What is interesting about Factorio - <AUTHOR> http://fuseki.net/home/WhatIsInterestingAboutFactorio.html <comment><USER2> As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later.

Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me.

As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

<comment><USER3> I understand the need to treat life as a dichotomy between work and play, but I feel you might have lost some of the magic of your childhood. For me it's the opposite, I hated complex games as a child but really enjoy them today.

For me, the best feeling is working hard for something and really getting into the details and enjoying all the complexity of the experience / challenge.

I think that most human beings are wired to enjoy this kind of activity if they can get past the energy activation barrier.

I've been in situations where I did not value the above. Looking back, I believe I was:

\- too mentally drained to enjoy anything

\- any free time goes to diving into Random Access Media (reddit, hnews, youtube, etc)

\- Never feeling full of energy or excitement and unable to find meaningful recharge

I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed with depression (systematically defined as not wanting to do anything at least once a week). Since then I've taking an active approach to monitoring and improving my mental state. Specifically:

1\. Identifying true energy restoring activities: 3 of them are - 1) engaging in conversations where there's a decent amount of laughter 2) Sleep / naps and 3) exercise

2\. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube

3\. Figuring out my mental health dietary needs (what is it that you're longing for that is unconsciously affecting your decision making) and making active plans to get them in a regular way. This could be social validation, laughter, new engaging experiences, feelings of accomplishment or accolade, etc.

Instead of feeling like I don't want to do anything when I wake up, I more often find life as exciting and looking forward to the challenges and new experiences of each day. And yes, I enjoy Factorio a lot when I have the time to play (which is rare).

<comment><USER4> > 2\. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but > don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) > reddit, 4) youtube

So, do you avoid them now? If so, what do you do when you're tired after work? It's hard to feel entire afternoons with exercise, sleep and conversations...

<comment><USER5> Not the OP, but for me energy restoring activities are "active" ones, like hobbies where you create/build something. Working on a painting, photo, sculpting, writing, working on a side project, playing intelligent games with your dog, ... Passive activities, like consuming TV or Netflix or worse social networks, at least for me are draining my energy levels.

<comment><USER6> By they definition, isn't going to work an energy restoring activity?

<comment><USER7> A hobby is something you go out of your way to do because of personal passion. If you approach your job like it's a vacation, then probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Isn't it amazing that someone could do something for 100 hours and not think > about obvious improvements, and not even wonder if they've been setup?

I have co-workers like this: people who don't bother to learn the tools of* their trade and waste dozens of minutes every day.

Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit and, at the risk of sounding inflammatory, is the type of activity that creates "skill gaps" between regular and "10x engineers."

<comment><USER9> > Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit

this is problematic, and the problem is made obvious when you take this fact to its natural conclusion.

are you juggling credit cards to simultaneously maximize the benefits of opening new cards with promotional offers, limiting your interest rates, and maximizing your credit score?

have you investigated the air quality of your working and living spaces? do you know the optimal concentrations of O2 and CO2? do you have plants around you that provide other benefits besides air quality? do you even know what those compounding benefits are?

what about your spinal posture? do you know about wrist shoulder hip and knee angles? do you know how this impacts bloodflow and neuromuscular activation? maybe you just run and/or stretch for 30 minutes a day and call it good enough?

> I have co-workers like this: people who don't bother to learn

no matter how smart you are, youve got finite bandwidth and a finite time to spend it. everyone picks most things they dont bother to learn.

<comment><USER10> I agree that people have finite bandwidth but we are talking about people investing in skills that are useful for the primary function of their job. It's the first thing to consider if you want to improve your productivity at work.

<comment><USER9> >useful for the primary function of their job

the number of things that affect your job performance are endless and it is arbitrary where you choose to stop improving. not only is it arbitrary where you draw the line, its arbitrary that you chose to optimize your job in the first place. these things are non-self-evident choices based on personal and societal feelings rooted in first-principle thinking about the meaning of existence.

"invest in your exponential job growth" glosses over some pretty significant life choices that are more important to recognize than saving 30 minutes a day at the office.

<comment><USER11> This reads to me like someone telling you that you could shave 30 minutes off your commute, and then justifying that you don't have time to look at a map. Plenty of things are very easy to learn with large payoffs; some of which are so basic and so necessary that it is criminally negligible to proceed with such vast incompetence for someone in the trade.

E.g. doctors spending no time to learn about new drugs and prescribing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the biggest hook for Factorio is that it's an _actual_ visual programming language. So much of what we do day to day ignores this (dominant!) mode of perception. It's extremely refreshing to be able to simply look at a system to reason about it.

(as an aside, I think this is also why the Zachtronics games are so effective)

<comment><USER13> I seriously struggle with factorio, You have to have a seriously good planning ability to create something that doesn't instantly turn in to a spaghetti. I always end up having to scale up things and then having no room. I find text based programming to be much much simpler. If I need to add more somewhere, I can, my text editor will push everything else out of the way.

<comment><USER14> > have a seriously good planning ability to create something that doesn't > instantly turn in to a spaghetti

If you only design factories from scratch by yourself, that's akin to being handed an assembler programming manual as your only reading material and building up every programming abstraction yourself. You likely won't discover the best abstractions.

After a while playing factorio I decided to watch experts play the game on YouTube, and that's like a programming novice watching an expert. They know how to create well-known patterns (especially with belt mechanics) and deploy them readily. Watching these videos is like someone handing you a library of programming abstractions your can put into your own code.

<comment><USER15> at least on the initial play through, i think that would ruin the game for me. i personally would prefer to discover the patterns on my own, or at least to the best of my ability. it's tempting, but i've become aware that reaching for the strategy guide tends to be a huge spoiler.

I picked up Pillars of Eternity a while back and couldn't get past the character creation screen without looking up strategies for character building. I couldn't get through the "it doesn't matter just pick something that sounds good" block. Bad experience for me, ended up dropping the game very quickly even though it has great ratings.

<comment><USER16> It's really hard to play a hardcore CRPG[0] like PoE if you haven't been playing some similar games lately. PoE gives you everything the moment you launch the game, then leaves you alone. This is intentional and really fun if you already have the muscle memory for theorycrafting[1].

I find RPGs which let you rebuild your characters in the middle of the game very approachable. They are good gateway drugs to get some familiarity with the genre. Divinity: Original Sin 1/2 are good examples, I highly recommend them. Any ARPG[2] will also do since they ask for less number crunching and more reflex building. Many of them never allow you to set your character before you progress in the game. Some JRPGs[3] are like that too (i.e Pokemon games).

Find me on Steam if you need some good RPG recommendations: [https://steamcommunity.com/id/diegoperini](https://steamcommunity.com/id/diegoperini)

[0] [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=CRPG](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=CRPG)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_role- playing_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_role-playing_game)

[3] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/JRPG](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/JRPG)

<comment><USER11> Divinity 2 is a really interesting one. The beginning of the game is utterly terrible when you're just starting out. Almost all of the battles are out of your league, there's very limited opportunity to get stronger, and if you're not interested in stealing the most basic scraps of equipment, it's hard to get anywhere in the game if you're not familiar enough with the battle mechanics.

Great game, but probably one of the most unreasonably difficult starts of any I've seen (relative to what seems to be the intended level of difficulty in the game). I nearly dropped it because I couldn't find the few stupid crocodiles that were killable after hours of walking around getting thwomped by everyone. Which was really annoying because the characters have strong personalities, so they say shit like along the lines of "let's go kill them all" and then be pathetically underpowered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This game made me empathize less and less with environmentalists. Forests are an impediment to a transport network. Wildlife are pests. Renewable energy has extremely low ROI.

<comment><USER18> Solar + storage lowers your pollution and the pests.

I wish there were a way to restore the environment like planting trees in order to also remove the pests.

<comment><USER19> For a sizable factory, massive spaces must be dedicated to renewable energy, which means obliterating lots of pests. And building the renewable infrastructure--mines, crude pumping, transit, smelting, refining, manufacturing, landfilling lakes, bot deployments, defense--are massively expensive and polluting. By comparison, nuclear (or even coal!) is much easier on the wildlife.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My computer gaming has been pretty modest for the past 6 or 7 years. An hour here or there, mostly on the weekends. I don't really get absorbed in games that much anymore.

Factorio is something different. I started playing it on a Saturday morning. Slept a few hours that night. When the sun started rising Monday morning I realized I should probably try to get a little sleep before heading into the office. Never had that experience before or since. Probably the closest I've ever come to a "bender".

</comment><comment><USER21> > It's also extremely addictive to engineers.

Quite the understatement. Pretty much every engineer that I've introduced to the game has played for at least 40 hours.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I used to play video games but now I mostly 3D print stuff and design robots for fun. I don't think video games are a bad use of time generally, but I feel so good about doing actual engineering for fun that I'm always a little surprised with games that are supposed to be fun for engineer types. I kind of wonder why actually doing engineering for fun isn't more popular?

<comment><USER21> Certain game types basically are puzzles that are similar to the kinds of puzzles one would encounter during engineering things.

Factorio is one of them, but other puzzle games such as topological ones (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Infinifactory, Molek-syntez), programming (Shenzhen IO, TIS-500, Human Resource Machine, Silicon Zeroes) or logic ones (Baba is you) kind of scratch similar itches.

As for doing engineering for fun, some of us are stuck doing rather boring tasks at the office, and the idea of having a game that one can just put away seems less daunting than having a code/hardware project that could potentially sit uncompleted. Designing robots definitely is fun, although it requires a fair bit of working space and tools.

<comment><USER22> Well I guess the idea behind engineering at home for fun is that it doesn't have to be boring tasks. And I tend to work on completely unnecessary things such that there's no time pressure. That makes it a lot more fun and rewarding than working at the office. Like I recently designed a pair of headphones from scratch. They sound better than any of my other headphones which are all a bit cheap. It totally didn't need to be done so I could put it away whenever. But it was lots of fun to dig in to. That feels more rewarding to me than a task where all of my progress is virtual. I should say I'm not trying to criticize others who play games, I'm just curious about it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

<comment><USER21> That's pretty cool with regards to the headphones. Do you have a link to your project?

I agree that it's really enjoyable to build physical things. I have one 3D part that I've been meaning to print for a while, but without a 3D printer at home it's a bit trickier to get it done. I wish I had a home workshop, but Silicon Valley prices make that a rather expensive proposition. There's no more TechShop either. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bought the game on a hunch in its very early development. At some point they introduced their weakly reports on development, which were extremely interesting about the problems they were facing. Great developer and I love how successful it became. It seriously deserves all the praise.

Even in very early development, when it still looked horrible, the core elements were already a lot of fun. I am no game developer, but for everyone that wants to go that route, I would seriously recommend reading their "friday facts". And even if you are just a developer of the mundane, it is super interesting.

<comment><USER24> The definitely set the bar for developers interacting with players. They change things back when people don't like it. They fix problems quickly. They keep everyone updated on what they have worked on recently, and what will be worked on soon. No BS, no promises, no PR. It reads more like an internal dev blog than something you'd print, but I like it for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've played it for many hours, and the thing that still asthonishes me the most is how incredibly efficient the code must be. While I haven't played with that specific purpose in mind, I've never managed to create a factory big enough where you'd notice a slowdown in the simulation.

Thousands of grabbers, trains, drones, belts, factories, aliens, environmental effects, different sorts of networks, all with their own logic, and somehow this game simulates it all like it's nothing. And it never crashed on me. You can make amazingly intricate factories all you want, but the truly great piece of engineering will always be the code that runs it all.

<comment><USER26> The developers frequently blog about how they're doing it, often going into immense detail.

Without spoiling too much, I have no qualms about calling them some of the best in the industry. The entire industry, that is, not just in games.

<comment><USER27> Their blog posts are great. They sometimes blog about really obscure parts of game development. It's interesting to read even if you are not building games.

<comment><USER28> ...and here they are: [https://factorio.com/blog/](https://factorio.com/blog/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Factorio is probably one of the best $$/hr values outside of Dwarf Fortress, which is free.

It's also basically engineering catnip, consider yourself warned.

For those who are interested, it's the stated goal of the devs to never put the game on sale. They think it's worth $30, and they intend to sell it for $30. So if you're interested, don't wait for a sale, buy it now!

<comment><USER30> I'd be interested in reading their analysis on price setting.

$30 is much more than it was 3 years ago. I've been waiting for a discount on factorio. I guess I'll take it off my wishlist.

<comment><USER31> >I've been waiting for a discount on factorio.

Don't unless the company is bought out. They will never discount the sale price as it leads to the behaviour you just listed, people will only buy the game when it goes on sale leading to low sales when said game is not on sale.

<comment><USER32> That is definitely not the reason why they don't go on sale. Sales are a good business practice and they usually result in higher sales. They don't go on sale simply because they want to be fair to their customers. They've said many times that they are financially well off and that they don't need the large amount of money that a sale can bring in.

<comment><USER30> One might justify keeping the original ticket price as it being unfair to early acquirers to lower prices but I don't find that a compelling argument; people are usually happy to pay extra for novelty. The early acquirers get something for paying the higher price.

Usually second hand goods draw prices of older items (ie less novel - shop-new but not design-new) down. But quashing of secondary markets for software allows prices to be kept high.

I have an irrational urge to acquire this 2nd hand now ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a good write-up, and the most interesting point is about self- efficiency. It kills me to see software engineers not use multi-paste or multi-cursors. But I agree this is "human nature". I have totally proven this to myself when I tried "lazy bastard" play through (the rule is once you basically get the first assembling machine you're not allowed to craft in inventory). It wasn't annoying, it was actually much more pleasurable and less stressful, because I set up automated process for everything. That's what Factorio is about, and it is a very educational game (also a severe time suck).

</comment><comment><USER34> For anyone here who's only played vanilla Factorio (ie. Factorio without mods), you should really try it with mods.. the mods enhance the game in so many ways (from eliminating annoyances, to making things more convenient, to adding way, way, way more content).

I absolutely loved the base game, but the mods made it 10 times better for me.

<comment><USER35> Would you have a small list of recommended mods for someone like me with ~50 hours in Factorio? Thanks.

<comment><USER34> I don't know if you finished the game yet, but if you haven't, I suggest that you do so before adding mods, just so you have a good feel for what the vanilla game is like before you start changing stuff... it'll also give you a sense of what you don't like or would want more of, and that'll let you more intelligently pick mods.

That said, I'd divide mods in to several types:

First, there are convenience mods, which make certain parts of the game less annoying or less tedious. Among those, I'd recommend:

\- Squeak Through - Lets your character squeeze through spaces that you couldn't in the vanilla game. It doesn't sound like much, but it make a huge difference and makes the game much less annoying.

\- Tree Collision - Similar to Squek Through, this lets you move through forests easily.

\- Splatter Guard - Keeps you from getting killed by trains.

\- Repair from Inventory - Automatically repair items in your inventory.

\- Packing Tape - Lets you carry filled containers.

\- Fill4Me - Automatically fills things things like turrets with ammo when you place them.

\- Even Distribution - An easy way to put the same amount of something in to multiple entities (ex: same-sized batches of coal in furnaces).

\- Belt Reverser - One keystroke to reverse the direction of a belt. Much easier than doing it by hand.

\- Atilla's Zoom Mod - Zoom out much further than you can in the vanilla game. Also has keystrokes for quick zoom in/out.

\- Todo List - I couldn't live without this mod, which lets me keep track of what I need to do.

\- Far Reach - Lets you manipulate far way items as if they were near by. This could be considered "cheating" by some, but it makes the game much more convenient. If you are concerned that the game is too easy this way, you could always raise the difficulty with other mods.

\- Where Is MyBody - When you die a line will be shown on the screen pointing to your body, so you can find it more easily and get your inventory back.

\- What is it really used for? - A nice way to find what items are used for (which the vanilla game does not tell you.. it only tells you how to craft items).

The second category of mods is one that adds major features to the game and/or lots of different items. In this category, I can reommend:

\- Factorissimo2 - adds "factory" buildings that can contain other buildings (including, if researched, more "factory" buildings). This is very useful for packing a lot in to a little space. If you're constantly running out of space this could be a good mod for you.

\- Bob & Angel's mods - if you want a trillion intermediate products to extend the game

\- Yuoki Industries - lots of strange, different items and intermediate products that feel very different from vanilla

Finally, if you found the vanilla biters too easy and want more combat, I'd recommend the Rampant mod, which makes the biters smarter and tougher. If you find Rampant too hard, you can dial down the difficulty in its options and/or install some other mods that give you more powerful weapons.

Ok, so this wasn't a small list of mods.. but I couldn't narrow it down any further without feeling like I'd left out some crucial mods. Hope you find something here that interests you.

<comment><USER36> Thanks for this! I haven't played in a while, and have been meaning to get back into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I find myself playing factorio every few months. I play and play and play until at some point i realize that I'm fooling myself: Adding that extra steel production plant, with all the blueprinting, train routing and refactoring that is involved... I'm no longer escaping work. Actual Work now seems like less effort. And that's when I'm cured for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER38> Factorio is the DOOM of factory games. It has spawned a new Genre that is a blend of RTS like StarCraft, and city builders like City Skylines, HOWEVER it adds a crucial element to distinguish it from a simple mashup of genres - automation. Only after Factorio are we seeing automation factory games, like Satisfactory, recently Industries of Titan.

Automation is truly a genre on its own. It's just about growing your economy by removing yourself from the equation. It's about how efficient and scaleable your base is, both which revolve around automation. Unlike RTS or 4X city builders, the quality of your automation will determine how fast your grow and how long you survive.

</comment><comment><USER39> One annoying aspect in Factorio in the short time that I have played it was that there is a player character, who needs to move to each location before an object can be placed there. It adds a degree of tedium in building, if having requiring the player sprite to move about..

<comment><USER40> The game does introduce a few ways to deal with this: there's cars and trains for getting around fast, but also you can command construction bots from any distance if they're in an area with radar coverage. It is a bit limited, but it does give some encouragement to create controllable long-range contraptions.

<comment><USER41> 6 exoskeletons (yes, they stack) and a couple of personal nuclear power plants and you can outrun cars and some trains for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Absolutely blown away by how good Factorio is, fiendishly addictive, seemingly endless possibilities.

I can see why it appeals to those with an engineering/tinkerers mindset.

Also from this post I just learned that Copy/Paste is a function in the game, _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER43> Factorio is my current favorite train set. Community feedback and a very long development cycle made it awesome.

You asked is it devils? But forgot the parts about nuking bugs. Shooting bugs, killing all the bugs

</comment><comment><USER39> I haven't played it for long, but one thing I felt with Factorio and with the Anno series is that there is no RNG. I feel it would perhaps be more fun with an RNG element. Like, the assembly lines won't create identical items, but there will be some statistical variability. Also sometimes total duds are created that will cause problems downstream. Also random plant failures and downtime. In my imagination it would be more exciting.

<comment><USER44> Angels & Bob's mods and/or Seablock might scratch this itch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can also recommend Satisfactory. Similar game with more immersion through 3d world.

<comment><USER46> Only down side is that it can't scale to the levels Factorio can. (Only applies to us that like to build massive megafactories).

<comment><USER47> Yep. I've enjoyed both, but I think it comes down to:

If your draw to the game is is your sense of connection with the place you're in, Satisfactory probably does a better job of that, with the pretty scenery and ability to build in 3D. Factorio's world feels very flat in comparison. I wrote a bit about that and possible ways to make it less so in [https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-309](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-309)

If your draw is wanting to build very large, complex factories, constantly pushing production to new limits, that is what Factorio excels at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If anyone is looking for an immersive game to play I would recommend Subnautica.

<comment><USER49> If you liked Subnautica, try Outer Wilds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent: the tech tree is a directed acyclic graph. If one is looking for a different experience in which one thinks about closing manufacturing loops, I would recommend Oxygen Not Included, where you have to sustain life amidst an asteroid colony.

<comment><USER51> > One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is > idempotent

What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You craft it again, you now have two things. That doesn't sound idempotent to me.

<comment><USER41> I think idempotent wasn't a good word but I think the idea being described is that crafting is acyclic.

For example Copper Wire + Iron = Green Circuit.

There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire.

So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe.

Contrast that to ONI's water cycle, where clean water gets made dirty then cleaned again.

So ultimately in Factorio everything is leading toward the only resources that get destroyed - Science, Rockets, or Coal (or other energy types).

<comment><USER34> _" There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire. So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe."_

There are Factorio mods that will give you access to recycling machines that will let you get back the ingredients that went in to making whatever it is that you put in to them.

So Factorio's recipes can be fully cyclic, if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> WARNING: stay far away from this game... way too addictive. I've lost so much time to it... you have been warned!

<comment><USER53> Was it really lost? Can you imagine yourself on your deathbed regretting that you played Factorio?

<comment><USER54> I hope I'm not even half the way to my deathbed and already regret how much time I spend on games (and the knock-on effects).

It's not that playing games (incl Factorio) doesn't feel satisfying. But the time we have is pretty much the only finite thing in life and thus what we can do is limited. Spending time somewhat deliberate seems like a good idea.

Again, that doesn't mean playing games is bad. It can be a great source of joy and broaden your horizon, just like other media. But moderation is key. Spending time in ways that allows us to meet people/ learn skills (we might even use professionally)/etc will probably have a bigger impact on our lives down the line than the 2000th hour of playing Factorio.

<comment><USER53> You regret it now when you have more than half of your life ahead of you. But when you have nearly all of it behind you do you think you'll still regret it?

I don't think I will.

<comment><USER54> What do you think you will regret? Is it not something that could have been changed with more time? Or are you trying to imply you won't have any regrets... and wouldn't that make the question kind of meaningless?

As for me, that depends... I might end up a lonely bitter old man who constantly/wistfully mourns the wasted potential cause of all the whishes/goals I had but never worked on. Getting away from spending that much time on games should make this scenario less likely. Thus my attempt to get on a different path.

But yeah, your constraints of only thinking about past and present is kind of interesting. That can pretty easily lead into the meaning(-lessness) of life, but lets not open this can of worms for now.

<comment><USER53> I think I'll regret not using more of my time to do things that bring me joy. I think I'll regret the times in my life when I was doing something other than exactly what I wanted to do that moment.

I can't be sure though because at 41 I don't regret time spent working because it wasn't that bad and money earned allowed me to have a lot of fun gaming. Also I don't regret time spent with people. So I can't be sure if I regret anything on my deathbed, other than that I don't have more time to enjoy things. I'm pretty sure I won't regret wasted potential, because I know how unique it is to realize it in any spectacular manner. I could as well regret not winning the lottery, and I'm at ease with that.

My life might be meaningless in any objective sense. But some people have drawn some utility from it and it's absolutely meaningful for me because I'm the one living it. It's the only thing I got and I'll never have anything else.

<comment><USER54> Your life experience seems quite different from mine. When you describe someone as "doing only exactly what he wants to do in that moment", I'd imagine something quite different. A heroin addict. Someone excessively overweight. A kid never doing house-/homework. Or, well, someone playing video games excessive amounts of time.

The thing I wouldn't picture is moderation. Or awareness of long term consequences.

Again, most things that feel good are fine, as long as done in moderation. What you describe doesn't sound excessive at all, so sure, play more. Sounds like you've got the foresight to understand the trade-offs and hopefully have the willpower to not let it get out of control.

Since once it's out of control and you spend 14h/day on games and media for years straight, getting yourself back to normal can be quite hard and require external help.

> I'm pretty sure I won't regret wasted potential, because I know how unique > it is to realize it in any spectacular manner.

"spectacular manner"? I feel you're overestimate my standards. It's more a case of "I justified that excessively expensive GPU in 2008 not with gaming, but wanting to do _more_ GPU programming. So why is the best thing I've got to show for the last decade a (nearly finished) CS bachelor?".

I understand to have many years ahead of me. And all of that might leads me to a great path with a happy ending. But right now I'm certain having played less would have made such a path more likely.

<comment><USER53> > When you describe someone as "doing only exactly what he wants to do in that > moment", I'd imagine something quite different. A heroin addict.

Fair enough. But heroin addict wants to do heroin in every moment and nothing else. While in my cases it varies wildly from moment to moment. At any given moment I might want to play a game, talk to human, craft a response on stackoverflow, read about some obscure database, build a prototype in language I barely know, connect solar panel to LiFePO batteries, sculpt large ugly head out of polymer clay, read online about covid19 related research, think about how you can prove simple tautologies within axiomatic logic system, attempt to fix a bug in a program I just started using, discuss philosophical ideas with you, watch youtube video and then game some more. All of it just as useless as heroine (although less harmful), but all of it something that I wanted to do in that given moment.

> The thing I wouldn't picture is moderation.

Moderation comes from diversity of whims.

> I understand to have many years ahead of me. And all of that might leads me > to a great path with a happy ending. But right now I'm certain having played > less would have made such a path more likely.

I wish you all the best. When I was younger I had this urge that everything I do should ultimately give some monetary benefit. Once I felt secure with what I had materially this feeling subsided and I felt (bit aimless) freedom. Now I just want to be as happy as possible. Even if that desire has nihilism as a foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> They should do a pandemic version where you make masks.

</comment><comment><USER56> It looks like programming but in a more cumbersome fashion. I enjoy and understand the appeal of puzzles (Recurse is a good game), but this is too much like work.

<comment><USER57> It is intentionally cumbersome, at first, but as you master the technology tree you get access to ever faster robots, blueprints, automation via the circuit network, self-maintaining defenses etc. You can construct and dismantle distant parts of the factory from the map view etc. Basically, you journey from insignificance to near-omnipotence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The author might be interested in knowing that both the cofounders of Factorio are dan-level go players.

</comment><comment><USER59> My brother gave me this game for my birthday and, oh man... I couldn't stop playing even though I was on a holiday trip. Now I have detoxed and I'm back to having a life. One day at a time.

</comment><comment><USER60> Mindustry is a game similar to Factorio. It's open source and free to download on the Play Store. Warning: it's super addictive

</comment><comment><USER61> Does anyone know what the website is made of? I like the simple markdown and especially the tagging!

</comment><comment><USER62> Look up Satisfactory

<comment><USER63> Satisfactory is interesting in its own way. It'd be easy to initially think that its the better/easier game to get into for someone who hasn't played a game like this before, but I'd argue the opposite. The three-dimensionality introduces logistical insanity that is startlingly difficult to wrangle, and the first person viewpoint makes planning the factory floor very difficult. The terrain is also a constant challenge, whereas the terrain in Factorio is generally pretty easy to work around.

But, the world design is totally incredible; it begs you to explore every nook and cranny, and its non-random, so you can link up with friends and share secrets you've found. There's far more super-fun goodies to unlock, like the hypertubes or bounce pads.

Its just different, and I think someone who enjoys one would enjoy both. I tend to tell people to start with Factorio, though; its simple, yet infinitely deep. After about 50 hours in there, you'll gain a new respect for some of the simplified mechanics and fun-factor of Satisfactory; 50 hours there, and you'll gain a deeper respect for the nefarious complexity of Factorio. They complement each other perfectly.

<comment><USER64> > " _The three-dimensionality introduces logistical insanity that is > startlingly difficult to wrangle, and the first person viewpoint makes > planning the factory floor very difficult._ "

As a former player of the Tekkit mod for Minecraft, the three-dimensionality is what I miss. As good as it is, Factorio is so disappointingly _planar_ , despite the tools they give you to manage belt intersection and materiel transfer.

<comment><USER63> One of the big advantages Minecraft, and Factorio, have is their strict global grid system. Factorio's is two-dimensional, Minecraft's is three-dimensional, but they both have one.

Satisfactory does not have this global grid. It does have very limited local grids, when you lay down foundations, but even these are less powerful than the grids on Minecraft/Factorio.

This makes every stage of logistical planning more difficult, which is both good and bad. Highly organized Satisfactory factories are, visually, more chaotic than highly organized Factorio factories. But, they can also be more satisfying to look at; from chaos emerges beauty, against all odds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> You know what else is interesting? Their "no sales" sales philosophy. For me its the reason never to buy it. I actually revolt when I hear their reasons. I feel like it comes down to: we are willing to hurt our options for making more profit to prevent people with lesser budgets from buying it. But its very interesting since a lot of people have the opposite reaction. They feel it is more valuable if it doesn't go on sale and they can support the developer by paying a 'fair' price.

<comment><USER50> Factorio is a polished experience, with devs committed to bringing it not just to completion, but to perfection (with performance, aesthetics, and balanced gameplay). In contrast, most AAA games are bland experiences built under sweatshops, and most Early Access games wind up half-assed or as abandonware. If there's any game worth your money, it's Factorio.

<comment><USER65> I don't doubt that it's worth the money. I just dislike their attitude. If it was a perfect fit for me, I'd swallow it and get it, sure. But thruth is I'm only a very occasional puzzle gamer. So i'd probably not play it much or at all. Also, let's not overgeneralize. I'm pretty sure a lot of indie devs are effectively sweatshops too. They face much less regulatory scrutiny and people tend to forgive them easily. Examples like Telltale and Riot tell us how ugly things can get if they grow too quickly and continue operating that way. Which doesn't mean factorio devs are that way too. there is just no way to know. It also depends on the country. For example gaming AAA giant Ubisoft is French. French regulations do not permit much in terms of unpaid overtime.

<comment><USER50> > But thruth is I'm only a very occasional puzzle gamer. So i'd probably not > play it much or at all.

Then why should you care about what the makers of Factorio do?

> Examples like Telltale and Riot tell us how ugly things can get if they grow > too quickly and continue operating that way.

Do Factorio developers show any sign that they're "growing too quickly"? Telltale took on dozens of contracts for games that showed no sign of selling well, and Riot went public and were acquired and became Tencent's bitch. How is any of that relevant to Factorio not going on sale?

<comment><USER65> > Then why should you care about what the makers of Factorio do?

As I said I find it very interesting how people respond to it. This whole thread is an example why. That makes it interesting. Why Factorio? Why not 'Farming Simulator'? Theres other games like this too. For example Dominions. You can't criticize that either without getting /significant/ pushback. What do Dominions and Factorio have in common. I'd say they are both very hardcore games that attract a certain audience. It reminds me of review wars when coding. trying to find every little thing to nitpick on. People really butting heads against each other for no good reason. The spite, the vindictiveness. How we all get caught up in these arguments.

> Do Factorio developers show any sign that they're "growing too quickly"? > Telltale took on dozens of contracts for games that showed no sign of > selling well, and Riot went public and were acquired and became Tencent's > bitch. How is any of that relevant to Factorio not going on sale?

It's not... The comment I was replying to was making other assertions. I would also like to ask you to not use that word again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I really want to play this game. I've put it on my wishlist 2 years ago, but I swear, I've never seen it on sale! I wonder if it's because technically it is still Early Access.

<comment><USER67> It's $20. For a game you will spend 100's of hours on.

<comment><USER68> The price was raised a while back to $30.[1]

[1]: [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/016-price- change](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/016-price-change)

(I purchased it for myself at the $20 price, but I've also purchased it as a gift at the $30 price. I have _definitely_ gotten my money's worth.)

<comment><USER67> Oh OK, I too bought it years ago at $20 - but still, that $10 doesn't materially change my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I found

> There's gotta be some innate machine-focused "interest in things" that this > is tapping. I've never taken apart or rebuilt a machine, but this gets me > anyway.

fairly sad. Factorio is fun, but it's a pale shadow of the experience of making even relatively simple machines work better or differently. Even getting a 2-stroke motor that has a dirty filter running again is immensely satisfying.

<comment><USER70> Kinda. But then you don't have the right o-ring and the store is closed until Monday. And you mixed up the BSF and UNC threads on your carbs. And the cloth wiring is intermittently shorting out. Computers are nice in some ways.

<comment><USER71> "The reason is that, in other fields, people have to deal with the perversity of matter. You are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem, and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealized mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.

And so there are many problems we don't have. For instance, if we put an if statement inside of a while statement, we don't have to worry about whether the if statement can get enough power to run at the speed it's going to run. We don't have to worry about whether it will run at a speed that generates radio frequency interference and induces wrong values in some other parts of the data. We don't have to worry about whether it will loop at a speed that causes a resonance and eventually the if statement will vibrate against the while statement and one of them will crack. We don't have to worry that chemicals in the environment will get into the boundary between the if statement and the while statement and corrode them, and cause a bad connection. We don't have to worry that other chemicals will get on them and cause a short-circuit. We don't have to worry about whether the heat can be dissipated from this if statement through the surrounding while statement. We don't have to worry about whether the while statement would cause so much voltage drop that the if statement won't function correctly. When you look at the value of a variable you don't have to worry about whether you've referenced that variable so many times that you exceed the fan-out limit. You don't have to worry about how much capacitance there is in a certain variable and how much time it will take to store the value in it.

All these things are defined a way, the system is defined to function in a certain way, and it always does. The physical computer might malfunction, but that's not the program's fault. So, because of all these problems we don't have to deal with, our field is tremendously easier."

— Richard Stallman, 2001: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-mec- india.html#conf9](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-mec- india.html#conf9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I had stayed away from the game for fear of being hooked up, but decided to give it a try when I was confined home, so I downloaded the demo. I really wanted to like it, but I gave up after an hour or so, because I felt that the game devs want me to be frustrated. Now, of course nobody likes frustration, but I hate very much everybody who wants me to feel bad.

First of all, I was expecting a sandbox game, and instead I got objectives, and a stupid popup telling me what I am supposed to do.

Secondly, one of the first non trivial objectives is to reach a certain production speed, which, at least in the early stages of the game means hustle (I haven't bothered to check if it changes later on). The game promises hustle from the beginning: you have to feed coal to a machine that extracts coal; you can use robot arms to feed the coal extracting machine with coal, but you have to feed coal to the robotic arm. WTF?

Finally, I'm really done with games where you have to do your thing but also fight monsters. Compare that to, say, Minecraft: you craft a bed, spam lights everywhere and never, ever have to fight a single monster if you don't want to, while you're still free to go and fight monsters with your bare hands if that's what you like.

Is there a sandbox game that is not hustle for the sake of hustle, that doesn't tell you what to do and in which you can do your thing without being too much bothered by monsters?

<comment><USER73> Anno 1800 might float your boat? Or any of the previous games in the Anno series for that matter. The campaign does very much have a story and specific objectives, but the interesting bit is the regular sandbox game:

Turn off pirates and competitors, and either turn off or ignore NPC quests. (There's no penalty to ignoring them, but they sometimes can be useful if you need money.) You'll still have incidents like fires, industrial explosions, disease, and riots, but those are influenced by factors you control, and with well-placed fire stations, hospitals, and police stations you can very much contain them so they're a non-issue.

<comment><USER74> I quite enjoyed Banished[1] and Surviving Mars[2] for city builders with no needless fighting.

[1]:[https://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/Banished/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/Banished/)

[2]:[https://store.steampowered.com/app/464920/Surviving_Mars/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/464920/Surviving_Mars/)</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon donates $1M to Wikimedia - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/25/amazon-donates-1m-to-wikimedia/ <comment><USER2> _" Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google all contributed around $50,000 by matching employee gifts."_

That seems paltry for Google, given that their knowledge graph benefits a lot from Wikipedia content.

<comment><USER3> Google gave $2 million in 2010 from searches, and Brin gave $500k. I'm guessing they gave more at various times, but I think you're right, Wikipedia is a vital resource used by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon's AI agents, and they should be donating far more since it is arguably a significant value add for those products.

<comment><USER4> Throwing money at an organization has diminishing efficacy.

What do you think $2 million or $10 million or $100 million would have done for the Wikimedia organization, you think they would hide the donation <div> next year?

<comment><USER5> Establish an endowment to ensure they are not fighting for survival in the future.

<comment><USER6> In 2017 WMF had $120M in assets. It's probably closer to $150M today, since they are making over $20M a year in "profit" (revenues minus expenes). The cost of actually running Wikimedia projects (servers + network + salaries of dev ops and salaries of code maintainers) should easily fit below $10M, because it did in 2012. There has been growth since then in terms of usage, but this is very scalable growth that's cheap to handle: it's not servers and network expenses that's been skyrocketing, these are pretty much constant since 2012. It's the salaries, grants and awards. Look at their financial reports[1], and especially compare the growth in expenses over time. Suffice to say, if WMF struggles in the future, it's only due to mismanagement of its cancerous growth.

[1] - [https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial- reports/](https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/)

<comment><USER7> > It's the salaries, grants and awards.

Salaries for who?

Grants to who and for what?

Awards to who and for what?

Like, can someone provide a summary, for those of us who don't really have the time to dive into the reports?

<comment><USER8> They have around 300 FTEs. It might sound high, but they are the 5th most visited website in the world. Of others in the top 10, I think Reddit is the only other company with under 1,000 employees (at around 250). In comparison, Taobao which is also in the top 10 has over 30,000 employees.

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

[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Staff_and_Contractors)

<comment><USER6> It was already top 8 in 2012, and had less than half of the headcount it has today, spending a third of what it spends today in salaries.

<comment><USER8> Eh - I find this public over-scrutiny of a company just because it's a nonprofit to be a little offputing. Sure, you want to know your donations aren't being wasted, but I keep in mind that most non-profits where my friends work have people under-staffed and without enough budgets overall compared to their parallels in commercial businesses.

Do you know for a fact there that what they were doing in 2012 was sustainable for their employees, and building a solid future path for growth? If everyone's overworked and not efficient, keeping it overly lean isn't good in the long term.

<comment><USER6> Sure, I was an admin on Wikipedia in 2008-2012, and we were doing completely fine. The Foundation was tenth of its current size at the time, and wasn't doing much except keeping the lights running, which is all the community needed. Bear in mind that Wikipedia is run by community, and if the Foundation has anything to say in Wikipedia's internal affairs, it is through employees who also happen to be community members. If the Foundation is overworked and not efficient, it literally doesn't matter, as they don't actually do much on Wikipedia itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Useless signaling. Wikipedia definitely doesn't need any more money. This $1M will be burned on salaries of Wikimedia Foundation employees, majority of which do nothing useful. Look at their financial statements and see for yourself. Wikimedia has enough cash already to find operations for a decade or two, and they spend most of it on salaries of people running programs you never hear about, and which have no bearing on the way most people actually use Wikipedia and Commons.

<comment><USER9> > Useless signaling.

Their contribution to Wikimedia sends a positive signal to potential customers that is very possibly less useless than the more typical form of corporate signalling: advertising.

Do you think that advertising is also useless signalling?

<comment><USER10> Useless from the point of view of the recipient. I believe GP meant "useless" as in "PR stunt"; certainly not useless for their public perception, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google went after Freebase, did all the knowledge transfer to their graph and discontinued the project. Wikipedia now became a vitally important source of information and it is great to see big players trying to keep open knowledge base funded.

<comment><USER12> Wikidata is the new better Freebase:

[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page)

[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2) 'Earth' example

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure this has been discussed before on HN, but how has wikimedia avoided the fake news problem that plagues facebook, twitter and youtube.

<comment><USER14> Wikipedia definitely is not immune to the fake news effect. I can recall both reading about and directly seeing numerous instances of propaganda-esque edits. I'm guessing it probably just seems less prevalent because readership isn't concentrated on any one Wiki article the way that news/fake news is. I'm also under the impression that most wiki articles are closely watched by their authors as well as various wiki bots that alert to certain types of changes, so many/most malicious edits are probably noticed and reverted soon after they are made.

<comment><USER15> Wikipedia has started to become _dare I say_ hostile to outside editors. The current glacial pace that it is updated at maintains pace with science, and journalism. But rarely the larger internet.

While this is frustrating, when your trying to correct a citation or trivial spelling error in a long forgotten page. While on frequently trafficked pages this pace prevents a lot of malicious behavior.

<comment><USER16> My Wikipedia account was created two months ago and has exactly two edits, one of which removed a spam link and another which fixed a transliteration error. There has been no hostile reaction.

If you're just trying to correct a citation or trivial spelling error on a long forgotten page, editing doesn't seem to be particularly difficult.

<comment><USER17> You don't even need an account to do those changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Considering all of their 'Alexa what is [x]' information comes from wiki, this seems short-changed.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's kinda gross how little the big tech players have donated considering how much of their and academia's AI efforts leverage wikimedia data.

</comment><comment><USER20> As other commentators have said, this donation will definitely invite accusations of virtue signaling. What Amazon needs to do is pay (not donate!) its employees better but that's also stating the obvious.

What intrigues me more is that each era's barons find certain causes more appealing than others. Carnegie gave a lot of money to public libraries at a time when the printed word was expanding its reach. It's not surprising that Wikipedia is a favorite amongst tech tycoons along with education.

<comment><USER21> Amazon has 500K+ employees. $1M is what, two bucks per employee? Maybe three bucks if we exclude higher management, they get enough anyway. So you're saying "instead of donating to Wikipedia they should give each of their employees a free Starbucks coffee once a year". That would surely change things.

<comment><USER20> You need to read what I wrote more carefully. I said "Amazon needs to pay its employees better" as in a living wage - not distribute the one mil it gave Wikipedia amongst its employees.

<comment><USER21> Why would you mention it as a comment to Amazon donating to Wikipedia unless you see some link between this $1M and Amazon workers pay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice to see good news like this.

<comment><USER23> That's a good point. This is good news. Why don't people celebrate good news?

<comment><USER24> Because it is neutral news. Wikimedia has way more money than they can burn any time soon, and money has diminishing returns.

<comment><USER23> at this point in time in the dumpster fire, neutral should be celebrated!

<comment><USER24> I don't understand this sort of pessimism. If a news is good, we should say good. If a news is bad, we should say bad. If it's neither, then we should state it's neither. What makes you think we live in an especially bad time frame?

<comment><USER23> the assault on truth, misinformation and disinformation.

the rise of authoritarianism.

the polarization of poltics.

climate change denial.

jerks getting outraged when people suggest not being a jerk.

rage-baiting for clicks.

<comment><USER24> How is this random potpourri of global problems supposed to prove your point? Do we have any data we have more problems now than before? According to what basis? Even if this is true, what change does this make, why does this imply we should start praising neutral news just because it's not bad.

<comment><USER23> a potpourri it may be but it is a response to your question about why I think this is an especially bad time frame. I see no reason not to consider them relevant and I also see them as being indicators that things could be a lot better. Based on this my original comment was a desire to try to increase positivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Waste of money. Wikimedia is still trying to support the ancient and effectively deprecated Mediawiki which is only realistically useable for corporate style deployments. Individuals cannot use it well and wikimedia fails at meeting its mission statement time and time again. Donations to wikimedia are effectively donations to wikipedia, which cannot house the worlds information properly. Information craves distribution and perspectives, decentralization.

I want to see proffessors and trade skill teachers create good wiki style sites, not for yet more useless projects by wikimedia designed to bolster their salaries.

It'd be possible to make an absolutely free hosting site for informational wiki's (a wiki farm) for 1M that'd last a generation. But nobody really cares about that.

<comment><USER6> What exactly is the problem with MediaWiki? I for one don't believe that any problems Wikipedia currently has are of technical nature. Lots of people has contributed greatly to Wikipedia in 2000s, when MediaWiki was even less accessible than it is right now.

<comment><USER25> Setting up MediaWiki properly yourself is not a small undertaking. How wikipedia does what they do is with puppet deployments and a significant amount of automatic server management. It's incredibly inefficient given that pages should be statically served, it's very difficult to even know what to install and it may not even be future compatible.

For example getting VisualEditor, MediaWiki's custom PHP-lua extension for your version of PHP, needing PHP-FPM, managing versions of PHP, correct configs. Setting up page caching, knowing what extensions to get, seeing lots of out of date ones, having to configure them properly. Ontop of all this doing it actually right with proper file and user permissions is just completely inaccessible to anyone but those who make a job of it.

Even the mediawiki 'package' is out of date and works differntly, causing more problems.

It should be as simple as getting a domain, getting cloudflare, pop up a $5 VPS and a couple commands to have a proper and automatically updated install. User sets up website, sets backups to GDrive or some other cloud service, allows logins from google, facebook, whatever, and can then manage everything from the UI.

<comment><USER6> Right, these are all real problems with the software, but then again, none of these is really a problem for Wikipedia itself at all. For Wikipedia, all of the problems you mention have been already solved, everything is set up and functional.

<comment><USER25> And that's the problem. The world's information cannot be in one place, and mediawiki is made to look like it's 'for information' when in reality it's for Wikipedia. It has intentions to be extensible but fails to follow through, and this is incredibly misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the equivalent of me announcing a $3 donation to Wikipedia. PR signaling and nothing more.

<comment><USER4> Throwing money at Wikimedia foundation doesn't solve a problem either.

Typically the reason why wealthy individuals and organizations opt to do "matching" is because there isn't a $number that will satisfy people or even help the situation.

So then you could tie your contribution directly to public interest.

The world is open to better ideas, so try to contribute those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Large companies donating large sums of money non-anonymously seems to circumvent the 'we're neutral because we don't have sponsors' credo.

They'll get used to the large cash injections, that is how political power is bought.

<comment><USER28> Wikipedia already has a problem with cash injections and not being able to save extra money instead of launching more and more projects.

As for the point you're making, I disagree as long as the income from one company isn't reaching too big a percentage of their total yearly income. And then again, Firefox clearly wasn't politically subservient to Google, despite most of their income coming from there.

So it's not so much an automatic reaction, the internal culture plays a big role. Which is why Wikipedia pre-existing issue with incoming cash usage is a red flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> good - they deserve it!

</comment><comment><USER30> Chump change for Bezos. Really.

<comment><USER31> It's Amazon the company not Bezos the person.

<comment><USER32> At this point, can you really separate the two? Most of Bezos's wealth is tied up in Amazon, and he is virtually in control of the company.

<comment><USER33> According to Bloomberg [1] he owns "just" 16.4 percent.

Sure, he is CEO and probably has a large influence on the board too.

But just based on stock, he doesn't even seem to have a blocking minority. (Unless he has a lot of preferred shares of some kind).

<comment><USER34> He's the shot-caller. Nobody else has that much influence in the company.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Investor Suggests Ransacked Airbnb User Is Lying - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-ransackgate-paul-graham-2011-7

<comment><USER2> What's unclear to me is why people expect Airbnb to operate as police inestigators, and insurance companies. People get robbed all the time, every day, in every city. The only thing that's different is this lady willingly let her robbers stay in her house while she was away, without meeting these people or verifying their identity in any way.

</comment><comment><USER3> _There only seem to be two possibilities, here. Either Airbnb is lying or EJ is lying._

I don't really agree with this. It's too binary when the real world is more analog. Two entities (people, companies, whatever) _can_ have truthfully held beliefs, that appear contradictory from an outside perspective. Perspective and point of view matter, and lots of things are shades of gray, not black- and-white.

I think it's entirely possible that EJ and AirBnB are both being (mostly) truthful, relative to their perspective.</comment>


Native UI for Firefox on Android - <AUTHOR> http://lucasr.org/2011/11/15/native-ui-for-firefox-on-android/

<comment><USER2> Not to take away from the performance improvements and improved integration that this will bring to Firefox for Mobile, but this new UI means that almost all mobile add-ons will have to be rewritten or significantly updated. Granted, there are less than 200 add-ons that support Mobile, but I'm responsible for 5% of those, and the time it will take to update them to support the native UI might not be worth the effort.

(A similar situation occurred between Mobile 1.0 and 2.0, when browser UI and Web content were separated into their own processes, requiring any add-on that dealt with content to be updated. I still haven't finished all of those changes.)

<comment><USER3> It certainly will be work to port to the native Firefox on Android. The good news is it's not too hard. The bad news is you have to port... again. Like you said, Firefox Mobile already caused an add-on shift when multi-process was created. Now, we have removed the multi-process, but also removed the XUL front-end. The end result will be a great Firefox Mobile, but once again, we are asking add-on developers to re-work their add-ons. I know it's no consolation, but I wasn't too happy that we threw away 2+ years of work either.

I am happy that the new, native approach will address many of the problems that caused users to avoid Firefox on Android. This means more people will install and use Firefox, making it a more compelling platform for add-on developers.

We plan on writing some tutorials and documentation on porting add-ons to native Firefox on Android, but the basic information is: # Same add-on system. We didn't invent anything new here. # No multi-process. You can use the classic ways of interacting with web content. # No XUL UI. We can't overlay, or use DOM access for any UI. We have implemented several services using native UI and created a simple API for manipulating some native UI: # nsIPromptService and nsIAlertsService are available and use native services # NativeWindow is a new helper object that supports managing menu items, door hanger notifications and popup toast alerts (more coming too) # JS XPCOM components can still be used to override and implement Gecko platform behavior # Jetpack support is still in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To try out the nightly build, here's a QR code:

[http://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr- code/?data=http%3A%2F%2...](http://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr- code/?data=http%3A%2F%2Fftp.mozilla.org%2Fpub%2Fmozilla.org%2Fmobile%2Fnightly%2Flatest- birch-android%2Ffennec-11.0a1.multi.android-arm.apk&size=250x250)

It's buggy but the new UI looks pretty slick already.

</comment><comment><USER5> I actually made my own android web browser because I didn't like what was out there. [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nj.appiphiliac.bro...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nj.appiphiliac.browser&hl=en)

Hopefully this re-threading will make firefox actually load web pages faster not just the ui.

<comment><USER6> I may give this a spin. I've been using xScope since it began development because I wanted a low-clutter, high-speed option.

Out of curiosity, had you tried xScope too and found it lacking?

<comment><USER5> xScope is good but not full screen. I wanted a browser which used the full height of the display.

<comment><USER6> I grabbed your browser and have been using it. It's nice and snappy. Just FYI, xScope goes to full screen if you hit the menu button. Cheers and keep up the good work on making apps.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Redesign any website with the new jMockups Website to Mockup Converter - <AUTHOR> http://www.jmockups.com/websiteconverter

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HackerNews -- about four months ago I launched jMockups, a new HTML5-based high fidelity website mockup tool [1].

This new Website to Mockup Converter is the second largest milestone next to the initial launch. With it, you can instantly import any existing website into jMockups, redesign it, and share it all within a matter of minutes. I hope you enjoy it and please let me know if you run into any issues.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829657>

<comment><USER2> That is seriously impressive!

The first site I did didn't import perfectly, but it only took a second to fix a the major differences.

Orginial: [https://img.skitch.com/20110219-8rej2qyyg9pd6swxnxqagk8brq.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20110219-8rej2qyyg9pd6swxnxqagk8brq.jpg)

Imported: <http://www.jmockups.com/designs/1428/d3e541a65c>

Good work.</comment></comment>


SpritePad - Create and edit css sprites - <AUTHOR> http://spritepad.wearekiss.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice app... but I think images are source assets (like code) and sprites are binary deliverables (like object files, dll's or class files) and therefore generating them (like compiling) needs to be part of your automated build flow.</comment>


The Gap Between the Haves and Have-Nots of Tech Widens - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/technology/google-earnings-big-tech.html <comment><USER2> It's a bit surreal having multiple trillion dollar companies all of a sudden. Meanwhile, the tent city that used to just be under the bridge near downtown keeps spreading, it's up to a few hundred tents spread across almost two blocks now.

Not sure why I keep thinking about those two things together.</comment>


What Vivian Maier Saw in Color (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/what-vivian-maier-saw-in-color <comment><USER2> "One question that has dogged the discovery of Maier's photography is how a lowly nanny could make such high art. Let's call that sexism. I've never heard anyone ask how another exceptional Chicago outsider, the visionary writer and artist Henry Darger, could have produced his fifteen-thousand-page magnum opus while holding down a job as a janitor."

Really? That's precisely the question many people ask about Darger (his stuff is beyond description, you should check it out) or any other Outsider artist, for that matter. Natural talent and genius? Of course. A ton of time available due to loneliness (these artists are mostly alone) to hone your art and practice? Another important factor. And the side effects of that loneliness.

<comment><USER3> The expression "outsider artist" is so silly, and very reflective of the culture and mindset that engendered it. As if there were a normative "inside" that "real artists" belong to, and that everything else is an anomaly of sorts. Following that definition to its logical conclusion, the overwhelming majority of artists who have lived on this planet have been "outsider artists".

Creating art is a fundamental aspect of the human condition, and this categorization serves no purpose except the ones of pompous art dealers and critics.

<comment><USER4> Your comment is so pointed and concise that I expected it to be a formal quotation when it reached its end.

The need to feel unique leads people into these camps of delusion. This delusion is up there with the fallacy that art can only come from suffering or that being destitute is a requirement for empathetic art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish I could verbalize why I like her photos so much. Perhaps it's the nostalgia they bring, but honestly it's much more. She had an eye for capturing something interesting among the mundane. The photo of the guy in the yellow shorts/shirt/socks could have been out of a Wes Anderson film.

<comment><USER6> I feel the same way, and I think nostalgia is a big part of it. Not only did she have an eye for capturing interesting things, but she also had a high quality medium format camera to do it with. They're a much better quality than most pictures we've seen of that era, outside of what appeared in magazines.

<comment><USER7> The medium format quality definititely have nothing to do with it. A lot of people were shooting Rolleiflex in those times, the talent made the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> She wasn't highly trained in formalism, in a way that interests photography critics, but did capture a large number idiosyncratic moments.

</comment><comment><USER9> And it is not very good. His black and white is so much better.

<comment><USER10> Well you must be the expert considering you can't even get her gender right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vivian Maier's photographs are so overrated. She'd be completely forgotten today had she simply exhibited her photos throughout her life instead of being so dramatically and romantically "discovered" at the end.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely not true. She had a rare eye that combined human insight with an unusual talent for composition with flashes of humour.

She didn't exhibit during her life because there were virtually no outlets for women photographers who weren't born rich and well connected, or who didn't find a way into straight photojournalism.

You don't take photos like this one by accident:

[http://cdn.vivianmaier.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/11/VM1956...](http://cdn.vivianmaier.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/11/VM1956W03409-10-MC.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Also notable is that she could not have exhibited these pictures in her lifetime - most of them were left undeveloped.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: why does the application ask for Facebook id? - <AUTHOR>

"For each founder, please list: ..personal url, github url, facebook id, twitter id;.."
How important is providing the facebook/twitter id? Is it ok if the facebook profile is mostly private/empty? <comment><USER2> I'm sure it's not that important if it's empty or private. They want to get a sense of the type of person you are, as they're funding people, not ideas. Anything that can help them knowing you better could be important, but I would't worry if you don't use facebook or keep everything private.</comment>


Ask HN: Any game devs who switched from business apps dev? - <AUTHOR> Any game devs here who started off building standard business apps? If so, would you say you became a better dev or more passionate about the craft i.e. software dev? Things learned or unlearned. Looking to know of the contrast between these two dev fields that are in my opinion  a world apart. What were your challenges during this switch and your learnings? Would you ever want to go back to building business apps or is this (game dev) a career of a lifetime? <comment><USER2> I did although I also made games on the side too back when I was doing business software. I'm now about to exit the games industry after 7 years. Unless you're into something super specific like graphics you may not see a huge contrast as a general coder. I originally got into programming because of my love of games and I wanted to work in games which is why I felt I had to do at least try to get into games at some point and I'm glad I did. I will still makes games in the future but it's time for a change.</comment>


How To Drink Gatorade  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/how-to-drink-gatorade/

<comment><USER2> Sugar is not only important for it taste. It helps to absorb the salts and rehydrate. For example, the WHO rehydration "salts" is a mixture of salts with sugar. ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy#WHO.2F...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy#WHO.2FUNICEF_definition_of_ORS) )

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll admit I'm failing to see what this article and HN have in common.

Care to explain?

Thanks.</comment>


How Adobe Really Killed Flash - <AUTHOR> http://jacx.net/how-adobe-murdered-flash/ <comment><USER2> I had almost forgotten about all that drama. Spot on.

Remarkably, they claim that they may still lock stuff up behind a "premium features" paywall in the future: [http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/premium- fea...](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/premium- features.html) (bottom paragraph)

</comment><comment><USER3> It is still included with windows sadly..</comment>


SPIF – Streaming Progressive Image Format - <AUTHOR> http://fhtr.org/multires/spif/spif.html <comment><USER2> Hi, author here. Wow, this was a while ago, I'd forgotten I wrote that.

There's a version of this using a directory of images and loads in a bigger picture if you zoom in: [http://fhtr.org/multires/](http://fhtr.org/multires/) (Note that, yes, it'd be better to have a tile map for large resolutions and load in just the visible part of the image. And dump the hi-res tiles when zoomed out.)

SPIF's intention was to throw out a "it'd be cool if browsers supported something like this natively"-proposal, as the browser knows best what pixels of an image are needed for sharp rendering. For the webdev, the experience would be to just put the image on a page, rest assured that it looks good. Like with SVG.

Yes, loading JPEG2000 / progressive JPEG with stream truncation would be nice.

Images don't load on iOS? Probably some silly bug in my code.

Images can't be saved with right-click? That's probably due to using revokeObjectURL after loading the image from a blob.

<comment><USER3> How does it compare with FLIF?[1]

[1]: [http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/)

<comment><USER2> The biggest difference is that FLIF is an image encoder, SPIF/Multires is a container format.

So you can cram lossy 20x compression ratio JPEGs into Multires, optimized for each resolution. Or you could put a simplified SVG for low-res use, and detailed one for zoomed-in detail. Or hack it a bit and use Multires for loading the right-resolution video for your page. The format is just a container that tells the browser where to find the assets for each resolution.

FLIF is a lossless bitmap image encoder with progressive resolution enhancement.

TL;DR FLIF is PNG++, Multires is automatic srcset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This appears to be quite similar to FLIF ([http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/)) and to some extent BPG ([https://bellard.org/bpg/](https://bellard.org/bpg/)). There's no shortage of image formats that are better then JPEG and some have been around for quite a while.

The problem is in software/hardware support, particularly in browsers. JPEG has a lot of momentum. WebP is only supported in Chrome/Opera ([https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp](https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp)) and IE/Android don't even support animated PNG yet ([https://caniuse.com/#feat=apng](https://caniuse.com/#feat=apng)).

I did loads of research on this for a web app dev book, which I'm currently updating for the second edition. Browser image support hasn't changed much since it was originally published.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Tech Details

> The SPIF format starts with a header that tells the offsets and sizes of the > images in the SPIF. The images are stored smallest first, but there are no > image size restrictions apart from that.

So... two HTTP requests per image load? That is probably going to hurt more than it helps. Also, that probably means a Range request, which don't have great support. (For example, the builtin Python http server SimpleHTTPServer doesn't support them.)

<comment><USER6> While I agree with your other point re: multiple round trips completely, the part about Range requests feels misplaced. Any "real" HTTP server that anyone would use for hosting images these days supports them. Yes, some simple developer tools may not, but it's not hard to add if there was value to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FLIF ([http://flif.info](http://flif.info)) does this already but is far superior in many ways. All it lacks is a JS implementation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nicer progressive display is possible in JPEG already:

[https://imageoptim.com/progressiveblurdemo.html](https://imageoptim.com/progressiveblurdemo.html)

it's only a limitation of libjpeg that smoothing of early progressive scans is weak and incomplete, and thus looks very blocky. I wish browsers improved implementation of this.

Partially loaded DCT coefficients correspond quite well to maximum possible image resolution, so it is known how much cross-block smoothing needs to be applied to get nearly-optimal smooth preview. There's even an implementation of that idea:

[http://johncostella.webs.com/unblock/](http://johncostella.webs.com/unblock/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice idea, but it has usability issues:

\- Right click -> View Image, Save Image, or Copy Link doesn't seem to work. This might be an issue with Firefox, because the blob is stored _somewhere_.

\- No direct linking is possible, so I can't drop a link to the image into a chatroom.

\- Zooming in page with Ctrl+Plus doesn't increase the resolution of the downsized image.

I'd rather download the original image, even if it takes more time/bandwidth, if these issues aren't fixed. And the CPU usage scares me a bit, if you multiply this by ~100 images, which is very common on news websites.

However, this method is better than embedding the full 7360 x 4912 image at least. It took 0.8s for the page to load in my browser and 6.0s to download the test.spif image.

I wonder if there is a way to use a progressive JPEG in a normal <img> tag (so it displays progressively rather than once it has finished loading) and use Javascript to halt the download once a certain amount has downloaded.

<comment><USER10> First and second are probably features for some people, third is solved, according to the source.

I wonder if it would be a good idea to revive plugins - back in the day we used object tags with links to the plugin to install to render the media. Maybe something similar can be done today with a link to some js that does the rendering. So you can have an img tag with mime type image/x-spif and a link to a js (or in the future, web assembly) handler in case there is no native support.

Web browsers are basically operating systems now. We should be working towards letting people safely install extensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like a reinvention of JPEG2000 and progressive JPEG, which were specifically designed to accommodate use-cases like this without having to store separate independent images for each resolution, and allowing the data stream to be truncated at any point to reach the required level of refinement.

<comment><USER4> Progressive JPEG is slightly different but JPEG2000 is very interesting. The wavelet transform is pretty clever in how it arranges the frequency components.

It's a shame JPEG2000 never took off, probably due to the patent issues. It has a niche in medical imaging though.

I wrote my thesis on this topic, over a decade ago now. When doing image recognition you only need to read the first small part of a JPEG2000 file to get good results, which has obvious advantages. You can ignore the high detail bits at the end.

<comment><USER12> It's quite popular with archives as well due to storage costs and allowing zoomable images with IIP image [http://iipimage.sourceforge.net](http://iipimage.sourceforge.net) But support is lousy only kakadu works fast enough, there are still many issues with OpenJPEG but it still seems to be in active development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool work! I'm a fan of anything that makes things more efficient.

Why not go a step further and have a server dynamically scale the image based on the size the image will be displayed at, so it's always displayed pixel for pixel and there's no waste? Anyone tried that?

<comment><USER14> THat's (almost) possible. You can obviously redirect requests to image-????x????.jpg to a script that resizes the source image to the requested size. To get the browser to request the correct size, you just have to add a bunch of them to the srcset attribute. I say "almost" because you're limited to giving specific sizes as options, and it's probably not a good idea to let that list grow to a thousand entries.

However, the approach given in the linked project is actually much better, because

\- It works with only a single file, not one for every resolution. The latter makes CDNs useless with increasing number of possible resolutions

\- On-the-fly-resizing is slow

\- A streaming solution could just continue to read at the point it previously stopped if anything changes, such as the user clicking on a thumbnail to see the full image

\- It also allows to make the stopping decision at a later point. Currently, a browser may have only loaded the first few lines of a html page when it has to decide which of the available sizes for the image it wants to load. If it can wait a bit longer, it has better data about, for example, the network speed to the server and the layout of the page.

<comment><USER15> Used to have a setup like this years ago but having a script that performs something heavy like image manipulation led to it being abused to ddos the server. You basically have to set predefined sizes but in that case you might as well render the images on upload and save all the versions.

<comment><USER16> What we do is to add a signature to url. For example image.jpg?w=500&sig=<hmac of w=500> so the server can validate that the request url originated from us and we can add more image sizes by just generating new urls with correct signature.

This solves the abuse issue while providing the same freedom for image sizes.

Edit: Also we use aws lambda for image resizing so scaling is not an issue and generated images are cached on s3. Storage is cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. A similar concept is applied in microscopy, where multiresolution TIFFs are the norm. Another option to consider would be Deep Zoom. The common denominator is that users are essentially wanting a differently zoomed version of the plane depending on circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER18> How old is this? In practice, since there is no native support for this format, ways 2 and 3 are the same (both JS based). We now have srcset + media queries that let us achieve this without any overhead.

</comment><comment><USER19> Image is very very low res on my iPhone (os 11 beta)... seems like it pre maturely stopped?

<comment><USER15> iOS 10 as well. Looks broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> sort of pointless no?

it would be for me, anyways</comment>


Ask HN: How to guarantee success at a new job as a Senior Software Engineer? - <AUTHOR> Just got an offer for a new job as the Senior Software Engineer. What should my first 30 days look like? What did you do to ensure success? <comment><USER2> You say "the Senior", so maybe this also means being in charge of other people? If it's just individual contributor, comment from emeraldd is good advice.

If you'll also be a team lead, [https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Closed-Doors- Management-Progra...](https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Closed-Doors-Management- Programmers/dp/0976694026/) is good book to read on management.

Also: spend the first 30 days just listening as much possible, not making suggestions. If there are things that need improving go and try to improve them directly yourself, or do it afterwards. But if there are problems make sure you spend the time to figure out _why_ people are doing bad things, and don't just criticize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just got the book. Thank you a million! I definitely need to practice listening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> * Learn as much as you can about the system and the currently running stack, deployment model, and dev environment. As a corollary, make sure you can bring a clean stack up on a dev machine, as isolated from prod as possible, by hand. Or as close to by hand as is practical. I've found this to be very important to understanding how things actually work in an application.

* Figure out who are you goto people to find out information about the system and the stack.

* Figure out who your 'users' are so you know who to ask about actual use cases or end user testing.

* Dive in bug fixing, the deeper the dive the better. The more time you can spend in the code base exploring and the faster you get into it the faster you figure out what the real structure is.

At least that's my starting point. For me, the big thing to remember is that applications are applications and business processes are business processes. It's all about pipelines that process customers/students/data/whatever and spit them out the other end.

Edit: formatting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some real golden nuggets here. Thank you so much.</comment></comment>


Families of San Bernardino Shooting Sue Facebook, Google, Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sanbernardino-attack-lawsuit-idUSKBN1802SL <comment><USER2> Wow, horrifying. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt for such a tradgedy and the emotional stress and grief it causes; but this is illogical, dangerous and counterproductive. Terrorism seeks to change our way of life and sueing a company for providing a platform for[0] free speech (which those companies actually already curtail) will not only cause problems to this already slippery slope, but simply displace terrorists to less visible places.

I hope this is not greed, because these companies are about as well funded as they are unconnected/innocent in this incident.

[0] added "provide a platform for" free speech for clarity.

Also, I am aware these platforms moderate, Facebook just committed to hiring 1400ish people to mod the site.

<comment><USER3> Do you think corporations have the right to free speech? Do you think they ought to?

<comment><USER4> This isn't about a corporation's free speech. It's about people exercising their free speech using products built by companies.

<comment><USER3> A corporation spending money to host and spread speech in order to make a profit.

<comment><USER5> Ironic considering a for-profit organization is paying to host and spread your speech right there.

<comment><USER3> I suspect if a user began to promote and recruit for ISIL on HN that they would be banned.

<comment><USER5> So then your problem is with censorship, and not for profit organizations paying to host speech? Nice mobile goalposts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > [The lawsuit] asserts that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread > propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided "material > support" to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

> A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social > media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond > the preliminary phases.

Here's another recent example of this [0]. At first glance of the definition for material support [1], these lawsuits might seem (legally) reasonable. Luckily though, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [2] makes these lawsuits fairly baseless. I can't imagine the consequences if social media providers were liable for all content posted on them... (Disclaimer: IANAL in the least)

[0]: [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn- lawsuits...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-lawsuits- social-media-terror-20170119-story.html)

[1]: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm wondering why not sue the ISPs and the utilities that provide electricity or the power generating nuclear reactors / coal power plants? Without any of these, it'd be impossible for ISIS to spread.

<comment><USER8> I think we should sue the chemical companies for not polluting enough to kill off the shooters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are all sorts of parallels between open Internet/encryption and the gun rights debate. It will be interesting to see how it all sorts out in the end. For example, in the future could we see a joint campaign by the NRA and the EFF?

<comment><USER10> Ironically relevant XKCD: [https://www.xkcd.com/504/](https://www.xkcd.com/504/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's like suing the coffee shops for the revolution

<comment><USER12> Or suing gun manufacturers for shoo--

[https://www.rt.com/usa/369036-sandy-hook-gun- manufacturing-l...](https://www.rt.com/usa/369036-sandy-hook-gun- manufacturing-lawsuit/)

..Oh

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's a valid comparison. Not making a statement on the Sandy Hook suit's merit, but clearly the San Bernardino couple didn't shoot up the place with tweets and wall posts.

<comment><USER14> Not a valid comparison? It's the exact comparison. What about suing the truck manufacturers when that terrorist ran over a bunch of people, or Boeing for 9/11, etc. Just because they are a manufacturer of firearms doesnt excuse them from this ideology.

<comment><USER15> This is not a valid comparison because there is literally a federal law protecting gun manufacturers. There is not a similar law protecting twitter.

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

<comment><USER16> Lack of a federal law doesn't necessarily make that comparison invalid; perhaps there should even be an analogous law protecting "free speech platforms" that is rooted in the first amendment, similar to how the law you cite it ostensibly rooted in the second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wait not suing Apple?

To clarify Apple refused to unlock the phone, thus I expected them to be a target of the lawsuit as well. Not saying they should have been sued or that this lawsuit has any merit.

<comment><USER18> What did they do? All they did was refuse to unlock the perpetrator's phone. How do they have standing in that?

<comment><USER19> They enabled the perpetrator's planning and communications by supplying him the phone. I mean, they are just as culpable as Facebook, Google and Twitter...

...i.e. not at all, but a large and wealthy company to try and extort a settlement from.

<comment><USER20> By this logic you can sue the clothing company that provided them with clothes during their felony

<comment><USER21> That's pretty much the point the GP was trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Section 230, Communications Decency Act, no ISP is liable for what third parties do on their site. There's an intense amount of case law backing it up. This lawsuit will likely be dismissed before they even get to a court. It's amazing to me that people even still try.

There's social media liability insurance you can get just incase someone tries to drag you into a frivolous lawsuit. The cases all get thrown out, but not before potentially $20-50k in legal bills. The insurance is really just there to cover the legal bills until the plaintiff pays it back after dismissal (which can take a while).

If you run a hosting service or a small social network and don't have enough money to hire a staff lawyer, definitely check out getting some liability insurance to protect yourself from crap like this. It runs about $100/mo for a $5k deductible up to $1 million in coverage, but those numbers probably vary a lot.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's an interesting one. It seems like it wouldn't work at first but then thinking about more maybe there is something there.

These companies want to position themselves as the new media, the gatekeepers of "truth" so to speak. That's why they are pushing "Fake News" and moderating it, classifying it etc. It is basically a strategy to fill the void left by the older mass media companies, which are seen as failing an unable to manufacture consent effectively. So in a way they are signaling "Come to us now, we'll advertise your stuff and mark you competitors ideas as fake". It's a good move really. From a business standpoint, can't blame them there.

I am trying to conduct a mental experiment and imagine what would happen if say CNN gave al-Baghdadi a few minutes here and there to express his views. Or letting the local KKK chapter air their ideas once in a while. Many would agree CNN then might be complicit in inciting violence for example and would share a bit of responsibility. So if these other companies what to play "gatekeepers of truth" game they should also be responsible too?

</comment><comment><USER24> Yet another frivolous lawsuit in the land of the USA.

</comment><comment><USER25> There were quite a few comments about the dishonest culture of the Indian bodyshops on the Infosys thread yesterday. And today I wake up to an Uber criminal probe and Facebook, Google and Twitter getting sued.

So as a student all I want to know, is how do I tell I am not working for the "let's do whatever it takes" assholes.</comment>


$1,000 Personal Genome Coming: Are We Ready? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmd.com/news/20100429/1000-dollar-personal-genome-coming-are-we-ready?src=RSS_PUBLIC <comment><USER2> Hold on! I'm almost ready! ...with the personal genome browser I'm building <http://devonjensen.com/screenshots.html></comment>