Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/cheating-video-poker/ <comment><USER2> > At 1:30 pm on October 6, 2009, a dozen state and local police converged on > Andre Nestor's split-level condo on a quiet, tree-lined street in Swissvale. > He was dozing on his living room couch when the banging started. "State > police! Open up!" The battering ram hit the door seconds later, splintering > the frame and admitting a flood of cops into the house.

> Nestor says he started toward the stairs, his hands over his head, when he > came face-to-face with a trooper in full riot gear. "Get on the floor!" > yelled the trooper, leveling his AR-15 at Nestor's face. Nestor complied. > The cop ratcheted the handcuffs on Nestor's wrists, yanked him to his feet, > and marched him into the kitchen.

That seems perfectly reasonable for a non-violent crime.

<comment><USER3> Read till the end. The government seized all his money, and even though he was acquitted (or never tried), they still kept it. And the IRS is after him too.

If you go against the government, you almost never win, regardless of how innocent you are.

<comment><USER4> Would he have any grounds to charge the government and/or the casino of theft?

He won that money in a fashion deemed not-illegal, the IRS even says he legally won it and want to tax him for it, and then they took it off him.

Sounds like theft to me.

<comment><USER5> > the IRS even says he legally won it and want to tax him for it

The job of the IRS isn't to pass judgement on the legality of income, just to collect taxes. If you earn money, it's taxable; that's true wether you're a computer consultant, a video poker gambler, a hitman for hire, a drug lord, or Al Capone.

<comment><USER4> Right, but the distinction here is they believe he earned it.

If they believe he earned it, and someone else took it away, isn't that theft?

<comment><USER5> The belief of the IRS is entirely separate from the issue of theft and bringing it up in this context is just confusing the issue. It's like asking "If they believe he earned it, and the sun is rising, is it before noon?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yup. Sounds about right.

Read about Phil Ivey, who used a similar "hack" to advantage play in Baccarat.

Casinos really can't have it both ways. If they want to make money from people gambling money, they need to assume the risk of losing the gamble through their own incompetence.

If they released a table game with a negative house edge (due to some mathematical miscalculation) and most of the people who played it won money, they would figure out their mistake, pull the game and everyone would keep their winnings. How is this any different?

<comment><USER7> Casinos make money by providing games with various house edges to gamblers. Gamblers and casinos know this, and if it is unfair you have the choice to not gamble. Suppose there were a glitch with the machine that caused it NOT to pay out as it should... The casino would be liable to pay back that money to gamblers under numerous gaming laws. Would you then say that they should not have to pay it back as gamblers should assume risk when they gamble? Also, if it were found that the casino knowingly had a glitchy machine out there that did not pay out there would be people going to jail for that.

If there were a vending machine that gave me all of the money it had in it as change after hitting a combination of buttons, and I travelled to every machine in town and did this, I would be stealing. This is no different. If they calculated the house edge wrong and launched the game to players that would be a different story as the players played in good faith and it is the casino's fault that they did it wrong.

<comment><USER8> It is highly likely that software-driven games could have a bug. Therefore the casino could have decided that electronic machines are too risky. Or they could have paid for some kind of insurance. I think the casino, just like many banks and retail stores, are using technology that they do not understand and are unwilling to pay or learn. They want more profit. Let the seller beware.

<comment><USER7> Risk assessment != allowing someone to steal from you. Surely the casino knows that any game can be fallible and they could take a loss from it. I guess banks know that their computer systems could have problems and they can lose money from it. But what if I noticed if I exchanged a certain amount of money between my checking and savings account a few times, it doubled my balance? And then I repeated this many times knowing that there was an error in their system?

Now the bank if I had gotten away with it and could not be detected would then chalk it up as a loss and part of the calculated risk of having computerized banking. However if they knew I did this on purpose and took their money should they chalk that up as a loss and allow me to get away with it? No they would want that money back from me and possibly have me arrested for fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Three friends and I found a broken slot machine an a Casino a few years ago the night before Thanksgiving. It was an older style slot where coins actually still paid out and the darn thing would just spit out more money they you it was supposed to. Obviously we were blown away. We would put twenty bucks in, play one or two times, and then hit payout and get between $50 and $100. So we started cashing out. A lot.

So here's the sketchy part... The machines only hold so much coin, so we kept having to have the attendent call to get the machine filled. I had seen enough movies to know how Casinos feel about this sort thing, so I would go to the bathroom and stuff the cash in my sock. The attendent started to make comments like, "wow, lucky night, huh?". This really spooked us so we eventually took off.

The four of us came in two cars so when my one friend was dropping me off at my house, we looked at other, and then took off back to the casino. When we got there there was someone else playing the machine; doing what we were doing but at a smaller scale. We probably sat and waited three hours for him to finish as he gave us a nod as he walked off.

We cashed out a few more times and then took off around 6am with a great story to tell the family at Thanksgiving dinner.

<comment><USER10> Slot machines are programmed with a table of payouts based on a rate, typically between 80 and 99%, such that the statistical expected payout overtime will be compounded at that rate. In some jurisdictions (e.g. Vegas), it is legal for the casinos to program a machine at greater than 100%. They do this to attract the players, who will attempt to find the winning machine on the floor. Random numbers still work, so not every payout wins, but over the course of the day you can get a payout. So you may have just walked away from free cash.

Source: I used to work in casino gaming (I wrote the Megapot server used for multi-casino progressives in France)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Thanks for the info!

Re: Megapot server. I've always wondered if those incrementing jackpot banners are actually tied to a real server of if it just increments based on an average. Are those incrementing numbers actually coming from a server in realtime?

<comment><USER10> In the case of most progressives, there is just a single bank of machines, and they are communicating in realtime (wire delay) between them. When I quit the industry, the Megapot was the first server distributing money across sites in realtime (network delay). There was a similar product offered by IGT at the time, but the incrementing counters were entirely based on play within the casino; casino jackpot sums were batched and shared across the casinos according to a fixed schedule. Our displays were certainly based on real money, and I suspect anyone else in the industry would have to do the same to be legally in the clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As I read the story, I shook my head in disbelief. How stupid could these people be? Hitting the same machine again and again and again, in sequence?

And once again, talking did them in. If Kane had kept it a secret and just did the Vegas circuit, hitting one casino per day for about $10K, he could still be milking the bug.

<comment><USER11> Nah.

I'd hit one casino per day for $1000, no more. No IRS paper trail that way.

I could probably manage to survive in Vegas on $250,000 tax free per year, working a few hours a day, 5 days a week.

<comment><USER12> I imagine him feeling some pressure that the bug could be patched at any time (even accidentally).

I would have traveled to hit machines everywhere, as quickly as possible, but only once per location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As programmers, we sure have a good position in society. If someone uses our buggy code to steal credit cards, the evil criminals are blamed. If someone uses our buggy code to win infinite money from a casino, the evil users that figured out the bug are blamed. If our autopilot software decides that a pilot is trying to land an A320 when he's trying to climb and the plane crashes into a forest, the pilot goes to prison, not the programmers!

And, we get this complete autonomy and immunity without any education or certification!

With great power comes great responsibility, folks.

<comment><USER14> I like your point, but you've drawn the wrong conclusion.

Those with power are the ones that make the rules. Programmers aren't the ones with power, it's the casinos or the plane manufacturers with power, so it's their rules as to who the losers are. If, somehow it was in the casino's best interest that the programmer was made the villain then I'm sure a reason would have been found.

Case in point Goldman Sachs screwing over Sergey Aleynikov, a programmer that served time because Goldman didn't want his expertise in a competitors company.

<comment><USER13> The Goldman issue wasn't about defects in the work product, though. If Goldman sent everyone to jail that wrote buggy code, there would be no programmers left in New York!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It struck me how the cooperation of the casino often comes up in these stories. Here, the trick ended up relying on the casino enabling the Double Up option on request. There was a story making the rounds a few months ago on HN about a famous poker player who took a casino for millions of dollars (playing a different game) by relying on a subtle asymmetry in the back sides of their cards, and that scheme required the casino to cooperate by providing a dealer who spoke Mandarin and allowed the cards to be turned around ahead of time.

I wonder why casinos don't just refuse _any_ sort of unusual request related to the game. Sure, it _sounds_ like an innocent request that won't affect the payout. But how sure are you about that? Wouldn't it be safer to just set the rules and never change them on request?

I assume the answer is ultimately that legitimate high-rollers sometimes have crazy requests, and you make more money from accommodating them than you lose from cheaters. But the response from the casinos (getting this guy thrown in jail, suing the poker player I mentioned above) seems to say that they aren't really comfortable with that tradeoff.

<comment><USER7> "I assume the answer is ultimately that legitimate high-rollers sometimes have crazy requests, and you make more money from accommodating them than you lose from cheaters. But the response from the casinos (getting this guy thrown in jail, suing the poker player I mentioned above) seems to say that they aren't really comfortable with that tradeoff."

They may be making the tradeoff but that does not imply that when the negative consequence happens (cheating) that they are going to let them get away with it. Suppose a store placed products outside in front of the store. There is tradeoff of increased sales of that product, but increased theft rate of that product. If they caught someone stealing they would still make them return the stolen item and possibly prosecute. Just because a negative risk is calculated, that does not mean that a detected negative event is _accepted_

<comment><USER15> That's a good point, but taking advantage of a casino after a player _asks_ the casino to help them cheat, and the casino _obliges_ , is a much grayer area of morality than simply stealing stuff.

To make another retail analogy, it's like a guy walking into a store, picking something up, and asking the clerk, "Hey, is it OK if I just take this home now?" And the clerk says "yes" with the _assumption_ that the person intends to pay for the purchase later.

<comment><USER16> "That's a good point, but taking advantage of a casino after a player asks the casino to help them cheat, and the casino obliges, is a much grayer area of morality than simply stealing stuff."

FWIW, the commenter wasn't referring to the morality of the practice. He mentioned what casinos _would_ do, not whether it was right or wrong.

<comment><USER15> It's obvious enough what casinos actually do, I'm just commenting on the psychology behind it.

And given that the casinos are willingly taking this tradeoff, _and_ that the losses aren't what I see as immoral actions, it then becomes rather nasty that the casinos are dragging people to court and putting them in jail for it.

In short: you and I generally work within the framework of the law and make tradeoffs accordingly. The casinos appear to be bypassing that and are bending or modifying the law so they don't have to make tradeoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's nice to see a real life example of the prisoner's dilemma going against the Nash Equilibrium:

>Prosecutors had a weak hand, and they knew it. As a December 3, 2013, trial date approached, the Feds made Kane and Nestor separate but identical offers: The first one to agree to testify against the other would walk away with five years of probation and no jail time.

>The old gambling buddies had one more game to play together. It was the Prisoner's Dilemma. Without speaking, they both arrived at the optimal strategy: They refused the offer. A few months later, the Justice Department dropped the last of the charges, and they were free.

<comment><USER18> I don't think the Nash Equilibrium applies here. The consequence of defecting has to be better than cooperating, regardless of what the other player does. Here, you have to consider the probability that prosecution would be successful, which did not seem likely.

<comment><USER17> So the scenario is:

If you don't defect -He defects first: You may or may not go to prison -He doesn't defect: You may or may not go to prison

And if you defect first -He defects second: You don't go to prison -He doesn't defect: You don't go to prison

Still seems to me that the Nash Equilibrium is to defect. Not going to prison is better than probably not going to prison. According to the article, they still don't talk to each other, so it's not like the outcome would have changed much.

<comment><USER19> That was probably the logic the Feds used when designing this game. Actually, kind of surprising that Nestor did not go for it, based on my assessment of his character from this article.

<comment><USER20> More of a bluff than a prisoner's dilemma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >The concept was proven in 1995, when one of the GCB's own staffers, Ron Harris, went bad. Harris modified his testing unit to covertly reprogram the EPROMs on the machines he was auditing. His new software commanded the machine to trigger a jackpot upon a particular sequence of button presses—like a Konami Code for cash.

This is actually a really interesting story that I saw on one of those "Vegas's Biggest Criminals" type shows. This Ron guy was given the job and created a device that would plug into the slot machine and check for tampering. He programmed it to check the device, mark it as clean, then insert his own code. This code allowed him to instantly win jackpots. He would have to bet a specific combination to open the jackpot. For example he had to bet 1 credit, bet 3 credits, bet 4 credits, bet 1 credit etc. I believe the sequence was like 50 steps long. He would obviously have friends play the machine to win.

Benefits to this system was that his team could spread out among many machines. If the casino wanted to check the machine, they would send Ron in and the machine would come up as clean (he developed the software to check it). The sequence was so long that it would take someone a lot of work to recognize it, and no one was likely going to stumble upon it by accident. It was really genius, however I can't remember how he got caught.

<comment><USER22> According to Wikipedia, Harris's slot machine hack wasn't discovered. He turned to Keno, finding a flaw in the pseudorandom number generator, and when his accomplice went to cash in a high-value winning ticket in New Jersey, the casino got suspicious, alerted investigators, and everything came out after that.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Sounds like a lot of these people get caught when they either get too greedy, or when they try to expand too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As much as I hate how casinos deal with people who find loopholes in their games, sitting down and winning "seventh jackpot in an hour and a half" is pretty silly.

Everything in moderation... But I guess you can't really expect that from a gambling addict.

<comment><USER24> I couldn't help but think that I would've handled this so much better than these two knuckleheads.

You don't need tens of thousands of dollars a day. Just go in to win one jackpot, lose money on some other games to lessen suspicion, and then go home with a few thousand dollars in profit. You could probably keep that up for ages without anyone connecting the dots.

<comment><USER25> The article made it clear that most casinos don't enable the double up feature by default. If you tried to play the long game, you'd end up interacting with the same high roller employees week to week to enable the feature, and eventually arousing suspicion.

<comment><USER26> You underestimate the weird things high rollers demand to order to "increase" their luck. Turning on some feature that is usually turned off is pretty low on the list of suspicious things high rollers would do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe this is a moral failing on my part, but I am still trying to figure out what was "wrong" about this. They found a bug. They exploited it. They asked other casinos to enable a function that allowed them to exploit it, but it was still a valid configuration for the game.

To me this sounds like IGT should have lost their shirts, but instead the NGC, local police and the IRS can recoup the loss from the individual and emerge unscathed?

I still cant see how this is wrong. But then again I think if you are good enough to count cards in blackjack you should be able to profit as well...

<comment><USER28> If he found a flaw in the poker simulation, I would agree with you. Cases like that have come up.

But instead he's retroactively changing the size of his bets. He plays the machine so he wins $50 then uses the bug to change the payout to $5000. It's like writing extra 0s on a check someone gave you.

It's an interesting bug, but I don't think he deserves his winnings. He was clearly playing outside the game and cheating.

That said he did _NOT_ deserve to be SWATed. That's a massive overreaction.

<comment><USER27> Excellent point, and I do see that as dishonest somewhat. I'm actually amazed they didn't exceed statistical payouts on just dumb luck alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I worked on online casino software for several years and we had a number of bugs like this. They would usually involve someone writing a client to hit our API directly and fiddling with the xml messages. The operators would usually catch the issues within hours, turn off the game and often deny the players their winnings, if it was a legitimate win. Several people wound up in jail for exploits.

In the early days of the company it was a fairly significant problem with incidents pretty frequently. The lack of QA and a release process really bit them a few times as well. A game was put into production with the result hard coded to a win. Goes to show that just because a company makes software that deals with money and is financially successful it does not mean they are at all competent. It took 9 years for them to turn things around and transform the company into a highly effective dev shop, at least by industry standards. I am proud I was part of that. Unfortunately the industry had some major problems in 2009-2010 and they ended up having to find a buyer who even more unfortunately does not appreciate or understand developers or software development.

We did integrations with many other gambling software companies and not a single organization was what I consider competent. I would love to see a new company with serious technical chops break into the world of online gambling and school the crusty behemoths. Hard to do however because of the network effects and importance of reputation and deal making.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article is missing the most interesting part, for me at least: how the bug worked. Not from the outside (the article has the sequence of steps to exploit the bug), but from the inside. What change in the control flow the "Double Up" feature did which caused it to remember the previous payout and multiply it by the new denomination?

<comment><USER31> Hypothetically, if pressing DoubleUp forces a recalculation of the payout immediately, that would create a vector for a timing bug.

<comment><USER30> From what I could gather from the article, the bug happened even if the user never used the Double Up feature. But the bug disappeared if that feature was disabled.

My guess would be that, for the Double Up feature to work, the program saved some state (or delayed clearing that state), so it could double the payout (I'm guessing that the "Double Up" feature is something used after a win, something like "flip a coin to choose between 2x or 0x payout"). Some other part of the program expected that state to be cleared. Without the Double Up feature enabled, the code skipped saving that state (or cleared the state earlier), which is why disabling that feature prevented the bug.

That is, something like the classic "MissingNo." bug in Pokémon, where there was a strip of terrain which didn't setup the random encounter table, and the space for that table was also used as temporary space to copy the player's data during an event in the game. Trigger that event, go to that strip of terrain, walk until you get a random encounter, and what was on the player data is used as the encounter data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It will be interesting to see what happens to casinos in the coming years.

Most people under 40 don't play slot machines, which account for a large portion of casino's revenue. Free-to-play games such as Candy Crush are far more interesting to younger players.

Vegas casinos will be fine, because gaming isn't the leading source of revenue for them. However, regional casinos depend on slots for revenues. As gambling become legal in more and more states those regional casinos will also have more competition.

<comment><USER33> Wheel of Fortune slots are __insanely __popular with college-aged women. Or at least were 5 years ago.

The barrier to entry for slots is significantly lower than games like craps or poker. That is also why you see so many novice gamblers playing roulette. You can figure it out right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> His only mistake was slaying the golden goose. That and immediately telling an aquaintance what he was up to.

What was he thinking winning 8 jackpots in under 2 hours? He of all people should have known that was impossible and incredibly suspicious.

He could have made millions and probably got away with it if he just spaced out his winnings between a few years rather than a few hours.

<comment><USER35> Addiction tends to get in the way of rational thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> These guys did this all wrong. They could have kept this going indefinitely if they found a team of people who all agreed to go in and play these machines at random times, at random casinos and never together. Better yet, rotate the people so they never go to the same casino within 6 months of their last visit so they don't get flagged for winning a jackpot every month.

Just send someone in, play for a bit and then win a jackpot and leave. $1.8k to $10k jackpots so ~$6k/casino per session per person.

You could easily get everyone to an annual $50-100k/year salary with very little play and be under the radar forever.

You would have to use people you trust since it's naturally a greedy endeavor.

I'm sure there are holes in my system, but those would be filled with a group of 10 people analyzing and iterating on it every week quite easily.

<comment><USER37> The larger a conspiracy, the more doomed to failure. There is no way a couple of schlubs like these two could recruit eight other people to follow their directions precisely and not get greedy. The first guy couldn't even recruit _one_ person he could convince to do that!

Perhaps a charismatic religious leader could inspire enough loyalty among brainwashed acolytes for such a scheme, but that's about it. Normal people are greedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> IIRC there's an episode of the .NET Rocks podcast where games in F# (roughly oCaml for .NET) is being used as a backend for these gaming systems. [http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=846](http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=846)

That bug probably wouldn't have existed if the code had been written in a functional language where state management was an inherent part of the whole deal.

Then again, some of these video poker systems look like a glorified Sega Genesis, and probably run under similar hardware, too.

</comment><comment><USER39> The last discussion of this case on Hacker News (May 2013):

 _Use a Software Bug to Win Video Poker? That's a Federal Hacking Case_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5638894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5638894)

</comment><comment><USER40> I love the unexpected last line.

<comment><USER41> The SWAT team is on its way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is there a reason why these guys couldn't sue the casino, the machine maker, or both?

</comment><comment><USER43> Casinos should have bug bounties.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if they would have. If he had contacted the company (via a lawyer) and said "I can show you a bug where X happens for a nominal fee" I wonder if they would happily given him some fair sized sum of money.

But he seems to have been a gambling addict, so used it himself.

<comment><USER44> Possibly.

Or they'd have the FBI come after him for attempted extortion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Play to win! (Unless you win -- we can't have that.)

</comment><comment><USER46> you can be arrested for 'suspicion of theft?' Am i missing something or is this illegal? Security in casinos have the legal right to detain you?

<comment><USER47> Nearly all arrests are for "suspicion" of some crime -- until you have plead guilty in court[1] it's always suspicion. And anyone has a right to make a citizen's arrest, while many security guards have limited police powers just within the private property they guard. With any of these, they can only hold you long enough to hand you over to police.

[1] Or, I suppose, found guilty by a judge. But that only happens with a miniscule portion of our legal cases in the US courts -- it is ignorable as an obscure special case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> yikes</comment>


Ask HN: How many tech IPOs this year? - <AUTHOR>

And will it include Facebook?  Will the floodgates finally open this year, or will it take until 2011 to start to see IPO exits? <comment><USER2> yeah facebook most likely and ......boom we are back in the 90s</comment>


Netflix is basically remaking all of TV now - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1280981/netflix-is-basically-remaking-all-of-tv-now/ <comment><USER2> > It can play with the structure to make the shows work better for its ad-free > format

I think people underrate how big this is from a creator perspective. As viewers, we typically appreciate when work is uninterrupted by commercials (though some shows are more forgiving of them than others), but to my understanding, it's quite difficult as a creative to segment your work out into 12-14 minute segments, constantly building up enough momentum that people will be riveted through the commercial long enough to stick around, and then having to ensure enough recap is done after the break that it doesn't break the narrative flow.

<comment><USER3> I think it is misleading to label Netflix as being an ad-free distributor. They in fact do generate revenue via advertising - it's just more modern and hidden: product placement.

"According to Isaacs, brands pay $50,000 to $500,000 per episode for getting into a Netflix or Amazon show. The price is calculated based on the popularity of the show and how long the product will be showed in the episode. There are two options for product placement in the shows: a logo in the background or a real plot point in the story." [0]

This, to me, seems just as disruptive to the creative freedom of a program's producers/writers/directors.

[0] [https://learnbonds.com/134772/netflix-killing-secret-ads- sho...](https://learnbonds.com/134772/netflix-killing-secret-ads-shows/)

<comment><USER4> People need to bear this in mind more often. I recall watching the second (I think?) episode of Lost in Space the other day that absolutely crowbared in a placement for Oreo cookies, how great they are and how much they reminded the character of home.

It took me completely out of the show. I would honestly have preferred an isolated 30 second ad to that. It does still affect the creative process, too - your show needs to be one an advertiser wants to be placed on, so there's every incentive to soften the show.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you in principle about product placement affecting the integrity of the work, but what's funny is I didn't even think twice about that one.

Were there other products in the show? I remember looking for logos on the rovers and seeing none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Netflix is an amazing testament to the fact that copyright does promote the creative arts. It started out as a mere middle man service trying to make a cut in the transaction between content creator and content consumer. But show and movie providers realized the true value of what they were licensing to Netflix, forcing Netflix to create its own, new content. The result is the best, most competitive market in television shows in American history.

Netflix never would've done all this if (a) they could easily just stream other peoples' content, and (b) other people could easily stream their content. Instead, the logical business play would've been trying to leverage network effects and lock in to keep consumer eyeballs on their service instead of a competing service.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that's Netflix's doing, though. I remember reading a few years back that the market was trending towards TV shows. Apparently years ago, being in a TV show was seen as relatively low pay/low class, and at some point that switched. I do think Netflix helps competition, but I honestly don't know anyone whose favorite TV show is a Netflix original. I'd describe their content as good overall, but not on the level of AMC/FX/HBO just yet.

<comment><USER8> > but I honestly don't know anyone whose favorite TV show is a Netflix > original.

I remember a year or two ago Stranger Things was a massive super hit. I mean that's all reddit could talk about that year - it overshadowed almost every other show at the time.

<comment><USER9> Stranger Things was a surprise hit, but not as massive as really big cable shows.

See comparison to Game of Thrones or TWD: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F0524b41,%2Fm%2F0131ln7y,%2Fm%2F0c3xpwy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like this might be a good time to mention that we're hiring! My team works on availability and latency optimization through global demand distribution and ensuring sufficient scaling.. If you are a Sr SWE or SRE, ping me! Lots of other jobs open, too: jobs.netflix.com. /shameless plug

</comment><comment><USER11> Problem is, this spam the market approach yields a lot of crap content.

I realize this is anecdotal (feel free to ignore), but most times I open Netflix and go through almost everything they feature on the home screen...before turning it off because there isn't anything that looks good.

<comment><USER12> So, you look at a bunch of book covers you don't like and call it "crap content".

I can't even count the number of Netflix shows/movies that the description didn't look all that appealing and the show absolutely was wonderful. Chef's Table was probably the biggest example. It looks like a cooking show. In reality is a beautiful documentary series about how world-renown chef's made their way.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

<comment><USER13> Black Mirror has gone downhill in an effort to create a mass audience. (Mostly the fourth season) What they do is create "hit" content that is very consumable not necessarily great or timeless.

"We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art" ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

That said, their documentary productions are way better than the crap Discovery, History Chanel, et al. have been producing this past decades or so.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. My guess is that's why they passed on The Expanse - it's a great story that is absolutely impossible for the majority to watch because it actually requires you to look up from your phone and pay attention. That's also why sense8 got the axe.

<comment><USER12> Sense8 got axed because it was a $1 million niche show. The same reason they passed on The Expanse. at $700k an episode. They are both wonderful television, but the masses want Survival so that's the garbage we get. At least Netflix and HBO still show actual TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's how I see it: Netflix and other streaming services are recreating all of cable now. It's not a good thing, just wait. Networks moved to the current cable model because its the most profitable. Netflix disrupted that in the same way Uber disrupted Taxis, now they're both becoming what they sought to change.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not actually all that happy about this. They were striving for quality at first but now it's given way to quantity. I think the turning point for me is when they canceled Marco Polo. I no longer could count of Netflix to be better than the other guys, by allowing a show to come to a natural enjoyable conclusion. There is nothing worse than a show that ends mid-story. I simply don't bother to get involved in any show anymore unless I know it has had its due run.

<comment><USER17> There was a lot of narrative at first around data-driven decisions etc. As far as I can tell Netflix and Amazon have realized it's mostly a game of darts, data it not. They don't have to cater to mainstream tastes as much as the networks. But picking hit shows still seems like a crapshoot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, they're certainly not doing anything differently than traditional producers when it comes to taking the axe to shows after just 1 or 2 seasons. Whenever I see a new Netflix show released, which seems to be just about every week now, the first thing that comes to mind is "even if I like this, will there actually be a second season?". This degrades the time investment of immersing yourself in a show's characters and storytelling.

</comment><comment><USER19> Netflix shows also don't force their producers to make 18+ episodes a season that draw out plots. There are lot of serialized TV shows that would be better with shorter seasons.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't get the appeal of streaming and find Netflix shows mediocre at best. It could very well be just my personal preference but I find HBO shows much better.

<comment><USER14> HBO also does streaming, so I don't get your point. If it's just 'most stuff on Netflix is cheaply made crap', that's a fact the article more or less states in it's body. That said, the expensive things are quite good, if rare.

<comment><USER20> I prefer cable and don't bother with streaming, period (I'm not even sure their streaming services are available here to their full extent, mind), thus Netflix as a service is completely irrelevant to people like me.

Second, the description fits my experiences with Netflix quality quite well, so I don't really care about them as a producer _either_ , regardless of the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm still waiting for shows where the plot can be changed on demand.

<comment><USER2> Call me odd man out here, but I can't imagine wanting that. My input could probably improve a bunch of shows I consider 'bad', but if I think that, it's usually because of either lazy exposition or predictable plot lines. For shows I consider 'good', it's hard to imagine my input making them better, or on the chance that it did, it seems like it would ruin my enjoyment of it.

Past that, since democratizing the plot would almost certainly yield a regression to the lowest common denominator, it seems like a really fun way to ruin quality television.

<comment><USER22> Obviously you can't fix incompetent creators with options given to you by the creators, but I don't think that's the only possibility here. Ithink the most useful possibility for a technique like that would be a "customize your experience" kind of thing. Maybe some people want more action, while other people want more romance. There are shows right now struggling and failing to balance the disparate desires of their audience, and sometimes they'll miss the balance so badly that nobody's very happy. Allowing somebody to just click a "more pew pew now" button might actually benefit those shows. Possibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's true - Netflix is the new television.

I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before there are ads, the price goes up a lot or it gets split up into 'channels' where you'd have to pay separately for separate set of content.

Another thing I think that's coming, is Netflix adding daily shows like the Jimmy Fallon show or Ellen. It seems like a no brainer - they're trying it out with David Letterman monthly series, and it's doing very well as far as I can tell.</comment>


Analyzing #first7jobs tweets with MonkeyLearn and R - <AUTHOR> https://blog.monkeylearn.com/analyzing-first7jobs-tweets-monkeylearn-r/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Maëlle Salmon for this awesome analysis!</comment>


What It's Like to Live in America Without Broadband Internet - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d35kbj/americans-who-dont-have-internet <comment><USER2> I can answer that one! It sucks! Not that difficult to imagine!

We only have ADSL, satellite and dial-up connections available where I am.

Speed-wise, it's never at or above 2mbps.</comment>


Inkscape Moves to GitLab - <AUTHOR> https://inkscape.org/en/news/2017/06/10/inkscape-moves-gitlab/ <comment><USER2> I used to use Inkscape constantly on Windows & Linux, and really like it. I found the UI intuitive and it did absolutely everything I asked of it.

Which is why the XQuartz/&c. user experience on macOS really really surprised me. It's absolutely unusable. Inkscape for macOS basically may was well not exist as far as my experience with it goes.

Are there other comparable GTK+ apps that work well under macOS or is this a common story?

<comment><USER3> I ran into this issue and ended up using Affinity Designer. I was pleasantly surprised, it's actually quite comparable to Adobe Illustrator. It's not open source but at $50 much more reasonable than Adobe.

<comment><USER4> Affinity Designer development seems to have stalled. There are many requests for features that have been accepted but untouched for a year or two. My current showstopper: export to DXF.

<comment><USER5> I don't feel that "stalled" this is correct at all. They had a massive feature update via 1.5 in Oct. and 1.6 entered customer beta in May.

They just haven't shipped your preferred feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time a project moves to GitLab or GitHub it is great news; I find them much easier to contribute to. It's specially goo news when it's gitlab, it's just an all-around awesome service.

<comment><USER7> It's really bad news when it's GitHub, as far as I'm concerned (Python...). Self-hosted GitLab or Phabricator is great news (GNOME,[1] Wikimedia[2]).

[1]: [https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure...](https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure/)

[2]: [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabrica...](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator)

<comment><USER8> Why so much hate for GitHub? My general experience with them has been positive :)

<comment><USER9> I don't think it is hate, more that people have learned to not put all their eggs in the same basket. Ask any Firebase user what they feel about this.

Also, the more players we have the less proprietary web interfaces for things like issues and PR will dominate.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think it is hate, more that people have learned to not put all their > eggs in the same basket.

But git isn't putting all your eggs in one basket. It's a distributed version control system. GitHub is one way to access your source but it doesn't have to be the _only_ one. That's purely a choice made by folks.

If you want to put your eggs into many baskets then great! But that doesn't prevent you from using GitHub at all.

<comment><USER11> For a dumb git host GH is passable, the problem is with their additional features which many projects use. If/when GH goes the way of the dodo they will be at the mercy of 3rd parties' ability to scrap and import this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > During the decision about which platform would host our git repositories, we > discounted staying on Launchpad itself as its git support was very weak > compared to other platforms and the project doesn't appear to be actively > developed.

How in the heck did Canonical squander such an incredible opportunity to be the _de facto_ standard for Ubuntu/FOSS code hosting by letting Launchpad stale so badly?

They freaking built it into their distribution of apt with PPA shortcuts, etc.

Unbelievable.

<comment><USER13> Code hosting services are never forever. Sourceforge aged and fell from grace. Google Code shut down. Github's time will pass as well.

<comment><USER14> Sourceforge fell from grace due to ads. Google Code just went the way of many of Google's side projects. (Also, I don't recall it being that heavily used. Just my memory?)

I'll confess that I feel that github will eventually wane. But, I can't say why I think that right off. When they run out of money? Start failing at the hosting portion of what they do in favor of other things?

<comment><USER15> > Sourceforge fell from grace due to ads.

Not just ads. Bundling malware into installers of popular projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't find a link to their GitLab instance/repositories. Where is it?

<comment><USER17> [https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape](https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape)

<comment><USER18> I couldn't find it either. Neither on their project pages nor that specific blog article and not even the "Search" option (where I searched for inkscape) on the gitlab.com/ site.

Thanks TranquilMarmot for posting the link to the repo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Self-hosted GitLab, or gitlab.com? Would a link in the article to the repo be too hard?

<comment><USER15> [https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape](https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really hope other FOSS projects take the same initiative

</comment><comment><USER21> I am very curious how many devs will stop and how many will start contributing because of this move.

</comment><comment><USER22> Now just please make use of [https://hosted.weblate.org/](https://hosted.weblate.org/) for translations

</comment><comment><USER23> :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I really want to learn to use inkscape well, but just can't grok the interface. It's a sad symptom shared by many open-source projects.

They seem to want to differentiate themselves as (e.g. "not photoshop" in gimp's case) but seem to equate that with "ignoring good ui/ux design".

<comment><USER25> This is what I used to think, but reflecting on my usage of these tools lately has shaken my belief. Here's my theory, illustrated on a personal example:

I've been using Photoshop for a long time, and I've learned a lot of its shortcuts and intricacies. Basically, when I want to accomplish something in Photoshop, I already have an idea on how I'll go about it, using the functionality that's available. But GIMP, on the other hand, never really clicked for me. I find it very unintuitive and limiting, and it's a huge pain to have to do something in GIMP when Photoshop's not readily available. I've convinced myself that this is because GIMP has a much inferior UX and is orders of magnitude more limiting than PS (at least the subset of their features I use in my day-to-day usage).

On the other hand, since my light vector editing needs have been satisfied by Photoshop for a long time, I haven't really learned Illustrator. Recently, for various reasons, I've had to do some heavier-than-usual vector editing stuff, but still nothing requiring more than simple Beziers, fills and strokes, so I've been doing it in Inkscape since it's just been handy. After some time, I decided to try and use Illustrator, figuring it'd be like a whole new world. And then, surprisingly, I realized I don't really like it. The interface was illogical and not in line with my mental model at all. I struggled to complete basic tasks, and finally gave up and did the job in Inkscape. Basically, it was very reminiscent of the Photoshop―GIMP situation.

So my conclusion is that the tools and their UX are very powerful in giving me a mental model of a task, and significantly more so than I would have imagined. So it might not be 100% true to say that the UX in these tools is inferior. It's just so different from what we're used to that we have a very, very hard time separating the "different" from "worse" in our heads.

<comment><USER26> GIMP also has some weird omissions. You can't lock a layer so that it won't move, for instance. This is apparently coming in the unstable branch, but it boggles my mind that this wasn't a feature from day one. There is also 'anchor' but that doesn't seem to mean what anchor means in just about any other CAD/Graphics application.

The expected behaviour in Photoshop is that if you drag-move, you only move the selected layer. It seems like in GIMP if you drag-move, you drag the highest layer that has a painted pixel under your cursor. There are probably situations where this saves time, but more often I try and drag some text around and I end up moving a background layer by mistake.

I often find myself using Inkscape to save time, it's intuitive enough and it works well.

<comment><USER27> Drag layer under pointer and Drag selected layer are two options of the move tool. You will find them in the tool properties pane.

All in all, I've always found Gimp more intuitive and easy to use than Photoshop, probably because I learned it first!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adventurous Engineer - <AUTHOR>

We are looking for an adventurous engineer to partner with us on the ground floor of building a new app that can revolutionize the Entertainment world. We have a million dollar idea and need someone who can create the simple and easy to use app that launches it. We offer part ownership in our company in exchange. This is that rare, once in a lifetime opportunity, up for grabbing. We would love the hear from you. <comment><USER2> How many successful ventures have you created so far? How succesful?

How much capital do you have?

What else are you bringing to the table that no one else has?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is our first venture and we are at the starting stage, working without capital- have to start somewhere! What we are bringing to the table is two very hardworking guys committed to making a GREAT idea come to life and change an industry, making a lot of money along the way. I would be happy to look at your CV and send you more information about our app idea (after signing an NDA).

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but an idea, no money, no experience, no connections, does not a 'rare, once in a lifetime opportunity, up for grabbing' make.

I would suggest that you seek out seed money before looking for developers. Alternatively, you could take three months or so to go through one of the many development bootcamps, and pick up the skills you need to build your own demos and also the technical knowledge you'll need to vet candidates. It's also a great place to find hungry, scrappy folks who like to code.

Also, drop the NDA. At this point, it just shows how inexperienced you are. If the idea is so powerful that you are afraid it will be easy for someone to run with, don't share it with anyone - make it yourself, and keep the success for yourself :)

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice.</comment></comment></comment></comment>