In 2004, Zuckerberg Broke Into a Facebook User's Private Email Account (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-into-the-harvard-crimson-2010-3/ <comment><USER2> Facebook's response to this story is revealing:

> "We're not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources > who seek to rewrite Facebook's early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg > with dated allegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard > for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from > a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives > of over 400 million people."

You get a similar argument in the recently leaked 'Boz memo': please ignore our unethical behavior, instead focus on how many users we have. Growth at any cost is justified.

<comment> loup-vaillant They're playing the status game. "Rewrite history" and "dated allegations" serve mostly to slander whoever made those claims. Then they raise Zuckerberg's status by pointing out his achievements.

They're effectively saying the accusation isn't valid because Zuckerberg is nobility and the accusers are not.

<comment><USER3> This is called the ad populum fallacy. Trump uses it all the time.

<comment><USER4> Yep.. some people think he's dumb but I'm not so sure about that. We think that when someone is full of fallacy that they simply don't know any better, but what about the alternative? You can _use_ fallacies as an effective tool to further your aims. We are so vulnerable to them that we must be educated about them to be able to fend them off. If the audience isn't educated on how to identify and fend off the fallacy, it will be effective.

<comment><USER5> Yep, it can win you the Presidency. Also prior to Trump's win, he was a very successful salesman with probably the best in sales talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the one hand, this is a very shitty thing to do. On the other, he was young and dumb and FB was very different than it is today.

I suppose it could be red flag and indicate larger character flaws that have leaked into how FB operates now, but I'm personally glad I'm not being judged today for everything I did when I was 19.

<comment><USER7> Some people get life in prison for things they do at 19.

<comment><USER8> If they lacked the foresight to be born wealthy and enroll in an ivy league college, that's their fault.

Cyni-casm aside, yours is a crucial point I think gets forgotten too often. Just yesterday I was scrolling through the comments on a Fox News post about an 18 year old who'd been sentenced to 25 yrs for being present during robbery when his friend killed someone.

Obviously substantially different crimes, but the comments were mostly people salivating at this "animal" getting "what he deserved."

Anyway, thanks for mentioning this point.

<comment><USER9> _> Just yesterday I was scrolling through the comments on a Fox News post about an 18 year old who'd been sentenced to 25 yrs for being present during robbery when his friend killed someone._

You misread this, likely because that would have made more sense than what actually occurred. The friend/accomplice did not kill anybody, but was killed by police in a shootout; the defendant was charged with murder for this death.

The involved law and its application are interesting interpretations of the idea of justice. ([http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/07/ala-teen-turns- down-25-...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/07/ala-teen-turns-down-25-year- plea-deal-gets-sentenced-to-65-years-instead-and-laughs.html))

<comment><USER10> > The friend/accomplice did not kill anybody, but was killed by police in a > shootout; the defendant was charged with murder for this death.

What the actual fuck? Then again, I can't say I'm suprised that it's in Alabama.

<comment><USER11> Taking cheap-shots at southern states with disreputable histories is easy, but the vast majority of states (46 out of 50, as of 2008) in America have a Felony Murder rule.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/felony_murder_doctrine](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/felony_murder_doctrine)

<comment><USER10> Here's an image showing lynchings (what you call "disreputable histories"): Alabama earned it's disrepute, which is why I wasn't surprised.

I am not taking a cheap shot, unless you can prove to me that these "histories" are firmly in the past for Alabama, and that the attitudes have not lingered and that lady Justice is now color-blind in Alabama courts.

Edit: I've just realized your post is what-aboutism, I regret taking the bait.

<comment><USER11> >"firmly in the past"

That's something I never said, or even implied.

If I said that America has a "history of military power projection", would you object that military power projection is the present reality as well? It certainly is, but you probably would not object to that phrasing. You're reading much more into the use of the word 'history' than you should be. I'm well aware of the civil rights problems in southern states. Save your outrage for a situation more deserving than this conversation, in no conceivable way did I defend honor or reputation of Alabama. I used the word disreputable specifically because the social problems of Alabama are widely known, you needn't teach me something every schoolchild is taught.

The simple fact of the matter is that when it comes to the felony murder doctrine, that boy could have just as well been in San Francisco. Rather than allow you to write felony murder off as a consequence of Alabama being a typical southern state, I decided to give you a brief education on the true scope of the issue. Since you were obviously distressed by felony murder doctrine, I expected you to thank me. Instead I get the feeling you're looking for a fight. That's disappointing.

>"histories"

English isn't my native language, so please correct me if I'm wrong. However I believe when you're referring to Alabaman history specifically (not the history of several separate states at once, as I was in my previous comment) you would use the singular "history" rather than the plural "histories".

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/history](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/history)

For instance:

>Alabama has a _history_ of civil rights violations.

>Alabama and California have _histories_ of suppressing labor organizations.

<comment><USER10> > Rather than allow you to write felony murder off as a consequence of Alabama > being a typical southern state

Ahh, I see where we're crossing lines. I was writing off my _lack of surprise_ at this occurring in Alabama. I would have been more surprised if this had happened in San Francisco, which as you said, has the same law. I'd love to see how frequently it's enforced by location as uneven enforcement is a thing, especially as societal attitudes shift but the laws are yet to be revised (see possession of small amounts of drugs in certain jurisdictions).

> ...I expected you to thank me. Instead I get the feeling you're looking for > a fight.

I was merely rebutting your accusation that I took a "cheap shot". The first half-sentence in your initial reply has no substances, and serves no other purpose except to antagonize. I would have been grateful had you replied with just the second half instead.

> English isn't my native language, so please correct me if I'm wrong...

I wasn't attacking your grammar, I was suggesting that the reasons leading to my lack of surprise are very much in the present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeahh we need regulations on Facebook. The fact that he retains a majority voting share in the company, the fact that I now have zero trust in Zuckerberg AND Sandberg into doing the right thing, AND that there is no viable competition/users are too psychologically entwined to make the decision to detach from Facebook means the only checks and balances left against this unscrupulous individual is the US government. Unfortunately 80% are in his pockets, but that's the best bet we have.

What's stopping him from using his master access to obtain any info he needs for a presidential election? Trust? Trusting him?

<comment><USER13> Maybe nothing, but in practice this would be hard to do. Access to this data would amount to material support from a company to a presidential campaign which under campaign finance laws would need to be reported and scrutinized.

Additionally, Facebook is not just Mark Zuckerberg and likely the company would not like the data being used that way because it would risk their relationship with their users, which is far more important than Zuckerberg being president.

<comment><USER14> I get what you're saying, but considering what we've witnessed in 2016 and how ethics, honestly and law no longer plays _any_ part in the White House, what used to be unimaginable to me, now is.

That being said, I could see the future in which the next elections are a full blown, all-gloves-are-off one year long fight between Trump (Republicans) and Zuckerberg (Democrats). Partially because Zuckerberg really does seem like he's aiming for this with its actions, and partially because Democrats don't really seem like they've learned their lessons from two years ago.

Now I'm not saying that's definitely going to happen, nor claiming that it's inevitable, nor that the chances of it actually happening are anything but minuscule, but I wouldn't be _too_ surprised if such thing actually happens.

<comment><USER15> In other comments people are stating that Mark was a different person back then, but that he doesn't seem to have learnt from his mistakes.

Assuming that's going to happen. What do you think would be a realistic response to the simple critique "American people deserve better" ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't necessarily buy this story because the facts don't really add up and there is no real evidence that this occurred.

The source of the story is described to be one of Mark's friends "Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend" and not the journalists "We reached out to Tim McGinn and Elisabeth Theodore for comment. Both declined to comment.". Given the evidence is based on a verbal account to a friend there is a slim probability that Mark made the story up.

It also seems odd that the details of the hack are laid out so precisely. It is stated that he found the passwords to exactly two email accounts, one of which belonged to Tim McGinn given that "In one account he accessed, Mark saw an email from Crimson writer Tim McGinn to Cameron, Tyler, and Divya.". Mark looked for "members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson" but it would have been easier to find the specific people involved instead. And why use failed login attempts if you have access to actual user passwords. I can't think of any reason why you'd log failed passwords but not real ones (except for maliciously stealing passwords).

Finally, how did the email from Elisabeth Theodore to Tim McGinn become public given neither commented on the story. From other parts of the story, it seems likely that Tim McGinn was a source (who else would have known about Mark getting upset with Tim on the phone). So it seems that Tim gave the email to Business Insider however Business Insider does not explicitly state that. This suggests that neither they nor Tim have any real evidence that this "hacking" actually occurred.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unrelated, but this reminded me of my very first real, salary developer job where I added logging to the web application. I remember logging failed password attempts specifically; I didn't give a second thought to simply logging the values of all form fields, seemed easiest at the time in case the developer changed the names of the fields.

It wasn't until a review by one of the senior devs that saw passwords in the log files - and with eyebrows raised asked "wth are you doing" \- that it dawned on me, "oops". I'm glad that never made it out to production.

<comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, did you look at the end-result log files yourself before the review?

<comment><USER17> I did! I however did NOT fail to enter my credentials correctly locally, and the rest of the logs were filled with random forms submitted during testing.

"Yep, all looks good on my machine!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not in defense of Zuckerberg, but I have seen and fortunately stopped some young entrepreneurs doing atrociously invasive things in order to better understand and expand their product.

I don't think this is necessarily a case of wickedness, but instead lack of knowledge and immaturity when the event happened.

<comment><USER20> Going into someone else's email to read what they have to say about you is something that even a three year old knows is wrong.

If you have dealings with people like that and you're helping them don't be surprised when you find out they have used their money to open a child rape hotel somewhere in the developing world.

<comment><USER21> There's a big difference between email snooping and . . . that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Many comments here can be summarized "but he was only 19, young and dumb ..." However many 19 years olds do things that impact the rest of their life and don't get that excuse. "But doing illegal things is different..." Isn't accessing someone's email without consent illegal?

</comment><comment><USER23> First time I'm hearing about this. Wow. Thanks for posting. Was there never a criminal in investigation?

<comment><USER24> I'd be shocked if there was a criminal investigation into one college student snooping on another's email account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The break in occurred in 2004, but the article is from 2010

</comment><comment><USER26> Ergo, a long history of double standards and hypocrisy.

Congresscritters on Tuesday are gonna set him on fire. Chances are that's all they do, unless setting him on fire brings about some actual political capital, and specific policies, to do something about facebook or privacy in general. But I think the critters have benefited from lax privacy laws, it's made them and their donor base wealthy and powerful, and a good deal of them will not want broad privacy protection for any number of reasons.

If their approval is around 10%, and Zuckerberg's is around 20% (estimates, but point being Zuck's is probably higher than Congress), they'll see making him look bad will at least in the short term make them look informed, sympathetic and serious. Even if they get a +1% for giving him a hard time, they'll see it as a win. It'll be a spectacle for fans of schadenfreude.

</comment><comment><USER27> What I don't understand is how the important leaders and influencers of the world, like Obama, or Bill Gates, or others, are not ashamed to show themselves near Zuckerberg.

He started the whole Facebook with a theft from the Winklevoss brothers. That whole business is the fruit of theft. Yeah, he was young and stupid, but how many of you even considered doing such a thing to your employer? Yeah, he built a huge business based on it, but it's still built on thievery and deceivement.

No matter how many seemingly good things he does, he is still a thief (by my moral grounds, of course, not by law)

<comment><USER28> That would be a fun position for Obama to take; would he spurn Zuckerberg before or after giving Kissinger the Distinguished Public Service Award?

I rail against Facebook, and think it's a dangerous system, but Zuckerberg is a damn saint compared to many of the people Obama and Bill Gates have shown themselves with. And the two are themselves far from .

<comment><USER29> You are comparing very different things. While I agree a lot of bad people are doing bad things out there, not many if any have the reach and control Zuckerberg does. I wonder if there is a resolution where Facebook can be fixed without government regulations that would likely have adverse effects on the internet at large. I don't even use Facebook and yet I am vulnerable as they doubtless have a complete profile on me based on tracking pixels and people with whom I socialize having accounts with them.

<comment><USER30> What reach? Surely you cannot compare Zuckerberg to Kissinger - a man who could (and by all accounts did) condemn hundreds of thousands of people to be shot, burned, raped, starved, and tortured.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A brand founded by a deceitful, insecure, and altogether immature person is a problem when is effects so many people's lives. News at 11.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm hopeful that Zuckerberg has matured at least slightly in the intervening 14 years.

<comment><USER33> Time is certainly necessary for growth but it's no guarantee of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm getting a 404 on the article link now. Did someone (on a Sunday evening) notice that this story resurfaced on HN and had their lawyer send over a cease a desist to business insider to get it taken down?

<comment><USER22> Up for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where are the sources that prove Zuckerberg illegally accessed someone's email? Did I skim over them in the article?

</comment><comment><USER36> I came up with a new term for Zuckerberg, Google boys and others in the business of invading privacy: spioneers.

</comment><comment><USER37> was wondering what type of journalist would decide to write an article like this, then realized the author came out of Gawker.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is from 2010, not 2004.

<comment><USER39> This story was written in 2010 about an incident that happened in 2004.

<comment><USER38> Yup, title has been changed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why are the media talking so much about Facebook's mistakes of 10 years ago, while there are much worse problems in privacy at the moment ? Grindr, China's rating system, NSA's algorithm in Pakistan..

Corporate culture changes a lot in 10 years, Facebook is the wrong target.

<comment><USER41> It has to do with the general population's complete misunderstanding on how ads are targeted, combined with the fact that it's hip to upvote and share anti-FB hit pieces.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: New job is having me switch from Linux to Mac – how do I cope? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using Linux over 15 years, and since 2005 I've been at startups where I controlled my destiny and ran whatever the heck I wanted on my work computer (typically Linux Mint Debian Edition on a Lenovo.)
Well, I took a new job and it starts on Monday (5/4). And part of that job is using the machine I'm given. As is. Which means a MBP running OS X.
Any real world tips that you can give me to ease the change? <comment><USER3> Install VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox, give it most of your RAM and hard disk space. Now run Linux on that. That's your best bet for sticking to Linux for most of your work.

You can use browser on the Mac if you want to be able to use the latest and greatest firefox/Chrome but for coding and software nothing beats Linux. All the OS X brew/ports etc are just not good enough compared to apt-get.

You can run the VM using VirtualBox in background mode too and then just ssh to it using the Terminal.app or iTerm.app on OS X.

Copy-paste works really well on iTerm so you can copy-paste links from your OS X browser like Firefox/Chrome to the ssh terminal and use it in case you download software using wget/curl sometimes.

For email, Thunderbird/Mail.app both work really well on OS X and that should be good enough unless you want mutt, which you can then use from your Linux VM.

Most likely your production environment is Linux, esp. if you're in a company that is giving you Macs so most likely web development. Even better if you mimic your production environment in your VM and develop on that instead of developing on a non-standard environment like OS X and then hoping stuff works in production. (Tons of devs do this and it makes no sense.)

<comment><USER4> Personally, I'd suggest using something like Vagrant instead - <USER2> lightweight in my opinion, in terms of being able to instantly destroy & create a new one with 2 commands.

Although, saying this, there's no reason the OP can't just install Linux over (or alongside) OS X.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious as to what makes Vagrant more light weight as it still needs some type of VM software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its more the discipline that Vagrant creates in letting you repeatedly generate the same environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OS X isn't a huge cultural shock. It's mostly getting your head wrapped around the dock and some hotkeys, and it mostly Just Works. I made the switch a couple years back after over a decade of hardcore Linux or BSD on the desktop.

Once you get a terminal to your liking, it should make things less obtuse and let you get a feel for the operating system.

<comment><USER7> Ditto. In fact, I switched because I grew envious of how much easier everything was to do on the MBAs used by my daughter and wife than on my Ubuntu laptop. I'd sit at one of their machines, use the trackpad for a moment, just a moment, and miss the gestures on my DV7.

One day, in a moment of frustration, when Libre or Open or Braindead Office got too much in my way, I slammed the lid down, yelled "I'll be back in an hour", had my own MBA set up and working to my liking 90 minutes later, and haven't looked back.

<comment><USER8> I did the same and actually felt kind of bad that we live in a place where we are able to go kill two grand just like that.

However, I felt bad for only about two minutes, and then forgot about that until I read your comment.

 _sigh_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why are you being forced to use OSX? Why not just install your distro of choice on it?

Other than that, use iTerm2[0], Homebrew[1] and Cask[2], this'll kickstart your CLI env in the right direction.

      [0] http://iterm2.com/
      [1] http://brew.sh/
      [2] http://caskroom.io/

<comment><USER10> I never understand the instant dismissal of the stock Terminal.app

Yes it's not the most featureful terminal emulator in existence but it's well put together and works just fine.

<comment><USER11> For me, the main reason I moved to iTerm2 was because terminal only had support for 16 colors (I think ... it was 4-5 years ago). So I just use iTerm now out of habit. I didn't have any other issues with Terminal.app.

And I suspect most others have similar reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Try and keep an open mind.

I used to be a die-hard Arch user who would never consider even buying a mac. Was given a macbook at an internship and haven't looked back... Well, I have. I love it though. Give it a month to start getting productive though.

As Revell said, Homebrew is a must-have. (Also fish[1], but that applies to Linux too).

[1] [http://fishshell.com/](http://fishshell.com/)

<comment><USER9> I've been looking at alternative shells a while back and Fish looked interesting indeed. What made you choose this one over regular Bash and ZSH? Also, how do you deal with incompatibility issues (if any) and different environments (f.e. when SSH-ing to a server)?

<comment><USER12> I only use Fish interactively. It has really nice autocompletion (which I'm pretty sure reads my mind), and cycling tab completion which I like. Also oh- my-fish[1] is awesome.

Last I checked it was maintained by one guy, meaning support isn't always great.

I still use bash for scripting (can't get away from it) and when compatibility is an issue.

[1] [https://github.com/bpinto/oh-my-fish](https://github.com/bpinto/oh-my- fish)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi There, I work at a startup and we all get Mac Latops, I installed VirtualBox and allocated 100Gigs and 4G of Ram to a Linux Mint virtual machine on my Mac OSX instance and it works great. I get so use all the features of the mac and I can do all my work on my linux machine. You shouldn't have a problem if you use a virtual machine.

Good luck in your new job.

</comment><comment><USER14> Some general tips for OS X (subjective of course)

\- Spaces are akin to Workspaces (Three finger left/right swipe) and are great for running VM's fullscreen.

\- Use gestures (Two finger/Three finger Left/Right/Up/Down swipe or grab/spread)

\- Spotlight (Command-Space) is handy

\- Give Safari a fair try but you mightn't like it (I switched from Chrome last year and am loving it)

\- I never use Launchpad (Grab gesture)

<comment><USER15> Alfred is even better than Spotlight alone, I have it mapped to option-A and I never launch apps any other way.

<comment><USER14> Thanks dysfunction, good tip. I haven't looked at Alfred in a long time. Out of interest, for you, what differentiates Alfred from Spotlight in Yosemite? Having a quick look, Alfred having 1Password is excellent. Spotlight though is great for an instant Calculator and Currency conversion. Does Alfred support these OOTB? It looks pretty flexible, could I write something to integrate these?

Do you have the powerpack? Is it useful?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been running into the same issue since last week. (Linux user being forced to switch to OSX)

All the terminal thoughts mentioned above are good although there are still some weird BSD idiosyncrasies that you'll have to cope with (cp missing the link switch, find requiring an explicit target, etc) Ive also been using tmux and it makes the default terminal a bit more bearable.

Here are my biggest gripes thus far switching from Debian Jessie with KDE:

\- The window management is laughably bad in OSX. I installed two extensions (divvy and cinch) to add window docking functionality which helps slightly but they are free only in that they pop up requests to pay every once in a while. Apparently there are some better extensions but they cost money and its my opinion that my workflow is my employers problem, not my monetary responsibility.

\- Using virtual desktops on OSX after becoming accustomed to the Linux implementation sucks. Its is far less featured than KDE (at least out of the box) and a lot of the extensions to make it better seem to cost money. The desktop switching order is linear and it randomly changes the ordering on you while you are using it. There is also no concept of docking a window across desktops or opening a window on multiple. In fact, when you maximize a window it switches desktops on you.

\- The firmware for the thunderbolt display is terrible. The USB ports keep shutting off randomly requiring you to unplug and replug the thunderbolt. Doing this totally screws up all your window sizes and placements. I generally have a full screen terminal on a virtual desktop and it causes it to underscan the window until I close and reopen it. Extremely irritating.

\- I don't really like the focus management in OSX but this is more a minor UX irritation. My issue involves clicking on a text field inside a different application and instead of having the text field gain focus, the application gains focus but not the internal text field. Many a time have I entered text into the wrong entry field in the browser.

All this being said, Apple hardware is really excellent. Some of the peripherals are a little bit too 'designed' and not as functional but they are not unmanageable. The software needs some help and I still may switch to Linux in a VM at some point. For now I figure that I might as well give OSX a chance before I completely bail on it. The Apple fanboys would never let me hear the end of it.

<comment><USER17> Regarding window management: I use an excellent little free app called ShiftIt ([https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt](https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt)) that makes window management way better. Uses maybe 20MB of RAM and plays nice with multiple displays.

<comment><USER16> Interesting, thanks. Im going to give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My biggest problem moving to OSX (from mostly windows) was the idiotic apple UK keyboard layout (US keyboards might not be such a big deal, so this stuff might not apply) so I found myself having to download a regular UK keyboard layout ([http://liyang.hu/osx-british.xhtml](http://liyang.hu/osx- british.xhtml)), and Karabiner ([https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/)) to make OSX behave properly with my normal keyboard with the pageup/down and home/end keys

Once I sorted that out it was a relatively pleasant experience.

You might also want to install SmoothMouse ([http://smoothmouse.com/](http://smoothmouse.com/)) which tames OSX's ferocious mouse acceleration curve, and reduces the delay between moving the mouse and the screen updating to be imperceptible

</comment><comment><USER14> +1 for running dev environments in virtual machines.

I tend to run them headless (Shift-Click in VirtualBox) mapping my dev folder using samba (Command-K in Finder maps to a samba drive) and ssh into the VM's CLI using iTerm.

It's a great way to retain environments at the end of projects.

Would love to hear your thoughts after a month? The good and bad obviously...

</comment><comment><USER19> Keep in mind that OS X is POSIX-compliant, but it's a customized BSD, not Linux. A lot of stuff works the same (and it'll compile most of your code without issue), and it's certainly a lot closer to what you're used to than a Win system (how that's POSIX compliant boggles me), but a lot of Linux- specific stuff isn't where you think it is.

You'll need to find alternatives to /sys and /proc. Services are managed with launchctl, which is kind of a pain. X Window support is there but clunky. And so on.

While you're living in a console, working on your own code, though, things are close enough to forget about most of the time.

Best of luck!

<comment><USER20> > Keep in mind that OS X is POSIX-compliant, but it's a customized BSD, not > Linux.

And that if you're used to BSD ... it's weird as BSDs go. (Just little things, but I found it slightly jarring in practice.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> echoing others I suppose, but I'll also recommend running a Linux VM as your dev environment.

at my dayjob I'm using an iMac and managing my virtual machines using Vagrant which loads an image of an Ubuntu Linux machine (same distro as used on our production servers). its a convenient setup in several ways. This keeps my dev environment a close match to the prod environment, and it lets me install packages quickly and easily for development using the usual Linux tools. I also get to continue using the superb desktop interface that OSX provides.

</comment><comment><USER22> A MBP running OSX is almost as good as a Linux laptop but with a better GUI. Just be happy they didn't give you a windows laptop. In the corporate world you would have to be a unicorn or rockstar to get a MBP. If you were a Linux sysadmin you might get away with running a Linux laptop but very doubtful. I love my Linux and my iMac 27inch no problem running brew to install things on OSX. Your MBP will be able to run vagrant and virtual-box which is Linux anyway.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use Linux as my desktop but have an Air for traveling. Switching between them is not so bad. :-)

Lots of great advice here, but I still remember being surprised that on OS X (and BSDs I think?) a trailing slash in a directory name is significant, e.g. here:

[http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2005111210000737...](http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20051112100007372)

Keep that in mind when running `cp` etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> Its a unix OS... it works the same. Some commands vary a bit but its largely the same. If you hate it, ssh into a linux box.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is dual-boot not an option? Or... if you're not allowed to do that, you could always use a live-cd or live-usb version of your favorite linux distro. Might run a bit a slower, but maybe a live-usb running off of a SSD drive with a thunderbolt connection would be fast enough.

</comment><comment><USER26> You'll probably transition fairly easily. Mac OS X is a customized BSD, so although it has differences with respect to Linux, it's also not that foreign either.

* Remap Command and Control if your fingers can't adjust to the change in shortcuts. System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys

* If you want TAB to work with all widgets (which is what makes sense to me): System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access: All Controls

* Not sure where a menu command lives? Search for it in the Help menu's Search field.

* Spotlight is a pretty good launcher, calculator, and more. Command+Space is your friend.

* If you need additional keyboard remapping support: [Karabiner]([https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/)) and [Seil]([https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en))

* Time Machine is your friend.

* Grab [iTerm2]([http://iterm2.com](http://iterm2.com)). Apple's terminal is nice, but iTerm2 has so much more. If you use tmux, iTerm2 has support for that, too.

* Install [Homebrew]([http://brew.sh](http://brew.sh)) for package management.

* [TotalSpaces 2]([http://totalspaces.binaryage.com](http://totalspaces.binaryage.com)) gives you even more control over how your spaces are arranged, animations between them, and keystrokes for accessing them. Can't live without it anymore.

* Window management sucks. I use [Moom]([http://manytricks.com/moom/](http://manytricks.com/moom/))

* I've given up on Apple's Mail.app. I use Gmail, and [AirMail 2]([http://airmailapp.com](http://airmailapp.com)) does the trick for me.

* Use virtual machines where appropriate (VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, ...)

* Install your preferred shell if Bash isn't your cup of tea. I use [Fish]([http://fishshell.com](http://fishshell.com))

* [F.lux]([https://justgetflux.com](https://justgetflux.com)) is your eye's best friend.

* [Bartender]([http://www.macbartender.com](http://www.macbartender.com)) keeps all those pesky menu items under control

* If you want to really customize your gestures and the like, [BetterTouchTool]([http://www.bettertouchtool.net](http://www.bettertouchtool.net)) can be useful. For awhile I had my "Windows+E" muscle memory tied to launching a new Finder window until I got over it.

Good luck! Give it about a week or so (if that), and you should be comfortable in your new environment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just run linux in a VM.

</comment><comment><USER28> Take a deep breath.

You will likely find the transition to be jarringly pleasant. To ween yourself off of linux, continue to use a VM on your MBP (I used vmware) to run your favorite distro.

Keep calm and carry on.</comment>


Cursors - <AUTHOR> http://cursors.io <comment><USER2> Dev here. There's an editor at [http://cursors.io?editor](http://cursors.io?editor), but it can't submit the level to me yet. But you can type "generateCode();" and put it on pastebin and email it to me at me [at] m28.io and I'll put it in game if I like it.

My server is getting hammered pretty hard, that's the reason for the disconnects. The spike caused by hn: [http://d.m28.io/ZCWdy0m1DHOG.png](http://d.m28.io/ZCWdy0m1DHOG.png)

I'm gonna sleep now but ask anything and I'll reply when I get up.

Edit: Sleeping is not an option anymore, the server is having some... troubles.

<comment><USER3> Keybind found so far:

* O: spawn * A/S: change paint color * W: exit? green block

<comment><USER4> More Keybinds from Code:

* A: Prev Paint Color

* S: Next Paint Color

* B: Create Click Button

* Z: Undo

* W: Add Exit Block

* O: Move Spawn Point

* N: Create Hover Area

* Arrows: Change Size

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started playing this while some code was compiling and ended up getting completely sucked in.

That giddy thrill of enabling a restless mass of fellow cursors to rush through a gate, or the temporary, unspoken bond between the lone cursor selflessly manning a button and the new arrival sidling up to them to see if they want to change shifts... there's a lot going on in this seemingly simple game. I'm glad I got to play while it's at critical mass.

(Developers, are you logging the cursor movements? This would be fascinating to analyze later.)

<comment><USER2> I am not logging anything at the moment. I started writing this a few days ago.

<comment><USER6> This is going to be H U G E.

Stats about one's own selflessness etc would be really cool. Or even aggregated stuff. X% is selfish, Deciles of goodness etc.

<comment><USER7> I was completely expecting some stats read out at the end, saying I had spent X time in levels that selfless people had spend Y time in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ooof, it's over. Some levels is more tragic and ironic than Hollywood movies. I've known a cursor who always clicking as if he cheering to everybody. Funny guy. There was two friendly cursors at the maze and they never stoped to draw a lines and moved together, side by side. "Leave me, save yourself!" \- I said to other brave cursor, but he stayed on the blue square and didn't want to escape the level.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is so much fun. It's kind of like RPG. There are 3 character classes. 1\. Asshole: just goes straight after the green square. 2\. Prankster: draws arrows pointing to the wrong exits. 3\. Batman: stays on the button and clicks.

I've tried all three characters. Playing prankster is fun (I was a true trickster and sometimes drew the right arrow). Playing asshole is boring. Playing Batman is ok.

My apologies to all the guys/gals who followed the wrong arrow.

Many, many thanks to the author.

Also, I haven't seen so many poorly drawn dicks and swastikas since grade school.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow! There is so much going on here. I can't believe you're not logging!

* First it starts out as a simple maze puzzle game.

* Then it there're weird layouts where people are clicking stuff, and pathways are opening up randomly.

* Then you realise it's not random at all, people have to click things for pathways to open.

* Then you realise someone has to stay behind and sacrifice themselves for other people to go through.

* Then there're levels where multiple people have to coordinate and click at the same time to open n layers gates.

* Then there're levels where not only do you have to stay behind, you have to go out of your way to do so. So you'll be letting people through for a while, you realise, as it's more efficient for the group as a whole. At some point you have to decide you've taken your turn and you move towards the main gate and wait, and then new people come and then they have to realise to go to press the key.

* So next level you see someone sacrificing themselves and you decide instead to go take their place and wiggle your mouse to tell them to go. "I got this", you indicate.

* Now some people have got it into their head this is all about cooperation and selflessness. So you can be waiting in one of these buttons in the middle of nowhere, letting people through for a minute, and a new guy will start making their way towards you to let you go, and you draw "thanks" on your way out, they wiggle their mouse to say "welcome" and off you go, leaving them behind.

* On some levels, not only did people have to coordinate at the same time, but things had to be done in sequence. On one, there wasn't enough people to hit all buttons at once, so we coordinated where you would unwrap the "outer" layer of wall protecting the exit, and a couple people would move inside, then you'd unwrap another inner layer, and so on, until they could get out. Finally, you'd decide your turn was over and go wait the same way. It took quite a while before this was figured out collectively -- but once newcomers saw how it was done it went in one smooth operation until I got out and onto another maze.

And that's to say nothing of the selfish people who just passed through maze after maze. In one maze people were waiting, and I and another were at the buttons, but there was one other. One of them had to realise they needed to sacrifice themselves. We were both wiggling our mouses to indicate so, but they didn't see it.

There's also the way people will follow you in the maze if you look confident, and the way people will draw on the right exit to help people out. I'd try to leave a trail if I'd had the right exit cracked in the maze.

In a way I think the inability to write and communicate is fantastic: you can't just tell someone "do this". They have to figure out that they need to collaborate, they have to have some kind of intuitive social empathy that puts the needs of the many against the needs of the few.

Genuinely, mate, this is the most fascinating "game" I've played in a long time. And I can't believe you're not logging it all! I'm sure game theorists and psychologists would love to get their hands on this kind of data. I thought it was a real experiment done for research.

Glad I got to play this while 700 people were on it, I think that really made for some great interactions. It felt like being part of some kind of military team.

<comment><USER11> It's great, the second time I played it I started drawing arrows at incorrect exits at the one level where you have to pick the correct one or be sent back. When I started there were about 10 people in the level and everything went quite smoothly since there was the occasional person pointing an arrow at the correct exit. By the time I was done there were at least 50 cursors in the room and it became completely chaotic. People started crossing out my arrows, and others joined me in my effort of drawing false arrows.

<comment><USER12> Hahaha. That level is so much fun to troll people in.

Someone was drawing an X on the correct exit, and I started drawing a checkmark on the one next to it. When they realized, they tried to cross it out.

<comment><USER13> Trolling was a fun break between bouts of altruism. On levels like this [1], I'd click until the counter went down to 1 and step away. Right before the cursor I pissed off came to take over the shift, I'd start clicking again.

[http://i.imgur.com/i3bOD81.png](http://i.imgur.com/i3bOD81.png)

<comment><USER14> You were one of _those_ people...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love how there's no way to stick out from the crowd, you could be selfish or selfless when ever you want and no one will be able to recognize you as soon as you blend in with the other cursors. Only you know how you behaved.

I decided to be one of the dancing cursors pointing to the right exit on the early stage, it was so fun to watch the difference in throughput when someone was dancing vs not. Almost everyone went straight for the dancer if there was one and just went 1 by 1 otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER16> The band Kilo had a "crowdsourced music video" based on the same concept: [http://donottouch.org/](http://donottouch.org/)

<comment><USER2> That was also one of my inspirations! (That and cursors*10)

<comment><USER17> Do you know 5xman. It's a lot of fun. It's a flash game you can play in armor games and kongregate (I don't know for how long this link will be valid, but anyway: [http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman](http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everyone seems to be loving it, but doesn't work for me. I don't control any of the cursors. There's a message in the bottom corner "Area too full, drawing is disabled". Latest Firefox.

<comment><USER19> Firefox's cursor hiding breaks it, won't let you move the cursor, so don't enable it. Red circled cursor is your actual mouse position, grey circled one is the 'ingame' cursor that's blocked by walls. Move the red onto the grey to start.

<comment><USER20> I found disabling the cursor lock on FF helped

<comment><USER21> No trouble here. FF 31.1.0esr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of cursor*10[1]. I always wanted an actual multiplayer version of it -- awesome!

[1] [http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=CURSOR10](http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=CURSOR10)

<comment><USER2> That's actually from where I got my inspiration! Thanks for noticing

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love it. I learn to be sometimes sacrificing myself and sometimes to be selfish enough.

Ps: I just realized you can draw something on board. Hint: Press and hold Ctrl.

<comment><USER24> Ahh, that's what the "Area too full, drawing is disabled" was for. I saw some drawing in a later level and didn't connect the dots.

<comment><USER23> I think no, that is the message from the server whenever it was overloaded. The drawing is not persistent. It goes away after a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In that level where the buttons are deep into a maze, I punished jerks who wouldn't do their part by clicking the button until it reaches 1, but no more. For a good 30s, there was a group at the gate drawing hateful messages to me. I'd been there for a good 5 min helping people out, and letting others through. The ones that were waiting had not travelled anywhere close to a button, they'd only been waiting at the gate for others to sacrifice themselves for them. Then one of them eventually gave up and came to replace me. What a bunch of assholes.

That's not everybody of course, but the later in the levels you go, the higher the proportion of jerks you'd meet. This, I guess, because the ones who aren't jerks take more time to move forward in the levels, while jerks move faster.

So while jerks can't reach the next level without the presence of good-doers, there still less and less good-doers as you progress forward. There's also attrition in good-doers along the way from:

        - Connections timing out or otherwise erroring.
        - People giving up.

And the further you move in the levels, the higher the jerk proportion so the longer it takes a good-doer to move forward, increasing the probability that one of the two attrition causes occur.

So it's possible that good-doers never make it to the end of the game (and thus nobody). In fact, if the game has enough levels, I'd be surprised if anyone ever managed to finish it without deliberate coordination by a group of good-doers.

All that to say, this game is really interesting.

<comment><USER26> Actually my experience is opposite -- the further you go, the more people have already realised the importance of teamwork and it's easier to cooperate, while at the beginning everyone just rushes to the next level. Anyway, very interesting idea and also could be put to the use for psychology students etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The challenge is not to simply finish the game, but to finish the game before it disconnects :D

<comment><USER28> Yes, some means of saving your progress via the history API or localStorage or something would be very appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, I just completed the "curiosity killed the mouse" level, took 3 people a while to realise what was going on, but after a few minutes we got to the non- obvious solution, and I got sent back to the first level. I feel a bit screwed over now... =|

<comment><USER2> Don't worry, it always comes right before the last level, so you didn't lose much.

<comment><USER30> Is that still true, Magnificent Cursors Creator? This morning, I finished it and, if I'm remembering my pre-coffee activities correctly, a few more stages after it and never reached the end.

<comment><USER2> It should be, unless there's a bug. But I'm pretty sure there isn't a bug...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Playing this was a mistake on my part considering I have plenty of networking HW due tomorrow, but then again looking at HN was the first mistake. Great job! It's a simple game that ended up being significantly more fun than I thought it would be.

</comment><comment><USER32> So much fun, great to see how people work together to help each other win.

I gave up on the one where you had to squeeze through a bunch of narrow red pathways, it's not so easy on a trackpad.

<comment><USER33> 'Cheat' to get you past thin red pathways: line yourself up with the pathway, and jam yourself against the wall opposing the path. Take your cursor outside the game box, then bring it in from the opposite side. Your cursor will snap across to the wall opposite where it currently is. My hand is a bit too wobbly for those paths, so I had to 'think outside the box' to get past them...

<comment><USER34> I just turned on mousekeys (on windows) and then used the number pad to travel vertically/horizontally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is _way_ more interesting than I thought it'd be. I bet it was a blast to build, too.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is pure genius. I was amazed at the self-emerging cyclical selfish & altruist behaviors.

Good job, mate.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anybody figured how to get gold in "You can't get always what you want"?

<comment><USER38> I can't see any way to do it I think the solution is it's impossible.

<comment><USER37> I've been there for a while and tried everything... Nothing worked so far.

<comment><USER39> I started poking around with the javascript to see if I could hack it, but it seems to have server-side verification to stop you from moving to places you shouldn't be able to access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really wanted to see how many people were at each level, to get a sense of how far up the tower this goes, and how many people were up top, and how soon I'd get there.

It'd also be cool if the higher up you go, you can see a previous level, and affect it in some way, like helping more cursors get up to your level, or hinder them to be evil.

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting but it lost me when I had start to have to do pixel accurate manoeuvring. That was challenging when I was 16, but it feels so pointless now (30 years later).

By the way, apparently it doesn't work with the ad on the bottom turned off by either NoScript or Adblock (connection to server lost).

<comment><USER42> I used Ease of Access Center in Windows to control the mouse via the numpad to get past the really annoying ones, getting past those parts was worth it.

<comment><USER43>
        for i in $(seq 50) ; do
            eesh warp rel 0 -8
            sleep 0.1
        done

// yes, I still use e16

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Interesting CPU performance in Chrome on Ubuntu!

Relating to this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471049) (Google chrome helper amok in OSX HN thread)

While playing Cursors my chrome CPU usage went through-the-roof! Just like OSX 60-80%+ CPU usage on that page. Side-by-side comparison with a mac at cursors.io had identical CPU (so may just be the load of the app).

Just did a side-by-side comparison with Mozilla in Ubuntu showed no higher than 15% for about 90 seconds, but actually ended up jumping to 100%

*Edit: The mozilla cpu jump was related to cursor hiding. Otherwise the crazy cpu usage is entirely gone. The issue persists in chrome.

</comment><comment><USER45> I get nothing either in Firefox or Chrome :(

Firefox says:

> SecurityError: The operation is insecure. client_out.js:30

Chrome says:

> Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from > 'Window': Access is denied for this document.

<comment><USER46> Doesn't work for me on Firefox Aurora, console shows: ReferenceError: WebSocket is not defined

I see just a rectangle with border, when I move cursor to it it disappears, when I move it out it appears again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Unfortunately I got the message "Lost Connection to Server", after I had made significant progress, and had to start over.

But all in all, I think it's a very interesting (and fun) game. The only part which concerns me is the fact that it's multiplayer only, which means as people lose interest over time it simply won't be playable. But, then again I don't see how the mechanics would translate to single player only, unless the other mouse cursors were controlled by bots with different algorithms to simulate various humans playstyles.

</comment><comment><USER48> The experience is so good! Though I wish there was some way to save state after connection lost. I have lost it a couple of times now probably because of load and it starts over every time.

<comment><USER49> +1 Also "clear state".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> recorded a video of my experience (1h40m with level bookmarks in description):

[http://youtu.be/vtuZlufpfag](http://youtu.be/vtuZlufpfag)

truly great idea. thanks for the game!

</comment><comment><USER51> Hey! It needs save the progress!! :-(

</comment><comment><USER52> The level that really made me smile was one with about twenty "exits", only one of which was real.

One of the cursors sat by the real one and danced invitingly until everyone noticed.

<comment><USER53> Did they figure out which was the real one, and then restart the game and get to that level just to point out the correct answer?

<comment><USER54> When I got to that level a cursor was drawing an arrow to a false path. I couldn't figure out how to draw, so I assume a "fake cursor" was part of the level.

<comment><USER55> You can draw by holding ctrl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Warning: Next iteration in a genre of basic addiction games."

These games really are impressive though. I wonder if there's been a good thesis written on them yet.

</comment><comment><USER57> Loved the game. There is one level where you have to push 4 buttons to open barriers. But 1 player if fast enough can push 3 of them and you get glitched through last one. So I was trying to get one cursor through, clicking every button 5 times, but I was just a bit too slow. Then he just came to my place and wiggled "hey move on its my turn to help". He was fast enough and I moved on...

</comment><comment><USER58> You have to love the game theory behind this. In order to get through the later levels you have to be a bit selfish and take the oppurtunity of going for the green square at other people's expense. The most interesting part is once you get to the last few levels where everyone is selfish. Makes for difficult times passing the level :)

Props to the dev for creating a simple game that is a huge amount of fun!

</comment><comment><USER59> OK can someone describe what on earth this is. I've tried twice - once I ended up in a maze with a load of other mouse cursors and no indication of what to do (I spent a couple of minutes moving around towards some coloured squares but ultimately nothing happened). The other time I was in a white screen that said "press shift and click to draw" but doing so did nothing :-/

<comment><USER60> Get to the green square. You're the cursor with the yellow halo around it. Figuring out the rest of the problems is part of the fun :)

<comment><USER59> Guess I've having issues then, I made it to the square when I tried before and now I'm getting a blank screen and a message about losing connection. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Just a heads up, I'm on a touch screen and can abuse those pink parts pretty easily by just tapping the screen on the other side of them.

<comment><USER62> You can do this with a normal cursor too. Get the cursor to the edge opposite the one you want to get to. Press escape to go into loose lock mode (not sure how to describe this).

By taking your cursor down outside the box, it doesn't register as being too far away (stays yellow). You can loop your mouse around to the other side outside the window and instantly your cursor catches up when you re-enter on the opposite side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Awesome app. It reminds me of a thing I made, [http://www.theinfinitemaze.com/](http://www.theinfinitemaze.com/)

One thing I did on that site which could be useful here: aid the mouse movement with a A* search with limited depth, so that the game cursor moves toward the actual cursor a little more instead of blocking when there is a wall in the way.

</comment><comment><USER64> Curiosity killed the mouse...

<comment><USER65> I went to the more-difficult-to-reach exit and was sent all the way back to the beginning of the game :-(

<comment><USER66> [Spoiler Alert] I did this on the first play through too. I played through again and it turns out that's the last level anyway. If you take the easy option you end up in a blank level where all the winners can hang out and just draw pictures. When I was there it was 50% people expressing their joy in finishing, and 50% dick pics :)

<comment><USER67> That is hilarious. This game is awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Broken in Safari -

        [Error] TypeError: undefined is not a function (evaluating 'w.requestPointerLock()')
        	ma (client_out.js, line 1)

(As the error suggests, checking the 'no pointer lock' button fixes it, but it shouldn't be silently failing.)

Edit: Ouch, I was disconnected from the server after getting several levels in.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the bug report, should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I went AFK after reaching a particularly hard level, and came back to "Lost connection to server." Apparently it boots you if you're AFK for more than a minute or two.

A bit frustrating, considering how much "work" I put in to get to that point.

It's hands-down the best HTML 5 game experience I've ever had. I look forward to more.

<comment><USER70> I have that message too now, I think the server simply went down, as I was not AFK at all.

<comment><USER2> Dev here, yep. Server was restarted.

<comment><USER70> I'm an active gamer and this is the first time I've had fun playing something in years.

Thank you.

<comment><USER2> Thank you. That means a lot :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Loving the anonymous "mob psychology" patterns that can be seen whilst playing the game, the cursors makes it look like we're observing a swarm of (intelligent) flies :)

Also funny to witness in the harder levels most cursors getting slower and slower as to avoid having to start again :)

<comment><USER72> I was trolled by a very mean cursor who relentlessly cyber bullied me and made some very NSFW gestures! I captured a screen snapshot, reported it to the FBI, and described the cursor who assaulted me to a sketch artist, but they said they could not do anything about it unless they have more evidence as to the rogue cursor's identity. What am I to do???

<comment><USER21> Be more subtle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Lots of fun, most fun is at the end of the game. A lot of drawing took place on the end level, was fun :D

</comment><comment><USER74> Just completed the game. Amazed me how "selfish" some players were. Although it's hard to communicate actions - and harder still to differentiate players - it did seem that I spend much longer helping players who just camped by the exit.

<comment><USER75> There's an end? Aw, man! I tought it was just big bunch of randomly chosen levels. How about a counter? Something like 'this is level 123 from 444'?

Surprisingly awesome game tough!

<comment><USER76> That's what I don't like about these "throw you into our world" games/websites. Sure, it's kind of adventurous to just be thrown into some game you don't know what is about or for, but it's not good for the web surfing procrastinator in me. OK, nice game and all, but is this going to be taking 5 minutes or two hours to complete? (Yes, I did finish this particular game. Someone pointed out how many levels there were, in one of the comments.)

<comment><USER76> And: If I close the game and want to continue the game later, is the game stored for me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Ugh. Two cursors are trolling the first level. They put their cursors on the block that can't have any on it, and so it prevents anyone playing from moving on :/

Would be awesome to kick cursors who haven't moved off a toggle in x many minutes...

</comment><comment><USER78> Very nice game, I just wasted a bit of my time trying to get through the levels :) which is always a good indication if you ask me.

On another note: 1) can you provide 1/2 links to the JS cursor API behind the game? 2) Do you plan to open source it?

Keep up the nice work

</comment><comment><USER79> Crashed twice on me now (other players stop moving, and the game stops responding to input).

IndexSizeError: Index or size is negative or greater than the allowed amount

Somewhere on line 18 of client_out.js, which is probably not very helpful because the source is minified.

</comment><comment><USER80> I was going to post asking for level numbers to be displayed, but then I read through the comments here and actually enjoyed reading people's stories about levels and having to describe them in terms other than "level #53".

</comment><comment><USER81> We did a quiz game with cursor sharing earlier this year here: [http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p](http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p) (DE/FR lang only)

</comment><comment><USER82> Dev - The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time? Would you be interested in this direction?

</comment><comment><USER83> The only downside is when disconnection occurs, the game gets reset, frustrating :(

</comment><comment><USER84> Trying to get it on reddit too: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2jowld/cursors/](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2jowld/cursors/)

</comment><comment><USER83> Finally finished it, now I can get back to whatever I was doing a couple of hours ago.

[http://i.imgur.com/ZUTUZ6L.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZUTUZ6L.png)

<comment><USER85> I happened to see this post while randomly refreshing /newest last night, 0 comments at the time. PST time zone. Says it was posted 10 hours ago which is about 9pm PST. I promise I wasn't selfish! I definitely helped people out. Also had no lag issues at that time but some levels I did have to wait 5-10 minutes for more people to come through.

[http://i.imgur.com/STilfzp.png](http://i.imgur.com/STilfzp.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I just finished a long coding session (it's 3AM here), and was about to go to sleep before I saw this. Looks like I won't be going to bed for awhile longer... :)

</comment><comment><USER87> I would like the cursor to change color slowly as it ages on each level. This way you can see who's been in that level for a long time and who's just arriving.

</comment><comment><USER88> This level is impossible to get past if somebody leaves the exit area.

[http://i.imgur.com/wBK3pKo.png](http://i.imgur.com/wBK3pKo.png)

</comment><comment><USER89> Wow! First impression: this is stupid. Played for two minutes, couldn't stop for a 15 minutes. Congrats on creating a truly fun game from a simple idea.

</comment><comment><USER90> I love it. :) Small suggestion: make the cursor slide against walls rather than getting stuck (at least it gets stuck on walls for me in Chrome).

</comment><comment><USER91> This was fun, thx! Nicknames or custom colorable cursor might be a nice addition so you can identify your peers. Or it may ruin it, not sure.

</comment><comment><USER92> To 'skip' the narrow passages: google "Move mouse with cursor keys" ;} programmatically: CGWarpMouseCursorPosition on mac

<comment><USER93> or do the ol' impossible quiz trick

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Interesting game, and nice little "success" with the amount of concurrent players. Any ideas how to monetize something like that?

</comment><comment><USER95> Thanks to this game I finally decided to upgrade my ball mouse to LASER.

(and unfortunately I got "disconnected from server" about 15 levels in)

</comment><comment><USER54> "Connection to server lost"

I had myself convinced for a few minutes it was just a clever way to end the game when you got to the last level.

</comment><comment><USER96> Definitely a Titan game! I like that people are requesting saved progress.

Uh no, you're a cursor, get back out there as a fresh cursor...

<comment><USER97> I agree! Fun to see people 'claiming' anonymous cursors.

"That's me!" "Which?" "That one, with the spots!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> I just made a bunch of people go crazy drawing on one level. It took me 30 minutes trying to get someone draw anything.

<comment><USER99> I tried that in the end. ALMOST made a mickey mouse. Almost.

<comment><USER98> The end level I actually did that with some help. ;)

I tried to get people draw things at the point where if somebody stepped on a button all walls disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Is that gold thing real? Any way to go in?

<comment><USER101> Press alt + F4 to get gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> A simulated social experiment it is. This is pretty much how societies will need to be like. WIN - WIN - WIN!

</comment><comment><USER103> When I open the link it says "Lost connection to server". Is anyone getting the same message?

</comment><comment><USER104> How did you solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting your first dozens of concurrent users, author?

<comment><USER2> Threads. Lots of threads. Heh, just kidding. But really, since there are no communication between levels, it's pretty simple actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Nice game! I did not think i would finish, but it kept me hooked. The cooperation mechanics were fun.

</comment><comment><USER106> Lost connection to server a couple times now. Gets old trying to get through the beginning levels.

<comment><USER107> I think we need a save/load button or the auto-save feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Are there any safeguards against bots? Or could someone just sit on a # tile while auto-clicking?

</comment><comment><USER109> Lost connection to server??? NOOOOO

<comment><USER110> Start again? :-o NOOOO

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> This reminds me of an app that I built ~6 years ago [http://cursorlog.appspot.com/](http://cursorlog.appspot.com/) \- it's not working now, some JS error with `this.hidden` :(

Source code here [https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/](https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/)

</comment><comment><USER112> Wonderful Gamee! Would you tell us which technologies & APIs have you implemented? thx!

</comment><comment><USER113> For the first five minutes I kept worrying it was going to be a scream (see Maze Game).

</comment><comment><USER114> This gives RSI faster than Emacs

</comment><comment><USER115> The Ending screen is the best thing since using Paint on Windows 3.11 :D

</comment><comment><USER116> Awesome, reminds me of Antichamber, especially the little hints given.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I played that game too. I remembered it when writing the hints... I guess that counts as inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I got a "Lost connection to server" Anything went wrong?

<comment><USER106> too much load

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Have you made any changes recently/do you have a changelog?

</comment><comment><USER118> Simply amazing. Shows team work, sacrifice, cooperation. Nice!!!

</comment><comment><USER119> Thank you so much for releasing this not on a weekday :)

</comment><comment><USER120> Has anyone finished?

<comment><USER53> Yep! [https://roboteddy- img.s3.amazonaws.com/051583a403c58c10a87d3...](https://roboteddy- img.s3.amazonaws.com/051583a403c58c10a87d3756310cd822.png)

<comment><USER120> Woo [http://i.imgur.com/4RN9UN0.png](http://i.imgur.com/4RN9UN0.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome, you totally need to make cursor RPG.

</comment><comment><USER49> I want to buy this game now. <3 The server hurts.

</comment><comment><USER121> Teasing people after hacking in noclip is quite fun.

</comment><comment><USER122> How many levels are there? I played until about 12

<comment><USER2> About 40 at the moment.

<comment><USER123> Some indicator would be great. Maybe even of "cursors in the earlier levels that might come soon". Is there branching? I was stuck with 3 people in a room where we needed 5-6 (or super good clickers) to proceed and gave up waiting for new cursors after several minutes. (The spiral with 5-6 "5 click" buttons that were all blocking the exit in the lower right.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> Got to big maze and... "Connection Lost"

</comment><comment><USER125> Ugh, as soon as I get far I get disconnected....

</comment><comment><USER126> Now it's stuck in a stage forever :/

</comment><comment><USER127> This is insanely fun. Thanks so much.

</comment><comment><USER128> why is there a lost connection with the server?

Is the game server connecting to the webserver via private ip?

</comment><comment><USER129> This was a lot of fun, well made!

</comment><comment><USER130> Thanks for this! It was a blast!

</comment><comment><USER131> This is soooo addictive.

</comment><comment><USER132> This is the best game!

</comment><comment><USER133> Cool game, love it.

</comment><comment><USER134> And it's dead.

<comment><USER135> And we were so far along, too :( _crosses fingers for persistent state_

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> WTB tutorial :D

</comment><comment><USER137> My head hurts.

I love it.

</comment><comment><USER92> any cheat page yet?

</comment><comment><USER138> awesome

</comment><comment><USER139> Omg! I couldn't stop playing.

what is the technology behind this. this is amazing.

<comment><USER2> Just a bunch of hamsters and a few spinning wheels. It was kinda hard at first but once you figure out the right food, they won't stop running.</comment></comment>


How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-12/how-one-family-built-8-billion-startup-far-from-silicon-valley <comment><USER3> Can someone please genuinely explain the need of such software products to me? I work in VLSI engineering and such things sound like a total superflous bullshit-bingo to me (stats, dashboards, metrics, "value proposition", "targeting", "customer segmentation") I suppose I think so because I am a total layman in these fields. I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain - is this a thing that acutally helps with some processes and how?

<comment><USER4> Here's a real-world example from a client who uses Qualtrics heavily. At regular intervals following vehicle purchase, an automotive manufacturer sends surveys to vehicle owners asking about their perception of the quality of the vehicle, issues that may have come up, features that were not explained properly or don't work as expected, etc. We're talking hundreds of thousands of surveys a year, each with 20+ branching questions. The surveys themselves are built in Qualtrics (something that it is quite good at), managed by Qualtrics (yes, survey management is a big deal), and the top-level data analysis of the survey results is done in Qualtrics as well to determine if there are problematic trends that need to be addressed, more issues than in previous years, segments of customers who are for some reason perceiving quality differently than others, opportunities to redesign or better market things in the future, etc. This data is directly used to update products, training, marketing, etc. at the company.

This is, in my opinion, the biggest use case for Qualtrics - <USER2> experience research based on surveys or data gathering methods managed from within the platform. You can think of it as Survey Monkey on steroids with some SPSS-lite data analysis functionality built in.

<comment><USER5> > each with 20+ branching questions

I never understood , why would anyone waste their time answering 20+ questions for free?

<comment><USER6> You'd be amazed. I was an account manager at Medallia (Qualtrics competitor, also backed by Sequoia) and the response rates on 20-50 question surveys was typically in the double digits. When you have hundreds of thousands of customers in a month, you can generate super rich data through this process.

However, the industry as a whole has been coping with something they call "survey fatigue" which is reflected in a lot of the comments here. There has been a general backslide in survey response rates, though as of a few years ago, it had mostly stabilized around a new normal that was still plenty good for generating excellent data sets to understand the customer experience.

<comment><USER7> The customer that fills out a survey must be a very select group of customer. If the response rate is in the single digits of percent, what about the rest of the people? Setting company policy on just this small fraction of customers could be the path to failure.

<comment><USER8> correct, and that's why surveys need to be as scientific as possible in order to avoid various biases that skew the results. hence qualtrics and not surveymonkey for serious survey research.

<comment><USER7> How does Qualtrics get people who refuse to answer surveys to do so? Come to their door and offer big bucks and then weight those answers heavily?

<comment><USER8> I don't know, but the key is to properly account for the biases in responses of those who do answer. Substantial percentages of people do answer surveys. Don't make the mistake of thinking along the lines of "i would never answer one, therefore nobody would"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Easy to setup programmable web forms and surveys for non-experts. Apparently it is big business. One thing I think is interesting is that I'd heard of SurveyMonkey before but never about qualtrics.. even here on hackernews. Maybe because qualtrics was outside of the valley? Yet clearly a unicorn and a very successful exit.

<comment><USER10> I am very happy to see this kind of success stories for multiple reasons.

1\. It gives a great morale boost so many other not so sexy US places outside of silicon valley. YES big success possible outside of Silicon Valley.

2\. Now with this big SAP investment, UTAH will get considerable 'tech employment' boost longer term instead of same old crowded Silicon valley & New York (sky rocking housing prices)

3\. The way the company grew organically for long time instead of hitting VC money from day one (another big company that did was Atlassian)

4\. a very rare father-son founder company and a family company (brother and many of family members in big roles)

> both his parents held doctorates and his father lectured about market > research at the University of Oregon. The Smiths moved to Utah around the > time Ryan's father opted to work at Brigham Young University, and in 2002, > the pair started Qualtrics, originally targeting academics that needed to > conduct field research.

<comment><USER11> Worth noting that their engineering org is in Seattle

<comment><USER12> Not 100% true. They have some engineering in Seattle but a ton in Utah too.

<comment><USER13> they have most in seattle and some in utah.

I engineered in both offices. VP of engineering and product are both in Seattle and there are MORE engineers in seattle if talking absolutes.

<comment><USER11> When I was leaving I was under the impression that they were no longer hiring new non-professional services devs in the Provo office

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used the service in college. It was prettt powerful. I did some demand estimation and some work for local businesses with it. I didn't find it 8 billion dollars amazing but who knows it could be much better than other tools out there — it was just free through my university.

Kudos to them for avoiding VC money for so long.

<comment><USER15> Please remember that Skype was bought by MS for 8.5 Billion (yes, crappy Skype). Of course it was bought for it's prevalence and big existing audience(i'm guessing). Certainly not for it's great UI/UX and Communication capabilities (I hate Skype).

[https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys- skype-2/](https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/)

So anything marginally better could certainly be worth much, much more (as in this powerful Qualtrics products suite).

<comment><USER16> Skype was far better before the MS acquisition - there doesn't seem to be a comparable video platform anymore, considering that Skype offered amazing video at a time when (U.S.) internet speeds were even slower than what they are now.

<comment><USER17> Agree, Skype in MS era is just a shadow of what it was before. They completely destroyed the user experience. I don't even know how you can break something that working so well before, and not realize it.

<comment><USER15> My experience using Skype on all types of connections (Cable,Fibre) and broad range of devices (High-End PCs) was always very bad (pre and post MS).

We've used it both personally and in business environment, and it was always very difficult to get sound and/or image, connecting properly was always a crap shoot and included 5-10 connect disconnect before finally getting audio and video on both sides.

Very painful to use.

Glad some of you had better experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Top bullet points that stood out to me:

• An insistent awareness that there are alternatives to the conventional solutions.

• Going directly toward the biggest challenges, early on.

• An understanding that engineering strength is more valuable than money.

• Willingness to weasel into industries with hard-to-open doors.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting news! When I was in uni, I made some money on the side writing custom JS plug-ins for their survey engine. Through a lot of trial-and-error I managed to reverse engineer some useful knowledge about the inner workings of it (this lasted up till a major revamp of the survey engine around 5 years ago). The community was quite vibrant, and their product was being used from questionnaires in academic studies to marketing research to high-profile class-action cases. I've always imagined this huge userbase as well as the centralized organization of all this research data is quite valuable, so this acquisition price doesn't strike me as out of place.

<comment><USER20> Haha, I did the same thing when I was in grad school! It's so interesting to see how while we've gone on to do other things, they are still keeping their eyes on their (well-deserved) prize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used this service as a psychology student, to my dismay if I may add. To the dismay of other students, I'd always code up my own surveys :D

I wonder though, how is there space for: Qualtrics, Survey Monkey, Wufoo (back in the day) and a lot of others that I presumably don't know about.

I feel most of these survey engines provide the same thing.

<comment><USER22> May I know what was your needs that required you to code your own survey?

<comment><USER23> Guessing: privacy

<comment><USER24> I doubt this is the reason. Any academic studies which are going to be published need Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to ensure they won't violate ethics guidelines. Qualtrics has done a lot of work to be the go-to academic survey software and meets the privacy criteria required by most if not all IRB's. Using Qualtrics for surveys a breeze to get through my institution's IRB - all they cared about was the content of the questions.

It would have been a nightmare trying to do surveys on some home-brew web server survey system. I saw something similar happen once (study needed real- time tracking of user inputs to a degree which wasn't possible with other systems), and it involved a physical security audit of the server as well as university IT being involved. Project was delayed by a few months getting it through IRB.

For what it's worth, I found Qualtrics to be a a flexible, extendable platform for my unique survey needs. The study I was working on involved people comparing 3d models. Even though an STL viewer wasn't provided by Qualtrics, I was able to use an iframe to display the models in the survey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember using this tool when I was in grad school. They've come a long way and are definitely a unicorn in every sense of the word. The fact that the family owns >80% of the company just blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER25> As per Wikipedia:

>Qualtrics reported revenue of $190.6 million in 2016 and $289.9 million in 2017 representing year over year growth of 52%. In 2016, Qualtrics reported an overall net loss of $12 million with free cash flow of $3.4 million. In 2017, Qualtrics reported a $2.6 million net profit with free cash flow of $21.3 million

Is it normal for companies to be bought at 30x their revenue or am I missing something obvious (may be the wikipedia stats are off) ?

Edit: 2018 revenue according to this article is $400mil. That would mean a 20x.

<comment><USER26> I heard that what you have to pay for a company is something like what the company will be able to make in 20-30 years.

Not sure if you couldn't build it your own for that kind of money.

<comment><USER27> 3 years was the standard for a long time. It still is the standard outside of tech as far as I have heard. Tech gets different/higher valuations because of the expected hockey-stick growth pattern, which makes future revenue non- linear, so you pay a higher multiple if you have that level of growth.

Even so, Qualtrics got a really good exit here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This might be the biggest Utah exit so far. Whenever all those "where are the other silicon valleys?" articles come up, they never seem to bring up the Wasatch Front, even though it probably has one of the most vibrant tech entrepreneurship scenes in the country. I moved here from Boston a few years ago and it has turned into one of the best decisions of my life.

<comment><USER29> > Whenever all those "where are the other silicon valleys?" articles come up, > they never seem to bring up the Wasatch Front

Huh, interesting. This is exactly the opposite of my experience. I would have said those articles _always_ bloviate about Silicon Slopes.

<comment><USER28> Maybe in Utah, but in my experience, most stories of that vein are more likely to list Austin or Denver, or even completely marginal markets like Atlanta or Miami before they do Salt Lake City.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the story.

But on the other hand it makes me feel like I'm looking at the equivalent of a popular Instagram model. It's hard to not compare myself and feel disappointed.

HN doesn't inspire me to do something with my life like it did 10 years ago. Perhaps it's my fault.

<comment><USER31> If it helps with your inspiration, here's my story: I launched my company (Wingify) on HN when I was 22 and bootstrapped for last 8 years. Today we're not Qualtrics scale, but we're doing ~$20mn and have never made a loss in our history.

My guess is that businesses like mine are more common than VC funded ones but we only get to see VC funded ones because that's what the news covers.

<comment><USER32> Awesome! Always good to hear stories like yours. Keep it going!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm currently reading a book called "Financial Shenanigans" and I'd highly recommend it. It's about account shenanigans companies do to make their business seem more profitable than it really is. Not sure if this applies here but interestingly there's a section that discusses IPO's and how investors should be very careful when companies decide to do an IPO through a M&A (Merger and Acquisition) instead of the usual IPO because it circumvents a lot of the SEC scrutiny that they'd normally be subject to in a normal IPO. Found it interesting that SAP acquired Qualtrics a few days before their IPO. Anyways just food for thought.

<comment><USER34> I think what you're referring to is a reverse merger instead of an IPO -- This is entirely different, just a standard merger transaction. Reverse mergers are when a private company that is trying to go public (often with shaky financials) "merges" with a company that is already public, usually on some OTC board somewhere. This process avoids the scrutiny of the S1 / roadshow / etc and allows a cheap and easy way to 'go public'. Typical mergers involve a lot of due diligence from the acquiring company, they can still go wrong but it's a much different proposition.

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

Many of the Chinese 'fraud-cap' companies were taken public in this way: [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/business/global/reverse-m...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/business/global/reverse- mergers-give-chinese-firms-a-side-door-to-wall-st.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> its a little known fact that Qualtrics rejected an acquisition offer from Suvrey Monkey back in the day for $500 million. A cool part of the story given this exit.

</comment><comment><USER35> how do businesses deal with sampling bias when they use these tools? In most cases you can't compel customers to respond to a survey invitation, so there will always be some potentially enormous bias in your survey results due to the non random sample that has responded.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Not bad for a CEO who got paid $100,000 in salary last year."

humble CEOs build wholesome companies!!!

CEO in a company here is drawing total compensation $2.2mil ($400+K + stock awards) Company is loosing $15mil/year for 10+ years already. Pathetic and greedy IMO.

<comment><USER13> I've been to Ryan's house. he has a basketball court in his basement. I'm sure he paid himself a lot more than $100k/yr as some point. (not saying he doesn't have every right to)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Qualtrics is apparently huge. I got a survey from a survey company that didn't even use their own software but used Qualtrics.

</comment><comment><USER38> Patient capital is grrreaaatt

But how much of this is down to patient employees and (relative) lack of alternative employers?

Could this be done in SV/Shenzhen/London where a good employee has multiple offers. This worked out great for the employees here. But in many other cases the founders get early rewards for building up a company, and are in no rush to IPO or sell because they are cashflow -balanced.

<comment><USER39> As a software engineer in the "Silicon Slopes," I can say that we get multiple offers almost constantly for companies throughout the area. There is enough tech here to keep people employed where they want to be making the money they want to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's a great story. Congrats to Qualtrics!

</comment><comment><USER41> > After college, Ryan said he wanted adventure and went to South Korea to > teach English. One of his early lessons in entrepreneurship came there. > While most foreign tutors were scraping by on next to nothing, he decided to > try private tutoring by putting flyers offering his teaching services in > mail boxes.

It's illegal. That's why not all English teachers in Korea are doing it.

<comment><USER42> Private tutoring is illegal?

<comment><USER43> Probably putting flyers in mailboxes without paying for postal service to do so.

Now that I stop and think about it, it's likely illegal in the US, too. Interfering with mail services might well be a federal crime. (or maybe not, I really don't know).

<comment><USER41> It's illegal because it isn't fair.

[https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/youll-never- gue...](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/youll-never-guess-what- south-korea-frowns-upon)

<comment><USER42> Interesting, looks like its unconstitutional too...

""" ...that Draconian approach was the brainchild of Korea's military leader, Chun Doo Hwan, who took power in 1980 and almost immediately banned private teaching (known as kwawoe). Chun's goals were to equalize educational opportunities for the poor and to relieve parents of the burden of paying for education. The ban lived on until last month, when the Constitutional Court, Korea's highest court, ruled that it is unconstitutional because it "infringes upon the basic rights of the people to educate their children." """

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Building a billion dollar startup OUTSIDE of Silicon Valley is possible? You guys just crashed my entire belief system...

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a bubble price. Qualtrics is a nice service to roll out surveys but $8B is a lot of money for something so niche.

<comment><USER46> It's not the "rolling out surveys" part that's considered valuable, it's the "data" part. These companies don't just drop a survey creation UI down and get $8B. They collect data, lots of it, and provide services around that data. The survey is just one mechanism they use to do that.</comment></comment>