Fear is America's top-selling consumer product - <AUTHOR> http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear/petrified-forest <comment><USER2> I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy.

That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missing out on what's going on in the world. Every time I dip my feet in global news, it's screamed at me, dripping in panic: "Trump DID A THING!!!" "Cops Shoot a Guy AGAIN WHY DID THEY DO THAT?!!"

Are there any good general global news sources that don't try to manipulate my emotions as I read them? Paid or free.

<comment><USER3> Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth.

In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind. You have to visit all sites and KNOW that you are getting the one sided alternative facts that best support their specific agenda. Then you MUST realize the world is never really Black and White, and MUST come to your own informed conclusions.

Every site has their own goodness. I find interesting articles in each of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Braitbart, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, etc. etc., but you have to sift through 99% of one-sided junk.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand this perspective. When CNN gets a story wrong, the right creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong (Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on and _on_ )... nothing happens. Nothing. It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia isn't that bad" before there was enough of an outcry for him to be fired. It truly frustrates me when I see people pushing this "oh both sides are just as bad, but one is left and one is right". No. They are not.

And it isn't hard to see the direct effects this is having, now. When the governor of Texas calls out the national guard to keep an eye on the _US Army doing training exercises_ , because of right-wing conspiracy insanity that has hit the mainstream, we are having problems. When President Trump can claim that Obama is the founder of Isis and people just eat it up, we are having problems. For God's sake, the man had his press secretary go out on Day One of his presidency and lie about crowd sizes. He spouts bullshit about crime statistics in Sweden and for months, Breitbart suddenly has constant articles about how immigrants are causing everything wrong in Sweden ever (I particularly remember an article with an image of a mangled child, with the claim this was caused by immigrants, only for word to come out later it was a dog attack).

The "mainstream media" (and I use the term in quotes because all the biggest radio shows are right-wing, fox is the biggest cable channel and the WSJ is the biggest paper aside from USA Today) is like a dog chasing a car, towing a pro-business line and chasing after whatever will give them the most eyeballs at the moment. But at least they aren't a goddamn propaganda force for the left, marching in lock-step and feeding off each other the way the right media does.

<comment><USER5> The truth is, there's actually a huge amount of centrist in the USA. Those centrists are reasonable people. They'll hear you out, think, analyze and make up their mind. They'll accept compromise, and they'll try hard to see if maybe there's truth to consider, even if most things said appears exaggerated, or ridiculous.

And then there's unreasonable people. They don't want to think, or consider options.

In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people clustered on the right.

Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well. Maybe CNN forgot to consider an option, so they reconsider. Fox news doesn't, they're not trying to be reasonable.

So what's happening currently is all reasonable people on the left is trying to give a chance to the minority of reasonable people on the right. While the bigger chunk of unreasonable people on the right are trying to avoid all reasoning about alternative options.

In that sense, its normal for most reasonable news source to appear tied to the left. And most unreasonable news source to appear tied to the right.

<comment><USER6> _> In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people clustered on the right._

I don't think it's fair to generalize 330 million people like this.

Certainly it feels like there are more reality-denying theories peddled by right wing media, but that could be for a variety of reasons, not limited to:

1\. Right wing media is louder in their publicizing of these issues

2\. Your media sources are more liberal and you view right wing media outlets as "unreasonable"

I am not American, but I have American friends. You cannot generalize political beliefs into who is reasonable or unreasonable in all their beliefs. Politics is a spectrum, and right now in America you have the loudest people screaming from the extreme right and (IMHO) the centre left. If you identify as more liberal, you're far more inclined to view this coverage as "reasonable" compared to more right leaning coverage.

 _> Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well._

No, this is the current media situation in America. In other countries this kind of propaganda from both sides of the political spectrum is not as prominent, and it's far easier to have a rational and reasonable debate about political issues.

You can draw your own conclusions about America, but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning people are unreasonable. It's a big world, and this most certainly is not the case in other countries.

I'd argue it's also not the case in America. American media has just been hijacked by the most loud, extreme group of people (from both sides) because the executives have figured out this style of coverage earns more money.

From an outside view, American news media has basically turned into The Jerry Springer Show. It's trashy and devoid of almost any meaningful content, but people watch it to be entertained.

<comment><USER7> > but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning > people are unreasonable

Nor that even MOST right leaning people are unreasonable. It's all a matter of vantage point.

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's a matter of vintage point. It's all about intention. You can work to be more reasonable if you choose to. You can teach people to be more reasonable. Its a skill, a quality that everyone healthy can choose to practice or not.

I don't even know what right or left leaning imply. That whole categorization is a joke. Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to get it. Only after that's been cleared up can we start discussing meaningfully.

What I do know though is that in the media, in the USA, in 2017 (it hasn't always been this way), most unreasonable people making noise associsate themselves with the right and like to associate reasonable people with the left.

<comment><USER7> > That whole categorization is a joke

It's a very serious distinction. One which wars have been fought over many times over (from the french revolution to the cold war). To trivialize it is more than naive.

> Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to > get it

There are many things I personally want but underlying it all is the idea of non-egalitarianism. I want structure in any society where merit and hard-work are given the utmost priority. Why do I want it? Because it is the most natural and most proven way to create proper incentive structures for the best outcome for other humans and myself.

How will I get it? First of all, remove most, if not all, government involvement in citizens' affairs. Allow for free markets to prevail and for the best ideas and the best people to rise to the top. I will take aristocracy over democracy any day. Democracy has become a tool that's been used to take away the liberties of individuals in the guise of freedom and equality.

<comment><USER5> The American right and the French revolution right are competly different things, which is another good reason for me to believe the categorization is a joke. They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details, they naturally lead to partisanship.

From what you said, we could have a reasonable conversation, but you sound more libertarian then the current American right. Here lies the issue of affiliation. You sound reasonable, but if you affiliate yourself with breitbart, fox news, and the rest of the leading right, you're associating yourself with a lot of unreasonable people in position of power. And since you've mentioned soviet communism and german fascism before, you might know that's exactly how reasonable people got tricked in the past also.

<comment><USER7> > The American right and the French revolution right are competly different > things

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is- th...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is-the-origin- for-left-being-used-to-indicate-socialist-liberals-and-right)

I'd point you to that and say I'd only support your statement in so far as saying part of the American right is not as pro-liberty as it ought to be - this is in reference to neoconservatism and similar ideologies.

> They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details

They're shorthand and I think they're useful when you're genuine about discussion but want a quick way to understand where an argument is coming from. If you're disingenuous about conversation, it doesn't matter whether labels are used or not, you simply cannot self-regulate your bias to give room for discourse is all I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not this essay's first time[1] making it to this front of hacker news. And I am glad for it, because Petrified Forrest essay is great, and Lapham's whole issue[2] on fear is fantastic.

Unfortunately two pieces I found most relevant for HN crowd from this issue so far aren't available on Lapham's Quarterly website. They are a moralistic Japanese 17th century account of an entrepreneur in "All the goodness gone from tea"[3] and Joseph Heller's bit on "Corporate Welfare" in "Something Happened"[4]. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14589087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14589087)

[2] [http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear](http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear)

[3] [https://books.google.com/books?id=ux89AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA93&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ux89AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA93&ots=_0XDTIXhUw&dq=%22all%20the%20goodness%20gone%20from%20tea%22&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[4] [https://books.google.com/books?id=b2AiWB98p5sC&lpg=PT14&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=b2AiWB98p5sC&lpg=PT14&ots=GTXIjffuIu&dq=_&pg=PT14#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><AUTHOR> When I entered the link I kind of expected to be notified it had be posted already, but no such notice came up. I was revisiting the site today and couldn't remember seeing that article linked here so I thought I'd give it a try.

Nice to see it get around some more. It really is a high quality site and one I look forward to each update with real anticipation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wanted to complain about the title not really making the right distinction, that fear is not a product but a sales method. However, the author actually understands that distinction and really talks about fear being the product. That also implies that people desire fear and that fear is produced with industrial efficiency.

Interesting thought.

<comment><USER10> I don't think people crave fear, they crave stimulation. Joy is much harder to manufacture than dread, and dread makes people act in a predictable, often- profitable manner. In other words, people don't want to be bored more than anything else, and the rest is just about the most stimulating things on offer.

<comment><USER11> >Joy is much harder to manufacture than dread

Is it though? And is it just harder in our current configuration or absolutely harder no matter how resources are allocated?

I'd argue that Joy is easier/cheaper to produce, we just haven't optimized for it (yet).

<comment><USER12> Joy is fleeting, fear is forever.

Manufacturing joy is easy, yes. Tie a counter to a semi-random process that's semi-controlled by a human and they experience joy when the counter goes up. The so called slot machine. THis is how HackerNews karma, Facebook notifications, your email inbox, and other addictive activities are designed.

You experience momentary joy.

But fear, fear is forever. How many fears have you been dragging on since childhood that never seem to go away no matter how irrational they are? Could've been from a single event like watching a scary movie about a clown, or a case of near-drowning, or ... well there's a lot of common phobias. The list can go on forever.

You always need to make a new slot machine. You rarely need to make a new fear.

<comment><USER11> I think that's a fair point, but would argue that it's likely not true for a sizable amount of the population (e.g. my childhood fears have mostly left me). But further, there are lots of services which actually sell getting past your fears, perhaps they are just not selling well enough yet to overcome the amount of fear being produced continuously? Mainly, just questioning how much it is "forever" fear vs. a constant influx of new fear.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's not a matter of introducing new fears but of reinforcing old ones and reminding you of them.

Everyone's afraid of random unexpected death that's out of their control right? Well most of us on some level at least.

So media spends a lot of time reminding us that we could die any moment. Terrorists, natural disasters, wars, car crashes, shootings, all these things that have a low chance of happening to you in particular but that nonetheless happen every day and _could_ happen to you.

Or take social exclusion. We all fear being cast out of society. So media keeps reminding us of all these things the cool people are doing that wr arent. Potentially things we can _pay_ to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Playing devil's advocate, all this fear and anxiety (as @coldtea properly states) is an engine of the economic machine of the western world.

What I'd argue is that is all twisted for idiotic reasons. For example, it would be good to have fear of death used to push society towards things like cures for cancers. And anxiety used to push ourselves to _reach our potential_ instead of seeking validation in superficial things expressed in Instagram pictures.

But we humans like the quick fix and the advertising lobby delivers. We have 50% of the blame here. Same with the unhealthy foods and drinks we take all the time.

To improve our behaviour we need incentives like most animals.

</comment><comment><USER14> A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings with a russian imposed nuclear doomsday scenario?

That assumption that a russian bomb was merely a copy of the the American effort, spying helped it speed up, but mostly prevented costly mistakes for the soviets is just another example of american exceptionalism.

Would rather watch Adam Curtis' _Power of Nightmares_ again, blaming the _culture of fear_ rightly and mostly on the rise of _neoconservatives_.

<comment><USER15> > A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the > arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings

Conservative? Can trigger warning exist without fearing something? I think the author describes evolution of fear.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't call this fear, but a, yet to be proven effective, strategy to avoid retraumatization.

The motivation, as I understand it, is actually to enable and prepare more people reading things they would be otherwise afraid of, so quite the opposite of fear.

Besides some right wing people seeing this as one of the horsemen of the end of free speech, this relatively obscure and confined practice simply doesn't warrant mentioning it on level akin with national doctrines like _MAD_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To be honest I think this was pretty obvious to anyone living outside the US, especially after 9/11\. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, it's nothing US exclusive, scaring people into obedience is the oldest trick in the book. Fear has been always one of the main selling point for politicians, ever since the beginning of time. When faced with a common threat (real or not) people tend to unite under a leader who they hope will protect them, and it's any totalitarian ruler's wet dream. Frightened people are easier to control and far more likely too look the other way on whatever irregularity or injustice, as it will always seem unimportant compared to the threat and fear they feel.

</comment><comment><USER17> Without a doubt the business news has a greater interest in delivery of facts on the ground than your typical national newspaper. To that end I pay for (and only pay for) the Financial Times due to their attempt to seek out truth. For example, on controversial issues they'll have editorials from both sides, long articles, and they publish letters criticizing and correcting articles. As it's investment-minded and British owned, there's more of an international focus.

The sad thing about the FT is how expensive it is.

Investors tend to care about facts more than feelings, so objectivity becomes a worthwhile pursuit. When you're investing in a commodity, foreign currency and so forth, you're going to read everything with squinted eyes, looking for the facts.

<comment><USER18> > The sad thing about the FT is how expensive it is.

Real journalism costs money, and ad revenues aren't what they used to be.

<comment><USER19> Partly because of ad blockers. But ad blockers became popular due to the rise in obnoxious ads. It's an endless cycle that advertisers and publishers aren't working at all to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's quite ridiculous that any author can get away with the obscure clairvoyant claim that people are really irrational and desire to be fearful——it's a claim contrary to primitive animal and human psychology alike. The motivation to go buy products associated with fear has nothing to do with fear itself even when you explicitly define fear as an uncomfortable uncertainty.

The reason to want to know fear, why fearful subjects are even discussed, is the quite natural rational thirst for information about uncertainty. Thus, you would expect them to purchase services that provide information about and that mitigate uncertainty. Much of the financial economy is purposed as a mitigation to uncertainty, because uncertainty causes an inherent inefficient allocation in resources in order to prepare for the uncertain event. If there is uncertainty, the rational agent is forced to prepare for it with capital (be it financial or physical). This causes there to be an unused buffer of resources that cannot be allocated to more pressing utilizations. Instead, the rational agent is obliged to maintain a buffer, and even incur more transactional costs in maintaining that very buffer. Uncertainty is expensive, and the rational agent thus seeks to understand all disturbances to mitigate the cost of uncertainty.

tl;dr The author is actually engaging in the cheap literary trope where the general population lacks rationality and the author is the exception for pointing it out.

<comment><USER21> No, I don't think the desire to mitigate uncertainty explains it. The reason is simple: fear is about overplaying and exaggerating the risks and uncertainty.

Fear of terrorist attacks is a great example. If you live in the US, that means that over the past 15 years you have been more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than a foreign terrorist attack. Yet a lot of people shit their pants with regards to, say, Islamic terrorism.

<comment><USER22> Because terrorism is more unpredictable. If you don't want to get struck by lightning, stay inside when it storms, or at least don't stand in the middle of an empty field. If you don't want to be killed by a terrorist, don't go outside at all?

<comment><USER23> Avoiding terrorism is pretty easy: avoid the busy parts of the largest cities. Nobody is carrying out a terrorist attack in Boise.

Which is ironic that the Americans who appear to be the most fearful of terrorism are the ones who live in places where it will most likely never happen.

<comment><USER22> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403022.html)

[http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article536103...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article53610300.html)

Can we agree that the conditions for lightning are fairly predictable, and staying safe is pretty straightforward? Whereas "just don't be where all the people are" is by definition advice that most people can't or won't follow.

Honestly I don't think this point is really debatable. Unpredictability is a core characteristic of terrorism. If tomorrow all Americans decided to spread homogeneously across the country and never congregate in large groups, terrorists would think of something else. If it were predictable and avoidable it wouldn't be as scary, which is the whole point of this conversation.

<comment><USER23> From your first link:

"The analysis measured not whether a city would make an attractive target to a terrorist but rather how well it could withstand an attack, Piegorsch said."

In other words, Boise is ill-prepared to handle an attack, but no statement is made on the likelihood that it would be a target. That likelihood is, of course, quite low.

For the second, the goals of an individual nut who couldn't even make his plan work aren't all that interesting.

Characterizing my advice as "just don't be where all the people are" is super misleading. There are a _small number_ of likely terrorist targets, and my advice is not to be _there_. If you're worried about terrorism, then you should probably avoid Manhattan, downtown Boston, major airports, etc. And most people paranoid about terrorism probably already avoid these places. Chicago or Miami or Seattle are probably fine. Places away from the centers of likely target cities are probably fine. "Don't visit New York" is perfectly viable advice for a fearful person in Iowa.

You can easily reduce your risk of being killed by lightning, but remaining perfectly safe is hard. Taking shelter isn't necessarily sufficient. Lightning _can_ conduct into buildings, and it can also start fires.

I don't think the fear of terrorism is down to its unpredictability and unavoidability. The same is true of car crashes (someone else's mistake or malevolence can easily end your life on the road, and avoiding the roads is not an option for the vast majority of people) and yet people give little thought to those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lapham's Quarterly is an absolute treasure. This issue is especially timely and informative (to say the least).

</comment><comment><USER24> It is funny how the US focuses on "intellectual property" over selling actual goods. We have been running a trade deficit since the 1980s I think. This reminds me of patent trolls for example.

</comment><comment><USER25> The 2nd top-selling consumer product: the first is anxiety (for your body, social status, income, career, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER26> Funny, I just watched this: [https://youtu.be/JrBdYmStZJ4?t=22s](https://youtu.be/JrBdYmStZJ4?t=22s)

Seems pretty apt.

</comment><comment><USER27> The internet promised to make every man a publisher, and it has succeeded. The problem is that most professional publishers shouldn't be publishers, much less the average person. There's simply too much money to be made with eyeballs. A press with no overhead is a race to the bottom with a cast of billions, many of whom would fight to the death over pennies.

I tell my friends to monitor and severely cut their intake of news. Ingesting news today is a profoundly emotionally unhealthy thing to do, and to the degree people ingest it, they are usually over-the-top in their fear of various things, the vast majority of which are no threat to much of anybody.

We've always had this situation with small publications. As a former freelance journalist, what I've seen over the past several years is that the big publications, after being brought over to Facebook and Twitter for better access to readers, are being forced to play this game too -- while they continue to lay-off staff and reduce costs. There's more than a whiff of desperation I see in the majority of headlines from most major news sources. It is a sad thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Evergreen: [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

Tl,dr: None of these stories [the news] have relevance to my life. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it's an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER29> Also: "Fear of missing out"

It's essentially what our culture seems to be based on nowadays. Thanks Facebook, thanks Google.

<comment><USER30> I'd say FOMO has been the primary technique used since the dawn of advertising. Not unique to Facebook or Google, although perhaps more prominent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Fear itself these days is America's top-selling consumer product"

Isn't that the point Michael Moore was making in Bowling For Columbine all those years ago? We are only rediscovering what we already knew.

</comment><comment><USER32> In some sick way I am a little impressed with Fox News...the comments in this thread seem to indicate they have effectively won the battle they chose to fight by making everything seem biased. Nihilism isn't intended as a political strategy but it is an effective one.

</comment><comment> nathan-wailes Hey all, I'm interested in this topic and created several summaries for my own use (below). Since this article is somewhat long and isn't as easy to understand as it could be, I figured other HNers might find these summaries useful:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Short plain-English summary of the major things he says in the article:

People in the US are generally much safer than in the past, but they also seem to be more afraid than in the past, and it seems to be because there are powerful groups that benefit (or believe they benefit) from this state of affairs: those associated with or members of the news media, the military and its private-sector suppliers, politicians, the very rich, and the police.

This shift to having the public generally fearful seems to have started in 1949 when we in the US learned that the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. Consensus in Washington became that the Soviet Union was a more immediate and serious threat than it probably really was, and the news media sold papers by stirring up fear of WW3. In the 1960s the news media made people afraid of the possibility of an actual armed revolution within the US by leftists. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the news media and politicians shifted to fear of drugs, and since 9/11 it has been terrorism.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

The main ideas / questions discussed, in his words:

[Motivating problem:] In no country anywhere in the history of the world has the majority of a population lived in circumstances as benign and well-lighted as those currently at home and at large within the borders of the United States of America. And yet, despite the bulk of reassuring evidence, a divided but democratically inclined body politic finds itself herded into the unifying lockdown imposed by the networked sum of its fears—sexual and racial, cultural, social, and economic, nuanced and naked, founded and unfounded.

[Main questions:] How does it happen that American society at the moment stands on constant terror alert? Why and wherefrom the trigger warnings, and whose innocence or interest are they meant to comfort, defend, and preserve? Who is afraid of whom or of what, and why do the trumpetings of doom keep rising in frequency and pitch?

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Paragraph-by-paragraph-ish main ideas (as far as I could tell), in his words:

Fear [is] the oldest and strongest of the human emotions.

[There is] real fear and neurotic fear, the former a rational and comprehensible response to the perception of clear and present danger, the latter "free-floating," anxious expectation attachable to any something or nothing that catches the eye or the ear.

I'm old enough to remember when Americans weren't as easily persuaded to confuse the one with the other. I was taught that looking fear straight in the face was the root meaning of courage.

[After] August 1949, when the Soviet Union successfully tested a [nuclear] bomb, my further acquaintance with fear was for the most part to take the form of the neurotic.

The Cold War with the Russians produced the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. For the everybodies whose lives were the stake on the gaming table, [this] didn't leave much room for Teddy Roosevelt's looking real fear straight in the face.

Expectant anxiety maybe weakens the resolve of individual persons, but it strengthens the powers of church and state.

Fear is the most wonder-working of all the world's marketing tools. Used wisely, innovatively, and well, it sells everything in the store—the word of God and the wages of sin, the divorce papers and the marriage certificate, the face cream and the assault rifle, the grim headline news in the morning and the late-night laugh track.

[He tells a story of working as a reporter in NYC in 1962, receiving a press release from the Russians about new weapons tech, and having the editor of the paper mold it into a front-page fear-soaked story, presumably motivated by the desire to sell more papers.]

Expectant anxiety sells newspapers.

The Cold War was born in the cradle of expectant anxiety; so were the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

The innovative and entrepreneurial consensus in Washington resurrected from the ruins [of Russia post-WW2] the evil Soviet Empire—stupendous enemy, world- class and operatic, menace for all seasons, dread destroyer of American wealth and well-being.

Fattened on the seed of openhanded military spending (upward of $15 trillion since 1950) the confederation of vested interest that President Eisenhower identified as the military-industrial complex brought forth an armed colossus the likes of which the world had never seen.

The turbulent decade in the 1960s raised the force levels of the public alarm. The always fearmongering news media projected armed revolution; the violent fantasy sold papers, boosted ratings, stimulated the demand for repressive surveillance and heavy law enforcement that blossomed into one of the country's richest and most innovative growth industries.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 undermined the threat presented by the evil Soviet Empire, and without the Cold War against the Russians, how then defend, honor, and protect the cash flow of the nation's military- industrial complex? The custodians of America's conscience and bank balance found the solution in the war on drugs.

The stockpiling of domestic fear for all seasons is the political alchemist's trick of changing lead into gold, the work undertaken in the 1990s by the presidential campaigns pitching their tents and slogans on the frontiers of race and class.

Like the war on drugs, the war on terror is unwinnable because [it is] waged against an unknown enemy and an abstract noun.

[The War on Terror] is a war that returns a handsome profit to the manufacturers of cruise missiles and a reassuring increase of dictatorial power for a stupefied plutocracy that associates the phrase _national security_ not with the health and well-being of the American people but with the protection of their private wealth and privilege.

Unable to erect a secure perimeter around the life and landscape of a _free_ society, the government departments of public safety solve the technical problem by seeing to it that society becomes _less_ free.

The war on terror brought up to combat strength the nation's ample reserves of xenophobic paranoia, the American people told to live in fear.

Given enough time and trouble over the last sixteen years, their collective fear and loathing collected into the cesspool from which Donald J. Trump became the president of the United States.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't watch cable news, your life will be better. If you're not already convinced that most cable news is editorialized for political gain, then surely you're convinced that is unhealthy to rubberneck at every problem in the world.

</comment><comment><USER18> Article needs editing for length and clarity.

</comment><comment><USER34> I got excited for just a split second on the off chance the author meant the Monolith Productions title back in 2005.

</comment><comment><USER35> The joy of your country having a neutral public broadcaster...

</comment><comment><USER36> I hope the author found their point, because I went 3 pages in and gave up looking for one.

</comment><comment><USER37> The writing style is pretentious, and for the life of me I can't see why trigger warnings, of all things, are being spun into this narrative. Perhaps betrays a lack of understanding of the concept from the author.

</comment><comment><USER38> Brilliant magazine.

</comment><comment><USER39> I would have thought it was sex

</comment><comment><USER40> AKA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe I'm dumb, but I can't glean the meaning of this partial (verbless) sentence?

> Not the outcome envisioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the one raising > the question addressed in this issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

Lapham's Quarterly is highly regarded, so I would expect such non-sentences – especially at the start of a paragraph, complete with a drop-cap – to be culled by the editor (or author, who is in this case the same person). Or am I just not intelligent enough to understand this style of writing? (Even inserting a well-placed "is" does not clarify this sentence for me.)

Aside, I'm surprised the article doesn't touch on _why_ fear is so delectable to the American palate. I suspect it's that humans _expect_ fear, like how we expect work, pain, hierarchy, and other objectively unpleasant things which we seek out when lacking, to restore balance to an otherwise saccharine existence. Americans in fact have very little to rightly fear, thus our lizard brains instinctively latch on to anything to fill that void in our lives.</comment>


Why Twitter Parody Accounts Should Stay Anonymous - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/07/why-twitter-parody-accounts-should-stay-anonymous.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's even more important when the lawyers get itchy... as it happened to the NYTOnIt:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/11/20/nytonit_n...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/11/20/nytonit_new_york_times_twitter_parody_suspended_nyt_cites_trademark_infringement.html)

Good on TNY to have a better stance on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The examples in this article seem to be of people who revealed themselves when they got bored of running their parody accounts, so I'm not sure anything would be different if they hadn't outed themselves. They'd still have been bored, and stopped updating the parodies, the only difference would be that they didn't fit into this irrelevant headline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dan Lyons didn't get less funny after the reveal. He (purposely) toned it down while Steve Jobs was sick. When Steve was doing better for a bit there FSJ was as great as ever.

</comment><comment><USER5> It saddens me to no end that this is even a topic of discussion.

<comment><USER6> Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline</comment></comment>


Examples of functional programming in very large web applications? - <AUTHOR>

I've been writing object oriented PHP for years, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how the equivalent of a large Rails or Symfony project would be structured using functional programming. (To be clear, I've only really played with Racket tutorials so far.) I've seen a few examples of functionally programmed apps, but they're usually not much larger than a small blog. Could anyone recommend large open source project, or point me in the right direction? <comment><USER2> Lift is a powerful web framework which makes use of many of Scala's functional and object-oriented features, so it'd be worth looking at the Getting Started guide: <http://simply.liftweb.net/index-Chapter-2.html#toc-Chapter-2>

</comment><comment><USER3> Paul Graham's Viaweb was written in Lisp. <http://www.paulgraham.com/vwfaq.html>

Reddit was too before switching to Python. <http://blog.reddit.com/2005/12/on- lisp.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in erlang ChicagoBoss is a rails like framework for erlang. <http://www.chicagoboss.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Haskell has the Yesod web framework: <http://www.yesodweb.com/></comment>


Ember.js Live Collections - <AUTHOR> http://awardwinningfjords.com/2011/12/27/emberjs-collections.html

<comment><USER2> _Assuming that Bocoup simply chose Backbone.js for familiarity's sake_

The tone of this post seems a bit dishonest.

There are plenty obvious reasons for not choosing Ember today: It's young, it's not production-ready, it's undocumented.

In that light I don't think you can reasonably expect anyone who's not a former SproutCore-user to choose Ember over Backbone today.

Case in point: The docs don't even mention the Em.ArrayController that your example builds on. How is anyone without prior SproutCore-knowledge supposed to discover it?

<comment><USER3> Well, to your point: I wasn't a Sproutcore user before, and I've read lots of articles on Backbone over the last 3-4 months, and tried to get it working a few times for my projects, without much luck.

That said, I'm not an expert Javascript developer, so maybe I just didn't understand it, or try hard enough. The following story is mine, so YMMV.

Then I saw Ember.js and the Handlebars bindings made simple sense to me, so I cloned the repo, and started playing around with it.

Sure it's not documented but I know how to load the uncompressed source tree in Textmate and look around. The source code itself is very well commented and contains inline examples (although some of them are still Sproutcore-centric, but s/SC/Ember/ and you're mostly good).

I read through the examples, I tinkered, and within a few hours, I had a semi- working version of my project.

So yeah it's young and undocumented, but if anything the ease with which I was able to get up and running on it says a lot for its future potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was catching a bit of the twitter back-and-forth this afternoon:

<http://bettween.com/ireneros/tdreyno/>

... and was a bit disappointed by the level of discussion.

"Live Collections", such as they are, have nothing to do with Backbone.js and Ember.js intrinsically -- and indeed, you probably can, and should, implement it in Backbone exactly as Thomas does in this article.

In other words, if you're looking for anything Backbone or Ember specific, there's nothing to see here -- both libraries support this idiom (Ajax some data, check for ids, add if not already present) in precisely the same way.

<comment><USER5> I was actually trying my hardest to present it as a technique worth being aware of rather than specific to one framework or another.

Totally agree. I use both frameworks for work and posted my article because Rick Waldron asked me too as penance for a bit too much snark on my behalf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I experimented with backbone and ember recently, the integration with handlebars to do in place updates and the quite comprehensive observer / bindings mechanisms in ember look powerful and definitely needed for more complex applications

Backbone seemed to provide everything needed for reasonably simple one page javascript apps

But both seemed to suffer the same problem, they are quite monolithic, everything is build around the fact your app is a 'backbone' or an 'ember' application, they arent just libraries that provide specific functionality.

They both seemed to miss out really basic functionality that I run into all the time building these type of applications, the example here shows one of the problems, when I am not looking at the recent tweets, I dont want to be polling the data source, I havent seen a good example in either of how to properly setup and tear down views, I came up with something incredibly simple that helps, I will try and blog about it soon.

Also I find the general tone of the article pretty rude and condescending

<comment><USER7> _But both seemed to suffer the same problem, they are quite monolithic, everything is build around the fact your app is a 'backbone' or an 'ember' application, they arent just libraries that provide specific functionality._

Isn't that the reason developers choose libraries like Backbone, Ember, Knockout, et al.? I think most web developers have realized that code spaghetti doesn't scale very well. Part of the reason the iOS ecosystem is so vibrant is because Cocoa is just as opinionated about architecture as it is about "specific functionality."

 _They both seemed to miss out really basic functionality that I run into all the time building these type of applications, the example here shows one of the problems, when I am not looking at the recent tweets, I dont want to be polling the data source, I havent seen a good example in either of how to properly setup and tear down views, I came up with something incredibly simple that helps, I will try and blog about it soon._

I'd love to read your blog post. In my opinion, it sounds like you might be approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Views being in charge of when the server is polled is a layering violation. Instead, I'd have a controller that is in charge of knowing when a given view is rendered to the screen. When it is, it tells the model layer to start polling. When it hides the view, it turns off the polling.

 _Also I find the general tone of the article pretty rude and condescending._

Thomas is an incredibly nice guy and has experience with many different MVC frameworks. I'm sorry the post came off this way to you, but it didn't to me. Personally, I think Backbone is an incredibly important part of the ecosystem and am very glad it exists. I think Thomas feels the same way too.

<comment><USER6>
        Isnt that the reason developers choose libraries like
        Backbone, Ember, Knockout, et al.? I think most web
        developers have realized that code spaghetti doesn't
        scale very well. Part of the reason the iOS ecosystem
        is so vibrant is because Cocoa is just as opinionated
        about architecture as it is about specific
        functionality.'

Thats true, and there are definite advantages to building things in that style, but I am surprised that the more popular of these libraries are all built in this style, There are also distinct advantages of having loosely coupled flexible libraries such as jQuery, which is the library for interfacing with the dom, loosely coupled well integrated components dont necessarily mean spaghetti code

        I'd love to read your blog post. In my opinion, it
        sounds like you might be approaching the problem from
        the wrong direction. Views being in charge of when the
        server is polled is a layering violation. Instead, I'd
        have a controller that is in charge of knowing when a
        given view is rendered to the screen. When it is, it
        tells the model layer to start polling. When it hides
        the view, it turns off the polling.

Sure but the problem doesnt go away when you move it up to the controller, I havent seen these libraries provide state which determines which controller is currently active. Of course you can code it yourself, but there are lots of little cases and functionality which imo libraries could do a better job of abstracting away. I will write the post asap, I mostly just need a name for my little micro library :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is using a polling technique, I suggest everyone check out Pusher[1] or the open source equivalent Slanger[2] that use websockets to allow you to push these updates from your server.

[1] <http://www.pusher.com/> [2] <https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger>

(ps: not affiliated with either of those, they're just awesome pieces of technology that I see as the future of the web)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nothing is this article demonstrates a feature that doesn't exist in backbone.js. In fact, backbone.js feels much cleaner.

<comment><USER7> The point of Ember.js is to reduce the amount of boilerplate a developer needs to write to perform common tasks. I think Thomas did a good job of explaining how you can accomplish the same thing in Ember.js with fewer lines of code (and remember–less code, fewer bugs!)

I'm curious: what about the Backbone version feels "cleaner" to you?

<comment><USER9> My point was that the sample code didn't show Ember's strong features like computed properties and auto binding. The backbone version will be more or less the same size for this kind of demo.

as for the cleaner part, I didn't like the fact that I need to call _super().

On the other hand I really like .property and .observe in Ember.js :)

<comment><USER10> That's been my armchair analysis of this. I was set to go on vacation, but it looks like I may scrap that and write a new frontend for our application and I'm trying to narrow it down between Ember and Backbone. I'd found something yesterday that would give you the KO style observables in a light standalone library, though the name escapes me now. Maybe it+Backbone.js is the most versatile?

<comment><USER11> it might have been this: <https://github.com/bruth/synapse>

<comment><USER12> Docs: <http://bruth.github.com/synapse/docs/>

Demo: <http://jsfiddle.net/bruth/bufeK/>

Source: [https://github.com/bruth/synapse/blob/master/src/synapse.cof...](https://github.com/bruth/synapse/blob/master/src/synapse.coffee)

Synapse is an elegant API for data binding. Subjects and observers clarify many issues for data-flow interfaces.

The boilerplate in Backbone shrinks significantly when expressed with CoffeeScript. Synapse's source is expressive, well-documented and only ~200 lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author mentions Facebook, but from my observations, it seems as if Facebook is much more real-time.

Does anyone know how Facebook is doing their live-updating? Are they using polling a la Ember.js, or are they doing something along the lines of Web Sockets/long polling?

<comment><USER8> I _think_ they're using polling for everything but the chat. I base this solely on how Facebook behaves, theres usually some delay in the updates and such and I believe a lot of things require mouse movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would be neat to mix this with an animated list-insert/resort, like David DeSandro's 'Isotope'.</comment>


Vietnam's Empty Forests - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/travel/vietnam-wildlife-species-ecotravel-tourism.html <comment><USER2> Vietnam is a stunningly beautiful country but unfortunately a love of nature doesn't seem to have really taken hold there. At least not yet. Missing from all the gorgeous photos of Mekong Delta waterways and pristine beaches is all the trash you'll find strewn in heaps everywhere.

My guess is it will take another generation for people there to appreciate how blessed they are to live in such surroundings but by then it will unfortunately be too late. To some extent this is just the inevitable consequence of a small but populous country hurtling into modernity but there are also some important cultural attitudes that need to change.

<comment><USER3> I'm a Viet, born and raised. My country is blessed with incredible scenery, diverse and natural. The coast line is as long as the country itself ffs. Now I won't claim that I'm an avid traveler, but from my limited traveling experience (only been to Australia, Korea, Japan and Hongkong on vacation, nothing too fancy), I have never been to a place that I would rank higher in terms of beautiful, natural scenery.

However, the one thing that always caught me off guard from the few oversea trips that I've taken is that _everything is so clean over there_. That's literally the first thing that I always noticed when I get there and when I came back. Makes me feel sad, envious, and shameful.

<comment><USER4> Western tourist also immediately notice it when they come to SE Asia. It's a pity that this is such a strong memory.

As a Vietnamese local, why do you think the plastic pollution is so widespread here? Sure, everything is packed in plastics, but so is in Japan. Why do people just not think twice about throwing their waste in a ditch or a river or leave their picnic at the beach? Or is most of it coming from the sea? What could change the mentality?

<comment><USER5> As a child growing up in 1970s USA, I remember the vast amount of trash along our roads, city streets, parks and beaches. It was fairly common to see people throw trash out of their car windows.

What changed? I have never studied this, but I know we implemented large scale clean up projects, passed new laws and made a cultural shift in attitudes.

<comment><USER6> What changed was the environmentalism movement, usually symbolized by the crying Indian commercial.

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CryingIndian](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CryingIndian)

>>>> My guess is it will take another generation for people there to appreciate how blessed they are to live in such surroundings but by then it will unfortunately be too late.

This in the parent comment is strange. It wasn't too late everywhere else, and it obviously won't be too late in Vietnam either. A clean environment is a luxury you can afford when you're rich. Poor places are dirty, but it's not like they _can 't be cleaned_.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I was a kid in the 1970s and the anti-littering campaign was pervasive. I was too young to remember/notice the litter itself, but definitely remember the "Crying Indian" commercial, Woodsy Owl[1], and others. You always saw these in the Saturday morning cartoons, in particular.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Japanese people are taught in schools: We have nothing naturally, so you have to overcome yourself to beat the disadvantages of nature.

Vietnamese people are taught in schools: We have everything naturally, our forests are gold, our beaches are silver. We're proud of it.

Results: Blindly and stupid education is a serious problem in Vietnam. Large percentages of past generation is lazy, not productive.

I don't even mention politics here. A hell.

Shortly, to be successful and rich in Vietnam, you don't need talent or hard- working. You just need relationship.

Who is Ho Chi Minh ? I don't even know if he was Chinese or Vietnamese.

Most of what was told in schools are lie.

Yes, it's a shocking truth: Most of things they taught us in schools are lie. To protect that communist party.

Polices are to protect that party. No bad voice is allowed here.

If you shout out bad things at the party, you'll be caught and get killed silently. Noone knows where you are.

<comment><USER9> > Most of what was told in schools are lie.

Do you have actually examples rather than hyperboles?

<comment><USER8> OK, for example, they taught very bad things about Vietnam Cong Hoa party, but the fact is that: Vietnam Cong Hoa party doesn't harm anyone. Who was the bad guy here ?

The point here is that, as we grew up, we try to find out what the fact was, and it's not the same thing that they taught us.

I don't even care what's the actual truth is, i just care that, they taught us the untruthy things.

<comment><USER9> > Vietnam Cong Hoa party doesn't harm anyone

There is misinformation from every sides, but be careful with blanket statements like that, because they're almost always false. For example, look up the 10/59 Decree where they brought guillotines throughout the southern rural areas and executed people on the spot if they suspected them of being communists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have tried my best to educate people around me to care more about environment to no avail, because to them "it's another guy's problem if we litter on the street, so keep doing it". What the government is doing ain't helping either, people want to make more money, to buy a car, bigger house etc... why should they care about some random monkeys in a forest that they will never see in their life? It's really depressing, maybe I should find an NGO and join them to protect the wild life.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps it's time to campaign against Chinese medicine, which seems to drive a lot of animal slaughter.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mankind must find a way to curb our population growth and our greed. We are, and have been blind. Not only are we destroying the natural world, we will ultimately destroy ourselves. Let us somehow find a way to limit our population growth and give those that are then born a first rate education so that they are capable of seeing and appreciating the big picture. Knowledge, objectivity - the realization that life on this planet is precious and rare and, irreplaceable.

<comment><USER13> We already are dramatically curbing our population growth. The rate of global population growth has plunged since ~1970. The rate will drop from a peak of about 2% per year in 1970 to 0.2% by ~2060. We've already roughly cut the growth rate in half in 40 some years. By the late 2030s, we should have the rate of growth returned to pre industrialization boom numbers (when the rate began to rapidly increase). It takes time to bring the numbers down, we'll be near population contraction by the time we're into the 2050s.

<comment><USER14> The metric that matters is resources consumed per person. If people's goals are to achieve consumption levels similar to upper middle class in USA or Europe, then it doesn't matter if the total population growth is slowing down, or even contracting, as resource consumption will still very much be exploding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's funny the way things have gone. Vietnam is supposed to be a communist country. The Vietnamese people are some of the greediest nationalities I have ever come across and the government officials and politicians are the greediest.

<comment><USER16> Nationalistic slurs will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is socialism for you. People are so poor they resort to illegal breadwinning. It happens in my native Brazil too, even if were are not overtly socialist (but heavily influenced).

<comment><USER16> Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


It's Summer, but Where Are the Teenage Workers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/your-money/its-summer-but-where-are-the-teenage-workers.html <comment><USER2> > "We don't know to what extent they're not working because they can't find a > job, or aren't interested, or are doing other stuff — like going to summer > school, traveling, volunteering, doing service learning,"

> What is clear is that those who need a job the most are often the least > likely to get one. To a large extent, the higher a household's income, the > more likely a teenager is to get a job.

So it seems to follow that we don't know what these low household income teenagers are actually doing when they've chosen not to work during the summer. It seems to me that this should've been something to figure out, rather than imply that those teenagers are not being productive. For example, they could very well be attending summer school which one could argue to be more "productive" than working.

<comment><USER3> _the higher a household's income, the more likely a teenager is to get a job_

The "well-connected intern" phenomenon. Also, I suspect most of those are white-collar jobs. Bit of web design, that kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since the government tries as vigorously as possible to make it risky and expensive to hire the inexperienced and low skilled, the fact that more of them are unemployed should be no surprise.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I did lots of manual farm labor for family friends as a kid, but there's no way we could do that together at under the regulatory regime here today. I'm not sure if we could successfully do it surreptitiously or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Leave it to the NYT to not even consider minimum wage increases as a contributing cause of unemployment for new or unskilled workers.

<comment><USER7> Its highly questionable if wage floors correlate to increased unemployment. There have been many studies on the topic and there has been consensus about almost nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We should start paying teenagers to attend educational programs over the summer in math, science, or tech.

<comment><USER9> Seems like this would just help create the exact same situation as in academia: way too many people (i.e. Ph.D.s) are qualified for way too few jobs.

Else, a whole bunch of bullshit jobs would be pulled out of nowhere, and we'd have teens spending their summers making internal websites for banks.

If there's really excess money burning a hole in someone's pocket, I'd rather see it go to a community garden or something than creating artificial demand for even more tech.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: why mobile apps using location are low rated ? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed that mobile apps who use users location information are either low rated or considered bad in a sense of user privacy.
I am building an which has one feature which uses user location should i include this feature or exclude. Please share your thoughts on apps using user location information lots of times
Thanks <comment><USER2> Because the authors of those kinds of apps cannot be trusted. Location data is incredibly sensitive. And sadly the way apps work - your control over them is non existent.

Unless phones evolve in a way that allows real anonymization of the end user, this will stay that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes i agree with your point of you about trusted the authors as people feel free to share location on apps like twitter, instagram, google but not on a unknown vendor

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My thoughts on the topic:

1\. Don't ask the end-user for permission to use their location data until the last possible moment. When someone will benefit by sharing their data, they will be more likely to do so.

2\. For iOS, ask twice. First, use your own dialog box to ask if you can use their location data. If they say no, persist that and don't ask them again unless they perform a similar location-requiring action. If they say yes, then you can trigger the iOS location permission request (this way, they are much less likely to say no to the official request).

</comment><comment><USER4> Make two versions of app: one with location feature and one without, then compare number of installations and average rating.</comment>


Looking for a front-end guy for a startup project. - <AUTHOR>

I am a developer who is working with a designer and we are looking for a front-end guy to join us.
The designer already has most of the project done in photoshop and I already have the database made. So we need someone that can take the PSD's and build them into a front end.
We already have an Amazon EC2 server setup with a LAMP stack. Our back-end framework is Laravel.
It is up to the front-end guy to choose what framework he wants to use on his end.
The project has had some interest from quite a few people! We have a great domain and are ready to build this quickly and get it out there!
We have beta access to Sqwiggle (http://sqwiggle.com), so working together remotely is great! We don't mind what state you are from, as long as you are willing to get online and work with us. We both have client work that we do during the weekend, but nights and weekends we are committed to this project. We obviously hope to build this into something that we can put all of our time into.
If this sounds like something you are interested in, contact me on Skype: ryHanson72
Thanks! <comment> saiko-chriskun I think most people will want more info on the project. How else will they know if they're interested or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because they can ask me what the project is about on Skype. Then my partner and I can both explain it and visually show them. Its not like we are trying to hide what we are doing or anything.

<comment><USER2> I imagine anyone worth bringing on is busy working on their own stuff. It's in your best interest to explain your project. Most people will see your post and not contact you. They won't contact you, and you won't get the opportunity to show or say anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your prediction was wrong. I had plenty of people contact me. Definitely some that are worth bringing on and are excited to work on the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey I don't have access to Skype right now but I would love to join if you haven't found someone. If you want to send me some more details/open up a discussion you can find my email address in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER4> Upvoted for mention of Sqwiggle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sqwiggle is awesome!</comment></comment>


Canonical Livepatch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/10/canonical-livepatch.html <comment><USER2> So.... This is ksplice, then?

It sounds hardcore, but this isn't really that complicated is it? Load a module with a patched function and then modify whatever the kernel equiv of the GOT/PLT is, and boom -- hotpatch... Right?

Oracle absorbed the kSplice thing though, and I assume the IP around it -- so unless this does something different to that general procedure, then is there a possibility of oracle doing their usual crap here?

This is more of a toy than anything though, I recon...

In all my years of adopting and trying to unfuck horribly outdated systems (not by choice) -- I've never once really wanted or needed to hotpatch a kernel....

You don't solve your poor architecture decisions by hotpatching running kernels... If your situation is so bad that a kernel update is the only solution, and you can't take a box down to do that without an outage on the platform -- then you need to rethink what you're doing or hire someone who can do that for you..

<comment><USER3> That's a bit critical, isn't it?

Just think of servers. You want to reboot them as seldom as possible, to be online. But you also want to have critical security patches (or well, just all security patches) applied as fast as possible. It is already very easy to run unattended upgrades, and a common practice. Maybe not in a high-class startup or big enterprise, but everywhere else. With livepatching the kernel you get the kernel security patches applied immediately, which is very very useful and will make the linux server more secure in general. And even if your security practices are perfect, livepatching is still (potentially) easier and faster and thus a good addition.

> if your situation is so bad that a kernel update is the only solution

I don't get that part, btw. In every situation you always need to update the kernel when security issues are detected.

<comment><USER4> > I don't get that part, btw. In every situation you always need to update the > kernel when security issues are detected.

Not the GP, but he means that if you can't take downtime on a server to reboot with an updated kernel, then you have bigger problems than the kernel not being up-to-date. Because instead of a scheduled reboot, the server could crash, lose its disks, lose its power, etc. And if you can't take a scheduled reboot, how do you take those?

<comment><USER5> Got RAID and UPS, bruh. Norton on the box. Basically invulnerable.

<comment><USER2> Raid? Pah!

Putting your main tablespaces on ramdrives makes them go like 300x faster!!

Redundancy is for cowards, just like unit tests...

</s>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that, for better or worse, this uses proprietary software. From the post:

" Q: Why does canonical-livepatch client/server have a proprietary license? A: The canonical-livepatch client is part of the Landscape family of tools available to Canonical support customers. We are enabling free access to the Canonical Livepatch Service for Ubuntu community users as a mark of our appreciation for the broader Ubuntu community, and in exchange for occasional, automatic canary testing."

</comment><comment><USER7> This is super neat but since I've moved my Linux servers to virtual I don't worry about rebooting for patches. The virtual Linux boxes generally reboot in less than 30s (thank you, systemd). It usually doesn't even register as a blip on my monitoring software. When I have to reboot the host, that's a 5–10 minute ordeal while the BIOS/UEFI and storage controllers initialize.

</comment><comment><USER8> I still don't understand why they want to bypass APT here. I saw the FAQ about this and it still doesn't make sense to me and just feels like some kind of a lock-in attempt.

<comment><USER9> There are a couple pieces to that, not the least of which is Canonical wanting to push their new 'snap' format, for better or worse. The other thing is that Apt is not a good fit for the task - say it's daemonized programs instead of live patches. Apt only takes responsibility for downloading the bits onto the machine and unpacking them, and init/systemd is responsible for actually running programs.

However, for live patches, it's critical the program be running/the patch installed, and Apt doesn't manage running processes, nor does it have a UI whos purpose is to report on patches that have successfully downloaded but fail to install. These aren't fatal problems, but those aren't features upstream apt is likely to want (maybe systemd wants to swallow apt), so then you're forking apt, with all the work that entails. Might as well just write your own thing in that case.

<comment><USER8> But APT does. It can run the post-install script for the package, which can certainly include the live-patching bits. It's not like live-patching needs a continuously running daemon.

Saying that APT can't do this is nearly equivalent to saying that APT should not be trusted to run any post-install scripts at all, which basically means it shouldn't be trusted to install half the software out there.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Difference from being a consultant and employee? - <AUTHOR> Im considering a role with a consulting company, and a regular non-consulting position; both full time.
I have never been a consultant before and wondered how its different ?
As a consultant are you just expected to know your shit completely? Or this there opportunity to learn from others more experienced in a subject matter?
Thanks <comment><USER2> > As a consultant are you just expected to know your shit completely? Or this > there opportunity to learn from others more experienced in a subject matter?

Depends on the company. Larger consulting firms will have different levels of consultants--associate consultant, consultant, senior, manager, and principal --and will pair newer consultants with more experienced ones. You should ask the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about smaller consulting firms? e.g. > 100 employee

<comment><USER3> In my experience it's mostly the same.

Since the demand exceeds the supply by far, most consultancies take on less experienced candidates, then train them and/or pair them with a more experienced colleague.

I've worked for several smaller consultancies focusing on different domains and technology stacks and always learned it on the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you dont mind me asking, how do you think this helped or hurt your career?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do freelance / consulting work (but I'm self employed with no employees).

Most gigs start with "ok, we have this problem..." and my job is to figure out how to solve it. It could be anything from fleshing out technical details to implementing the solution myself. It really depends on what the client wants.

I never worked an employee position but I would imagine if you're hired to do either one for someone else, you would be expected to interact with your company's customers directly as a consultant as opposed to an employee where you'd likely only be told to write XYZ code away from any direct customers.

I learn something new on every gig I take, but I'm mainly learning from my clients, not other consultants since I am a solo consultant. Although I do learn from other consultants in more social means (talking with other consultants, etc.). It's just we rarely work together on the same job and every job is very different.

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing to consider about consulting companies is they charge your time to the client by the hour, hence they want you working as many billable hours as possible. This is measured through utilization and in my experience I had to account for every 15 minute block of my day. This became a burden and eventually quite stress inducing ("Why are you only at 70% utilization?"). On the other hand, full time work is more relaxed. It is goal oriented but not down to the minute.

On the plus side, you will generally be exposed to more and different types of work in consulting, so you may learn and grow faster. You can also expand your network through clients you meet who can help you down the road.</comment>


Kik and the SEC: What's Going on and What Does It Mean for Crypto? - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/05/15/kik-and-the-sec-whats-going-on-and-what-does-it-mean-for-crypto/ <comment><USER2> I really dislike the ongoing usage of the word "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency", i.e. "cryptographical currency". I can never tell if something's happening to ICOs or cryptography.

<comment><USER3> This is especially difficult when Kik is involved, since it uses cryptography and is involved in cryptocurrency. I was interested until I saw it was about ICOs.

<comment><USER4> What does Kik use cryptography for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 50% of participants in the token sale purchased less than $1000 of Kin, > which seems more consistent with a consumptive use vs. investment purpose > argument.

So 50% purchased _more_ than $1000. To do what, buy stickers and themes?

I'd wager than even the "under $1000" crowd will be 90% cryptocurrency investors holding it as part of a "balanced" portfolio.

<comment><USER6> That line makes the post seem tonedeaf. Maybe "less than $1000" is the definition of throwaway consumption money for someone who works at Andreessen Horowitz, but for many of the hopeful retail investors in 2017 ICOs, it may have been a large chunk of their savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The proposed Token Taxonomy Act is relevant. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/2144...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/2144/text)

I think its really necessary to differentiate between ICOs and cryptocurrency in general.

<comment><USER8> The distinction between securities and "digital tokens" as the proposed bill refers to them appears to be this:

> [a digital token] is not a representation of a financial interest in a > company or partnership, including an ownership interest or revenue share

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> IANAL, but:

The interesting thing about securities is that although we think of a security as a "thing" (like Kin) its actually a transaction - as in a "securities transaction". Meaning with two transactions involving Kin, one transaction could be a securities transaction, and the other could not.

This is more obvious when you think of the original Howey test. Selling an orange grove is not a securities transaction, but selling an orange grove where you also promise to cultivate the asset for the profit of the investor is.

Selling $5 of Kin in to a Kik user doesn't sound like a securities transaction, but selling $5 Million to a VC fund does (though probably one exempt from registration).

<comment><USER10> Sort of - but it's more about intent/expectation than "thing" vs "transaction." A security _is_ a thing. The _Howey_ test is how we determine whether an orange grove is a security or a deed. The problem with _Howey_ is that it doesn't address situations where investors aren't investing exclusively for "profit" but might be investing for some other benefit to be derived from the use or enjoyment of the underlying asset. So someone might purchase $500 of Kin with the expectation that they'll sell if it reaches $X and regardless they'll spend at least some of it on mini games.

They expect to consume at least some of the coins... but they also anticipate potential profit from some of the coins.

So are the coins "securities?" Are only some of them? (Presumably, $500 - whatever the buyer intended to consume.)

You can see that _Howey_ 's focus on investor expectation isn't particularly helpful in where that line is drawn.

<comment><USER9> In United Housing v Foreman, a sale of stock was considered not to be a securities transaction, even though a stock is explicitly a security.

<comment><USER10> The court determined the "stock" was not a _security_. Calling something "stock" creates a rebuttable presumption that it's a security but the purchasers of the co-op "stock" didn't have any possible expectation of profit (the "stock" couldn't appreciate in value, would not pay dividends, was non- transferable, etc.) so it failed the _Howey_ test. Merely calling something stock does not make it so.

You might find SEC v Lauer[1] interesting. Where a non-existent hypothetical investment was determined to be a security. As well as SEC v Edwards[2], where a fixed-rate leaseback agreement for payphones _was_ determined to be a security.

[1] [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th- circuit/1054989.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1054989.html)

[2] [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th- circuit/1156201.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th- circuit/1156201.html)

<comment><USER9> Ah. Yes I think Foreman was a bad example of what I was trying to get at.

I think my main point was that if Howey had 100 fungible orange groves, and one was sold as a security and 99 were sold straight up, that wouldn't make all 100 orange groves as a security, would it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> how does the law work when you did something before it was illegal? or why it's not the case here?

<comment><USER12> Depends on the country. The phrase you're looking for is "ex post facto". Doesn't fly in the US.

That said, if I'm reading this article correctly, all that happened was that the SEC issued guidance on the legality (that is, not legal) of various forms of ICO. That doesn't mean ICOs were legal before, just that the SEC hadn't issued guidance about it.

If your argument in court is "well nobody told me specifically that my exact actions were illegal, because your honor, I stabbed that guy while hopping on one foot on a Tuesday while it was raining", then the court tends to take a dim view of it. I don't know the case, but if Kik's argument was "well we sold a security before anyone told us specifically that this thing is actually a security", it might pan out in a similar fashion.

<comment><USER13> Generally, you can say that if you don't know what you're doing is in fact legal, you should get some legal advice. Of course, this isn't practical in every situation. Sometimes you just have to take a chance if the stakes are low. However if what you're doing _looks_ an awful lot like selling securities, but you don't actually know if it counts or not, I hope you'd get some advice on that matter. I'm curious if they did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> legal precedence was poorly thought out</comment>


Pharo 3.0 (the immersive live environment) Released - <AUTHOR> http://pharo.org/news/pharo-3.0-released

<comment><USER2> Anyone have any examples of use cases for Pharo? Is it similar to a numpy/matplotlib/ipython stack?

<comment><USER3> As a python coder that has changed to Pharo I can tell you that the answer to your questions is "no". Its actually much better because cpython is not a live coding environment but Pharo is.

iPython tries to compensate , Pharo of course lacks some of the features of iPython but overall Pharo's ability to do true live coding really shines here. Live coding means the ability to code your application while it runs without every need to stop it and restart it to correct an error.

Pharo lacks the existence of a pure mathematical library like numpy however it offers not only Nativeboost that gives full access to C libraries similar to ctypes for Python , Nativeboost also is an inline assembler. In theory that means access to raw speed.

Matplotlib I am not very familiar with but Pharo has a set of library called Moose which contain several libraries for visualisations one of them is Roassal which is easy enought to use for several kinds of Graphs and illustrations, there is even Roassal3d if 3d graphics is your thing.

Roassal: [http://objectprofile.com/Roassal.html](http://objectprofile.com/Roassal.html)

examples of Roassal: [http://forum.world.st/attachment/4692028/0/image.png](http://forum.world.st/attachment/4692028/0/image.png) [http://www.highoctane.be/images/RoassalWorldMap.png](http://www.highoctane.be/images/RoassalWorldMap.png) [http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo- dev_lists.pharo.org/a...](http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo- dev_lists.pharo.org/attachments/20140424/0c1da1cc/attachment-0004.png)

examples of Roassal3d: [http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo- dev_lists.pharo.org/a...](http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo- dev_lists.pharo.org/attachments/20130715/df364e3e/attachment-0003.png) [http://objectprofile.com/photos/3.png](http://objectprofile.com/photos/3.png)

I give a general idea of what Pharo is in my "Why Pharo" video tutorial

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol5ivaEATLQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol5ivaEATLQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome job on the website, and it's great that you guys got such a good domain name.

A bit off-topic, but would it be possible for Pharo's windows to look native?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on that, but it will not be ready until Pharo 4.0 (being native _and_ multiplatform is not the easiest task to accomplish, sadly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, good news!

I have a NLP library on github for Pharo or Squeak. Hopefully thus will motivate me to update it.

<comment><USER5> BTW, the github repo is [https://github.com/mark- watson/nlp_smalltalk](https://github.com/mark-watson/nlp_smalltalk)

There is not much there: just my FastTag part of speech tagger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2364 issues closed by > 80 contributors in ~ 1 year - WOW! And the website looks great :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work by a great community, congratulations !

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excellent! I look forwards to grabbing a copy later today.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent job guys. Kudos to the website designer too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great! Congratulations on the web redesign as well!

</comment><comment><USER11> It's looking nicer all the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great work Pharo team.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool news!

</comment><comment><USER14> Great!</comment>


Analysis of the Facebook app for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.timac.org/?p=1707 <comment><USER3> This is really unacceptable and so easy to solve, had they even bothered.

But it has been known for years that Facebook just cannot (or will not) manage its application development process. I remember reading somewhere that they developed build tools that take multiple versions of the same static library and mangle the symbols so that all versions can be linked into a single binary and there are no symbol collisions - all this to allow developers to use whatever version they started of, and god forbid, require some sort of review or cooperation between developers.

It is very sad to me that so many companies (start up or otherwise) aspire so much to have the same work methodologies as this company.

<comment><USER4> The fact that you think this third-party analysis has discovered an incredibly easy way to radically reduce the size of the Facebook app - but that Facebook has not "discovered" the same "fix" \- reveals an oversimplified perspective of iOS, app development, and large tech companies.

I absolutely guarantee that this analysis is missing some significant complexities, and that Facebook understands what's actually going on under the hood.

<comment><USER5> Has nobody worked on a decent sized, agile project before ?

Facebook updates their iOS app on a pretty regular cadence which means it is quite likely that removing duplicate assets (if it's even an issue) could simply have trickled across to the next sprint. You just can't make broad generalisations based on a particular snapshot in time.

But I suspect it isn't even an issue anyway. It seems clear they have one lightweight framework that is required during startup and another which gets dynamically loaded later (FBNotOnStartupPathFramework).

<comment><USER6> I did not buy 64GB of flash storage so Facebook could be lazy. I bought 64GB of flash storage to store media that gets noticeably better, to a point, when you throw more bits at it.

Things that are smaller than Facebook's iOS app:

\- Windows, through at least Windows 95, if you count stuff written to disk during install

\- The Java Runtime Environment

\- Eclipse IDE

\- Google Chrome for OS X (beware—updater leaves old versions in the app bundle)

\- Firefox for OS X

\- Pokémon Go

\- A two-disc set encoded in 256kbps AAC

And to add insult to injury, Messenger is another 155MB, and is a separate app for some reason, probably with a second copy of that bigger-than-the-JRE-by- itself FBSharedFramework.

And while the sudden almost 300MB is new, the "I can't believe this is a Web service front-end and not an experimental operating system" bloat has been with us for a while.

<comment><USER7> > I did not buy 64GB of flash storage so Facebook could be lazy.

then vote with your wallet, and remove the app. If you can't tear yourself away from facebook, the web is the "right" app to use!

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, on android facebook purposefully disables parts of the website (chat in particular) to force oyu to install the app.

<comment><USER9> Chat can still be accessed through mbasic.facebook.com.

What other parts are disabled?

<comment><USER10> That's intentionally awkward. If I tap the messages icon on Facebook.com on mobile, I get redirected to a page telling me to download the app. Similarly, messenger.com points me to the App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There must be a lot of people out there with 16GB iPhones that are constantly out of space. I don't think Apple publishes stats, but I guess >50% buy the cheapest model. The Facebook app also likes to use 500 MB for cache with no way to clear it other than deleting the app.

<comment><USER12> Lots of apps are like this and I don't understand why. They should be using the caches folder and "the system may delete the Caches/ directory to free up disk space". However I have never seen this happen. When my phone runs out of space I have to manually delete these apps. Are they not using the correct folder, or is the system not deleting the caches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do you have to download all localizations? Isn't it possible to download only the required one after install? As far as I know Waze does this, for example. (Honest question, I'm not a mobile developer)

<comment><USER14> Sure you can! Downloading the localizations is a large extra complexity in development though, while simply bundling them all is a minor bother in increased download size, for the customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought our apps were fat, this is ridiculous. But clearly they belong to the school of never rewrite just keep adding more and more and more. Eventually you wind up having no idea what you are shipping and the quality goes in the dumpster. At least you can use the web if you hate the mobile app (I do).

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a side-effect of the current app business model, which sacrifices software quality to deploy it fast to the market... who expends 1 month optimization while a new app comes every 6 months ?

</comment><comment><USER17> > DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED

What could possibly be in there?

<comment><USER18> We use it as a joke name for functions/modules that are deprecated or dangerous, or that otherwise should be avoided. It works pretty well even though it's (probably) an empty threat.

<comment><USER19> Why not just remove them instead?

<comment><USER20> The same reason why you otherwise deprecate stuff. Because it's still used. As for React, they have such a variable to allow interop with the react dev tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find it fascinating that they managed to get to this much disk footprint so soon without any of us having much of an idea about what is going on below the good.

Despite weekly updates with nonsensical generic descriptions we still don't have actual features like support for devices like the iPad Pro.

Especially with all the frequent A/B testing bull they're pulling recently, the quality and usability of their software is dropping on a weekly basis. It just seems like a bad combination of everything on a level Microsoft at their worst couldn't even come up with.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there a privacy analysis of the Facebook app that anyone knows about?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is exactly what happens when you don't bother to have any coherent architecture.

And is why you shouldn't get a job at Facebook if you really care about what kind of work you do.

<comment><USER24> The funny part is even if you do interview at Facebook, they only ask algorithm whiteboard questions. So it doesn't really matter if you have the sort of aesthetic values that cause this horrible app or not. If anything they might be actively selecting for it by filtering out experienced hires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are these files not compressed on disk? I'd imagine duplicate data like this compresses very well.

<comment><USER26> That's assuming the on-disk compression deduplicates. ZIP does not and 7z only does in 'solid' mode. Compression is not a silver bullet for this either - <USER2> you have a repeated 8MB sequence in 8 different parts of a 250MB file, whether or not the sequence gets deduplicated depends on the compression algorithm, dictionary size, speed setting, etc.

The solution to all the duplicated files is to dedup at build time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> New PM?</comment>


Generating PDF directly in the PostgreSQL database - <AUTHOR> http://www.profv.de/texcaller/group__postgresql.html

<comment><USER2> Are there significant advantages to doing this in the database as opposed to a middle layer?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why why why?

Why would you do this?

This is wrong in so many ways!</comment>


Derek Yu's "Spelunky" - <AUTHOR> http://tinaja.computer/2016/05/21/spelunky.html <comment><USER2> I want to make a comment on Spelunky on such a long time; here is a fraction of my thoughts:

Spelunky is one of the greatest video games ever created. It is pure perfection and I believe this to the fullest possible extent since playing the game for what must be seven years now.

It is an absolute treatise in good gameplay mechanics. Zero percent of it is an interactive story (save the intro and end, barely), it simply excels in being some of purest expression of what makes a game fun to play.

It has a little physics engine - one with no positional resolution (except for tiles) - that keeps the game constantly feeling smooth. The reason acceleration is put into a game, is because linear motion is so bizarre without it. That's kind of off topic but it's true.

What some people don't realize is that you can play spelunky however you want and it stays challenging, and the way you play the game changes over time. When I first started playing, I would methodically go through most of the rooms. Now I go straight to the exit. That may seem like hardly a difference, but the process was very much an evolution of giving up what I thought was necessary to beat the game using my own skills.

The only flaw I have found with Spelunky (and this is arguable): the teleporter is rng. mr yu pls fix.

I have so much more to say but I won't bore you.

<comment><USER3> Weird, as a roguelike fan, I find Spelunky enormously tedious and repetitive. I would much rather crack out BoI or good ol' Nethack.

And that's not for lack of trying. I've spent many hours trying to find satisfaction in Spelunky. But no matter the amount of time I put into it, it always seems like you're far more likely to be punished by bad luck than rewarded for skill or thoughtful play.

Perhaps I've just never gotten over some hump in the game, but I also find it remarkably shallow for a roguelike.

Of course this is all a matter of taste, but I thought it only fair to offer a counterpoint to your glowing review. :)

<comment><USER4> I'm a veteran roguelike player as well. I've beaten BoI, ascended NetHack quite a few times and beaten Spelunky many times as well. Out of those 3, Spelunky is the only one I keep coming back to. NetHack and BoI, to me, are monstrously tedious exercises in building an "ascension kit" and then merely brute-forcing the remainder of the game with it. Spelunky, on the other hand, stays fresh and challenging no matter what items you get.

As for luck? Spelunky is the least luck-based game out of the 3. It's possible to beat the game with no items at all. The enemies all behave in deterministic ways and there are no dice rolls involved in the combat. Winning comes down to a combination of manual skills and experience at reading the situations and reacting appropriately. Most of the times I die these days come down to taking unnecessary risks (milking the ghost for diamonds or murdering all the shopkeepers in the black market) in the hopes of racking up a really high score.

<comment><USER3> That may very well be why I find the game so tedious.

I _want_ a roguelike to offer me tools/equipment/power ups that offset the difficulty such that I don't constantly feel abused by the game.

Spelunky isn't designed that way. You can't stack items so all you can do is pick those items that best match your play style. Beyond that it does very little to help you... it's _deeply_ and fundamentally unforgiving.

Combine that with the lack of variability in level design (while the levels are individually procedurally generated, each major section of the game feels very similar from run to run), and whenever I play I find I'm just waiting for my next jump to not be quite precise enough, leading to YASD.

So I suspect for those that really revel in highly precise platformers with zero room for error, Spelunky is probably a great game. For me it's just game after game of deep frustration.

Edit:

BTW I'll happily admit that what I call bad luck is probably just a lack of skill. Unfortunately I doubt I'll ever develop the level of timing and precision necessary to play Spelunky well. And because the margins of error are so small, it _feels_ like bad luck when I die... again...

<comment><USER4> I guess you have a different idea of tedious than me! :)

Things are tedious to me only when they aren't challenging. If something is frustrating and really hard, it only makes me want to try again and again and again. If something is easy but just takes many steps to get done, I find it tedious and boring!

NetHack was my first roguelike and I absolutely adored it when I was learning it. I found it very intense and challenging and exciting going for my first ascension run. After having done it more than 10 times, I now just find it tedious. There is so much stuff to do that doesn't take any skill at all such as: item identification, Sokoban (same puzzles over and over for years), castle wand, magic marker, reverse genocide silver dragons, writing tons of enchant scrolls, doing the invocation ritual... It feels more like filling out government paperwork than playing a game.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I get that. I actually find BoI hits pretty good sweet spot in that regard. While I enjoy an OP build, most are playable (as evidenced by the challenges), so it doesn't feel like checking boxes on a spreadsheet, but it also feels like the game rewards you as you progress.

For me I find Spelunky just swings too far the other way.

But to each their own! I know plenty of people who love it. And talking about it now, I'm tempted to take another crack at it... :)

<comment><USER4> Haha, if you do: take your time and really pay attention to your surroundings and make a plan before you proceed. Leave the speedrunning to people who play the game thousands of times in a row! Enjoy! :)

I think I'm gonna play some Tales of Maj'Eyal (another box ticker I can't seem to stop playing)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might just be me, but I didn't immediately realize that the article was about Derek Yu's new book [1] about the making of the rougelike indie game [2] Spelunky.

1-[https://www.amazon.com/Spelunky-Boss-Fight-Books-Book- ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/Spelunky-Boss-Fight-Books-Book- ebook/dp/B01CYVHYSS)

2-[http://store.steampowered.com/app/239350/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/239350/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was in college with Derek, he was a gift both to CS classes and to the campus humor magazine, where I worked with him. He did a particularly great drawing of our data structures prof on the whiteboard one day.

<comment><USER7> His additions to the Heuristic Squelch were always fantastic too!

<comment><USER8> Derek Yu drew the cover for Vol 13, Issue 2

[http://squelched.com/issue/volume-13-issue-2-flaming-poo- bag...](http://squelched.com/issue/volume-13-issue-2-flaming-poo-bag/)

<comment><USER7> My favorite was Volume 11, Issue 5:

[http://squelched.com/category/volume-11/11-5/](http://squelched.com/category/volume-11/11-5/)

but seriously, he did so much at for Squelch. The office was covered with things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While on the topic of Spelunky, I have to mention that I hope Yu or someone ports it to linux. I would love to play it on the future Steamboy handheld console, if it ever releases. I do not own a Vita, as it is saturated by Japanese titles, for which I care little. I do have quite a couple linux compatible games on steam, however. Also, if I could stream from my PC to this device on the go, similar to the Vita, that would be splendid.

Here's hoping. Derek!

<comment><USER10> > I do not own a Vita

I bought one specifically for Spelunky actually, then BOI came out which I went on to 100% Platinum on the device. I'd never have bothered to do that playing either of those on a PC.

Excellent device for games like these and the best d-pad I've ever used

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where's Trigger Happy 2, tho!?</comment>