A Lament for the LAN Party - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/09/lan-party-starcraft-nineties/ <comment><USER2> LAN parties were an interesting normative force at my high school. You always hear about the tension between jocks and geeks. But jocks like playing video games as much as geeks, who had the technical know-how to get networked games going. So the jocks at my high school were really interested in being friends with us nerds. We finally had something in common! Our LAN parties were this strange alternate universe where the captain of the football team hung out with the science fair nerds. We even had cheer leaders come to our LAN parties.

I graduated before the internet really obviated the need for LANs. From younger friends, I heard that when the Xbox 360/PS3 came out, LAN parties slowed down, and jocks ceased interactions with nerds. But there was that brief period in the early 2000s where we existed in harmony.

<comment><USER3> Call me crazy but as I understand it from kids today it's pretty cool to be a "nerd" today

<comment><USER4> The word "nerd" is so overused that a supermodel who likes Dickens considers herself a nerd.

It's really not the word it used to be.

<comment><USER5> Ye olde definition implies physically attractive people can't be nerds, and unattractive people can't _not_ be nerds.

That's only useful for making an us vs them label. It's a good thing that anyone can nerd out on Dickens.

I've heard before that it's a question of degree ("prove just how much you like Dickens!"), which is kind of an uncool way to discourage intellectual curiosity. Not everyone was forged in the pale glow of monitors in their parents' basement, some have to work at it later.

<comment><USER6> _Ye olde definition implies physically attractive people can 't be nerds, and unattractive people can't not be nerds._

An alternate interpretation is that 'nerd culture' has become an ugly perverted commodity of its former self to the point where the requisite "hot girl" is put in front of eyeballs with no authenticity and offers semi- humorous-because-she-doesn't-quite-get-it-but-still-tries-her-best one liners while simultaneously manifesting this new proto manic pixie dream nerd girl persona-having no real purpose or reason for being there other than to rope in the casual viewer looking for something, anything, __anything __but another TCP /IP joke.

Physically attractive people can be nerds. Nerds can be physically attractive. But let's not fool ourselves on those tropes that still exist and get trotted out there making everyone look like damn fools: The hot girl who tries to be nerdy with a front as transparent as saran-wrap, and the incapable, slightly awkward-looking but you can't figure out why nerdy guys who pine after her because she totally understood how heavy the ending to Empire Strikes Back was _and enjoyed it_.

I call "The Big Bang Theory" to the stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh the LAN party... Me and my mates in Rio, around '99, would carry our PC towers, monitors, and backpacks of cables, keyboards and tech paraphernalia to our one of our apartments in Ipanema and set up wherever we could. There'd be maybe 4-6 of us.

We'd spend maybe 4 hours trying to get all pcs "visible" to other pcs on the Windows network. At first we used coaxial cables and T plugs with a terminator at the last computer, what a nightmare. Then eventually I think someone brought a switcher and we used the regular rj-45s.

We still talk about epic Starcraft battles, insane coop quake run throughs and the day Diablo II came out and we played 12 straight!

Usually at the end, in the early Saturday or Sunday morning we'd go get a cheap breakfast go home to get changed and meet back up at the beach to debrief last night's shenanigans.

<comment><USER8> This reminds me so much of my own youth, except for the beach debriefing :). Especially the 4 hours trying to get all computers to "see" each other brings back memories. I remember a particularly puzzling problem where my computer and a friend's computer were unable to communicate directly, but could otherwise talk to everyone else. After half a weekend, we found out that the on-board network devices on our motherboards (which were identical brand and model, ordered from the same place) had been manufactured with identical MAC addresses. After all the black magic that we had applied to the problem, without luck, throughout the LAN, it gave a great sense of joy and relief to fix the problem by simply spoofing the MAC and changing one digit :). We had an epic 8 hour long Age of Empires session afterwards ...

<comment><USER7> I can't imagine how you guys eventually found that out! We usually resorted to abandoning Windows Network and just hoping we could ping everyone and "see" each other's servers hosted on a computer. Often computer A and B could see C but couldn't see each other. Never ending mess of installing/removing tcp/ip and the other LAN protocols and fudging around with ip addresses etc!! Took forever but when it worked and that first game started rolling everyone was up

<comment><USER8> I was very fascinated by networks and network protocols back then, so often at LANs I would play around with a tool called "netXray" which could capture network packets (basically a proprietary equivalent of Wireshark).

I could spend a lot of time trying to decipher the data that games would send on the network, and I also tried to mess with my friends by replaying modified UDP packets (rarely had an effect, though). As far as I remember, I found the MAC address issue while playing around with netXray :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Board games are the LAN party now, at least for my social circle. I still meetup with the now 15 years older LAN gaming crowd. And I understand board games have been around forever but now we live on screens I think they have a more special place than 15+ years back. Plus the mechanics/quality of games coming out these days is at another level. If you think of board games as Monopoly/Risk, I would strongly suggest checking out what is available these days.

I still miss LAN parties though...

<comment><USER10> With most of the eurogames, I wonder why a computer isn't doing all the busy work they seem to require.

<comment><USER11> Check out games like the tabletop version of X-Com. They've integrated a smartphone app into the gameplay extremely well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably about 4 times per year on a long weekend, my mates and I still get together in someone's warehouse or garage and have a 3 day LAN. There's normally between 15-20 people, and we play a mix of CS:Source, Warcraft 3 custom maps, AoE, Dota 2, and whatever else the fashion is at the time. A recent one has been Spintires, which is a blast with 4 people!

That said, the amount of sleep and the quality of the food we eat has definitely improved in the last 15 years or so - no more fast food for all meals.

<comment><USER12> Also, the advent of broadband and routers now mean networking is literally plug and play, not spending 2-3 hours trying to either set up a DHCP server, or assign static IPs and trying to figure out why it's not working, only to find out that someone mistyped it.

<comment><USER13> I remember buying a networking kit at Best Buy in the late 90s and then with 3 of my friends spending hours just trying to get the computers to ping each other.

There was also always someone who would have to reformat and reinstall Windows.

<comment><USER14> I laughed hard at this... The one poor guy who had family computer and required a large amount of work to be playable....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> LAN parties are still a thing among tight-knit gaming communities where the personal relationships are strong.

For example, I still play Descent [0] competitively, along with perhaps a few hundred others off-and-on. There's a group of about 20 of us who have become really close friends in the last few years, and we try to have a big LAN party every summer. We've also had quite a few small get-togethers where a handful of people will fly or drive out for a weekend. Last month, a friend drove out from a couple states away, and joined my wife and I at my grandparent's old cabin, at 9200 feet in elevation, with no running water but with electricity, and we played a bunch of matches.

In the past, I've been to Descent LANs at such unusual locations as a hog farm and a Dominican monastery. My wife and I also took our laptops on our honeymoon and played Starcraft: Brood War in a tiny trailer next to a lake in northern Idaho.

I'm also a part of a small Christian gamers group [1], and there are regular discussions about who would be able to get together in various parts of the country this summer.

People are willing to travel to meet friends. Lugging along a computer isn't all that unusual.

[0] [http://descentchampions.org/](http://descentchampions.org/) is the competitive site

[1] [http://www.solidrockgamers.com/](http://www.solidrockgamers.com/)

<comment><USER16> Wow. Descent? I haven't even thought about that game in a decade and a half. I feel like the hardware required to play that game doesn't really require lugging, these days.

<comment><USER15> Most people run a newer .exe in higher resolution and a high framerate. You can run it moderately well with reduced settings on a Raspberry Pi, and we have people bring mini-PC's to LANs. A big CPU tower is no longer necessary.

What almost everybody lugs is their preferred controller (gaming keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.) and a good monitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jon-wood It makes me sad that everyone is acting like they're no longer a thing. If you can get a few friends together then it's still great fun, possibly more so than it used to be.

There's a big organised LAN party here that runs three-four times a year, with space about 80 people in a big school hall, and then some friends of mine get together now and again at each other's homes. With modern kit you can just turn up, plug in, and be playing.

Our most recent LAN party was a friend's stag night, a full weekend of gaming, drinking, and general craziness. Also the first one we've done and explicitly left space to use the TV which was great fun later on once everyone was over Counterstrike.

<comment><USER17> Yup.

My high school (graduated last year, but I doubt it's changed since) would host a LAN party 1-2 times per year, pulling probably 2/3 of the school.

My little brother still arranges ~10-man LAN-parties, and has now managed to get the municipality to arrange smaller LAN parties weekly.

And of course, the huge ones, like Dreamhack and The Gathering are still well and alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For anyone that likes this sort of thing, I found a few videos of old LAN parties from 1998-2001:

[https://youtu.be/ch__Ah2iCtQ](https://youtu.be/ch__Ah2iCtQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X43soJt7jI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X43soJt7jI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6bzgl6vKA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6bzgl6vKA)

Also, this is much more recent but really captures the whole LAN party spirit. It's a basically bunch of guys playing sudden-death Minecraft.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNF3_hO_no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNF3_hO_no)

There are some other LAN games on their channel that are fun as well.

<comment><USER19> I'm loving the 10Base2 in video #3 :) Those were some great times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shameless plug.

Can't speak too much for it just yet (working through sponsorships, etc), but some friends and I are setting up a 160p LAN in Chicago later this year. It's particularly neat since we're not the only ones to have similar goals. LANs are coming back ;).

We also do ~monthly LANs out in Wauconda (Chicago suburbs) area if anybody's interested.

Here's just some preliminary stuff we've been working on. The switch we have is the same as LHC's: [http://imgur.com/a/BICDK](http://imgur.com/a/BICDK)

<comment><USER21> That's awesome.

What's your approach to internet connectivity and wifi? How much power are you budgeting for?

<comment><USER20> I can't speak much for the power setup since I'm on the networking/infrastructure side, but it's pretty hefty and accounted for with tons of wiggle room. The switch alone is a decent chunk of the power. Back when we were setting it up in winter, it was able to heat a full house while sitting idle :).

For bandwidth, I'll be setting up an http cache server this weekend so that steam downloads (at least) can be retrieved locally as often as possible. The internet we have is 100Mb/s, which I personally think is more than plenty if managed correctly. We'd like the network and its capabilities to pretty much be as open as possible with a noticeable disclaimer that traffic can easily be intercepted and that Bad Stuff won't be tolerated. Ideally, we'd want the network to be as old school LAN-y as possible, which means that we unfortunately have to make some security compromises. We're going to place heavy restrictions on southbound traffic coming in, but northbound is going to be pretty limited. That said, we haven't set it up entirely yet, so we'll probably change a lot as we go.

We haven't really talked about wifi that much, but I've heard more and more that ubiquiti routers are incredible for the price. We'll probably buy two or three decent ones.

<comment><USER22> Ubiquiti APs are nice if you want to use PoE or if you need a pre-packaged solution to manage a large number of them. They won't offer better wireless performance than cheaper consumer routers running OpenWRT/LEDE that use the same radios.

Ubiquiti's _routers_ are overrated.

<comment><USER23> > Ubiquiti's routers are overrated.

Why say that?

I'm a pfSense fanboi but was planning on recommending Ubiquiti kit for those not happy about spending the money to get pfSense capable hardware.

<comment><USER22> Ubiquiti's wired-only routers tend to be more expensive than a consumer wireless router with the same or better processor that can also be an access point. The EdgeRouter products are highly reliant on relatively inflexible packet processing hardware offloads that make it impossible to do things like use QoS/AQM techniques that are more modern than the CPU design, so their impressive specs won't necessarily translate to competitive real-world performance. (Not that it would matter when you use a BSD-derived router OS that hasn't been keeping up with those advancements.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Other opinions welcome. Here's mine:

LAN parties were implementations "instant messaging", "VOIP","video conferencing" and maybe some other things I'm omitting. Before these things even had a "market".

Gamers solved all these challenges when the web was still a blatently crude hack and the internet was dog slow by today's standards.

Then they successfully and reliably pierced NAT to play games over the internet. Even when the internet was painfully slow. Before Napster, before Bittorrent, before Kazaa/Skype, etc.

Others outside of gaming seemed to be struggling with coming up with solutions for these basic but obviously valuable "services". There is a wasteland of failed/abandoned "VOIP" projects from the 90's that still boggles my mind.

Except for some well-funded research labs, gamers did it first. LAN over internet. (Ethernet frames in UDP packets.) It might be ugly to some people, but it does work.

Now, I will let you all tell me how my opinion is misinformed.

<comment><USER25> Oh yeah, I remember buying a license for kali.net (which apparently the service and website are both still up) to play Warcraft II. It allowed IPX protocol gaming over the Internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_%28software%29)

<comment><USER15> My wife and I played games together on Kali before we ever met in person (we didn't meet on Kali, but on a message board for Descent.)

If you ever played Descent on Kali, there's a facebook group full of your old friends: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hm, what nobody seems to have mentioned yet: We've all grown up. In that time I used to play 6 hours every week day and maybe 12 hours every weekend day. Now I'm happy if I can make it to 5 hours a whole week combined. If you would organize a LAN party with all my old friends from back then and all the games, I would still need to look in my calendar if I can make it there.

Not just times have changed. We have changed as well.

<comment> jon-wood I'm 32, with a kid, as are most of the guys I LAN party with. We still manage to make it happen, although admittedly with quite a lot more notice than we used to need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I also seem to recall having a LAN party New Years Eve...

Those were the days. We would spend all night doing the LAN party and all day either hunting or paying paintball.

Andy, I'll never forget your first LAN party: showed up with 7GB porn on your 8GB hard drive and refused to delete any to make space for the games because you only had 33.6k dialup.

</comment><comment><USER28> For us it was and ever shall be Age of Empires. Wololo!

<comment><USER2> My LAN career started with StarCraft and ended with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Anyone play that?

<comment><USER29> W:ET was a ridiculous amount of fun.

<comment><USER30> I love ET! Have you heard of ET: Legacy? It's a modern implementation of the client and server and works great ( had a server running on FreeBSD).

[https://www.etlegacy.com/](https://www.etlegacy.com/)

<comment><USER31> What's the population like? I fired up the original a couple of years ago, and most servers were either dead or filled with bots.

<comment><USER30> Sadly that's the main problem in my opinion. As far as I know there are still some rare events which can bring players back but it has been stagnating for years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The LAN party is still well and alive in the demoscene, in the form of demoparties which are basically LAN parties plus computer art. Some of them have become _extremely_ large:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Assembly2004-areena01.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Assembly2004-areena01.jpg)

[http://www.ozone3d.net/public/jegx/201308/asm2013.jpg](http://www.ozone3d.net/public/jegx/201308/asm2013.jpg)

<comment><USER33> Oh man, the room full of CRTs brings back so many memories of nights spent playing chicken with a heart attack from the cocktail of energy drinks we consumed in the glow and buzz of CRTs on every surface in the room that could actually support them.

Do you happen to have any more resources about the demoscene community? It's something I've wanted to get into ever since I had my mind blown by a no-cd crack that somehow added a 9 minute high res intro video to a 25k launcher exe.

I guess I'm feeling pretty nostalgic today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Growing up, my way to make money for the summer was playing RTS games competitively at LAN parties and regional/national tournaments - way before e-sports were a thing outside of South Korea.

I met people from the internet at big LAN parties, I got introduced to the demoscene, wargames / CTFs and a whole lot of other things that shaped my career; I even ended up dating girls from that world.

Is there anything equivalent to the old internet cafe for kids these days? Or (active) IRC channels, for the matter.

<comment><USER35> Yes. Come to Defcon and/or QuakeCon in the US. There are others around the world, but I'm assuming you're in the US. It all still exists and young people are still into it. The tech scene is just huge now so this stuff is kinda considered niche / underground, but it's still definitely a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm so glad to have been a part of this (short) era. Video games and junk food from sunset to sunrise with a bunch of people connected by CAT5 cables! While technology makes things easier and more convenient, sometimes the effort and lack of accessibility leaves better memories.

</comment><comment><USER37> In middle school, I helped organize a weekly "computer club" that met after hours in a school computer lab. It quickly degenerated into a giant Starcraft lan party every week, and became much more popular as a result.

In early high school, I played a lot of Tribes 1 (with some mod that I don't remember the name of) and Aliens vs Predator.

In later high school, CS 1.6 and Deus Ex multiplayer, still with Starcraft mixed in.

In college, it was "flavor of the month". We had a crazy file-sharing network, so the common in-dorm games switched around all the time. Warcraft 3, Counterstrike, Halflife 2-based mods, various open source FPSes, tons of Halo 2+3, and locally-hosted WoW servers are what stick in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER38> I loved lan parties. I hated moving my 17" CTX crt monitor to them. It was as deep as it was wide and must have weighed damn near 40 pounds.

The future ain't all bad.

<comment><USER39> I had a 19" CRT which was terrifying to transport. Later I met a friend in college with a insane 21" CRT. Transporting that thing was like a proper move.

<comment> jon-wood I had a big 21" CRT that would go to LAN parties with me. It took me and a friend to move it, and it once broke the table it was put down on with its weight.

Amazing monitor though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> When I was a senior in high school, Cisco offered their NetAcademy program to a few high schools around the nation. It was a pretty sweet deal: for a relatively small price, you could earn your CCNA as an optional elective. You had to get approval to take the class; basically, the 10 of us were the most technically minded and computer literate students in the school.

So, of course within a few weeks many of us were staying after school to use the top-of-the-line (circa 1999) computer equipment to play games. :) Half Life and the various mods (particular Action Half Life [0]) were favorites. Even the teacher eventually got in on the fun.

"You shot me! If you shoot me again I'll fail you!"

A lot of times a few folks would come over to my house in the evenings because we had a blazing fast (again, circa 1999) 128k ISDN line in the house, supposedly to do "homework" but really gaming, surfing the web, playing MUDs. Sometimes we'd kick on a movie like Army of Darkness while gaming.

Such great memories and an awesome time to be alive. I still keep up with a few folks from back then but I'd love to know what happened to everyone else.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Half- Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Half-Life)

<comment><USER41> Same timeframe, my highschool in Arizona was one of the first netacademy programs. Your stories sound just like my stories, isdn included. Something about that time just had this fresh, wild frontier feeling to it when it came to computers. I miss it often.

I credit so much to the head of the computer dept, and industry guy who left the industry and was teaching us kids, but kept his industry contacts. I consider him my mentor, because he taught me the power of curiosity and tinkering.

One of my favorite stories when I first started netacademy, we would do capture the flags in a big circle of routers and wires, and one day in the middle he walked over and switched physical connections and said "the rules today didnt say anything about physical security" and walked away. 16 year old mind blown.

Did you do VICA competitions too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I really got emotional when I first read the article. LAN parties were that epic moment when you felt you were part of something new, we were initiating the new socialization process we are all now accustomed to. Nerds kind of disappeared in my mind

</comment><comment><USER43> Oh how I hated to set up the network: We've usually gathered around saturday morning, everybody hauling up their gear and waving their parents goodbye. The oldes guy in our group had removed all network cards from the PCs at his office and we spend the next six hours installing the network, hooking up BNC cables, trying to get the IPX to work, executing all kind of arcane rituals in order to get the games to work.

Later on network cards got cheaper so we had our cards pre-installed. Still the expensive 3com cards didn't mix well with the cheapest Planet ones. (We had to keep the cheap cards on one side of the BNC part and the the others on the other side...)

Ethernet was a godsend.

A couple of years later Laptops made spontaneous LAN parties possible. I wouldn't wanna go back.

</comment><comment><USER44> This was even before LAN parties became a thing, but I still remember playing 'hunt' (IIRC) on pre-Solaris Sun 3/50 workstations in the math department computer lab.

Nothing quite like those slime bombs.

Found a bit more on this impossible to search for game: [http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/255131/the-internet-s- forgott...](http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/255131/the-internet-s-forgotten- games/7?backTo=255131)

And: [http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/bird/hunt/](http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/bird/hunt/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I sometimes wonder whether hackathons are in some way an evolution of the LAN party (or the demo party).

It does depend a lot on the hackathon - many these days are very business- oriented. :(

...but there are still some where people show up just to experiment with technology - to prototype something quickly and understand whether a technical idea has potential and where the dragons are.

(These are definitely my favourite hackathons. If anyone knows of any like this around London, let me know. I'm hopeful that [http://www.hackthesenses.com/](http://www.hackthesenses.com/) might be one!)

</comment><comment><USER46> Like the author's group of friends, mine has stopped throwing LAN parties. I think our last ones were around early WoW time.

However, large LAN parties are far from being dead. There's Dreamhack and the like, and my alma mater runs a huge 2000+ players LAN event every year ([https://lanets.ca/](https://lanets.ca/)). It seems like it's become more of a grand event, as opposed to the couple times a year gathering with a handful of friends.

As a guy in his late 20s, it's really interesting to see how gaming has evolved and democratized itself during the past couple decades.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems the spirit here is more smaller events, but we still run a 720-864 person event every 3 months here in Perth, Western Australia

www.rflan.org

<comment><USER48> That's a peculiarly specific range...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We still get together to play a variety of games from AOE2 to CS to BFBC2. The last time we got together we had way too much fun with Blockstorm which is like Minecraft meets Quake.

I remember Doom, Decent, and Aces of the Pacific were popular too.

<comment><USER49> Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft, great times :)

<comment><USER29> The first time I played StarCraft was on a Friday afternoon at my new job. It was an insurance company that had all their PCs on a 10/100 network and the owner and head of IT coaxed people into playing so they could have a frag fest. I still hate that game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> My old highschool colleagues and I still meet once a year for a LAN party. Still playing the same old games like Quake, UT and Enemy territory. Last year I flew extra from New Zealand to Austria. And it was worth it.

</comment><comment><USER51> > The LAN party, where you and six mates cram yourself into a dining room for > a weekend, hook up your PCs with a complex series of switches, routers and > CAT9 cables, somehow became quite the thing.

What is a CAT9 cable?

<comment><USER52> No idea, I remember playing around with 10-base-t coax a few times...

<comment><USER53> To clarify vt240's reply: If you were playing with coax, that would have been 10base-2. 10base-T is twisted pair Cat3 cable that used the same 8P8C connectors we use today.

<comment><USER54> Sorry. Just to mention it is going to give me nightmares about big AUI media converters sticking out, loose, not fitting right, falling off, ahahhaa. Novell Netware. Tree. Booting from floppy disks. ISA Cards!

<comment><USER55> [http://genecatlow.keenspot.com/d/20000721.html](http://genecatlow.keenspot.com/d/20000721.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> True story circa late 1990s:

As a high school student in a religious affiliated private college prep environment, the Senior/Junior class members could be a part of a nearly "free study" computer course, contingent on acting as the school's basic IT resource. I was among a team of about 6 total, and we were very close knit. There was a 'brother' who ran the computer lab, about 30 networked PCs, and along a back wall, we had our array of about 7 machines on a separate network.

So what did we do with our unchecked, unmonitored machines?

Installed Duke Nukem 3D, natch!

When the Brother eventually noticed we were playing against each other instead of, you know, doing work related stuff, he came over and the discussion went as follows:

"Hey I don't think you guys are supposed to be playing games."

"It's okay Brother J, we wrote this one."

"Oh! Wow, that's pretty good. Okay then."

Not sure who it was who threw that Hail Mary but it landed and we couldn't believe it.

...and that, ladies and gentlemen, is but a sliver of my life that would eventually be dominated by Half-Life until finally putting down the mouse for a guitar pick once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER57> The most epic multiplayer Starcraft game I ever played was still on the Blood Bath map. We mined out everything, and when my battlecruisers tried to attack my friend's base, he stole them using his dark archon's mind control. Total battle of attrition.

Thomas, kudos to you for being able to play 2 different Starcraft games at the same time on battle.net and win!

<comment><USER58> Blood Bath was an awesome map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Some of my best memories are LAN parties. I've spent many times more time playing online with strangers, but it's so not the same.

\- In my early days at a major chip manufacturer, they used to allow people to use the demo hardware. We'd come in on a Saturday and play Age of Empires for the entire day, on state-of-the-art machines. It's still a major talking point among that group of friends.

\- The alternative history provided by Civilization games is more vivid than actual history. I still talk about the strategy of building a discrete city on Svalbard (looking forward to nukes), which my Europe-dominating friend discovered to his chagrin. Him and the other guy I was playing with were my best men.

\- Another group of friends was cemented when someone's parents were out for a week, leaving the whole house to a dozen or so guys. Counterstrike and AoE seemed to balance out who got to win. Which is good, because I was getting murdered a bit too often by the younger kids.

</comment><comment><USER60> My first LAN gaming experience was during the last 30 minutes of a double- period computer class on Fridays in São Paulo when our teacher let us play Doom in the school's computer lab. This was in 1994 or 1995. I also used those machines to send my first email to a girl I had a crush on who lived on another continent.

I also remember many evenings playing [Space War][1] on an IBM machine with a friend and waking up at 6am to play [Sopwith][2] before heading to school when sleeping over another friend's place.

[1]: [http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2006/06/spacewar/](http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2006/06/spacewar/) [2]: [http://www.sopwith.org/](http://www.sopwith.org/)

</comment><comment><USER61> Okay, anybody connect two Windows 95 PCs together via serial port to play Warcraft II? That was 10 year old me!

<comment><USER62> Serial was a bit tricky to get synced as I recall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Oh the memories. My first "lan" party was in my parents garage right after Quake 1 came out. We had two computers connected with a null modem adapter, since neither of us could afford network cards. Everyone took turns playing 1v1 games.

My best friend and I got our first apartment when we were still in High School, which ended up turning into an almost 24/7 lan party. Friends would find space for their PC's and leave them there for weeks, dropping by to play games when they had the time. One weekend we had so many people, there were two PCs setup on the kitchen counter. Internet access? A socks proxy letting everyone share our 33.6 dialup connection.

</comment><comment><USER64> Just going to pitch in Diablo 1&2 and Myth: the Fallen Lords and Myth 2: Soulblighter.

So many hours.

<comment><USER65> Mmm... Myth aka revenge of the pyromaniac dwarf sappers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> These days I like the sub-LAN, a.k.a. calling 1→3 friends to enjoy Steam couch party games supporting 2→4 xbox controllers. Here's my selection, sorted from most to least approachable to non-gamers and marking with * my personal long- time gamer favorites:

* Gang Beasts, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/285900/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/285900/)

* Nidhogg, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/94400/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/94400/)

* Hidden in Plain Sight, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/)

* Mario Kart Wii, non-Steam, played on www.dolphin-emu.org

\- Sportsfriends, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/277850/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/277850/)

\- B.U.T.T.O.N., [http://store.steampowered.com/app/92400/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/92400/)

\- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/)

\- Kalimba, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/324140/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/324140/)

\- Mount Your Friends, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/296470/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/296470/)

\- Starwhal, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/263020/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/263020/)

* Lethal League, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/)

* Clusterpuck 99, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/337960/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/337960/)

\- Broforce, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/274190/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/274190/)

\- Crawl, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/293780/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/293780/)

* TowerFall Ascension, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/251470/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/251470/)

\- Monaco, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/113020/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/113020/)

\- Blur, [http://store.steampowered.com/video/42640/5707](http://store.steampowered.com/video/42640/5707)

\- Distance, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/233610/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/233610/)

\- Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/212480/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/212480/)

* A Fistful of Gun, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/229810/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/229810/)

\- Jamestown, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/94200/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/94200/)

\- Sky Force Anniversary, [http://store.steampowered.com/app/355050/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/355050/)

<comment><USER67> Same here. I feel couch co-op is really having a small revival the last years.

You should try Duck Game!

<comment><USER66> Duck Game is good! Buuuut although funnier, not as gameplay-rich as TowerFall IMHO :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Oh man this takes me back. I remember lugging steel case builds and CRTs around to many 2-3 day cs 1.6 LAN parties in high school. So many cases of bawls were consumed; so much time was spent sitting in #findscrim

</comment><comment><USER69> The author mentions software piracy but I think other varieties were often a driving force. Nowadays with good legitimate digital music/video/software services there's much less need for that.

In-person gaming is still something special, but I don't blame people for not going to all the logistical effort when you can just sit down at home in the evening with zero pre-planning and get most of the same experience online.

</comment><comment><USER70> I had a resurgence of the LAN party while in Iraq (07/08): the internet access was sufficiently slow, so we played C&C Generals quite a bit.

<comment><USER71> CnC generals was the best! Those chinese mammoth tanks were pretty OP though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I remember lan parties fondly. In the late 90's I worked as a computer lab technician. After closing all the lab techs would get together to play games. The most fun was playing DOOM with a 3 screen setup (Left,Center,Right) with 3 PCs per person. A sort of poor man's VR.

Those days are long gone but so very fondly remembered.

</comment><comment><USER73> We still do LAN parties once in a while.

Much easier today with laptops, haha.

But yeah, I remember the times back then, when we had to carry our PCs around town.

Always the guy with the 21" CRT that weighted a ton.

I was a cool guy when getting one of the first 17" TFTs :D

We also organised bigger events. Once a party for 500 people, with competitions and whatnot.

Yeah but now I don't do this big stuff anyore...

</comment><comment><USER62> Setup was always such a time consuming pain. Just tonight I tried to co-op a retro game which still went bad despite two (modern) source ports and hours of tweaking.

Steam can help--for a price.

Back in the day the first LANs I attended also took hours of preparation in the school AV lab. Still, being in person was interesting.

Consoles with split screen make it so much easier.

</comment><comment><USER74> Wow, this thread is full of terms and experiences I had long forgotten: IPX/SPX, null model, T plugs and their terminators, trying to make computers "see each other", hauling around CRT monitors (oh, how I envied the guy with the 21" Triniton!) and backpacks full of cables!

Nice times :)

</comment><comment><USER75> I used to play Warcraft II in LAN parties during college.

But now I play Euro board games... JUST AS GOOD! Agricola anyone?

</comment><comment><USER76> This brings back so many good memeories. Back to middle school when we had monthly LANS playing Counter-Strike and DOTA. Then to fill in the time between LAN parties we'd frequently go the LAN center next to our school.

</comment><comment><USER77> Ugh, those things were always so gross. I don't understand why liking computers is so correlated with, well.... hygiene issues.

</comment><comment><USER78> Awesome timing: I am hosting a LAN party in two weeks, and I'd really love to hear as many tips and suggestion as you HNers can give me.

Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER79> Depends on the size. IMHO parties ~10-20 people are the best. If you go bigger, it gets more complicated and anonymous. Didn't like those very much.

For a run-of-the-mill LAN you don't need much. Make sure there's

* enough chairs

* enough tables

* enough drinks, food

* enough power outlets (know where the fuse is)

* possibility to shade the windows

* somewhere to sit and chat without necessarily gaming

* possible sleeping quarters?

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Anybody remember Snipes on the old Novell LANs?

<comment><USER81> Yes! The first company foolish enough to employ me as a junior dev would have Snipes games on Friday afternoons between anyone who wasn't fielding a customer support call.

Sometimes I would be on the phone to someone while navigating around the maze trying to bounce a few stars round the corners at people - and then have to explain what the screams were in the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Ah, back when gaming was fun :-) Best gaming I ever had was back at university where we rented out a floor of the student union, setup 8 bitchin' PCs in each of two separate rooms, wired it all together with a huge projector in the central room, and invited players from all over the state for a 16-team bracket playoff of Quake 1 CTF. That was a hell of a good weekend.

</comment><comment><USER83> NetTrek in the high school computer lab was way too much fun.</comment>


A special report on debt: Repent at leisure - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16397110?story_id=16397110 <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the old software engineering maxim "All problems can be solved with another layer of indirection - except too many layers of indirection."

Debt is not all that much unlike a layer of indirection - it's basically a pointer to the debtor who's _actually_ doing something with your money. And just like a heavily-layered Java program, it's often difficult to figure out exactly where the work is getting done. Add enough layers of indirection, and it's possible to have the appearance of a very complex system where no real work is getting done at all.

Maybe the financial crisis and associated bailouts were the equivalent of throwing out the old codebase and starting anew. "We don't understand the system anymore, so, err, let's throw it all out and rewrite everything!" With all the associated loss of institutional learning.

<comment><USER3> I like your analogy, so I'll extend and maybe fix it.

The economy is like a heavily layered enterprise Java program, where little useful work is performed by lots and lots of expensive layers of abstractions. There are so many abstractions that virtually nobody understands the program or where problems come from.

The bailout is _not_ equivalent to throwing out the old codebase and starting anew. Just the opposite, it's the government saying do not abondon the old codebase, here's a $800 billion dollars, hire another 10.000 Java programmers to maintain it. If the government would let you abondon the old codebase, all the programmers who had jobs maintaining it would be unemployed, which is political suicide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems to me that debt is virtually a necessity created by prosperity: otherwise, the folks with all the capital end up with very lumpy mattresses. Take the Japanese government debt (please!): the reason they're able to sustain such a staggering amount of it is that the debt is owned mostly by older Japanese folks who spent a few decades with savings rates in the 20% plus region.

I'd be more worried about pissing spending away than about debt-financed spending, per se. ($20k to get a degree, OK, $240k to get a master's degree in traditional dance... well, I hope you marry well. Buying houses on credit, OK, asset bubbles a little less OK. Constantly increasing QOL caused by expanding public services, ambivalence, capture of budgeting process by public service unions less OK.)

<comment><USER5> It sounds great when you keep debt and lending in zero-sum. Problem is, the numbers don't add up anymore, and they haven't been for quite some time.

<comment><USER6> What? Of course they do. For every dollar borrowed, a dollar is lent. U.S. debt is financed through the sale of Treasury bonds, for example. And for each bond sold there is a real investor on the other end who paid actual money for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any way to escape? What depresses me is that I really don't like the spending habits of my government (Germany). Already the "theoretical debt" (what the government owes per working citizen) I have is higher than what I own. I don't have any hopes of it getting any better.

The problem is that the government can just confiscate everything I own to pay off their debts with my belongings, so saving or investing does not seem to provide a way out.

By the time it might happen, I'll probably be too old to build something new. Otherwise I would say investing in skills would be a good idea (after the breakdown, capable people will still be in demand). Social networks might be good, too.

Gold? But I don't really like it, as in theory it is useless. And the government will try to seize it, too. The logistics of hiding gold somewhere make it impractical.

<comment><USER8> In Sweden we had our crash in the early 90s. The government was forced to borrow huge amounts of money but after a few rough years cleaning up the balance sheet the economy recovered.

We now have probably the strongest balance sheet in Europe.

Of course a weakened krona fueled the export sector in the late 90s, a luxury the euro countries don't have but still, recovery can be surprisingly fast if you avoid the fate of Japan.

<comment><USER9> Would you elaborate on how Swedes save and invest? I'm curious about behaviors of investors and savers in economies that don't seem to be on the brink of death.

<comment><USER8> Taxes in Sweden are extremely high so people tend not to save but rather rely on the government helping them out if things go south. You can probably find all the stats you need here: <http://www.scb.se/default____2154.aspx>

One thing to note is that the real estate market has not crashed in Sweden (yet) as in most other countries. Prices are high so this can still happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but I was disappointed. This article seem to promise a lot, but then peter out at the end without coming to a strong conclusion.

One little image I did like was government debt as a ponzi scheme based on population growth. If population starts to decline, we'll need some fundamental changes to the economic system.

<comment><USER11> _If population starts to decline, we'll need some fundamental changes to the economic system._

It's actually worse than that, since it's not the population as a whole, but, rather, the productive, working-age population.

The US (and perhaps the "West" as a whole) is already on the precipice, if not already tipping over, with Baby Boomers hitting retirement age. Even when the more patent Ponzi scheme of Social Security collapses, it won't solve the underlying economic problem, that so few will have to support so many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From all angles the situation manifests itself as a gridlock. The article seems to have very concretely taken the harrowing position that the future is either default or inflation.

Now, let's consider the average American Joe in this new world. Things are looking pretty grim for him -- corporations are inevitably looking forward to even more automation (as opposed to manual labor), because it's in their best interest, so as far as I see, there just aren't going to be very many jobs for the larger majority of the people in the times ahead.

What then?

By application of the original position, a radical rethinking of the fundamentals of governing bodies and economic systems is called for. Unlike centuries ago, when all mechanical work had to have been purely supplied by the raw muscles of humans, we now have technology. We can do so, so much more than we could have imagined with only a limited amount of man's mechanical power. We are actually in a very technical sense within our capability to feed every hungry mouth in the world today. And by any reasonable ethical framework, this free capability absolutely bounds to service this obligation.

Thoughts? And please go easy on me here, these are just the late-night musings of a 21st century youngin. ;)

<comment><USER13> > Things are looking pretty grim for him -- corporations are inevitably > looking forward to even more automation (as opposed to manual labor), > because it's in their best interest, so as far as I see, there just aren't > going to be very many jobs for the larger majority of the people in the > times ahead.

> Thoughts? And please go easy on me here, these are just the late-night > musings of a 21st century youngin. ;)

A couple thoughts. The first is that your top idea - "automation is coming, people are screwed" has been popular since the Industrial Revolution. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was about automation. The term "Luddite" to refer to a technologically-unsavvy person came from this group:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite>

They actually attacked, broke, and destroyed automatic machinery. They're worth reading about.

The reality is, automating things let humans get on to more and more interesting things. Being afraid of automation is like being afraid of Ruby and Python because now what will coders in C do? In reality, automating/streamling/improving one area of business opens opportunities for new things to do. Not too long ago, society was comprised of between 60% and 80% farmers - without machinery and automation, we'd be ploughing fields right now instead of discussing on Hacker News.

As long as any human wants or needs are unfilfilled, there's a capacity for almost unlimited amounts of work. And we're nowhere close to automating/obsoleting things - today's manufacturing and shipping is going to look pretty primitative in 100-150 years. I won't hazard a guess of when it'll become available, but this is one of the most exciting new areas that'll come to bear in not-too-long:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_engineering>

<comment><USER14> Hmm, I am reminded of that (dreadful) Star Trek movie where one of the characters says "we believe when you create a machine to do the work of a man you steal something from that man" (or something like that). So wrongheaded that I barely even know where to start, yet it seems that many people did and do really believe it. Of course it's only true if the "value" you create consists only of holding people to ransom. But that's not the way honest folk do business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a useful interactive feature from the article that lets you look at various countries' debt over time and by type -- financial, government, household, etc.): [http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2010/06/indebtedne...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2010/06/indebtedness_after_financial_crisis)

Particularly interesting to me is the variation in debt mix amongst countries (click on the headers at the top of the image) and the changes over time (click on the countries on the map).

<comment><USER16> Yes, thanks. That was very interesting.

It also made me wonder. Looking at the UK, the largest proportion of debt was 'financial', which I assume is debt owned by businesses operating in the financial sector.

If so, is this even a bad thing? For example, does a hedge fund (which borrows large amounts of money to amplify it's wins and losses) naturally have a large "base" debt? Does a large financial sector just mean large financial debt as a matter of course?

UK household debt is also high. I'd expect a significant part of this to be mortgages. The combination of the culture of home-ownership (as opposed to renting) and high property prices (small island, lots of people) leads most people into a long-term mortgage quite early (and has for a long time).

Does that mean the UK's position isn't perhaps as bad as the "overall" graph paints it?

<comment><USER17> As far as I understand it there is no fundamental reason why a hedge fund has to take on any debt at all - just that the investment strategies they often employ actually have very small returns so to make the overall returns to investors attractive they often borrow (or used to) large multiples of investors capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't be comforted by the _Debt as a % of GDP_ figures. The GDP is a washy figure that shouldn't be relied on; it can easily be overstated. And just like with a person, the big question is future income -- whether a country can pay back that debt as things change.

Germany and Switzerland have similar debt levels to the U.S., but the former two are going to do fine; I wish I could be so confident of the latter.

<comment><USER19> How so? What kind of productive capacity does Switzerland have? Their have cheese, watches and cuckoo's clocks. And the finance industry obviously, but only because of their secrecy towards the tax agencies of other countries, which is going to go away in the next decade or so. So what kind of logical reasoning can lead to the conclusion that a country whose only asset is a bunch of mountains where people can ski is going to fare so much better than a country that has everything it needs to be self-sufficient (arable land, oil and other resources, 2 coasts, the most advanced technology in the world, a huge work force), plus a government that actually supports rather than just pays lip service to capitalism, the only system proven to lead to economic prosperity?

(I'm not an American and I won't say that all that the US does is great and fine but come on, if you're going to make outrageous statements you'll have to at least back them up a little, especially on a site where (I hope) people pride themselves on their rationality).

<comment><USER18> I am American and it's not outrageous, just not (yet) conventional wisdom. Switzerland has banking and stability. That will soon come at a premium. It has self-sustaining energy and perfect transportation systems. This will all be very valuable in the near future.

Sure the US has arable land. It has oil. The problem is, it doesn't have enough oil. (You probably weren't around in the 1970's, but there was a big crisis as America switched to depending foreign oil and OPEC took advantage.) It's been a net importer ever since. Two coasts? Really? Greece has more. It's not going to help them. The most advanced technology? That's China.

In fact, China and oil are the big elephants in the room. I can happily write more about why, if you're interested.

 _a government that actually supports rather than just pays lip service to capitalism, the only system proven to lead to economic prosperity_

Sweden is doing much better than America by every account and it's Socialist.

<comment><USER19> I don't quite know where to begin, so I'll have to default to a point-by-point approach I'm afraid, sorry about that.

\- How can banking 'soon come at a premium'? Like I said, the only appealing quality of Swiss banking is its secrecy, and that is going away fast. How are Swiss banks going to be of any use to anyone that is not Swiss without their bank secret? It's a closed country, hard to reach, with no natural or other resources.

\- Yes it's stable, but how is it any more stable than any other Western country? Besides like I already said it's very closed (the stability and closedness are intertwined, of course) - its internal stability has little value to anyone but the Swiss themselves.

\- No the US doesn't have enough oil for its own use - my point is that at least it has some. I was contrasting it with Switzerland which has nothing (no offense to Swiss readers, I love hiking in your mountains so thanks for that ;) )

\- You coastline argument is a red herring. A country that is basically a bunch of islands with irregular coastlines will of course have more coasts (but Greece has only a bit more than the US). Amount of kilometers of coastline is just a proxy for how much exploitable sea area that represents, and how much access it provides to the rest of the world for trade purposes, and the US crushes Greece on both accounts.

\- Advanced technology: to paraphrase Charles Babbage (badly), "I'm unable to comprehend the level of confusion that could lead to such statements". Despite the sensationalist reporting and the high growth rates of China (and the rest of Asia) over the last 2 decades, China is still effectively a third world country. Its R&D capacity is below Western level and production capacity is highly concentrated in low-tech mass manufacturing like steel, clothing and electronics assembly. If you are serious in claiming that the Chinese have overtaken the West in technological development you'll have to come with proof of such claims, considering that all measures that would reasonably be used for such statements (GDP, R&D budgets, production in high-tech sectors, origin and ownership of leaders in the field, ...) solidly point to the US as world leader (with the EU as a second).

\- I'm not sure what you're comparing by. GDP and consumption power are lower in Sweden, unemployment roughly equal, debt (as a ratio to GDP) is only a little bit below the US, and to get out of the near-bankruptcy state that Sweden was in in the early 2000's they had to significantly raise taxes yet cut in benefits. Not sure where you're going with this but Scandinavia being so much better is not a closed case as you try to make it seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Since Earth is not borrowing money from Mars, does the debt explosion really matter, or is it just an accounting device?_

To me, this has always been the most crucial question to any discussino of "debt," but I don't believe the article actually answered it[1].

Perhaps more to the point, I don't believe I've encountered a concise explanation as to _how_ debt, particularly sovereign debt, affects the real[2] worldwide economy.

Would a country go to war over a sovereign default?

[1] The section heading is "Why It Matters," so it's not really hiding that it's begging the question.

[2] i.e. human behavior as it applies to production and trade

</comment><comment><USER20> It's worth reading a history of Usury if you're interested in more on the history and morality of debt.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury>

<comment><USER21> Not sure it was correct, but it's interesting how much of the focus traditionally was on the lending side of the equation, whereas today it's mostly on the borrowing side. Today people will look disapprovingly on someone who borrows more than they can repay, but traditionally people would look disapprovingly on someone who lent to someone who couldn't repay it. Regular debt amnesties every N years also seem to have been a common traditional feature, making it impossible for debt to persist beyond short-term loans (and discouraging lending to someone who you weren't _very_ sure was going to repay it soon).

It does seem that approach has some structural benefits, in that it doesn't produce long-term webs of debt that will never actually be resolved, but with everyone carrying on as if they will. Forcing a debt reset every 7 years or 20 years or whatever keeps things somewhat honest, making sure people are really talking about assets they have, as opposed to assets they supposedly are promised but will in reality never get.

<comment><USER22> I think you are confusing two separate issues. One is the probability of debt repayment, and the other is debt lifetime. The two are not necessarily related.

Payday loans have a relatively low level of debt repayment (necessitating high interest rates) and also a very low debt lifetime (days to months). In contrast, many AAA corporate and govt bonds have long lifetimes and high repayment rates (until recently, mortgages did as well). There are also low repayment probability, long term debts (subprime mortgages) and high probability, short term debt (commercial paper).

I don't think debt lifetime is that important a factor. Long term debt makes sense to finance long term investments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Falling property prices caused defaults and a liquidity crisis in the banking system so severe that the authorities feared the cash machines would stop working."

Wow, that can happen? Wouldn't that mean that no one would have any money but the people who have kept cash and rather than a 1930s style depression, more of outright anarchy!</comment>


Ruby 1.9.3-p385 is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2013/02/06/ruby-1-9-3-p385-is-released/

<comment><USER2>
        echo "--no-ri --no-rdoc" >> ~/.gemrc

install every gem much faster, avoid rdoc vulnerabilities. Since gem installation can run arbitrary code, I am suspicious of rdoc xss vulnerabilities being a cause for concern (if you are not running a publicly- accessible gem documentation site...)

<comment> why-el This will run these options for _every_ gem command though. Better restrict it to install and update.

<comment><USER3> Like so:

        install: --no-rdoc --no-ri
        update:  --no-rdoc --no-ri

<comment><USER4> Also add --env-shebang so that you don't get stupid shebang lines which lock you to a specific interpreter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Generation of Music Using Pure JS and HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/labs/2j1pofsj/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's __MY CODE __, mate. Maybe give some credit, eh?

Edit: Looks like OP just borrowed my note array.. which I in turn borrowed from Aphex twin, so no harm done... :)

Also, it isn't working 100% in Chrome, the sampling rate is probably wrong.

You can check out my example Here: <http://valdemarorn.github.com/Files/JSAudio/index.html>

Anyway, Riffwave was posted here yesterday, and I posted a similar example I did with WebAudioAPI. Basically, it's that code that OP has adapted to fit into RiffWave.

My code can be found here: [https://github.com/ValdemarOrn/valdemarorn.github.com/tree/m...](https://github.com/ValdemarOrn/valdemarorn.github.com/tree/master/Files/JSAudio)

<comment><USER3> Yes the notes sequence and the base frequency algorithm is yours and I notified you about using it here. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4561565>

I am sorry for not giving credit to you on the main page.

Edit: BTW, what is wrong with the sampling frequency? I think 44KHz is sufficient and it's working fine on my Chrome. A fork maybe?

<comment><USER2> No problem, I was just a little surprised when I saw it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked at the JS over here <http://codebase.es/riffwave/riffwave.js> and find this line

         this.dataURI = 'data:audio/wav;base64,'+FastBase64.Encode(this.wav);

(edit... more accurately the whole RIFFWAVE function blows my mind)

Really quite revolutionary (in terms of my understanding)... I already knew about making JPEGS etc, so this makes perfect sense but just seeing him build all the headers for a wav file in memory then "spit it out" to the page is stunning.

Kudos, Bravo, Standing slow clap, etc...

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> That distortion you're hearing is because of sharp changes in your signal's amplitude. To get rid of it, you should apply a little bit of smoothing to the attack and release of individual notes.

<comment><USER6> A little ADSR envelope and one smidgen of FM synthesis helps...

    		var data = [],
    			sampleRateHz = 44100,
    			lengthInSeconds = 8,
    			sampleCount = sampleRateHz * lengthInSeconds,

    			//Notes sequence, play with it ;)
    			notes = [87, 0, 87, 0, 85, 0, 82, 0, 80, 0, 82, 82, 80, 0, 82, 0, 85, 0, 78, 0, 78, 78],

    			noteLength = sampleCount / notes.length,

    			//Base Frequency based on the notes
    			baseFreq = function(index) {
    				var r = 2 * Math.PI * 220.0 * Math.pow(2,(notes[index]-69)/12.0) / sampleRateHz;
    				return r;
    			},

    			envelope = function(offset, attack, decay, sustain, release) {
    				if (offset <= attack) {
    					return offset / attack
    				}
    				offset -= attack;
    				if (offset <= decay) {
    					var prop = offset / decay;
    					return 1 + prop * (sustain - 1);
    				}
    				offset -= decay;
    				var susLen = 1 - (attack + decay + release);
    				if (offset <= susLen) {
    					return sustain;
    				}
    				offset -= susLen;
    				return sustain * (1 - offset / release);
    			};

    	//Fill up the sound data!!
    	for(var j = 0; j < sampleCount; j++) {
    		var currNote = Math.round(j/noteLength);
    		var currFreq = baseFreq(currNote);
    		var sample = currFreq * j + 0.5 * Math.sin(currFreq * j * 1.21);
    		var offset = (j % noteLength) / noteLength;
    		var amp = envelope(offset, 0.05, 0.01, 0.5, 0.75);
    		data[j] = 128 + Math.round(96 * amp * Math.sin(sample));
    	}

<comment><USER3> this helped a LOT! I created a fork just to test and the sound was definitely awesome! <http://cssdeck.com/labs/5atlvhph/0>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm at a conference, so I can't listen to it, but I made something kind of similar that responds to touch events:

<http://jlongster.com/s/touch.html#notes>

Requires Web Audio API. I talked about it here: <http://jlongster.com/2012/09/12/web-apps.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> This rules. The other weekend I was feeling curious and started a little project to see what it takes to get up and running doing basic audio synthesis: <https://github.com/nicolasmiller/bleeper>. I got distracted with some other stuff, but the goal is to compile examples in as many languages/environments as possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> If implementing every effect out there by yourself becomes tedious, you might wanna give audiolib.js a shot: <https://github.com/jussi- kalliokoski/audiolib.js> , it's an audio effects library I've been building for 2 years now. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really neat! I wonder if this would be a smaller file/render size to implement over a normal audio file for HTML5 games. If so, I'm sure with a bit of work, you could make a cool "8 bit sounding" theme song for your game!

</comment><comment><USER11> web audio api also does help.. for instance <https://github.com/dashersw/pedalboard.js>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome.. thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fun and educational. Reminds me of those first experiments with music creation on 8-bit BASIC machines.

</comment><comment><USER13> This should make it easier to make a pure js NES emulator. We have sprites/canvas/webgl, and this level of audio fits perfectly.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that this lets you generate a buffer, and when you're done with that, play it back, but it doesn't let you push blocks of audio continually while previous blocks play. That will be necessary for any real-time audio application like NES emulation. Ultimately, this should be solved with the Web Audio API, but so far that appears to implemented in Firefox/Chrome/Safari, and only partly in those. I can see a Flash shim being useful there.

Now, in the mean time, I do have an idea of how this might be implemented on top of Riffwave.js, but it's iffy. The problem is that while the HTML5 audio element does have some events that tell you about playback status, we cannot possibly rely on JS events (or the placement of new audio tags) to give us the temporal granularity needed for audio timing. If you mistime the beginning of one block from the end of the previous block by half a millisecond, you'll hear an audible pop.

So one possible solution would be to crossfade blocks, using an overlap period on the same order as your timing uncertainty. In the cleverest implementation, the timing uncertainty would be continually measured and the overlap size would be adapted to be as low as possible.

But that's not a perfect solution. It would ameliorate the problem, but it would also introduce its own artifacts. For example, if you have a 440 Hz sine wave playing, and one block is offset by the next by 1.13 ms, then at the midpoint between two blocks (where each block is at 50% volume), the waves will interfere completely, resulting in a point of silence. The artifact would be _soft_ , but it would still be a problem.</comment></comment>


Fight the hype with this Apple Watch graphic - <AUTHOR> https://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2329

<comment><USER2> I hope this was written by an idealistic teenager and not an adult. 1,4,5 are basically the same issue worded differently.</comment>


Ask HN: Is facial recognition by itself appropriate security? - <AUTHOR> I keep seeing these articles where people can unlock phones and other devices using printouts or 3D models of a persons head.  [1]  It seems to me that your head is a "thing you have" and you should also need a "thing you know".  Should this be a password, or perhaps a set of gestures?  i.e.  wink, wink, frown smile.<p>[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/12/13/we-broke-into-a-bunch-of-android-phones-with-a-3d-printed-head/ <comment><USER2> I believe the general consensus is that your face is more akin to a username. In combination with a password and a second factor such as text message, facial recognition could provide proper security but not on its own.</comment>


Google Cr-48 Demolition Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool. My suggestion for destruction was for them to send it to me. I get the whole cloud theme, but stop blowing them up already.</comment>


How mutton flaps are killing Tonga - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35346493 <comment><USER2> I studied this topic a bit in a Food & Culture class last semester and this is the first time I've heard of mutton flaps or turkey tails being a likely culprit with regards to obesity in Pacific Islanders.

My understanding is that most experts put it on (a) the introduction of high- sugar/starch/carb processed foods (after all, isn't that where most experts pin obesity now?) and (b) the "Thrifty Gene" theory:

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

<comment><USER3> I noticed the article said that 100g of mutton flaps is around 400 kcal.

If the average Tongan can or will eat 1kg of mutton flaps per day (like the article says) that's insane and definitely a cause of obesity. (Or, at least should be.)

I lift weights 5+ times a week (for about an hour) and if I ate over 4,000 kcals I'd be obese too.

I can't imagine that average Tongan exerts enough energy to make up for eating 4,000 kcals worth of mutton flaps.

<comment><USER4> When I was lifting three times a week and running three times a week I would eat much more than that on an average day. If you're working hard to gain muscle you can consume a surprisingly large caloric intake.

4kcal is about right for an average person on a gain diet. Source: [http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/gain-mass/eat- mass...](http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/gain-mass/eat-massive-get- massive)

At the olympic level some people consume 8kcal/day or more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A little OT...but have mutton flaps reached any level of popularity in bigger nations' cuisines? I'm thinking in terms of pork belly, which used to be a cheap cut of meat but now fetches $10 for a couple of slices in David Chang's New York restaurants. I've never heard of mutton flaps before but if it's that tasty as to wreck a Pacific nation's diet, I wonder if it'll be the next big thing served by Brooklyn food trucks.

<comment><USER6> Doner kebabs are a pretty popular drunk food in the UK and Europe. They're a bit on the fatty/greasy side to be much to my taste while sober usually.

<comment><USER7> They're actually pretty popular non-drunk on the continent - it's a slightly different offering, since back in the UK they tend to be a little bit of a mess while here they tend to be wrapped up neatly in a flatbread.

<comment><USER6> I've had doner meat and chips in a flatbread cone in italy. It was amazing. I was, however, drunk at the time. Guess I'll have to try and get around to trying one sober one day :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Crazy, about 20 years ago I read an article saying turkey tails were probably a huge cause of obesity in pacific islands. Then just now I wondered if I had confused them with mutton flaps...but no. Separate things! And it appears Samoa banned turkey tails in 2007 [0] until their desire to join the WTO _forced_ them to drop the ban completely as of 2016! Insanity.

Seriously, these people are being abused, are they not?

0: [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/14/182568333/sam...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/14/182568333/samoans- await-the-return-of-the-tasty-turkey-tail)

<comment><USER9> > "I know it may seem ironic but fish and native staple foods do cost more > than turkey tails," she says.

> James Sumner, president of the U.S. Poultry and Egg Exporting Council, says > his organization didn't realize they were exporting turkey tails to Samoa > until he learned about the ban.

> And since the late 1990s, the poor island nation of just under 200,000 > people had been trying to join the WTO, hoping to improve its economy with a > gross domestic product of less than $2 billion.

It seems like something that's less "abuse" (at least in the sense that anyone's consciously doing it), and more a result of dirt-cheap imported food in a nation where most people don't have much money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The mutton flap angle is bullshit. Here is the real problem:

> According to Soakai, it's not unusual for a Tongan to eat 1kg of mutton > flaps in one sitting.

<comment><USER11> Their food culture is the problem. Obesity is a massive issue for islander communities in NZ and the country at large, and there are plenty of other cuts of meat available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> nice click bait title, should be "How eating over 1kg of stuff per sitting is killing Tonga".

</comment><comment><USER13> That is a good showcase about how massive caloric surplus leads to obesity no matter the source. They are almost on keto.

<comment><USER14> Almost on keto isn't keto. If they drink a sugary drink with their meal it will completely defeat the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another good reason to stop eating meat altogether. Since I've been vegetarian, and now vegan, I've lost weight, gained energy, and _feel_ so much better. I feel as if my mind is much sharper than it used to be when I ate meat.

This would not only be much healthier for these people (and all people) but it would also be _cheaper_. Examine the logic from any angle you choose, and the solution is quite apparent.

P.S. Yes, I expected the downvotes. But it's still worth speaking up when there is an obvious solution to these kinds of problems...

<comment><USER16> Anecdotal evidence is bad evidence.

I started praying to this cool rock I found, and the moon is in Sagittarius; guess what?! I've lost 5 pounds and am getting performance compliments at work!

<comment><USER15> It's an anecdote from me personally, but there is a large wealth of research that's easy to find on the subject. I encourage you to do more reading if it interests you.</comment></comment></comment>


Face recognition app taking Russia by storm may bring end to public anonymity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte <comment><USER2> _Kabakov says the app could revolutionise dating: "If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request." The interaction doesn't always have to involve the rather creepy opening gambit of clandestine street photography, he added: "It also looks for similar people. So you could just upload a photo of a movie star you like, or your ex, and then find 10 girls who look similar to her and send them messages."_

Sounds like neither of the founders has been on a date lately.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. The latest fad in dating is smell dating

[http://uselesspress.org/things/smell- dating/](http://uselesspress.org/things/smell-dating/)

Waving an electronic nose around is even more inconspicuous. Now you could have an app that would match the current odors smelled around and your state of mind, and automatically match them with a database to point you to people giving you good feelings.

<comment><USER4> Is this from this year's Stupid Hackathon? ([http:////www.stupidhackathon.com/](http:////www.stupidhackathon.com/)) Because it totally could be.

<comment><USER5> Same people involved in both Useless Press and the hackathon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Facebook has the capability to do these types of visual searches internally and they've almost certainly shared some of those tools with the US gov. Remember, Facebook took money from In-Q-Tel (the CIA's VC fund) and have close ties with lots of three letter agencies.

In a way, what's happening in Russia is better for society because it means the general public is aware of the technology and it's implications. Here in the US we presume we have a lot more privacy that we actually do.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of "Right now, your government is doing things you think only other governments do."

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wU92eycwmxY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wU92eycwmxY)

<comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU92eycwmxY#t=3m41s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU92eycwmxY#t=3m41s)

"Right now, our government is doing things we think only other countries do."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This feels like the makings of an off-line equivalent of a supercookie - people that visited X-store must be interested in Y-goods, plus you can cross- ref your customer data with such a database and create a deep profile. You don't need a social network corpus for that, though one would make matching and new customer identification easier.

And unless you are into serious plastic surgery, there isn't really a clear cookies button with this tech.

EDIT: a.k.a. the Minority Report billboard/storefront that changes based on people around it.

Same works for any kind of identification of interests, including political - if your CCTV network captures faces of people who attended an opposition rally, you get to match them to other venues, spot patterns and recognize leaders/organizers.

<comment><USER10> Customer tracking's already a big thing, except for using a personal tracking devices (like mobile phones; based on identifiers their radios scream out loud) instead of facial/gist recognition.

Not to say your favorite taxi or banking app may include some unadvertised extras that _cough_ "improves your customer experience" by enhancing your device screams.

<comment><USER9> As well as apps listening to human-inaudible signals to identify TV content being viewed.

Most of these have some sort of counter-measures, such as being able to turn off features of the phone. The facial thing is both universal and very hard to "disable".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook and Google have been able to do this for years, and you used to be able to also using their platforms.

For Facebook, does anyone remember when they released their auto-tagging feature, it would tag people who weren't your friends too? They quickly removed it when it started auto-tagging random people in pictures you took in public.

For Google, this was an initial feature of one of their mobile apps (I forget which), which they removed because people were creeped out by it.

</comment><comment> awinter-py This will backfire. Institutions (large corps as well as police & intelligence orgs) think they want this information to use for 'precrime' projects and also to use as evidence in court.

However -- bureaucracy has always been vulnerable to its own overreach. An invasive legal system is a tax on productivity & innovation. If laws are society's immune system, an invasive police state is a society with an autoimmune disorder.

Tiny countries that can offer alternative systems will become destinations for a new generation of skilled or wealthy expats. Delaware offers benefits to corporations; Estonia is offering benefits to tech expats; this phenomenon will increase.

<comment><USER12> Was Russia really drawing many foreigners to begin with?

<comment> awinter-py it's not a russia issue, it's an everywhere issue. snowden stuff aside, police just got caught installing automatic listeners in california. texas police are trading license plate capture data to camera makers in exchange for free LPR equipment.

Private companies are using surveillance technology on their employees and on their users.

<comment><USER13> So how will this backfire?

If it's an everywhere issue, then I doubt that it will result in e.g. mass migration towards the few places that won't do it; people have shown in practice that they do not "vote with their feet" (or with revolutions) unless the abuse escalates to either _very_ severe state violence or _very_ severe economic hardship.

Sure, a minority of idealists will do so, but in the thousands, not in the millions. That doesn't matter in the large scale - to do so, it would have to match something like the jewish and other refugee flow from central europe in 1930ies. Currently, for every talented person that would consider leaving USA for political reasons, there are ten or hundred talented people that would rather come to USA for economic reasons, even if their current country doesn't do much or any surveillance.

<comment> awinter-py The primary issue isn't the fact that people will leave, it's their reason for leaving -- surveillance-based policing makes life uncertain and work inefficient. Top-down societies will fail whether or not their innovators jump ship.

Look at the shenzhen special economic zone in china; it evolved into something special because entrepreneurs were able to act without extreme government control at every step.

It's forgiveness vs permission. It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission, i.e. it's more efficient. But surveillance-based law creates a permission society. Opportunities to fail or break the rules are also opportunities to succeed. You can't say 'we're only going to allow you to run the experiments that will work'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My initial thought was that privacy conscious people will begin to partially cover their face, but I can see where technologies like these are headed: given a full body image, they can match height / body mass and reduce the possible number of matches. It could even learn what clothes you wear and match even further. Given a small enough sample, it's won't be that difficult (for a machine) to create a graph of where your possible movements. Scary!

<comment><USER15> Height and weight are dynamic and can be spoofed.

Personal identity is not an exact science, no matter how much we would like it to be, there are always ways to fake it given the right tools.

Consider the roots of the concept: the word "person" originates from the ancient Greek _persona_ , meaning a theatrical mask worn by actors.

Per+sona

Per: that through which

Sona: sound goes

<comment><USER16> Gait is pretty hard to spoof. Maybe people could do it for a short people of time but eventually you fall back into your normal way of walking.

<comment><USER17> Put rocks in your shoes, like the characters in Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" stories.

<comment><USER10> It's plain inconvenient to walk like this.

The problem is, this doesn't scale. While this could be acceptable for a person some may call a "tinfoil-hatter", it's certainly unreasonable to think of general population to walk with rocks in their shoes and heads masked.

So, this doesn't solve the issue.

<comment><USER17> Everyone in the book did and it seemed reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It will be interesting to see how this further affects our society as public anonymity starts really going away. I have been reading The Great Gatsby. There was an interesting moment in the book where Gatsby shows the main character a medal from the war as well as a photo of him in Oxford.

THAT was how he proved that he went to Oxford. Nowadays, if you want to know where someone went to school you'd do a quick search and take the first thing you find. If you are more diligent you'd dig deeper.

It's also very clear that Gatsby treasures his anonymity and the reputation he's built around being mysterious.

The reason I bring this up, is that it represents (in my mind) an indicator that there is an argument to be made that public anonymity has already changed so much in the past 20 years. Granted there were still ways of verifying all of this information before it was just a lot slower.

This post just stirred up some thoughts that I had this morning while reading. The internet more drastically technology have changed our culture so much it's almost impossible to realize the effect.

Just thought I'd share some musings I had this morning that tied into the current topic.

</comment><comment><USER19> Numbers look strange.

500,000 users and 'only' 3m searches ? That's 6 per user - way lower than what I would expect (or one of the numbers is false).

<comment><USER20> 500,000 users =/= 500,000 Active users, I imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this really different from what Face.com offered in 2010? They claimed >90% hit-rate.

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

One nice mashup of that Face.com and Facebook APIs was the "AutomaticDJ": the computer will start playing the favorite music of the person in front of the PC, great for parties:

[https://github.com/gleitz/automaticdj](https://github.com/gleitz/automaticdj)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's going to play out just like in the anti-spam/anti-virus domain. Someone is going to develop a face-CAPTCHArizer service that throws bitmaps at a photo to make life difficult for commonly used face-recognition and feature extraction algorithms.

Upload a photo, toggle a true/false positive control, get your online-safe photo back. Looking forward to an announcement on HN.

</comment><comment><USER23> How do they get the data, is it just because that Russian network allows scraping?

I had an idea like this before, actually I think it might even work with just descriptions (no photographs needed). Like if you see a stranger on a train - you don't need that many bits of information to identify them. But you need the data of all people living in a city...

<comment><USER3> Exactly. For a city with 200,000 people you only need 18 bits. For the whole planet, you only need 33 or 34 bits.

<comment><USER24> But you have to select the bits very carefully for that population. If you're playing "Bitwise Guess Who?" against Moscow's population, there are going to be many combinations of bits that result in zero matches (ethnicity: African, hair color: red, eye color: blue, height: 4 feet) and many combinations of bits that result in many matches (ethnicity: Slavic, hair color: blonde, eye color: blue, height: 5'8")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Glad my decision not to use VKontakte is paying off.

<comment><USER26> Happy VK user here. If this algo can recognize my face in the avatar I use on it (which is a panoramic shot) I will gladly eat my hat.

<comment><USER27> Now I don't know vkontakte, but facebook at least let users tag their photos with who's on them. That should be pretty good training data for a machine learning algorithm, so your profile photo is not necessarily needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> fuck this. services like this one are not some inevitable result of having high technology. if they are, then governments tracking the movements of every citizen with face recognizing security cameras is inevitable as well. its ok because it stops terrorism, right? no. i think it needs to come to a halt. laws must be enacted. the sanctity of our privacy must be protected deliberately now that it is not protected by barriers of technical infeasibility.

<comment><USER29> So. You want prevent, through the use of force and the rule of law, private citizens from taking photographs of people in public places and comparing those photographs with a voluntarily provided corpus?

Enforcing such rules would take nothing short of a totalitarian state.

There was no privacy when we lived in villages, and we will return to that state in the mid-term future. The anonymity of the modern metropolis and the accompanying sensation of privacy in our day-to-day lives is but a temporary aberration in the history of the human experience.

Do not get used to it. It is not long for this world.

<comment><USER30> Can you explain why it's necessary to prevent people doing those things, or to impose a totalitarian state, in order to prevent identification of random citizen x by random citizen y?

It seems what's actually needed to prevent that is controls on the creation and use of large databases in order to identify faces (except under some list of acceptable uses). People who work in IT often express disbelief that laws like that could work. In fact, factors that humans understand like scale and intent are an important part of law, and laws written in those terms are commonplace.

Re villages: another thing commonplace in the past was brutal violence. In the past, it was obvious that brutal violence was inevitable. Then, we made it illegal, and it largely stopped. We should do that again, in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Except that this technology can easily be defeated with a .50 cent plastic nose from the Halloween store.

<comment><USER32> Will you wear it every moment you're outside of your own private home or office? I thought so. :)

<comment><USER33> Just to pile on... are your home and office windowless?

<comment><USER32> He he, no, they aren't. The difference is that in public there's much room for opportunistic, untargeted data collection, which is a lot more creepy under the right (wrong?) circumstances than targeted or random surveillance over my private spaces.

I'm more worried about untargeted collection of data because it produces a larger data set, which can be used to data-mine all sorts of juicy tidbits about people's lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if someone makes this for Facebook?

<comment><USER35> Facebook doesn't allow this, but even if they did, there are many laws in place in western countries regarding photographs of people in public, that would make creating and/or using such an app illegal.

<comment><USER36> Or in other words, something that only people with good enough lawyers could use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I tried the app just now. Where is this "70% accuracy"? It just shows you a huge list of vkontakte users with the same facial features (eg a beard) and ratios between the eyes, nose and mouth etc. What is the accuracy claim based on??

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone tried how FindFace et al fair against a cvdazzle.com-type outfit?

</comment><comment><USER38> Don't post your photos in public accounts, that's about it.

<comment><USER39> Not really. Many of these people are being found because they're in the background of one person's photo untagged, and they're in the foreground of a friend's photo and tagged. The person in the picture may not even know there are any pictures of them on the internet and they need not have posted any photos themselves.

<comment><USER10> Just having a photo on the 'net isn't enough. A photo must be tagged. Tagging usually requires a social network profile, and I think all mainstream social networks don't conceal the fact one was tagged.

So, if you search for yourself and don't see any photos of you - all chances are you're somewhat "safe". For a time being.

(A good thing about photo tagging is that a lot of tags go on memes and random pics just to gain the tagged person's attention. This must generate some noise.)

<comment><USER40> > Tagging usually requires a social network profile

I don't think this is true. Tagging with a reference to a social network profile requires a social network profile, but just like you can tag a bear "the bear," you can tag a photo with someone's name without them knowing, being on the site, or even being alive.

<comment><USER10> Well, yes.

If you have a profile, it's most likely there will be a link rather than just a text note. And the value of text notes ("here's John") is generally much less than of a profile link.

Still - you're correct - it's well possible that someone tags a photo with a full identity information - and that person won't know it. But I think it's quite uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Friends dont let friends use social networks.

Russia heading fast to dystopia is not surprising, really.

<comment><USER42> I would love to have a contact lens that projected information about the people around me onto my retina. Serious question - what's dystopian about that? I realize there's often a fine line between utopian and dystopian and for me, facial recognition (especially as my vision deteriorates) seems solidly on the utopian side of the line.

<comment><USER10> I'm really lost on this debate.

Even though I'd really like to have control over the information that concerns me, I also find it highly morally questionable to restrict others ability to see, know or remember, either naturally or technologically assisted[1]. Even for those who are unfriendly or outright malicious. That just feels unnatural to me.

And if someone shares their knowledge[2], while I fully reserve the right call them assholes if what they do caused me grief or worse, I'm also not sure it's still morally right to demand for me that they shut up.

Still, if I can apply this sort of logic to myself (i.e. I surely can decide for myself that I can't complain if my photo was published and is a part of some database), it would be plain wrong and even inhumane to apply this to anyone else. Can't impose this sort of thinking on others, especially given that the general expectation and attitude seems to be drastically different with all those "right to be forgotten" and other privacy laws and stuff (which - I'll be honest - feel just unnatural to me, but, heck, I guess I can't really argue with majority).

This damned dilemma sucks. /rant

___

[1] And where to draw a line? Glasses for poor eyesight? Pen-and-paper notetaking? PDAs (phones or whatever)? PDAs with cameras? Networked PDAs? Those sci-fi brain implants concepts that don't exist but would probably happen in the future?

[2] Given that it's about valid true facts that literally anyone who sees me in public can obtain. So this is drastically different from the restricting what others say when what they say constitutes a defamation.

<comment><USER30> Where to draw the line? How about "people you have seen"? But the line is less important than the reason for the line being where it is -- and that is about things like the principle of least authority, stability against tyrrany, whether progress is held back even a little by chilling effects, etc.

It isn't necessary to restrict others ability to see, know or remember _per se_ , but only to prohibit the application of those powers -- by means of large computer databases collected by many people -- to particular purposes. In exactly the same sense, it isn't necessary to constrain people's ability to move their arms and hands in order to prohibit strangulation.

Perhaps your dilemma is caused by something along the lines of a tacit incorrect assumption that moral principles are not constrained by other moral principles. Can you think of a moral principle about freedoms that is not restricted in any way by harm caused to others and to society?

I think you are right to say that "it just feels unnatural" is not a good argument, but I don't think that's because you are arguing with the majority: the majority are often wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment>