are technically savvy" (I already know you're not.. but pray continue) - Oh your 12 year old spent the money you gave him access to from his own bank account.. Well I think lessons have been learnt on all sides here - and if you don't think it's his fault, chuck him another £700 and see what happens. I have some lovely magical-beans I'll cut you in on, for his email address.

4) "My 11-year-old daughter has spent over £100 of my money in a day downloading apps that are the same." Well that's a curious statement. Most stores would say "you already own this".. she was creating new accounts for the thrill of a fresh download? I can't help but feel despite your aforementioned tech-savvy swagger - you have no f'in idea what happened even as you spoke to the reporter. Still I'm completely reassured that you've now given her a PS3 where "No fraud, no online grooming and no bullying"... Three horrible things, but does most definitely have an online store, which is the single problematic thing you mentioned.

Oh I'm losing the will to live now.. and feeling increasingly misanthropic, so I'll stop.

<comment><USER28> Let me help you with your misanthropy: try targeting it at companies which exist solely to exploit children rather than the parents of said children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> The parents should think of the 3000 pounds as the cost of a course in child care.

</comment><comment><USER93> After reading the title I thought it would be about Europa Universalis 4 and all their outrageously priced DLCs.

</comment><comment><USER94> I know this comment will soon turn gray, but I'll say it again as I have before: Don't hand your credit card to a child, or to _anyone else_. This is your first, and most effective, line of defense.</comment>


Unshackled – Funding for immigrant founders with US work visas - <AUTHOR> http://www.unshackled.co <comment><USER2> Every time I see things like these I'm reminded of my days studying for entrance exams for engineering here in India. Basically college classes are pretty useless, and you will have to attend tuition classes to get some additional coaching to crack these exams. Since this is the case, there are coaching classes that specialize in merely teaching you how to crack these exams. The only issue is, the competition is so fierce, _the coaching classes will have their own entrance exams to train you to prepare for the engineering entrance exam_. So you now have to crack two entrance exams, one to get into the coaching class that helps you crack the exam, and secondly crack the main exam itself.

Often you will spend pointless time just doing this circus. So much so you would be rather better off, directly working hard on the main exam.

Start ups are hard, you will likely fail certainly. In all that work there is to do. And all that stress, anxiety and tension you are likely to go on merely working on your start up. I wonder what is the point in taking all the pain to fight for a Visa amidst all this(Which you are very likely not to get).

There is no doubt there are amazing benefits of working in the USA. I would do anything to get an opportunity to work in the United States. But to get a H1-B(Or any work related visa) is a great challenge, especially for guys like me. Plus years of living under perennial threat of getting fired, losing your job, having to restart your green card process all over again(If you've started), and redoing all of this if you lose your job all over again, spending decades doing this and chasing sub goals. At some point you have to wonder, if its all worth it.

Why not spare yourself the pain. And work on the actual thing itself.

<comment><USER3> just adding on, most folks who do not have this background of an immigrant do not understand the approx 10 year penalty you have to pay before you can start your own company here in the US. starting in 20s is different from in 30s. but hey, we play the cards we are dealt and slope matters more than intercept :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an excellent hack if it holds up on the legal fronts! There might be constraints, which I have not seen called out yet, such as - a H1B visa holder having to be employed in their field of specialization, hence the H1B founder will need to startup in said field. But the constraints appear trivial in comparison to the problem being solved. This is exciting!

<comment><USER5> Not only that!. Companies that sponsor an H1B person need to "show" proof that they have attempted to hire a US person before they can turn to sponsor an in immigrant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm worried about the ownership of the startups. as they are developed by employees of Unshackled so to speak.

And what if a startup doesn't take off?

</comment><comment><USER7> OT: The moving image behind text that visitors are trying to read is the worst design trend since carousels (aka sliders).

<comment><USER8> Perhaps you haven't seen parallax websites.

<comment><USER7> I've seen two variants of parallax - parallax scrolling (which is fine) and parallax videos that play behind text. When you're trying to read text, having a moving image behind the text makes it harder to read. It looks cool, but it's a bad design. And not just for the readability issues, but also due to the loading. For example, PayPal has it on their front page now. I used to be able to go to PayPal and immediately click the login button. Now I have to wait for the loading to finish. It's annoying.

<comment><USER8> I find parallax scrolling to be ineffective. Call me old school but it takes a well understood action (scrolling) and overloads it to perform animations. Animations which often times do not add much value besides "flair". An ineffective tradeoff in my opinion.

And yes, videos behind text is absurd :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Saw this on Techcrunch.

Are you solely funding only immigrants and or a team with one or more immigrants?

Do you consider a team of US citizens?

<comment><USER10> Based on the contrast between their FAQ & the title, it looks like they are technically allowing "anyone with authorization in the US", and in practice discriminating like crazy. Otherwise, what exactly is the point of this?

Ironically, it'd probably be legal if structured as an actual VC / angel firm plus coworking, but "If selected, join Unshackled as employees" makes it subject to employment law.

The dual employee / investment model seems loaded with conflicts of interest on both ends. The only way it makes sense is if you need to be an employee for immigration purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Q: Since H1-B employers needs to run payroll, will they run it for the entire team and count it differently from the investment?</comment>


How do I begin customer development? - <AUTHOR>

I have a basic idea for the B2B app I want to build (and the problem that it would solve), have selected a target customer, and I would like to start the customer development process.  There are a few companies that I would like to speak with to see if they really need this app.  But I'm not quite sure how to "get out of the building" and get that phase of the process started.  I've been fighting every temptation to simply start coding, but I want to make sure that I'm not just a solution in search of a problem.
What's the best way to get in contact with the right people at these companies?
I would love to hear how you worked through this process.  Thank you for your time. <comment><USER2> I would suggest just taking one step forward. Don't think too much about the specifics of how you should be going about it and just do it! If you have a list of companies I would suggest start by calling the offices. This is where knowing how to persuade and sell will be helpful. Make sure you can visually explain how your app will work. Whether that is putting together a PowerPoint click-through, piecing together a clever doodle, or just getting a list of "hypotheses" that you have about your customer. Before you can build this B2B app you need to determine if you can get early adopters. If you plan on speaking face to face with people get personable and ask them for a small chunk of their time.

Patrick (Boston, MA)

<comment><AUTHOR> Patrick, I think you're exactly right. That sounds like a great approach. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Why Paul Graham Is Still So Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@6nomads/https-medium-com-6nomads-y-youre-not-supporting-remote-startup-teams-8fff13a40413 <comment><USER2> I'm working as a remote engineer and it sucks. So many things are happening in the office that I'm missing out on. MAYBE if all you do is code and someone else write clear spec for you, and you're not a fan of bonding with teammates, then it can work fine. But if you really _care_ and want to optimize for winning and making an impact, remote isn't the way to go.

<comment><USER3> I've managed remote teams.

Distributed teams work really well.

One-person-out teams are a surefire recipe to crash-and-burn.

With distributed teams, you get into a flow where Hangouts are as natural as going for a walk, where everyone has a proper headset, where there is appropriate shared whiteboarding software, where people communicate with tools which leave a digital trail (mailing lists, wikis, github, etc.), and so on.

My distributed team worked better than local teams, hands down.

With one-man-out, there's one person who wants this stuff to work, and the rest who, well, don't care too much. There will always be the dial-into-a- conference-room where you can't hear someone, the one-douchebag-doesn't-use-a- headset echo, the everyone-but-the-person-out-goes-to-dinner-together, and so on.

It. Just. Doesn't. Work.</comment></comment>


Dolphins Show Self-Recognition Earlier Than Children - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/science/dolphins-self-recognition.html <comment><USER2> Comments in this thread seem kind of... defensive? Are people really worried that this is going to be extrapolated to "Dolphins are universally and forever smarter than humans" or what?

I'm not sure what to make of the "so what?" comments. Would this discovery only be interestinging if it validated hitchhiker's guide?

I think this is interesting regardless of whether it upends the "intellectual hierarchy" of species.

<comment><USER3> Development speeds in the animal kingdom aren't really an apples to apples comparisons. Deer calves run before, chimp babies climb before human babies.

If you're comparing cars for a race, you need to check both acceleration and top speed. Just calling out one of them is not helpful.

<comment><USER4> You completely miss the point lamacase is making. He finds it strange that people get defensive about the article, just like you did. He isn't saying that dolphins are smarter than humans.

<comment><USER5> And if they prove smarter than humans, the first thing I'd think of would be: how do I communicate with them??

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part of what's going on is that, as a result of our large brain, if we were fully formed, we wouldn't be able to pass through the birth canal.

As an evolutionary strategy, we're basically born at a stage of development that'd be considered a fetus for other animals in a lot of ways, and rely a lot more heavily on our parents as we continue our development.

<comment><USER7> Humans are effectively marsupials, we just don't have a pouch.

I remember, back in the heydey of the Discovery channel having real science programming, a Wild Discovery[1] about guanacos in the Andes. Within an hour, the baby guanaco was birthed, licked clean of placenta, and on it's feet scrambling unsteadily up 14k foot mountains after it's mother.

[1] I miss this show, and that era of basic cable documentary television so much...

<comment><USER6> I mean, we're similar in that regard, but were more closely related to literally all placental mammals than marsupials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Study: Precocious development of self-awareness in dolphins

Citation: Morrison R, Reiss D (2018) Precocious development of self-awareness in dolphins. PLoS ONE 13(1): e0189813.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189813](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189813)

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189813

Abstract: Mirror-self recognition (MSR) is a behavioral indicator of self- awareness in young children and only a few other species, including the great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies. The emergence of self-awareness in children typically occurs during the second year and has been correlated with sensorimotor development and growing social and self-awareness. Comparative studies of MSR in chimpanzees report that the onset of this ability occurs between 2 years 4 months and 3 years 9 months of age. Studies of wild and captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have reported precocious sensorimotor and social awareness during the first weeks of life, but no comparative MSR research has been conducted with this species. We exposed two young bottlenose dolphins to an underwater mirror and analyzed video recordings of their behavioral responses over a 3-year period. Here we report that both dolphins exhibited MSR, indicated by self-directed behavior at the mirror, at ages earlier than generally reported for children and at ages much earlier than reported for chimpanzees. The early onset of MSR in young dolphins occurs in parallel with their advanced sensorimotor development, complex and reciprocal social interactions, and growing social awareness. Both dolphins passed subsequent mark tests at ages comparable with children. Thus, our findings indicate that dolphins exhibit self-awareness at a mirror at a younger age than previously reported for children or other species tested.

</comment><comment><USER9> Humans are one of the slowest developing mammals, so this sounds expected.

<comment><USER10> It does say they predicted it, so this is "scientists find result everyone expected".

> Dr. Reiss said the timing of the emergence of self-recognition is > significant, because in human children the ability has been tied to other > milestones of physical and social development. Since dolphins develop > earlier than humans in those areas, the researchers predicted that dolphins > should show self-awareness earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you look at dog versus human intelligence, newborn humans have a start (they have functional vision and hearing from the day one), then puppies will pass them (they can run and do many things while infants can't even crawl), but then children will outrun dogs (speech starts to form) and that's forever.

If dolphins show self-recognition earlier, their runway might just be shorter. Doesn't tell us much.

<comment><USER12> Human babies are pretty helpless compared to most animals, which I think supports your point. Human babies can't walk, crawl, roll, or even lift their heads. Even with your example of vision, newborn humans barely have functional vision, depending on what is meant by "functional."

> The ability to focus their eyes, move them accurately, and use them together > as a team must be learned.

Source: [https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/good-vision- througho...](https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/good-vision-throughout- life/childrens-vision/infant-vision-birth-to-24-months-of-age)

> At first, the farthest your baby will be able to see is the distance from > your arms to your face (about 6 to 10 inches).

Additional source: [https://www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/baby- vision](https://www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/baby-vision)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course, you do realise that dolphins spend practically their entire lives in close proximity to a reflective surface, seeing it from both underneath and above? Of course a surface where they can see clear reflections close up is going to be interesting to them.

In other news, dogs are better than humans at self-recognising the smell of their own urine.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mirror Self-Recognition is closely linked to social awareness and self- consciousness[0]. Does it mean dolphins are more self-conscious than humans?

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22673374](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22673374)

<comment><USER13> Nope, that would be one of those leaps you can't make, loosely akin to the schoolyard game of -

Donut consumption linked to economic development... Development of satellite infrastructure linked to economic development... Does this mean that Dunkin Donuts has more satellites in orbit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dolphin young also emerge more developed and capable than human young, is it really so surprising they get woke before us?

Even if dolphins are smarter, which depends on metric, we rule the earth and are more successful here than them...Unless it's dolphins piloting the cigars and discs that shoot out of the oceans.

</comment><comment><USER16> Behind a login-wall, but an interesting critique of the mirror test nevertheless:

[https://www.academia.edu/2525451/A_Critical_Analysis_of_the_...](https://www.academia.edu/2525451/A_Critical_Analysis_of_the_Mirror_Self- Recognition_Test)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not where you start but where you finish.

<comment><USER18> the judgment criteria matter, too.

dolphins are a heck of a lot better at swimming than I am; world-building, not so much.

<comment><USER17> I just imagined myself in a race with dolphin, the two of us at the starting line, me with a wetsuit and swim fins and goggles, and how intense it would be at the countdown to swim all out dive into some sort of dizzying psych-myself- out spiral, and know that I'd be left in the dust and it would only be so fun for about 1.5 seconds before I'm toast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dolphins also have a shorter lifespan. I'd wager these two data points aren't completely independent.

<comment><USER20> When she died in 2014 Nellie (a bottlenose dolphin in Marineland) was 61. No one realy knows what is the maximum lifespan in the wild. Some bowhead whales have the lifespan over 200 years, and we know nothing about their self- recognition or when it emerges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I, for one, welcome our new dolphin overlords.

</comment><comment><USER22> better tails, too

</comment><comment><USER23> Puppies start walking earlier than babies.

Great. The next question _should_ be: so what? And that's what this article fails to deliver on.

<comment><USER24> It actually does show something interesting. Self recognition is a complex activity that isn't dictated through a simple instinct. That means dolphins are developing their frontal lobe faster than humans. Puppies walking is an instinct, and isn't necessarily a complex development

<comment><USER25> > _Self recognition is a complex activity that isn't dictated through a simple > instinct_

Source? If anything, this finding increases the odds that self-recognition might be a genetically primed (or even pre-programmed) neuronal circuit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Children start showing signs of self-recognition at about 12 months at the > earliest

Doesn't match my real-world experience with real-world children. I'd rather trust my own lying eyes than an unsourced citation of "scientists say".

<comment><USER27> well I am going with the idea that young humans have many more distractions in their life to yield a good test. however I am certainly not an expert in this area but I wonder what a good test would be? Set toddlers in play rooms with mirrors on one wall?</comment></comment>


Google opens up more of their core Java libraries - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/

<comment><USER2> a lot of the primitives and io functionality has long been available in the jakarta commons projects

<http://commons.apache.org/io/> <http://commons.apache.org/lang/> (ArrayUtils contains primitives functionality)

i haven't looked at it in detail yet but a cursory look at the api doesn't show much you couldn't find elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd imagine part of the reason this was released was for the same reason a stripped down version of their web server was released-- to allow other internal Google projects to be released as open source without much modification.

Not as much "new stuff" there as opposed to guice, GWT and google-collections.

Their concurrency utilities, on the other hand are interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's nice that they are releasing this, but it's boilerplate that most shops are going to have in one form or another, whether by open source or something they brewed in-house long before an alternative surfaced.

<comment><USER4> at least it will give new shops something to start from instead of writing their own. +1 for google.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are ways you feel healthcare can be improved? - <AUTHOR> Hey folks, its early days yet, but I'm working on building a platform and api (www.sapien.io) that would bring together your health records, fitness data, lab report, and any other health related data and place it totally under your control. I think quantifying longitudinal health data would have an enormous value for our society. A good analysis of what I mean is at https://medium.com/@qbio/a-positive-feedback-loop-for-humanity-437762f6725c#.x15ojq5w1. I think making it developer facing would also be really awesome. As smartphone sensors get better and better, it isn't far fetched to imagine tests and apps being made for the phone that can detect common ailments like the cold. But we need a platform to support the developers and algorithms that would do that. Any thoughts or advice for me? I'm very young and really just trying to build something that would help folks. I don't really have any plans for monetization, yet. <comment><USER2> Gamification is the only area where you really can't run out of ideas. Find ways to pull some of this sensor data, whether from the smartphone, the Nike+, the fitbit, etc, and create games out of it. That would also seem to be a good easy way for a young developer to get something simple but finished (rather than complex but unfinished).

It could be just a basic competition among friends -- whoever walks the most steps in a day gets a badge. Or you could do something crazy like Pokemon Go except where the Pokemons run away from you at a 10 minute mile pace (6 mph) when you spot them, and you have to chase them down. Or do an internet-of- things project where you change your TV channel by doing the corresponding number of push-ups. These ideas are free of charge, you're welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow thank you! I really appreciate the pointers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> First of all, health care is definitely a part of society which needs to be reinvented, so kudos for contributing to that. You say you are looking to build a platform with a great value for society. Why not focus on the big issues? Smoking is still the number one cause of death in many countries. In my country, 1 in 10 people has type 2 diabetes, and 1 in 3 adults will develop it at some point.

It might be too difficult for a one man project, but anything that does not tackle these problems feels like premature optimization to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good insights, thank you! It may seem like too much for a one man project, but perhaps if I do my part people will follow suit? I'll keep you posted on how it turns out!

<comment><USER3> I am interested to hear about it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting idea but where do these data come from? Fitness data makes sense but health records/lab reports/medical claims are owned by doctors and insurance companies...

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right! To integrate the more serious data, I would have to partner with some of the medical and insurance organizations. I'm going to take it one step at a time, and see where that gets me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Single payer.</comment>


The Entrepreneurship Industry and the Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3479042 <comment> bjelkeman-again This is an interesting paper. But I wonder if their irreverent use of terms or expressions lowers the attention they get? Example: "Muppets everywhere" as a way to express poor performing startups.</comment>


What Makes Cities Great - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/what-makes-cities-great/ <comment><USER2> He's being too specific. Each city/region has relative strengths and weaknesses, and each of these vary in importance over time. To remain competitive, cities must use their current competitive advantage to build the next one. This is more likely to happen if the value created by the current advantage is shared among many agents.

Detroit and Pittsburgh suffer b/c too much of their value was held by a few companies. Cities with a broader base of firms (financial industry in NYC, tech in SV, entertainment in LA, etc) have a better chance to remain competitive over time. Incidentally, this doesn't bode well for Seattle's long term future as a tech center. Incidentally, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc were incredibly prosperous in their heyday because their competitive advantage was so important and their firms so efficient at creating value from it. Their fall from that point was therefore that much farther and more poignant.

Cities like Cincinatti, St Louis, and Buffalo suffer because their original advantage (access to inland waterways in the US) is less important now that more manufacturing and trade is international. Ocean port cities like LA, NYC, Tacoma, New Orleans, Tampa, etc have an advantage here.

Norway is a good example of using one advantage (North Sea oil and gas) to fund future advantages (education, health care, sovereign wealth fund), while the Texas/Houston energy economy is a good example of how having a rich ecosystem of firms is more stable than a few vertically integrated firms.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think he is overlooking governance. In Michigan the leaders were in denial over the loss of manufacturing and to this day spend millions chasing a shrinking base of jobs. <http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=11457>

Add to it a series of Detroit mayors who drove business away and looted the city and its schools and you have a modern day third world city.</comment>


Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona - <AUTHOR> https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/worldrenowned-linguist-noam-chomsky-joins-faculty-university-arizona <comment><USER2> He's 88, still mentally very sharp and probably moved there for the weather(aside from the great department filled with old students).

His work ethic is incredible, he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public- I've received a detailed response every time I've sent one. The amount of time he spends engaging with even terribly misinformed(but well meaning) people is truly astounding, and unparalleled amongst public figures as far as I can tell.

Here's an example([https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/6tz1xp/what_do_you...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/6tz1xp/what_do_you_guys_think_about_ncs_argument_here/)) of some random kid badgering Chomsky with emails, and he still takes the time out to respond to every one of his questions, even though he gets more than a hundred mails a day.

<comment><USER3> Holy shit that link you shared was so frustrating to read. To think of all the productive things a great intellectual like Chomsky could be doing with his time. Instead he generously chose to engage someone who had already made their conclusion and just wanted to "debate" without actually ceding to any points (take a shot any time OP says "liberal" or "PC"). He even hints at OP's "intentional ignorance" many times too... What a patient soul to debate someone whose entire education on race issues was some /pol/ infographic and right-wing blogs. OP could have taken some time to read some pre-existing literature, to learn the opposing side's arguments and especially when corresponding with an academic, to read their prior writing. Instead we have this..... the state of public discourse on the web 2.0.

<comment><USER4> > Instead he generously chose to engage someone who had already made their > conclusion and just wanted to "debate" without actually ceding to any points > (take a shot any time OP says "liberal" or "PC").

Chomsky was not prepared to cede any points either. In many places, he does not respond to the probing questions asked of him at all (this is assuming the poster didn't add them in afterwards) instead opting to insult the poster.

Poster:

        1: By what mechanism do white supremacist elements impose American black culture on the American black community today?
        2: For example, how is white supremacy responsible for single-parent families in the American black community? Allegedly single-parent rates have skyrocketed since the Civil Rights Movement.

Chomsky:

        Racism is quite extreme today, and by many measures increasing. I don't know what cocoon you live in.
        Perhaps you are completely unfamiliar with racism and its impact, in particular, the extreme racism experienced constantly by African-Americans. If so, I would suggest that you learn something about the world, and then you will understand the mechanisms very well. If you don't want to have direct experience – which is not that hard –then at least look at the literature.
        Again, try following your own logic. It's not genes, so it is circumstances. Do you perceive any circumstances beyond the extreme white racism that it takes real effort to be oblivious to?

> He even hints at OP's "intentional ignorance" many times too.

Hinting at ignorance is not helpful unless you show a path away from ignorance. Saying that something is obvious or trivial (as Mathematicians say) is not helpful. If it is truly obvious, just provide evidence.

Now this is not to criticize Chomsky, he is still replying rather than remaining silent. And with his limited time, it doesn't necessarily make sense for him to give a solid argument in that case, but his argument in that link wasn't convincing.

<comment><USER5> Readable version...

Poster:

> 1: By what mechanism do white supremacist elements impose American black > culture on the American black community today?

> 2: For example, how is white supremacy responsible for single-parent > families in the American black community? Allegedly single-parent rates have > skyrocketed since the Civil Rights Movement.

Chomsky:

> Racism is quite extreme today, and by many measures increasing. I don't know > what cocoon you live in.

> Perhaps you are completely unfamiliar with racism and its impact, in > particular, the extreme racism experienced constantly by African-Americans. > If so, I would suggest that you learn something about the world, and then > you will understand the mechanisms very well. If you don't want to have > direct experience – which is not that hard –then at least look at the > literature.

> Again, try following your own logic. It's not genes, so it is circumstances. > Do you perceive any circumstances beyond the extreme white racism that it > takes real effort to be oblivious to?

<comment><USER6> More from Chomsky.

> Why were you and your friends raised in a different non-ghetto culture? > Agreed, it has absolutely nothing to do with genes. Rather, it has > everything to do with extreme white racism, which includes refusal to > acknowledge what has been created by a history of 400 years of vicious slave > labor camps which were the source of a large part of our wealth and > privilege, a culture of white supremacy that is the most extreme in the > world, beyond South Africa, as comparative studies have shown, and very > powerful effects right to the present moment. Including what is sometimes > called "intentional ignorance".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect that when Chomsky dies, a burst of new and valuable linguistics research will arrive. I'm _not_ saying I hope he dies soon. However, I think his current impact on the field is probably negative.

My theory derives from these sources: [https://www.economist.com/news/books- and-arts/21695371-theor...](https://www.economist.com/news/books-and- arts/21695371-theories-worlds-best-known-linguist-have-become-rather-weird- noam-chomsky) (Chomsky's recent theory of how language evolved has not been accepted favorably), and

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w21788](http://www.nber.org/papers/w21788) (this happens a lot)

<comment><USER8> Chomsky has far less of a grip on the field than people outside it imagine. There are already lots of people doing research in linguistics that's fundamentally different in its approach. So I would not expect any very sudden sea change once Chomsky dies.

Note that the economist article is very badly informed. Since another poster didn't link directly to the relevant article on the 'facultyoflanguage' blog, here is a link:

[http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/it-never- end...](http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/it-never-ends- never.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't read his political works but Noam Chomsky as a social phenomenon is interesting. His subject matter is often media and political manipulation and people who haven't read him often feel compelled by an entrenched, opposed political view to voice extremely strong opinions about his work. And they're doing this without any conscious irony.

</comment><comment><USER10> World-renowned linguist and all people are talking about is his political views (mostly by his own design).

Make no mistake, Chomsky's work was significant to both linguistics proper (X-bar theory, generative grammar, universal grammar) and computer science (Chomsky hierarchy).

In recent years though he more often than not comes across as a grumpy old man who can't seem to accept the fact that linguistic theory has moved on to often simpler, more elegant approaches.

<comment><USER8> > linguistic theory has moved on to often simpler, more elegant approaches.

As a linguist, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. There have always been alternative approaches. But we have not recently been blessed with any that are clear winners in terms of simplicity and elegance.

<comment><USER10> HPSG or statistical approaches in computational linguistics, for instance.

Now, of course one can argue - as Chomsky himself has done - that statistical approaches are not as elegant as rule-based ones but as human language faculty quite likely behaves statistically to some degree, statistical methods for describing language do have some merit.

<comment><USER8> Linguistic theory has not "moved on" to HPSG. HPSG originated in the early 90s and remains a minority pursuit.

The term "statistical approaches" could mean almost anything. There have always been people who are more interested in building, say, practical machine translation systems than in figuring out how kids acquire grammatical knowledge. But again, the field has not "moved on". There are just different groups of researchers working on different problems.

<comment><USER11> Could mean almost anything but what generativist linguistics (or whatever the latest label for the Chomskyan school) does, which continues to promote the notion that language is essentially algebraic, that "grammaticality" is binary, and so forth. It's simply not the case that Chomsky is "okay" with approaches to the study of language which are not in accord wiht his own. He repeatedly dismisses whole subdisciplines as "uninteresting," but in context those complaints don't mean "uninteresting to me," they mean "worthless."

<comment><USER8> >promote the notion [...] that "grammaticality" is binary

I don't know a single generative linguist who is committed to the claim that grammaticality is binary. And there is lots of published work in generative linguistics that explicitly does not assume this. Where are you getting this idea from, exactly?

>language is essentially algebraic,

Not sure what this means. If it just means that sentences have structure, then yes, generative linguistics is committed to this obviously true claim.

>He repeatedly dismisses whole subdisciplines as "uninteresting," but in context those complaints don't mean "uninteresting to me," they mean "worthless."

He's entitled to his opinion, no? It's not as if no-one ever criticizes his work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Chomsky is a great critic of social issues like imperialism, manufactured consent, and state capitalism. However he has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela and as of today won't admit the problems with state socialism. I hope his new students realize this.

<comment><USER13> > However he has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela and as of > today won't admit the problems with state socialism. I hope his new students > realize this.

Doesn't the problems with state socialism result from being attack by state capitalism which tend to be much stronger nations?

The US and europe attacking venezuela and blaming their failures on state socialism is like blaming democracy for ukraine's loss of crimea. When larger nations bully smaller nations, smaller nations suffer.

We can never truly ascertain the merits of socialism, capitalism or any other ism really because it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

The chinese and their state socialism has been the most successful nation the past 40 years after the US decided to play nice with them.

<comment><USER14> China is not a socialist country.

<comment><USER13> They are more socialist than capitalist. Besides, there is no pure socialist or capitalist society on earth.

Using that logic, the US isn't a capitalist nation and venezuela isn't a socialist nation. And the guy's assertion that venezuela is suffereing because of state socialism is pointless.

China and venezuela are both socialist countries. You can't just decide to accept one because it fits into your worldview and reject the other because it doesn't.

<comment><USER15> "the US isn't a capitalist nation" \- ok buddy

<comment><USER16> In 2017, 36% of the US GDP is government spending, including federal, state and local governments. Of the remainder, most is highly regulated giving government specific controls over how companies can speak, hire, employ, operate, manufacture, and how their ownership is determined and profits distributed.

At what level of government control over the economy do you draw the line between socialism and capitalism? It can't be 100%, that's called communism. If you draw it at 50% for socialism, a very good argument exists that we are there right now, just establish that the government controls anywhere near 20% of the decisions private businesses make.

<comment><USER17> >At what level of government control over the economy do you draw the line between socialism and capitalism?

No level, where do you get this idea that Socialism and capitalism exist on a scale between government control over the economy and no control over the economy? I can't imagine what would arouse such an opinion. Marx never said "Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff it does, the more Socialist it is". That's complete rubbish.

>It can't be 100%, that's called communism.

No, it's not. Communism, like other anarhcist ideologies, has no "government control", and this is painfully obvious by reading Marx's discussion on the self-regulating sphere of activity.

And this is of course ignoring the fact that in Marx's time, Socialism and Communism had the same meaning. Their distinction is almost entirely a Leninist one.

Here's the thing: Socialism isn't about government control over a capitalist economy, and it's not about acting like a capitalist but on a global scale. That's called _state capitalism_.

<comment><USER16> I was talking about real world definitions of socialism, not fantasies Marx used to trick people into buying into his concepts.

The real world definition of socialism is government control of economic activities. And there has never been a "socialist" economy without dictatorship and fascism. Socialism is a mandatory step on the road to fascism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations to Noam Chomsky! I remember when he was giving a talk at Columbia university and the line for entry was literally around the block !

Great man.

<comment><USER19> The redness of Arizona comes from the affluent suburbs of Phoenix; it doesn't come from Tucson (where Chomsky is presumably moving).

If everywhere south of the Gila River (i.e., the Gadsden Purchase) became its own state, it would be __deep __blue.

<comment><USER20> If you exclude Cochise county anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just about died when I read, 'He formulated the algorithm "context-free grammar"...'

</comment><comment><USER22> TIL that Noam Chomsky answers emails. It's always been my thing to reach out to personal heroes of mine. What's the best way to reach out to him?

<comment><USER2> His public MIT email

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting move given the hostile AZ political climate.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anybody else find these sorts of discussions to be just fundamentally _cringey_ as hell? On both sides. Stuff like "We agree mainstream black culture is terrible."

Like I don't think either would have the guts to say that in front of a black person.

<comment><USER25> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052145) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a UofA grad I can tell you the hippies down there are going to go absolutely apeshit. The university is half Rob Gronkowski and half Cesar Chavez. The Gronks all leave after school but the Cesar's all stick around the university and think, act, and look like Noam. He'll fit right in.

<comment><USER27> >> and think, act, and look like Noam

So they are low-key, patient, and make thorough, very detailed responses when debating?

<comment><USER26> I didn't say anything negative about him or his debating style. I'm just saying I'm not so surprised he chose UofA. Tons of east coast aging hippies fall in love with the desert, get a mansion in the foothills, then only come down into the city for the university dressed like they're on a fucking safari.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is our source code so boring? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/awwsmm/why-is-our-source-code-so-boring-27ld <comment><USER2> Have you ever heard of APL? You should read this paper "Notation as a tool of thought" [http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pd...](http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf) \- it will probably change the way you think of code.</comment>


Saudi Twitter User Faces Death Penalty for Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blasphemous_tweets_hashtags_of_shame_malaysians_ar.php#.TzRAwqzZZhc.hackernews <comment><USER2> wow</comment>


The brain-heart dialogue shows how racism hijacks perception - <AUTHOR> https://sinapticas.com/2019/04/30/the-brain-heart-dialogue-shows-how-racism-hijacks-perception/ <comment><USER2> Consider this hard fact:

 _" Blacks are just 13% of the population but responsible for a majority of all murders in the U.S...."_

from the Wall Street Journal:

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/jason-riley-the-other- ferguso...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/jason-riley-the-other-ferguson- tragedy-1416961287?mod=hp_opinion)

One must conclude that, _a priori_ , blacks are more dangerous that whites. Ergo, one would be wise to take fewer risks when engaging blacks in any way. This isn't necessarily racism, but merely common sense and one should not be surprised to find that, as the sinapticas article states(concerning policing):

"In prior studies, participants were significantly more likely to shoot an unarmed black individual than a white one."

Finally, to the above and other questions such as

"Do black Americans commit more crime?"

visit the url:

[https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black- amer...](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans- commit-crime)

The answer is "Yes."</comment>