Ask HN: Ask to be acquired? - <AUTHOR> I run Obsidian Portal ( http://www.obsidianportal.com ), a content management system for tabletop RPGs (ie. Dungeons & Dragons).  We've been doing this for about 3 years now.
When I originally started, I (naively) believed that the publisher of D&D would see the value of what we were doing and immediately acquire us. Back then, I just thought that's how things worked. Make a site, get bought out, go buy expensive car.
Fast forward 3 years, and they've never once contacted us. I actually met one of their web developers at a convention, and introduced myself. First thing he said: "Yeah, we know who you are..." So, they definitely have heard of us, and frankly at this point, it would be impossible for them not to know who we are.
Anyways, we instituted a freemium model about 1.5 years back and things have been great. We've got a lot of premium subscribers, and the ranks are swelling every day. We're not rich, but we're getting close to ramen profitable.
However, we've started to hear rumors that the publisher is getting ready to develop their own campaign management system. They tried once before and failed miserably, but their new team is very competent and I have every reason to believe they'll succeed this time around. With their exclusive access to all the copyrighted material, I'm pretty sure it will be a big hit, even if they lack some of the cool features we have. Plus, I fully expect them to borrow heavily from our feature-set. It's what I'd do in their place...
So, I'm frustrated and worried that they're about to enter the arena with a big advantage (ie. the brand and the exclusive content) and I won't be able to compete. Still, it seems that even after all this time, my site remains a perfect fit to be acquired. We could deliver exactly what they're looking for without all the risk of developing it from scratch.
Since they've never once tried to contact me all this time, is it time I put a foot forward? I've read the conventional wisdom that "companies are bought, not sold", but my shy-girl-at-the-dance stance of waiting to be asked so far hasn't generated any results.
How do I go about making that first contact? Who do I contact? Do I propose some kind of partnership in the hopes that the relationship grows from there?
Any advice here would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER3> _frankly at this point, it would be impossible for them not to know who we are._

That might be the view from your end of the equation, where you wake up every day and check your analytics stats. However, if you are ramen profitable, your current sales are probably roughly equivalent to the healthcare costs of the night shift on the janitorial staff at one of their offices. They're a large, publicly traded company -- they might not even know who you were _if you worked for them_. (Far stranger things have happened.) Its not like my bosses have ever come to me in the morning and said "Patrick! There might very well be some young buck working in his kitchen on the next big thing in examination management systems! Drop what you're doing and discover his identity so we can prepare to squash him like a bug!"

 _We could deliver exactly what they're looking for without all the risk of developing it from scratch._

I don't think you're thinking like a big company here. You see existing code and think "Yay, working features!" They see integration headaches. You're not tied into their accounting system -- that is going to take six figures to fix. (You think you can do it cheaper? Wait until you start working in a large organization that does everything in teams of highly paid people whose salaries and healthcare benefits start running the second the first of three planning meetings begins.) You aren't on brand yet, which is going to require a redo of all your HTML -- including a turf war between marketing, their product-side artists, and their web group. Oh, and you. You're a bit of a problem, too -- they can't absorb your code without you, but you upset the apple cart among multiple groups within their organization. Who do you report to? Who can you boss around?

When you start thinking in these dimensions, you can see why they might say "We'll do it in house, own it all, and not have to worry about any complications."

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I should amend and say "they" who know about me are the web developers and the people in the tech team. Perhaps they have no desire to buy someone else's stuff and would rather build from scratch. That's what I'd do. So, you're right, the people with the purse-strings probably don't know who I am. Any advice on how to change that?

And I can definitely see the point about integration headaches. Technology acquisitions seem like they'd be a nightmare to me.

<comment><USER3> _Any advice on how to change that?_

Stop acting like a programmer, start acting like corporate sales. Find a contact within WotC. Ask to be introduced to the product manager of their existing product which is closest to what you have to offer. Contact him and sound him out on the possibility of being acquired. Be prepared to be told "No, we have no intention of doing that at all." Also be prepared to be told the same thing in a non-obvious manner that consumes several months of your life.

Personally I'd be thinking more along the lines of "Take my existing business to the next level" if I were you, since time spent on it will yield predictable results. Start with the low-hanging fruit such as charging more, optimizing conversion to the trial, and (biiiiiig subject coming up) marketing. If you're making (pulling a number) $2,000 a month today with 10k uniques a month then it is highly likely you'll make at least $4,000 a month when you have 20k uniques. That really isn't that far away -- it is only a single factor of two. (Multiplicative improvements make "factor of two" really not that bad in our business.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _Personally I'd be thinking more along the lines of "Take my existing business to the next level"_

Thanks for this advice. That's how we've been operating all along, and it's done well for us. I guess I'm mainly just scared of the increased competition.

Also, your pulling-a-number-from-the-hat estimates are quite good. You should be a fortune teller :)

<comment><USER3> Compete.com + AdWords keyword data + reasonable guesstimations of your conversion rate based on my own experience with a bit of a discount thrown in because of the demographic = +13 attack bonus to guesstimating revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a thought: they are about to do 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars worth of free marketing for YOU, if you can do these 2 things:

1\. Be clearly better than them.

2\. Make sure the people they market to know there's a better alternative (you).

If you can pull that off, you'd be a fool to sell. They're about to validate and promote your market.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that's really true where IP is involved. It's pretty easy to leverage the IP of those original games to make a more compelling alternative, even if it is otherwise inferior.

He may not be able to be better than them legally. Niches like this don't get validated, they get owned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly right. They don't need a lot of whiz-bang features as long as they have access to the IP content. Imagine trying to make a site about Harry Potter and then J.K. Rowling announces she's going to do the same. She'll be able to give the fans a lot more of what they want, even if the presentation is technically inferior.

I've got a few ideas that might allow us to get legal access to that content as well, though. Still, I hate getting too specific on a particular RPG system, as there's a whole universe of systems and settings out there, and D&D is simply the most well known. Many of the others are much better, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Business is about making contacts with people in the industry you are in.

I would call the MD of the mega-corp and ask to have a meeting about potential business overlap and how you could work together. All very informal, no money talk or specifics. It's just to see if you could work with these people.

You've already got a lot in common (business wise) with them so you'll find it a lot easier to talk to them then you imagine. If you arrange to meet for lunch it will give them a clue that it's a more informal chat then three hours around a board room table.

Worst case you leave the office with a contact in the industry, best case it will lead to your fancy car.

Good luck.

<comment><USER7> Companies buy partners all the time. Any time it seems useful, strategic, or cheaper in the long run. Become a partner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not an expert, but I think you absolutely should approach them. When you understand the rationality behind acquisitions you can see why I'd say that. Take Google for example, who has been on a tear with acquisitions, along with others. Look at their structure, at their company direction. Acquisitions for them make sense for several reasons: access to the brainpower of the startup, consolidation of power, more favorable reviews in the community. All that and it costs peanuts from their perspective.

Contrast that with the publisher of D&D. How forward thinking, in terms of having strategic technological positioning, is their management? Probably not as much as Google. All they are concerned about is a 1 to 1 correlation with profits. Action A yields profit B. If they see that they can build your functionality in house, they may see a lot of advantages to that. They don't care about the other stuff as Google might. I'd come up with a figure to be happy with, yet highly enticing to them, and then sell it with rationality. Point out all the benefits, of which access to you should be the biggest selling point, as you've successfully built it up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Their problem is a typical build-or-buy. There's likely a price at which it just makes sense to buy you instead of building it out.

Do they have any competitors who might be interested in you? Maybe a smaller game publisher?

Can you leverage your head start in any way?

Can you make your service more 'sticky'? If people have committed lots of time to building up a profile on your site then they'd be less inclined to switch. People still use Yahoo after a decade of Google being around.

One idea could be adding a Facebook app or link up with FB Connect - <USER2> deeper into the users life, announce targets, scores, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> As a general rule, your community is valuable, your tech is not. They can reproduce your tech in-house, the user base is harder.

Why did their first attempt fail? Was the tech that bad or was it a marketing problem? If its the latter, I like your chances better.

Either way, I think you should approach them directly. As you said, your current approach hasn't worked, so it may be time to mix it up.

</comment><comment><USER11> From what you've described, there's a huge negotiation problem. You don't have leverage, and you're starting to sound desperate - everything they can use against you in the event that they contact you.

Lets say you asked them to acquire you. They're interested, they google around for anything about you, and find this post. They know exactly what your fears are, they know that you're not ramen profitable, and they know that you know that they're coming after you.

Which means, they can negotiate you down to a point where they're buying your company for pennies on the dollar. What's your BATNA? (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) - right now, it's just to continue on, despite the fact that you're losing money. Fix that BATNA, and you'll be in a much better position to either sell this off, or to even just continue running with it.

But just asking HN for help is huge. Most people never get that far. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a question I'd be interested in having answered as well. I run a small educational website that has a comparative niche advantage and you're summary of how you thought web startups worked sounds very familiar. So far no expensive car. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's a very common misconception, but we're all so embarrassed about thinking that way that we don't admit it.

I also had similar misconceptions about VC funding. I used to think VCs would just appear at my doorstep checkbook in hand, ready to invest in my great idea. Still waiting on that one as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think you should be too worried about it. You've got a pretty loyal (and decently sized) user base. Plus all your existing users have their content tied to your site, so don't go writing any data export features that would even allow them to jump ship.

Its probably a hard pill to swallow, but you said it yourself: they know who you are, they've never approached you, and they are writing their own. Conclusion: for whatever asinine reasons, they've determined consciously that buying OP isn't in their best interests. You courting them isn't going to change that scenario.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you do decide to try for a buyout, do this:

\- increase your perceived value by adding something sexy tha looks hard to do, ie. an iphone app.

\- increase your value by finding another potential buyer or two (real or perceived) and make sure they know that the other buyer is in talks with you, and that that worries them. Make sure there's some kind of deadline involved.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you disrupt an existing business significantly then they can't help but be interested in you and then ideally they decide: \- to reduce the number of players in the market (by acquiring you) \- that it's cheaper and quicker to market by acquiring you rather than develop inhouse

</comment><comment><USER8> I just had another idea. I still think approaching them for acquisition is an option, mostly because I don't like businesses dependent on other businesses (for precisely this reason). However, an alternative route may work better. I wish I had a fuller understanding of text based RPGs like MobWars because they are making an absolute killing. I tried one out once, but just couldn't understand its draw, otherwise I'd create one in a heartbeat. But obsidianportal.com seems similar to me, just based on D&D copyrighted material. Try to brainstorm out a text based RPG that would appeal to D&D'ers but with your own material. You already have a community to sell it to, and it might grow to be worth far more, and you own all the IP.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've practically no experience in all this. I dream of owning a startup, growing it and have it acquired by a bigger company and yeah buying expensive cars after that.

So here's some amateur advice :

1\. If you are the one approaching then obviously chances of you getting a good deal would be less 2\. If you do decide to approach, you should be able to make the company's decision making team salivate at the prospects of buying you out 3\. In case the other company comes out with its own version, it can be a good thing for you because if the company fails again then they would definitely think of acquiring you.

P.S. What if D&D officials read this query of yours? :P

</comment><comment><USER16> they are definitely developing a competing product, the reason they haven't contacted you, is to avoid you raising stink later: "they talked to me, stole all my ideas, then came out with their own product

what kind of money are we talking about here? $100K sale or $10M sale?

Also looking at your Alexa rank(150,890) it doesn't look like you are driving a lot of traffic, and your forums don't appear to be all that active(~700 users)...

so I see 3 strategies for you:

a) tell the DoD guys, that your site is for sale for $XX thousand.

b) list the site for sale on eBay(made like $250K for that note taking site, so you might find a "sucker" who'll spend more than the site is worth)

c) list the site for sale on Flippa

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Here is some background info related to your questions:

1) We're probably closer to the $100K mark than the $10M. Then again, I think paired up with a strong brand it would be killer. We've got great features, but not the branding or marketing.

2) The forums are a very sideline part of the site, and we have considerably more users than 700. I don't like to give out the actual number, but it's comparable to some of the larger D&D websites. We're not big overall, but we're big in our niche (ie. tabletop RPGs). Surely that counts for something. Plus, we have a proven revenue model and are approaching ramen profitability with our current traffic.

To be honest, I don't think I could ever sell it on a place like eBay or Flippa. I'm very attached to my site and handing it over to just somebody off the street is out of the question. Plus, I have a reputation to maintain with my userbase. They would understand me selling to a major player in the community, but would be horrified if I just tossed it onto eBay.

<comment><USER17> Though whoever wants to pay the most for something, should have the best use for it. But I agree with your sentiment, that you users probably wouldn't like to see the side on eBay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> this might be helpful [http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/22/sold-to-the-highest- bidder...](http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/22/sold-to-the-highest-bidder/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Not really on topic, but this is a great D&D website.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link: <http://www.obsidianportal.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> Do you only have one potential buyer? Are you tied to one role-playing system? If so, that would be a problem. Support more role-playing systems and campaign types.

If you have more than one potential buyer, and you want to get bought, then start spreading rumors that someone is planning to acquire you. Put some time pressure on your potential acquirers. Once the rumors have percolated, start claiming it (without naming names, because some people are malevolent and will call to confirm). Preselection: buyers (like women) want you only when others do. If you're not wanted by the others, lie and say that you are. It is not unethical to do this. If someone is going to make a judgment of you based on anothers' opinion, you have every right to take advantage of that weakness through any means possible.

If that fails, just follow the competing product and make sure to be a bit better-- a few months ahead of the curve. They are following your feature set. Follow theirs. Buy a subscription and see what they're doing right. (Don't steal their ideas, but learn from them.) You still have a conceptual head start; you've been doing this for 18 months, and the fact that you guys are profitable at all (in gaming, in a recession) is a signal that you're very smart. You're also in a desirable industry and you'll be able to get smart college kids to work for you on the cheap (plus equity).

Once you can start paying high salaries, make sure that key players-- developers and story-writers-- are treated like kings (remember: you're not a big business, and your competitors are, and as a business gets larger the status of key creators declines) with 20% higher salaries and 500% more artistic/creative freedom than they would have at the big company. Become the boutique out of which all the best ideas come. You'll still have competitors chasing you, a few months behind you, but if you can develop the status of being where all the best ideas are developed, the best people will want to work for you. The "very competent" team that your competitors have? Those guys will be talking to you. Once you're established and have 10x as much artistic freedom as VP of Campaign Development at BigGameCorp, you might not want to be acquired.

By the way, the fact that D&D's publisher is trying to build a competitor is a good sign, not a bad one. That means you're working on something _worth doing_ , which puts you ahead of all the pie-in-the-sky gaming startups. It's a signal, and remember that, although they're a competitor, you can learn from them and what they're doing.

Good luck. Why don't you send me an email? I have some ideas I want to discuss with you. pwnstigator at gmail dot com

<comment><USER21> > By the way, the fact that D&D's publisher is trying to build a competitor is > a good sign, not a bad one. That means you're working on something worth > doing, which puts you ahead of all the pie-in-the-sky gaming startups. It's > a signal, and remember that, although they're a competitor, you can learn > from them and what they're doing.

I think that this is really good advice. It's a mistake that I would have made just a few months ago, as well. Programmers tend to think of economics as a zero-sum game. It's just as likely that their entry into the market will grow the pie, and you'll benefit, as it will squeezing you out.</comment></comment>


Computing primes with CSS - <AUTHOR> http://nedbatchelder.com//blog/201609/computing_primes_with_css.html <comment><USER2> This is _way_ cooler: [http://silon.slaks.net](http://silon.slaks.net)

<comment><USER3> is it, though?

[https://github.com/SLaks/Silon#implementation- details](https://github.com/SLaks/Silon#implementation-details)

"Silon is implemented using LESS to generate CSS selectors for every combination of inputs that will turn each gate on. In effect, I created a LESS-based DSL that expresses (almost-)arbitrary boolean expressions."

<comment><USER2> Yes, I know a preprocessor is involved, much like many single- element/background-image hacks and CSS-only glitch effects which translate to fifty-keyframe animations.

It's still cooler than the OP.

<comment><USER3> it's definitely shinier than the OP, but I personally think encoding a sieve of Eratosthenes in a CSS selector is cooler than encoding truth tables in a CSS selector

<comment><USER2> I was always more interested in the philosophy of mathematics than prime numbers.

Actually, I'm interested in philosophy in general, especially early Wittgenstein & Gödel.

So I'm biased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

\--Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park)

<comment><USER5> We have clearly passed the point where we should stop, but let's keep going and see what happens.

<comment><USER6> \-- Scientist from Jurassic Park

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can do the same thing with pure HTML, just write `2,3,5,7,11,13...`. I am disappointed by the article, was expecting something with CSS `calc()`.

<comment><USER8> That's not similar, at all. This is actually removing multiples, as in the sieve of erastosthenes.

<comment><USER9> It's missing a loop, and the primes are hardcoded into the source code (see the similarity?). You might be mislead by the fact that you also find 'span:nth-child(4n+8)' or 'span:nth-child(6n+12)' (which aren't primes) but those are redundant, and an efficient sieve would skip non primes.

<comment><USER10> Yes, they are redundant, but there's still no special knowledge of the primes in the file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I made a slightly improved version using <ol> and <li> elements to not have to manually output the numbers within the <span> element: [https://jsfiddle.net/r8c2Lsz7/](https://jsfiddle.net/r8c2Lsz7/)

<comment><USER10> Nice! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does the size of the code increase with the number of primes shown?

Imho, the code should not grow. So in my view, the article is cheating.

<comment><USER13> Code size increases in Θ(n^(0.5))

I agree that the title is somewhat misleading - it is (to me) as much a 'computation of prime numbers' as a lookup table would be.

<comment><USER14> Well it's closer to O((n/log(n))^0.5), although that doesn't make much of a difference until n becomes rather large.

<comment><USER13> Good catch - I didn't differentiation between n as 'upper limit for primes' and n as 'input length'. The former is more intuitive, which makes your solution more accurate. (Also, I should have played it safe and use O instead of Θ...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why the commenters in this thread are being so negative towards this project. This is a fun experiment to see what the author could do with the minimal tools CSS provides. Sure there's no _use_ for this kind of project. Not everything has to have a use. Some things can be for pure fun. The negativity in this thread isn't even productive or helpful.

<comment><USER13> I don't feel really negatively towards this project, but after reading the title and looking at the code it felt a bit disappointing. When I read "computing primes" I didn't expect so much pre-computation cooked into the code.

<comment><USER16> I don't disagree, because I have a similar feeling. But I recognize that it comes from a bit of a 'No True Scotsman' in regard to computation.

By which I mean that looking up values in a table is actually a part of computation. That's pretty much how anything with a trigonometric function works [we've just replaced books with integrated circuits]. Back in the days of using a slide rule, there was a looking it up in a table element as well, it's just that the table was in a flexible form.

Practically, speaking if the easiest way to calculate the first fifty million primes might be: [https://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/millions/](https://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/millions/)

Philosophically, I don't have the same feeling querying for some nth prime at [https://primes.utm.edu/nthprime/index.php](https://primes.utm.edu/nthprime/index.php) but it's probably doing all its calculations for mundane things like network packets and none of it sieving natural numbers.

<comment><USER13> I see your point, and I think we share a point of view.

But when using lookup tables, I consider the computation of the lookup table a part of the algorithm - after all, a lookup table is essentially an optimization: You extract a sub-computation and store it, paying with space for better time complexity.

<comment><USER16> Philosophically, I don't think that feeling intellectually satisfying is a marker of correct understanding. I mean I don't think there's anything out in independent reality that makes an procedure that implements the sieve of Eratosthenes better than a procedure that uses lookup tables.

1\. The only thing that matters about a function 'nth-prime' is that it maps 1->2, 2->3, 3->5 etc.

2\. To be useful in practical applications, a function `is-prime` is unlikely to use the sieve of Eratosthenes and more likely to use something like Fermat's Primality Test [1] and hence will be mistaken over Carmichael Numbers and so hard coding the first few into the function via looking might be a good way to do what people expect...though at some point:

 _Numbers that fool the Fermat test are called Carmichael numbers, and little is known about them other than that they are extremely rare. There are 255 Carmichael numbers below 100,000,000. The smallest few are 561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, and 6601. In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a "correct" algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering._ Abelson, Sussman, Sussman [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-11.htm...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-11.html#%_idx_912)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I once saw an interesting way of computing primes using LaTeX [0].

The link also mentions a way of doing the same in plain TeX that is taken from Donald Knuth's "The TeXbook".

[0] [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/134305/how-to- produce...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/134305/how-to-produce-a- list-of-prime-numbers-in-latex)

<comment><USER18> Well, TeX is _supposed_ to be able to do that, which makes it less cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's because CSS is turing complete. The rule 110 cellular automaton has been implemented in CSS, and because the rule 110 is turing complete, that means CSS is turing complete.

<comment><USER20> What's "because" CSS is Turing complete? Anyway, this implementation could be done using a DFA (because it's not actually computing primes with CSS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You could replace the "+4" in "2n+4" with "+0" to remove the amount of custom text you have to insert into each line.

<comment><USER22> No, the point is to display the primes (2, 3, 5, 7...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You can remove all non primes in the selector, like below

span:nth-child(2n+4), span:nth-child(3n+6), span:nth-child(5n+10), span:nth- child(7n+14), span:nth-child(11n+22), span:nth-child(13n+26), span:nth- child(17n+34), span:nth-child(19n+38), span:nth-child(23n+46), span:nth- child(29n+58), span:nth-child(31n+62),

<comment><USER24> But that'd be cheating. How do you know what the primes are before you've computed them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Unrelated to the main story, those damnable f-strings are awful. For goodness' sake, don't put code into your format strings, you maniacs!

But don't take my word for it: [http://www.stringtemplate.org/about.html](http://www.stringtemplate.org/about.html)

<comment><USER10> Anything can be overused. Do you find my use of them "awful"? It will mean we don't need code like: "...".format(a=a, b=b, c=c, d=d)

<comment><USER25> No, I will admit your usage here seems perfectly cromulent. ;-)

(Don't pay too much attention to me: I still haven't adopted the .format() method! Heh.)

Very nice project sir!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But would that be... as stylish?

         #####
        #### _\_  ________
        ##=-[.].]| \      \
        #(    _\ |  |</comment><comment>|
         #   __| |  ||||||||
          \  _/  |  ||||||||
       .--'--'-. |  | ____ |
      / __      `|__|[o__o]|

_(____nm_______ /____\\____

<comment><USER27> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12611579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12611579) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


A Coder in Courierland - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548 <comment><USER2> I worked as a courier for a short while, and I have good memories of that time.

It gives a certain kind of job satisfaction which is very different from what you get from being... well, anything else I've ever been. Your goals are short-term (get this package to that place by this time) and achieving each one gives you a little dose of satisfaction. If you get to the end of the day and you haven't been late, lost a package or been hit by a car, you know you've done your job as well as possible. That's in stark contrast to being, say, a theoretical physicist (or a software developer), where the doses of job satisfaction are (hopefully) much larger but are much further apart, and where you can easily go for days without feeling like you've achieved anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> The sad irony is that I read that title and assumed it was an essay on font choices in development environments.

<comment><USER4> I had the same exact thought.

But still, a very fascinating article. I'm a bike commuter in SF, and I can related to some of the bullet points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first time I read this article I was living in Austin, and was in the midst of closing up shop on my first startup. I seriously considered getting a job as a courier, to the point of researching who the best employers were and wages and such. I love cycling, the weather in Austin is great, and it seemed like a good way to work on my introversion. But, I started Virtualmin, instead...sold my car, moved to the valley, and ride for pleasure and ordinary transportation.

</comment><comment><USER6> It always frustrates me when people equate "real" work with outdoor physical labor.

A software engineer is a life full of a surprising amount of importance. Frequently you're working on massive systems that affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions. And he trades it in for a "real" and "romantic" job of being a envelope peddler?

I mean, good for him. Do what makes you happy, but don't try to slyly say, "P.S. You have no soul and your job is meaningless."

<comment><USER7> Why does it _frustrate_ you ?

<comment><USER8> Because it is a prejudice and unfairness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Biking around the city is always an adrenaline rush for me, and I ride conservatively. You almost have to ride like you are invisible. I feel bike messengers have a job that balances risk and excitement. I admire this guy for taking on a job that is as far away from the cube as you can get. If you ever get a chance to see the Cycle Messenger World Championships, go.. I like this guy's writing style.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting article I wonder how many people here bike to work and how long of a bike ride is usually for them?(Miles/Minutes)

<comment><USER11> I do about 9 miles each way (124 blocks down, plus crosstown) in Manhattan. It takes about 30 minutes if I'm in a rush, 40-45 otherwise.

There are some hazards, however:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ>

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vW36qt1SbE&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vW36qt1SbE&feature=related)

<comment><USER12> Were you there? Were the NYPD picking out people at random?

<comment><USER13> It was a bad deal, the cop basically picked a guy out and assaulted him, then filed a completely false report accusing him of starting it.

[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0729081bike1...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0729081bike1.html)

Its good that no one was seriously hurt and that this fool's true color showed early before he could do any real damage. They can't all be heroes, I guess. That's what makes the ones that are special. This joker was probably hiding in the broom closet on 9-11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I forgot there was still good stuff on Kuro5hin as recently as 2005. Internet years seem so much longer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's a soundtrack to accompany the article: <http://radio3.cbc.ca/play/band/Abdominal/Pedal-Pusher/>

</comment><comment><USER16> I have heard that the bicycle couriers often end up with destroyed knees. Makes me avoid the job.

<comment><USER17> Funny that you mention that, my brother had actually worked for a month as a bicycle courier and indeed he reached the point when he had to quit this job because of hurting knees.</comment></comment>


The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction - <AUTHOR> http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-glorious-profitable-inescapable-art.html <comment><USER2> One of my favorite Minecraft Mods was equivalent exchange. It foretold the coming of modern idle games. You work hard in the beginning to earn your first magical item, that gives you some sorcery that lets you spend less time gathering resources.

A small amount of time later, you get another magical item that lets you transmute a little more efficiently. A few dozen grinding hours later and you've acquired an array of items that grant you limited control over the environment, and you start grinding towards your first resource generator, which gives you resources which let you make the second one.

Now you're scaling. Build speed becomes the bottleneck for awhile, you're grinding the farm. Eventually you reach the next tier of generators, and this unlocks new mechanics. Finally at the end of the game you get artifacts of immense, game-breaking power.

Once I started playing, I couldn't stop until I had done all the things. And when I was done with that, I never picked it, or Minecraft, back up again.

The lure of mastery is perhaps the most addictive one that could ever be dreamed.

<comment><USER3> Weirdly I've only played vanilla survival but this genuinely sounds precisely like my experience. First we built a zombie farm. Which gave us some weapons and xp. Then a chicken farm, for food. Then a spider farm. Then we found an underwater temple. Guardian farm time! Oooh, and an ender pearl/xp farm, iron farm, gold farm etc etc etc.

We spent days and days in game automating away as much resource gathering as we could. Until the server was basically finished - there really were no more farms to build.

So we started a new one :)

<comment><USER2> Yeah my next big rush was Factorio. More concentration on the mechanics of building and scaling, less on the awesome graphics and immersion that Minecraft offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility.

If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad.

If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting them for money.

If you sell time, like a subscription, then players think you are trying to force them to grind to pay money

If you sell in-game items, like weapons or maps, the players think you are intentionally weakening the free items in favor of the power you can buy.

If you sell in-game cosmetics, like skins, which have no impact on gameplay, the players think you are trying to make every look stupid and you have to pay to look cool.

Video games are inherently manipulative in the sense that the game is designed for you to behave in fun ways and do fun things. Once monetization is in the picture it completely poisons the whole dynamic. It doesn't help that the audience skews young.

If you want to make a game just for the passion of it, if you want to have a healthy relationship with gamers, you are literally not allowed to monetize. You have to give it away fully for free.

<comment><USER5> Upfront sale is not like the others at all because it doesn't interact with addictive behaviour in the same way.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't relate to addictive behavior, but there's still continuous uproar about deceptive marketing and lack of support. Developer interviews are picked around and lists of promises are made. Any monetary incentive a developer has will be viewed through a bad faith lens at every turn. That can't win.

<comment><USER6> There is only uproar about deceptive marketing and lack of support if the marketing is actually deceptive and if there is an actual lack of support.

People have been burned a few too many times by less reputable developers (EA) selling unfinished, deceptive garbage (SimCity 2013) at full price, so a certain amount of uproar and skepticism when it happens _again and again_ is to be expected, I think.

But there are good, reputable companies too who are doing honest business by selling quality games for a reasonable up-front price. I don't generally see people having an issue with that.

See if you can find a lot of people who are unhappy with dropping $60 on Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey, for instance.

<comment><USER7> an upfront price made sense in the old days when a relatively polished product was released at launch, perhaps with a couple patches to fix bugs, and with users running their own multiplayer servers.

for better or for worse, the norm has shifted to longer periods of support and servers hosted by the company. it's hard to commit to supporting a game this way when each user only pays once.

personally I like the approach csgo has taken. you get a full game for free (although it was still a good deal at $20, imo) and you can pay for purely cosmetic items. I think this aligns the incentives well; the devs can only get paid by making game that people care about playing, but there's also an unrestricted stream of new players since it's free. plus if you decide your finally done, you can sell all your skins on the market and get at least some of your money back.

<comment><USER6> I will fully admit that I have only the faintest idea of how modern multiplayer games work, but I agree from my understanding that the old business model of selling a complete game once seems ill suited to that style of game.

(Although, counterexample: Mojang made a fortune out of selling Minecraft, a complete multiplayer game, where you host your own servers, with no paid DLC or hidden catches, but then later came out with the Realms thing where they had optional paid server infrastructure. That's a thing you can do. Not sure how it panned out.)

That being said, my point was that there are still plenty of companies, such as Nintendo, successfully operating in the traditional way without facing much hostility for daring to sell a complete, polished, mostly bug-free product for money.

Therefore I think it is inaccurate to state that "every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility" like the grandparent did.

<comment><USER7> to be clear, I'm not saying it's totally not viable to just release a good game and charge for it upfront. there is a small number of studios/publishers who have such good brand recognition (or just consistently ship really good games) that they can actually make money this way. it can still work well for games with little ongoing maintenance cost from established companies making AAA titles or indie devs who don't have the same upfront costs.

all I'm saying is that there are other "game-as-a-service" models that can align incentives well between players and devs for ongoing projects without _necessarily_ being abusive.

GGP is sort of right though. gamers are a notoriously difficult group of customers to please, and they don't really have a way to understand the business or technical constraints faced by the makers of their favorite games. the worst of them will be uncharitable and hostile, no matter what you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Now, of course, we designers know to make the upgrades come in a constant > flow of smaller improvements. A host of bars slowly filling up and numbers > increasing, so that the warm feeling never stops.

I don't think that's necessarily true. WoW moved more and more towards this model and all it did was make the game predictable and grindy. You need big chunks of uncertainty (will we kill the boss? will it drop what I'm after? will that item go to _me_?) to really kick the intermittent-reward circuitry into gear.

Constant small incremental progress is just easier to implement.

<comment><USER9> Note: This is likely not as neat an analogy/example as I would like, but it seems relevant.

I used to be an actual heroin addict, many many years ago. Finding the next hit every day/every couple of days was nearly as satisfying as the actual rush of the drug itself.

In fact, this effect was so powerful, that the "come thru" message from my dealer, and driving over to his, would make my withdrawal symptoms subside nearly entirely, well before I'd actually taken the drug.

Brains are crazy.

<comment><USER10> I imagine you saw a bit of a dopamine spike when that message came in. Was it enough to mitigate the physical symptoms at all, or was that purely mental, I wonder?

<comment><USER9> Genuinely mitigated the runny nose, aches and pains in my back, etc.

<comment><USER11> I wish I could trick my stupid brain like that. (not saying that your brain is somehow easier to trick than mine or whatever. My brain is just stupidly stubborn when it comes to feeling pain)

I'm really very deeply glad you kicked that habit and killed the dragon. This internet stranger is rooting for you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't mind DLC and virtual slots model, if only it delivered better games in the end.

In reality games became just a gateway to these slot machines or DLCs. i.e. development happened only in one direction: money.

There is no way to explain how 15 years ago developers were able to build incredible open worlds with hours of dialog and tons of possibilities worth 100s of hours of gameplay on a single pay model, except priorities change in the industry. Fast forward 15 years - all the progress and tools, developing practices, experience accumulated in the industry - but no real progress or innovations.

There are still games that push quality mark forward, but mass market is going away from it. Companies like EA have to make a choice: do we fund this game that will sell for 60$ and give 100s of hours of diverse gameplay or do we fund this online game with proven gameplay and sell ingame items for 1$/piece for next 2 years. Both of these games not only differ in terms of money they make, but also in terms of time people spend on them. So EA is better not to fund game 1 at all, to let people spend more limited gaming time on the game that has a potential for more profits.

<comment><USER13> Sony is going in the opposite direction ( single player, story based games with rich content).

Their logic is quite flawless:

Online games depend on a large userbase to be successful, which forces them (or at least greatly pressures them) to be multiplatform. That's a bad direction to move towards if your business is selling a console and its walled garden - so they are pushing for content that is more compatible with console exclusives, ie. single player games.

<comment><USER14> I hope they develop more splitscreen games! That's really the main edge to consoles for me.

<comment><USER15> In an alternate reality, 3D TV really took off and split screen was replaced by polarized-screen. Wouldn't that have been neat?

<comment><USER16> [https://www.tweaking4all.com/video/gaming/split-screen- game-...](https://www.tweaking4all.com/video/gaming/split-screen-game-full- screen/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This brings to mind a very recent dilemma of sorts that I have been experiencing.

I love strategy games. From _Carrier Command_ back in the 80s to _Sid Meier 's Alpha Centauri_ to _Stellaris_. I've recently picked up _Surviving Mars_ in the Steam sale and it doesn't appear to be holding my attention as well as Stellaris does.

Why? It probably can be reduced down to the reward factor. In Stellaris the galaxy is pretty huge, there's a massive combination of races, ideologies and other factors that all go together to create what feels like a novel/new experience.

In Surviving Mars, your playing field is limited to a 10x10 grid, and you quickly become bogged down keeping ahead of your colonists' needs. The experience feels the same, and there's no real novelty. The planet just kind of exists as a map outside your little grid, there's no way to visit or expand, you just send expeditions out and get a text box saying they found x, y or z.

Now, if someone could write a game that accurately captures the feel of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's _Red Mars_ in an exploration/build/research combined with novelty in a truly expansive world, that would be amazing. Setting up your base, digging your habitats, finding volatiles and water and all that good stuff. It would be great, if done well, of course.

But maybe by the time someone writes such a beast, we'd have people on Mars for real.

<comment> blaser-waffle > The experience feels the same, and there's no real novelty

That sounds like Stellaris, tbh. Eventually it just turns into waiting for things to complete so you can launch the next war. And without the historical immersion (EUIV, VIC II), or personal connection (CKII) of other Paradox games it just feels like a complicated menu simulator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate the direct mention of his motivation for writing.

>I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror.

<comment><USER18> I've been reading Vogel's writing for something like 25 years now, and it always repays the time. He's entertaining but thoughtful with it.

<comment><USER19> First heard of him reading this which is very nearly 25 years old.

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.games/-ShSyZ8bv...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.games/-ShSyZ8bvcs/LniQHEyxP- UJ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of what we do can be explained (or "reduced") to chemical processes that reward or reinforce behavior. Is there a chemical difference between this and the pleasure some get from reading great literary works, building a birdhouse, playing with your kids, etc?

A key question on the ethics of it all is - I think - whether there is some externality from the behavior that leads to social utility. Reading literature might make you more understanding and empathetic of others' experiences for example. Gambling in a casino, maybe not so much (though certainly it creates jobs, etc).

I'm excited by the idea that neurochemical feedback loops in gaming _could_ create some positive social utility. Certainly the storytelling in a lot of games is artistic and meaningful, but maybe we'll find even better ways to directly channel those brain cycles, along the lines of protein folding games but with more depth. (Neal Stephenson had some interesting ideas for this in Fall or Reamde - can't remember - where an MMORPG had an API similar to mechanical turk where players were rewarded for cognitive tasks in the real world like airport security)

edit: I guess we shouldn't forget that games are fun too, and doesn't necessarily need to be deeper than that to be good.

<comment><USER21> > _Is there a chemical difference between this and the pleasure some get from > reading great literary works_

Yes, and that difference is the whole point of art vs entertainment. After consuming entertainment, you want more entertainment. But after consuming art - after reading The Great Gatsby - your eyes get yanked back to your own life. You start thinking "what doomed dreams do I have?", not "when will they release Great Gatsby 2?"

<comment><USER22> Note that the comment didn't say books vs games. A video game can be art, and a book can be entertainment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Suppose the people who hate free to play games win the argument and get rid of microtransactions. Suppose they change the laws so you have to get your looter shooter Destiny /Anthem/Division dopamine drip for one fair fixed price. So you're grinding hundreds of hours to get better armor, but you aren't spending more money. Just time._

If it's a single fixed price, what is incentivizing the developer to make the game more addictive? Purchasing the sequel? Wouldn't the developer instead be incentivized to make a game with novel and compelling gameplay that isn't necessarily addictive?

<comment><USER24> If your game only has 10 hours of gameplay, people will complain that it's too short. Then your game gets bad reviews and you don't eat.

So you need to have more gameplay, and that's either through cleverly addictive game mechanics or a ton of expensive to produce content.

<comment><USER25> Plenty of games have less than 10h of gameplay, and an even bigger amount of games have less than 10h of non grind gameplay. Portal is a good example

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Look, if an ADULT spends $500 of their hard earned money to buy Fortnitebux > or Smurfberries or whatever, I don't know what business it is of yours. If > an adult wants to spend cash on beer or DLC or opera tickets or loot boxes, > it's their right.

I was ready to write an angry 10,000 word response on the importance of private property and the free market system. But reading this paragraph de- escalated the situation enough for me to realize this article was only a general overview of the industry they work in.

<comment><USER27> Well, the article provides some good points why a free market system does not work.

The basis of free markets is that participants act rational and have full knowledge.

Yet here we are researching increasingly sophisticated ways to undercut their rationality...

<comment><USER28> The basis of free markets is that on balance people with radically different preferences will make better choices more aligned with their preferences and local knowledge than other systems do.

Markets perform better than other allocation systems for many things. It's an observed principle rather than something that was directed from above.

Some economic models assume people are rational because on aggregate it works for those models.

Mostly market systems have substantially outperformed centrally controlled systems.

<comment><USER29> If you take a descriptive (vs. prescriptive) view of the free market, you have to include _all_ observations.

Yes, we've observed that under free market, "people with radically different preferences will make better choices more aligned with their preferences and local knowledge", at least on many occasions. We've also observed countless of occasions when they'll make a _worse_ choice. Sometimes idiotically worse choice. We've observed the cases where those choices, aggregated, cause wide- spread suffering.

So many people were asking a question - why does free market work perfectly in some cases, but fails so badly in others? That's where the "rationality" and "full knowledge" things come from. Economists have figured out that these are necessary conditions for the free market model to work the best. When you make people behave irrationally, or refuse to give them full knowledge, the free market model results in suboptimal outcomes.

Free market isn't a silver bullet. It's a process that gives particular outputs for particular inputs, and we've been mapping the relationship between its domain and codomain for a while now. We know that the more rational participants and the more symmetrical information come in, the more ethically positive transactions come out. This can be seen in both theoretical models and in practice.

Now when the game industry is "researching increasingly sophisticated ways to undercut [players'] rationality", what that means is that they're weaponizing the free market to fuck fellow human beings over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's a flavorful point of view but it really is about IAP. Only truly mad people go out and defend virtual slot machines, and that's definitely the virus (smallest reproducing harmful life form) of the game industry.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a lot of (my own, highly speculative and uncertified) thoughts on this, and if you'll indulge me in some cynacism I'll try to highlight what doesn't feel quite right.

If you're curious about how this is developing, try Black Desert Online. It's a really remarkably polished game that is truly unique. It's a PvP action fighting game encapsulated by an immersive RPG with a load of different ways to play the game.

It's almost terrifyingly well crafted.

There is a startlingly well designed progression system pivoted around raising your attack and defense rating to fight against other players in the various fields of battle. In every one of the sub routines within this intricate Skinner Box there is an efficiency modifier which can be metered through the use of USD,

All of these sub routines inevitably connect at the central purpose of pumping black stones, or as I'll refer to them, probability stones into your gear with a chance of either raising their rating, lowering their rating, or in certain cases destroying them completely. Sometimes the undesired outcomes can be negated through further remittance of USD, for this and certain other mini- games as well.

There is a tightly controlled exchange of goods through a central system (which collects a tax unless you pay for a buff every month), with only a small number of consumable items being transferable between players.

You are utterly economically isolated in the game.

This is not a new phenomenon, but I think it's clearly evolving.

Casinos were built on it, and so are many of these so-called "Korean MMOs".

Pearl Abyss has enjoyed massive success and, to my dismay, has purchased CCP Games, developer of EVE Online.

[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_gam...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_game_design.php)

I hope these system designs are less insidious than my experience has led me to believe.

Edit: I'll add that I've read supposedly regulatory action is being taken, I read somewhere that China was or is imposing a rule for disclosure of probabilities in at least some circumstances. Not confident on veracity.

Curiously, in certain regions there are apparently varying or no limits on purchase of "cash shop" items, while in others (like NA) there are. Also worth noting that within the game, players who've paid the most into the cash shop are called "whales".

Edit2: Last I looked they boast a player base in the 2-3 million range.

</comment><comment><USER32> As a recovering gaming addict, the author doesn't realize behavioral addictions can lead to a person becoming suicidal.

Or doesn't care. Or cares and has no idea how to live an ethically sustainable and interdependent life.

</comment><comment><USER33> Me: I can't see how people can put money into a slot machine or a video game and take pleasure from that.

Also me: gcp compute model.fit(epochs=20) _watches error trend downwards_

<comment><USER34> Most people find pleasure in it once they do it. But perhaps it's not for everybody.

Have you ever tried?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Compare this to a game like Beat Saber, where you can play any level, at any difficulty, in any order, and the computer just keeps track of your score. 99% of the game state is in your brain, so the only way to progress is by learning how to interpret the patterns and coordinate your body. It's also anti- addictive, because playing for more than a few hours is physically exhausting.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great talk from the author: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs)

> _In this GDC 2018 talk, Spiderweb Software 's Jeff Vogel presents a > retrospective on his company's history and how they've managed to stay in > the game-making business since 1994._

</comment><comment><USER36> I dunno, calling people unsophisticated drug dealers because their game designs don't value the same dimensions of fun as your game designs seems pretty judgemental.

> This isn't an editorial. I'm not judging anyone. I write computer RPGs for a > living. My games are crude and low-budget, but they give you your modest > dopamine dose for a far more reasonable price than the free-to-play drug > lords over on Android. I even throw in a decent story to put a patina of > sophistication on the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Bad, sloppy, breathless writing. Reiterating the central metaphor for pages on end doesn't make it right. It's like the author really wanted to vent with their preferred insult for more successful game developers and needed a few pages of folksy pop-psych nonsense to justify it.

If there's any kernel of truth here, it's nothing new. Likening commercial online games to drugs is as old as "Evercrack".</comment>


Ancient Indian Texts - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/home <comment><USER3> If you take a look at the math subsection ([https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/math](https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/math)) be aware that Brahmagupta was a beast of a mathematician. His sucessors, the two Bhaskaras, were ridiculously good as well. Their names aren't nearly as big as any of the European mathematicians you know, but they were powerhouses of math during Europe's dark ages.

Brahmagupta was pretty much the first recorded dude to use 0 in math, so he's got that going for him, and the only issue people take with his work is that he was weak around the indeterminate forms (e.g. claiming 0/0 = 0)[1]. His work on Pell's equation is pretty awesome too, but then we're veering into more esoteric mathematics, so I digress.

Bhaskara II invented a rough and early verison of differential calculus to calculate instaneous rates of change in the mid 1100s. Newton finished his Method of Fluxions in 1671. (Newton's work was independent of Bhaskara II's and is said to be far more rigourous with greather breadth and depth of usage and applications; I haven't read enough of either to be an honest source, but the claim seems reasonable.)

[1]For an ancient, though, this is understandable. We know that 0⨯0 = 0, that b|a iff a = b⨯k, and that a = bq + r, so it's reasonable to assume that since 0 = 0⨯0 + 0 and 0|0, that 0/0 = 0. (Phew!) When you pretty much codify 0 in math, I'll cut you a break on that one.

<comment><USER4> The 'problem' with Indian math was the general aversion (or ignorance) of the importance of the method of proof. The more well known works of Greek mathematics were great in emphasizing the importance of the concept of mathematical proof. Yet, Greek mathematics, with the exception of Archimedes and Diophantus had an aversion for arithmetic (especially the concept of infinity and infinitesimals) and algebra and an over-reliance on geometry[1]. Engaging in a bit of counter-factuals, if either of the following had happened: (1) Indians picking up on the method of proof, (2) Greeks adopting more arithmetic and algebra, history of mathematics may have looked significantly different than today.

However, the OP link has a ton of apologist/revisionist history with insufficient archaeological evidence mixed in with a little bit of the good stuff. Example: references to vastu shastra, which is astrological woo.

[1] Eric Temple Bell, 'The Development of Mathematics,' Dover, 1992.

<comment><USER5> > vastu shastra, which is astrological woo.

I'd give you that in its current marketed form it is astrological bullshit, but originally _Vastu Shastra_ was a formal form of science [1] grounded on engineering principles and urban design. All persevering to obtain a 'calm' for the dweller.

One can still infer from the high precision N-S-E-W positioning of fairly huge ancient Hindu temples, historical remains of homes and dwellings, monasteries and other artefacts. Even the 1000+ step staircases in some of the forts and fortresses [2][3], transoceanic bridges [4] suggest the quality of math that was in play.

The choice and placement of stone, wood and metal w.r.t Sun, tropical climate and other ergonomic needs is simply mind blowing. Math has to be at the root of it.

Obviously not many records exist to substantiate the level of skill and academia prevalent at the time. I wish someone undertook a journey to research and substantiate just about "everything" that we have from Egypt to Indonesia (Hindu kingdoms spanned that far, yes!). At the risk of being shooed away by existing pride.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastu_shastra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastu_shastra)

Even the wikipedia here, for example, says ... "while Vastu had long been essentially restricted to temple architecture..." which is completely wrong, and they defeat it in the third paragraph where they define "the Sanskrit word vastu means a dwelling or house with a corresponding plot of land" which is what Vaastu Shastra was all about, not temples alone.

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChandBaori.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChandBaori.jpg)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chand_Baori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chand_Baori)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Bridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Bridge)

<comment><USER6> >from Egypt to Indonesia (Hindu kingdoms spanned that far, yes!).

wait, what?? Clear to elaborate? I know alexander had a huge kingdom, i know gnehis khan conquered a very very large area of land. I know muslims had an ENORMOUS empire but this looks like news to me. So clear to elaborate? Specifics?

<comment><USER5> Wait, yes. Dude, Alexander and Genghis Khan are like they happened only yesterday. Hindusim is much older than all of that, and I don't mean only in terms of religion. The culture itself is very old, so to speak.

God this is going to be a long comment.

I don't know how immersed you are w.r.t Hinduism, which gave birth to, no rather off-shooted other religions like Buddhism & Jainism. Here I can only give a very top-level view to help you make an entry:

There are two epics of the Hindus: The Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Read both, they're brilliant classics. These two epics are stories about rise and fall of political power, affairs, conceit and ensuing wars between leaders of different Hindu kingdoms. Let's say kingdoms of an aggregate land mass we now call India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan that stretches up to far, far east to places like Cambodia.

I could not confirm how far in the west did Hinduism spread out but will do so given that I am excited about it now.

Both epics are mythology by today's standards, but the stories in each are what Hindus vehemently believe as true. All (not most) of warring cities in both these epics exist inside and outside of India (or sunk under the ocean [1]) even today. I mean literally.

On axis of time, both these two epics are separated from each other by two 'Yugas' [2]. We are living in the Kaliyug where kali == machines and yug == time-frame. Yugas are of varying length, first being Satayug about 1,728,000 million years. Man exists during this period as life forms from scratch in this universe. Alexander was like a fucking second ago when you're talking ages of this length.

I suggest start with Yugas and you'll start seeing math, numbers, conclusions, geometric progressions and astronomy right in there. No need to accept anything is true or false, w.r.t written and confirmed history. But you'll love visiting places, and connecting it with the historical texts.

It goes up the Bohr's model of atom (Paramaṇu), the theory of what nucleus and subatomic particles were about (hell yes!), the nuclear bomb ( _Brahma Asthra_ ) and how these were used in warfare, negotiation and peace keeping. Several other concepts of what seems similar to magic of quantum physics, treatment of time-space curvature, extraterrestrial life, theory of relativity and additional dimensions of gravitational physics (though refuted by modern practitioners of course) all exist in discussions. May or may not be correct, but the level of thought can be appreciated.

Astronomy, for example, scales to the level of predicting solar cycles, cycles of universe (311.04 trillion years?[3]), variable length of life of man/species, sub-sub-events like the ice age, age of the machines, age of only truth which you will find pretty fascinating to read, if not believable.

Let me just throw in the starting point [2]:

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarka)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrics_of_time_in_Hinduism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrics_of_time_in_Hinduism)

<comment><USER7> >The culture itself is very old, so to speak.

A humble evidence based look at this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization#Indian_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization#Indian_subcontinent)

No known evidence shows anything meaningful in the civilization department happened before 4000BC.

<comment><USER5> Well, no. The evidence you present is of civilizations that disappeared or were destroyed and were excavated later on. These do not tie to the age of Hinduism or the age of the culture, but only represent a few dots on its timeline.

Ayodhya, for example, the city of Ram exists even today [1]. You're an Indian, you'd know it of course. The modern version of this city is considered more than 9000 years old, that's roughly about 7000 BC on wards. Buy a plot of land in Ayodhya, start digging and you'll hit structures and temple tops of another buried city underneath as you go deeper.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayodhya](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayodhya)

This cave for example _Bhimbetka_ [2], is between 50,000-200,000 years old. It is mentioned in epic Ramayana which has yet to be dated. Bhimbetka is declared a world heritage site, and gives a proof of _homo erectus_ with skills in the Deccan area that early in time.

Some crazy estimates suggest approximately 100,000 to 900,000 years ago for Ramayana, but then it is a crazy estimate [3] indeed. There are pearls of available proof, mythology and craziness all over the place. Someone needs to connect them together so that we might get a better picture of it. Obviously I don't wish to over state the age of Hinduism, but it is mystic by virtue of its age for sure. It makes me lose my calm, ironically.

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhimbetka_rock_shelters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhimbetka_rock_shelters)

[3] [http://www.rense.com/general30/nasa.htm](http://www.rense.com/general30/nasa.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> //Ancient India was a land of sages, saints and seers as well as a land of scholars and scientists. Rishis were the sages who built our great culture. They devoted their life, energy and experience for the welfare of people. They wrote Vedas - the manual of vibrations. Following this many field of science evolved in India. //

This is typical hindutva propaganda, where they claim that anything and everything originated from Vedic scriptures, which are for welfare of people.

Before buying into it, I would suggest the readers to review the works of Dr. Ambedkar such as Riddle In Hinduism. [http://www.ambedkar.org/riddleinhinduism/](http://www.ambedkar.org/riddleinhinduism/)

<comment><USER9> Yup, that link is definitely not propaganda.

<comment><USER10> of course it is, but it just generally helps looking at it from multiple perspectives if you aren't directly affected, so you aren't affected more by one side of the argument, and perhaps even have a better, more informed perspective than some Indian people who may have been raised to think one way or another, sticking to one of the sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The dates of ancient texts from India are claimed over a whole wide range. There is as much as 2,000 years of divergence between the earliest speculative date and absolutely attested known date for the _Vedas,_ for example. A good outline of the issues in historiography of India can be found in _Mathematics in India_ by Kim Plofker[1], who was trained both as a mathematician and Sanskrit scholar. Not always knowing when a particular text was composed has a lot of influence on knowing or not knowing which ideas appeared in what era in the development of science and mathematics in India.

(One difference between India and either China or the near east is that the writing materials used in India, often plaited sheets of palm leaves, were much less durable than the silk sheets or bamboo slats used in China, or the fired clay tablets or papyrus sheets or parchment hides used in the near east. So many of the earliest writings from India have perished, while remarkably old writings still exist from either China or Sumer.)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-India-Kim- Plofker/dp/06911...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-India-Kim- Plofker/dp/0691120676)

<comment><USER12> The oldest writings in China are not much more than 2,000 years old. Maybe you're thinking of oracle bones & bronze inscriptions? But those are rarely more than a sentence or two in isolation.

<comment><USER11> The formation of the texts of Confucius and Mencius of course is older than that. The Qin book-burning destroyed a lot of the books that were that old, but bamboo manuscripts and silk manuscripts are still being discovered from archeological sites that are much older than any surviving writings from India. I have personally read in museums bronze inscriptions that are more than just a few sentences long, dating back about three millennia.

[http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/2010/01/29/rare- bamboo-...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/2010/01/29/rare-bamboo-strip- books-discovered-in-chinese-tomb/)

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

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

<comment><USER12> The Qin book-burning was mainly what I was referring to, but I didn't know there was significant recovery of bamboo or silk manuscripts going on (such material does not generally last 2,000 years without unusual environmental conditions).

I've also seen the long-form bronze inscriptions in museums - but those are the exceptions. That's why they're in museums ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You may have picked up on the author's not-so-subtle self-congratulation in the use of the phrase: "our great culture".

There is a lot of wonderful material to be absorbed in the ancient texts of India, but the text of that page has a strong Hindu religious nationalist tone (which in Indian languages is called "Hindutva", or "Hindu-ness").

The vast (in time and space), and diverse Indian culture that produced these works was far more tolerant and open to the world's ideas than the apparent mindset of the individual(s) who created this site.

So try to enjoy the actual linked texts, but observe, and then ignore the religious nationalism that seems to have inspired the site.

<comment><USER14> "our great culture"

Do you mean cultural heritage? I wouldn't call the culture so great now with the corruption in politics, etc.

<comment><USER15> how does politics get to be a part of culture ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sort of topic has come up before, and to put it gently, blog posts like these have been lacking in context and substance. See a previous HN post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154755)

Also see a previous HN post about a PNAS publication that talks about the people from current-day South India 4000 years ago (while South Indians' language is not based on Sanskrit, and 4000 years ago far predates the time period mentioned in the original post): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5078076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5078076)

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting collection. Disappointed to see the typical Hindu apologist, revivalist nonsense in the description though.

Edit: What I mean by typical: [http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0](http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0)

<comment><USER18> Agreed - why dig up ancient books that did not stand the test time? Just go forward with what is present and focus on future.

<comment><USER19> When these issues come up, there's always a vague "comes from india" contingent willing to riot and avenge their country over the fact they are the best at everything. (Don't bring up any discussions about infosys, else you'll be inundated with how great and expansive they are.)

Maybe it's because such a huge population actually has an origin place and story going back quite far? I don't have an origin. I come from some vague stock of medium-tall people with transparent skin in northern europe where the sun don't shine. I've nothing of ancestry to fight for, so I'm not sure I can even understand how they approach the world largely focused on the past.

<comment><USER20> I'm from India and it pisses me off a bit as well, but you've got to admit there are people all over the world who're stuck in the past, where they're from etc. and on the other hand, ones who'd rather worry about where they're headed :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yep ... I know that eye glasses and cataract surgery were done there first (the ruined lens was poked out of place with a copper wire, then a pair of glasses became the primary lens and the cornea became the secondary lens). And obviously you needed to be able to produce glass to make eye glasses. There was also early production of stainless steel.

I'm not as well-versed in Indian history as I should be ... with that kind of science, you would have expected a dominant technical culture but why was this knowledge lost instead?

<comment><USER21> >>you would have expected a dominant technical culture but why was this knowledge lost instead?

One word, Entropy!

As an Indian, I can tell you India has seen many cycles of ups and downs. And its not just mere technical culture, there is tons of other things. Food, literature, language, poetry, food, clothes, music, religions, philosophy and what not. I don't know any other country in the world comes close to matching this. Buddha arrived in India in around 500 BC. And that was one of India's peak times in Spiritual and philosophical tradition.

There are languages that are totally extinct, cultures that have faded away. Massive amounts of literature lost completely to mankind.

But Mainland India has been invaded many times, colonized, bulk of its wealth plundered. Add to this the overall entropy of the system.

A simple question to you would be like this. Can you be sure US will remain the world super power 200 years from now.

<comment><USER22> A small correction there, Buddha WAS from India :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there is a lesson to be learnt, it is that one should be humble about the notion of being the first to invent anything. I'm pretty sure the many of the concepts expressed in these texts go further back in time without any record. Everything is an addition or evolution of the past, regardless of whether it is explicitly or wittingly so.

</comment><comment><USER23> I pass no comment on the site, but on assertions here about hindutva as hindu religious propaganda/nationalism. This is incorrect, hindutva does not proscribe or prescribe any religion.

Veer Savarkar's pamphlet on which modern notions of hindutva are based on can be read at [1]

Sarvakar includes all Indian religions in the term "Hinduism" and outlines his vision of a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) as "Akhand Bharat" (United India), stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent.

Hindu in the context of hindutva is not religious. It speaks about a common identity for a united nation. Savarkar's writing need to be read in the context of the period that they were written, English oppression and the fight for independence, before the idea of a muslim state, Pakistan were first proposed. During this time, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh were one nation commonly know not as India, but Hindustan. Hindustan represented not a Hindu state, but a country where people who shared the hindu ethos reside.

At the level of practice, the Hindutva or Hindu ethos, outlook boils down to upholding righteousness (Sat-guna) and fighting ignoble attitudes (Dur-guna).

Quoting Savarkar, "We Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization - <USER2> Hindu culture"

Modern India was founded at independence on the same beliefs, in the quote above replace hindus by India and hindu culture by Indian culture.

Please read the literature on the subject and not what is simply presented on modern pop culture.

[1] [http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/essentials_of_hindut...](http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/essentials_of_hindutva.v001.pdf)

<comment><USER24> Please enlighten us on Savarkar's reaction to Ambedkar wanting to convert Dalits away from Hinduism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting, will check the site out. Apropos: I had blogged this a while ago:

Bhaskaracharya and the man who found zero:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/06/bhaskaracharya-and-man- who...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/06/bhaskaracharya-and-man-who-found- zero.html)

<comment><USER25> And here is one of his books, the Lilavati:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati)

I noticed this at that page:

"Bhaskara II gives the value of pi as 22/7 in the book but suggest a more accurate ratio of 3927/1250 for use in astronomical calculations."

I also remembered reading somewhere that some ancient Indians had a simple formula for pi that was somewhat accurate; take the first 3 odd positive integers, twice each, as one single number, split it down the middle, and divide the right half by the left half, i.e. 113355 => 355/113 = ~pi.

So I checked, using Python:

$ python >>> from math import pi >>> pi 3.141592653589793

>>> print 3927.0/1250 3.1416

>>> print 355.0/113 3.14159292035

The approximation that uses 113355 matches pi (from Python) upto 6 decimal places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is neat! Thanks.

I have wanted to learn Sanskrit for a long time, and I think the stuff you could read after learning that would be interesting.

And then there is NASA (apparently) using Sanskrit for AI: [http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit- nasa.html](http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html)

<comment><USER27> As someone who put in the years required to learn Classical Latin and Attic Greek I can but only heed you to make very, very sure you are willing to invest the enormous amount of time required to learn an ancient language.

If you have a normal job, wife and children, and can't find at minimum 2 hours out of your day to dedicate to language study, then don't bother. You will never read any Sanskrit at a comfortable pace if you can't commit to such an investment. I'm talking about picking up a book and not hitting an unknown word 3 times a sentence. You'll need at minimum 2 years of a full time schedule like before it even becomes fun.

It's the unfortunate and sad reality about the time commitment required in learning ancient languages to the level of fluency.

<comment><USER26> That's good to know. Ya, I understand it would be a huge time investment. Luckily I don't have any of those barriers, and am still quite young!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Indian culture was always inclusive in nature right from its point of origin.but now we only see it becoming exclusive and narrow concentrating only on the Hindu side of the culture.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Russia is the motherland of elephants" (old Soviet joke)... how familiar...

</comment><comment><USER30> Ancient texts should be considered as a philosophy rather than science, because almost nothing was formally proved that time, but lots of phenomena were correctly inferred or guessed.

Most famous insights, of course, were these about the nature of mind from the Upanishads, which uses state of sleep, deep-sleep (without dreams) and wakefulness as metaphors to illustrate what we now call "models of the world", "contexts", "cognitive dissonance", "frames of reference", or just the role of the mind (consciousness) in cognition - how we constantly distort, reinterpret and even ignore perceived reality.

Roughly, it was a notion clarified later by Buddha - "Life is shaped by our mind, we become what we think", the notion that all our (at least psychological) "suffering" begins (and ends) inside our skulls and doesn't exist in the world outside.

Another great notion was one of the Dzongchen sect of Tibetan Bon tradition, when they use analogy of a mirror to how our mind should "work" \- as a mirror isn't affected by what it reflects, so the mind in its "primordial" (original, such that of a child) state is just a "tool" to "do everything", including things done by Buddha or Einstein.

More recent marvels from India including "Want to see a God - look between two thoughts" by "modern" saint Ramakrishna, which is "in continuum" back to Upanishads.

In short, in decent texts composed by highly intelligent authors (including so-called fiction) there is a possibility to find correct inferences and guesses for almost every observable phenomena, if your own mind is lucid enough.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm really confused by the comments that say the tone of this site is "Hindu nationalist". I see no mention of the word "Hindu" in the entire page. In fact, it's as far from politicized text as possible. Not everything on the web has some hidden meaning or subtext.

<comment><USER32> The site has a page on "Vimanika shastra"[1] ("Science of Flying Machines"), which is known to be a bullshit text from the 20th century[2].

Definitely a Hindutva site.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/aeronautics](https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/aeronautics)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaim%C4%81nika_Sh%C4%81stra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaim%C4%81nika_Sh%C4%81stra)

<comment> s-topper >>> _Definitely a Hindutva site._

And, your point is?

That site also has collections about works of legit ancient Indian mathematicians, Vedas etc. So, you are going to disregard them because they're Hindus?

If somebody mentions about these things, then they're said to be peddling this so called Hindu propaganda. Now, _THAT 'S_ a real propaganda.

<comment><USER8> It is really pathetic to see how people try to defend their fundamental beliefs without any substance. People are brainwashed to believe that vedic scriptures are full of knowledge (I was a victim too. I used to recite some parts of the scriptures like purusha suktam). In reality, the scriptures are filled with filth like procedures of sacrificial, bestiality and orgy rituals, calls upon gods to slaughter their enemies (who have stolen their herds), etc.

Ambedkar was very diplomatic in his criticisms towards them. Osho was not so kind. See: [http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-rigveda- tulsidas-...](http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-rigveda-tulsidas- heritage-c6e3574f-06c.aspx)

You can also see that the site claims that Jyotish is astronomy but it actually means astrology.

Here is the description of Saturn in one of the texts "Parashara Hora Sastra" [http://archive.org/stream/ParasharaHoraSastra/BrihatParashar...](http://archive.org/stream/ParasharaHoraSastra/BrihatParasharaHoraSastraVedicAstrologyEbook_djvu.txt)

29\. [Saturn] has an emaciated and long physique, has tawny eyes, is windy in temperament, has big teeth, is indolent and lame and has coarse hair.

What is legit or scientific about it?

<comment><USER33> > What is legit or scientific about it?

Nothing. And no one here is claiming that all parts of these texts are to be taken as absolute fact with empirical proof. Most of it, as you mention, is riddled with imaginary stories probably because scientific discovery was being carried out by religious philosophers of that time.

However, there are parts of these texts that are legitimately impressive, philosophically or scientifically - and a blanket denial of that would be just as unjust as the 'filth'.

<comment><USER8> But the site says: ... [sages] wrote Vedas - the manual of vibrations. Following this many field of science evolved ...

I have provided references to show that the basic 4 vedas are tribal in nature and there is no basis to claim them as the origin of other scientific oriented texts. I am not denying all of the texts as bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> meh..</comment>


Advice from a Geographer: Put Away the Map - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/book-review-bonnett-beyond-the-map/ <comment><USER2> Deleuze says "make a map, not a tracing." Here the map is the tracing, because mapmakers in this sense are intent on capturing the territory and the raw data in the finest fidelity, rather than capturing the essence of the territory. (It's arguable that the former is a prerequisite for the latter, but it might also be arguable that focusing on the former makes you lose sight of the latter.)

This article is also reminiscent of _Seeing Like A State_ , which is quickly becoming my favorite book. The book notes that maps (and map-like devices, like censuses, even systems of measures), again prove to be an imperfect device for capturing physical or social reality, failing because the territory changes too much too quickly.

<comment><USER3> Thx for the book tip. People dont often mention Deleuze here lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who has hiked and canoed extensively in far flung places with and without maps - I can unequivically say that maps can be amazingly useful representations of the world or they can downright kill you with misleading info depending upon when they were updated and how often the landscape changes, as well as the just general quality of the map.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't the downside kind of outweigh the upside?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see anything particularly new here - the ideas described seem like fairly standard post-modernist dismissals of quantitative geography. Great fun to study at undergraduate level and gets you out of the lecture theatre, but for usefulness I'll stick with science.

</comment><comment><USER7> > To that end, he shows us places around the world — from a garbage city in > Cairo to an urban park in Helsinki, from the underground tunnels of Tokyo to > a traffic median in Newcastle, England...

So if I don't know where those places are, I should find out by...?

<comment><USER8> > So if I don't know where those places are, I should find out by...?

Advice from a commenter: Put away the headline.

Out lives are saturated with headlines. We see them in cars, subways, and airplanes. We access them with our phones, computers, and GPS devices. There are headlines of deep space and of the topography of the deepest ocean floors. Then there are the headlines of us — of our genomes, of the cognitive landscape of our brains, of the web of neural connections that allow us to see and think and act. Our faith in the headline as a true representation of the article, and a reliable metaphor for experience and the concepts of modern life, is exercised every day, largely without question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Easy to forget there's a difference between models and the reality they try to represent. All abstractions are leaky.

In the case of maps there are all sorts of issues that relate to projections and size, the 2d nature of maps vs. the 3d nature of lots of places, editorial decisions as to what is relevant and what is not, etc. There are a lot of political subtleties as well, historical changes, temporary changes, etc. Also, continental drift and gps accuracy are a thing; especially in earthquake sensitive regions.</comment>


1955 Map Shows No-Go Zones for Soviet Travelers in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/05/15/cold_war_map_shows_areas_prohibited_to_soviet_travelers_in_the_united_states.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The stretch from Rock Island, IL to Memphis I get --- Rock Island houses a huge arsenal, southern Illinois has a large munitions plant, the Mississipi is an important shipping lane, and the area around Memphis gets you Oak Ridge Labs.

I think I understand Oklahoma --- you have Tinker AFB and another munitions plant.

I know there are a lot of military installations in Michigan and presumably Indiana, but is the primary reason they're blacked out just that it's the industrial corridor for the country? Just black out the rust belt?

Any other areas people can explain?

<comment><USER2> One thing that jumped out - "Travel restrictions on Soviet private citizens stayed in place, enforced by the Departments of State and Justice, until the Kennedy administration unilaterally lifted them in 1962 as a symbol of the openness of American society."

The administrations in question were surely perfectly aware that there was no such thing as 'Soviet private citizens' just up and traveling to the US.

But, anecdotally at least, the symbolism did work - my father first visited the US in the early 70s as a Soviet-bloc citizen working for UN IAEA Safeguards. He was impressed by how unrestricted his travel was - he wanted to extend his trip slightly to do a bit of sightseeing - the Grand Canyon and Vegas (I think both off this map). His hosts helped arrange it for him in a few minutes and with a couple of calls. To a travel agent, not the CIA.

Which may seem innocuous now but it was the height of the cold war, the UN was a much-beloved Soviet spy-insertion vector and the working destination of his trip was, in fact, Oak Ridge - not a place famous for its guided tours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stay out of Malibu, Lebovski!</comment>


20 Years On, Amazon and Jeff Bezos Prove Naysayers Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/business/dealbook/andrew-ross-sorkin-jeff-bezos-amazon.html?emc=edit_dk_20170516&nl=dealbook&nlid=65508833&te=1&_r=0 <comment><USER2> It seems like the jury is still out about what impact Amazon will ultimately have on local communities and shopping as we've known it for years. Retailers are closing their doors as fast as they can get out of their leases.

In many ways, it seems like Amazon has too much control.</comment>