To design and develop an interactive globe - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/globe <comment><USER2> Great basic and easy to follow tutorial for visualization display only (virtual globes), which are totally fine to be spherical, just be aware of the limitations.

So as a trained Cartographer I have two supplemental remarks on this:

1\. For anything involving simulations or else, that require an ellipsoidal earth or beyond, go for Patrick Cozzi's (of CesiumJS) still very relevant book _3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes_

[http://www.virtualglobebook.com/](http://www.virtualglobebook.com/)

2\. There is no fixed ratio of screen space for map vs globe display, it all depends on the choice of projection used for the map version, the ratio mentioned is apparently for a specific equirectangular plot.

Maps don't need to be rectangular, projections like Robinson or Equal Earth are also considerable options, which don't make the map appear so huge and have a way better screen space ratio vs. a globe than rectangular ones.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> These giant companies employ/stockpile vast numbers of elite programmers who they don't really need.

So they build other things. Nice work if you can get it.

<comment><USER4> They are probably hired to do front-end work to make things look nice and be creative at the same time.

I personally think that Stripe is on point with design. Which attracts more customers.

You don't need elite programmers to only do the "important stuff". Visuals are important too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a more mathematical description of the "sunflower pattern" on the sphere, a spherical Fibonacci lattice: [http://extremelearning.com.au/evenly- distributing-points-on-...](http://extremelearning.com.au/evenly-distributing- points-on-a-sphere/)

As a live notebook: [https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/spherical-fibonacci- latti...](https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/spherical-fibonacci-lattice)

</comment><comment><USER6> 'None of us on the team considered ourselves 3D artists, so we leaned on each other, the internet, and friends to help solve technical problems.'

You have money to burn on a vanity exercise using experienced programmers but don't even bother to hire anyone in the visual arts when designing it?

<comment><USER7> Err what? Stripe's design team for a decade has been so solid, so good, that they literally drive some design trends across the web (at least with tech companies).

I'd say they're probably one of the biggest champions of people in the "visual arts" among tech companies.

<comment><USER8> Design and Visual arts are not the same.

I agree with GP, this reads like a student's first foray into opengl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a cool project.

I am amazed that there are companies this big that investing so much time into building what's essentially a gimmick has positive RoI

<comment><USER10> There is an interesting chicken-and-egg problem in our line of business, in that we have to convince you that we're not just normal-software-company levels of trustworthy and competent, but trustworthy and competent enough for you to put us solidly in the middle of your revenue. Additionally, due to the way our business works, we might have to do that before you even have revenue.

So we invest quite a bit in "the little things." I don't think we'd call them gimmicks. Error messages, for example, certainly aren't gimmicks; they're a classic product feature for an API, but they're afterthoughts in most places and we sweat them enough such that one of every X,000 developers debugging their integration will praise the error message (specifically) to their colleagues or friends. We aspire to that level of care up and down the stack. This includes our web presences; they're shipping software products of our company, after all.

The same sort of chicken-and-egg problem applies to hiring, by the by. The best reason to work somewhere is the colleagues. How do you let people experience the colleagues before the colleagues have convinced them to work for you? Our answer: you create replete evidence that the kind of people you'd end up working with would spend weeks getting a globe animation right and that the people who manage/promote/etc them would say "Absolutely yes, the home page redesign doesn't ship until we have a globe animation we can be proud of."

<comment><USER11> on that note, are you aware that the globe on stripe.com is rotating in the wrong direction?

<comment><USER12> This is a tricky one. The majority of worldwide software revenue comes from companies in the North Hemisphere who read left-to-right, so most globes are oriented this way.

<comment><USER11> Can't tell if sarcasm...? What I mean is that the globe should rotate towards the East, not towards the West. This is of course assuming a stationary camera!

<comment><USER7> Yes and the reply was saying that to the majority of readers (who read left to right), the globe spinning as it does, probably feels more subconsciously comfortable to our minds.

It's an artistic interpretation of a globe. It's not meant to be a scientifically accurate representation (one could say that the oceans aren't grey either, or that countries aren't sets of dots, or that the Earth isn't a sphere but an oblong spheroid, slightly squished at the poles). Again, scientific accuracy isn't paramount here.

<comment><USER13> This is actually a very intersting tangent! If I visualize interacting with a physical globe, I'm going to spin it left, as if I was "reading" the globe left-to-right. The rotation displayed on the stripe website is not the rotation of the Earth, it's the rotation of a globe!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Despite the impending release, an executive (it was Patrick) posed to us: > what would you build if you had the time to do it the way you wish you > could?

Funny how CEO of Stripe is still participating in such (seemingly) low level decisions. Can't imagine that CEO of Ford for example would participate in new site design and development.

<comment><USER15> Maybe that's because Ford makes cars.

<comment><USER16> And we saw what happened when a car company let someone spend company time and resources to build their ideal car [0].

[0] [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Pw9gaEiQAxY/hqdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Pw9gaEiQAxY/hqdefault.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Actually, Ford also tried to build an ideal car in the 50's. Edsel is now known as a "popular symbol for a commercial failure."[1]

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

<comment><USER3> That's what The Simpsons episode is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On a tangent, I do feel most GIS systems and applications still use 2d maps instead of a 3d globe, which I think could do with some rethinking. Working with globes could eliminate the whole apparatus of projections, and I guess would simplify a lot of calculations.. but there seems to be much resistance to this idea.

<comment><USER19> It's still being projected onto a screen though so you're still using a projection. There are some pretty extreme trade offs you accept when using a orthographic 'globe' projection, not least of which is that you can't see half the planet for any given moment.

<comment><USER18> I don't exactly get this argument. It is not only about what you see on screen, I was talking about geographic operations like spatial queries being executed on the globe rather than on a projected 2d surface.

<comment><USER20> > spatial queries being executed on the globe

But it's perfectly possible to create geodesically-correct buffers, for example - such as you might see when calculating ballistic missile range over thousands of kilometres - in a 2D projection, and indeed this has been available for decades. And we have plenty of global models, such as WGS 84: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System)

So what exactly are you talking about?

<comment><USER18> So do you think there is no benefit if we can avoid projections entirely? Also won't using 3d make working with great-circle paths easier?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They mention globekit [1], an insanely cool globe visualization which deserves their own post.

Does anyone know the price range for their services? I hate it when companies don't put the price upfront and make potential customers ask for a quote. :-\

[1]: [https://globekit.co/](https://globekit.co/)

<comment><USER22> Cool, sure, but after several seconds of loading I closed the tab without knowing anything more about the company. I'd say what's on globekit.co would be a bad idea to put on stripe.com, as is.

<comment><USER23> That's too bad. Check out [http://piano.io](http://piano.io) to see an example of GlobeKit in use. They launched that over 2 years ago judging by the timestamp on their instagram account - [https://www.instagram.com/p/BmPBqP9BWUK/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BmPBqP9BWUK/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's fascinating to me that so much 3D web design work is still done by hand in code, rather than using a visual 3D tool.

3D in web design essentially means simple rotating shapes, e.g., see the Stripe globe or the Panic truck ([https://www.panic.com/transmit/](https://www.panic.com/transmit/)). I don't want to diminish what's been accomplished here, this is absolutely bleeding edge, state of the art work. But here's an example of what 3D design means in other media ([https://vimeo.com/260279525](https://vimeo.com/260279525)).

<comment><USER22> Comparing something rendered on the fly with a video is a bit unfair.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely, maybe I should have used something like Monument Valley ([https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/](https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/)) as an example? I'm making a point tangential to performance though. Why aren't assets like this made in visual tools for web design (e.g., Blender, Cinema 4D, or Houdini) the same way they are for other mediums like video games, movies, and image assets?

<comment><USER8> This is absolutely not even close to bleeding edge. I am frankly surprised it wasn't made in an art tool.

The manvsmachine video IS what we're starting to reach in terms of quality, even on mobile. (Admittedly cutting a lot of corners, but realtime is 99% cutting corners :)

<comment><USER24> I meant bleeding edge just as incorporating 3D into web design. Per my original comment, all I usually see people doing is rotating an asset. (If you have some better examples, I'd love to see them!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cool writeup! I agree with this sentiment 100%: "the web is poised to embrace 3D en masse". And with the heady webgl adoption that threejs brings, we see sites with decorative elements that hog resources, inhibit user interactions, and make finding the actual information you are looking for a nightmare. It's a power tool, use it judiciously ;)

Post fails to mention how they are actually rendering the "dots". But I feel perhaps they are executing excessive draw calls. 100K is not egregious. ThreeJS docs include many instanced geometry samples. As well as library level particle systems and materials. All anim logic handled via shaders. Raw webgl points without textures are also very performant for things like starfields, etc.

Wanted to link up the original "webgl-globe". Visualization originally used at Google to see where in the world search requests were arriving from:

[https://github.com/dataarts/webgl-globe](https://github.com/dataarts/webgl- globe)

<comment><USER26> Yeah I thought their counts for the number of dots they could render performantly were pretty low. I suspect they aren't doing any instancing because from what I know about three.js the API for creating instanced geometry is a bit more complicated than creating and using CircleGeometrys as they do in their example. But of course the example could just be a simplified one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love the tangibility afforded by a good globe, it's a great way to visualise so many things. We built something similar a few years ago. It started off with some lofty ambitions, but other work got in the way [https://citizensgbr.org/explore/atlas](https://citizensgbr.org/explore/atlas)

</comment><comment><USER28> The dots in 3d are certainly the best-looking solution of the ones they mention, but most likely also significantly slower than a texture-based approach. It makes their website extremely janky for me when scrolling, on an upper-midrange laptop.

<comment> Const-me > slower than a texture-based approach

Try to rotate the globe with a mouse, and you'll see an effect very hard to achieve with a texture.

> makes their website extremely janky for me when scrolling, on an upper- > midrange laptop.

Probably a software issue with your laptop, not with the web site. Works fine on my low-range laptop (i3-6157u, 16GB RAM, Windows 10, MS Edge).

<comment><USER28> This mostly depends on the graphics chip (and drivers, obviously). What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be necessary to have powerful graphics processing just in order to see a marketing website, but YMMV.

<comment> Const-me > This mostly depends on the graphics chip

That laptop only has Intel GPU, albeit a good one (Iris 550, 800 GFlops).

> it shouldn't be necessary to have powerful graphics processing just in order > to see a marketing website

I generally agree. If I would be making that web site, I would have tested on the slowest Intel GPU I have in this house, I think I still have a Windows tablet with Atom Z3735G somewhere in the attic. However, I'm 100% certain it's technically possible to implement that particular thing in a way so it works even there.

One obvious improvement, merge all dots into a single immutable mesh, for mouse dragging effect displace them in vertex shader. Each dot needs 4 vertices, each vertex with XYZ relative to center of sphere, UV to apply round sprite texture, and one scalar random number for mouse drag displacements. They render 20k dots, rectangular sprites would need 80k vertices, with 6 floats per vertex that's about 2MB of VRAM, and this way all dots will render in a single draw call. Possible to optimize further by passing less data per vertex (e.g. positions only need 2 floats for lat/lon, and texture coordinates only need 2 bits of data), and more so if WebGL supports geometry shaders in which case we only need to pass single vertex per dot without texture coordinates, and expand them into quads on GPU.

However, such low-level GPU shenanigans require skills most web developers probably don't have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While I realize this article is about a software 'globe' I think it would be really cool to have a more physical solution--a computer with software on it that displays a globe to a Gakken Worldeye [1] which is controlled by a Spaceball [2]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcG9O6S6cOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcG9O6S6cOU)

[2] [https://dezignstuff.com/3dconnexion-and- spaceballs/](https://dezignstuff.com/3dconnexion-and-spaceballs/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Here's another article on doing things like this with three.js. It doesn't cover interesting ways of placing the data but hopefully it's helpful anyway

[https://threejsfundamentals.org/threejs/lessons/threejs- opti...](https://threejsfundamentals.org/threejs/lessons/threejs-optimize- lots-of-objects.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> While we're on this topic, does anyone know ready-to-use open source map dashboard (preferably 3D, but I'm fine with 2D) to show signups or any event of interest?

I want to display it on TV showing our user signups. Reminds me of X-COM.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is really cool! The new Stripe site is a big piece of inspiration for me for what web design could be. Also, to the dev team thank you for integrating the Konami code into the site, that's a fun easter egg.

</comment><comment><USER33> Harks back to Shopify's Black Friday/Cyber Monday live globe tracker site no?

Also, Tron:Legacy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Huh, looking at the first globe they made, it shows how much of the world is "dark", i.e. where Stripe doesn't operate. For example, Russia. Is there an alternative that covers more of the world? PayPal?

</comment><comment><USER35> Looking at this article reminded me of the Map Projections XKCD comic.

[https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

The Dymaxion map is what tipped me off to the rabbit hole that is the Dvorak keyboard layout.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout)</comment>


The real scars of Korean gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32996009 <comment><USER2> Sometimes you pay a price to be able to do the things you love. However, the plight isn't necessarily with Lee Young Ho (aka "FlaSh"), who was winning $50,000 tournaments multiple times a year while on a 200-300k per year salary (I stopped following after the end of professional Brood War, not sure what it's like now).

The plight lies with those who aren't among the top 1% in their already elite field who are subject to the same amount of physical and mental stress and grueling 12 hour practices while making welfare wages. Maybe that's changed with more capital flowing into eSports these days, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> I spent four years of my life dedicated to StarCraft. I made GM several seasons on NA ladder. I made GM on Korean ladder for one season. I played many top tier players, and I beat them. Repeatedly.

Then I decided to invest in flying myself down to Dreamhack. All the people I played online and beat about 50% of the time and made connections with, I lost to every single time.

There's many like me, top tier players but who can't win a cent. The disparity in skill from bottom of the Grandmaster ladder to top 100, from 100 to top 50, then top 10, and finally top 5, is massive.

Stopped gaming altogether around that time.

<comment><USER4> I've had a similar experience, except it was with the Tekken series fighting games. At one point I was ranked in the top 20 in NA. I had a few chances over the years to play the top 5 in NA, and #3 from Korea.

The difference in skill level as you go from #20 down to #1 can be huge. I would have 50% chance against one of the other top 20, but that would go to maybe 5% against someone in the top 5, 1% against #1, and 0% against the Korean #3. I think I beat him one round ever.

I'm not sure I'd want to be #1. There is a point of diminishing returns when the game is no longer fun but work.

<comment><USER5> Neat. How does the skill gap change the higher you go? That is, #5 vs #1, is the chance close to equal, or is there that much of a power gap? (There's probably a mathematical description of what I'm asking; I just don't know the name, if someone cares to enlighten me.)

Any speculation on the cause? Is playing at #20 just not so time-dominating, but top 5 is a real full-time career? What factors are at work?

<comment><USER4> In the Tekken scene (this was 14 years ago), the main differences were competitive - the #1-5 all played each other regularly. They were in a league of their own, as were the Koreans. Time dedicated is also a big factor.

You have ~1/4 second (10-15 frames depending on throw) to analyze and react to perform a throw escape, which is pushing the limits of human reaction time. If the buttons are 1,2,3,4, throw escapes were typically 1,2, or 1+2 (rarely 3&4). If you hit the correct button for the throw, you escaped it.

At first, nobody ever escapes throws. It happens too fast. With practice, you can successfully attempt an escape, but it's only a guess at 1,2, or 1+2. You go from 0% success to 33% success.

But you can tell what the escape is by the animation. A 1 escape shows the characters left arm more forward than the right, a 2 and the right arm is more forward, 1+2 and both arms move in unison. If you are _really_ fast and analyze which escapes to do, you can escape throws 100% of the time. This requires more than practice - it requires continuous training, even conditioning to increase your metabolic rate (which changes your perception of time).

This is the difference between the #1-5 guys and everybody else. They could always escape throws, without guessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is still incredible to watch the Starcraft Brood War games played by FlaSh:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLSlqG9f4AQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLSlqG9f4AQ)

<comment><USER7> I often forget just how good BW was to watch. I used to stay up all night watching ProLeague on some Korean stream, way before Twitch was a thing.

SC2 killed it though, but it was just never anywhere near as entertaining to watch.

<comment><USER8> I still hold that grief. If not for SC2, we could still be watching another Flash vs Jaedong today. So SC2 basically killed a source of entertainment for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For context, Flash, with the large scar on his arm had an elo rating in brood war that may have made him the best player of any game -ever-. I think I've seen it noted somewhere that his highest elo was higher than even famous chess grandmasters.

This implies that after over a decade of hardcore professional broodwar around the world, he was more dominant at his peak than anyone else has ever been in a game with elo ratings.

<comment><USER10> > I think I've seen it noted somewhere that his highest elo was higher than > even famous chess grandmasters.

Elo ratings are not comparable across games (or across different player pools in the same game). All an Elo rating (or a rating in a similar system) measures is how you perform compared to others in that same rating pool. Each group that runs an Elo rating pool has parameters they choose when setting up and when maintaining the pool that affect the average and the spread of ratings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why real-time-strategy (RTS) is dead outside of the StarCraft 2 e-sport niche. RTS used to be the best selling game category around 2000.

<comment><USER12> Mostly because designing for e-Sports has a massive effect on options and creativity of an RTS - keeping the game balanced and fair for competitive play comes with a massive tradeoffs in creativity, faction diversity and player options (especially if the developer does not have large amounts of time for balance testing).

And since for some reason everyone wants a piece of that pie the RTSes have become a bit... bland. No more crazy unbalanced C&C superweapons, no more unfeasable "useless" underground units, no more extreme unbalanced side diversity of Relics DoW1, no more composable units of Earth 2150. The games got boring for everyone but the most core RTS group (which is probably already playing SC2) in SP. They got extremely unpleasant to play in MP if you're a beginner (SC2 is anything but fun on basic levels with it's economic timing pressure while playing).

As a consequence, the majority of SP players have rejected those games (and in a lot of cases moved to more accessible MOBAs) and the extremely pro community just isn't big enough to splinter into several games communities.

<comment><USER13> Add to that the level of increased communication and strategy available via internet and especially sites like youtube. Now everyone has the tools and info to tell which strategy is the best, at lower levels you're often better suited to just follow the exact steps someone else used and you'll win, but that's boring. Not doing it implies always losing however.

There's room for creativity only at the very bottom and the very top.

<comment><USER14> I'm not so sure. There used to be plenty of walk-throughs published in gaming magazines as far back as I can remember. While I don't recall any for RTS' (Dune II wasn't that hard, IMHO) -- I do seem to recall eg: Shadow of the Beast, Another World, Flashback and Chaos Engine having some big guide specials in the 90s.

Sure, it's easier to just go and look stuff up now -- but I don't really think _that_ has much to do with the decline. After all, if someone wants to ruin their fun by following a manual -- why would they spend money on the game in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a traditional athlete that has also dabbled in competitive Smash, I think every athlete has to ask themselves: Is it worth it? Not just in the immediate sense of getting back into the game, but in the long run.

I've watched too many teammates continue playing after it was clear their time was up. Always coming back for one more season when it was clear their bodies had had enough. I'm reaching the point myself where I had to figure out how much longer I'm going to play. I'll be done after my tenth season or sixth surgery or first major concussion, whichever comes first.

I'm going to have sports surgery #4 this summer. This dude has gotten one surgery, doesn't seem like a big deal to me. The author is right in the people need to stop freaking out.

One difference I'd like to note is that while e-sports and traditional sports have a lot of similarities, most traditional sports have a physical exercise component that benefits one's health. So I look at the sports I play and yeah, I've had three surgeries already, but at the same time I'm way healthier and in shape when I play them. So it's a tradeoff. I can't say the same about when I play competitive Smash.

</comment><comment><USER16> The analogy is simple, gaming is a sort of sport. The professionals are fully into it, the fans play the game as well, support their favourite teams and watch tournaments, just like any other sport. When comparing games like dota and chess, the similarity is even more evident. But it will take some time for this analogy to be accepted worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have to make a comparison.

My friend's brother-in-law is an ex kickboxing featherweight champion. The man does not have physical scars, but his brain is majorly damaged. He has some communication troubles, but the only thing his brain preserved is his physical prowess. American football players often play games just weeks after a concussion. Boxers... don't even get me started.

e-sports are IMO the least damaging of the professional sports. As a comparison much fewer e-sports gamers die due to injuries, and much fewer are crippled for life. The sedetary lifestyle is in fact a problem, but not too much more than it is for the average office worker.

</comment><comment><USER18> Injuries? Every sport has them, some even worse(MMA, boxing, fighting sports in general). From time to time this articles pup up about pc gaming. Its like any other sport, people should get over it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Did the authors never meet any professional athletes?

If you do any sort of sport (actual physical sport) on a competitive level, even in a local league, you do get hurt. And you work through your injuries and you keep training.

<comment><USER20> Did you read the article past the headline?

>One of his colleagues later suggested that if I'd been interviewing the world's most-decorated marathon champion, I wouldn't be surprised if they had damaged knees.

>Nor would I suggest a footballer needing surgery was "too far", the phrase I'd used to describe Mr Lee's arm.

>He had a point.

<comment><USER21> I would suggest a footballer needing surgery is "too far". The purpose of sports is to provide a framework that motivates healthy exercise. Once it gets to the point where it's frequently causing harm rather than benefit to the participants, the purpose has been lost along with any reason society should consider the activity normal or tolerable.

<comment><USER22> ... I'm pretty sure that is not the purpose of sports. The purpose from my perspective is: Advertising, Gambling, and entertainment. Since when has it been at all about exercise? Defensive Linesmen are hardly a "healthy exercise" motivation.

Sports that have little to do with exercise:

\- Racing (Horse, car, hound)

\- Chess

\- MMA (While they are super fit, it isn't "healthy")

\- Boxing

\- Bowling

\- Sumo (nothing healthy there)

... The list could go on, but I think I've made my point.

<comment><USER21> Okay, to clarify:

The purpose of sport for the companies that make money from it is, well, making money, and that's from advertising, gambling and entertainment, as you say.

But society grants sport a lot of tolerance and even encouragement that it does not grant to other such profit centers. What is the motive for society to do this? Answer: it dates from the time when sport was healthy exercise. Now that the ratchet of ruthless negative-sum competition has turned sport into something that does more harm than good, this social tolerance is highly inappropriate, and it should be revoked.

<comment><USER20> You are mixing pro sports with people playing casually. Pro sports is about players pushing themselves to the limit for the audience's entertainment. Modern day gladiators. You think of society like some noble, all-knowing and wise entity. It is not, I'm sorry to tell. Modern day gladiator games is all there is to it and the crowd loves it.

Panem et circenses.

<comment><USER21> That's because reality mixes them. If it was just a case of professional sports ruining a few hundred lives for entertainment like in the decadent years of the Roman Empire, well that would be bad but on the basis of sheer numbers it would be small potatoes compared to things like a million deaths a year from road accidents or the major powers treating Syria and Ukraine like puppies fighting over chew toys, so I probably wouldn't bother to comment. But it's creeping into the general culture. For example: how many Americans have played football at least for a while in school? Now consider that _everyone_ who plays American football suffers irreversible brain damage, and the total harm becomes substantial even on the scale of bad things happening in the world at large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With Dota 2 sitting at an $11,000,000 prize pool, it's a little shocking that there isn't more structure and regulation in a massive sporting event like this.

Given the development of LoL in Korea and Dota in China (Along with CS:GO and others), an international esports comittee is something desperately needed for increasing player salaries, and driving up viewership.

<comment><USER24> Regulation which would kill the little fun left?</comment></comment>


The tower that clears smog and helps to make jewellery - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33739265

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to the project's kickstarter page;

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1777606920/the-smog- fre...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1777606920/the-smog-free- tower?ref=nav_search)

<comment><USER2> > The Smog Free Tower draws in dirty air from the sky and captures ultra-fine > smog particles by using innovative, patented ion-technology. The Smog Free > Tower uses little electricity and is safe.

Oh boy. There's basically no discussion of the actual tech they're using here, which isn't really confidence inspiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> The artist says that it uses a proprietary ion filtration method. There was a time when art wasn't even copyrighted, now it is copyrighted, patented and uses trade secrets...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get around ageism and perceived incompetence? - <AUTHOR> I'm about 35 years old working in software.
As you age, people expect you to be able to handle increasing levels of responsibility. 9/10 of my years working professionally have been as a contractor to small 10-20 people companies. Despite their small size I never felt like I was a major contributor or had a major say in something, aside from one project. I have been the architect for one reasonably complex project, but I never lead, interviewed, or managed people.
General consensus I get is that I'm too overqualified for junior roles, but for senior roles, they didn't find any exceptional strong points with me. My network is weak and I have almost no friends in the tech field. So, how does one work their way out of this problem?
Don't know if it's impostor syndrome but it feels like I require a "remedial" software job (which doesn't really exist). <comment><USER2> Bottom line is that you'll need to move away from the ultra competitive areas. If a companies can find a younger person to do the work you do then they will. It's not just tech it's everywhere. You can try to fight the perceptions and become a super developer by cramming more tech skills but ultimately it's a losing battle.

I just read that people are rushing to get CS degrees in record numbers. Soon there will be an even larger pool of graduates looking for tech jobs.

My best advice it to look at getting some management and marketing skills. Start looking at teaching. Look at job openings and see what skills they are looking for. Also, go to tech gatherings and start making contacts.

Unless you are at the top tier as a developer, software jobs get scarce as you get older.

Start training for a new field, health is probably a good bet, that's the reality in our new economy these days. Don't wait.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not looking to compete with younger people. I am mostly going to be in competition with people 35 years of age like me, who also have around 10 years of experience in the field.

There are lots of software developers that are doing very well at this age. No need to look at other areas of work for now. If the majority of 30-something software engineers can be competitive, so can I.

Right now I am going to tech meetups (at least 5 per year) and am talking to other people in the field. It feels like spinning my wheels, though. Using those connections to help fill in work in between jobs is going to be more of playing a "long game".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I quit software after about a decade of experience. The passion was gone and I could only argue that MeteorJS (or other hyped tech of the week) was not ready for our production use. But kids will be kids and the rockstars started using my age to shame me to leave, which worked. Using rails for our next services was apparently just too old school. This is the dark side of software development that rarely is mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like you're suited for management or teaching.

You're humble enough to have impostor's syndrome. You're at the sweet spot for management/teaching age.

Despite what you feel now, you've probably learned a lot about different kinds of tools and which one to pick in what situation, even if you're not great at using them. You have also learned how trends evolve in time and have better instinct for when to adopt a new technology or use an older one.

Management isn't that hard either, but it needs someone who can understand what the engineers are going through and get things out of the way.

My hack was to start a startup and see it all the way through, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're really desperate.

Another approach might be to teach bootcamps or some community college. You're probably extremely qualified by teaching standards, unless you hate teaching.

</comment><comment><USER5> With respect, you haven't seen ageism until you hit 40 or 50. When you've been told that you have a great rèsumè and that they're looking for someone just exactly like you but five years younger and would you be able to give them any suggestions, then you've seen ageism.

I've never been a manager, and I wouldn't want to be. Technical Team Lead is as far as I would want to go, and I haven't done that yet.

As you get older, it becomes easier to become a contractor or consultant, as opposed to working in-house. Then they expect you to be a bit older, because you've got more experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you actually interested in more responsibilities? Not everyone is. Have you proactively asked for it or have gone above and beyond to contribute outside of your normal day-to-day activities? Or do you tend to wait for opportunities to come to you?

Senior-level contributors are expected to show initiative on a continuous basis. As for moving into lead or manager roles, you need to show a lot of those qualities before even being considered for them. If you haven't demonstrated that you already have the qualities necessary for the new level, nobody is going to take a chance that you will suddenly develop them later. Proactively seeking those opportunities is part of the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> People _expect_ more responsibilities out of me due to my years that I worked. But throughout most of my career, I worked jobs that lacked support for programmers, and no mentorships. I'm not ready to lead or teach without first being on the receiving end of that. But no company that has the resources for being taught skills by better programmers would give me a job, so I'm stuck at this road block.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not managing people is good; it means that you're not a manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just about managing. I don't have any exceptionally strong technical points either, and that has not been well-received by employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Email me using the address on my profile. I may have a way to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on what is it you do for work? Do you help run a company? Do you work for a company that has on-the-job training for new employees?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really does seem like all the job ads specify either recent grads or senior team leads. Nothing in between.</comment>


10 'superforces' of the business future (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cornell.edu/video/priceline-founder-jay-walker-10-superforces-of-business-future <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone that doesn't want to invest 40 minutes in this:

New Sensor Technology

The Connector Force - mobile network

The 2nd Software Revolution - big data, AI, machine learning

Feedback

Synthetic Biology

The Second Industrial Revolution - 3d printing

Nanotechnology

Robotics

Ultra Urbanization

Emergence of the Global Middle Class</comment>


Perspective tracking with only a web cam - <AUTHOR> http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ece576/FinalProjects/f2009/ty244_jgs33/ty244_jgs33/ty244_jgs33/results.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool. This class consistently produces great projects. You can see all the projects since 2006 here: [http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/Courses/ece576/FinalProject...](http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/Courses/ece576/FinalProjects/)</comment>


Ask HN: Simple rules inspired by Rust ownership in C++? - <AUTHOR> Rust's ownership system is great.
Could we devise some simple rules and conventions inspired by Rust to have a safer resource/memory experience with C++ ?
Some pointers I gathered:
* A nice SO answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30011603/how-to-enable-rust-ownership-paradigm-in-c/30062820#30062820 http://stackoverflow.com/a/30062820 * Stroustrup et al "Resource-Model" based on code static analysis: http://www.stroustrup.com/resource-model.pdf
    * The idea of "Owner" hinting is nice, but requires tooling <comment><USER2> I've got a simple way of implementing Rust's borrow checker in C. It's based on always nulling out old pointers rather than letting them dangle. Functions that take ownership of an argument demand a pointer-to-pointer, and then null out the caller's copy. When freeing memory which might've contained pointers, I assert that the entire thing is zeroed, to ensure it doesn't have any dangling pointers or leaks. Non-owning pointers are marked with const so they can't be freed.

This obviously tracks ownership at runtime, rather than compile time, but static analyzers are pretty good at tracking nulls, and optimizers minimize the runtime performance impact. The end result is very similar to Rust, albeit coming from the other direction.

At some point I'd like to write up a blog post with examples.</comment>


Ask YC: How would you sell your business? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. We have an existing software business (provision of encryption software) that brings in a good level of regular revenue but the income at the moment isn't stratospheric (We're bringing in around $120k per year). In the right hands this business could increase, but my main goal is I'd like to concentrate on a new startup and don't feel I can do both.  I appreciate that most people wish to sell their business for millions, but if you were after something in the region of $400-$500k where would you look? How would you do it without causing problems (ie people thinking you're up for sale)?  This is not something I've ever done before so would really appreciate any advice from anyone who has done this kind of thing before.<p>Thanks for any input <comment><USER2> We sold Kiko on eBay for $250k, which is around the neighborhood you'd want. The issue is that for that to work, you need to get a lot of attention. Since you have real revenues, I'd consider going to a boutique investment bank and seeing if they'll help you sell it. At the very least, even if they won't sell it themselves, they will probably tell you where you should sell it.

<comment><USER3> > We sold Justin.tv on eBay for $250k, which is around the neighborhood you'd > want.

Hilarious kind of mistyping there. Obviously that was supposed to read "We sold Kiko on eBay..."

<comment><USER4> If that's not a typo, I know some investors who will be seriously pissed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When people post sites for sale in the sitepoint.com forums, to prevent the general public from stumbling across the sale, they usually use a tinyURL pointing to the site and avoid using the site name in the description text. This prevents the sale post from appearing in most search results. You could also check out the robots.txt for wherever you list.

<comment><USER6> Would someone sell a site for this kind of money on Sitepoint? I've seen $15k-$30k on there, but not an amount as high as this. A quick glance is that even in the 'premium' category most are in this ballpark or less

Edit: sorry, don't mean to offend. Just curious if you know of any that have sold for this amount

<comment><USER5> No offense taken. In their premium section I have seen some things on for near this neighborhood (the lower part, though). My bigger concern is that sitepoint is about sites for sale rather than businesses for sale. To that end, I wasn't necessarily suggesting sitepoint so much as describing how people kept their privacy. If someone knows of a sitepoint equivalent for technical businesses, please post it--I'd like to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kiko, previous startup of justin.tv founders, was sold on ebay.

But I would not advise that for your startup, since I don't think you would be able to get enough attention to it from the right people.

I think the best idea is to figure out who the best people to buy your startup are. Either because they can leverage the product best or because they are your competitors or because they have enough money and interest in your space. Then start conversations with them.

Some people use investment banks or hired investment bankers but you need to be looking at a higher valuation to interest those.

<comment><USER8> The reason we sold Kiko on Ebay is because big companies we were talking to would have been willing to consider buying the company for a bit more, but only if Emmett and I went to work for them for some n years. Because (Total Amount of Money) / n wasn't very much, we said "fuck it" and just went for broke, so that we could work on our much more awesome idea, which turned out to be Justin.tv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You might want to go the business broker route (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_broker>), but don't pick one from a directory at random, try to get a recommendation from your lawyer or accountant.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for their input so far. I now have a few things to look at and research - the main thing is to move it forward. If I can sell it, then it will give me additional capital that will be useful, and another company who can market my existing product better than us can take it forward. Thanks once again - I really appreciate everyones comments

</comment><comment><USER10> Off topic, but I read your profile description and I had actually thought of doing something similar a few years ago. At the time bandwidth was still prohibitively expensive though. Nowadays, I don't think that's been adequately solved yet, and it would be much more realistic with services like AWS now. Good luck with that! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree with you, though we've done 'ok' so far. Feel free to get in touch if its an area you're interested in. Email address is now in profile

<comment><USER10> I would totally be interested, but I'm already way over my project limit right now ;) I'm running one company by day and I'm launching another in about a month that we've been working on since last September.

I'd love to see a beta though when you guys get something online! My email is in my profile too now. I'll keep an eye out either way :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mark Fletcher (founder of bloglines) gave a good talk which touched on this. Here's a transcription:

[http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher- blogl...](http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-bloglines- onelist.html#transcript)

</comment><comment><USER12> Curious... what kind of expenses do you have selling software that the income on 120 revenue is bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> $120k is our turnover. Actual expenses are very minimal (hosting costs, $500 Adwords and a few others) as we do other things - time spent on it is around 1-2 hours a day between us. If we all pulled a wage purely from this though then it would be quite low. My main thing is its taking up brain space now and I want to be able to concentrate on my latest idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Inc magazine has a section for advertising deals like these, I think. They at least feature one of these each issue.

</comment><comment><USER14> You might be able to sell it to a gold farmer and then cash out the gold IRL.

</comment><comment><USER15> NOTICE: The following message contains hearsay.

I heard that Justin from Justin.tv sold his first startup on eBay, but that could be entirely fictional. You might want to e-mail him to find out.</comment>


Hardlywork.in - Browse Facebook in a spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> http://hardlywork.in/ <comment><USER2> Much better than the Diesel version. Didn't know people were still making desktop apps!

<comment><USER3> Especially if you can't actually install programs on your office computer :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We need something like this with emacs / vim interface

<comment><USER5> Doesn't emacs already come with a browser mode built in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> we need something like this with a google chat interface and an emacs/ vim interface</comment>


Why Microsoft should forget about Yahoo and buy Palm - <AUTHOR> http://slate.com/id/2209139

<comment><USER2> The article suggests that Microsoft should spend 1-2 billion USD to buy Palm because the Pre is an innovative gadget. The unanswered question is: would it be worth that much to Microsoft to acquire a mobile phone company that has completely lost its relevance and marketshare outside North America, and has little to do with Microsoft's business-oriented Windows Mobile strategy?

Palm under Microsoft would become the "Zune phone" -- a vertical integration experiment detached from the goals of the rest of the company. But didn't Microsoft already buy Danger (maker of Sidekick/HipTop/whatever) not long ago? It's possible Danger is already working on something along those lines, but with more Windows integration than Palm's web-oriented Linux+WebKit device provides. Where would Palm fit in?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a little early for the critics to shower praise on Palm's new device. Right now, the Palm Pre is just a demo. It doesn't even have a release date - according to Engadget it is supposed to be out in the "first half of 2009." And yet this columnist declares the Pre's UI is better than the iPhone's. How about holding off on statements like that until you have actually used one of these devices.

[http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/13/palm-pre-everything- you-e...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/13/palm-pre-everything-you-ever- wanted-to-know/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The problem isn't that Microsoft can't create good products. The problem is that its priorities can be different from the priorities of many users. Microsoft concerns itself with its ecosystem more than anything. Apple doesn't do this and Palm is splitting from their's with the Pre.

Apple's attitude is, "we created something great and you should want to develop for it and if you're a user with legacy stuff, you should just migrate". That's fine most of the time with consumers. Likewise, their programmers have gotten used to making little tweaks when a new version of OS X comes out to make sure things work well. Microsoft, on the other hand, has tried to keep everything working even if the company that created an add-on is now defunct. It's chained them up. Something relied on a bad behavior of IE so that behavior must be kept even if it is sub-optimal for many things.

The Pre looks cool and I'm getting one as soon as it comes out (Sprint customer who doesn't want to switch carriers). However, it's completely new. It wouldn't be a platform to move Windows Mobile users to. Palm has created something that looks really great. But Microsoft really needs to decide if it's willing to let go of the legacy compatibility that Windows Mobile has going for it and require the people who have made Windows Mobile applications to suffer a dead end and port to a new platform.

It's easy when you're at the bottom to embrace change - you don't have developers and customers to loose. Microsoft has a lot to loose. Break compatibility and people can migrate to competitors as easily as they can migrate to your new model. Of course, the other side is that if you don't make the changes necessary, you can start loosing people because your product gets old and kludgy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft doesn't need Palm. It already has the talent and the resource to build a great mobile platform. It just needs the will to start over. They are in a tough position, traditionally they have stayed away fro mobile hardware because of pressure from the hardware OEMs. This might change because of their success (sort off) with Zune and xbox 360. I think Plam has a great strategy about building apps using web technology and using a good browser (webkit) Microsoft should forget about their mobile browser and adopt webkit also. They should put aside the ego and accept their browser and mobile OS is not on part with their competitor. From what I have been hearing about Windows 7 so far it seems that they can still write good software.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why should huge companies merge? What's wrong with a lot of small companies with different visions? It keeps the market agile and innovative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Efficency, marketshare, product consolidation, &tc.

Its one of the only unfortunate instances of self-organization I can think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No! Palm is good. Don't ruin it!

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Nokia would be a much better fit for Palm.

Nokia are desperately lacking a next-generation smartphone platform, they have plenty of hardware experience, they have relatively little penetration in the US where the Palm brand could potentially help them gain marketshare, and the ability to use the strong Nokia brand in other markets would help sales of any Palm phones.

<comment><USER9> Nokia is already executing a different strategy - they purchased Trolltech for $150 million less than a year ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My major issue with this concept is the added expense of integrating the Palm OS and Windows Mobile. That's no small undertaking and it would find Microsoft stuck between them until it could complete the integration.

</comment><comment><USER11> It wasn't all that long ago that many Palm branded phones being sold were actually running Windows Mobile. I suspect that commentators are way too quick to write off the Windows Mobile platform most cause they don't really know much about it. Sure the UI is a little clumsy compared to the iphone but I don't see what will make it so difficult to incorporate most of the techniques in to the OS. There are actually a huge number of apps developed for the platform and still it has a large user base around the world. I suspect the much of the reason for the platform being written of is their lack of a mobile carrier 'deal' in the US.

<comment><USER11> Downmods with no comments to a serious proposition -> Mac zealots, morons or some combination of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't the whole reason that Microsoft wanted Yahoo was its patent portfolio?

</comment><comment><USER13> A better idea for microsoft would be to get back into writing great software. Their main business as always been software. If they can do this they don't have to buy anyone. Buying these companies doesn't mean they'll get all talent with them.

<comment><USER14> To write great software though you have to be able to move fast and iterate. I don't think they can do that with the vast number of staff they have.

It'd probably be a good first move to get rid of half the staff - should speed things up a bit.

<comment><USER15> It depends on what you consider great software. I agree the Office programmers could do with being cut in half or into two departments, one with a majority of senior programmers and one with newer programmers; one produces Office and one runs through all the code and tests the sucker to death.

However, writing an OS I don't think fast is necessarily good. The biggest improvement (IMO) microsoft could make to windows would essentially be a completely error free XP. I've tried Vista and I've seen no appreciable improvement and just a huge pain in the ass for doing absolutely everything I'm used to.

I think if they could make XP survive anything that can be thrown at it and virus proof the sucker to hell, I think it would be the best product MS ever made.

<comment><USER16> Have you tried Windows 7? You might want to, I was really pleasantly surprised.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WeRead – Hacker News for non-geeks - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gorillatap.weread&hl=en <comment><AUTHOR> We want WeRead to be the TED for reading. We want to be known as the single destination for high quality articles. Our goal is to maintain the same high standards as Hacker News, just more friendly to non-techies.

Please download the app, post some articles, leave some comments, up-vote content you like, and give us your feedback. We want to welcome you on becoming an active member of the WeRead community! :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Good job but what do you mean " more friendly to non-techies'? How you implying Hacker news isn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I don't mean to say that the Hacker News community is not friendly to non-techies, just that the articles on Hacker News are often very technical and incomprehensible to people outside of the tech world. WeRead wants to have a more diverse set of articles while upholding the same level of standard as Hacker News.

<comment><USER2> Ok.. understood.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu Cloud PRNG seed - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features#prng-cloud <comment><USER2> I was curious so I decided to post some of the Google links about this:

* man page: [http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/pollinate.1....](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/pollinate.1.html)

* Q&A style blog post: [http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/02/random-seeds-in-ubunt...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/02/random-seeds-in-ubuntu-1404-lts-cloud.html)

* A "why this is scary" blog post: [https://tim.siosm.fr/blog/2014/04/25/why-not-ubuntu-14.04-lt...](https://tim.siosm.fr/blog/2014/04/25/why-not-ubuntu-14.04-lts/#pollinate)

</comment><comment><USER3> Quoting this comment by atoponce from /r/netsec: [http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2xlruv/ubuntu_cloud_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2xlruv/ubuntu_cloud_prng_seed/cp1996q):

>"Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu cloud images include the Pollinate client, which will try to seed the PRNG with input from [https://entropy.ubuntu.com](https://entropy.ubuntu.com) for up to 3 seconds on first boot."

So, let me get this straight. An Ubuntu cloud image doesn't have enough entropy to create strong crypto keys on first boot (SSH, SSL, etc.). So, it connects over the _Internet_ , via HTTPS, which requires strong crypto keys to make the connection, to gather its entropy. Facepalm.

The correct answer to generating enough entropy on boot is to either install haveged(8) as part of the imaging process, or to have the cloud image attach to a HWRNG using something similar to VirtIORNG.

Enough entropy needs to be created _before_ making an HTTPS connection, not after.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know how I feel about this. It's at least stirring the pot a little bit, but—as the Pollinate README indicates—it's not really increasing the entropy in the system at all. Thus one still needs to collect actual entropy, e.g. with CPU jitter[0]—and if one has collected enough entropy that way, then stirring the pot doesn't help (although it doesn't really hurt either).

I think that the real answer has to be blocking boot until enough entropy has been gathered, based on CPU or storage timing, or on console input.

[0] [http://www.chronox.de/jent/doc/CPU-Jitter- NPTRNG.html](http://www.chronox.de/jent/doc/CPU-Jitter-NPTRNG.html)</comment>


Computer Vision: On the Way to Seeing More - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/20/science/computer-vision-imsitu.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Wow, I'm pretty impressed… Some of those I don't even know how I would describe...

"A woman's foot on a pink spiky floor"</comment>


The New Path App Is What an iPhone App Should Be - <AUTHOR> http://andrewdumont.me/post/13550415023/the-new-path

<comment><USER2> What does it do? The post gives no clue. But it scrolls smoothly.</comment>


G.K. Chesterton: The fallacy of success (1909) - <AUTHOR> http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs <comment><USER2> Not on topic as far as the article is concerned, but in regards to G.K. Chesterton, my favorite quote of his is:

 _" Never take down a fence until you understand why it was put up."_

I used to use that one a lot with developers trying to improve on a predecessor's code...

<comment><USER3> That's the basis for "conservatism": recognize that many processes, rules, barriers, morals, norms, etc. have been hard-won and hard-learned at great cost (money, lives, time), that we may not remember/understand quite why they're in place but they're there for good reason nonetheless, and abandoning/destroying them out of ignorance may doom generations to suffer until they re-discover why those were enacted in the first place.

That's also why rebuilding systems from scratch (the old "just rip it all out and do it again") usually doesn't work: there is a great deal of wisdom, however poorly implemented or documented, buried within that system. Starting over abandons those minute but critical bits, and must be re-discovered the hard way.

<comment><USER4> And yet the crowning achievement of conservatism in the last thirty years has been tearing down the processes, rules, barriers, morals, norms, etc. that were put in place during the Great Depression to prevent capitalism from tearing itself apart again.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between an ideology and a country's political party.

<comment><USER4> This line of argument tiptoes kind of close to the "no true Scotsman" argument, though. Don't you think?

"Conservatism is about respect for established institutions!"

"But every conservative I see is running around tearing down those institutions."

"Those people aren't _real_ conservatives!"

<comment> __--__ No, the line of argument is that conservative means two different things in two different contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, what fantastic writing. I often find tech entrepreneurs and HN readers are too obsessed with success and wealth, often explaining away any accusations of greed by claiming it's their "passion" and talking in mystic terms of the tech revolution they're a part of.

The biggest thing I would call a "success" in my life is the joy I've received from good friends and family, and the experiences I've had with them. Things that take a long time to cultivate and over which I often have little control.

<comment><USER7> Value is created when both sides want what the other side is offering more than what they have. There is a case to be made that your wealth is a reflection of the value you have created in the world. Do Big Things in the world, and you may find yourself wealthy. It's not necessarily greed. When you speak of success, and friends and family, most people on HN would agree, but put them on a parallel track to wealth. They are more to do with happiness imho. Rock on.

<comment><USER8> > _Value is created when both sides want what the other side is offering more > than what they have._

Value is created when, by your action, you change the world to a state that you, or another person, find preferable to the previous state.

On the other hand, _trade is profitable_ when both sides want what the other side is offering more than they have (with some caveats involving deceit).

That was a quibble with a minor stumble you made, now for a reply of substance:

As for wealth being a reflection of the value that you have created, it might be. It might be that you inherited it. It might be that you stole it. It might be that you tricked someone into believing you had something they wanted, and traded for it. Maybe you extracted rent (in the study-of-economics sense), without creating value. Maybe your wealth comes of virtuous value-generation, but you earned more wealth per value than another person, by virtue of skin colour or gender or whatever. There are many many ways to acquire wealth, and scant few of them require creating value, and even fewer reflect virtue in a linear and straightforward way.

And similarly, value that you create may not convert to wealth. Who created more value, Torvalds or Zuckerberg? Not that Linus is poor, but he's not a billionaire, afaik. I propose for consideration that it may be far easier to create value when wealth is not a priority (though I concede that in some circumstances, vehicles like corporations help with scaling your value- creation).

Now, all that said, you might amend your position thus: "Wealth earned in certain ways, with certain restrictions, is roughly proportionate to value created, perhaps modulo a scaling factor beyond anyone's control." Okay, I sort of agree. BUT! If you believe this, it follows that spending your wealth on yourself is destroying (consuming) value. I make a sandwich, wealth is generated. I eat the sandwich, wealth is destroyed. I make $1000 of software and get paid accordingly, wealth is created. I spend it on plane tickets, I consume/destroy the wealth. Only the money you give away (including via taxes) is wealth created-and-not-consumed. Bill Gates was a leech on society (rent- seeking friction-inducing market manipulation)... until he decided not to be, and redeemed himself twice over.

So, in summary: while there is a relationship, in some limited circumstances, between wealth and value-creation, taking wealth as a proxy for virtue is spectacularly mistaken.

<comment><USER9>
        I spend it on plane tickets, I consume/destroy the wealth.
        Only the money you give away (including via taxes) is
        wealth created-and-not-consumed.

So if I buy a bottle of wine to have with dinner, and my wife and I drink it with dinner, I have destroyed wealth, and am a mooch. If I give the wine-money to a bum who then uses it to buy a bottle of Mad Dog and drinks himself into a stupor, I have created wealth, and am a benefactor to mankind.

Mad Dog for all bums now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wowza, that was some Inception style mind bender out there.

At the top you have a rookie author using an early 21st century platform (svbtle) to dispense bon mots about life and ingratiate himself with his readers who are turned off by current social mores by

\--- Aligning himself with the words of a rookie author in the early 20th century platform (books) who dispensed bon mots about life at the turn of the 20th century who in turn ingratiates himself with his readers who are turned off by then current social mores by

\--- Invoking the words of puritans of the early 19th century who in turn … well the trail ends since we don't know what they thought. Plus we live in a puritan culture so I suppose we are stuck with whatever they thought and that is foundational.

Three level inception. Nice.

"Medium" guys take note, svtble is using a three level inception to gain readership. The game is on. You need a four level inception to convince me. Otherwise, I ain't clicking on your ads.

Seriously though, I'm reminded of the foreword of another early 20th century book as noted by Oscar Wilde

In old days books were written

by men of letters and read by the

public. Nowadays books are written

by the public and read by nobody.

<comment><USER11> G. K. Chesterton was a great mind and certainly not a "rookie author." I hope I'm reading you wrong there. You may not agree with him, but that doesn't mean he's a rookie.

Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton) American Chesterton Society: [http://www.chesterton.org/](http://www.chesterton.org/)

<comment><USER10> Sure, he was a great mind. However he was getting started by the time of All things considered, published 1908. Let's put it this way, he published far more after this essay than before, so on a relative level he was rookie author when he wrote the essay.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton_bibliography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton_bibliography)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation._

<comment><USER13> Bertrand Russell once said that all work falls into one of two basic categories: moving objects on or near the surface of the Earth, and telling other people to do so.

<comment><USER6> That's a great quote. Do you have a source? I can't find it online from him.

<comment><USER14> > First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the > position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such > matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant > and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is > capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, > but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two > opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of > men; this is called politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think I have been silently screaming to read something like this for ages and ages. Capitalism, the godless religion. Thank you for that link.

<comment><USER16> For anyone who might be interested, the greater part of Chesterton's work is available for free online.

The essay quoted in the blog post above is from this collection: [http://archive.org/details/allthings00chesuoft](http://archive.org/details/allthings00chesuoft)

Many volunteers have shared recordings of themsevles reading Chesterton's writings aloud

[http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22G%20K%20Che...](http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22G%20K%20Chesterton%22%20AND%20collection%3Aaudio_bookspoetry)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is excellent. I'll add this to the article so everyone can read it all. Thanks for taking the time out to search for and put it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Now I don't cheat. And although I like to think that we have some pretty smart people in this building...it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just be first.

<comment><USER18> What happened to "be better"?

<comment><USER19> It's a quote from the movie Margin Call, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I loved this article - anything which dismantles an ideology (especially one as ancient and terrible as money-worship) always gives me a smile.

</comment><comment><USER21> G. K. Chesterton nails it every time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Success is in the eyes of the beholder. Take two millionaires. On that had the objective of having by now one million bucks, has them, reached his objective, success! The other had the objective of having by now two million bucks, has only one million: failure. Not even close.

Now what if the later changes his objective after the fact? IMO still a failure :-)

So success is not defined by what you have are or archive, but by the goals you set for yourself.

I am a big failure: I'm not 500 light years from here exploring the stars. :-(

<comment><USER23> So your advice to kids who want to succeed in life would be to aim low?

<comment><USER13> "Low" by whose standards and compared to what? Those who mistake success for happiness usually end up losing both. We recently had a wealthy corporate CFO in these parts who had pretty much everything everybody else wants jump off a bridge because... I don't even know why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In a chat with one of my older friends who I respect very much, he lent this advice: _Mark, the first thing you need to do to be successful is make a decision on what you want to accomplish, and then commit all your resources to that goal._

</comment><comment><USER25> _A hundred years ago we had the ideal of the Industrious Apprentice; boys were told that by thrift and work they would all become Lord Mayors. This was fallacious, but it was manly, and had a minimum of moral truth...The Industrious Apprentice rose by virtues few and narrow indeed, but still virtues. But what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly by his vices?_

So who are the _new_ new Industrious Apprentices? Growth Hackers? ;)

<comment><USER26> Graduate nerds being exploited in web dev sweatshops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Chesterton is a great writer that ought to be better known.

<comment><USER28> Not only are his works worth reading, he is endlessly quotable.

<comment><USER29> And, as usual, he's quoted for what he did not quite say (but the meaning is accurate): [http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently- ask...](http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently-asked- questions/cease-to-worship/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Although the author is trying to make some good points, he succeeds only in attempting to tear down. He does not appear to offer any reasonable alternatives.

I came away from this article feeling slightly unclean, as if wanting to improve myself is both pointless and somehow wrong. It appears that I should have no goals, aiming only for mediocrity.

<comment><USER31> I think you may be misreading him, Chesterton isn't saying you should stop improving yourself, but that you can't hope to find that improvement in a book detailing the supposed habits of the wealthy and successful (or the one weird trick that makes everyone a millionaire).

Your goal shouldn't be to become Cornelius Vanderbilt, it should be to take advantage of your abilities and circumstances to find your own path to success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A website post, "Saint Chesterton?" commenting on recent discussion of proposals for canonization of G.K. Chesterton (declaring him to be a saint):

[http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/saint- che...](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/saint-chesterton/)

<comment><USER33> Really a charitable understatement of the case against.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Success is easy to sell as it is most often what someone believes they need. Perhaps it masks a flaw in their character.

The example in the article relates to money but success to a lonely man may be love. Perhaps success means only that which we most feel we need to be complete.

</comment><comment><USER35> _The days of idealism and superstition are over. We live in a time of science and hard common sense..._

Unfortunately, it wasn't true in 1909, and still not true at all today

<comment><USER36> Did you miss the quotes?

<comment><USER37> I don't know if it's a browser issue or something else, but I actually don't see any quotation marks, or italics, or anything else. I spent a good while figuring out where one of the quotes ended.

<comment><USER19> Same here. No actual quotes or other indication of quoted text, but context was enough to figure out when the quote began and ended.

<comment><USER35> sorry about that, but it appears in italic for me. with quotes: "The days of idealism and superstition are over. We live in a time of science and hard common sense..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For those interested, you don't have to flip through the images to read. All Things Considered is free on the kindle store.

Or download ebook here: [http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13992463M/All_things_consider...](http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13992463M/All_things_considered)

</comment><comment><USER39> It's like Chesterton is describing every other marketing post on HN.

Fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if Chesterton ever read Dale Carnegie :)

<comment><USER41> Haha well put, I've read both and Chesterton is good for having a deep understanding of how humans behave and I come away feeling smarter and more interested in the world. I enjoy Carnegie at the same time and get a rush of optimism after reading, but they are more general tactics.

What's even more amazing is that writing from these authors from the early 1900s and 1930s is clearer and stronger writing than a lot of stuff today - well at least compared to blogs.

<comment><USER42> That's not strange/amazing/weird. They passed through filter of time. For every Chesterton/Carnegie there are thousand really bad contemporary writers, prostitutes aspiring to be writers etc.

If you lived in their time, you'd probably say same about people from 1850. And saying all those news articles are pretty mundane and bad. And that the thing people scribble on walls are very rude.

Technology changes, people don't.

<comment><USER9>
        That's not strange/amazing/weird.
        They passed through filter of time.
        For every Chesterton/Carnegie
        there are thousand really bad contemporary writers,
        prostitutes aspiring to be writers etc.

Indeed, the subject of the article was the abundance of such writers at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11505](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11505)

</comment><comment><USER44> Wow. The good old fat catholic Chesterton (though not fully catholic in 1909, but 95%).

</comment><comment><USER45> Perfection

</comment><comment><USER46> "The world has become an idolator of this god called money." \- Pope Francis</comment>


Significant improvements coming in Linux 3.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Significant-improvements-coming-in-Linux-3-5-1598702.html

<comment> micro-ram > The Ext4 filesystem can now add checksums to its metadata to help recognise > data tampering.

<comment><USER2> That is really interesting. (And not just data tampering but possibly data corruption.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > many systems produced by Apple have had this kind of "FireWire target disk > mode" for a while now.

Since 2000.

<comment><USER4> .. but unlike Linux, the Apple Firewire Target mode can't be used while Mac OSX is running on the machine. In Apples' case, its implemented in EFI - whereas with Linux, it will be possible to use the 'target mode' while the machine is still running.

<comment><USER5> One complication in that scenario is that you can't mount a (normal) filesystem while exposing it over SCSI target (because then it would be mounted twice).

<comment><USER6> Actually you can't mount anything from the target drive, because the whole drive is exposed over the network as a SCSI device.

<comment><USER4> The point is I can now very easily build a Linux-based RAID stack that works with my Macs over Firewire:

Kernel-Firewire-Target:0:1->/home/disks/image00.dd & image01.dd &image02.dd &etc.

Build a big Linux box with much SSD and other slower disks, wire up a light Mac farm to it with Firewire, point each node to a relevant loop file on some path, and managed storage networks are a cinch.

<comment><USER5> That would have been awesome years ago; now I'd just use gigabit iSCSI. Thunderbolt target mode OTOH...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> for some broad definition of "significant"

<comment><USER8> I expected something bigger as well. From the release mail of Linus:

      It's a pretty normal release - roughly 60% drivers, 20% arch updates,
      and 20% "all over" - filesystems, documentation, tools, you name it.

      Nothing hugely special springs to mind - there's some memory
      compaction issue that is still being discussed, but I don't think
      there's anything particularly scary or special that stands out over
      everything else in the -rc1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Being able to act as a FC target could be pretty powerful as well. I wish I could do that now on my linux boxes...could create a nice little storage network.</comment>


Hating on Candyland: Why most games for kids are awful - <AUTHOR> http://kidsdungeonadventure.com/hating-on-candyland-why-most-games-for-kids-are-awful/ <comment><USER2> The purpose of Candyland is to play a game, without playing a game. It's for toddlers to learn to take turns, to accept negative or positive outcomes without stomping off in a huff, and to play a game with a level playing field between the adults and children... and at the level we are talking about, if there is a meaningful choice _at all_ , then the child, or perhaps rather _toddler_ , will simply lose. It's more than just "following directions", it's the whole set of skills necessary to play a game.

This is why family games have a gradient to them, gradually trading chances for decisions, and gradually expanding the state space, until the game player is ready to join the adults fully with something like Scrabble in the early teens or so. The mentioned Connect 4, for instance, is relatively simple and can be effectively "solved" by an 8 or 9 year old, for instance, so a 8yo and an adult are still not separated by such a large gulf that the game is a joke. Children are actually pretty good at figuring out that they are being "let" win.

If you replace Candyland with something that has any choices at all, you've replaced something other than Candyland.

That said, I'm not saying the progression is optimal as it stands, but if you don't understand the reasons for the enduring popularity of the "standard game loadout", which hasn't seem to have hardly changed in 50 years, you're not going to improve on it properly. And I'd say most of the flaws are on the higher end and solved with things like Settlers of Catan and such, not the children's part of the progression.

<comment><USER3> Your comment reminds me of when I used to play Trivial Pursuit with my family (all much older) when I was eight or so. Of course I hardly knew anything at the time, but quickly cottoned on to the fact that "Hitler" seemed to be the answer more often than anything else, so I'd just answer "Hitler" to anything I didn't know.

<comment><USER4> Trivial Pursuit is candyland for grownups.

<comment><USER5> I've never understood trivial pursuit. Every single science question can be easily answered by anyone with a fourth grade education could answer, and yet all the other categories involve things like obscure B movies from the 1930s that no one has ever heard of.

<comment><USER3> Well then, it's possible that your distribution of knowledge is atypical.

Besides, most people have forgotten most of what they knew in fourth-grade science, unfortunately. I recently gave a talk about planetary science to a classroom full of seven-year-olds, and was astonished how many random facts some of them seemed to know.

Kid: "How many moons does Jupiter have?"

Me: "Well, there's four large ones, and quite a number of smaller ones. We're still discovering new ones, and the smallest ones are only a kilometer or so in diamet..."

Kid: "Sixty-three!"

I checked when I got home, and damn, he was right, there are currently 63 known moons of Jupiter. I research Jupiter for a living and I didn't know that, but this seven-year-old kid did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In `A Theory of Fun` _, Raph Koster writes about games being learning and teaching tools. When my brother and I would play 'soldiers' growing up, we were safely simulating, and learning from, what it would be like to be a warrior (evolutionarily, a useful identity). I always like the idea that Candyland was a game game -- it's a game to teach kids how to play games.

_ It's a really spectacular book; I learned a lot from it despite not being a game designer: [http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph- Koster/dp/1932...](http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph- Koster/dp/1932111972)

<comment><USER7> Raph Koster is one of a few remarkably unique minds in game design. He "gets" virtual worlds like almost nobody else does; dig around on raphkoster.com for some of his writing on the subject.

Ultima Online in 1997 was so far ahead of its time, nothing quite like it has been made since. Some games have fumbled around with elements of UO, like open PvP or player housing or crafting, but nothing has ever captured its real essence: feeling like a living world with a wide variety of people, not just fantasy hero cutouts.

You could spend months in the world without killing a single monster, just mining and blacksmithing and selling your wares to make money to buy a house. And it was fun! You could wear clothes just for aesthetic reasons, not because they gave you +1 dexterity. They got so many subtle details so right. It makes me sad that "immersion" now basically just means "pretty 3D world".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, but you can make decisions in these games.

Years ago I was teaching English in Japan to a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old. We were playing some utterly moronic game where the kids took turns drawing cards, having me read the letter of the alphabet they drew, and then moving their pawn as appropriate.

It was really more for the younger kids, so the 6-year-old made a decision: he attempted to cheat! He simply moved his pawn forward ten squares or so when he guessed we weren't looking.

Regrettably for him, we were indeed all looking at the board. He offered to move his pawn back the ten spaces, but no, it was back to the beginning for him.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've got to say, I find even Monopoly to be a _terrible_ game. My strategy for the game can be summed up as: "buy the property if I can, otherwise pay rent if I have to".

I almost never stray from that strategy, and even when I do, it's not like those exceptions make the game any more interesting.

<comment><USER10> Oh?

Mine, at least until people cotton onto it, is to be a "Slum Landlord." I buy and trade for the cheapest sets I can find, and then I put four houses on each property. Remember, they're slums, so you don't expect hotels. If I can corner the market on houses[1], no matter what the other players do, they can't bankrupt me with rents because they can't improve their properties.

This doesn't work in a game where people ignore the housing shortage rule, of course. But If you toss that rule out, I don't think you're playing Monopoly any more.

[1]: There are 32 houses, so if you own 21 houses, it is impossible for anyone else to upgrade a three property group to hotels. If you own 25 houses, no other player can upgrade any group. It's fairly easy for two players to control the property market and kill the other players off.

<comment><USER11> The limitation on housing is the key to the game's structure. Most people don't seem to play it this way (letting players build hotels if they have the money, regardless of the number of actual plastic houses remaining), and it screws the game up. Not to mention house rules like "free parking" artificially adding money to the game.

<comment><USER12> I think they play it that way because the houses always get lost, so you never know how many there really are supposed to be. So you use stand-in pieces, with no limit.

<comment><USER11> Well, every set I've ever had came with extras, and the number you're supposed to use is printed right there in the instructions.

<comment><USER12> Assuming you didn't loose the instructions too......

<comment><AUTHOR> Monopoly's instructions are printed on cardboard and are part of the box. Hard to lose unless you are loose with that sort of thing.

<comment><USER12> Not in mine. Mine came on a tiny booklet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is off the topic of the actual post, but the concept of Kids Dungeon Adventure is just _awesome_. I'm getting this to play with a friend of mine and her 5 year old daughter -- we play games whenever I'm in town, but I've never felt they tapped into her (mindblowingly amazing) creativity and imagination. Great job, Ben; we need more of this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and I hope you like it! Send me the pics of your dungeon and I'll post them up on the blog.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely will do. Gonna head out there in a couple weeks and give it a try. Can't wait to try it -- brings me back to the days of sitting around with friends in elementary school and creating our own little RPGs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's wrong with 'terrible' games like Candyland existing? Choices are not things that ONLY happen in games. When kids are ready, they'll move up.

When I was a kid, I _chose_ not to play Candyland. I _chose_ to play Battleship and Stratego and Checkers and Chess and (much later) Magic.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really excited about Dungeon Adventure. Going to have to sort out how to make it run well with multiple children controlling the heroes. Mostly, how not to be biased in dealing out monster attacks to the heroes. Possible monster 'strategy': attack whoever just attacked you. If you weren't attacked, attack whoever dealt the most damage to your monster buddies in the last roll. For when the monsters have initiative, make the order of the heroes walking through the dungeon significant--whoever's in the lead gets attacked first, giving them the opportunity to collectively decide to put the healthiest guy in the front, or let one person keep the protection ring in exchange for always taking the lead, or put the weakest in front to watch him die (or trade him out for a new hero) or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Make sure you send me a pic of the dungeon you guys create. I'm always looking for new ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tom Vasel, of Dice Tower, reviewed Candyland. After reviewing 999 other games, his daughters pretty much bullied him into doing a video for Candyland. He panned it and rightfully so, but he also spent some time on what makes it so appealing to children. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tas5aCeNgEU>

Other than the hundreds of other kids games that offer better alternatives, he also suggested letting each player draw four cards and choose which one to play. This way, there's still a lot of luck and the kids will still win sometimes, but it's not completely passive.

I have to agree with Tom. It's hard like a game that gives kids no choices. In life people _do_ have choices.

</comment><comment><USER17> warning: paypal gripe ahead

looks like a great idea (his game) so I decide for $6 it's worth a shot. My only payment choice is cc via PayPal, but PayPal are demanding my home address ("Please note we do not accept PO Boxes. If we are unable to match your address against Australia Post records, we may ask you to verify it by providing documentation."), full name and valid home phone number.

Sorry, but they're not getting them. I'm still interested in the game though.

</comment><comment><USER18> My family has found Gamewright to be one of a handful of companies that have games that both children and adults can enjoy. <http://amzn.to/gIh8gU>

We still own the "traditional" childhood games mentioned in the article but rarely play them.</comment>


Valve Bans Game Publisher After It Sues Players That Gave It Bad Steam Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/valve-bans-game-publisher-after-it-sues-players-that-gave-it-bad-steam-reviews <comment><USER2> This is, simply put, a direct result of the Steam Greenlight system.

Since anyone with access to $100 and an asset pack is able to become a self- published con artist, it was only a matter of time before one of these con artists had enough money for a hired gun lawyer to try and silence what they perceive as attacks from users and critics.

The publisher is question is Digital Homicide. Enjoy a bit of the context and backstory below.

(to be viewed chronologically): [1] [2] [3] [4]

1) [http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-jimquisition-the- slaughte...](http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-jimquisition-the-slaughtering- grounds-a-steam-meltdown-saga/)

2) [http://www.thejimquisition.com/steam-vote-rigging-and- shady-...](http://www.thejimquisition.com/steam-vote-rigging-and-shady- connections-the-curious-case-of-bob-middleton/)

3) [http://www.thejimquisition.com/digital-homicide-and-the- case...](http://www.thejimquisition.com/digital-homicide-and-the-case-of-the- sockpuppet-developers/)

4) [http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-jimquisition- homicide/](http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-jimquisition-homicide/)

Good on Valve for taking action.

<comment><USER3> How many heists have been pulled off over video games on kickstarter so far? When will the chickens come home to roost?

<comment><USER4> Isn't that a bit like asking how many scams have been pulled off in dozens of segments of the $18.5 trillion US economy in general? Consider just the scale of real estate related fraud for example, whether on the consumer side or the commercial developer side etc.

The video game industry is very large. That there would be millions of dollars worth of scams in it annually (of one variety or another), would be entirely expected.

<comment><USER5> With or without starcitizen?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hang on.. so if you say something bad about a company in a forum that's enough for a judge to give that company your name and address?

So if I were to associate my various accounts on forums with a corporation I own then I should be able to get the names and address of all who ever criticized a comment of mine on reddit, yes?

Probably not but still.. wtf?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't really have anything to do with being a company/corporation. He is filing the lawsuit as an individual, not on behalf of Digital Homicide (which may not even be a corporation). He is suing because of things that were said about him.

<comment><USER8> some comments where actually pretty rough.

but really most things can't be taken seriously, most of them are kids in anger. they say stupid things a lot of the time, if you take that too serious while developing indie games. than you would need a whole fleet of lawyers.

<comment><USER9> We need to stop dismissing the shitty attitudes of gamers as "kids in anger", because far more frequently it's actually "adults who should know better".

<comment><USER10> ...or even "kids who should know better".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm normally a bit wary about platforms such as Steam wielding their power over the marketplace but in this case, I'll be the first to congratulate them!

Bravo! Please keep your store empty of publishers who sue their dissatisfied customers.

<comment><USER12> I used to share this point of view, especially due to the inability of customers to return faulty games. Now that they allow returns, I'm starting to gain faith in Steam again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not necessarily in this case but in general I am more on the side of the one being criticized. There are so many issues with marketplaces and communities like Ebay, Yelp, iTunes and so on. Very little oversight combined with the power to destroy whole businesses.

Ratings can sometimes be bought, fake or resulting from the customer being incompetent or just a dick. It is often times very hard to get rid of them.

I myself currently have an issue on a marketplace where someone owes me money, but I do not really know how to handle it, because the resulting bad rating would probably cost me even more. I asked the platform what to do about the possibly bad review and they just said, they won't do anything about it. So I get suing.

Platforms should take measures that ensure reviews are real and fair, publish rules and have a way to clear violations. Especially in Valves case, since we are talking about children here and you want to avoid them getting sued. Even though being hold accountable and having to think about how your actions affect others is probably a valuable lesson.

<comment><USER14> Are there any platforms with a policy like what you're suggesting?

<comment><USER13> I am not sure, you would have to research that. I think I recall articles about Yelp removing fake reviews. I definitely know, that suing over Ebay reviews is a thing. Ebay als has a formalized process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Better title: Game Publisher Banned By Valve After Suing Players That Gave It Bad Stean Reviews. The original title is ambiguous and can imply Valve is suing the players...

<comment><USER16> I also assumed the exact same thing! I know the rules state that the title should match, but in this case the original title is really ambiguous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lawsuits are the continuation of flame wars by other means. -- Carl von Clausewitz (not really)

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah, Digital Homocide. This sounded like them from the start.

It's been pretty entertaining watching them trying and failing to beat up on people thus far. When they're successful, it's not funny, but when they're beating up on Jim Sterling without a case, or pulling crap that gets them dropped off Steam, it's pretty hilarious. But their continued attempt at beating on Jim is downright comical at this point.

Because he's Jim Motherf#%king Sterling, Son. And the irony embedded in that catchphrase just makes it that much more delicious.

<comment><USER19> >Because he's Jim Motherf#%king Sterling, Son. And the irony embedded in that catchphrase just makes it that much more delicious.

Most people here probably do not know what either of those things are supposed to mean.

<comment><USER18> Should I explain? Okay.

Jim Sterling, a critic previously of the Escapist, had a series where he played steam games, and talked about how good or bad they were (I think he selected for bad, but if he didn't, Sturgeon's law was in full effect). One of the games he played was Digital Homocide's The Slaughering Grounds. Needless to say, it was rubbish.

However, Digital Homocide decided that Jim's review was terrible and unfair, and released a video called "Reviewing the Reviewer", which was Jim's video, overlaid with sarcastic, bitter text scrolls. Jim then posted a video of himself laughing at that video, and the situation continued to increase in size until we reach today.

However, in that video by Digital Homocide, amid the bitter sarcasm portraying Jim as an idiot, there was a repeated catchphrase, "Because I'm Jim motherf#%king Sterling, son," Jim thought this was hilarious, and his onscreen persona is that of an egomanic already, so it quickly became Jim's actual catchphrase.

So now you know, which is half the battle.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the explanation. Doesn't really sound like irony, though. Just a backfired joke from Digital Homicide.

<comment><USER18> You know, I think you're right. Dang it. I usually don't make that mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And now they're apparently threatening Valve with legal action in response:

[http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1280358](http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1280358)

'Brilliant' move there guys!</comment>


Show HN: Pintouch – A location-based, map-driven social network - <AUTHOR> http://pintouch.net/ <comment><USER2> I don't quite understand the page, but the costs to enter are so high!</comment>