Show HN: EatUp Sponsors – get/give free food for meetups, tech and other talks - <AUTHOR> http://www.eatupsponsors.com <comment><AUTHOR> OP here!

I run a recruiting company, and I want to buy the pizza for local tech meetups here in Melbourne, Australia. And presumably there are meetups and hackathons and internal brown bag lunch presentations who would like free food for their attendees.

So I created a list of sponsors who are offering free food for tech talks, hackathons, meetups, heck even internal brown bag lunches!

The deal is that if you're running a hackathon, a meetup or internal brown bag lunch or whatever, and you want free pizza (or maybe sandwiches or something else) for your event, you provide a promotional message opportunity to the sponsor in return.

The idea is that people who run events that need food will come to this list to get it free.

So if you want to offer free food to tech talks, meetups, hackathons and brown bag lunches in your city, send an email to email@example.com and I'll add your company to the list.

</comment><comment><USER2> Do you have plans to get this to other cities? I run a club that does tech workshops and tech talks and I think this would very helpful for us.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's already anywhere in the world.

Send me a list of your tech workshops, website, the dates that they run, the city/county, and your email address, and tech talks and I'll list them as "seeking food sponsors".

Email email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea! A great way to get participants to come to these events, especially since they are usually after work during dinner time anyway.</comment>


Two million Facebook, Gmail and Twitter passwords stolen - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/04/technology/security/passwords-stolen/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 <comment><USER2> 2 Factor Authentication, 2 Factor Authentication, 2 Factor Authentication!

I've had 2 factor authentication enabled on my gmail account for over a year now, and once you get past the initial setup phase, it's really not _that_ inconvenient.

I have even been able to train my parents to use 2 factor auth, I just need to get them using a password manager now...

<comment><USER3> What happens if I'm i) outside the country, so no SMS for me, ii) outside cell tower coverage but with wifi (happens every day for me inside buildings), or I got my cellphone stolen for instance. How does 2fauth works in that case?

(Just wondering, as the above _are_ the reasons I decided not to use it)

<comment><USER4> 2-factor authentication does not require the second factor every time. It typically only asks for the second factor if the device is unrecognized, or the usage pattern is unfamiliar.

So, your laptop that's logged into GMail will stay logged in when you're out of the country. Unless you explicitly log out, it will stay this way.

I enter maybe one two-factor auth code a week, if that.

So:

i) Prepare ahead and log into your services.

ii) Walk to the nearest window, get the code, and go back to your desk.

iii) Replace your phone - you keep your number - request the auth key again.

None of these are completely seamless of course, but the idea is that all of the above happen rarely enough, and are mitigable enough, that it's far better than the alternative: getting pwned.

There are also second factors in the form of mobile apps, which eliminate the need for SMS, so as long as you have data/WiFi you're set. There are also ones that don't need data at all (see: the Battle.net Authenticator, which is basically a RSA key on your phone), but require more substantial initial setup.

<comment><USER5> This advice isn't _incorrect_ , but it isn't entirely accurate either.

The Google Authenticator mobile app doesn't require data, so that meets the OP's requirements perfectly (ie, no SMS or data).

Use that, print out the one-time use codes and keep them in your wallet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Misleading headline, makes it seem like these guys were hacked on their servers. When the reality is people spread a virus and passwords were logged from individual machines. No fault from Google or Twitter.

<comment><USER7> Yup. They're talking about the recent spiderlabs report it seems.

<comment><USER8> The source is this SpiderLabs blog post:

[http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2013/12/look-what-i-found-moar- po...](http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2013/12/look-what-i-found-moar-pony.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "File Transfer Protocol (FTP, the standard network used when working from home) "

May be at CNN, that is what they use to work from home.

<comment><USER10> HN greatly overestimates how dead FTP is.

<comment><USER11> But I heard FTP was declared harmful and phased out in 1970?

<comment><USER10> Tell that to my wordpress projects....

<comment><USER12> You can. Put this line in the config file:

define( 'FS_METHOD', 'direct');

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ugh. Actually, 410k Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter passwords stolen:

        318,000 Facebook accounts
         70,000 Gmail, Google+ and YouTube accounts
         22,000 Twitter accounts

<comment><USER14> There were thousands of services attacked, there isn't room in the headline for all of them.

<comment><USER13> Sure there is: "Two million Facebook, Gmail, other passwords stolen".

Or: "Two million passwords stolen, including from Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While technically accurate, the headline seems to allude to direct breaches of Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter.

<comment><USER16> Not even technically accurate. The article says that only 400k of the 2 million stolen passwords were from FB/GOOG/TWTR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you use LastPass, this is a good time to run their Security Challenge ([https://lastpass.com/index.php?securitychallenge=1](https://lastpass.com/index.php?securitychallenge=1)) to audit the strength and uniqueness of your passwords. If you're not using LassPass or something similar like 1Password then today is a good time to fix that.

<comment><USER18> What good will that do against a keylogger?

<comment><USER19> Strength of password won't really help for key logging, but using e.g. Lastpass helps because it logs you into everything without having to type your passwords. It will even generate and fill in your initial passwords so that you never have to type your passwords even once.

<comment><USER18> Lastpass doesn't have a password itself?

<comment><USER19> Ah great question. It does, but it usually stays logged in on your computer, since it runs locally. So you rarely if ever need to type your password for Lastpass, meaning the keylogger would have had to be running on your computer when you installed and set up Lastpass. On a related note, it can also be set up with 2 factor auth.

<comment><USER18> Presumably the password is stored to a file or in memory (of course that could be arbitrarily difficult to figure out how to decode, but it can't be encrypted since that would require another password.)

<comment><USER19> Why do you assume it'd be stored in plain text rather than hashed? Also, what does compromising someone's local filesystem have to do with the functionality of a keylogger?

<comment><USER18> Even if it's hashed, then the hash can still be used to reconstruct the lastpass passwords. And I'm just assuming that you can't trust your filesystem if your machine has been compromised by malware. You're right the keylogger probably isn't that complicated. It depends on what level of paranoia you have and how widely lastpass becomes adopted (thus more incentive to hack it.) More likely the keylogger will just get the first time you enter your password into lastpass and then steal it that way.

The point is lastpass is designed to protect you from weak passwords and password reuse. It doesn't do anything to protect against attacks on your actual computer.

<comment><USER19> Oh, I misunderstood you; I thought you were referring to the master password of LastPass as being plain-text or reversibly encrypted. You mean that the passwords stored by LastPass must be reversibly encrypted on disk. Yes, that's true. Password managers do open the door for such an attack, but they tend to be much less vulnerable to attacks in general than reusing the same passwords. Of course, it's really up to each person to decide what risks are acceptable in the trade-off between convenience and security.

I think the main point was that a password manager would have been much less susceptible to the keylogger attack which lead to this particular incident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I found this rather amusing: "Among the compromised data are 41,000 credentials used to connect to File Transfer Protocol (FTP, the standard network used when working from home)"

<comment><USER21> Well, it is a not so wrong vulgarization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What platform(s) was the keylogger written for and how was it spread?

<comment><USER6> Given the vast amount of passwords farmed, I would say it was targetted for the Windows platform.

<comment><USER23> Is this really a valid point still? Surely two million is a drop in the bucket in the group of Facebook users accessing via OS X or Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anybody have a torrent of this?

You know... for science.

<comment><USER25> I'd like to verify my users are not among those exposed, since we use some of the aforementioned services for single sign on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Which operating systems were affected? It seems like the official report doesn't even contain this critical information.

<comment><USER27> Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/8 (x32/x64)

Apparently this keylogger was used:

[http://malware.dontneedcoffee.com/2013/10/jolly-roger- steale...](http://malware.dontneedcoffee.com/2013/10/jolly-roger-stealer-c- panel.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > The massive data breach was a result of keylogging software maliciously > installed on an untold number of computers around the world

Is that a Windows only issue or are other OSes affected?

</comment><comment><USER29> I had an unexpected login attempt from Vietnam in this past week. Google blocked it automatically - though it was successful, correctly used password.

I wonder if connected..

</comment><comment><USER30> Not as safe as other solutions, but I can remember all my passwords by choosing passwords by website category (6 for example): one low-security sites, one for sites that have your CC #, one for social networking, one for email, one for work, and one for your banking sites. keep a copy in your wallet. Sleep better.

</comment><comment><USER31> > Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter told CNNMoney they have notified and reset > passwords for compromised users.

> The hackers set up the keylogging software to rout information through a > proxy server, so it's impossible to track down which computers are infected.

Have I missed something or are these statements contradictory?

<comment><USER32> Nothing contradictory about it. First statement is about accounts on services, second is about finding the machines used to log into said accounts.

The sad part is that many people with this keylogger may react to the password change before/without removing the logger, which would entirely defeat the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case anyone is interested the primary source for the article is the following blog post (it is slightly buried):

[http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2013/12/look-what-i-found-moar- po...](http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2013/12/look-what-i-found-moar-pony.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> I was wondering, how does these services come to know that they had a breach. How Facebook or Twitter or Gmail, exactly number the amount of data(passwords) stolen. Just curious to know!

</comment><comment><USER34> 57.06% of the passwords stolen were for the Facebook domain. Sigh!

<comment><USER35> At least nothing of value was lost?

<comment><USER36> The ADP -- a payroll service -- passwords (which, interestingly, aren't in the headline), are probably the ones that, despite being smallest in number, offer the most opportunity for direct financial disruption.

<comment><USER35> ADP is _horrible,_ but their website can't change financial details (it only shows paystubs and tax forms). You can kinda change things through ADP FlexDirect, but all direct deposit enrollment is done elsewhere.

The ADP employee site hasn't changed in the past ten years and still uses basic auth. It's horrible. And freaky. When you login to your new company account, it shows all paystubs from your past employers too. [With the implication of your current payroll department being able to see how much you were getting paid at all your previous jobs since it's the same account?]

<comment><USER36> > ADP is horrible, but their website can't change financial details

The article here says that the account information that was compromised can. I'm not sure if that is a result of bad reporting on the same level as that related to FTP in the article, or the accounts that were compromised are different than the ones for the website you are talking about.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, it's possible they were HR-level accounts that actually run payroll and not just employee accounts.

The more power you wield in an organization the less competent with technology you are.

<comment><USER36> That's probably only even roughly true in tech organizations where the low- level folk have tech-related duties. (Though HN users are probably somewhat biased to think in terms of such organizations.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So no details on how to detect if this virus is on your computer?

<comment><USER38> Apparently not. I think just wait until Google, Facebook, or Twitter reset your password.

<comment><USER39> That is exactly my fear

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Was this targeted towards windows?

</comment><comment><USER33> i thought hotmail was least secure. But every time passwords are stolen, its always for the Big-3 Social networks. Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This time Gmail joined in. Great !! But then what can you expect from a free service {kidding}

</comment><comment><USER41> Page won't display in my mobile browser, so I can't read the story.</comment>


Ask HN: How to talk to users? - <AUTHOR> I often see a lot of advice on 'talking to users' as fundamental to understanding their needs, building a product they love & running a profitable startup. However, it seems there is a right way to talk to users & perhaps, steer conversations in a way that provides you valuable insights or gets you closer to what their pain points are. How do you ideally talk to users, most especially if you're trying to validate a B2B idea? <comment><USER2> Don't you mean talking to humans that you work with and build solutions for? The term 'user' depersonalises the relationship, and yes, you do need to take care, and so do they, but there are better means. Structure your business relationship and build order first to maintain clarity should the need arise. Bind that agreement on ethics not need. If you do not want a relationship with clients or prospective clients, perhaps use your engineering skills in an existing organisation that shields you from the interaction. Otherwise, honest personal contact is best. Your abilities should be evident in response to need, not assertion of need. Be prepared to skilfully manage emergency situations that are not your own.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://momtestbook.com/](http://momtestbook.com/)

Also see the first couple of chapters of _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ by @sgblank.

</comment><comment><USER4> like, actually talk to them. use Twitter, be active on forums, etc. and continue to do so after launch so that you can see how they respond. don't add/drop features purely based on telemetry. remember the things using your software are people and not just data points.</comment>


Death by metoo hits Toronto startup Planswell - <AUTHOR> https://betakit.com/planswell-ceo-attributes-company-downfall-to-social-media-storm-in-investor-email/ <comment><USER2> It seems there are only ever allegations, the anonymous person gets what they want (a person fired, a career ruined, and in this case, 50+ people lose their job), and we move on without actually finding out the truth. Even if the truth is that it never happened, many people don't care and are still steadfast in their beliefs.

Social media mob justice doesn't help society and many innocent people get hurt in the process.

<comment><USER3> >It seems there are only ever allegations

The company hired a third party to investigate, the accused person left the company of his own accord without contesting the allegations, the CEO made a public statement that he found the allegations credible. What in your opinion remains to be done in terms of "finding out the truth"?

<comment><USER4> Additionally, the "anonymous person" isn't anonymous any longer as they have updated their twitter to use their real identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original post seems to be gone, but here's the best summary I could find of the accusations:

[https://betakit.com/anonymous-medium-post-raises- allegations...](https://betakit.com/anonymous-medium-post-raises-allegations- of-sexual-harassment-at-planswell/)

(from link)

In the Medium post, Jane Doe alleges that they began interacting with Wickware after expressing interest in video and marketing at Planswell, and began pitching ideas to the CMO.

"My interactions with Michael eventually led to me being sexually harassed by him," the Medium post alleges.

Wickware, in a position of power as a co-founder and C-suite executive, "consistently pushed boundaries in an effort to get closer to me," asking if "I wanted to sext with him," and refusing to "leave me alone when I asked him to on numerous occasions," the post alleges.

Feeling pressured into appeasing Wickware, Jane Doe claims that the two entered into an affair.

"I so deeply wish I was in a healthier mental state to understand what was happening and to have put a stop to Michael's behaviour in an ethical manner," the post reads.</comment>


Peter Thiel wants to overcome death - thinks Internet isn't sexy anymore - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Funternehmen%2F0%2C1518%2C812991%2C00.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry to be negative, but I really can't see the use of linking to a Google Translate version of a very general German article about someone that anyone here already knows plenty about.

Well, except for a bit of a laugh, I guess... ("Earth is alien to him". Right...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality - Jean Paul</comment>


Single-page websites may be a dying breed - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/12/23/single-page-websites-may-be-a-dying-breed/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RoyalPingdom+%28Royal+Pingdom%29

<comment><USER2> Single page websites have an advantage when considered as web apps. Instead of page loading, directly manipulate the DOM with javascript and fetch content with AJAX or web sockets.

See <http://itsnat.sourceforge.net/php/spim/spi_manifesto_en.php></comment>


The US Startup Visa: A boon for dismayed, frustrated British entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/03/the_us_startup_visa_a_boon_for_dismayed_frustrated_british_entrepreneurs.html

<comment><USER2> >> "This is a critical reason why most tech startups in the UK go absolutely nowhere. You can't legislate against it. It's built straight into the culture."

[Citation needed]

This piece is fairly short on evidence+numbers, and overloaded with sweeping generalizations.

>> " If you're starting a new tech business, the only place — the ONLY place — you should be is Silicon Valley."

If you need to schmooze VC/need to work for a big company for a while so you can schmooze their M&A department/etc, then probably Silicon Valley is the best bet.

But if you just want to build a tech company that makes money, it doesn't much matter where you are.

>> "That is a traffic warden putting a parking ticket on the Bugatti. That is also a crowd cheering on the traffic warden. Why? Well it's because each of the people watching will never, ever, ever have the capacity to even think about buying an £800,000 Bugatti. They know it. They know their place. Why should someone else be allowed to be successful enough to blow almost a million quid on a car? Yeah. Fluck'em! Rich B'stards!"

They're cheering because the car is probably in the way.

Jeez what a stupid 'article'. The author just comes across as someone who has failed and is blaming it all squarely on the 'culture' rather than any fault of his own.

And FWIW, flying out for a couple of days every 3 months is hardly a big deal. If the US had universal healthcare I think it'd be more appealing.

(Caveat): I don't really care about 'the scene'. I just sit in my office, do my own thing. I don't really need a 'tech scene', I've got one online :/

<comment><USER3> _They're cheering because the car is probably in the way._

In the UK, ~30-50 people do not get into a crowd and "cheer" a traffic warden doing their job unless the car belongs to someone they hate a lot more than traffic wardens.. and traffic wardens are vilified in the UK to ridiculous levels (there was a recent documentary about this - <http://youtu.be/4TxxiXZHXD0>).

 _If the US had universal healthcare I think it'd be more appealing._

Annual travel insurance is so cheap in the UK - even that covering the US - that using the US healthcare system isn't really an issue to most travellers.

<comment><USER2> Yeah maybe the traffic ticket is more about class differences.

One cultural difference is that in the UK, a lot of sitcoms are about lower/middle class people. In the US many sitcoms seem to be about insanely rich people. So perhaps that comes into play.

But in any event, the result would have been similar anywhere where supercars are a rarity.

      * Crowd gather to see supercar
      * Parking attendent give car a ticket
      * Crowd cheer/laugh/etc because it's something you don't see often.

Also there's probably a large element of people cheering, glad to see that laws are equally applied to both rich and poor.

I don't think you can just cite this as evidence that people in the UK are jealous of wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best part of leaving the UK was escaping the cycle of negativity. Sure this guy is warped by it and comes across really badly, but it's insanely helpful being able to say I'm working on a startup and have people be understanding and supportive. If you don't believe me about the attitude of some British people, check out this Guardian article and the comments:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/10/not-safe- fo...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/10/not-safe-for-work- internet-london)

I tried to make sense of it all myself here:

[http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2009/07/you- cant...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2009/07/you-cant-fail-if- you-dont-try-or-why-i-left-the-uk.html)

<comment><USER5> Linked to both of those in an update at the bottom of the post Pete. Nice one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He nailed it. It's written in an abrasive tone that's sure to attract negative reactions, but the array of positive comments left so far show an undercurrent of support (and I've had plenty of positive retweets and responses on Twitter after mentioning it). Nonetheless, it's the patriotic right of some to believe everything is fine and dandy here.

I've always played it by being based in the UK (because I haven't been able to move to the US, maybe in a few years) but having 90%+ of my customer base in the US (I even took angel investment from the US, like the article's author). That way I enjoy the UK's tax system and I can live here legally, but I enjoy a customer base with a clue (try selling Internet services or advertising in the UK - ha ha ha). Works for now-ish but the startup visa could be a big help.

(In retrospect, maybe I should edit my post to say this guy is totally wrong to stop getting downvoted by the handful of patriotic Brits who remain :-) By jove, humbug to the US, chaps, the UK is splendid!)

</comment><comment><USER6> > In the UK, entrepreneurs try too. The first thing that happens is they > become social outcasts. They're labeled, with a bit of a laugh, 'delboys'

what is this nonsense. (If anything I find high correlation between entrepreneurs and getting laid.)

<comment><USER3> (I thought you were plc on Twitter and hence British? I'll explain anyway for the benefit of the non-Brits!)

Del Boy - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Boy> \- is the lead character in, perhaps, Britain's best ever sitcom that ran in the early 1980s, _Only Fools and Horses_. Del Boy was a slightly shady trader-cum-entrepreneur who always had an eye out for some dodgy merchandise to shift.

Calling some a "Del Boy" communicates the attitude of seeing entrepreneurs as fly by nights, always looking out for an easy buck.

<comment><USER6> oh, heh, I simply meant "this doesn't actually happen" :)

Lovely Jubbly!

<comment><USER3> I don't know how popular it is, but I've faced it. I now only tend to associate with people in the lifestyle or who have aspirations to work for themselves anyway.

I'm guessing it's a lot _less_ common nowadays, though, simply because entrepreneurship and business have become "cool" thanks to the popularity of the Internet and TV shows like Dragon's Den (Shark Tank, to those of you in the US) and The Apprentice. In the last 90s, though, when I first became self employed, people did react a bit weirdly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author's a bit bitter, isn't (s)he?

<comment><USER8> That honestly to me seems to be a much larger problem in the London startup scene. I'm out there pretty often and it's not bad -- there are a lot of investors both VC and angel, a good smattering of startups and altogether a great environment for starting a company ... and all everybody does is complain about how bad it is.

At the last TechCrunch meetup I went to there, there was a whole talk with completely bat-shit reasons on why the UK had it so bad and the US was so much better (e.g. startups couldn't do well because Brown isn't as cool as Obama).

<comment><USER9> _startups couldn't do well because Brown isn't as cool as Obama_

OMG, someone used that as an excuse? What was their excuse when Blair and Bush were in power?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know a couple Brazilian ones that are quite frustrated too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, I would have said from that rant that it is pretty clear why nobody invested in his ventures or purchased his products.

<comment><USER5> I thought I better step in here to say that I've had $25k, $50k, $300k, $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 investments so far. The last exit was $24m, the products and services continue to be purchased.

Ewan (author of the post)

<comment><USER11> Good for you!

So why not mention that in the article to balance things a bit?

<comment><USER5> I wanted to target the British entrepreneurs who're suffering and keeping quiet, or not necessarily recognising reality. I didn't think think that including my achievements would necessarily be that useful. But I understand it would have helped to balance things out though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can the founder on this visa eventually apply for a green card, and bring their family here? Or is it employment-only visa?

<comment><USER13> I think you'll be thrown out of the country as soon as your startup tanks or you choose to leave the startup.</comment></comment>


All rise and no fall: how Civilization reinforces a dangerous myth - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/15/all-rise-and-no-fall-how-civilization-reinforces-a-dangerous-myth/#more-525079 <comment><USER2> I think there's a weird tendency in modern internet culture to take long- established things and decry them as myths, where the whole debunking consists of bad faith engagement with a straw man argument not attributed to anybody. And sometimes even the debunking itself is just a more nuanced restatement of the idea supposedly being debunked, offering to substitute it for the 'simplistic' view that someone, somewhere, supposedly believes.

And I don't think the thesis put forward by the Civilization franchise is necessarily wrong, however dreary. As with anything, it depends on the level at which you engage with it, and how much good faith you apply and which things you choose to emphasize or not emphasize. Economic strength and accumulation of resources and sheer population do have a lot to do with who dominates. But maybe it takes other stuff, too. Maybe playing a game doesn't mean you're ignoring it, and "correcting" the thesis of the game doesn't mean we're due for an overthrow of a grand cultural dogma.

<comment><USER3> >Economic strength and accumulation of resources and sheer population do have a lot to do with who dominates. But maybe it takes other stuff, too.

That may be but it's got nothing to do with the article which is talking about Civilization--and games in general-- presenting monotonic, consequence free growth as the only state of being until the "A Winner Is You" screen (the dangerous myth)

Which as a side effect leads to grind-y end games where you have dominated everyone but still need to put in another hour of grind to actually finish them off or otherwise end the game (the bad game design).

<comment><USER2> Huh? The stuff I'm talking about might as well as have been a verbatim quote from the article itself.

>Through the Civilization lens, raw economic strength is success. Population is power.

What's the difference between that and my statement, "Economic strength and accumulation of resources and sheer population do have a lot to do with who dominates." ?

<comment><USER3> nothing, but that sentence is not the topic of the article.

<comment><USER2> As I read it the article has two parallel points.

One is that the game Civilization advances a supposedly dangerous narrative about the myth of progress. Another is that, in gameplay terms, this infinite expansion and growth leads to a grindy end game.

You seem to be saying that the latter is the real point, and that by addressing the former I'm missing the point. I think the former is the more important point and I feel like I did a reasonably good job of being responsive to it, and I feel that cryptic comments telling me I'm missing the point are unfairly dismissive.

<comment><USER3> You wabbled about click bait and then took issue with how dominance is achieved, meanwhile literally every other sentence in the article is about perpetual growth, how perpetual growth a dangerous myth, how other games deal with it or how it's bad game design.

You didn't address the myth of progress at all, which regardless of it's merits from a grand historical point of view certainly doesn't apply to individual nations which rise and fall all the time. You certainly didn't present any arguments against the idea that unthinking growth sometimes actually has consequences which Civilization games have actively been removing.

All you said economic power and resource accumulation probably leads to dominance. But it's not dominance the article takes issue with, it's that dominance is represented only by growth which is why one sentence after your quote: "Only growth matters"

<comment><USER4> Civilization does not actually portray inevitable perpetual growth. It's quite possible for your advanced civilization to be conquered by barbarians (actual barbarians or a less-advanced civilization; it doesn't really matter which), and when that happens, technology is lost.

As a matter of practice, this doesn't happen much because it isn't fun, but it's well within the game's view of what can theoretically occur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The points are valid but let's step back and remember that this is a game. When someone plays Call of Duty, there is a suspension of disbelief that allows the player to ignore the horrors of war (and zombie nazis and whatever else they're doing these days). When I play Civ, I suspend my disbelief when Ghandi tells me that nukes are the way of the future in 200BC and Teddy Roosevelt declares war on Cleopatra.

Civ is not a perfect reflection of history, society, or civilization, let alone an idealistic society or civilization. And in truth, that's what makes it fun. Pinning the fate of our "IRL" civilization on a game because it perpetuates the myth of perpetual growth is a bit ridiculous. The perils of capitalism are not going to be defeated by changing the mechanics of a Sid Meyers game.

If we want to talk about the harm video games bring about, let's talk about loot crates and microtransactions in F2P games.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing special about a game compared to any other form of media, or any form of fictional storytelling which make them immune to having an influence. You have to suspend disbelief in any novel, nevertheless no matter how outlandish the material it always communicates some ideas about the way the world works. I'm actually really looking forward to people giving up on the implicit idea that video games are just fancies or toys, because it's at that point that video games which set out to communicate interesting or unsettling ideas or perspectives will become mainstream.

<comment><USER5> Are you saying it's irresponsible, then, to publish a novel whose plot revolves around the success of perpetual growth (or success of a civilization embracing perpetual growth)? Influential or not, we shouldn't censor media that we find enjoyable because its real world counterpart is destructive.

<comment><USER7> Critizing a creative work is not censorship. Using the authority of the state to repress a creative work is censorship. I am free to, and in some sense ethically obligated to criticize the ideological implications of creative work.

<comment><USER8> You can use other kinds of authority and power to censor. "No platform" is a form of mob censorship.

Though I agree that critical analysis and censorship are two different things.

<comment><USER9> People have a right to free expression, they don't have a right to have thst expression amplified by third parties. I've noticed that when an emotive word is overused, often with a new word in front of it, it's bullshit. "Mob censorship" "white genocide" and so on for some glaring examples, might as well have the first words replaced by "Not really."

Co-opting words with strong emotional valence for the sake of an appeal to emotion is petty, and speaks to the weakness of the underlying argument.

<comment><USER8> Most dictionaries have a broader definition. Here's the ACLU:

> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," > happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or > moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as > well as private pressure groups.

[https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship](https://www.aclu.org/other/what- censorship)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That design feature is very deliberate.

I remember listening to a talk from Sid Meier and at some point he explains how they tried to implement a rise-and-fall system in the original Civ. It didn't go very well. Playtesters hated it.

When the first fall came, people just quit and start again, thinking that they did something wrong. When they were told it was intended and they had to fall to rise again, they just didn't like it at all.

I can see a niche for a hardcore strategy game where rise and fall is part of the game loop, but given the current estate of affairs it would be just that, a niche game.

<comment><USER11> And just this phenomenon, of pandering to customers' desires, and giving them the fake news they want, is where we get the pejorative word "stereotype." Stereotypes were 19th century 3-D photographs. At first, these showed realistic foreign scenes but it soon became apparent that the audience wanted to see (and would only pay for) truly exotic costumes on those foreigners, and exotic customs, whether this had much to do with reality or not.

<comment><USER12> Remind me of a quote from Alan Moore:

"Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic.

In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being, that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment—things with which we can fill twenty minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience; they would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."

-The Mindscape of Alan Moore

<comment><USER13> > If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience; > they would be the artists.

Games know what they want. They complain very loudly, when they get something different than what they wanted/expected.

Of course game developers and publishers again want slightly (or completely, I'm looking at you Electronic Arts) things. Developers want that artistic meaning, publishers want a lot of safe money, while gamers want to enjoy the game, they want the flow [0], the feeling of conquering a hard but not impossible challenge.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is an interesting pair to Jimmy Maher's "The Game of Everything, Part 2: Playing Civilization" [1] published just two days ago.

He makes the same point that the original Civilization was designed around the assumption of a relentless march of growth and progress that will ultimately benefit all mankind. This is encoded in the game's winning conditions: "You win a game of Civilization in either of two ways: by eliminating all rival civilizations or by surviving until the colonization of space begins."

 _" Bruce Shelley, who authored the manual, is thus explicitly discouraging the player from approaching Civilization as a zero-sum game: you win simply 'by being in existence when colonists reach Alpha Centauri.' This doesn't mean that all or most players played under that assumption — a topic I'll return to momentarily — but it's nevertheless kind of an amazing statement to find in a game like this one, implying as it does that civilization writ large truly is a global, cooperative project. There's an idealism lurking within Civilization, this game that plays not just with economics and war but with the grandest achievements of humanity, that's missing in the likes of Master of Orion. It's notable that, while the history of gaming is littered with hundreds of galaxy-spanning 4X space operas, vanishingly few games beyond Civilization's own sequels have attempted to replicate its model of grand strategy."_

[1] [https://www.filfre.net/2018/03/the-game-of-everything- part-2...](https://www.filfre.net/2018/03/the-game-of-everything- part-2-playing-civilization/)

<comment><USER4> > "You win a game of Civilization in either of two ways: by eliminating all > rival civilizations or by surviving until the colonization of space begins."

This isn't accurate at all. To win by colonizing space, it has to be you who colonizes space. If all you do is survive until somebody else does it, you lose.

<comment><USER14> The Civilization designers say it's a win even if you're not the one who sent the ship.

The text you quoted is from the original game's manual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the expansions of Civ 3 (or 4?) in the late game you can lose tiles to effects of climate change and desertification. Though it was never a huge issue for my cities, a little production lost here, a little food there. I'm wondering why they took that out and what other set-backs they can add to Civ to prevent this perpetual growth gameplay. The article touches on the challenges of this, that with these balances the game still has to be fun. Civ 5 balanced (some might say over-balanced) perpetual expansion of civilizations by making new cities a pretty heavy resource sink until they were of a certain size. I'm not as big of a fan of that iteration because of that mechanic.

<comment><USER16> AFAIK it might have felt like unfairly penalties to the player. Sid Meier has discussed in an old interview the prototyping rise and fall of civilizations in the game. He concluded that it was not fun for someone to see the civ they built over the course of hours being taken from them.

<comment><USER2> I agree. As a person who has not played Stellaris but is aware of its excellent reputation, I got to the part of the article where it said Stellaris breaks up it's late game bloat, and was expecting the second half of that sentence to be very different. I thought it would be something about abstracting away the tedious low level details, and shifting toward supermassive macro scale problems, maybe going up a higher level like Spore, but in some salient strategic sense that fits the feel of Stellaris. I was disappointed to learn but the actual solution was just random punishments.

<comment><USER17> It's not really random punishment, it's challenges. eg, if you use certain dangerous technologies extensively (eg, strong AI, subspace drives) then a strong late-game enemy may appear at an unpredictable time (eg, rampaging AI bent on killing all races, rampaging fleets from another dimension).

I think this actually works well for Stellaris, because of the vassalization dynamics. In most 4X games, if you get defeated then you're dead and may as well quit. In Stellaris you can get defeated, become a vassal of another nation, and later break out to defeat your former masters. Having a powerful late-game enemy appear makes that sort of shakeup much more likely, as the smaller/vassalized empires may be able to pick off systems from the more powerful, but weakened or distracted, empires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think many commenters are missing the most important bit of this article. The author says, "There is a historical context for this modern myth of perpetual growth. It emerged from the Industrial Revolution ... Many of us act as if we believe this will continue forever, even to the stars themselves." The implication is that such growth _won 't_ continue forever, and we _won 't_ reach the stars. It's a sentiment that I happen to agree with, but the author takes it as something of a given, and spends the article talking about how these games reinforce false assumptions, assumptions which many people don't even think about. That's the real point here.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a civ player I would love to the the mechanics mentions where you could overfish, overfarm, etc and mines and other production improvements had negative impacts on through pollution & other risks (eg offshore oil platform spills, etc). There could be techs & policies to mitagate these issues, but investing/adopting in them would be a trade-off on production & wealth.

<comment><USER20> I remember in the first Civ that there was a notion of pollution that started kicking in once you had built factories. The only way to clean it up was to dedicated Settler units to go around and clean it up.

<comment><USER21> Nuclear clouds were also a giant pain in the ass IIRC, could they even be cleaned?

Convenient way to strangle enemies though, nuke their cities and they have a very hard time rising back up because they can't produce.

<comment><USER22> Civ5 had fallout, but while factories require coal, they don't produce any pollution.

Even Civ 1 had global warming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish There's a game called Banished that has cycles to it unless you are careful. The economic model is complicated enough such that if some event hurts your ore miners, then your ore output drops, when your ore output drops then your blacksmiths farming tool output drops, when the farming tool output drops your food output drops. When your food output drops, your food stores drop your people start starving. It can cause a population of hundreds or thousands to drop to a few dozen. But all the infrastructure you built for your large city becomes a burden at that scale, and it take longer to grow to your old size than it did the first time.

What I found fascinating is after playing for a bit you can start to see these cascades start early and try to stop them and still fail. All you can do is try to efficiently route resources as you watch your entire city fall into decline.

<comment><USER23> I'm very impressed by that game and was hoping you'd have more of a positive endgame note ;)

<comment> Paul-ish I admit, my experience may reflect my skill more than the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Collapse of civilization is always pictured as something dreadful, that might not always be universally true, for it also brings change: the slaves of Rome were finally free, the collapse of the Soviet Union also brought freedom (that was really good for those who could take advantage of it), the non German subjects of the third Reich were very happy when that one came down! Somehow the big narrative that is embedded in the civ games is missing these details completely.

Also collapse of a state does not mean that civilization is gone completely. Maybe exploring collapse may be fun too. (At least it would teach an agility that could come quite handy for an individual). However building such a game would be really hard, as it would go against the patterns of historical discourse, there is probably less data to build on.

On the other hand we had a lot of instances during the past century when the established order of things did come to a crashing halt...

<comment><USER25> When Europe "collapsed" because of the plague the rest of the world didn't really notice.

Today things are more inter-connected so it could domino in ways it never could before.

<comment><USER24> The world took notice in the long run.

The survivors of the plague had it good though, salaries were up and the institution of serfdom was finished in western Europe, the stage was set for rapid modernization.

Also westerners got some level of immunity to these germs so that people in far off places would just die off when they came around.

<comment><USER25> The Plague was never really a problem outside of Europe because it required particular conditions. Other diseases did spread, but those didn't have the same apocalyptic effect on society.

When smallpox and other diseases rampaged across the New World the rest of the world didn't notice. It was geographically and demographically contained.

That's not the case now where things like SARS can go world-wide in a matter of weeks.

A failing society could cause considerably more damage today than at any other time in history.

<comment><USER24> No problem outside Europe? Asia is outside of Europe. Now the plague caused the decline of the Mongol empire - the first trans continental, almost global trading network, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica)

<comment><USER25> Maybe it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back but it doesn't seem to be the deciding factor in that decline.

Like the Roman empire before, the fractured bits of the Mongol empire survived for hundreds of years after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In these types of games, when an empire becomes large, all the minutiae decisions very relevant in the early game become tedious exercises. It seems then that in 4X games, the game could evolve in response to the change your empire's complexity, including new UI, new strategic considerations, and even removal of features from the earlier stages of the 4X game. Individual units might be glommed together into a larger superunits. The map might change to a larger field of view..move from warfare to economic rivalries. The point I am making is that the tedium of late levels versus the intense fun of the beginning, is partly because the game stays the same. Change the game, and that expansionist fun can be highlighted again.

</comment><comment> GuB-42 It is a game FFS. It is designed to maximize enjoyment, realism is way down the list, and it is obvious to any reasonable player. It would be a "dangerous myth" if state leaders started using Civilization as a model, but thankfully, it is not the case.

And the way the rise and fall mechanism is implemented in practice is simply by ending the game. Once you've won (or lost) you are back to the stone age on a different map.

<comment><USER27> > It is a game FFS. It is designed to maximize enjoyment, realism is way down > the list...

I see this argument often, but it always fails to consider that some players, including me, get enjoyment from realism, simulation and faithful representation of a matter/topic/process.

<comment> GuB-42 There is a niche for players who want realism above all.

Sometimes there is a studio that fills the niche, sometimes not. And while the team is usually very passionate, they simply don't have the resources to match to polish of AAA titles. I don't know what the state of the art is for 4X games. You can probably find realistic wargames though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Civ 3 had pollution, and managing it created a number of complaints: [https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/an-option-to-turn- off...](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/an-option-to-turn-off-the- pollution.57841/)

Civ 4 had global warming, and it annoyed people enough they hacked the game to get rid of it: [https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/global- warming.145922...](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/global- warming.145922/)

People already complain the games are too complex. If you add a bunch of knobs for various forms of pollution and exploration, you'd just get thousands of requests to turn it all off.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe they should try upping the difficulty level.

I usually play at Prince or lower because my civilization does much falling at higher levels.

<comment><USER30> Cities:Skylines does a relevant thing with traffic. Because the granularity of all activity plays out as individual vehicles and pedestrians going from place to place, as you scale up you run into bottlenecks and traffic issues that affect lots of things in the game.

Some of it's simply dumb AI bugs, but some is a legitimate requirement for designing road flow (which you can do around the bugs as well if you know they're there). A comparable thing could be done with Civilization-type games if you had something that worked at a low enough level of granularity. Rather than 'because you did this, enjoy 20% more productivity', implement it as something where it depends on underlying factors following a good design.

<comment><USER31> To me C:S is another example of how every town you make has to be an american town: its all about how you place the roads.

The original game doesn't have any way to build something away from a road, even if its something like a park or a statue, and certainly you can't make an area with just pedestrian access. Good luck making a medieval city centre, or collage town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Rise and Fall, the first major expansion for Civ VI, makes bold moves to enliven the endgame, like introducing Dark Ages and "city loyalty" , which makes your cities more liable to defect but also gives you a chance of phoenix-like rebirth into a Heroic Age. The intent is to inject that early game dynamism into established empires, encouraging them to, well, rise and fall."

It's all biology. Empires grow and decline and die like animals. The leave offpsring.

There is perpetual growth but it happens in a cycle. No empire "wins", it breaks down and the pieces then grow and compete.

<comment><USER33> And the memories continue to accumulate until we have no more need of progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Civ II solved the 4x end game grind in an odd way, contrary to this quote from the article:

"That means that sooner or later, in every Civ game, you'll reach a point where the challenge is gone but there's still a long grind before you reach the point at which you have enough capital cities, culture points, rocket launches or religious conversions to win the game."

It solved it with tubeworlds. You were allowed, in Civ II to build, say, 24 x 160 worlds, and that made all the difference. Games were exciting all the way through as you raced to deal with the Civilizations next to you and fight toward the ends. No matter what, when you came up against your last one or two computer opponents, they were advanced civilizations that weren't boring to fight even though you were already close to a win. Very sadly, this was dropped from subsequent games, in which you could only generate rather square maps. I have absolutely no idea why. A great loss. I don't play Civ now.

</comment><comment><USER34> One game not mentioned in the article and that managed to keep the late game pretty damn exciting was Medieval: Total War II [1].

There's many ways in which the game shakes things up in the late game. One aspect of it is squalor, a metric that rises as your cities grow and advance in technology. High squalor increases unrest. There is very little you can do to reduce it- it will just keep rising over time, as your population grows. And even with careful management the cities at the edges of your empire (where the population tends to have cultural differences to the center) are always at high risk of a revolt, that kicks your army out of the city and replaces it with a rebel force. A hack around that is to artificially cause the city to revolt in an opportune time (when you have a good army to take on the rebels), take it back and slaughter the population, bringing it back down to a manageable size. Still, large cities will always eventually get to a point where they just suck for everyone involved.

The other thing that shakes the late game up is the Mongol invasion. Actually- two of them. First you get the regular Mongols that are the hardest thing that's hit you until then, by a wide margin. Don't worry- they don't want your cities; they just want to pillage them, raze them and move on to the next. Once you 've dealt with them and a few decades have passed, the Temurids come on, who are like your worst nightmare married to its own worst nightmare, but trailing elephants with cannons strapped on their backs. You know you're in trouble because their banner is black and red. That spells "evil" even in a real history-based gaming world.

Then of course there's more stuff that happens in the late game- somebody discovers a New World and a whole new map is added to the game. Things like that. It's very hard with the game to end with total domination. If nothing else, I've abandoned most games because I got bored of the constant strife, that got a little too repetitive after a long enough time, to be honest.

The point is- there was no constant march of progress in this game. You really got the feeling that the world hated your guts, as things went on and the more you played, the more it hated you. Such fun :)

_________________

[1] I played this game primarily as a 4x game, for the city management and the map expansion - I know that's not how it's meant to be played and that the focus was on the realistic battles, but MTWII had probably the best balanced campaign map than any Total War game and playing it this way was way more satisfying than many 4x games I've tried, including various Civs that didn't even come close, to be honest.

<comment><USER35> I also liked Shogun 2's realm divide mechanic. Right around when you take over ~1/4 to 1/3 of the map, the Shogun declares your clan an enemy of the state and the rest of Japan declares war on you after a few turns. It forces the player to bide their time, build up their forces, and think carefully how they'll plan their late game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Computer games are unrealistic". Sure they are, thanks about informing us about it. That's the whole point. In real life, you are not Emperor Of Earth, you do not control economies or vast armies, and if you try to pull any of video-game shenanigans, you'd die a horrible death. The whole point of playing is to escape - in your imagination - into a world where it's not true. I can't believe people can be dense enough to not realize it. So what's the point in such articles?

</comment><comment><USER37> Are there any games reviewers out there who actually enjoy the play aspect of games without any hand-wringing?

</comment><comment><USER38> Civilization was created as a fun computer mediated version of tabletop strategy games where commerce and technological innovation was so hard to simulate it was even more superficial. Decrying them for not being didactic about unsustainable development, poisoning the environment, or techno-dystopia seems rather petty.

That said, it would be pretty neat if it were possible to make a fun game that did all that. The hazard is that didactic games often aren't fun. Don't make games that aren't fun.

</comment><comment><USER39> Do I understand correctly that they don't have mechanics for overfishing/overfarming/etc either? That seems strange.

However absurd the reasons are, I can at least understand the assertion that climate change is a "controversial" topic, so if your goal is to even cater to the lunatics, fine.

But that overfishing can damage the environment shouldn't be controversial - or is it?

<comment><USER40> Of course it is. How dare you threaten short term corporate profits. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In Civilization VI, climate change has been written out entirely, even as we > live through planet-wide ecological collapse in the real world. The novel > inclusion of natural beauty (as 'Appeal') only gives modifiers to growth. > Famine is a minor inconvenience in your grand plan, as it was to empire- > builders in Ireland or India. While older Civilization games included > climate change mechanics (Alpha Centauri even set psychic death worms on > polluters) Civilization VI is reluctant to take a side on 'controversial > issues'.

Culture victory for United States of America!

To be somewhat less facetious, does the game have any mechanisms for environmental issues? Do you have to handle pollution, loss of species, depletion of stocks through overfishing or overhunting, etc?

</comment><comment><USER41> TLDR: Civilization should be more roguelike. Or maybe that's what Dwarf Fortress already is.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really hate zero-sum thinking. It's true, if we were stuck on this ball of dirt forever, _and_ technology is stagnant, then yes we should conserve a lot. But we're not stuck here (help Musk!), and technology will keep progressing. So I gotta say I completely disagree with this article.

<comment><USER43> If we consume too much, we'll never make it off the planet.

<comment><USER44> If we consume too little, there will never be the required return on investment required to attract the capital required to make it off the planet.</comment></comment></comment>