French high court rules that Steam can't ban users from reselling digital games - <AUTHOR> https://www.vg247.com/2019/09/20/steam-users-right-to-sell-games-french-court-valve-ruling/ <comment><USER2> Surprised to see so much sentiment against this ruling. Digital software sale and distribution is just supposed to make software management easier and faster. A license is the same regardless of wether it's physical or digital. Why shouldn't this apply to resale of said merchandise?

I rarely say this- but the French really make a ton of sense here.

<comment><USER3> A license is not the same for a physical copy vs a digital copy.

A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the _ownership_ of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law.

A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e., the copy on your hard drive is not the copy in memory, though they may be identical).

Copyright law is entirely about restrictions on _copying_ things and digital goods are trivially copyable things.

The French law makes little sense. The distinction between physical goods and intangible items exists for a reason in copyright law, and indeed is inherent in other parts of EU law, such as with respect to e-books. Importantly, earlier this week the EU itself ruled that ebooks cannot be resold (see [https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by- topic/international/i...](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by- topic/international/international-book-news/article/81151-second-hand-e-book- retailers-ruled-unlawful-by-eu.html)) and the French court's reasoning in this case is entirely contrary to the reasoning of the EU.

Expect this law to be overturned, or for PC game prices to go up dramatically in the EU if it is not.

<comment><USER4> >A license is not the same for a physical copy vs a digital copy.

>A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the ownership of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law.

>A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e., the copy on your hard drive is not the copy in memory, though they may be identical).

...as defined by courts, but not this one. It is those things because we _say_ it is. In another reality it's perfectly reasonable to assume courts ruled that there is no difference. It's a situation which benefits the producer, not the consumer.

I agree that it's tricky because you also can't allow for a buyer to produce copies and undercut you but, at the same time, I am getting a low less with my money.

>or for PC game prices to go up dramatically in the EU if it is not.

There has been a second hand market for games since they have existed (which was also fought against btw, along with rentals.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Although its unlikely a policy change this momentous would be made, Valve has a history of making changes based on court rulings it's involved in."

Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law?

<comment><USER6> > Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law?

The article isn't well written, but I believe the point is about Valve making the change worldwide, even though their legal obligation is just to do it in France (or possibly the EU).

<comment><USER7> If they have to build infrastructure to support reselling game use licenses to comply with this law, it's unlikely they'll be able to justify releasing it to France only; there'll be backlash from their users in other countries.

<comment><USER8> Companies release features to some regions all the time. For example, in Google Photos, you can search by face in the USA but not Europe (due to differing privacy expectations).

<comment><USER7> Huh. TIL regarding Google Photos.

That sucks; glad I'm in the US because I use that feature often. It's great for when friends ask for the photos I took of them.

In any case, I predict the Steam situation will differ because privacy and retail goods are valued differently. Americans are going to want that feature if Steam has to implement it, and they have options regarding what game store they use; it becomes a point of competitive advantage for Steam to switch it on in the States. They'll have to do the calculus on whether they lose more potential developers if they do vs. lose more potential store users if they don't.

<comment><USER9> Funny enough, if you use a USA based VPN server, the option will appear on your account and you'll be able to activate it. It Will stay activr for your account even if you switch back from VPN

<comment><USER8> That's deliberate... Those kind of "annoy the customer" limitations are all for PR/legal/business reasons, and the engineers building the features want to make the restrictions as easy to get around as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could this extend to ebooks as well?

Valve's argument that what they sold was a license and not the game feels like a distinction without a difference to me. Say I accept that. Then why can't I sell that license?

<comment><USER11> A license is a contract between you and valve. You can't transfer that license because the contract says you can't. The court says that the digital game is a good (just like a DVD is), and not a license, so you must be allowed to resell it to somebody else.

<comment><USER12> Transferring the doctrine of first sale to the digital realm would have massive implications for pretty much every digital distribution service we have today. Streaming services wouldn't be affected, but Kindle, Steam, iTunes, and so many others are built on the assumption that their product has no secondary market.

<comment><USER10> That's probably true, but it shouldn't factor into the decision about whether or not digital goods should be transferrable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sensible but not surprising decision. The right to resell software was made incredibly clear in the CJEU case _Oracle v UsedSoft_.

In fact, how did Steam manage for so long to ignore the pivotal case law?

<comment><USER14> Steam? How about pretty much every digital storefront? You can't sell prime movies, you can't sell iTunes music and so on. All of these store fronts should ideally allow people to resell all digital content they purchased.

<comment><USER15> Why should? The whole idea of copyright is that only the author (or otherwise copyright holder) can profit from making copies. Just because you purchased a copy yourself shouldn't automatically result in a right to making another copy for someone else as long as you promise not to use yours.

<comment><USER16> I know, people here are demanding that after you fill up at an all you can eat buffet, you should be allowed to sell your seat to somebody else.

<comment><USER17> No they are saying that if you buy a meal, you should be able to package it up and sell it to someone else, which you can do. If I go buy a hamburger, I can walk right out onto the street and if someone else offers me money for it I can sell it. What I can't sell is access, which is what a buffet is, you're not paying for the individual item you're paying for access to the buffet.

<comment><USER15> So what is the difference exactly if Steam says they sell access to the game for your personal account? Would it that be a good analogy then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this ruling is accepted, it's going to go a bit further than "can't ban," right?

AFAIK right now, there's no infrastructure for transferring one's games on Steam from one user to another (apart from, say, selling the password to one's Steam account). So would compliance of the ruling imply Steam has to build some kind of digital marketplace infrastructure to allow for licenses to be resold?

<comment><USER18> I dont see why they would need to create the marketplace themselves. Why couldn't they just let users convert purchased titles back into keys and then sell them on tons of third party key sellers that already exist?

<comment><USER7> They could.

... but they could also offer the option of doing that, but alternatively just letting you transact the game to another Steam user directly, using the in- store currency (with an x% shaved off the top) for the cost of Steam basically working as an escrow service (to guarantee you haven't done something like converted to a key and then sold that key twice).

If doing so is fully compliant with the law, I predict that's what they would do (and it's probably worth the cost to them to pay the lawyers to _argue_ that's fully compliant... ;) ).

<comment><USER19> I wonder what the highest x% is that the courts would accept as not totally bs. I'm pretty sure if Steam said, oh yeah, you can re-sell within Steam but we'll just take 99% lol, that would not be ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is incredibly stupid. This is just going to make games even more unprofitable to make for their developers, and push it towards live- service/F2P games over traditional ones, since account selling is prohibited. Its hard enough to survive in that sphere making traditional games now; enabling the Gamestop effect on digital games is probably going to hurt beyond compare.

<comment><USER21> Its going to increase dark patterns and loot boxes for kids who cant / wont pay £50 for a AAA game

<comment><USER22> It might fix the problem of loot boxes. If the law applies to games, then it may apply to in-game items as well. Then players would be able to buy in-game items on secondary markets at known prices rather having to gamble for them as they do now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A game only has value while I'm playing it. If two people play the same game at different hours or timezones, they can buy a single license and transfer it back and forth. (This is different from e.g. server software.)

A tariff on resales would cut back on that (if the ruling allows it). But the effective price of a game would still tend to approach the cost of reselling it. You would need to re-download the game every time you buy it, but with modern broadband this is feasible.

An efficient marketplace for 'renting' games (or game licenses) would let you buy a game just before you start playing, and resell it when you go to sleep. The marketplace would only need to buy enough licenses to satisfy peak demand and could amortize the cost across players and games.

<comment><USER24> The article doesn't mentions that the judgment would force Steam to facilitate game resell though.

You can be allowed to do it, but it can still be a pain in the ass to do it (giving access to your account, etc...).

Same goes for a marketplace that would use that rule to allow people to rent the games. None of theses games has to facilitate the resale and they aren't forced to sell license to the marketplace either (though they could buy license through Steam or anything else, but that would still go with the "pain in the ass" argument).

<comment><USER23> This is true. But if it's at all possible, the marketplace could automate it. History shows that DRM and adjacent technology rarely succeeds if the law doesn't make it illegal to circumvent. And history also clearly shows that most users are willing to click a button letting others access their Steam account if needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Personally, I like the fact that Steam games can't be resold. Why? Because that keeps the prices down since the resale value of a game does not need to be included in the price.

If games could be resold then I'd have to go through the trouble of reselling them in order to recoup the difference.

<comment><USER26> The fact that triple A games have similar prices today on steam to the times when they also had both disk printing, physical distribution to stores and resale figured in seems to contradict that assertion. The main thing that's keeping prices down seems to be the storm of smaller indie games and sales (which for Triple A games happen much much later in the lifecycle these days).

<comment><USER21> Inflation and the use of things like performance capture has increased costs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You can't resell your copy of Windows, I don't see how games are much different.

I think at least one likely result would be many fewer deep discount sales. Having them would allow a resell arbitrage as people stocked up at the low price in order to resell when the sale ends.

<comment><USER28> Why not? It's perfectly legal in the EU to sell any digital goods second hand as long as you stop using the software you sold.

<comment><USER27> I didn't realize that! Though in researching it, I found that the law allowing resell is somewhat linked to the original install media, i.e., you couldn't sell the license key and a backup copy. I don't see any EU cases that square this with digital distribution, but maybe this current ruling will provide guidance on that issue.

<comment><USER28> There was the famous Oracle vs UsedSoft lawsuit: [https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of- justic...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justice-used- software-download-ruling)

This basically added jurisprudence that digital downloads can be resold provided that the original is made unusable.

<comment><USER3> That case was one of the reasons that Adobe and Microsoft switched to a subscription-based model for their software suites.

<comment><USER27> That makes sense. I also saw some speculation that it's helped accelerate some vendors' efforts to convert customers to cloud offerings. On the other hand, I saw a very insightful analysis that thought vendors fighting this were being short sighted because annual maintenance can often be upwards of 20% of the initial license, and so recipients of second hand software would still be more than making up for the revenue in the not-so-long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think this is a bad idea which will encourage more in game transactions to be profitable. Margins aren't good enough for the majority of games. I hope this doesn't expand out of France.

<comment><USER11> This will likely expand to at least the whole European Union since european texts were used to arrive to this ruling.

<comment><USER21> "texts"? there is an EU ruling that you cant sell e books.

Each EU country implements EU law in its own way I suspect this would be challenged at the EU level.

Some European countries are known for not really implementing EU law as they are supposed to - Spain and TUPE for example

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> With laws like this you generally have to ask what's best for the consumer. I'm not sure reselling is.

The current setup gives game developers a somewhat predictable revenue model and on the strength of that model they can encourage investors to put up money to make the games. Changing the revenue model may change how investors look at the market. Maybe for better maybe for worse. Who knows, but it would be a disruption if Steam has to adopt this model worldwide.

The thing that I don't like is if you allow reselling then developers get less long-term revenue but (hopefully) more short-term revenue. This will cause them to focus more on getting a big opening weekend than making a solid game that might have years of appeal.

Portal is still $10 on Steam. Maybe they only sell 100 copies a month at this point but that's still money coming in rewarding them for investing in interesting core game mechanics. I'd rather see them get rewarded for that than for dishonest advertising campaigns because 50% of their money will come from the first few days of sales.

<comment><USER28> Funny how you can make the same comment about physical goods. Should we ban selling second hand furniture?

With laws like this you generally have to ask what's best for the consumer. I'm not sure reselling is.

The current setup gives furniture salesmen a somewhat predictable revenue model and on the strength of the model they can encourage investors to put ip money to make furniture. Changing the revenue model may change how investors look at the marker. Maybe for better maybe for worse. Who knows, but it would be a disruption if IKEA has to adopt this model worldwide.

The thing that I don't like is if you allow reselling then carpenters get less long-term revenue. This will cause them to focus more on getting a big opening month than making solid furniture that might have years of appeal.

Antilop is still $20 at IKEA. Maybe they only sell 100 chairs a month at this point but that's still money coming in rewarding them for investing in ergonomic chair design. I'd rather see them get rewarded for that than for dishonest advertising campaigns because 50% of their money will come from the first few weeks of sales.

<comment><USER30> > Funny how you can make the same comment about physical goods.

No, you can't. That's why this is such a complicated issue.

The inherent value in a physical good is consumed with use. If somebody buys a couch and takes it home it becomes a used couch. Used couches are not great substitutes for new couches; they devalue with time and use and you eventually have to _pay somebody_ just to take it off your hands. Its value actually goes negative.

A used digital good is a _perfect_ substitute for the original. A digital copy is also a _perfect_ substitute for the original. That changes everything. If we want people to be able to make games professionally, and to be compensated for their work, we have to use laws to make the digital marketplace resemble the physical goods marketplace. Or find a whole new model which I don't believe anybody has done.

<comment><USER28> The inherent value for a digital food also decreases over time. Top of the line graphics from ten years ago look bad in comparison to today. Story driven games get their stories spoilt over time, especially the popular ones. Compatibility with controllers and other such devices depend wildly on backwards compatibility (for example, the xbox one controller had loads of compatibility issues with games that only accepted xbox 360 controllers for a while).

I would have paid 60 euros for Skyrim back in 2011. These days, I wouldn't spend more than 10-15 bucks on it if it was new. This is reflected in the price on steam as well, with it currently being sold for 15 euros.

The mere passing of time decreases the value of the goods, just like using a game would.

I don't know what happened that people think that selling things you don't need anymore second hand is suddenly bad just because the goods are on a computer. The car industry would love a method to stop people from buying second hand cars but consumers would never accept such limitations.

Games sales aren't affected by anything past the opening quarter. A study done by the EU on piracy concluded that even piracy is barely affecting the price of games after the opening period. Reselling games will barely touch the games industry.

Adding arbitrary rules just because the game industry is unhealthy isn't a solution to the problem. If I have to give up rights so that people can make some shiny toys every now and then, I don't care about those toys anymore. I don't want to give up rights to keep game developers employed because their current ecosystem is unviable. And, in my opinion, neither should you.

<comment><USER3> You're still not getting it.

It's irrelevant that graphics from 10 years ago aren't as good as they are today because that only matters for games where cutting-edge graphics are part of the selling point of the game (i.e., AAA games). There are plenty of games that don't try for cutting edge graphics and so look the same today as they did when first released, like Cave Story, Celeste, Fez, Braid, etc.

The point the parent was making is that a copy of a game is inherently the exact same as any other copy of the game, which is not the case with physical goods. A physical good, however lightly used, still has some wear and tear when resold, so it is not the same as a new good.

<comment><USER17> It's not that they're not getting it, it's that your point is a poor one. A physical copy also came with the costs of storage, storefronts, retail space, manufacture, shipping, etc. None of that is true now. A digital copy costs almost nothing to store and retrieving that copy is again a nearly costless process. The only person who loses by locking up digital goods is the consumer. You're making the same arguments film studios made about VHS, except VHS caused movie studios to make more money than ever because it forced then to make better stories and movies. What do we get now that there's the digital push? Rehashed super hero stories and 90s nostalgia.

<comment><USER30> > The only person who loses by locking up digital goods is the consumer.

In the short term they my be losing out (kind of. It's like how I lose out when I don't steal at the grocery store.) but in the long term they're gaining because the companies making the goods they're purchasing get to stay in business.

It's a trade-off. Do you want video game consumers to have a short-term boost because everything's free, or do you want them to have a healthy game development ecosystem where talented devs can get loans to make good games because they'll have a predictable revenue stream from sales. You can try to balance the two, but you can't give them both.

Really all of this _I want it free, I want it now_ just leads to free-to-play games where the developer recoups costs through micro-transactions, loot- boxes, pay-to-play items, etc. And in this model you probably never own the game at all. If the user can't be trusted to own the game, then never give them a complete game! Always keep part of it on your own servers. Force them to log in, force them to be connected, force them to have an active credit card number on file.

If we demand to resell/copy/trade the digital goods we purchase without restriction then this is the world we get - we stream movies, we stream music, we connect to game servers, but we never possess any of it. We never listen to a song without Spotify taking notice and putting it in our file. We never watch a movie in privacy without Netflix, "oh, he's watched Fight Club three times this week." We never get to play a game without server-side analytics being run to look at how tweaking the boss difficulty affects sales of the super-sword.

It's not as simple as saying locking up digital goods hurts the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If steam loses this case, what is to stop someone to ask the same of app stores and reselling apps you have purchased, or eg movies on iTunes.

<comment><USER32> Nothing, I would imagine.

...which seems to me like a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sweet, time to create a bunch of steam accounts, stock up on cheap games during steam sales, and then resell after the steam sale, undercutting the the "new" version (it's not like a digital resale is any lower quality than the "brand new" one). Rinse and repeat. Profit.

<comment><USER34> You can do that with every product on sale. Buy clothes on sale and sell them later at full price or close to it.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, and as a result, prices are going to be higher for everyone. No more 90% off steam sales like we currently get - that would just encourage profiteers to stock up on as many digital copies as possible in order to resell and undercut later.

And certainly no more "Celeste is free" type promos - that would be a feeding frenzy for profiteers.

<comment><USER35> People can already buy on discount and resell later if they use Humble Bundle or stores that gives Steam keys. We have been able to do that for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > and isn't required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access

Simple solution: make French users pay recurring fees. Problem solved?

EDIT: would be nice if I could prune my library and perhaps swap some games. But what about other marketplaces and other stores? Why only Steam?

<comment><USER28> If Valve prefers not selling games in the EU to implementing a way to sell second hand games, sure.

Remember that the French court is referencing EU law. This basically means that the practice is forbidden across the entire EU based on current jurisdiction.

It's possible for Valve to introduce pay-as-you-go games, but doing so would probably violate the contract under which previously sold games were sold. This means that they still need some way to allow customers to either resell or download and resell the old games regardless of whether they will charge a fee to their users or not.

They might also undo the sale of the old game, assuming the customer agrees to do that, and give back the entire paid amount spent on the platform in exchange for removing the old games. This would be a huge financial loss to the company and would only be possible if all customers agree to getting their money back.

If they do charge a fee, they should expect their consumer base in Europe to shrink significantly.

If Steam wants to appeal, they might be able to put the case in front of an EU judge. This will cost them even more legal fees and is likely to end in the same result. Reselling digital goods is allowed in the EU and Valve (as well as other companies like it) are breaking the law.

In my opinion, just following the law would be a better choice commercially than trying to work around it.

<comment><USER37> I think this could get interesting.

Would valve be legally required to offer their services (game download + cloud saves) to a second hand buyer? Surely the person selling the game would need to provide the second hand buyer the copy of the game along with the key?

Valve merely provides a service which says "this key now belongs to this account" but that second hand buyer has no right to download from valve?

<comment><USER28> I'd say yes. The steam key comes with a set of perks that made the buyer pick steam as a reseller over one of their competitors. Removing those features would degrade the value of the product and, in my opinion, be a measure to prevent proper resale of the product.

When I buy a key, I don't somehow get the download to my computer before adding it to my Steam account. Steam designed their system in such a way that the installer has to come from them, and that you can't burn an installer that only works with your key.

Imagine buying a chair with massage functionality and a GPS tracker that stops working when you move it outside your house. In my opinion, even though the chair itself remains functional, the added DRM would prevent someone from selling the chair second hand, because the main reason you buy the chair has suddenly been disabled by a third party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> DRM is a crazy thing. Now it distorts the already DRM-distorted reality.

<comment><USER39> Steam's DRM isn't technical, it's the community and platform itself. Any technical restrictions are completely optional.

<comment><USER32> This always gets brought up when Steam and DRM are mentioned in the same sentence, and it is true technically speaking. However, I'm not convinced it matters in practice.

In reality, the _vast_ majority of games on Steam will not start if Steam isn't running. And some which appear to work at first will have strange errors later on. There's also no way for me as a consumer to tell if a given game has DRM before I buy it. That pcgaming wiki has been wrong for me before (many times), and sometimes games that used to work will no longer do so after an update.

<comment><USER39> My point is it's not forced on to developers like some platforms do, hint Epic Games Store. _Edit: Not true_.

I know a plethora of people who support only Steam on principle alone. Not only have they been kind to the Linux community but they've so far held up their end of the bargain when it comes to Steam. Valve's willingness to uphold free speech (while accepting all the downsides like negative brand attention) also means a _lot_ to me.

They used to be awful for customer service but it's really come around lately.

<comment><USER40> If you want to support a platform based on a DRM-free point of view, you should only buy from GOG. The only ethical platform.

<comment><USER39> Though I don't consider DRM-free the only metric for being ethical (being one of the few platforms to really support Linux, contributing back to OSS including the Linux Kernel itself, pushing free and open standards for VR, etc.. are all reasons I support Valve), I really appreciate and support GOG too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I can't imagine Valve won't find some loophole or way around this. Being able to resell digital games would destroy that economy. A possible outcome would be games in France are never on sale and they can only be traded within the French Steam economy. Can Valve still take a cut of all sales on their platform or add fees? Very curious how this turns out, but I feel like it's 50/50 whether this makes things better or worse.

<comment><USER42> From the article: "Valve's defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves. The court, however, doesn't see game purchases on Steam as subscriptions, since the owner has access to them indefinitely, and isn't required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access."

Guess what the loophole's gonna be?

Steam will cost you 1 euro a month to maintain access, BUT WAIT, we've got this awesome "temporary introductory" deal where for every Euro you spend on anything in our store, anything at all, you get one free month of subscription! Yes, buy one brand new AAA game and you get 5 or 6 _years_ of free subscription! Wowzers! What a stonking great deal for the consumer! Such an incredible deal that has been so successful that we're running it indefinitely, despite the fact it's totally temporary.

But if you do somehow manage to run out of months, you will indeed lose access. That part has to be real. And there will be a real "just buy subscription access" option, though nobody will ever use it because why just give Valve 12 Euro when you can buy a game with it instead?

I'm fairly confident in common law traditions, that would be too blatant and they couldn't literally do that. They'd sidle up in that direction, though, as close as they thought they could get. I don't know about how France's Civil Law tradition would take that, but, still, same principle; head in that direction as close as you think you can get. "As close as you can get" may in fact be quite far, but I think this is still the general _direction_ you're going to see.

<comment><USER43> > Valve's defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – > subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves.

IANAL but buying a license seems different to me than buying a subscription, and if you ask most Steam users they will tell you that they do the former not the latter. (In fact I have never seen the word subscription on their store, though I guess it is somewhere in their EULA).

If they go that way they may have to change their wording and that will also change the perception that people have of the platform: if I'm subscribing to a service the price I'm willing to pay to access (not buy) the games will probably much lower.

It may be better for them to just keep people thinking that the own the games forever (even though we know in practice this is probably not be true).

I'm wondering if instead they could just set themselves as the middleman for the used game market, since they already have all the infrastructure needed. In this way at least both steam and the publisher could get a cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I could easily see this as setting the minimum sale price as the current new- purchase price, Valve taking a 2%-5% cut, and then putting the balance of the proceeds in the seller's Steam wallet just before throwing out an offer to use it to buy the top game on their wishlist that costs less than that amount (maybe after a 5% post-transfer incentive discount).

</comment><comment><USER45> I really wonder how this will work with VAC bans and cheating. You can be banned from a game by various means VAC is one of them and Battleye is another popular tool. If a person gets banned from DayZ then they sell their game to buy a new copy that isn't banned does the buyer of their original game remain banned?

<comment><USER17> VAC bans are account based and can impact multiple games at once. A new user installing the software couldn't be tied to that account. The original user is still banned. That said you might be prevented from reselling as a form of punishment. I'm guessing that it wouldn't be difficult to set up a new account, however it couldn't be associated with the same MAC addresses.

<comment><USER46> Thing is, looks like that Valve would be prevented to forbid reselling of an account on these grounds...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another problem is that the court probably means that you can resell games for real currency. Currently you can buy games with the Steam currency, which means that reselling games is a legit method of piping out real currency from Steam.

<comment><USER47> They wouldn't necessarily need to implement that though, just a way of transferring licences to someone else. People could figure out their own payment.

<comment><USER7> There's the problem of needing escrow for selling the game in that scenario; if, say, they implement game resale as "You can ask Steam to cut your access and give you a unique code someone else can enter to gain access," there's the problem that if I buy that code from you, I have no knowledge of if it'll actually work when I get home (maybe you sold it twice?).

... and then Steam can offer payment via their in-store currency (with x% shaved off the top) to basically serve as an escrow intermediary. Win-win for everyone except the developers deprived of first-sales by the new resale market.

<comment><USER32> Not Valve's problem. Valve is not obligated to provide a framework that makes reselling games safe and easy, they just need to allow the transfer.

<comment><USER7> Not problem; opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So, don't sell in France in order to keep your business model in tact?

<comment><USER49> More like "don't sell in the EU". Not sure if that's a market to easily ignore...?

<comment><USER50> Does this ruling affect all of the EU?

<comment><USER49> Not a lawyer, but since it seems to be based on some EU harmonized market regulation, I suppose it could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is absurd. When I buy a game on Steam, I fully understand that it doesn't have any resale value – and I easily agree to this deal, because I choose to forgo resale rights so I can get the game cheaper. But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer. And to add insult to injury, it's done this under the pretense of defending my rights, as if I'm an idiot who's not capable of making an informed choice.

I really hope Valve finds a way to fight this. I don't want to go back to pre- Steam PC game prices.

<comment><USER49> For some titles there is no option to get a "resale allowed version". E.g. I bought a retail version of Borderlands 2 several years ago on DVD (long time post release, was like 20 Euro in a local games store). Well, turned out that DVD basically was a Steam Installer plus key (of course, that's a decision made by the publisher).

Also, "so I can get the game cheaper" \- do you? When I buy a newly released game on Steam it's usually in the 50 to 60 Euro range. Most games I buy are a lot cheaper, but they're usually a few years old by the time I pull the trigger.

Still, I also have mixed feelings. If games get a resale value, it will be more difficult to earn money making games. Especially those with great, but short content.

<comment><USER52> On the upside, having resale value is a direct attack on loot boxes, micro transactions, and other forms of in-game financial exploitation. You might be less likely to sink a thousand dollars into loot boxes if you're thinking about selling the game.

<comment><USER49> Good point. I was skeptical of DLCs when they first game about, but if they're decent quality/effort expansions, then that's fine with me. But games with the kind of exploitation you mention I stay away from, and as someone who regards games as a kind of art, I can't see how our cultural heritage benefits from this... kind of games (I'd like to add some not-so-nice words aimed at the beneficiaries of these "games", but those words seem inappropriate for HN).

//edited a little bit ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A woman who can't feel fear - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/01/20/meet-the-woman-who-cant-feel-fear/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of discussions of pain asymbolia or not being able to feel pain (diabetes, leprosy): it's a crippling and dangerous problem.

Fear, pain, guilty - the gifts no one appreciates.

<comment><USER3> By lumping them all together, you are implying that fear is a gift. The NPR podcast on the other hand suggests otherwise. SM describes herself to be happy 9 out of 10 times, and she has no past trauma. Sounds like being fearless is in fact the under-appreciated gift.

<comment><USER4> I think you miss the point. She describes herself to be happy 9 out of 10 times because she is also unable to notice the real dangers that fear is there to help us handle. While it may be great to not feel afraid, as the article points out it also leads her to risky behaviour that most healthy persons would avoid.

<comment><USER5> That's because most healthy people are wrong. There are no risks or dangers worth fearing.

<comment><USER4> If you want to stay alive that is blatantly false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had the privilege of working with the patient described in the podcast. She's unique in any sense of the word.

<comment><USER3> Excellent! Could you say something about her emotional life? In the podcast, she described herself to be happy 9 out of 10 times. I wonder if she experiences love. And if she does, does she also experience grief? What about fear-based emotions (such as separation anxiety)?

<comment><USER6> First, I should point out the original work of Ralph Adolphs, the Damasios, and Dan Tranel on this case [0]. It's a short, important paper that started this whole line of investigation based on the single extraordinary case of SM.

In my interactions with her, SM was uniformly happy, and it's my impression that she's like that in everyday life as well. A former labmate, Justin Feinstein, wrote an interesting paper based in part on observing her in real- world settings [1]. He didn't observe fear in any of a variety of potentially frightening contexts — she generally confronts such contexts with laughter or wonder.

Regarding love, she's deeply attached to her family. I distinctly remember stopping when we walked past the hospital chapel so that she could pray for members of her family. I can't say as much about grief, but she never seemed anxious in any of the time that we spent together, and she certainly never got angry or even upset.

[0][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7990957](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7990957)

[1][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167712](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167712)

<comment><USER3> Thank you. I find it interesting that you describe her to be "uniformly happy" yet your former lab mate, Justin Feinstein (along with Adolphs, Damasio, Tranel), uses "adverse consequences of living life without the amygdala" to describe her.

And when he (they) concluded the paper by writing "[SM's] behavior, time and time again, leads her back to the very situations she should be avoiding, highlighting the indispensable role that the amygdala plays in promoting survival by compelling the organism away from danger." were they thinking of the experimental situations (snakes, haunt houses) in mind or real world situations? I ask because for someone living in a "poverty-stricken area replete with crime, drugs, and danger" at the age of 44 being held at knifepoint/ gunpoint 4 times seems par for the course.

Even so, what evidence is there that SM went back to the very situations she should be avoiding in _real life_ (i.e., not experimental situations of poking snakes and monsters). For example, did she go back to the situation that put herself at knifepoint (the incident which she handled fearlessly by saying "go ahead and cut me")?

I can't help but think that the authors are bringing their own bias (that fear-response is essential in modern times) when concluding as that. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm very interested in the topic of fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like after every popular science radio show / podcast, a raft of 'articles' appear that are just cribbed summaries of the show.

Either there's just not enough material out there, or writers are very lazy, or these are essentially promos for the original show. In any case, if you consume science journalism with any appetite, this is pretty frustrating.

How about writing a new story, people?!

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder whether she has done truly awesome things with her life. One of these pieces of advice you hear often regarding your true vocation goes something like _what would you do if you had no fear?_.

Well, she literally hasn't. So is she an Olympic champion who fights crime during the night and writes amazing novels during the day and commutes to work swimming together with a school of piranhas, or has she led a relatively normal life? She can follow her passion with no fear of failure or success or whatever!

I'm genuinely curious to find scientific evidence about whether fear is the only thing holding us back or there are other factors.

<comment><USER9> I think what they really mean by fear, in those advice, is actually "learned helplessness". You refrain from applying that great position you've always dreamed of, because you "fear" that being rejected would crush your dreams. This is a complex thought. What this woman lacks, as I understand, is something more elementary.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the "complex thought" of "learned helplessness" actually based on the elementary "fear" instinct? That is: no fear, no learned helplessness (only intelligent appraisal).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would stop a person like this from killing herself if she is truly depressed ?

What stops her from killing herself out of curiosity ?

Would she make a better or worse soldier ?

I wish this woman did an AMA.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if you can be truly depressed if you don't fear anything? Or does her lack of fear not encompass anxiety?

<comment><USER12> >I wonder if you can be truly depressed if you don't fear anything?

I would say yes, often times depression manifests itself not as a feeling of fear or dread but as apathy. See for example Hugh Laurie's personal life [1,2] or Nine Inch Nails' Everyday is Exactly the Same[3] which captures that exact feeling. Or of course the wonderful Hyperbole and a Half's account of depression[4], especially the second part makes the point that depression at its worst is a void. No positive feelings, but also no negative ones.

Now I made myself sad^H^H^H apathetic going through those sources. Why does Trent Reznor have to be so good at projecting?

As for the anxiety bit (anxiety and depression are to completely different things), the article mentions her response to having her blood-co2 levels elevated, which seems to me to be a standard anxiety response. A feeling of restlessness and dread.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Laurie#Personal_Life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Laurie#Personal_Life) [2] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2316880/Playing...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2316880/Playing- House-nightmare-says-Hugh-Laurie-250-000-episode.html) (I know, I know, Daily mail but the quotes are worth it) [3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aj9_8t1eQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aj9_8t1eQc) [4] [http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.nl/2011/10/adventures- in-d...](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.nl/2011/10/adventures-in- depression.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This didn't feel like much of an article. I'm super interested in hearing her responses to the interview questions, but the article just kind of stops!

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of this podcast from earlier this week.. [http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/](http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/)

<comment><USER15> That's exactly what they reference in the first couple of paragraphs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sounds a lot like sociopathy. I've read that sociopaths are not scared like normal people are in frightening situations. Maybe dysfunction of the amygdala is part of that too.

<comment><USER17> I've read that sociopathy may be related to a dysfunction of the brain's ability to sympathize with others. Perhaps it's a combination of the two.

Who knows, it might have conferred a survival advantage in our distant past-- bands of nomadic hominids might have had to kill and even eat each other at times.

<comment><USER18> Sociopathy is more likely related to mate competition than cannibalism, which is almost never practised for food, but rather for its ritual significance. Cannibalism was fairly widely and routinely practised in pre-political states --to the extent that in Polynesia there is a prion disease that appears to have evolved with cannibalism as a vector--but even amongst peoples where it was practised, in times of starvation people would mostly starve rather than eat each other.

A number of early European explorers (including Champlain, if memory serves) describe ritual cannibalism--generally the consumption of prisoners, who were first tortured to death in that holistic and natural way First Peoples had-- but also describe people starving to death in times of want without resorting to it.

In the case of this woman, her amygdalae have been damaged by Urbach-Wieth disease, which according to the article is extremely rare.

That said, it is likely that there is a wide distribution of various types of emotional response in the populace due to variations in neurological capability.

<comment><USER19> > pre-political states

How is this not a contradiction in terms? Non-political humans seem impossible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Diaspora team takes on Eben Moglen as informal advisor - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-open-alternative/ <comment><USER2> "Laurent Eschenauer, one of the OneSocialWeb developers, says his project and Diaspora share the goal of providing a "free, open and decentralized alternative to the social networking silos that are Facebook and Twitter." He says he hopes that Diaspora looks to work cooperatively with his project, rather than "reinventing the wheel."

...

"Both OneSocialWeb and Appleseed share the same problem: getting enough users to make users want to sign up — the so-called network effect where a network gets exponentially more useful as it gets bigger. (Think of the fax machine as an example — two fax machines in the world aren't very useful, but your fax machine becomes much more useful when there are 1,000 of them, and even more valuable when there are 10 million.)"

...

"Users don't have to choose to stop using Facebook or Twitter and will be able use the Diaspora client to use those all those services in one place — much like Friendfeed currently does. But when Diaspora knows that the person you are trying to communicate with also has Diaspora, it will use peer-to-peer, encrypted methods to send that message. And as more and more people start using the free software, they'll slowly find themselves weaned from for-profit services, according to Moglen."

I think if the various social networks coming up interoperated, on some significant set of features, it would be good for all of them and all of us.

If service A has Ua users then the value of A is Ua^2 (or whatever). If B has Ub its value is Ub^2. If they interoperate then the value of both approach (Ua+Ub)^2. E.g. 3^2 = 9 and 4^2 = 16, or (3+4)^2 = 49. As service A adds users, services A and B both enjoy an increase in the value of their networks.

Edit: math notation.

<comment><USER3> I have long doubted the validity of this "Metcalfe's Law", which "states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2)". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law>

Generally the people in your social group is much more likely to belong to the same telecommunication system as you do. And you don't care nearly as much otherwise. Someone in Nepal will care a lot less when Facebook gains 100,000 more users in Italy than when those new users are in Nepal itself.

We can make a much better approximation of the real usefulness of the network by individualizing the law to each user, i.e. "...the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2) _in your relevant social group_."

Notice that since an individual has "cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships", this modified law also place a much sharper limit on a network's usefulness by Dunbar's number. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number>

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. People always seem to forget how simple people are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Near the bottom of the article: "Diaspora is taking a different tack, according to Moglen, who has taken the students on as clients and is informally advising them."</comment>


Appcelerator Titanium and PayPal partner to deliver mobile commerce - <AUTHOR> http://www.appcelerator.com/ <comment><USER2> I really hope they pull through on the promise to improve and invest in the platform. I've been playing with it lately and it is fun to work with and shows lots of potential, but it's full of holes and inconsistencies. Despite those issues, I'm considering going with it for my newest mobile project and this announcement is encouraging.</comment>


Generating Pusheen with GANs in tensorflow.js - <AUTHOR> http://zna.do/pusheen <comment><USER2> Hey! I'm the creator of this, happy to answer any questions</comment>


The broken windows theory, and why you should clean your room - edouard-harris https://russellpollari.com/2019/10/24/the-broken-windows-theory-and-why-you-should-clean-your-room/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author writes:

> While initiatives based on this theory have been controversial > (particularly, New York City in the 90s), there is legitimate evidence > supporting the theory. In a 2008 Science article,

However, one report is not conclusive, especially as that Science article points out how "Studies aimed to test the BWT (3–6)h ave provided mixed results at best", suggesting that their paper only adds to the mix.

You can see this in the abstract for an upcoming paper (expected publication date, Jan. 2020) at [https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev- crimin...](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev- criminol-011419-041541) :

> To evaluate the causal claims made in these studies, we use a potential > outcomes framework of causality. We conclude that, although there is some > evidence for both broken windows and informal control theories, there is > little consensus in the present research literature. Furthermore, at > present, most studies do not establish causality in a strong way.

The author then asserts: "The broken windows effect is also true at the level of the individual."

Is there any evidence for this?

The author also writes "Your environment (e.g. your room, desk, house) sets the norms for your behavior."

Really? Because that sounds like a fundamental attribution error to me.

Does it mean that a single person who can afford a maid to keep things clean is inherently more responsible than, say, a single parent with two kids who is also a small business owner, but can only clean up the house once a week?

No. Clearly not.</comment>


Show HN: A local, people-focused tech jobs site for PDX - <AUTHOR> https://techjobspdx.com/about/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've worked in tech for over 20 years. I'm tired of throwing resumes at global job sites and hoping for the best.

So, I'm building something local for tech jobs in PDX, focused on helping local companies and the people living and working here find each other. Being an "older" worker, I'm especially interested in helping people of all ages and identities (and experience) find work in the tech industry in friendly, inclusive workplaces.

Post your tech jobs here if you feel the same. I'm going to make the best possible resource I can, to help as many people as I can. I'd be grateful for any and all feedback from folks here as things progress.

James Gill email@example.com</comment>


Hedge Fund Is Building an Algorithmic Model From Its Employees' Brains - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worlds-largest-hedge-fund-is-building-an-algorithmic-model-of-its-founders-brain-1482423694 <comment><USER2> I think this....

> Mr. Dalio returned to run Bridgewater earlier this year after stepping back > to a mentor role six years ago.

Is what's driving almost all of his new found desire for a unified AI to run everything.

Here you have a man who by any measure has been wildly successful, he tried stepping back and letting other take over but ended up finding that the team he left in charge didn't make the exact decisions he would have.

If the story ended there it wouldn't be in any way surprising, who hasn't left a team and second guessed the decisions that the new leaders have made.

It turns out that when you are worth 15 Billion one of the things you can do is hire a shit load of AI experts, like one of the heads of IBM's Watson team, to build an AI to make decisions based on WWRDD, "What would Ray Dalio Do"?

Since his first retirement failed, this is his new take on how to have his second retirement go smoother. Just build an AI that bases all decisions on the Bridge water principles that he wrote down years ago.

see: [https://www.principles.com/](https://www.principles.com/)

As an aside, he recently let Tony Robbins publish his ideal portfolio, the all weather portfolio. It's actually a pretty strong portfolio for the average person.

[http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/11/back-testing-tony- ro...](http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/11/back-testing-tony-robbins- weather-portfolio/)

[http://www.moneysense.ca/invest/raining-on-the-all- seasons-p...](http://www.moneysense.ca/invest/raining-on-the-all-seasons- portfolio/)

<comment><USER3> > see: [https://www.principles.com/](https://www.principles.com/)

This is a very, very good read. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER4> You might disagree with the read if you actually saw what the implementation of said principles looks like. There's plenty of articles out there about what those principles do to a psyche, but let's forget about those: The culture is still broken because there is no sensible way to have real transparency in an environment with power differentials.

In any situation with a broken status quo, openness by those that disagree will just get them squashed. In practice, change occurs in the dark: The people that have a different idea hide in a corner, bake the idea in secret, build allies in secret, and only reveal it when they cannot be squashed down. It works with different ways of investing, with tolerance to LGBT, interracial marriage... instant openness in an environment that is against you will ruin you unless you are powerful.

The principles, as applied, lead to an appearance of openness, where people have to toe the party line and only disagree when they know they can win politically. Otherwise, the powers that be will find you and make sure your disagreement can't go anywhere.

And how do you get power? In practice, by toeing the party line. Only by agreeing with the people above you, those that have been blessed as the smartest, you can get any credibility. And yes, this is something that is actively codified in Bridgewater's culture.

I wish external researchers had access to the internal ratings and surveys that Bridgewater employees fill in all the time. The patterns in them are the definition of a dystopia and groupthink.

<comment><USER3> > " instant openness in an environment that is against you will ruin you > unless you are powerful."

You make some good points, and I especially like this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mr. Dalio has the highest stratum score at Bridgewater, and the firm has > told employees he has one of the highest in the world.

So this billionaire is designing a human-ranking system based on some criteria on which he scores number one in the world?

In examining a system for bias I certainly hope they factor in the fact that the guy who paid billions for scientists to research factors under the "total human awesomeness scale" also somehow managed to find that the guy signing all the cheques was the same guy scoring a perfect 10 million every time.

I wonder if the scientists working on quantifying human greatness for Kim Jong-Un are using the same scale?

Couch it in whatever scientific BS you want, it sounds like we just read some sort of billionaire's ego-rotica.

<comment><USER6> The strata in the article are based on the work of psychologist Elliot Jacques who as far as I can tell created this independently of Dalio and Bridgewater.

Strata are related to a person's ability to handle complexity, and Jacques argued that this is related to the time horizon a person can handle. For example, the role of a shop floor employee selling widgets does not need to consider what happens more than 1-3 months in the future, however the store manager has to think about a year into the future, the owner of the chain has to consider what happens 2-3 years down the line and so on.

He devised an interview protocol to determine at which level a person is capable of thinking at to be use to match employee's with roles for which they are suitable. Being in the highest stratum means having a time horizon of 20-30 of which Jacques believed only a handful of people are capable of in each generation.

<comment><USER7> Dr. Jaques divided people into eight strata based on their innate capabilities and limits.

Most of us if we're honest with ourselves are on the level of Strata 1–4. (Even to presume we're Stratum 4 is being generous.)

Strata 5–8 are the rarefied elites. They're typically CEOs of large companies and business leaders.

Stratum 9 and higher—like Mr. Dalio—are the rare geniuses who are capable of thinking into the far future (100+ years) and working on problems of extraordinary complexity.

<comment><USER8> No one can think 100 years into the future, that's just ridiculous. Chaotic systems -- all real-world human systems on some time scale -- are unpredictable no matter how awesome you are.

<comment><USER9> I mean clairvoyantly sure, but why not imagine the future? Traveling to Mars, autonomous and flying cars, intergalactic space travel etc. type problems are all thinking in a long range, certainly not 5 to 7 years. Look at something like planes even, which took humans years to have the right tools. Thats why people mull over the possibilities of an outcome to reach their goal, which could very well be a long term, 100+ year goal. Instead of worrying about the unpredictability, you can hope the unpredictability will lead to answers for questions you can't answer yet; thats the whole reason for research labs at Google and such, working on longer term problems, finding what's missing now and shelving things for later when we might be able to accomplish the goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It reminds of "managing the numbers". Not to say Dalio himself doesn't know what he's doing. But translating that to software, yeah...good luck.

It's challenging enough to translate simple trading systems into machine code, and have it reproduce human results. At least that's my experience.

To distill your knowledge and wisdom down to a set of algorithms, the complex interactions, discretion on when to use and ignore certain ones, being able to learn from results by adding in new "rules" and discarding old ones that no longer work such that you've identified the correct parameters/situations applicable?

Best of luck with that one. Not a place I'd ever want to work.

<comment><USER11> >It's challenging enough to translate simple trading systems into machine code

I can attest to this from my experience with a bot I'm trying to build to handle my personal finances. When I sat down to try and encode the seemingly simple decisions I make like whether to pay a bill now or wait until the next check, things got really complicated really quickly.

<comment><USER12> I'm struggling a lot to get access to my bank's "bill pay" interface. Any recommendations for banks that support building out automation like this?

There are very small things I'd like to implement (budgeting, auto- categorization of expenditures) and some type of bill pay as well.

<comment><USER11> <strike>I can't really help you on bank API's</strike>. My bot uses webdriver.

Actually I can help with that: [https://openbankproject.com/for- developers/](https://openbankproject.com/for-developers/)

<comment><USER12> Huh.. Looks like they don't support my bank, but really love the project!

I'll have to check out webdriver, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am a big believer is what he is doing. I worked both in financial firm and now have my own small factory. There is so much wast in financial firms. in the early 1990s, people with MBA where getting 100k a year for just doing spreadsheets. On top of that, it is not a full days worth of work. the work was not rewarding and it was high stress. The paycheck was great, for sure. I am trying to do that same thing now with my small manufacturing shop. Ordering of raw materials, Manufacturing allocation, labor etc are all controlled by a software. These are all boring jobs that an AI will do a much better job at.

<comment><USER14> Why does it have to be an _artificial_ intelligence? The field of Operations Research has basically perfected automated and optimized decision making in pretty much every heavy industry out there, and they've been doing it since before computers even existed by using mathematical modeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since reading it maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I've thought Principles is a great handbook for personal reflection and self-improvement, especially in that it continually guides all discussion back to the lodestar of thinking for oneself and asking "is this true?".

However, I'd also say that Principles is a lousy "how to manage people" manual, because it tries to algorithmically describe how to deal with unpleasant interactions that require emotional intelligence, and harps really hard on the concept of "the truth will set you free and if you can't handle the truth you need to GTFO of our culture". Reading this article has reinforced that opinion.

Two other random observations here:

\- These guys are a big Palantir client...I wonder if Palantir has any role in building this new system. They weren't mentioned in the article.

\- Isn't "Overseer" is a really, really fucking bad formal job title for anyone at any organization?

<comment><USER16> > _Isn 't "Overseer" is a really, really fucking bad formal job title for > anyone at any organization?_

Yeah. At my company we just include anyone who would fit that billing as a member of the Panopticonal Oversight Committee so that they can also keep their regular title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That has got to be the worst case of group think ever. What happens if you challenge one of the "principles"?

<comment><USER18> Sounds like you lose upside down Christmas trees at the company party, get demoted from co-CEO, get fired, or get chewed out so hard you cry in the bathroom.

Honestly, I just read a few other articles about Bridgewater Associates, and even though it seems cult-like, I think the principles probably help prevent group-think. For instance, the second most important goal is no talking about people behind their back. If any of the companies I worked at had this rule, I'd think they were trying to make people toe the company line. However, this rule actually supports the first rule, encouraging transparency, really well.

For instance, have you ever been in a situation where you are doing something wrong, only to find out later that people noticed but nobody told you? The consequences aren't that bad if your tie is on backward, but I've made expensive mistakes because nobody spoke up, and I've been in organizations where there was such a negative stigma around "confrontation" that mistakes happened all the time and gossip was rampant.

Studies have shown that groups that are told they much come to a consensus make worse decisions than groups that are encouraged to disagree. The difference can be pretty marginal, but a marginal difference in return can result in huge gains or huge losses when you are dealing with markets.

It definitely reflects poorly on a company when stories come out about employees crying in the bathroom. One can only imagine the psychological horrors that must go on at such a company! However, in my experience, there is a certain kind of person whose entire self-worth is based on their success. They are typically very high achieving, but failure is an anathema to them. They try to avoid failure at all costs. They end up under incredible strain, because failure is inevitable.

I've known a lot of people like this. There was one person I knew who was so stressed when she didn't know a question on an exam that she ended up vomiting all over the test. Another time, I caused a woman to cry in Model U.N. by vetoing her Security Council resolution as the Russian Federation. If you know anything about Russia and the Security Council, a veto is not exactly an uncommon measure from them. However, it meant we ended 5 days of debate on an issue without passing a resolution. She took the veto as hard as if I had vetoed a judgement of her character. She was a grad student at a prestigious school, so I'd say she had to have been in her mid-20s, which is definitely old enough to be working at a high-powered investment firm.

I personally think I'd like that environment. I do really well when I have a lot of autonomy, and I don't need much supervision to work. I hate it when people don't criticize my work. It just makes me paranoid; I know I'm not perfect, and I know there are flaws. I learn from every critique and failure. I know a lot of people that would have a mental breakdown in that environment though. It's hard to tell who those people are ahead of time though, because they are such high-achieving individuals, and their anxiety about failure is basically invisible.

So, to answer your question more seriously, I think their continued success is evidence that they must comfortable challenging their beliefs. However, I do think a holy book full of principles seems a little cult-like, especially in light of the fact that they are building an AI clone of their CEO.

<comment><USER17> seems to me like challenging peers is ok, but don't dare challenge management. So, yes you'll get day to day issues worked out, but things like ethics, general strategy, and other high level issues you run into problems. So, when they f* u* it will be huge...because the whole organization will be blinded to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Hit a nerve - a prized attribute." It would be interesting to see how quickly the company as a whole (and the system, if possible) responds to the results of incentives. Does the culture quickly regress to fooling the algorithm or does a cat and mouse game result?

Either way not something I'd want to use to drive culture, but an interesting take on how to "institutionalize" a culture and cultural norms even long after one has left the business.

<comment><USER20> They already have a system that people game all the time. It doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had a good chuckle reading this article:

> At Bridgewater, most meetings are recorded, employees are expected to > criticize one another continually, people are subject to frequent probes of > their weaknesses, and personal performance is assessed on a host of data > points, all under Mr. Dalio's gaze.

I think this is a testament to the disconnect between people in this space and technology. The idea that some mythical holy grail technology will produce alpha is as illusive as relying on automated trades.

> Bridgewater says about one-fifth of new hires leave within the first year. > The pressure is such that those who stay sometimes are seen crying in the > bathrooms, said five current and former staff members. This article is based > on interviews with them and more than a dozen other past and present > Bridgewater employees and others close to the firm.

And it confirms my suspicions. I stopped reading here because it's another PR piece for Bridgewater.

I think we will see a small homage to Bridgewater in Mr. Taleb's upcoming books as an example of "techno-irrational exuberance" along with other hilarious _empty suit_ moments described in the book Fooled By Randomness.

</comment><comment><USER22> How could any quant models _not_ be based on the brains of their inventors?

<comment><USER19> From the article, it doesn't appear this has anything to do with quant models - they're looking to optimize how their employees conduct the work and how they are managed as personnel. This does not seem to target their trading strategies at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The 1980s called, they want their expert systems back.

<comment><USER24> exactly what I thought, this is a new gen expert system

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bridgewater manages $160 billion, the most of any hedge-fund firm. It has earned clients twice as much total profit as any rival, says LCH Investments NV, a firm that puts client money into hedge funds. Mr. Dalio personally earned $1.4 billion last year, according to research firm Institutional Investor's Alpha.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have heard that Amazon tried to do this with hiring with really bad results.

<comment><USER5> Can you expand on this at all? An article anywhere with a detailed write up? It sounds fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another megalomaniac looking for religion where it can not be found: radical transparency, humans and economies as machines, personality tests to determine stratums, daily ratings called "dots" (which incidentally is what Palantir calls their ratings as well). Then again maybe the article makes the place sound more like a cult than it actually is in reality.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like a horrible place to work! If things go as planned, "Horrible Place to Work(tm)" will have in install package for it.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, really.

"The pressure is such that those who stay sometimes are seen crying in the bathrooms, said five current and former staff members."

What's the upshot? Seven figure salaries or something?

<comment><USER30> there are people crying in the bathrooms at every big firm on the planet.

<comment><USER31> Solution is to move the bathrooms into the open plan. No more slacking or being aa wimp in private.

Or even better give everyone nappies so they can clean themselves on their own dime. Once they get home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can't possibly get enough training data for this.

<comment><USER33> I don't think it is fair to say it is not possible. There is an AI system out there that has correctly predicted the superfecta for the Kentucky Derby based soley on user predictions.

[http://www.newsweek.com/artificial-intelligence- turns-20-110...](http://www.newsweek.com/artificial-intelligence- turns-20-11000-kentucky-derby-bet-457783)

<comment><USER31> I work for a company that bets on the horses, and yet they use broadly similar techniques. But this doesn't replace humans at all.

Also as an aside, correctly predicting a superfecta happens quite a lot, and it is hard to tell from sample size of 1 if this was luck, skill or a combination of both. Probably a combination of both - their algo may have reduced the odds to 200-1 for example, and luck did the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-11/bridgewat...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-11/bridgewater- said-to-get-22-5-billion-in-new-money-since-2015)

</comment><comment><USER35> Horrible, but I can sympathize.

Living alone now after 22 years of co-habiting. Tempted to encase myself in cameras and sensors and train a model of ... me.

What would Jaba do? If it's a dumb thing, then help him not do it...

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm gonna guess these employees have a work for hire contract of some sort, so that their ideas or potentially copyrightable or patentable methods, belong to their employer.

<comment><USER37> So does every large technology company including Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, etc.

<comment><USER38> As do a number of major universities (CMU, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and plenty more, I'm sure). If I had to guess, these contracts are generally a lot more prevalent in fields where people are regularly creating intellectual property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There is no algorithm for trader's instincts;

</comment><comment><USER40> FYI, I was able to dodge the paywall and read the article by copying the URL into Google to get their referral, then clicking the top link.

<comment><USER41> not sure why the regular search links aren't working anymore when you click web. The link in "Top stories" section worked

<comment><USER42> Seems to be related to the title - if I take the article title from the actual page, google's first result works.

However if I take the title from here it goes to the paywall.

I wonder if Google has recently adjusted the algorithm for this? Makes me wonder if they actually like paywalls, as I've always thought Google was against them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Odd, I submitted the same story but it wasn't picked up as a duplicate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238860)

</comment><comment><USER44> I would assign a small chance to Bridgewater being a ponzi scheme. I am not the first person to be skeptical of the firm and there have constantly been rumors about them.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Though outsiders expected Mr. Ferrucci would use his talents to help find hidden signals in the financial markets, his job has focused more narrowly on analyzing the torrent of data the firm gathers about its employees. The data include ratings employees give each other throughout the work day, called 'dots'"

This -- Isn't -- JEOPARDY!! This is shit.</comment>


Try Node.js for 2¢ or less in ~2 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nowjs.com/get-started-with-nodejs-for-002-and-two-minut

<comment><USER2> Are there really that many people that want to code a Node.js app but can't set up an quick ubuntu image using virtualbox? EC2 as a dev environment seems a bit backwards.

<comment><USER3> I use EC2 for development (I commute via bike so I don't usually work offline) and it's the best environment I've ever coded in.

In fact, I can even code and fix things from my iPad, your iPad, anyones computer, my phone, a library kiosk or an airplane cockpit.

If I want to try something experimental (aka dist upgrade etc), I just clone the AMI, make my modifications, and if I like it, I keep it.

My emacs looks exactly the same, where ever I am. If I need to get to a different computer, I still log in through my EC2 instance, where all servers I need are accessible via convenient shortcuts and the appropriate port forwarding is configured already. And, again, I can do this from wherever I am.

How is that backwards?

<comment><USER4> How is that superior to having a nice desktop that you can shell/nx into?

<comment><USER3> OTTOMH: create different configurations that you only need for one project, experiment with cutting edge software, increase CPU, memory and disk on the fly ...

<comment><USER4> For a development environment? What?

Especially with node.js that simply doesn't make sense.

If you're running it with users on it which would actually need CPU, memory or disk, duh I would run it on EC2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is easier than ./configure && make?

<comment><USER6> The posts targets users not familiar with nix systems as well. Often times, it's not as simple as ./configure && make. There are dependencies that need to be satisfied and PATHs that need to be configured (depending on your distro). That was a huge headache for us when we first setup production servers on EC2.

I understand that it may seem silly to setup an EC2 account when the accustomed nix user can install Node much more easily, but hey, who doesn't like a year of free dedicated hosting thanks to Amazon?

<comment><USER5> _The posts targets users not familiar with nix systems as well._

So the idea is to convince them to run servers connected directly to the Internet without any system administration skills? No wonder I get so much spam.

Somehow I think distributing binaries would be the logical solution to "node.js is hard to compile", not convincing people with no UNIX experience to pay Amazon $70 a month to let them run their very own server. But that's just me.

(I have personally compiled node from source on Debian and RHEL5. It was easy on both machines. The hardest part was to get waf to use all 32 cores on that RHEL machine for the build. But it's actually documented in the node docs!)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the idea is that for newcomers it will be free, because amazon is nice.

Also, according to other comments it seemed that paths were the problem, not binaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I spent the past week getting node.js up and running. This guide helps a ton. Thanks for doing this.

On the other hand I've learned more about unix in the last week than I ever wanted to know. I'm now happily hacking away at my code on my ec2 instance using vim and all sorts of funky commands. I still have no idea what nginx is supposed to do, but I did figure out how to turn it off. Yeah, me.

So, if like me, you've never logged into a unix box, you may actually want to try one of the harder guides. It will teach you a ton.

</comment><comment><USER8> May not be the place for this, but I'm curious what everyone is using as a node.js deployment workflow? I'm very tempted to stick to my old fabric fab file.

<comment><USER9> I'm using Capistrano, which is pulling my code from Github, with a bunch of custom scripts to minify my static assets and send them off to a CDN. If you've got a fab file that works for you, there's no reason not to stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like passing out a small VirtualBox image with Linux and node installed on it already would be easier.

<comment><USER11> uh, no it doesn't

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eric Zhang (NowJS guy) has been extremely active over the past few weeks. Kudos!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: if you've never used EC2 before, you get a year of node for free!

</comment><comment><USER13> This AMI is only for US West

<comment><USER8> i setup a ubuntu 10.10 64 instance in virginia; they're not charging me</comment></comment>